There’s a great debate over whether or not the oscars are racist. Fuck that shit. These are the Helpful Snowglobes, our first annual film awards, which are TOTALLY racist. Don’t even bother debating it.
Best Movie From This Year: Fury Fucking Road
No shit. The only argument I’ve heard is that this movie has no story. Which is incorrect. It has almost no PLOT, but there’s a story. I’m thankful to see a movie that lives, without exception, in the moment I’m seeing on screen. No flashbacks. No drawn out backstories. I don’t need that sheeit, I don’t want it. Maybe you do, and that’s cool, and you can watch pretty much every other movie made in the last 5 years. This is the best theater experience I’ve had in years, and it brought me back to the theater in a big way.
Movie Everyone Said Was Great That Was Not: Guardians of the Galaxy
Sorry.
Okay, clarification. These awards are based on what I fucking saw this year, not the year the shit came out. If you want stuff only from 2015, my suggestions are to:
- Check every other web site.
- Fuck yourself.
Guardians was fine, but I heard so much good about it. And when we got down to it, eh, Chris Pratt was not what I was hoping for, Zoe Saldana was pretty boring, and the best performances were from a Raccoon and a Tree voiced by Vin Diesel. It had one really memorable moment, but because it’s a Marvel movie, it has to have a near-apocalyse and an overly happy ending.
I’m not saying this was a TERRIBLE movie by any stretch. Just, look at the title above, okay?
Movie That Everyone Shit On And Was Totally Fine: Jurassic World
Oh, what Chris Pratt was doing in this movie would have gotten people killed in the OG Jurassic Park.
People. This is the giant CG dinosaur craziness movie. This is not a brilliant thinkpiece on playing god or the military industrial complex. We watched fucking beautiful people do fucking crazy things for a couple hours, then we moved on. That’s all it ever was.
Movie I was Sorely Tempted To Sneak Into The Theater And Catch the End Of: Point Break
What can I say? I got out of Star Wars, and I was like, I want to see how this Point Break motherfucker ends. Can it possibly end like the original? And why did they remake this movie? I’m pretty sure that I refuse to PAY to see this movie, but I’d watch the last 18 minutes out of pure curiosity.
Movie I Changed My Mind On: Snowpiercer
When I saw this for the first time, it was too violent for me. Which isn’t something I think often. Or ever, really. But there you have it.
Then, over the last year, I wanted to watch it again, and I did. It’s definitely violent, but without the surprise of how violent it was, I think I was able to really enjoy it for what it was, a pretty great movie with a very horizontal Die Hard thing going on.
Most-Wasted Person In a Movie: Judy Greer
Seriously. Redhead McPrettyface was fine as the lead opposite Chris Pratt in Jurassic World, but I’ll never be able to let go of the fact that we could have seen a Chris Pratt / Judy Greer team-up, and that would have been totes rad.
Best Movie Podcast: The Flop House
There are a lot of bad movie podcasts out there, and this is the only one I really like. It’s ACTUALLY funny, and it’s funny whether you’ve seen the movie discussed or not. They also discuss more recent critical or financial failures, which means you don’t have to sit through yet another episode about Batman & Robin or, I don’t know, Michael.
How Did This Get Made? Never. Flop House? Forever.
Movie I Know Least How I Feel About It: The Revenant
Beautiful as fuck, shot in natural light only, which makes it really special, but fuck. It was excruciating, and there were parts where I was mostly looking forward to the next thing happening. There’s something special going on on-screen, but…I don’t know. I can’t nail down how I feel about that one.
Movie I Came Closest To Seeing Out Of Guilt: Straight Outta Compton
Sure, the Oscars are white, although people seem to forget that it’s not some secret ACADEMY that nominates actors, but other actors.
I liked what Ice Cube had to say about the Oscars:
“I never used to go anyway,” Cube answered, laughing. “You can’t boycott something that you never went to anyway.” Now that his horse is out of the “horse race,” he said he just plans to tear up his ticket and move on.
“We don’t do movies for the industry,” he continued, gesturing at [Kevin] Hart beside him. “We do movies for the fans, for the people. And the industry, if they give you a trophy or not or pat you on the back or not, it’s nice but it’s not something you should dwell on.”
“We got accolades from all levels, from our core fans, from our curious fans, from people that didn’t even think they wanted to see that movie,” Cube continued. “We got so much praise for the movie. So how could we be mad that one other Academy or guild or anybody didn’t say it’s their number one?”
“It’s like crying about not having enough icing on your cake,” he added. “You know what I mean? It’s just ridiculous.”
It’s hard to say this without sounding like I’m being dismissive of the race issue, but here we go: I really don’t give a fuck about Oscars. I don’t know that there are many years where the Oscars got it right, and I definitely know that the movies I’ve tended to enjoy are not only outside the winners’ circle, they are outside the Oscar type. I don’t mean white, but I do mean the kind of epic scope movie that tells a sweeping, sometimes absorbing story, but can feel like a filmmaker jacking off. I liked Benjamin Button, honestly, the film that’s seen as David Fincher’s Oscar bid, but there were moments that I felt like this was his Oscar movie, and that transparency killed some of the fun.
Anyway, Straight Outta Compton. I think the NWA music is pretty interesting, as are the careers of Dr. Dre and Ice Cube into the late 90’s, before they started selling headphones and shit family movies.
But for me, I don’t see a ton of movies in the theater, and I can’t say that SOC was something that I saw the preview for and thought, “Yeah! That’s the ticket!”
I don’t know. Documentaries have gotten so good, people are figuring out how to make them good, watchable movies that aren’t just slow zooms on still images, that I prefer the documentary most of the time as opposed to the biopic.
Movie I Quit Almost Immediately on Netflix: No No: A Dockumentary
Ostensibly a story about a guy who pitched an MLB no-hitter on LSD, I watched ten minutes of discussion about how Dock Ellis showed up on the field with curlers in his hair one time.
I kinda get it. It was a different time and that was wild behavior. But I also feel like baseball…I find baseball super, almost intentionally boring, and the politics of it seem so antiquated even today.
I think there’s something about a rebellious baseball player that just doesn’t excite me, and the movie was boring as hell. I mean, I feel like most of us have to tamp down our real selves and we make a lot less money than baseball players to do a much shittier job. How much do I care that Major League Baseball fined a player for wearing curlers in his hair? Not much.
Plus, it was just boring. Go ahead and watch it. I’m spending a lot of words trying to figure out why it was boring, but the truth is, it was just boring.
The Perfect Movie If You’re Working On a Project: Never Sleep Again
I didn’t think I’d watch a 4-hour documentary on Nightmare on Elm Street, but then I made a blanket out of my old t-shirts, and boom.
It’s a movie you actually can watch without watching it 100%. There’s a lot of talking heads, and it’s really good, and the stop motion visuals between the movies is really awesome. But you can totally get away with it and enjoy the shit out of this one.
Most Tacked-On Love Story: Creed
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie that was less in need of it’s B-plot love story than this one.
The inevitable comparison is to the original Rocky, so let’s do it.
The original showed us two people, essentially handicapped and truly outcasts, who engage in one of the most awkward on-screen romances ever. And I don’t mean awkward in a Zoe Dascheneel (I don’t know how to spell that and I’m not bothering) way where she, I don’t know, thinks a party is a pool party when it isn’t and has to spend the whole time in a bikini top and win over the crowd with charm. The romance is Rocky is actually painful to watch.
In Creed, we get a guy with a chip on his shoulder, but he has all the potential to become the ultimate warrior, and a woman who is a music genius but is slowly losing her hearing.
In Rocky we have two not-super-attractive people falling in love. Don’t take that as insulting. I think Talia Shire was pretty good looking, and they definitely weirded her up for the movie.
In Creed, we have the two most attractive people on screen falling in love.
In Rocky, we see a strange romance that maybe shouldn’t work between two characters who are not seemingly on their way to the top. They are plateaued, if not on the way down in terms of their life arcs.
In Creed, we see two people have a very standard romance, they’re beautiful, they’re cool, and they are ready to pop and become huge.
I think the idea of the romance coming on the way down is a lot more interesting and intriguing, and it’s not something you see a lot. Whereas the Creed style, it’s just in the movie because…honestly? My pet theory is that the filmmakers either A) felt every story needs romance -or- B) didn’t want people to go down a Rocky/Creed gay route. It was the least interesting relationship in the movie.
Actor I Turned Around On This Year: Leonardo DiCaprio
I finally saw Django Unchained, and I saw the Revenant, and this dude is great. I mean, Coming from being a teen at the height of Titanic, I think I always considered him like a heartthrob nothing, but he’s fucking awesome. Brad Pitt, same thing. When DiCaprio is on screen, something good is happening.
Movie I Couldn’t Bring Myself to See: Amy
I almost did it. I was outside the theater. But I just didn’t want to. It seemed too sad. I really like Amy Winehouse’s music, and I don’t know a lot about her personal life. I guess it might be sheltering myself, but she’s fucking dead, and I don’t think it’s really any of my business.
Worst Moment from Star Wars: Jedi Mind Trick
Not the worst moment because of some crap where it’s a girl doing something girl’s shouldn’t do. The worst moment because there were a dozen opportunities to write in a reason that Rey would have known about the existence of the Jedi Mind trick. Han Solo: “It’s all real. I’ve seen people have thoughts put in their minds.” Maz: “The Jedi can put thoughts in people’s minds.” Kylo Ren could have done it in front of her. It’s not a bad moment because someone is doing this in a silly sci-fi movie, it’s a bad moment because less lazy writing would have fixed it easily.
Best Moment from Star Wars:
“It’s true. All of it.”
Most “The Book Was Better” Movie: The Martian
It’s a damn good book. It’s a passable movie, but it’s a damn good book.
Most No-Bad-Guys Backstory: Ant-Man
Seriously. The main character steals back money stolen by a giant, evil corporation, a total Robin Hood maneuver, and everyone treats him like he was strangling and raping children.
The need for a character to do something bad but ALSO be lovable is killing stories. I can live with a main character who did something bad. Maybe if he, I don’t know, hit someone with his car while he was drunk, maybe that would mean it makes sense that he would feel like shit and need to find redemption.
A Sci-Fi Movie With Black Stars You Need to See: Attack the Block
Good sci-fi, and it’s fun to tell people there’s a movie where John Boyega has been kicking alien ass since way before Star Wars.
A Movie Where A Black Person Provides Gravitas and It’s Not Morgan Freeman: Pacific Rim
Idris Elba is pretty awesome. I’d watch him in everything. Okay, not the Beyonce vehicle movie. And, alright, Ghost Rider is a stretch. But DEFINITELY anything with giant attack robots. Would have been nice to see Ron Perlman and Elba in the room together, but what can you do?
The Black Actor I’m Most Happy To See On Screen: Anthony Mackie
The Hurt Locker was an interesting movie in that we all (I think) expected Guy Pierce to be the star, but that turns out incorrect, to say the least. Then we move on to Jeremy Renner, but in the middle of all of it was Anthony Mackie, who was awesome in that movie and is still awesome. He was by far the best part of Ant-Man, baby Mackie was awesome in 8 Mile, and I think he’s one of the stars I’m most excited to watch in the future.
The Black Actress I’m Most Happy To See On Screen: Rosario Dawson
There are some arguments about her ethnicity and whether she’s black, which seem to come down to whether she’s “black enough.” I don’t really care about that because, who the fuck am I to comment? I just think she’s criminally underused.
The Mostly-Black-Casted Screen Project I’m Most Excited For: Luke Cage
I really hope this is awesome. Because it totally could be. It’s not a movie, but fuck it, it gets the award anyway because I’m just not going to pretend that Boo! A Madea Halloween is worth anything.
On The List For This Year: Senna, Bone Tomahawk, Hateful Eight, Ex Machina, Hunger Games.
Sort of On The List, But With Nervous Reservation: Dr. Strange, Rogue One.