Review of Films Watched During 2013

Best film (all categories)

Beasts of the Southern Wild– A great film with brilliant stroy-telling, excellent child acting and ace music

Most entertaining

Dark Shadows - Very funny, especially Jonny Depp’s English-speak 

Best script

Argo - ‘Argo fuck yerself’ being the best line

Worst film (all categories)

Rock of Ages - Absolutely terrible film.  I was even driven to write review on Lovefilm to warn others!

Close second and third

Dredd – Atrocious!  Cheap and rubbish plot

Django Unchained - very disappointing. Not nearly as funny as expected and Sam Jackson is actually blacked up – WTF!

Best British film

Sightseers – An interesting premise and quite funny 

British film with worst casting

The Sweeney – Quite an entertaining if silly film but what is Plan B doing in it?

Worst British film

London Boulevard – What was Keira Knightly thinking?

Best foreign film

Tulpan – The first Kazakh film I think I’ve ever watched. Interesting and entertaining

Strangest foreign film

Yamada (The Samurai of Ayothaya) – A weird Thai martial arts do

Best life-affirming

The Concert - A gently funny, life affirming affair

Close second

Live and Become – An interesting story about an Ethiopian boy who goes to Israel

Best Nordic noir

King of Devil’s island – Brutal and stark real-life tale of grimness

Shiniest sci-fi

Oblivion - Quite good for a clap trap sci-fi film despite starring tiny Tom Cruise

Weirdest sci-fi

Prometheus -  A strange film; which started life as a tie in to Alien but took on a life of its own. (One thing you can say for old Ridley though, whether it’s an historical epic or a sci-fi romp, the plot is going to be ludicrous – see Robin Hood as aired on Boxing Day 2012 for details)

Weirdest Zombie film

Deathwatch - WW1 zombie trench horror; funny and yucky in equal measure

Funniest Zombie film

Cockneys Vs Zombies – as well being very funny, lovely to see a bunch of OAPs stickin’ it to The Man! 

Zombie film with daftest plot

World War Z - I mean, no way would planes still be flying about during a world-wide Zombie apocalypse!

Best Nazi Zombie film

War of the Dead – but still not a patch on Dead Snow which is still my all-time favourite Nazi Zombie flick 

Best vampire film

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter – surprisingly entertaining

Best Vampire/Zombie hybrid

Stake Land - Low budget vampire/zombie western. Imaginative and with cool music 

Best Western

Wyatt Earp’s Revenge - Very good and an excellent portrayal of Doc Holliday

Best comedy Nazis

Iron Sky - Very funny film. Comedy Nazis in space. Fantastic!

Strangest undead- Nazis- but- not- Zombies

Bloodstorm – Norwegian film featuring not-dead Nazis at the centre of the earth, with a weird terminator Hitler – completely bonkers!

Best action flick

Fast & Furious 6 – A glorious romp through shiny London

Close second

Iron Man 3  - Totally barmy but entertaining. Ben Kingsley is ace

Most disappointing action flick

A Good Day to Die Hard - disappointingly not Christmassy

Token thriller flick

Abduction - okay and keeps you guessing, but a disappointingly fizzly end

Best historical romp

The Great Revival – Chinese government funded epic about the start of the CCP. Revisionist but interesting

Best re-telling of a Greek myth

Wrath of the Titans - Better than Clash of the Titans, in spite of what the reviews say. And rattles along at a fair old lick

Best pre-historic epic

AO The Last Hunter - Good except for the totally unnecessary voice over

Best WWII film

Days of Glory – Very grim but good film about Africans fighting for France

Close second

The Round Up - not cheery but some excellent funny child acting

Worst anti-Nazi film ever

Army of resistance – I wanted the goodies to die as much as the Nazis. Terrible!

Best satire

God Bless America - Gun-rampage satire with a few twists

Most convoluted

Cloud Atlas – Very nice to look at but contrived and far too long 

Close second

Trance - Quite good and shiny with great music but a bit convoluted

Greatest missed opportunity

Jonah Hex – A great premise and some brilliant crows but far too short – and it’s not often I say that

Weirdest Bollywood

Endhiron – a sort of Bollywood sci-fi in Tamil. Incredibly daft but a lot of fun, if a bit long.

Weirdest James Bond movie

Skyfall  – The oddest James Bond I’ve ever seen! 

Best portrayal of a has-been

This Must Be The Place - Very good and funny in a nice gentle way

Best re-retelling of Moby Dick

Age of the Dragons – Interesting and imaginative

Craziest kids’ film

Puss in Boots - Excellent animation and funny dialogue

Worst kids’ film

 Hunger Games – Absolute rubbish and far too long. I just couldn’t accept the basic premise and it is so lame and predictable

Best blast from the past

The Final Programme – re-released in September 2013, it really is an odd do and very of its time

Worst CGI

Doomsday Prophecy - Very cheap TVM with worst CGI ever, but a laugh

That-franchise-has-run-too-long now

Resident Evil – Retribution - Same old bollocks

Most disappointing watch

Dark City - As recommended by bloke in pub. A very strange movie in which Keifer Sutherland talks... In... A... Really... Annoying... Staccato,,. Fashion... All...The way... Through

Most revisionist

Angels of Evil- Okay to watch but trying to make out some 1970’s Italian gangster was like some cool Baader Meinhoff dude was annoying. Some good clothes though

Most overrated

A Field in England – I must admit I didn’t really get it; the film or the rave reviews

Midget TVs shrink our brains and other organs

The recent trend in watching Film, TV and other entertainment media on tidgy phone screens may be welcomed as a miracle of modern technological science by many, but I’m afraid I just don’t get it.

Why do you want to watch a movie or TV drama on a 2 inch square screen? Apart from the fact that you can barely see the thing, it can’t be good for your eyes.

‘What do you mean?’ I hear you all cry. ‘It’s great – you can watch anything anywhere, like when travelling on a train or bus’.

Hmm, well, I would respond, for one thing we have managed for about a century NOT watching telly when travelling and for another thing, surely all that bouncing around potholes, being pushed and jostled by fellow passengers and stopping and starting every few minutes interferes with your viewing pleasure. Doesn’t it? It might be ok for a YouTube video but a movie?!

‘Ah, but if you’re at home you can also watch one thing whilst your partner or kids are watching another’, you may retort.

True, I may concede, but then again don’t most homes have more than one TV these days? And what happened to sharing the viewing experience? If you want to watch something completely different on TV than others in your household do you have the choice of going to another room to watch your favourite or maybe download it and watch later, or, dare I say it, not watch it at all? Will your life fall apart if you miss a particular show? You may be shocked to learn this but no, it doesn’t.

‘oh you’re just a luddite’ I hear you cry in exacerbation.

Well, that is absolutely not true. I love technology and the things we can do with it that we would never have dreamed of only a few years ago – it’s truly marvellous in many respects. But I believe it should be used in the best way depending on the purpose. For example, I can see a use for midget TV if you want to make your own mini home movies for example and preview them or watch a cat stuck in a toilet for a few seconds of pointless mirth, but how can you possibly enjoy watching a feature length film on an iphone?

And whilst we’re on the subject of download phenomena nonsense, I do wish that Love film® would stop trying to get me to watch films on line. Unless streaming capabilities get about 1 million times better than what they are now, I would much rather stick to my old fashioned DVDs thank you very much. I don’t care if it’s out of step with the zeitgeist but I really don’t see the point in switching from watching movies (especially ones that have took months and millions to make with high production values) in the way in which they were intended to the infinitely lower quality experience of waiting for the spinny thing on the computer to do its stuff and put up with a whole load of delays and glitches, and in many cases, adverts you can’t skip.

I don’t care if that makes me sound like one of them music nerds (which I’m not) that still think gramophones are better than CDs (which they are by the way). I shall continue to go against the grain until forced to conform to lowest common denominator due to market forces.