TOP TEN 2015

Other Top Ten Lists.

This Christmas, a holiday season inundated with an insurmountable flood of Star Wars merchandise, I heard my nephew describe one of his toys as a "Lego Movie Lego Set." In other words, this is a toy set based on a film adaptation of that same brand of toy set. Setting aside the meta-awareness that The Lego Movie brought to the conversation, that playset throws into stark reality the perpetual cycle of film and merchandise, forever feeding off of each other.

Before my second viewing of The Force Awakens, a ticket purchase that I felt some vague guilt about, there was a big screen commercial that by all appearances advertised neither a film nor a product, but rather urged its audience to talk to more people about Star Wars and watch more Youtube videos about Star Wars. We've gone beyond advertising products, and are now advertising cultural monopolies--the utter domination of discourse.

Culture is eating itself. 2015 exists at the nexus of rampant reboot/remake/requel culture. Movies that make significant money are almost never original properties anymore. That being the case, production companies have delved deep into their reservoirs to try to dredge up old properties that still carry with them a modicum of brand recognition. Thus we get the crushing inevitability of a nostalgia-pillaging Jurassic Park sequel. A wretched Fantastic Four cobbled together out of sheer corporate obligation. A new Terminator movie that nobody liked, the third Terminator movie in a row that was meant to kick off a subsequently aborted trilogy. A trilogy of failed trilogies. And on the horizon, a Die Hard remake, a Labyrinth remake, a Memento remake, and cinematic universes for Marvel, DC, Ghostbusters, Avatar, Transformers, Hasbro, the Universal Monsters, and The Fast and the Furious, among others.

The cart is firmly before the horse.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT: America's Secret Sin

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Demian Bichir, Bruce Dern, James Parks, Channing Tatum
Runtime: 187 mins.
2015

I take pains to keep my reviews here as substantive as possible while providing the fewest number of plot and story details I can get away with. The lowest form of film criticism is by-the-numbers plot recap. I admire film reviews that can give me an idea of the movie while skirting any information that might influence my experience of the story.

However, I don't feel like I can give a proper review of The Hateful Eight, one of Tarantino's more controversial works, without digging into heavy spoilers. So I'm going to split this post into Spoiler and Non-Spoiler sections.

THE BIG SHORT: Bubble Trouble

Director: Adam McKay
Writers: Adam McKay, Charles Randolph
Cast: Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt
Runtime: 130 mins.
2015

I've invented an adage. It goes like this: I don't care what a movie is about.

That's not to say content isn't important. I also don't mean to imply that I don't have preferences. If someone were to ask me to choose between a movie about a high concept sci-fi adventure and a story about the trials and tribulations of ballerinas, given only that information I would pick the former. And yet, there are very few high concept sci-fi adventures that I prefer over Black Swan. The lesson I've learned over time is to never dismiss a movie based on its subject matter. If I've heard good things about a movie from trusted resources, or if I trust the people who worked on it, I will see it regardless of the subject matter, even if the subject matter is of no interest to me. The great thing about great movies is that they will make you interested in their subject matter.

The Big Short is about the housing bubble, and subsequent financial crisis, that crippled the American (and world) economy in 2007. More specifically, it is about the men who predicted, and thereby profited from, that very crisis. Some of the best jokes in the movie are about the disconnect between the moviegoing audience and the topic. Ryan Gosling plays Jared Vennett, our narrator, who tries to guide us through the narrative while acknowledging the eye-glazing dullness of the subject matter. Not only that, but the sheer boring factor of banking and finance is integral to the plot and themes of The Big Short. How did nobody see the housing crisis coming? They were too disinterested to look.

JOY: Dull Dolls

Director: David O. Russell
Writers: David O. Russell, Annie Mumolo
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini, Dascha Polanco, Elisabeth Rohm
Runtime: 124 mins.
2015

I've heard time and time again that early career David O. Russell is better. My favorite of his has been The Fighter, the earliest of the four movies I have seen. I enjoyed the film, a boxing movie with a weird quirky spin. The dialogue was off kilter and the side characters were kooky; I still remember being thrown off kilter by the way the movie framed the weird cabal of sisters. It had a great original energy to it. Silver Linings Playbook maintained that energy, but situated it in a widely accessible package. The edges of psychological illness, that movie's subject matter, are smoothed over in a palatable and appealing way. Next was American Hustle, to which I gave a primarily positive review back in the day, but even then my major problem with the film was the lackluster convenience of the ending. It felt like Russell spent the whole movie setting up dominoes, then calmly placed them back in the box without ever knocking them over.

Now we've arrived at Joy, the culmination of a trend that has been brewing in Russell's work for years. After the critics and the public alike fell for Silver Linings Playbook, Russell has been catering to those crowds. These films aren't passion projects. They are what he thinks people want to see. This is a baseless claim of course, but I bring it up as an illustration for my feelings about Joy as a whole: it is a movie utterly devoid of passion.

Rejuvenation: 2015 in Review

Other Years in Review

2015 has seen a rather pronounced arc for Post-Credit Coda, though I suppose change isn't to be unexpected in a year when one moves residences twice. The first few months saw the blog in much the same shape as it was last year, occasionally pumping out a review when inspiration or inclination struck. That changed in the summer months, when a few of my popcorn movie reviews pulled more hits than I was typically accustomed to. I followed that up with a retrospective on the Jurassic Park movies. I'm not sure what combination of words or images I used in the Jurassic Park review to entice search engines to send traffic my way, but there has been a steady stream of clicks on that post ever since.

This encouragement prompted me to make some of the changes I had wanted to make for months. I detailed them in my Post-Credit Coda Revamped! post, and they amounted to: a new archive, a set design scheme, and a push for more big series events. My interest in this endeavor of amateur film criticism was rejuvenated and I started pumping out the posts.

I quite enjoyed my massive Spielberg Retrospective, but by the end of the Pixar business I was utterly burnt out. I even had a Tarantino series planned, but neither my desire nor my capacity were on board for that one. Obligation can lead to productivity, so long as it doesn't verge on oppression.

Unlike last year, I have no goals for Post-Credit Coda heading into 2016. Now that I've settled on a format I like, maybe it's time to buckle down, keep refining my craft, keep figuring out my goals, and put together some reasonable retrospectives.

Above all, I hope I continue to learn. If anything, this blog may someday represent a sort of personal archaeological dig into my development as a cinefile. Everyone needs a hobby.

Let's look at some year-long statistics!

This year Post-Credit Coda featured a total of 73 blog posts, including 66 movie reviews, 21 reviews of 2015 films, 1 top fifteen list, 1 guest review, 1 editorial, 1 television experiment, and 1 fluff piece written by Nicolas Cage.

Of the 66 movie reviews (exactly double last year's count!), the average score was a solid 8 out of 10.

The highest score, a perfect 10, belongs to four movies: Mad Max: Fury Road, Why Don't You Play in Hell?, Toy Story, and Finding Nemo.

The lowest score, an asinine 1.5, belongs to Left Behind.

The breakdown is as follows:

Score - Number of Movies with that Score

10 - 4
9/9.5 - 21
8/8.5 - 22
7/7.5 - 5
6/6.5 - 8
5/5.5 - 4
4/4.5 - 0
3/3.5 - 0
2/2.5 - 1
1/1.5 - 1
0/0.5 - 0

The total number of hits for this year: 14,004. The total number of hits for each specific post adds up to 7,784.

Of the 73 eligible posts, the average number of hits per post was 107.

The highest number of hits: Jurassic Park with 1725.

The lowest number of hits: Amistad and Munich with 20.

Great year everybody! Catch you later.

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - May the Force Bewitch You

More Star Wars Reviews.

Director: J. J. Abrams
Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, J. J. Abrams, Michael Arndt
Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Domhnall Gleeson, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill
Runtime: 135 mins.
2015

Thus the tang of the prequels is washed from our mouths.

Sixteen years ago the whole world was anticipating the revival of the Star Wars franchise. The Phantom Menace was perhaps the most widely anticipated movie of all time. Star Wars fans had assumed for years that they would never have another new experience in their beloved fantasy world, yet here Lucas was returning to his old stomping grounds. He had a new story to tell, and his audience anticipated it with bated breath and open arms. Then the movie was released...

Many people walked out of that theater shellshocked, having realized from the moment of the opening crawl that something was very rotten in Denmark. Some people walked out thinking they had seen something good, already preparing their defenses via a psyche suffering from heavy cognitive dissonance. Few people walked out satisfied in any meaningful way.

The prequels wrapped up and Star Wars was dead yet again, leaving fans with a decades-spanning case of blue balls. It seemed impossible to conceive of being excited about another Star Wars revival after Lucas's last debacle--and yet, here we are, staring down the barrel of a Star Wars movie that has become the new most anticipated film of all time. This franchise is a titan that will not die.

The excitement did not spring up overnight, to be sure. A great deal of work was put into refurbishing the franchise's image by a great number of talented people (the marketing push for The Force Awakens has been one of the most skillful and massive advertising assaults ever). At the pinnacle of all this was J. J. Abrams, a man with an unparalleled love for Star Wars whose entire career seems to have built to this point. From the first bits of Star Wars information that came down the pipeline, Abrams and co. actively, if not explicitly, disavowed the prequels and promised a return to form. J. J. convinced us all that he understood why Star Wars became such a cultural phenomenon in the first place, and he reassured us that we were all in good hands.

All of that turned out to be true to a fault. The great failing of The Force Awakens is its unforgivable similarity to the original trilogy, A New Hope in particular. Yes, the movie is a return to form, but it accomplishes this by replicating large swathes of the originals. This goes deeper than winky and noddy homages to the original trilogy, though there are plenty of those. I'm talking about a lack of imagination on the structural level. Yet again a droid is secretly given documents of incredible importance. Yet again our characters walk into a shady cantina with aliens playing snappy music in the background. Yet again, and this is the most egregious example, our plot centers around the destruction of a massive planet-killing weapon.

STAR WARS: Force Lightning in a Bottle

In preparation for the first of a new wave of Star Wars cinema, I've revisited the first of the first wave. Unfortunately I did view the special edition version, because Lucas has disallowed the existence of the original. For the sake of my review I have ignored the atrocious CGI and Lucas's various other meddlings.

More Star Wars Reviews.

Director: George Lucas
Writer: George Lucas
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, James Earl Jones
Runtime: 121 mins.
1977

It is physically, emotionally, and spiritually impossible for me to be objective about Star Wars. In fact, nobody can come to this movie without baggage anymore, whether it be I have seen this 50 times or I have been chastised my entire life for never having seen it. For my part, I cannot remember a time when the original trilogy was not already ground into the fibers of my being. Star Wars isn't my personal favorite or most beloved franchise, but it is one of the franchises that I dipped into over and over and over again as a child.

Coming at the film for the purposes of a review was a tricky exercise that involved a lot of hopping around trying to find the right angle of inquiry, rather than just letting the movie slide comfortably through familiar patterns already etched in my brain. To see Star Wars with fresh eyes is to force the perspective that this is a weird and cheesy sci-fi movie from the '70s, a movie that would have been good no matter what, but could easily have gone the way of The Last Starfighter: a cult classic with good and bad elements that never quite sparked a cultural brushfire. We are all living in the wake of the unparalleled Star Wars cultural brushfire, and peering beyond the flames is difficult.

SPOTLIGHT: This Little Light of Mine

Director: Tom McCarthy
Writers: Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James
Runtime: 128 mins.
2015

I can't think of anything special about Spotlight. That sounds like a slight but in this case it is not. As a friend put it on facebook, 2015 has been a great year for solid, classical filmmaking. Spotlight may be the foremost example of this, a procedural drama low on panache but high on unshakable craftsmanship.

The film follows the Boston Globe's Spotlight team of investigative reporters through every step of their journey down the rabbit hole of child molestation in the Catholic Church. The ordeal begins inauspiciously enough, with the team digging around an old story while trying to remain sensitive towards the power and respect that the Church commands in their city. As threads start to unravel, it becomes clear that this is not an isolated incident, but rather a wide-ranging systemic cover-up. The scandal grows, and the team finds that they have poked an enormous cultural hornets' nest.

THE GOOD DINOSAUR: The Land Beside Time

Twenty years ago Pixar Animation Studios revolutionized cinema with the first full length completely computer-generated film. Two decades later and Pixar is still one of the most consistently groundbreaking studios in the business. The Good Dinosaur is Pixar's 16th feature film, a worthy if not especially inspiring entry to their canon.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Peter Sohn

Writers: Bob Peterson, Meg LeFauve, Peter Sohn, Erik Benson, Kelsey Mann

Cast: Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Sam Elliott, Steve Zahn, A. J. Buckley, Anna Paquin, John Ratzenberger

Runtime: 93 mins.

2015

A new original film from Pixar is always something to be received with great relish, for they are becoming less and less frequent as the studio's sequel-able properties increase in number. The Good Dinosaur has the added benefit of fashioning for itself a pretty good central concept: What if the meteor that wiped out dinosaurkind had instead missed the Earth, and the course of evolution had continued without interruption? Thus The Good Dinosaur presents a timeline in which dinosaurs have adopted language, and have begun to move past hunting and gathering into agriculture and animal husbandry. This is a richer idea than the typical "what if dinosaurs could talk" animated standby, as it can tackle more interesting questions about the development of a species' culture.

Unfortunately the concept is entirely wasted on this movie, which seems interested in little more than the "dinosaurs talking" business. The entire first act takes place on the farm of young Arlo the apatosaurus, and it is somewhat amusing to see the techniques these long-necked beasts use to tend their crops, but it is also by far the most boring stretch of the movie. It's repetitive and only slightly charming. The characters of Arlo's family are sketched in sand, and for the amount of narrative actually accomplished by this segment of the movie, it certainly could have been streamlined by upwards of 50%. I also reacted poorly to Jeffrey Wright's performance of the little dinosaur's father, the only other member of the family who is at all relevant to the film. It's a performance that perhaps feels warm and welcoming to a child, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Barney was trying to teach me something.

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY: E Pluribus Anus

Twenty years ago Pixar Animation Studios revolutionized cinema with the first full length completely computer-generated film. Two decades later and Pixar is still one of the most consistently groundbreaking studios in the business. Leading up to the release of their new film The Good Dinosaur, I will be going through Pixar's entire filmography at the rate of two movies a week. We finish out our retrospective in disappointing fashion with the barren prequel Monsters University.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Dan Scanlon
Writers: Dan Scanlon, Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird
Cast: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, Steve Buscemi, Peter Sohn, Joel Murray, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Charlie Day, John Ratzenberger
Runtime: 104 mins.
2013

In my Brave review, I mentioned that near the climax I wandered out of the room without even thinking about it. During Monsters University, on the other hand, I very consciously spent as much of the runtime as I could doing other things vaguely nearby the television. Of all the Pixar movies I've watched or rewatched for this retrospective, I was looking forward to Monsters University the least. I called Brave "wholly and unflinchingly average." MU takes it one step further and becomes crushingly average. This is a movie that has no reason to exist and never stops reminding you.

To be honest I'm tired of this series. I embarked upon it because I figured I would enjoy critically revisiting some of the great contemporary animated masterpieces, and I have, but the most recent arc of Pixar's filmography is incredibly deflating. Between the Cars movies, the botched diversity of Brave, and now the insipid pointlessness of MU, my personal stock in Pixar is at an all time low (which is still rather high compared to other studios).