Movies in Review

I was doing a little house keeping the other day and realized that my 250th movie review was about to post.  Doing a little scrolling back I ran across a few things that I thought were worth noting at this milestone.

My rating system is designed to put most of the movies in the 2/3/4 range.  Only the very best should get a 5 and the very worst a 1.  Of course, that lovely bell curve wasn’t ever going to work out perfectly.  Because of my selection process I’m more likely to find the top of the scale than the

bottom.  The movies that got the worst reviews tended to be surprises to me.  In reality, as much as I would love the reviews to serve as guideposts for folks trying to explore  over a hundred years of movie making, I don’t really WANT to watch bad movies!  So the average score has been closer to a 4 than a 3.

Worst ratings went to “Goodbye, Mr Chips” which actually received a rating of zero.  A book that I loved was turned into an unwatchable abomination by trying to make it a musical and then casting Peter O’Toole in the lead role.  O’Toole has created some of my favorite characters in the movies.  But he should never, ever have been allowed to sing.  There were fourteen ratings of 1 –  “The Lone Ranger” (which very nearly also received a zero), “The Purge”, “Hudson Hawk”, “Men in Black 3”, “Mars Attacks”, “Shanghai Knights”, “I Spy”, “Scott Pilgrim vs The World”, “Daredevil”, “The A-Team”, “Charlie’s Angels”, “Because I Said So”, “Prince of Persia-Sands of Time”, and “License to Wed”.  I usually get some static from younger friends about my disdain for “Scott Pilgrim” but I just found it unwatchable and self satisfied.  Prince of Persia was so bad I actually stopped watching it.  Looking back I had three weeks in a row with single star rated movies (“Scott Pilgrim”, “Daredevil” and “The A-Team”).  That was a pretty awful stretch.

It’s interesting to see that several of my favorite actors appear in movies at the bottom.  O’Toole, Johnny Depp in the excrable “Lone Ranger”, even Robin Williams in an awful “License to Wed”.  Some I still have no idea why I watched except that I’m willing to try anything for the good of the cause (“The Purge”, “Prince of Persia”, “Mars Attacks”).  In fact, there are only two movies on this end of the list that I had to go back and look up – “Because I Said So” and “License to Wed”.  Really not worth the effort to jog my memory.

There are 27 two star ratings.  Surprises there?  How little “Clerks” impressed me.  A couple of interesting concepts rather badly put together for me.  I’m not buying into the fandom there.  Likewise the two star rating for “The Black Hole”.  Re-watching it didn’t change my mind.  Greatest disappointment was probably “Ali”.  As a fan of “The Greatest of All Time” I wanted the movie to be good.  It wasn’t.

81 movies made the middle grade of three stars.  97 got four stars.

There were some delightful surprises in the four stars.  “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” took me totally by surprise with its charm. Had no idea what to expect from “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Winter’s Bone” and came away stunned by them. “Zombieland”, “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Descendants” all surprised me as well.  “The History Boys”.  “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”.  Have to stop. Lots of good movies here.

Finally, the top of the heap, five star “Highest Recommendation”/”Must See” movies.  26 (or just over 10%) made this cut.  Not a lot of surprises here.  There are some interesting “discoveries” for me.  “Ace in the Hole” was a movie I had honestly never heard of before.  “My Neighbor Totoro” is one I still talk about because it simply blew me away with it’s heart.  “The Barbarian Invasions” was a challenge since it’s entirely in French but what an incredible movie it is.

All of which really makes me want to see what the next 250 movies are going to be!