Slither: A criminally underappreciated horror-comedy from the writer of the Dawn of the Dead remake, James Gunn. It's funny, it's disgusting (in the best possible way), and it's populated by characters who actually register as individuals. Most impressively, it parodies horror film tropes while still getting the most out of them in terms of shock value, but not in a precious, po-mo Kevin Williamson way. Plus, there are zombies. And alien slugs. Score: 8.4
V for Vendetta: embarrasinlgy earnest and more than a little naive, but damnit it this bastard doesn't get your average couch-bound would-be revolutionaries blood pumping. Score: 7.5
Inside Man: Sort of an "urban" Out of Sight, in that it's a genre exercise helmed by a director more well known for small, personal films. Just like Steven Soderbergh with Out of Sight, Spike Lee uses the familiar structure of the crime film to experiment with form, creating the kind of intelligent genre movie that are rare as hen's teeth in Hollywood. Most genre movies are directed by commerical/music video hacks or a Michael Bay acolytes. It goes to show that the right sensibility can breath life into the most tired of plot constructions. Score: 8.2
Casino Royale: Speaking of breathing life into tired plot constructions...rebooting the James Bond franchise was really the only thing to do. (I heard there was an invisible car in the last one) Daniel Craig brings the brutishness to the role that is too often missing. Bond is, after all, essentially an assassin, something it's easy to forget when Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan are flouncy about. My favorite thing about this movie: Bond fucks up a lot. It's supposed to be his first mission as a Double-Oh, and the filmmakers are smart to show him bungling things a bit. He's never comically incompetent, but he screws up more than a few times, even while pursuing a remarkably low-stakes mission for a Bond movie. That's a good thing, too, because you get the idea that, at this stage in his career, Bond couldn't save a bunch of money on his car insurance by switching to Geico, let alone the world. Score: 8.1
Little Miss Sunshine: Winner of the first annual Worse than Hitler Alexander Payne award for middlebrow failure-fest. Teeters on the edge of smaltz without falling over, and creates some affecting character sketches by Steve Carrell and Greg Kinnear. Score: 7.7
Idiocracy: Mike Judge's mean-spiritied satire about dumbed down consumer culture that was strangled in the cradle by Fox. The editing scars practically bleed off the screen, and the sloppy voice-over used to stich up the wounds chaffs like a bastard, but it's absolutely packed with jokes, the majority of which hit home. Also, it's got the year's best line of dialogue that is hilarious, but completely meaningless when said out of context: "But Brawndo's got what plants crave...it's got electrolytes!" See? Score: 8.0
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: There's some decent satire of NASCAR cracker culture buried under the ramshackle improv. It's more hit-or-miss than Anchorman, largely because there are fewer comedy set pieces, but when the hits come, they resonate. Isn't it time that we acknowledged the fact that Will Ferrell is similtaneously one of the top comedy actors in America, AND the country's foremost practitioner of absurdist humor. It makes you wonder what the millions of mouthbreathers who made this movie a hit thought of all those endless scenes of dimwit characters trading non sequiters. Score: 8.0
A movie that felt less like seeing a film than having a government-mandated immunization course, with five inch syringes:
The DaVinci Code Score: 2.0
A movie that felt less like seeing a film than having a government-mandated immunization course...but not unpleasant, neccesarily, you know, like that polio vaccine with the sugar cubes?:
Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest Score: 7.3
Movies that not only sucked, but were crushingly dissapointing, as well:
Lady in the Water: Words can't to justice to the monumental awfulness of this thing. M. Night Shamaylan's ego has officially seceeded from the union and declared itself a nuclear power. That he thought people would be able to abide the breathtakingly awkward storytelling in this thing boggles the mind. Score: 1.1
Superman Returns: Not as dissapointing as Lady in the Water, if only because I never liked Superman's boring ass in the first place, but still...damn. Makes Ang Lee's Hulk look like Batman Begins. Score: 4.0
2006 to be seens:
The Good Shepard
Brick
Half Nelson
Pan's Labyrinth
Letters from Iwo Jima
Babel
The Science of Sleep
Stranger than Fiction
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
The Black Dahlia
Last King of Scotland
The Good German
Miami Vice
Damn, I've got work to do.
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