5-Point Movie Review, 2014

Last year, 2014, I went and saw 26 movies. This time around I included 3 movies viewed on Netflix movie steaming service, and by this I mean that I sat down and really watched them unlike like other Netflix content where I let it play while I do something like art up something at 3:00 in the morning. “Art up” is a proper verb isn’t it?

For a break down of my grading process, you may refer to my 2013 roundup.

Averaging about a movie once every other week seems like a lot. However, about half way in the year I decided to avoid my local AMC Theartres’ $2.00 surcharge on films with showing times after 4:00 p.m. when paid with a gift certificate/ voucher. So I wasn't hitting them after work as I had been doing and instead I attended a Pacific Theater, which was a little less convenient. Other wise, I figure that I would have seen at least a half dozen more movies last year.

The abundant up-graded reviews (in white) shouldn’t be surprising, since by now I pretty much know what kind of films I like/ will pay to see. Which makes the three down-graded films (in black) particularly disappointing. On the other hand, I see ever fewer surprises in films with each year, and struggle to not down-grade something because I guessed the twist ending and rather more justly grade the quality of how well the twist ending was handled.

I graded both The Lego Movie and Big Hero 6 an “A,” and probably enjoyed The Lego Movie a bit more.

I down-graded Maleficent by three levels. Besides not understanding why the characters were depicted as they were (Maleficent, the misunderstood hero), I could not imagine the creative reason why it needed to be made.

You may note that I gave most of these a starting grade of “B.” In other words I’m saying this: “Congratulations, guys, you’ve went and made the film you wanted.”

To select one film of this batch as my “If you missed it, you should check it out” recommendation it would be Edge of Tomorrow a.k.a. Live, Die, Repeat, even though I bumped it up only one level. I think it earns that position just by being a decent film that was so difficult to market or in a concise way describe the film as something a lot of people would be interested in seeing. Interstellar, by contrast, as marketed was “Christopher Nolan’s weird space and time travel movie,” and audiences understood that. Certainly, in Edge, Tom Cruise brings his “Tom Cruise” brand of actioning, but it’s like the director uses that bit of familiarity as a set-up for a surprising pay-off.

Now, I’d love to continue ranting on about AMC Theatres’ policies, but I’ll stop myself.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for watching.