The Road To 3K: 2831
The journey of a lifetime rolls on as I continue the trek to 3K unique films watched. Got a lot of work done this week in regards to films watched. I watched 3 films alone yesterday so without wasting too much time, let’s dive into what I’ve watched since I’ve last updated you and what I’ve got in the pipe.
I started off the weekend picking up The Raid two film collection from blu ray. A foreign film series that is as action packed as they come. I watched the first film in the series so far, The Raid: Redemption and damn what a good movie this was. I can see how people said Dredd was a ripoff of this movie but both movies make enough unique choices to separate themselves from being complete rip offs. This film has some of the best action I’ve seen in a movie as we follow a police squad as they go floor by floor in a tenement building run by a drug lord in hopes of taking him down but after they’ve become exposed they must literally fight for their lives as the drug lord puts a hit out on them, so the entire building is looking to kill this squad. It’s balls to the walls action and I love it. I just wish the film came in its native language with English subtitles because the dubbed version really kills the mood with terrible voice actors.
After that the weekend saw the release of three new movies, two of which I watched the day they came out. I started Friday morning watching Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse starring Michael B. Jordan in the title role. It was a solid action thriller with some really cool action set pieces, especially one towards the end of the movie in Russia. Where this film falls apart is its story. It’s insanely cookie cutter to the point that you know every beat the film is going to make before it makes it. It doesn’t completely derail the movie as Jordan’s performance and the action make it worth watching. I just hope that they can find a much better story for the next film because I still want to see a Tom Clancy universe with John Krasinki and Jordan at the head of it.
After that I watched the animated film The Mitchells vs The Machines, a really funny and gorgeous looking film from the creators of Into the Spider-verse, so the animation style is very akin to that film and it really helps the visuals pop. It’s a fun family road trip style movie that deals with the robot apocalypse and manages to mine a few really good running jokes throughout the film. Danny McBride is especially hilarious as the bumbling father trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter before she leaves for college. It’s a super funny and super sweet animated film that definitely won the weekend as far as best movie of the three.
We’ll get to the third one in a minute as I didn’t get to that train wreck till the week. Saturday, I watched the sequel to the incredibly tense and violent zombie film Train To Busan. Called Peninsula, the film sees Korea blocked from the rest of the world due to the zombie outbreak. Four people looking to make a boat load of cash return to the peninsula in search of a truck full of millions in American cash (hmmmm Zack Snyder’s movie Army of the Dead seems awfully familiar now). The film trades in horror for action and by no means reaches the claustrophobic terror of the first film but still manages to be an enjoyable zombie film all the same. Leagues better than anything the walking dead has ever put out.
Monday night, my lady love put on a much better than expected comedy called Saved! starring Mandy Moore and Jena Malone. This film ended up being loads better than I thought with a seriously witty and funny script about the fallacies of ultimate devotion to the Lord. It also maybe my favorite Mandy Moore film as she actually plays a character in the film, one you want to punch in the face too. God I can’t stand Jesus freaks.
After the misses went to sleep I ventured into DC territory for the animated superhero flick, Batman: The Killing Joke. I’ve never been the biggest DC fan nor the biggest animated superhero fan so this one missed the mark for me. It was alright and had some solid moments, mainly the performance of Mark Hamill as The Joker, but the film was just too scattershot and silly for me to really enjoy. It didn’t help that the first like twenty five minutes of the movie is so pointless, it’s basically just an exercise in watching Batgirl be horny for Batman until she can’t take it and jumps his Batboner….interesting choice.
Tuesday brought the last of the three weekend releases and the train wreck I talked about earlier. Things Heard and Seen starring Amanda Seyfried. Quite possible one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched in my life. Just no tension anywhere to be found for a ghost story and an ending that goes so far off the rails, it’s a wonder how it got greenlit. It’s a film that I feel like someone roped Seyfried in because she is far too talented to be starring in crap like this at her stage in her career. Just ugh, less said about this film the better.
To wash the taste of that film out of my mouth I then watched John Carpenter’s They Live. A film I just got that day in 4K for my new 4K blu ray player and while the film looked incredible thanks to the restoration the same can not be said about the story. Just completely nonsensical and while the 80s tone helped make it better than it had any right to be, it was tough to get truly into it with Roddy Pipers performance. Just terrible. I liked the idea of the film too and I think it’s one that may be better suited to a reboot with a better writer and better effects, although I did give this film an extra star for the last scene so if they remade it they have to keep that scene in.
I’ve slowly started to dip my toes back into horror so the rest of the week was dedicated to watching horror films I’ve missed from the last ten years or so and I started it off yesterday watching The Purge. It was alright. It’s a film that had some good moments and a solid premise behind it but was just fumbled by stale and boring writing. It’s a film that should have been handed off to someone more experienced because the world of the purge is so interesting, it’s just such a shame it comes from a writer-director who doesn’t have what it takes to bring that world the movie it deserves. Ethan Hawke and Lena Heady are both good in the film though and the creep who plays the person terrorizing them is suitably creepy in the film. It just needs a better third act.
Right after that I watched Purge: Anarchy because I read that in that film we actually get to go out on the streets and see what the purge is like which is what I wanted out of the first film so this film was a bit better for me. Not great. It still has a really silly third act and a lot of shitty dialogue and characters but the world building remains top notch. Frank Grillo is the only well written character in the film and he is on top form as the man out looking for revenge on the guy who drunkenly killed his son. I enjoyed this movie for what it was but after watching it and reading about the next two I fear we’ll never truly get the great purge movie we deserve. One where the plot matched the heights of its lofty socially political ideas.
The last of the three movies I watched last night was the horror classic by James Wan, Insidious. This film was really good. Not as tension filled as The Conjuring but it had some devilishly good scares with it. The red faced demon was fucking terrifying and the whole last thirty minutes of the movie when Patrick Wilson goes into the furthur was sick. James Wan and Leigh Whannell have really become masters of the horror genre and it’s been awesome to see their progression from their early work on Saw to films like this and Conjuring. They’ve really come into their own making some of the best horror not just of the 21st century but of all time.
And that brought us to my current total of 2831. If I can keep this pace I will most definitely make it to 3K before the end of the year. I’m hoping to reach it by the end of the summer/middle of fall if I can keep this going but we’ll see how that holds up once summer is in full bloom and we’re hitting amusement parks and beaches and doing fun summer things.
My next few movies I’m gonna be watching will be finishing up both The Purge and Insidous series. I bought the 4 pack Purge films so I’ll watch Election Year and the First Purge and I also bought all four Insidious films so that’s Chapter 2, 3 and The Last Key. There’s also two new releases in theaters this weekend that I’ll be checking out. Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man which sees him teaming up again with Jason Statham and a film called Fatima, which I don’t know much about but my theater is getting it so I’ll be watching it. And then from there I’ll dip my toes into my movie collection and find whatever I haven’t seen that’s calling out to me. I’ll probably finish The Raid series and watch the second film and then who knows from there. At that point it’ll be time to check in again so we’ll go from there.
Appreciate it anyone who has made it this far and actually cared about this journey. I know it doesn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things but hey movies is what helps the days go by for me so let me know down in the comments if you’ve seen any of these films and what you’ve thought and if you plan on checking out any of the new releases this weekend. Theaters are finally back and the summer movie season officially begins so get back out to those theaters people.
And until next time, Adventure On!