The Guilty Pleasure Award

Lockout

Smoking in a space prison.  What could go wrong?

Why do I feel guilty?  This movie is unabashedly B level and it revels in that fact.  I mean, its about a prison break in space.  That concept screams B movie.  The action is laughable, like a Chuck Norris movie from the 90's, and the dialogue is punny and filled with one liners at every turn. 
Why do I feel pleasure?  The movie is fun and doesnt take itself seriously for even a second.  It knows what it is, tells its story, and gets out.  This is one of those movies where you can watch it and, if you can shut your brain off, simply enjoy it for what it is.

Magic Mike

If it weren't for the ties, this would be really gay.

Why do I feel guilty?  The movie is about men taking off their clothes.  I should enjoy nothing about this movie.  The plot becomes a bit melodramatic and the acting that is coaxed out of Cody Horn (see worst acting) is uncomfortably bad and can barely be described as acting.
Why do I feel pleasure?  The acting that comes from the people not named Cody Horn is surprisingly solid.  Digging deeper than the surface of men stripping shows us a decent story about friendship and a really good story about aspiring to graduate to something better than where you are at.

Pitch Perfect

"I didn't know I could sing either."

Why do I feel guilty?  The comparison between this and Bring It On is apt and for all the reasons that Bring It On is a guilty pleasure, Pitch Perfect is too.  Young women in-fighting and making up words that dont exist should not make for an interesting story, especially in a competition centered around something usually classified (not by me) as being girly.
Why do I feel pleasure?  The music is quite good and the strength of the bit parts is very enjoyable to watch.  Every character is likable in some way and afforded an opportunity to have their moment.  Even with the end never being in doubt, it was a fun ride to get there.

Red Dawn

One of these things doesn't belong.  Hint: Its the guy from Drake and Josh.

Why do I feel guilty?  It's just so big and loud and dumb, the type of movie that Michael Bay would make if he were capable of showing any kind of restraint or nuance.  North Korea teaming up with Russia to attack America sounds like it could veer into some racist territory and the movie doesnt disappoint, giving us a terrible characterization of Korean people.
Why do I feel pleasure?  My enjoyment really comes down to one scene late in the movie that I dont want to spoil for those who havent seen it.  Up until this point, the story had been very formulaic, but then a twist that genuinely caught me by surprise was thrown in and the ending of the movie was put in doubt.  I appreciate that and it made me see the rest of the movie in a better light than it probably deserves to be.

This Means War

"...And that's why we should rent a porno movie."

Why do I feel guilty?  This is a generic romantic comedy where 2 men are fighting over 1 woman, except the 2 guys are secret agents and best friends.  This last bit naturally extends itself to scenes of espionage and random action sequences.  It's very by the numbers and each scene that comes could have been predicted 5 minutes before it first appears.  Also, Chelsea Handler sucks the funny out of every scene she is in, per usual.
Why do I feel pleasure?  The chemistry between Hardy and Pine is very enjoyable.  They play off each other well and you have difficulty picking who you want to end up with the woman.  Some of the action sequences are quite good too, mixing humor and action well.

3 Stooges

Please have a gun in the box.

Why do I feel guilty?  The plot is very loosely tied together and it is non-stop physical humor and terrible cameos.  Jennifer Hudson continues to do things that make us question whether or not to revoke her Oscar.  Plus, any reliance on the cast of Jersey Shore is borderline unforgivable.
Why do I feel pleasure?  It captures the spirit of the olden days 3 Stooges shorts, which were loosely tied together plots and physical humor.  The guys cast to play the stooges did a good job paying homage to the original stooges, but dont offer us much new in the form of character advancement, with the exception of the actor who plays Moe, who brings new layers to the character.

The Michael Bay Award

I am gonna do this entire post in pictures from the movie that most make it look like a Michael Bay movie.

Battleship

Dredd

 

The Expendables 2

 

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Red Dawn

Wrath of the Titans 2

The Wilson Award for Acting by an Inanimate Object

The Axe from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

"Give me that Oscar, Daniel.  I earned it."

Where would our country be without this brilliant axe.  It is rumored that in Abraham Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, he was actually try to give rights to axes and not the slaves.  This Lincoln biopic brilliantly portrays the love of a man for his killing weapon and all of the difficulties that his marriage suffered as a result of this affair.  The sex scene between Lincoln and the axe is particularly moving.

The Bow from The Hunger Games

I bet Meryl Streep can't shoot a bow.

The Bow had a pretty good year this year.  It got to kill children in Brave, be used in an archery contest in The Avengers and kill aliens in The Hunger Games.  I think the killing children was my favorite though cause you can't outrun a bow, but it was fun to see the children try.  They are making another Hunger Games movie that comes out this year and in it they should have like a double bow that can shoot 2 arrows.  Imagine how many aliens Katniss could kill with that.

Daniel Day Lewis' Beard from Lincoln

Where's my f****** milkshake?

Daniel Day Lewis originally wanted to play the part of Lincoln without the beard.  He wanted to have Lincoln sport a Hitler mustache as a commentary on Lincoln's politics.  Spielberg, however, didn't bite cause for some reason he dislikes Germans.  We the audience are the winner of this refusal by Spielberg.  I think my favorite scene is where Lincoln drinks the blood of Robert E. Lee, and as it drips down his beard he shouts, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD!!!  I DRINK IT UP!!!  Powerful stuff.

Stripper Poop from Ted

"How hard is it to find a picture of poop on the internet?"

Other critics have labeled this performance as a "steaming pile" and "kinda corny", but I found it to be nutty, in the best way possible, and its' delivery and timing was nothing short of smooth.  This layered performance has set the standard for when poo is portrayed on screen, every copycat that follows it will have to settle for number 2.

Surgery Machine from Prometheus

The future of circumcision

This surgery machine can do anything, even though its custom built for a man, it is capable of performing a pap smear and hearing about how your friend from work didn't like your shoes.  There are only a few of them in the world and they cost like 18 dollars, which is a lot since in the future they finally manage to reverse inflation, except the word they use is unflation.  

USS Missouri from Battleship

Where do the pegs go?

The USS Missouri is a real ship that survived like the Civil War or something.  You would think that it wouldn't work properly, having sat tied to the shore for 350 years, but you would be wrong.  At a moment's notice and with the help of dozens of octogenarians, the ship is thrust into an alien war that it does not agree with.  The inner struggle of the ship is evident, especially when it preforms the single greatest stunt in the history of the ocean, pulled in one direction by its desire to kill aliens and in another by its love of the land.

Best Acting

Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook

"What do you mean I can't play with you guys?"

Mental disorders are a tough thing to accurately portray because an actor can have a tendency to create a charicature of what they perceive normal mental disorder behavior is instead of a unique character who happens to suffer from a mental disorder.  In this regard, Bradley Cooper hits this one out of the park.  The story doesnt revolve around him suffering from an illness, but instead focuses on him trying to put his life back together while he has an illness.  Cooper hits all of the right notes in his performance, taking the usual character he plays, the pretty boy douche, and adding a spice of realism and unspoken intensity. 

Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

"Hey QT, what's my line? N*****? Oh, ok."

Quentin Tarrentino specifically wrote this part of a German bounty hunter for Christoph Waltz, and that becomes evident very early on in the movie when we see the ease with which Waltz is able to deliver the fast paced dialogue that Tarrentino usually writes.  Regardless of what the title of the movie is, Waltz' Dr. King Schultz is the lead of this movie, and the driving force behind much of the plot moving forward.  He gives us a bounty hunter with a heart and a mind rather than just a killing machine.  I found myself drawn in every time he opened his mouth to speak, wondering what fascinating thing he may say next.  He now has 2 Oscars to go with his 2 performances in Tarrentino movies.  Why would he work with anyone else?

Daniel Day Lewis - Lincoln


Thanks for inventing the penny.

This performance is so iconic and masterfully acted, that when your grandkids picture Abraham Lincoln, they will not see the real Lincoln, but Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln.  There is no greater praise you can give to an actor than that.  He is able to play Lincoln as a quiet and reserved leader one moment, then in a matter of seconds, he explodes with a biting quip or a surge of intensity.  His Lincoln is a man of the people (well, half the people), telling drawn out stories then hammering home a punchline like a 19th century stand up comedian.  Day Lewis will go down as the greatest actor of our time, and possibly, of all time.

Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook

"You mean he was on the roof the whole time?"

It would have been entirely too easy to dismiss Lawrence in this movie.  She is only 22 years old, yet she was playing someone who had already been married and widowed.  However, she tackles this role with such a self-assuredness that we the audience immediately forget this fact.  She fully encapsualtes the character and makes it her own, drawing all eyes to her even in scenes where she shares the screen with the great in this movie, De Niro.  We accept that her character is kinda whorish and manipulative and we root for her, not in spite of these things, but because she makes them simply character traits and not definitions of her character.

Judi Dench - Skyfall

"It's Dame Judi Dench, you insolent little twit."

She is a thief.  She managed to steal away the entire plot of a Bond movie and made this all about her, and I could not be more thrilled about that.  The Bond films have always felt very formulaic to me, with Bond encountering a new villain, then screwing and drinking his way to a resolution that usually involved violence.  The newer Bond movies have upped the ante a bit by adding a compassionate side to Bond, showing us that he is truly affected when the people he cares about are taken away from him or put in harms way.  The greatest example of this being the use of M in Skyfall.  Dench exudes that usual aura of hers that demands that her character be respected and laces it with a new insight to her character that allows us to see just how deeply these two characters care for one another.  In lesser hands, the role of M could have been simply there to move the plot along, but in Dench's hands, it became so much more.

Quvenzhane Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild

I would make the same face if The Onion called me a c***.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I question how much of a child's performance should be credited to the child itself and how much should be given to the director.  (I will be doing a longer article next month about this very topic.)  With that said, Wallis is simply captivating in this movie, as we see her grow from a dependant child to someone ready to take responsibility for themselves.  Much of her best work is done through voiceover, but even when she is on screen not saying anything, you are drawn to her and her story, and the credit belongs to her performance.  Its easy for a child to lose their whimsy when they are put up on the screen, but that isnt a problem here and we never forget that this is a child tackling some major adult issues.





Worst Acting

Cody Horn - Magic Mike

" I believe you know my father, the inventor of toaster strudel..."

When acting this terrible comes along, it usually follows 1 of the 3 reasons untalented actresses get work.  1) They slept with someone.  2) They are related to someone.  3) They are an international music star.  Not coincidentally, every worst actress on this list follows one of those 3 rules.

When your dad is a major player in Hollywood, you are afforded certain perks, like discount coffee, backstage passes, and lead acting parts in major Hollywood films.  As the love interest of Channing Tatum's Mike, Cody is given the task of conveying the confliction her character feels toward the guy she likes being a stripper.  Just how bad is she in this movie?  When you type Cody Horn in to Google search, Google predicts that you are going to end up typing Cody Horn Magic Mike Bad.  Even Google knows she sucks.  Between her constantly making stupid faces and laughing like Ed, the mentally challenged hyena from Lion King, she actually manages to be outacted by the kid from I Am Number Four.  She was the least watchable thing in a movie where men were constantly taking off their clothes.

Diego Boneta - Rock of Ages

Peek-a-boo!!

Not all bad performances in a movie have to be cringeworthy and make you uncomfortable.  They could just simply be so laughably forgettable and absent that they warrant comment.  Diego's Drew would fall into that latter category.  He is supposed to be portraying a rock star, but has so little screen presence that you begin to question why they didn't just get a young rock star instead.  Even his singing opportunities, which in a musical are kinda important, don't have any power behind them.  Add to that the fact that he has zero chemistry with his costar, Julianne Hough, and you have the steaming pile of excrement that was Diego's performance.

Jeremy Renner - The Avengers

Can you do one more without looking into the camera?

Sometimes bad performances can happen to really good actors, as is the case here. Renner's Hawkeye isn't so much bad as it is terribly underdeveloped and one note.  He becomes the guy with the bow and arrow instead of a character whose fate we actually care about.  Some of the problems stem from the writing, since its rather difficult to develop a character who spends much of the first half of the movie as a possessed body, but even after that, Renner does nothing to set his character apart and make us care. His screen time with the Black Widow left me with more of a feeling of when can I see the other Avengers that matter to me and not with a feeling of caring about what was going on.

Kristen Stewart - Snow White and the Huntsman

This is her angry face.  And her sad face.  And her happy face.  And her...

There are things that most humans have which are called emotions.  Humans have developed the ability to convey these emotions through the manipulation of their facial muscles.  I should say most humans have developed this ability.  Kristen Stewart has made a career of biting her lip and twirling her hair and staring off at nothing.  Her attempt at an inspiring speech at the end of the movie may be the least inspiring thing I have ever seen on film, and I have seen Rollerball.  In fact, I should award all of the extras who had to listen to her give that speech the award for best acting, cause how they weren't all rolling their eyes and falling on their swords is beyond me.

Rihanna - Battleship

If this is why he hit her, I kinda understand.

How is it possible to be terrible in a part where all you have to do is look scared and every few minutes shout a line?  I will grant her that the script did her absolutely no favors.  She had 68 lines in the movie and 40 of them were 3 words or less, and ranging in content from shouting about coordinates to shouting about KFC.  With that said though, its no ones fault but your own when you cant convey terror or confusion and I realize the movie is big and loud and dumb, but you don't have to shout every line like you are in a crowd of Will Ferrells.

Taylor Kitsch - John Carter

"I can't act?  Friday Night Lights is on Netflix.  Go ahead, I'll wait."

Taylor had the opportunity to be bad in 3 movies this year, and he seized that opportunity and made it his bitch.  So why pick on John Carter and not the other 2?  Cause I wanted to pick on this dialogue between Taylor and an alien.

John Carter: You got me. I surrender. 
Tars Tarkas: [Fist on his chest] Jeddak. 
John Carter: Jeddak? 
Tars Tarkas: Jeddak. Tars Tarkas. 
John Carter: Tars... Tarkas. 
[Tars smiles] 
John Carter: Captain John Carter. Virginia. 
Tars Tarkas: Vor... ginya. 
[Points at John] 
Tars Tarkas: Vorginya! 
John Carter: No. My name is John Carter, I'm from Virginia. 
Tars Tarkas: [Continues to point at John] Virginia. 

  

The only thing that would make that cringeworthy dialogue worse would be an actor who chose to deliver the lines like this.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJrs11fLq14  That is a perfect storm of suckage. 

1st Annual Benny Award Nominations

Each year, we as moviegoers are inundated with movies that have a huge range in quality and content.  These awards were created to honor the good and the bad, the forgettable and the preposterous, the wrongly successful and the depressingly unsuccessful movies that come out each and every year.  The dates next to the category are when you can expect a category preview writeup posted.  So, without further ado, here are the nominations for the First Annual Benny Awards.

Best Film - 3/28/13 and 3/29/13
21 Jump Street
Argo
Cabin in the Woods
Chronicle
Lincoln
Moonrise Kingdom
Perks of Being a Wallflower
Silver Linings Playbook
Skyfall
Wreck it Ralph

Worst Film - 3/27/13
Battleship
Dark Shadows
John Carter
Rock of Ages
Snow White and the Huntsman
That's My Boy

Best Acting - 3/12/13
Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook
Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained
Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln
Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook
Judi Dench in Skyfall
Quvenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild

Worst Acting - 3/11/13
Cody Horn in Magic Mike
Diego Boneta in Rock of Ages
Jeremy Renner in Avengers
Kristen Stewart in Snow White and the Huntsman
Rihanna in Battleship
Taylor Kitsch in John Carter

Best Film Premise - 3/22/13
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Cabin in the Woods
Django Unchained
Looper
Ted
Wreck it Ralph

Worst Film Premise - 3/21/13
Battleship
The Grey
Lincoln
Odd Life of Timothy Green
Premium Rush
That's My Boy

The Guilty Pleasure Award - 3/15/13
Lockout
Magic Mike
Pitch Perfect
Red Dawn
This Means War
Three Stooges

The Michael Bay Award - 3/14/13 (This goes to the movie that best attempts to be a Michael Bay movie, ie loud and stupid)
Battleship
Dredd
Expendables 2
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Red Dawn
Wrath of the Titans

The Wilson Award for Acting by an Inanimate Object - 3/13/13
The Axe in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
The Bow in The Hunger Games
Daniel Day Lewis' Beard in Lincoln
The Stripper Poop in Ted
The Surgery Machine in Prometheus
The USS Missouri in Battleship

The 'That Was a Thing' Award - 3/20/13 (This goes to the movie that you already forgot existed)
Here Comes the Boom
Jack Reacher
The Raven
Red Tails
The Watch
What to Expect When You're Expecting

The Criminally Underseen Award - 3/25/13
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Goon
Haywire
Safety Not Guaranteed
Seeking a Friend at the End of the World
Seven Psychopaths

The Quality Gap Award - 3/19/13 (This goes to the movie with the greatest gap between its quality and how much money it made)
The Hobbit
Hotel Transylvania
The Lorax
Snow White and the Huntsman
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2
Zero Dark Thirty

The Sleeper Award - 3/18/13 (This goes to the movie that made way more money than anyone expected)
21 Jump Street
The Devil Inside
The Hunger Games
Magic Mike
Pitch Perfect
Ted

The Premature Award - 3/26/13 (This goes to the best film of next year)
Ender's Game
The Great Gatsby
The Monuments Men
Oblivion
Star Trek Into Darkness
The World's End