I feel like recently my ability to sit down and enjoy movies has diminished. Taking a little bit of inspiration from Soderbergh, here is a list of the last few movies I’ve watched for the first time:
- Gravity
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- 52 Tuesdays
- Priscilla Queen of the Desert
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Interstellar
- 22 Jump Street
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
- Godzilla (2014)
- The Imitation Game
Although be aware that this isn’t an exhaustive list of 2014, it’s from around August to now, January 2015.
Only five of those ten (Gravity, GotG, 52T, PQotD, 22JS) I actually enjoyed and didn’t afterwards complain about to those unlucky enough to see it with me. This disappoints me. I’d like to be a person who enjoys all films, but instead I feel like a party pooper when everybody else really enjoys a thing and I then have to launch into all the reasons I didn’t. This is a formal apology to all my friends who watch movies with me and then have to deal with me being a downer afterwards.
Some of these films I saw in cinema, some on television, and some on those crap little screens in commercial airplanes. Some I saw alone and some with company. Unfortunately none of these variables correlates to how much I enjoyed the film.
I’m not going to give reviews of those films above because, honestly, I don’t remember what I complained about for most of them. I didn’t even dislike most of them, they were “fine”. Unfortunately when you’re around people who exit the cinema grinning and raving about the film you just watched together, and then you politely smile and say “eh, it was fine” it really sounds like you’re saying “why did you guys drag me here. I want to go home.”
As I look down the list of films I didn’t enjoy as much I realise it might be that I’m choosing the wrong films. I didn’t really expect much from TMNT (and was still let down). There are a bunch of new ones that I’ve wanted to see but haven’t had the chance: The Rover, The Babadook, Boyhood, Neighbors, Locke, and these might have helped the ratio a little.
Looking through IMDB’s 2015 list I’m keen for:
- Blackhat - Michael Mann
- Maps to the Stars - Cronenberg
- Jupiter Ascending - Wachowskis.
- Project Almanac - PG rated teen time travel!
- Chappie - Blomkamp
- The Gunman
- Furious 7 - obviously
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Mad Max: Fury Road - Mad Maximum excitement for this one.
- Jurassic World
- Tomorrowland
- Terminator Genisys
- Magic Mike XXL
- The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - Guy Ritchie
- Everest
- Spectre - new James Bond one
- Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
- The Hateful Eight - Tarantino
- The Forest
- The Fifth Wave
Some of these are included just because they’re continuations of big franchises, or by big name directors with fantastic work in the past, which basically means everybody has to see them, right?
I won’t see all of these, and I’ll probably accidentally see some I didn’t mean to, like the new Mission Impossible. I’ll probably accidentally see that like I accidentally saw the last two.
