Posted by Happy New Year fellow geeks!
Introduction (repeated on all parts)
I can’t believe another year has passed! For this site, we’ve only been here since September, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not watched movies all year! You can find my reviews before September at AGeekNamedBob and WatchPlayRead.
I watch a lot of movies. This year I banked 208 2018 films. If you count, you’ll see this list is little shorter than that. I removed festival films that will be wide released in 2019 and those I watched for Crypticon Film Festival. (hey, go to Crypticon!)
And because I love you all, I went through all all of those movies and wrote up a short statement for EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
There are still many I want and need to see, as I watch them over coming years, I’ll update and leave a note for them.
At the end of the year I took all those movies and separated out into a 1 through 5 ranking overall. Hard picks to do – five seems right, but often a 3 can be a bad movie with just enough good to push up, or a good feature with some issues. Thus, the little write up.
Without further ado: I present…
The 3 out of 5s: The Average-ish flicks.
These are the films that either were truly in the center, or may lean good or bad but didn’t quite set up in either end to make it to 4 or lower to a 2. You’ll notice this is in alphabetical order. Maybe if I have time or it bugs me enough (or you people do), I’ll try to rank them. You may also note I didn’t add credit info. It’s out there if you look for it. Reviews are linked if there is one.
Caught
Caught was delightfully weird. Two strangers show up a man’s door requesting an interview. They seem a little off… a little … alien? Okay, they are. And they dont’ quite know how to be human. This makes the first half of Caught a blast as things soon end up with bloodshed, threats, and tension. But it can’t sustain as the ideas of the film soon run out leaving a standard home-invasion back half, albeit with really weird invaders. It is definitely worth a watch if just for the bonkers first half.
Children of the Corn: Runaway
I’m as surprised as you are this made it as far up the list it did. I watched ALL of this series this year in preparation for Stephen King panel at Crypticon. After 10, 11? Fuck I don’t remember and I’m don’t care enough to look real shit films (although III: Urban Harvest reaps some dumb fun) Runaway was almost a breath of fresh air. There’s an intriguing back story a good build. Then it goes to crap and becomes what we’re used to.
Cloverfield Paradox – REVIEW
This has been shat on continually since it’s release. But dammit, I found a lot to like. By no means is it perfect, or anywhere near as good as Cloverfield or 10 Cloverfield Lane (one of the best films of its year). We’ve seen it all before in other films, but we had enjoyable enough characters and some good questions of what the hell is happening, I was intrigued, and sometimes creeped out. Fuck that ending though. Review here.
Deadpool 2/Once Upon a Deadpool (review)
I loved the first film. Loved it so much. So did just about everyone else too. It was a hilarious satire of the superhero genre, reborn with such a boom in the last decade. It was naturally funny with a very strong lead in Ryan Reynolds. Folling up a comedy is hard, but Deadpool 2 tried hard leaning into what what people liked about the first. But in attempting to replicate can come off forced. Add in a really disjointed script, and we get something that doesn’t quite work. Once Upon a Deadpool, the PG-13 cut doesn’t use it’s concept as well at it should have. While the addition of the Fred Savage scenes are solid stuff, the cut of Deadpool is underwhelming. Unfortunately, they just remove from the film and doesn’t add to (like adding fun bleeps or overdubs, change scenes to hilarious alternates).
14 comments