Okay, I've seen a lot of movies over winter break (my sister is 7 months pregnant, and worried that this is her last chance to see movies ever. Also, airplane movies).
In chronological order of when I saw them...District 9, G-Force (didn't see end), Invictus, 10 things I hate about You, Brothers Grimm, Avatar, The Fantastic Mr Fox, Brothers (didn't see start), Sherlock Holmes, Up in the Air, Memento, Napoleon Dynamite, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
I am now going to attempt to rank them by how much I liked them (which is really hard, because most of them are very good for completely different reasons).
#13: G-Force:
I heard it was bad, but it was the end of a really long day of flying, and I was in the mood for a turn-your-brain-off movie. It was so much worse than I had even imagined. Nothing but action scenes of hamsters using bazookas would have been much, much better than this movie.
#12: Napoleon Dynamite:
I think I laughed once. You know, I suspect this might appeal to the kind of people who enjoy The Office. Which is to say not me. It's also likely that the humor was rather male, which did not resonate with me.
#11: Brothers:
I didn't see the start of this, so perhaps I was missing context. Buuuut...cinematography and directing was weak. Before modern cinematorgraphy and it's camera cuts, really ancient movies used to try to be just like observing a play, so they put the camera in the "best seat in the house" (middle front of the theatre). That's what this movie felt like...especially when they were actually performing the play of Julius Caesar (about 20 minutes worth of just filming the stage from an audience location). Don't get me wrong, strong acting, but there were a lot of scenes that should have been made shorter, and frankly weak director choices in camera.
#10: Brothers Grimm:
It's a film with HEATH LEDGER and MATT DAEMON under the directorship of TERRY GILLAM (guy who directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail). How could it possibly go wrong? Short answer: it doesn't. It's just weird (and not in a comedic way like you might expect from a Monty Python type). Well...and it feels slow in places.
#9: District 9:
Don't have a whole lot to say about this film; it does what it does, and it does it reasonably well.
#8: Sherlock Holmes:
I'm incredibly impressed with how close to the original writing this is (well, except with more explosions and fighting). I mean, it recognizes that Dr. Watson is a freaking doctor, and smart with plenty of deductive reasoning, and a ridiculous risk-taker. It then correctly portrays Sherlock as this out-of-control whackjob where "dangerous" "unreasonable" and "unhealthy" don't even begin to describe him, yet he's so observant he gets kept around. Certainly the best Sherlock Holmes rendition I've seen.
#7: The Fantastic Mr Fox:
It's a Roald Dahl story, so it's weird and bloody, and kinda awesome. Done in a claymation way, and a lot of very smart cinematographic choices. It also uses clever visuals (switching from claymation to any of a variety of statues for interesting and awesome visual depictions).
#6: Memento:
You know, for most of this movie I was sort of like "yeah, whatever, this is a cool idea but not actually that fun to watch this way", but the end of the movie, my god. I won't be forgetting this movie any time soon.
#5: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs:
You know, working around animators and learning bits and pieces of what they do has made me into a bit of an animation nerd. It's to the point that I seriously respect the Ice Age movies when most people on the internet are like "WTF, who even likes Ice Age?" I wasn't even planning to watch this, but I saw a bit on someone else's screen, and just thought "damn, the way they're moving is really eye-catching." It also helps that it's about both food and mad science (two of my favourite things).
#4: Invictus:
Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela. He's just taken the presidency, and decided that the best way to achieve racial unity is to have the South Africa rugby team win the world cup. Yes, really. It's definitely worth watching. I wouldn't be surprised if it won the Oscar for "best film". So you might ask, "why is it only #4, then?" While I totally enjoyed watching it, and thought it was an excellent movie, I'm just never going to personally care that deeply about a sports film. (Well...maybe I would if the sport was Starcraft or Ringette, but those movies have not been made).
#3: Avatar:
Side note: saw this in 3D; dunno if that would colour my judgment (or even which way--I think I might have preferred it in 2D, honestly).
Anyhow, on the one hand, I'm kinda embarrassed to have this so high; the plot is pretty formulaic (seen it in romantic comedies, except Avatar has worse acting than romantic comedies). The fantasy is a combination of a lot of things I've seen before. And yet it was just really emotionally powerful. To some degree the really clichee movie plots exist because they work on human emotions, and this movie just clicked on that level, at least for me.
#2: Up in the Air:
George Clooney plays a guy who goes around firing people for a living. Completely breaks with normal movie plot in dozens and dozens of ways, but that's not what gets it so high (Invictus also does that, but is much more seamless about it--you don't even really notice it when you're watching Invictus. Up in the Air easily could be more clicheed, and it's sometimes jarring when it's not what I expected). It's interesting, they say if people don't enjoy the last 10 minutes of a movie, they won't enjoy the movie--and I didn't enjoy the last 10 minutes of the movie, and walked out thinking I guess I didn't like it that much after all.
So...what got this movie to #2? Some of the conversations in this movie are just plain brilliant. Brilliant discussion topics. Brilliant writing. Brilliant acting. It really made me think about a lot of things I take for granted.
#1: 10 things I hate about You:
I consider the vast majority of the romantic comedies I've seen to be good but not great. Generally above average, and always entertaining. It's very, very rare that I consider a romantic comedy to stand out as much better than others. In fact it's happened twice. The last time, was Wedding Crashers. This time it's 10 things I hate about you. When it comes down to it, my ordering for #8 through #2 was fairly arbitrary; I could probably scramble them and still be reasonably happy with the order. My #1 just stood out, though.
Now I want to be clear here: 10 Things I Hate About You is a romantic comedy. It doesn't even stray that far from the romantic comedy mold. It just does it really well. Featuring Heath Ledger and Julia Styles before they became big. Brilliant and funny writing. Excellent acting. Never had me thinking "I wonder when this movie will end" or "wow, you did something different just to be different, how 'artistic'." (To be fair, I would also say these two things about Sherlock Homes, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and Invictus). Bottom line is that (for me) 10 things I Hate About You hit all the right chords and none of the wrong chords.
