Zach Sees Every Movie: The Zach Sees Every Movie Awards

This is the final post of the Zach Sees Every Movie project. Previously this week, I reflected on the experience as a whole. On Wednesday, I posted a handful of finished reviews I had sitting on my computer. And in this climactic post, I host the Zach Sees Every Movie Awards. Here we go…

When I went into this project, I had no intention of publishing a year-end list in December. I had only been seeing every movie since September, which hardly qualifies me to judge the year in total, given the eight other months I neglected. Plus, it really wouldn’t make sense as part of this project, which wouldn’t allow for a logical summing-up until at least May. And now that the time has come, I certainly don’t regret not publishing a top-ten list, but I also realize how redundant a Zach Sees Every Movie one would be. Since a given year tends to be pretty back-loaded quality-wise, my list would look terribly similar to the countless lists others formulated back in December. So instead, I’ve decided to go with a group of random superlatives and write about some of the highlights and lowlights that way. Enjoy!

Best Movie with a Shit Trailer

Easy A (Gluck, ’10)

Really, this is just a mediocre trailer for the first two minutes and twenty seconds. It makes Easy A look like your run-of-the-mill dumb teen sex comedy. Then that final exchange happens – the great punchline on which this trailer ends, surely the perfect mix of wit, topicality, and edginess to sell this movie to the masses:

Amanda Bynes: There’s a higher power that will judge you for your indecency.
Emma Stone: Tom Cruise?

Booyakasha! Well, it turns out Easy A is actually a damn fine comedy. It boasts a sharp sense of humor and a handful of strong characters, even if Emma Stone (who gives a great comic performance that I’m not sure anyone saw coming) and Dan Byrd are the only memorable non-adults. And then there’s that line – bad any way you slice it, but one that could easily pass by without notice in the context of the film. Yet the trailer not only repurposes it in a short package designed to sell the movie, but gives it the greatest comedic spotlight of any other joke, turning this awkward, nonsensical, but minor misfire of a gag into the groan-inducer heard round the world. (Although it did get nominated for the MTV Movie Awards’ “Best Line from a Movie,” so maybe I’m just being an idiot. I mean, to be in the esteemed company of “I want to get chocolate wasted!” has to mean something.)

Best Bad Movie

Alpha and Omega, (Bell, Gluck* ’10)

Yeah, this was a bad, bad movie, one that I would have trouble even calling competent. But the awfulness of this story about a wolf clan divided between the esteemed alpha wolves and the lowly omegas was just plain funny. Really, howling as a metaphor for sex? Really? I wish I could have seen this movie with a friend (what, you’re surprised I couldn’t find anyone my age to see this with?), because I would have loved to share the experience of mocking this garbage.
* different Gluck

Runner Up

Beastly (Barnz, ’11)

I got to share this experience with a friend, although it was in a bustling theater compared to the dead one I saw Alpha and Omega in (there were no children, just a few Middle Eastern adults), so the mocking had to be quieter than I’d have liked it. But Beastly really was quite the amusingly bad movie. From its absurd premise delivered with no conviction to the tinier details that are amazingly ludicrous in their own right, Beastly should provide an embarrassment of riches for any so-bad-it’s-good connoisseur.

Best Movie that Was So Strange and Ridiculous I Pretty Much Have to Recommend It

The Warrior’s Way (Lee, ’10)

This is the kind of movie where you’re never quite sure just what the fuck you’re watching. It’s an over-the-top action-comedy ninja Western that takes place in a location apparently free of time, a classic 19^th century American West town on the surface, but anachronistically home to a circus and full racial integration. It’s endlessly confounding, but eventually as I was watching I began to realize that its bizarreness was actually really enjoyable. It was probably the strangest surprise of this project.

Runner Up

Drive Angry Shot in 3D (Lussier, ’11)

Since its genre elements aren’t as memorably blurred, Drive Angry isn’t quite on The Warrior’s Way’s level. But it’s still a sublimely ridiculous grindhouse-style action film that delivers the goods in some ludicrous setpieces and performances. Nicholas Cage stars as John Milton, a man who breaks out of Hell to avenge his daughter’s death at the hands of a demented cult leader (Billy Burke). He teams up with Piper, a fiery waitress played with gusto by Amber Heard. But along the way he is chased by a man known only as “The Accountant” (William Fichtner, in a performance that is as close as the film gets to true greatness), presumably Satan’s. The Accountant’s duty is to return Milton to Hell where he belongs. Drive Angry’s plot is muddled and makes absolutely no sense (a great episode of the podcast How Did This Get Made? tackles it in detail), but it’s a spectacle nonetheless. Sadly, both this and The Warrior’s Way tanked at the box office, but their noble efforts shouldn’t be overlooked.

Best “Oh My God, Is This Going to Happen? You Have to Be Kidding Me? There’s No Way This Is Going to Happen. It’s-H-Holy Shit! Holy Fucking Shit! It Just Fucking Happened!” Scene

Limitless (Burger, ’11)

[SPOILERS. Also, my memory’s not 100%, but this is basically the gist of the scene.] Limitless is about a magical drug, NZT, that gives you insane amounts of energy, focus, and skill, so that you can pretty much accomplish anything. In a showdown later on in the film, Bradley Cooper faces off against some folks in his apartment, but he’s not on NZT, which severely lowers his chances of not dying. He manages to kill two of his main opponent’s thugs, but he can’t win without the NZT. One of the thugs, who had recently injected himself with what Bradley Cooper thinks is the last dose, lies dead on the floor, blood pouring out from his gunshot wound. So Bradley Cooper does what any sane man would do in that situation – he proceeds to lap the blood up off the floor, essentially gaining NZT’s power by drinking a deceased man’s blood. It’s an absurd moment that feels a bit out of place in the movie, yet is amazing nonetheless. Unfortunately, aside from this and one strong scene between Cooper and Robert DeNiro, Limitless is only passable, but it has an odd charm in its cheesiness (and the happy ending basically comes from Cooper figuring out a way to harness the drug’s power without any of the health consequences, which is an awesomely immoral ending for a major Hollywood film), and is worth a rental for that scene alone.

Actress Who Kept Showing Up Throughout the Project and I Kept Hating Her Character, or Maybe Her Performance, or Maybe Both

Lucy Punch, Dinner for Schmucks (Roach, ’10), You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Allen, ’10), Take Me Home Tonight (Dowse, ’11)

I gave Lucy Punch the benefit of the doubt after Dinner for Schmucks. I absolutely hated her character, to the extent that it made me want to get up and leave the theater in the two scenes she was in. She more or less completely derailed the movie each time she showed up, burying any goodwill Schmucks might have managed before her appearance. But see, maybe she just did an amazing job playing an incredibly grating character. Could be, right? Well, then Punch wound up playing my least favorite character in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which I rather liked (in fact, I actually liked it a bit more than his newest film Midnight in Paris, which got much better reviews). As in Schmucks, she was not exactly playing a sympathetic character. But you know what? I’ve seen plenty of unsympathetic characters played by actors who I thought gave tremendous performances. And making me consistently want to tear my hair out (even in her briefer appearance in Take Me Home Tonight, which was filmed years before the other two roles despite being released after them) is not good acting. I think.

Best Traditional 2-D Animated Movie

Oh wait.

Best First Season of a Television Show that Was a Movie for Some Reason

The Lincoln Lawyer (Furman, ’11)

The Lincoln Lawyer is a legal drama whose thirteen-episode first season tells the story of Mickey Haller, a lawyer with typically low-profile clients, who unexpectedly lands a huge case. But it soon turns out to be far more complicated and dangerous than he bargained for.

Well, actually The Lincoln Lawyer is a two-hour movie. It just happens to have enough story for a cable-sized season of television. Which is really to its detriment; it has to cram in so many plot developments that it doesn’t have time to pace itself in a way that would make you care about the characters. It also means you can’t acclimate yourself to a certain status quo long enough for the twists to really surprise you. And I’m not saying that this hypothetical show would be great. I don’t really think The Lincoln Lawyer has greatness in it. But it would certainly make for a breezy, fun series. And it’s based on a series of books (each around four hundred pages), so it would have enough source material to run for a decent amount of time. But as a movie, it feels sadly rushed.

Best Director Who Made Movies that I Liked that You Probably Assumed Were Terrible

John Chu, Step-Up 3-D (’10), Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (’11)

What can I say? Step-Up 3-D had some laughable characters, dialogue, and conflicts, but like, fun laughable characters, dialogue, and conflicts. And the dance scenes were pretty awesome, even if the third dimension took a bit away from them since, you know, it blurs motion. And the Bieber movie had a lot of issues (every person on Justin’s tour crew is introduced as his closest pal), but was a largely enjoyable piece of propaganda. So you know what I say? Bring on his next movie, G. I. Joe: Cobra Strikes. Or, uh…you know, maybe don’t.

Best Claustrophobic Movie

Buried (Cortés, ’10)

Ryan Reynolds is stuck inside a coffin. That’s the premise of the movie. Ryan Reyonlds remains inside the coffin for the entire running time. That’s right, we don’t even get an out-of-coffin setup. It’s ninety-four straight minutes of coffin-y goodness as he communicates with the terrorists who buried him alive and the supposed forces of good who are trying to rescue him, while worrying about his diminishing supplies of light, battery power, and air. It’s an intense, gripping movie, and a fascinating and impressively effective exercise.

Worst Claustrophobic Movie

127 Hours (Boyle, ’10)

The grades I gave these two are pretty close (this one a B-, Buried a B), but the gulf between them is wider than that would suggest. (For one thing, it’s quite possible that I underrated Buried, but I’d have to watch again to confirm.) While Buried takes a limiting premise and finds a way to tell an interesting story with it, 127 Hours takes a limiting premise and says “fuck off” to the limitations, an attitude that proves to be its downfall. It has enough strong scenes to bump it to a barely-positive grade, but it traffics in so much stylistic gimmickry that it usually undermines its own would-be intensity.

Best Movie that Was Made Years Ago but Wasn’t Released Until This Past Year and Was Met with Universally Bad Reviews that I Actually Liked

Case 39 (Alvart, ’10) [Rotten Tomatoes, 23%; Zach Haldeman, B+]

What can I say? Although everyone else hated this horror film about a demonic child, shot in late 2006 but not released until late 2010, I kind of dug it. Maybe it was its weird structure – I went in knowing nothing about it, and it was about a full forty minutes until I actually realized it was a horror movie, since until then it was mostly a domestic drama with the occasional tense scene – or maybe it’s that I’m a sucker for Bradley Cooper being attacked by CGI bees that crawl out from under his skin. I DON’T KNOW. In fact, I can say with absolutely no certainty that I wouldn’t reverse my opinion of this upon re-watch. All I know is that on October 5, 2010, I saw a nighttime screening of Case 39 at the AMC Loews Boston Common 19, and I enjoyed what I saw.

Runner Up

Take Me Home Tonight (Dowse, ’11) [Rotten Tomatoes, 28%; Zach Haldeman, B]

I know, right? Such a specific category, and there are two candidates! Take Me Home Tonight, which was shot in early 2007, but not released until early 2011, tells the story of Matt Franklin (Topher Grace), a super-smart MIT graduate with no motivation stuck in a go-nowhere job at a Suncoast Video. On one fateful night, he, his sister (Anna Farris), and his best friend (Dan Fogler) go to a party in the hopes that Matt will meet up with his longtime crush (Teresa Palmer). Though steeped in cliché, Take Me Home Tonight has a certain earnestness and retro vibe that I found undeniable. (Not retro as in 2007, but as in 1988, when the film takes place.) It never surprises, but it consistently charms.

Most Overrated Oscar Winner

The King’s Speech, (Hooper, ’10)

Between the forced artsy angles in an otherwise visually and stylistically indistinctive film, and the unexceptionally constructed story that breaks no new ground while bathing in clichéd themes of the “you can do anything you set your mind to” variety, The King’s Speech was an enjoyable but deeply flawed historical drama given an almost absurdly disproportional amount of acclaim. That this led to it winning the most esteemed award in cinema over eight better nominees, not to mention plenty of superior films that weren’t nominated, is dumbfounding. But Tom Hooper’s win for Best Director is arguably even more outrageous, since the directing may have been the least remarkable and most objectively undistinguished aspect of the play-it-safe movie.

Most Frequent Trend

Demonic possession/demon-in-disguise movies, The Last Exorcism (Stamm, ’10), Devil (Dowdle, ’10), Case 39 (Alvart, ’10), My Soul to Take (Craven, ’10), Paranormal Activity 2 (Williams, ’10), Season of the Witch (Sena, ’11)

I don’t really have anything to say about this one. It was just strange. Do so many iterations of this subject pop up every year and I just skip them? (I mean, Paranormal Activity part une came out last year, so perhaps.) Since this subject for some reason seems to strike a chord with me, and I quite enjoyed three of these, I guess I can’t complain. (Also, to be fair, My Soul to Take only sort of counts.)

Best Fifth The Fast and the Furious Movie

Fast Five (Lin, ’11)

I’ve never seen The Fast and the Furious, or 2 Fast 2 Furious, or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, or Fast & Furious. But I have seen Fast Five, the fifth entry in the infamously oddly-titled series, and I liked it. A lot. Because Fast Five was just a deliriously fun action movie. The kind of action movie I waited the entire length of the project for. There are only so many turds like The Expendables, Faster (unrelated ‘fast’-in-the-title film), and The Mechanic that you can take before you desperately need something this kick-ass to wash away the mediocrity. Fast Five’s critical success was surprising to see but totally earned. It’s not great, but for the fifth entry in a decade-old popcorn franchise, it’s far greater than it needed to be. (And to think, I went into that weekend more excited for Prom.)

Well, that’s it. I mean it. This project will never happen again. I will fucking die before I let this project happen again. Bye.