Movie Grades 3Q 2009
I watch a lot of movies. A couple years ago I kept track of all the movies I watched each quarter and posted them on this blog along with a letter-grade of how much I liked it. I figure such a thing could be of some value to readers. For some reason, I stopped doing it, but this quarter I decided to start back up again. Here are the movies I saw in the third quarter of 2009:
A
The Hurt Locker – The best release I’ve seen this year and it’s not close.
Apocalypse Now – I had considered this the most famous movie I’ve never seen. Maybe Gone with the Wind is now that movie. This was my favorite Vietnam movie and I think I’ve pretty much seen all of them now (the praised ones, anyway). About halfway through it occurred to me that I was probably watching one of the best movies I’ll ever see in my life. Enjoyed every second.
A-
Inglourious Basterds – Was everything I was hoping it would be, only more funny.
A History of Violence – Viggo Mortensen has gotta be one of the more under-appreciated guys out there.
B+
Tyson – Very broad and complete documentary on Mike Tyson as told by Mike Tyson.
Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) – Didn’t even know this movie existed until the remake came out. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. A little slow though. Maybe moviegoers in the 70s were quite as huge of action-junkies as people today?
Primer – A pretty interesting movie that was very difficult to follow. But what I appreciated more than the complex plot was the fact that this movie was made on a budget of $7,000.
The Informant! – Hilarious and entertaining.
B
The Hangover – Rarely stopped laughing.
The Terminator – I had never seen this before now. I’m not really into Sci-Fi movies all that much, but this was pretty entertaining.
Crossing Over – A movie about illegal immigrants that reminded me a lot of Crash. Good, but also very one-sided and idealistic to the point where I was like “oh gimme a break!”
I Love You, Man – I had no interest in seeing this movie until hearing from multiple people about how funny it was. By and large, they were right.
Home – Documentary about our planet. Was a little depressing actually, but the visuals were spectacular making this film worthwhile.
B-
Lakeview Terrace – Entertaining, terrifying, but also overly dramatic, unrealistic and predictable.
Brüno – I kept letting thoughts like “I wonder if this scene was staged or not” distract me from what was a funny movie.
The Great Buck Howard – Pretty good, pretty heartwarming.
American Psycho – While entertaining, it seemed incomplete in a couple of ways.
Bart Got a Room – Decently funny movie about a kid who struggles to find a prom date.
Big Fan – Disturbing
C+
Moon – Meh
Transsiberian – For having a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, I was thoroughly disappointed.
C
Public Enemies – This was disappointing, but not terrible. Still, a movie about Dillinger could have been much cooler than this was.
C-
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard – This was really disappointing. I was looking forward to it a lot but hardly laughed.
Major League – Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is a very funny movie?
D
Made in America – Very disappointing documentary that was supposed to be about the Bloods and Crips but instead was really disorganized and focused more on broad racial issues.
D-
Killing Room – Even a bad movie centered on the MK-Ultra CIA experiments would have been pretty worthwhile, but this was just downright awful.
The Flock – Movies like this make me wonder if even the director is able to realize it’s bad.
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