Letdown after Letdown

I'm glad, referring to Chris's earlier post, that the product is finally actually getting blamed for a change. I've stopped writing any reviews because A: Chris does a very fine job, and most of the time I have the same opinion as him, and B: The movies for the most part aren't worth writing about.

There have been some gems in all of this shit. "Wallace and Gromitt," "History of Violence," and "Stay" are three titles that come to mind. But most of it has either been flat out crap lately (aka "The Fog" and "Flightplan") or just mindless dribble that doesn't move me one way or the other. Movies like "The Greatest Game Ever Played," "Elizabethtown," and "Domino" aren't bad per say (well, maybe "Domino"), but they're definately not anything special.

I just don't understand. I don't think movies are over by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm sure if you looked at the history of films on a year by year basis there have been years like this where the product was weak, but as an avid movie goer for many years, I can't remember one like this in my lifetime. If there was ever a year to improve your DVD collection and find out why certain movies are considered classics this would be the year.

This year is just full of catastrophes. The genre film seems to be at an all time low, and horror movies seem to be the worst off. Look at these titles: "The Amityville Horror," "The Ring II," "High Tension," "House of Wax," "The Fog," "Boogeyman," "White Noise," "Hide and Seek," "Venom," "Cry Wolf," "The Cave," etc. I'm not sure any of these movies are going to be remembered in two years nevertheless scaring us silly in the next ten. It's like 1981 all over again when the earlier successes of such still talked about fright films (Halloween, Friday the 13th, Alien, and The Omen) led to an onslaught of instantly forgettable titles like "Final Exam," "Happy Birthday to Me," and "Graduation Day." You're all thinking what the hell are those films? My point exactly.

The action film isn't any better off. Movies like "Domino" and "Doom" not only have unoriginal action scenes, but they don't have a viable story that makes any sense to go along with them. The reason we still love "Die Hard" and "True Lies" is not only because those movies had great action sequences, but because they also had some great characters.

The romantic comedy has in my mind been dead for years, but movies like "Must Love Dogs" and "Just Like Heaven" are even further proof that they all have the same damn story, and why should we waste our time? I can just go back and watch "Sleepless in Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally" again, why do I want to waste my time with Reese Witherspoon's version of "Ghost?"

Even hot trends of the past few years have been made stale and pointless in 2005. Remember all of those instant classic "puzzle" movies of the past couple of years. It started in 1995 with the still outstanding "Usual Suspects" and moved on to such great films as "Fight Club, "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable," "Memento," and "Vanilla Sky." These were movies that changed the face of the mystery by using the narrative and settings to fuck with our minds and throw us a twist ending that we never saw coming, but at the same time made us understand everything that had happened before the resolution. In 2005, movies like "Flightplan" and "The Skeleton Key" tried to do the same thing with disastrous results mainly because they had a terrible story to begin with, and we could care less by the end. Like I said there have been a few exceptions, and I say this because "Stay" is actually a great example of this type of film and should not be missed.

I was thinking about what my "Top Ten" would be right now if the year ended, and for the first time in I don't know how long it would be much easier to come up with a top fifty worst list than a top five best list. I mean after "History of Violence" and "Batman Begins" I don't know where to go. I forgot about "Oldboy," but after that I'm stretching.

Here's hoping that movies like "Capote," "Kiss,Kiss, Bang, Bang," and "North Country" are as good as people are making them out to be. Here's hoping there are many bright spots in the next couple of months. Most of the time when I'm at the theater this year I'm always wishing I was back home watching "The Godfather" or "Ghostbusters" for the umpteenth time. At least then I know I'm gonna watch something great. It beats wasting 8 bucks on something that will probably be mediocre at best.