The State Of Cinema

Why is it so difficult to make a good film nowadays? Of the many films I’ve paid to watch at the cinema this year, only two stand out as being any good. All of the summer blockbusters (that I caught) were total let-downs. Even the smaller, more niche movies I’ve seen have been terrible.

Here’s why.

I thought Wolverine was going to be the low-light of the year, when I saw it. I fell asleep for around 30 minutes. When I dropped off, he was fighting Sabretooth. Then when I woke up, he was still fighting Sabretooth. I thought I’d only nodded off for a second, but then the film ended. It was like a strange form of time-travel. Also, the less said about Deadpool the better. Not because of Ryan Reynolds – who doesn’t love Ryan Reynolds? – but because he was so badly realised. They murdered Wolverine that day, and Marvel shouldn’t let Jackman anywhere near those sideburns again. Bad Hugh…naughty!

Terminator: Salvation was of a similar standard. IE – boring, overblown and completely needless. Terminator films only need robots fighting humans, and a few explosions, to be half decent. The concept is solid enough. What it doesn’t need is rehashed ‘Classic Lines’ of dialogue, misdirected fan service, and Transformers rip offs. Just robots fighting humans. That’s it. The only person to come out of that wreckage of a film was Anton Yelchin…mainly because he wasn’t as bad as everything else. Heart surgery, from a semi-robot to a human, in the middle of the desert? Unnecessary schmaltz. Terminator doesn’t need it.

Transformers 2: Rise of the Whatever was arguably the biggest let-down of the year. So bad, infact, it has ruined any joy I might have once wrung out of the first instalment of the series. A giant Megazord with giant balls…evil waffle irons…and some of the most hideous product placement this side of an actual advert for a product. Add to this the worst examples of ‘comedy robots’ I can think of, including a bit of a wise-cracking Wall-E and Ghetto-bots from space, and you’ve got yourself a terrible film. No amount of back-flipping robots in slow motion can save it. Which is a pity, because they rely on that heavily. Almost every new robot is introduced with a slow-motion backflip. It’s hard to care after the second one.

The worst comedy of the year has to be Bruno. Except that people will love it. Because people are idiots. There isn’t a single bit of humour to be squeezed out of this film – it’s just one long, unfunny gay joke. Borat was edgy, and challenged peoples preconceptions, ousting America to contain a fair few racists, sexists and generally not nice people. But the difference is it did it with it’s tongue firmly in cheek. It was quite funny, which made the more awkward moments easier to swallow. However much Bruno tries to emulate it, it can’t. Relying too much on heavily-scripted segments to provide humour, any sense of fun it might have had is gone. It’s main joke – Camp Man In Few Clothes – was done a million times better by Chris Pontius a few years ago, in Jackass.

There’s been other terrible films…Last House On The Left, Doghouse, Bolt…but no-one cares about them anyway. I could probably berate Doghouse until I ran out of words, and had to make up new ones.

The only two films I can recall being any good this year, were so unashamedly terrible, they were automatically great. Crank 2, widely panned by critics, was one of the best things I’ve seen. Ever. I challenge anyone to find a more madcap, inventive, original major release this year. It can’t be done. It was a pioneer for stupid films. It made stupid cool, and cool stupid. It made as much sense as raping a bottle of Toilet Duck, and was all the better for it. If you hated it, you’re allergic to fun.

Drag Me To Hell is similar, in that it was so bad…so stupid…it was great again. It rejuvenated the horror genre this year – no other film can match it in terms of jumps, scares, and gross-out moments. It’s pacing was spot on, it had a demonic goat, it was the perfect Sam Raimi film, hindered only by the lack of a Bruce Campbell cameo. But then, the same could be said for any film that Bruce Campbell isn’t in. Alison Lohman played it perfectly, the make-up and effects were b-movie grade gloriousness. Even Justin Long was alright.

So out of all the films I’ve sat through this year…all the popcorn I’ve ate, and Orange 2-for-1’s I’ve used…only two films were actually worth watching.

Oh, and Watchmen was alright too. There’s no point writing more than that about it…the risk of nerd-rage is too great.

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