I woke up this morning, looked at the calendar, looked at my movie spreadsheet and thought why don’t I do a monthly summary? Apparently, as you’ll notice from the extreme length of this post, I had a lot to say. I watched 27 movies this month, with an average rating of 7.0876 and enjoyment rating of 0.56 (my made up system of enjoyment where 1 = thumbs up, 0 = Eh, it was ok, -1 = thumbs down, and -2 = the worst thing ever). Overall a pretty average month, but with some movies that got strong reactions of me. So let’s get into it.
Best of the Best
Saturday Night Fever (1977) – 7.89
I’m hesitantly putting Saturday Night Fever on my best list. It’s the first time I’ve seen it and I didn’t know anything about it, other than Travolta doing disco in a white suit. Despite some completely deplorable scenes, I found myself kind of liking the story as a whole. The movie centers around Travolta who plays a young stud who goes dancing every night with his friends trying to pick up chicks. Him and his group of friends are despicable with how they talk about women and it almost turned me off from the movie. Then came Stephanie to save the day, a woman who tells Travolta just how little she thinks of him and I was back in. I loved her no shit attitude and that she didn’t fall for Travolta’s tricks. It was interesting because after being turned down so viscously, Travolta can’t stop thinking about her or what she said. It’s very much a character study movie and I was interested to see how Travolta would develop.
All that said, there were parts to the movie that were seemingly glossed over that made me question if it deserves to be a best movie. Spoilers ahead because I’m going to be real here. There was a scene of gang rape that barely even gets mentioned in the movie, and has the victim hugging one of the rapists barely 5 minutes after. She should’ve gotten the fuck out of there the second they stopped that car. But as sick and disturbing as it was, I don’t think the movie tried to paint those guys as good guys for doing that. It was more like the last straw for Travolta to realize he can’t hang around with his friends anymore. So in the context of the story it could be deemed necessary, but it is sickening. The poor girl just liked Travolta, she didn’t deserve that. Then there’s the part that I’m even more torn up about. Travolta attempts to rape Stephanie in the back seat of his car. She manages to push him off and get away, but then when he shows up on her doorstep at the end of the movie she lets him in. He apologizes to her and tells her how he wants to be a better man. I can appreciate the fact that she was hesitant to forgive him, but I don’t know how I feel about her ultimately agreeing to be friends with him after that. Again, it does something for the plot of the movie because it shows how Travolta is trying to grow by suggesting to be friends with a woman instead of just someone to have sex with. Movie wise… ok… maybe it can work, but I don’t think it was a good thing for Stephanie’s character or for women in general. It made the movie end on a happy, optimistic note, but I’m not so sure that is should have. I liked the movie, but definitely still torn up about it.
Tenet (2020) – 8
I saw Tenet for the first time a few days ago and I can’t get it out of my head. I heard all kinds of bad things about this movie, but I generally like Christopher Nolan and wholly like Science Fiction movies so I couldn’t resist. I will confirm one bad thing I heard about this movie, which is that the sound in it is atrociously bad. There are scenes with characters just talking to each other and there will be this aggressively loud music playing over top of their dialogue. It was so bad that I had to turn subtitles on so I wouldn’t miss anything. Intentional or not, it completely doesn’t work. I was also extremely confused by the idea behind the movie. It’s technically a time travel movie, but not in the way you’d expect. Instead of being transported to the past, the characters invert and go backwards from the present. The whole concept of this broke my brain. I only started to get it about half way in when the protagonist inverts himself for the first time. Once I started to wrap my head around everything I thought it was an amazing idea. In a sense you’re watching the movie forwards and backwards and I love that! Not only is the idea cool, but I marveled at the technicalities of people moving forwards and backwards in the same scene. It was so seamless I couldn’t even tell how it was done. The special effects are mind blowingly good. One part that stood out to me was when an inverted guy steps on a piece of rubble that then starts to un-rubble itself and flips him over in the air. It took my brain like 5 seconds to process what it just saw and then it was just speechless.
This movie is like Fight Club or Mulholland Drive where the twist changes your whole perspective and you want to go back and watch it all again to pick up on things you missed the first time around. It’s even more like Mulholland Drive for me because without knowing the full story I hated it, then when I got to the end and realized what was happening I ended up loving it. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Sure it has its flaws, and Christopher Nolan can be a bit much at times, but I give him massive credit for writing an original screenplay. It’s refreshing and interesting enough that I can 100% overlook the sound problems and exposition heavy scenes. This broke my brain in a way that hasn’t happened since I watched Primer. If you love time travel science fiction you have to see this. I know I’m going to be re-watching it again soon.
Dangal (2016) – 8
My best movie of January is going to be pretty out there. It’s a 2h 40m Indian movie about a father that trains his daughters to become gold medal wrestlers. This turned out to be a blast of a movie. The story is obviously right up my alley. I like feel good sports movies, musicals, and movies with strong female characters. This had it all!
There were a few catchy songs in the typical Bollywood fashion. Something about the way Bollywood songs sound just makes me happy. I wouldn’t have minded some more, but I liked the few songs that I got. Then I loved the fact that these girls were wrestling and beating the shit out of boys. I know I would’ve loved this as a kid because it wasn’t often I saw strong girls or women in movies. But I’ll admit that the story is very Hollywood, which is to say you could predict things from a mile away. For instance, the very moment we learn about this extremely difficult 5 point flip move that can be performed, it was clear that the movie would end with a gold medal match and that in the last second a 5 point flip would win the fight. You know it’s going to happen because that’s how all sports competition movies end. Call me a hypocrite if you want, because if you keep reading about the other movies in this post I totally am. Sometimes obvious plots piss me off, and other times I don’t even care because the movie as a whole is so good. This is a fun movie, with a well told intriguing story and I have no issue with naming it my best movie of the month. It’s on Netflix Canada and worth a watch.
Worst of the Worst
I Wake Up Screaming (1941) – 6
This was the third noir I watched from TSDPDT and I would’ve done a whole post about it but honestly I don’t have much to say. The movie is about the murder of a young actress and the investigation into who killed her. My biggest problem with it is the fact that it’s not told chronologically. There are frequent flashbacks and sometimes I didn’t understand what was happening. I tried to follow along but I just couldn’t keep things straight. By the time I figured out who was who, I just didn’t care. Not to say that there wasn’t anything redeeming about it. There were some fantastically shot scenes of the suspects and witnesses being interrogated by police that was shadowy and perfectly epitomized noir. So while it felt like a noir, I just didn’t enjoy the story or how it was told. The only reason I put it on my worst list was because I wanted to mention it, and because it took me 4 tries to finish it which generally isn’t a good thing.
Sightless (2020) – 4
Next up is Sightless, a Netflix movie about a young woman who loses her sight in an attack and then starts to go crazy imagining things. It sounded like an interesting premise. I thought it’d be like Hush, which I loved, but wound up being one of the most maddening movies of the year. I’m probably going to spoil the whole thing, so, while I don’t recommend you watch it, if you plan to then skip ahead. This movie is the most beautifully shot garbage that I’ve seen in a long time. I hated literally everything about it from the plot, to the characters, to the dialogue to the actors themselves. The woman gets attacked for who her family is I guess? And her brother sets her up in some kind of recovery hotel with a young sexy male caretaker? The setup for the movie is stupid and from the first time I saw the caretaker I knew there was something wrong with him. It was so painfully obvious, and of course I was right. See he was pretending to be everyone! She can’t see so she doesn’t know who she’s talking to. He pretended to be doctors, neighbours, the police, every one. This “twist” just enraged me at how stupid it was. The acting reeks of teenagers trying to break out into more dramatic film roles and the main actress isn’t there yet. She tried way too hard and I couldn’t empathize with her in any way. Although I can’t completely blame the actors because they were given nothing to work. The dialogue in this movie is atrocious. The first scene has the protagonist talking to a detective about her attacker and he was like “How tall was he or she?” and the woman cuts him off and vehemently says “He. It felt like a man.” Oh sure, let’s base the entire investigation off your feelings. The movie’s riddled with lines like that that make no sense and no human being would ever say and it set me off every time. I’m trying to find more examples of how bad the movie is, but even skimming through it again is triggering me. Stay away from this movie. It’s not so bad it’s good, it’s just offensively bad.
Run Hide Fight (2020) – 6
I had a moral debate over what to rate Run Hide Fight and where to place it on my list. It’s about a girl who fights back when a group of kids takes some students hostage in a school shooting. This is an action movie along the lines of Die Hard, set in a school shooting. I enjoyed the movie, I think putting aside everything I’ll talk about soon this was more of a high 7 maybe even an 8. But then I think about the fact that it used a school shooting as a backdrop, an event that is still very much ongoing and severely traumatizing to anyone who experiences it and I can’t rate it that high. If they were trying to make a statement about school shootings, I could understand making this movie, but then what message would they be trying to send? The protagonist pretty much saves the day by fighting back like a badass. So the message I would take away from this is don’t listen to lockdown protocols which are laughably ineffective, and fight back. This is where I have a problem… you tell people to fight back and you turn school shootings into wars with even more casualties. You tell students not to trust teachers, or the security procedures and you’ll have people who don’t lockdown and get killed. You talk about all the short falls of lockdowns publicly and you’re just giving potential shooters tips on how to skirt lockdowns and find more victims. None of these are good message and I hate that I even supported this movie by watching it.
On the other hand, this movie might’ve been made not to send a message, but for pure entertainment value. In that case why did it have to be a school shooting? Sure it may be commonplace now, but it shouldn’t be! I don’t want to normalize this fucked up situation. How about the protagonist is working part time at a super market and some bad guys try to rob it. Maybe a bank, a plane whatever… anything but school shootings. I was in school when Columbine happened, but before they became this common. I didn’t have to walk through metal detectors, or do active shooter drills and I was never in fear for my life when I walked through the school doors. That’s how it should be and to pretend like anything else is acceptable makes me sick. I wouldn’t want to send my kids to school thinking I’ll never see them again. For that reason I’m happy to put this as my worst of the month because it’s a tasteless, disgusting idea for a movie.
Biggest Surprise
Witchboard (1986) – 8
On to something happier. As I pondered what movie surprised me the most this month, it was clear Witchboard had to be it. I bought the In Search of Darkness II 80s horror documentary and as part of that they do these bi-weekly watch parties. This was the pick for the week and I had no hope of this being good. An evil Ouija board? Woooow, how original… But I haven’t been so surprised by a horror movie since My Bloody Valentine. The kills in this movie were shocking and they even happened to people you didn’t want to die. You start to get to know characters and you care about them as the movie progresses. They felt like real people that had emotions. Spoiler warning, the main character’s friend gets killed and our protagonist actually cries over his body. It made me sad. A horror movie made me sad. Usually a friend gets killed and nobody even seems to care, so this was unique and refreshing. The best part though was the ending which was totally badass and I loved every minute of it. The lead’s girlfriend who was using the evil Ouija board goes full on evil and kicks his ass. It was unexpected and awesome.
Now with all that said, this is an 8 on a horror movie rating scale. It’s not a masterpiece like Psycho or something, but if you like 80s horror this one is top notch. Don’t be turned off by the boring premise or generically weird title. It’s good enough that it might make its way into my Halloween rotation.
Biggest Disappointment
Sixteen Candles (1984) – 5.8
Now lets end on a sour note. I decided to do a John Hughes day on the weekend and watch two of his movies that I’ve never seen, Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. The latter was alright; a typical dumb 80s teenager movie. While the former was cringey and dated beyond belief. I sort of knew the plot of this movie, or at least some key scenes, but I didn’t know the extent of the cringe. For example, the Chinese exchange student, Long Duk Dong… every time he’s on screen they add a gong sound effect. It’s the most embarrassing thing since Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I can’t even put my feelings about this into words. It’s terrible. And it’s not even the worst part of the movie. There’s this geek character who keeps trying to win the attention of the main character, Samantha. He puts his arm around her, flirts with her… sniffs her… tries to make out with her… gets her panties and shows it to all the guys at school… What a quirky guy, that isn’t creepy and gross at all! There’s another girl in the movie, she’s this beautiful popular girl who likes to party and at one point she’s completely plastered. Well this geek drives her home and then he realizes that he has this hot babe totally at his mercy. So what does he do? He tells his friends who take pictures of him posing with her to make it look like they slept together. Already this is fucked up, but it goes even further. The next morning him and the girl wake up in the back seat of the car, neither of them remember what happened, but apparently they slept together. The movie sets it up like the geek was drunk too so it’s ok, but he was not blackout drunk. The guy was sober enough to drive in a straight line, think about taking pictures with a girl and drove her out to a remote location. This guy was sober… and he took advantage of a drunk girl. Then she… liked it?! What a great message to send to kids. If girls don’t like you, get them drunk and have sex with them then they’ll realize how great of a guy you really are.
I honestly can’t look past either of these elements of the movie because they are there through the entire thing. It’s so offensively bad that I wouldn’t ever watch it again. A part of my brain knows that deep down, no one probably cared about these things when it was made, but I can’t look past it. I won’t fault the movie for being made when it was made, but I’m not going to hold it up on a pedestal just because it had a quirky scene at the end with kids eating cake while sitting on a table. This was no Breakfast Club that’s for sure, and I’m very disappointed.