March 22nd, 2016

Yeah, it’s a pretty great update I’ve got for you since January. Get it? Update? Weekend Update? Where are you going? I thought we were friends?

ANYWAY.

For those of you that don’t know what the heck is happening, I’ve challenged myself to watch 366 movies in 2016 that I’ve never seen before.

It’s insanely hard to watch this many movies AND constantly update my blog regarding how I feel about them, however I did take the time to create a Google Sheet rather than a Doc so that I can track not only the movies I’ve watched, but list where I’m ranking them best to worst.

So far, there have been 82 days in 2016 and I have watched 97 movies.

I know. You’re super impressed and a little turned on. That’s normal.

Here’s the link to the Google Sheet if you care. CLICK HERE. On the left it’s movies that I know exist that I haven’t seen. The column in red are the ones I’ve already seen with the order in which they were seen listed parenthetically.  They are in descending order of awesome.

I’m going to break down a few that I have actual opinions about, because there are quite a few where I simply thought: “Well that was a movie.”

Here’s the bottom ten:

As you can see, Mac and Me is dead last, as it should be.

“But Ben”, you might be asking, “what’s so bad about an Alien befriending a small boy in the 1980’s? E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and His Adventures on Earth was SO good.”

Yes. Yes it was. You may remember a scene where some kids wheel down a ledge like this one from E.T:

It won’t embed, so HERE it is.

Wow, what a great scene.

Now here’s a scene where a kid wheels down a ledge in Mac and Me:

You know what, nevermind…that scene is pure gold.

The other crap movies at the bottom of the list include:

The remake of Point Break, which manages to make Ice Cube’s XXX: State of the Union look like an Oscar winner.

Yup.

Hitman: Agent 47 which manages to have the largest inverse relationship from movie poster awesomeness to actual movie crappiness:

Tracers starring Taylor Lautner who’s Google search results turn these up for good reason:

Again, it’s funny because it’s true…not the being dead thing…just the alpaca thing:

Unfinished Business…which was pitched like this:

Studio Guy doing coke 1: “Vince Vaughn being Vince Vaughn, as I don’t know, something with business?

Studio Guy doing coke 2: “Yeah but he’s gotta be in not America so we can play on him being Vince Vaughn not in America.”

Intern: “This script is completely unfunny, plus it’s unfinished at best. It has no business being a movie”.

Studio Guys doing coke: (in unison) “THAT’S WHAT WE’LL CALL IT! UNFINISHED AT BEST!”

Intern: “Christ, at least call it Unfinished Business, also, I bet Dave Franco isn’t doing anything right now”

He wasn’t

So those movies were shit, but I DID see some FANTASTIC ones as well:

I remember seeing Aliens when I was SUPER young, and I wanted to introduce it to my girlfriend, and after the first 10 minutes I just could not remember ANYTHING that was coming and everything was surprising and fantastic to me, so I put it back on the list.

Shaun the Sheep is a stop motion movie (made by the same people that do Wallace and Gromit) that has no dialogue. It’s utterly delightful. If you’ve never seen anything done by them…I feel like if you like the following gif, you’ll like Wallace and Gromit:

Concussion was underrated this year and Will Smith was great, but Albert Brooks just friggin nailed his role. I don’t know who I love more, Albert Brooks or Stanley Tucci as far as actors that usually snag these little bit parts that end up as the best parts of the film. I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone who’s on the fence about seeing Concussion, so I won’t. Albert Brooks has the best line of dialogue (that he delivers perfectly, of course) from any movie in 2015 and I’ll fight you in the parking lot if you disagree.

Rush surprised me so much. Ron Howard has some great movies, but DAMN. I’d venture to say it’s the most underrated movie of all 97 films I’ve seen this year. It wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, but hey…remember this dude from Inglorious Basterds?

He should have been nominated for Best Actor, even though I looked it up and they were pushing him to be nominated for Best Supporting, which is bullshit. It was a two man show with him and Thor in a car, and he was magnificent.

The other movie that really surprised me with how much I truly enjoyed it was M. Night Shamalamadingdong’s The Visit.

“Ohhhh spooky…I wonder what the twist is…blah blah blah” NOPE…not even close to being a let down, this movie was expertly done and I LOVE the direction it took the entire time.

That’s the update for now. Thanks for reading. If you read the list and you think there’s something random and weird out there that I haven’t already seen, reach out why don’t you?