The Films That I Saw: April 2013

The summer film season is about to begin but there is also an end of sorts that is happening as I’ve decided to put my music blog The Void-Go-Round on indefinite hiatus due to lack of enthusiasm and ideas I’m shutting it down for an in-determined amount of time. Largely because I just don’t really care to write about music again even though I have been listening to some new records that I like. Even as I’m taking the time to discover other elements of classic hard rock like Cheap Trick, Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, and several other acts just to fill my time and add something to my music catalog.

For me, April was a pretty good month though the past couple of weeks had me decided to slow things down as I was feeling a bit tired and wanted to save some energy for next month. I saw a total of 38 films, 20 first-timers and 18 re-watches. Definitely down in comparison to last month as one of the things I saw was a 7-part TV mini-series. Still, I think I did pretty good though I felt a little burned out in the last few weeks. Notably as I found a major highlight of the year in my Blind Spot assignment in Floating Weeds.

Here are the top 10 first-timers that I saw this month:

1. Trance

2. The Place Beyond the Pines

3. A Matter of Life and Death

4. Red Road

5. To the Wonder

6. Top of the Lake

7. Wuthering Heights

8. I Know Where I'm Going!

9. Ruby Sparks

10. A Canterbury Tale

Monthly Mini-Reviews:

American Reunion

I enjoyed the American Pie films (not the bloody awful straight-to-DVD films) though I wasn’t sure about seeing this. It was on TV and I decided to check it out where it wasn’t as bad as some people said it is but it’s not as interesting. Sure, characters like Stifler and Jim’s dad are fun to watch as well as seeing that 18-year old neighbor of Jim who’s got a very nice pair of tits. It was just that some of the humor didn’t work while some of the people in the film like Mena Suvari was underused.

Dark Shadows

The trailer for this film when it was about to come out looked like Tim Burton was going back to his comedy roots. Yet, the lukewarm reviews did worry me as I decided not to see it in theaters. Now that it’s on TV, it was OK but a lot of it revealed that Tim Burton really needs to stop using CGI, certain color palettes, and really strip things down again. Despite some good performances from Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bella Heathcote, and Eva Green, it got to silly while things definitely went out of control towards the end.

Ric Flair: Unemployed to Undisputed

A YouTube-made documentary about a crucial period in the career of one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all-time. It’s a very well-made documentary that showcased a period in time in which Ric Flair had left NWA/WCW due to a contract dispute and other reasons (which were stupid from WCW’s part) where he went to the WWE from the fall of 1991 to early 1993 though the film chronicled Flair’s arrival in the WWE to the moment in January 1992 where won the Royal Rumble to become the undisputed WWE Champion. It’s something wrestling fans must see which featured some rare footage and moments where Ric Flair proved to be the Man in pro wrestling for a brief moment in time.

The Watch

This was excruciating to watch from start to finish. It was bad enough that some of it was shot in areas where I lived including my old high school football stadium and the parking lot at my local Costco. What pissed me off about this film was that it tried too hard to be funny and instead, it came off as just embarrassing and dull. Jonah Hill’s creepy schtick doesn’t work while I think it’s time for both Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller to just simply retire because these old dinosaurs aren’t funny anymore. Definitely one of the worst films I had ever seen.

Top 10 Re-Watches:

1. Blade Runner

2. Ghostbusters

3. Rocky

4. Strictly Ballroom

5. Flight of the Navigator

6. The Rocketeer

7. Born on the 4th of July

8. Rookie of the Year

9. October Sky

10. A Life Less Ordinary

Well, that is it for April. Next month will be the start of the summer film season as well as the Cannes Film Festival where I will be doing my marathon as I’ve selected 15 films to watch for the duration of the festival. Before that, there will be a mini-marathon of films by Francois Ozon that I had never seen along with two new theatrical films in Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby where the latter will coincide with the next Auteurs piece on Baz Luhrmann. Until then, let’s make this summer our bitch.

© thevoid99 2013