22 Jump Street: You Know, The Second One.

21 Jump Street was way better than it ever deserved to be.  In an era of reboots, it stood alone as the film that actually tweaked its source material enough to spit out an original product.  It occasionally mocked its existence, but spent more time poking fun at the Glee-generation and flipping high school stereotypes on their head than it did rehashing old narratives.  It barely felt like a reboot.

Two years later, 22 Jump Street feels like nothing but a sequel.  In fact, the movie's sole purpose is to remind you, over and over again, that you're watching a sequel that was only made to squeeze more money out of a tired concept.  The self-satire is frequently amusing, but 22 Jump Street spends so much time making fun of itself that it forgets to become more than the concept it's been mocking.

Neighbors, or Seth Rogen Kind of Grows Up.

I no longer know how to write about comedies without being tempted to go on a long tirade about why there are so few great ones nowadays.  Maybe someday I'll provide you with that lecture, but for now let me try to focus on Neighbors, the latest entry in a long line of comedies that we can at least consider adequately amusing.

In Neighbors, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne play a young couple with a cute baby who are trying to keep the youthful dream of having sex in the kitchen alive.  Unfortunately, they're now old and sleep deprived, so their efforts are typically stifled by their child, exhaustion, or Seth Rogen's declining sexual prowess.  When a fraternity moves into the house next door, Seth and Rose attempt to become fast friends with the fraternity leadership (Zac Efron and Dave Franco) in the hope that their friendship will convince their new neighbors to keep it down while they're trying to sleep.

X-Men Days of Future Past, or Terminator 2: Motivational Speaker Edition.

"You need to make stronger life choices, son."

It's the future, guys.  It's really dark in the future.  And the T-1000's Sentinels have been killing all of our mutant friends.  The solution, of course, is to send Wolverine into the past, because Kitty Pryde (who went into the past in the comic incarnation) is a woman, and women aren't allowed to be main characters in movies.

The resulting film is an X-Men family reunion composed largely of motivational speeches, since the majority of the plot is articulated to us within the first fifteen minutes by narration, and then relayed to the X-men of the past via Wolverine's first of many motivational speeches to a young Professor Xavier.  Thankfully, we're also treated to the obligatory getting-the-band-back-together sequences, which are the moments in which Days of Future Past actually remains bearable for a while.

Noah: Aronofsky's Guide to Adaptation.

Singin' in the rain, just singin' in the rain.

In many ways, Aronofsky has done with Noah what I've been begging someone to do for a long time.  He's taken a story that everyone's familiar with and adapted it into a twisted nightmare for everyone who was hoping for a faithful adaptation.  Sure, I was hoping for a twisted adaptation of a beloved young adult novel (C'mon, R-rated Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), but this will do for now.

The Grand Budapest Hotel, of Which I Start Writing Four Different Things and Then Forget What My Point Was.

I assume the rule of thirds is applied here by accident.

On a delightfully whimsical day in the throes of 2007, a much-thinner-than-now, pink-haired youth sitting in a quaint classroom in the romantic and mysterious land of East Lansing, Michigan was asked to provide to the classroom his favorite director of films.  To this question, he replied simply—avoiding the tenuous conviction typically associated with the youths of 2007—with "Woody Allen" (Or Takashi Miike, one can't be too sure in a year like 2007).  One after another, the next eleven youths in a row supplied "Wes Anderson" as their most preferred director of cinema.  And the colored girls went, "Doo do doo do doo do do doo..."

The Top Ten Films of 2013

    With the Oscars tomorrow, I suppose it's time to grit my teeth, throw five films randomly in the 6-10 slots and start writing.  The last time I had this much difficulty assigning arbitrary rankings, my girlfriend had just dumped me and I spent twelve hours rearranging my Top 8 on Myspace.  That's not to say I didn't like a lot of films this year, I just liked way too many of them exactly the same.  Ties went to the films I wanted to write about.  As always, documentaries are ineligible and I didn't see any animated films.  Let's start with some honorary awards.

Oblivion: At Least Will Smith Isn't In It.

I'm quite torn on Oblivion.  I'm not sure if I should tell you to avoid it at all costs because it's incredibly bad, or if I should tell you to see it immediately because it is amazingly bad.  Either way, it's the worst movie I've seen all year, except for maybe that Wizard of Oz bastardization.

The Place Beyond the Pines, or How to Ruin a Movie with Bradley Cooper.

Dear Derek Cianfrance,

I think I see what happened here.  I'll bet you had this really great idea for a film, and the whole time you were writing it you were thinking, "Damn, this is good."  And you kept writing it, it kept being brilliant, and then you finished it and realized that it was only forty-five minutes long.

And in this instance, you blew it.  The first segment of The Place Beyond the Pines is fantastic and the rest of it is a sub-par addendum; devoid of any real emotional or thematic connection to its predecessor.

The Top 10 Films of 2012, or Ten Films that Wouldn't Have Made My Top 10 list in 2011.

Accepting the award for best still of the year is Holy Motors, because the still from Killer Joe was NSFW.

There were a lot of films that I liked in 2012, just not very many that I liked a lot.  There's currently a twenty way tie for tenth going on but, by the time I finish this opening paragraph, I promise I'll pick one.  My list is fairly predictable, but I'll try to spruce it up with witty/childish/gangsta commentary.  I had tried to make the list better by watching plenty of non-Hollywood films but, unfortunately for 2012, that meant that I watched twenty bad movies in a row.  As always, the list does not include documentaries, because then this would just be a list of ten documentaries.  Before we get started, here are some personality awards (because fat kids deserve recognition too):

Side Effects: May Include a Fedora Montage.

In case you haven't heard, there's a new C-Tates movie out.  It's called Side Effects, and it stars Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and everyone's favorite ex-stripper.  Side Effects is directed by Steven Soderbergh, who I always get confused with David Cronenberg, because they're both Jews who occasionally make good thrillers when they're not busy making garbage.  Soderbergh's track record is arguably more consistent, and Side Effects certainly adds weight to his claim.

Side Effects is one those rare films that I won't gut the plot for you, because the less you know the better.  Catherine Zeta-Jones may not dip beneath any lasers, but I can promise you an awkward montage of a giggling, fedora-wearing Channing Tatum.  If that's somehow not enough for you, read after the break.

Warm Bodies, or Cute Girls and Bonies.

He's trying to find the white meat.

Teenage girls just can't seem to fall in love with the living anymore.  Vampires and werewolves I can understand.  Vampires have just the right amount of mystery and darkness, and werewolves tend to have deliciously bronzed abs even when they do look like alpacas.  Monsters used to be scary, but now they're just your daughter's boyfriend.  I guess that gives the fathers of the world one more reason to hunt them down, but seriously, ladies.  I know you're all secretly dead on the inside, but zombies?!  They are a little too-obviously dead on the outside, and they want to eat you.  And not in an I-want-to-eat-you-so-bad-but-I-love-you-so-much-and-let's-make-a-vampire-baby sort of way.  This opening paragraph has been brought to you by Twilight references and misogyny.

So, let's start the review here.  Warm Bodies is good.  (A warm body is always good.  Right, bro?)

Damn it.  The third time should be the charm:

Zero Dark Thirty, or They Killed My Monkeys.

Hey, that's not funny, bro.  My dad died in 9/11.

Dear Kathryn Bigelow,

One of the few popular criticisms of Zero Dark Thirty is that it just might go on a little too long.  I kind of agree.  I think it was about two hours too long.  I think I could have watched Zero Dark Thirty for thirty-seven minutes and been at least mildly entertained.

In reality, I think my enthusiasm lasted about fifteen minutes.  The opening torture sequence, while not particularly engaging, set the stage well.  A CIA agent tortures a captive, says, "dude", "bro", and "man" a whole lot, and we've got the opening to our story.  At least it was a scene.  The scene began, the scene developed, the scene ended.  It wasn't a particularly excellent scene.  There weren't really any lines of dialogue or deep thoughts to take from it, but it told a story.  It began a plot.  And then, the rest of the movie happened.

Django Unchained, or Cinematic Reparations.

My biggest problem with Django Unchained is that it's not as good as Inglorious Basterds.  That's not a bad problem to have.  Thankfully, unlike Inglorious Basterds, Django doesn't have any moments that make me want to slap Quentin Tarantino in the face.

The film really shines in the first act.  Christoph Waltz purchases Django from some slavers and the two form a bounty-hunting partnership that results in some of the funnest movie moments of the year.  Christoph Waltz seems incapable of being outsmarted or killed, and claims each bounty with panache.  It is in these first scenes that we get the best of Tarantino's dialogue, humor, and cleverness.  Christoph Waltz talks himself out of every threatening experience, befuddling a US marshall, a southern plantation, and a group of Klansmen who can't seem to get their headwear in order.

Les Miserables, The Movie Killed the Dream.

So far, the trailer for Les Miserables is one of the best films of the year.  Anne Hathaway whimper-singing "I Dreamed a Dream" gets me every time.  Unfortunately, the trailer somehow made me forget that Les Miserables only has four good songs (I Dreamed a Dream, On My Own, Master of the House, and Little Fall of Rain).  The film reminded me.

Lincoln: The Great Storyteller.

Don't you just want to slap that face?

The best part of Lincoln, is the amazing tangents that Daniel Day-Lewis takes us on.  Certainly, the film is purportedly a tale of overcoming ignorant white people and changing history, but it would have been dull and predicable without Lincoln's penchant for storytelling.  Some of the tensest moments of Lincoln are broken up by a non-sequitur from the commander-in-chief.  His whimsical nature is the highlight, and it's probably enough to make the rest of the film worthwhile.

Wreck-It Ralph: Rated E for Everyone, but Mostly Children.

Animated video game nostalgia.  What's not to like?  Not much, but Wreck-It Ralph just doesn't have the flair to pull off the Pixar style it attempts to emulate.  It's a cute, mildly funny feature that just doesn't accomplish all it set outs to.

It's a fantastic idea really: Wreck-It Ralph, the destructive villain in the fictional video game Fix-It Felix, just wants the chance to be a hero for once.  Unhappy with his day job, he begins jumping between video games in an attempt to prove his worth.  Unfortunately, after the first thirty minutes, Ralph finds himself in a saccharine racing game called Sugar Rush, where he stays for the rest of the film.  There a few amusing references to Tapper, Q-Bert, and a few others, but almost all occur in the film's opening moments.  Once Ralph reaches Sugar Rush, the film evaporates into little more than a childish underdog/outcast story and one amazing Oreo joke.

There are plenty of recognizable voices, but the typecasting is so meticulous, they might as well have named one of the characters "Sarah Silverman".  Disney Animation is trying its best to blend the adult with the childish, but it hasn't quite graduated from elementary school.

6/10