30.) Hardcore Henry [4/17/2016]

I am not one to look down on a hyper-violent action movie, or a movie with barely any plot to tie together a string of increasingly epic fight scenes (see: Pacific Rim and Godzilla, both of which I liked quite a bit). So, with Hardcore Henry, which promised to be a gimmicky, first-person-shooter-style movie about a voiceless robot fighting the Russian mob, I had tempered my expectations.

Oddly, this movie was exactly what I wanted it to be, and well-done to boot (which is rare for an action movie released this far from summer). Now, I fully understand and appreciate the argument some have made about the attitude the film takes towards women (which charitably could be called unenlightened). I can see why some would dislike the film for that reason. That said, it was a hell of a thing to make. Unlike Blair Witch and other "found footage" first-person narratives, the viewer was not seeing the narrative unfold through the lens of a camera, but instead experienced the film (as best as possible) as if Henry. There was a ton of action off-camera which could be detected on the periphery or when Henry (and the camera turned). The parkour scenes were fraught with tension as it felt like I was jumping from roof to roof.

Furthermore, all the actors, especially Sharlto Copley, seemed to thoroughly enjoy making the film. There were some genuinely funny, charming scenes, particularly towards the end). I found myself smiling through the whole thing. All in all, this movie (warts and all) has been the most enjoyable film experience I have had in a while.

29.) I Saw the Light [4/14/2016]

Hank Williams had an interesting life and an interesting career, shaping folk music into what we would call country music today. He lived hard, died young, and made some pretty good music along the way. Unfortunately, this movie didn't really show that. Instead, it wasted a perfectly good performance by Tom Hiddleston in which he had a series of fairly mundane conversations with different women. Then he died. The movie was short of drama and music, which is odd for a dramatic retelling of a musicians life.

To be fair, there have been some great music biopics out in the last year or so, such Get on Up, and Love and Mercy. This just didn't live up to those, either in narrative or performance. 

28.) Eye in the Sky [4/7/2016]

I get annoyed with movies that shy away from morally ambiguous subjects, and instead give the viewer an expected, often times happier, ending.  Eye in the Sky was not that sort of movie.  At the core of the film is a question raised by Star Trek so many years ago: how do we value life?  How do you weigh 80 potential deaths to 1 certain death?  Does it matter if that death is a child?

The movie did a good job of resisting any certainties.  There were always other options available to the mission operators, and all of them had terrible consequences.  Eye in the Sky also did a good job showing the logistical nightmare faced by people looking to perform a military operation.  It explored all the legal, political, and militaristic ramifications of each action taken and not taken.  No one felt good about the choice made, and no one felt good about not making the choice.

I really "enjoyed" the movie, as much as one can enjoy such a dark film that is completely incapable of ending happily.

27.) Hello, My Name is Doris [3/31/2016]

I like movies with non-standard representations of poorly represented characters.  In this movie, Doris, an older woman played by Sally Field, falls for and actively pursues the younger new art director John Freemont, played by Max Greenfield.  Without giving away too much of the plot, it was nice that film pushed against stereotypes about older women.  The movie was under-developed in a lot of places, but overall it was a fairly enjoyable movie.  

26.) Whiskey Tango Foxtrot [3/29/2016]

This was Hurt Locker meets Eat Pray Love for war journalism, and Tina Fey was great as the adrenaline junkie reporter looking for excitement from her humdrum, rich white lady life.  It would have been nice if the actors playing Afghan characters were, perhaps, Afghans.  Instead, they trot out Alfred Molina (a British actor with Italian and Spanish parentage) and Christopher Abbott (an American actor with Portuguese and Italian ancestry).  Still, it was a pretty solid movie.

25.) Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice [3/25/2016]

I fully expected to hate this movie.  Superman: Man of Steel made me uncontrollably angry, and the previews made it seem like 70% of the film was set in the rain for some reason.  The new line of DC movies, unlike their line of TV shows, is unremittingly sad, having sucked the whimsy from superheroes in favor of dark, gritty, and brooding.  BvS:DoJ continued down that road, with sad Superman fighting sad Batman in the rain.  Then dark, muted Wonder Woman joined in when the left-over CGI from the Turtles reboot was unleashed on the city by Lex Luthor (played by Jesse Eisenberg, a low-rent, poor-man's version of Heath Ledger's Joker).  It wasn't great.  It wasn't even good.  Somehow, though, it was better than I expected.

24.) Allegiant [3/22/2016]

I really liked Divergent.  It was like Hunger Games, but I liked the characters better (particularly Shailene Woodley).  The idea of a society divided by factions which set upon itself when one decided it could be better at ruling than the other.  Then a war broke out in the second movie to resolve that issue.  The third movie, then, was seemed unneeded, and the actual movie didn't really give reason for its existence.  There wasn't anything particularly bad about it, though the Jeff Daniel twist was painfully obvious; it just didn't seem to add anything to the series as a whole, and when it ended it didn't seem to really end.  So, I guess, what was the point?