Although I track the movies I watch on Trakt.tv, last year at this time I published a post about Movies in 2021 and I’m doing the same again. Last year I rated them 1-10, this time I’m doing the same with the addition of one sentence reviews.
These are listed chronologically, from most recent to the beginning of 2022.
Avatar 2 – Beautiful but otherwise unimpressive in every way 7/10
Rocky – More of a drama than a boxing movie with a shockingly good performance from Stallone 9/10
Rocky II – Slow, sad, and dramatic until the triumphant and thrilling third act revival 8.5/10
Rocky III – Cameos from 1980’s superstars Hulk Hogan and Mr T. are fun, but the pattern of diminishing returns from Rocky movies is becoming clear 7.5/10
Rocky IV – Still not bad but becoming very predictable and formulaic now; should have stopped with the third 7/10
Con Air – A camp classic, but the wooden performance from Cage along with dialogue that reveals a boring one-dimensional character makes this one which has aged poorly 6.5/10
Red Dawn – The Wolverines are the scrappy underdogs you want to win, but their utterly implausible escapades combined with the film’s corny production values gets mostly unintentional laughs 6/10
Miracle Mile – This dialogue-driven nuclear holocaust drama unfolds in an LA diner late at night and ends with a depressing surprise 7.5/10
The Warriors – This memorable, campy depiction of 1970’s New York looks great, feels ridiculous, and is still a lot of fun 8.5/10
MK Ultra – Painfully boring film about a riveting historical event 4/10
Heat – One of the best casts of any movie ever made with the best shoot-out in film history 9.5/10
Lone Survivor – A gritty, realistic depiction of war in Afghanistan which is unusually authentic 8/10
The Greatest Beer Run Ever – A goofy Vietnam tourist movie starring Zac Efron with HGH face that is unlikely to hold your attention 6.5/10
The Bourne Identity – A well-executed James Bond espionage thriller without all of the cliche baggage that earns its sequels 8.5/10
The Godfather I – It seemed unlikely that this film would live up to the monumental expectations I had, but it did 9.5/10
The Godfather II – Incredibly, even better than the original 10/10
The Godfather III – What I thought would surely be the weakest of the Godfather trilogy, which concluded with a third act that I’ll never forget 9/10
Jaws (theater) – A slower era of filmmaking defines this creepy, quasi-natural thriller which produces a few shocking surprises 8.5/10
Ambulance (flight) – Terrible characters, awful action sequences, nothing in this entire movie looks remotely real, of course Michael Bay 3.5/10
Beavis & Butthead Do the Universe – Low brow, low expectations; as stupid and fun as I could have hoped 8/10
Collateral – Free-form, like jazz, led by a confident and brilliant performance by Tom Cruise 9/10
2000 Mules – More informative than entertaining, the steal included many more counties outside of Fulton and Maricopa which were most talked-about 7.5/10
What is a Woman? – The brilliance of this documentary is that it reveals the unreasonableness of this movement’s advocates with questions that aren’t hostile or discourteous 8/10
Top Gun Maverick (theater) – A thrilling joy on Memorial Day in the theater, and shockingly, a fitting and fully qualified sequel to one of the 1980’s greatest films 9/10
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (theater) – The perfect movie for Nicolas Cage to make at this stage of his career now that he has aged graceful into the real-life role of living meme 8.5/10
Idiocracy – A dumber and more crass depiction of a dystopian future which is not much less visionary than Orwell’s 1984 9/10
Scream (theater) – Another entry in the innumerable Scream franchise which is grippingly violent and fun enough 7.5/10
Hell or High Water – A modern classic in the pantheon of contemporary Westerns 9/10
The Town – A criminally underrated heist film masterminded by creative genius and insufferable political activist Ben Affleck 9/10
