Moviewatcher122's 2014 Film Diary: September

September 1

Re-watch

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"Smokers. There's no excuse for smoking. Smoking is the equivalent to carrying around a salt lick, laced with a little bit of cyanide."

Still a very funny movie. Yes it's mostly just Steve Oedekerk complaining, but just how he complains about things are funny and truthful. Throughout this movie I was laughing and I was also agreeing with him. There is a plot to this movie though. It's not much of a plot, but it's still there. The low-production values and over-acting just adds to the charm of this movie. Jim Carrey is in this movie, but it's just a brief cameo near the very end of the movie and it's still funny as hell. Whether you'll find this movie funny or not depends on if you find Steve Oedekerk funny. If you liked Bruce Almighty, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and Kung Pow then you'll probably like this one too.

September 1



"An on-the-job shooting is still considered a homicide. It's never an easy ride. If you do the right thing, I'll always have your back. Do the wrong thing and cross me - I will personally throw you under the bus."

This is an awesome movie. The casting in this movie was perfect and I also love how it uses the found footage style. It really made the movie seem more realistic. The character development is also great too. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena's characters were portrayed like real cops which you don't see in that many movies and it really makes those last 20 minutes very intense. It's not a perfect movie, but it's still a great film and I think it's better than David Ayer's other movie, Training Day.

September 2



This movie is so ridiculously stupid. It starts off as a really poorly-written movie that took itself too seriously, then it turns into a laughably bad movie that has the same quality as a direct-to-DVD release. It has Jason Statham playing the Jason Statham character minus everything that made the character cool, Mickey Rourke sleepwalking through another role and 50 Cent stars in it just because the movie wasn't already bad enough. Some of the bad acting in this movie is hilarious and I just couldn't take anything in this movie seriously. I got some enjoyment out of this movie because of how bad the production value is, but it's still not worth recommending unless your looking for a bad movie to make fun of.

September 3



"I feel that I'm a pretty intuitive person. Except for that one guy who said he was an advanced scout for an alien invasion force but it turned out he just wanted to get inside my pants."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's not easy to find a good comedy these days especially when you've seen all the great ones. I've tried searching for them, but most of the time I've ended up with stuff that isn't worth remembering. This movie is the gem that I've been looking for. I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie at first, but I was sold by it right away when Dave Foley does his hilarious and intentionally unconvincing crying. This is actually one of the funniest movies I've seen in quite a while. It's also got a decent premise and the pacing is actually pretty good for this kind of movie. This is one of the most underrated comedies ever made and it does not deserve to be overlooked.

September 4



"Picard or Kirk?"
"No question... Kirk."
"Hell yeah. You gotta respect a man who can fuck a green bitch and destroy an entire civilization in sixty minutes."

This is another one of those movies that seem to be heavily influenced by Quentin Tarantino and in this case it's not a bad thing. It has some very good dialogue and it can get really weird at times. It has a few scenes that are just so weird that you just can't help but laugh. The biggest problem I have with this movie is that they could've ended it better, but it's still a pretty good movie that is definetely worth checking out.

September 6



"It doesn't matter who's fault the break-up was, I was stubborn, you were like a mentally ill whore from the 1800's."

I fucking hated this movie and this is coming from someone who loved the first one! While Will Ferrell has starred in some bad movies before, this one is one of the worst ones he's ever been in. It's not worse than Semi-pro, but it's on the same level as that movie. Semi-Pro is worse because I couldn't even finish that movie although I was tempted to stop watching this one, but I pulled through with it just hoping that maybe there would be something funny about it. It never happened. There is not one joke in this movie that felt unfunny, forced and so desperate to get a laugh out of me. The humor in the first movie was great because it actually had build-up to the jokes and they were cleverly written. In the sequel however, they're more concerned about cramming as many jokes as they can instead of actually taking the time to remember what made the first Anchorman work. It's not just the humor that makes this movie terrible for me, but it's also the characters. These characters are NOT the ones I loved in the first movie. They feel like completely different people despite the fact that their looks haven't changed. Ron Burgundy is now a complete asshole, Champ Kind is really annoying, I don't know what the hell Brian Fantana is and Brick Tamland just went full retard.

If you liked this sequel then that's completely fine, but I just see this sequel as a mistake that shouldn't have happened. Even with very low expectations I was severely disappointed with Anchorman 2 and it just shows that Anchorman didn't need a sequel at all.

September 7



"Listen to me! This man is dead. If you don't want his death to be meaningless, it's time for you to become a fuckin' man and get your people into Cameroon! Now cowboy the fuck up! Got it?"

This kind of felt like a weaker version of Black Hawk Down. The characters were underwritten and it's not as dramatic as the movie wants to be. It does have a lot of things to like about it like about it, but in the end it's nothing special and it is far from being as good as Black Hawk Down or any of the other great war movies. It's good for what it is, but it's nothing memorable.

September 8

Re-watch

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"You stay classy, San Diego. I'm Ron Burgundy?"
"Dammit. Who typed a question mark on the Teleprompter?"

I just had to re-watch this to get rid of that bad taste in my mouth that Anchorman 2 left me with. This is my third time watching this and it is still Will Ferrell's funniest movie. I won't say too much about it, but I will keep watching this movie again from time to time and just pretend that Anchorman 2 never happened.

September 9



This was a great documentary. It was very informative and it's just shocking that all this stuff actually happened back then.

September 10



"I wanna see my lawyer!"
"What did you say?"
"I wanna see my lawyer."
"There are no lawyers, dumb fuck! It's just me and you, and I am in your shit for the duration!"

This is probably one of the most underrated movie I've ever seen. I mean the reviews for it were mostly positive, but it's just unfairly overlooked. It's a shame because it's not a typical cop movie. Far from it actually. While the plot is nothing new, it's very dark in a way that made it hard for me to watch and that doesn't happen that much with movies like these. It also has fantastic perfomances from Jason Patric and Ray Liotta which is another thing that makes this movie great. I was so invested in this movie that the ending almost made me cry. No movie has done this to me before, but this is the closest a movie has came to making me cry. I wasn't surprised to find out that this movie was directed by Joe Carnahan because he also directed a couple other movies that I really love like The Grey and Smoking Aces. This is a very underrated movie, but just don't watch this if you're in a crummy mood because this movie will just make you feel worse.

September 11



I found this movie on Netflix and went into it completely blind. While it's far from being a masterpiece, it's still a pretty good British film and it does have some well-written characters. The movie still could've had more depth to it, but it's still pretty good and it's definitely worth watching.

September 12



"Is that pot?"
"Of course not, do I look like a hippie? It's crack."

I wasn't sure if Aaron Paul would have a decent acting career outside of Breaking Bad or not, but after seeing some episodes of BoJack Horseman and this movie I'm now convinced that he's a very solid actor outside of Breaking Bad. I went into this one expecting a typical love story, but instead I got something completely different. This is a very accurate portrayal of alcohol addiction and how hard it is to quit. This movie has some great acting and it can also be pretty funny at times. It doesn't cross the line of greatness for me, but there were times where it came close to doing so. It's a pretty good movie and I hope it's able to find an audience.

September 13



"Don't you have a dick to suck?"
"Several! Unlike you, fucktard!"
"Cluck you!"
"Cluck? Say fuck, like a normal person."

While the first 20 minutes of the movie aren't that funny, but when those minutes have passed that's when the movie starts to get really funny. It's far from being a great movie, but it's one of the better comedies to come out last year.

September 14



"If you don't keep me up to speed I'm gonna take it very personally."
"You've been doing that a lot lately."

This was just average. Meg Ryan wasn't good in this movie, the story was average and while it can be somewhat entertaining at times it's just a generic thriller that is easily forgettable.

September 15



"Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature."

I was disappointed when I found out this movie was going to be PG-13, so I lost interest in seeing it until I heard that there was going to be an unrated cut. This is one of the weaker zombie movies that I've seen so far. It's decent, but it's mostly underwhelming. The story could've been executed better, Brad Pitt has seen better days and the characters could've been more fleshed out. (No pun intended.) The action scenes aren't really anything special, that is until an hour into the movie with that scene in Israel and the scene on a plane. Even though the movie could've been better, it's decent for what it's trying to be and that is a summer blockbuster with a lot of zombies. It's worth watching at least once if you're a fan of the genre.

September 15



"Have you found Jesus yet, Gump?"
"I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir."

This is probably going to shock you, but I had NEVER seen Forrest Gump before! At least not from start to finish. I was eleven when I was watching it on VHS and even though I was enjoying it, I took the VHS tape out with intentions of watching the rest later. Years passed with the VHS still on the same part and I just decided that I should just start from the beginning again. I had put off watching it for a while because I was worried that it would be overrated. Mainly because I've seen so many movies and I was worried that I wouldn't think much of it now. Fortunately that wasn't the case with this movie. I won't say too much about it since I'm 100% sure that everything has been said, but Tom Hanks delivers an amazing performance and I just really dug the premise where Forrest Gump tells a bunch of people his life story. It's a great movie and I'm glad that it exceeded my expectations.

September 16



"Drop that zero and get with the hero!"

I can't believe that this movie exists! This is a bunch of 90's trash that shouldn't have even existed back then. It's got some really bad rapping, terrible writing and Vanilla Ice is clearly not an actor. The craziest thing about this movie is that it was released in theatres! Even though Vanilla Ice was big back in the day, it doesn't make sense to make a movie about a rapper who's not interesting in the slightest to warrant a movie and the general public seems to agree with me because this movie flopped big time. While I thought this movie was terrible in every way possible, I still think it's worth checking out. The idea of a movie with him in the lead is just so absurd that you have to see it to believe.

September 17



This was a very interesting documentary on voice acting and how the business works. That is until the last 30 minutes. That was when the documentary REALLY started to lose steam and just started to get less interesting. If it wasn't for that then this documentary would've been a 9/10, but since it did I had to lower my score quite a bit. It's still worth watching if you're interested in this kind of stuff. Just don't expect anything great.

September 18



"Goodbye, yard! Goodbye, crepe myrtle! Goodbye, mailbox! Goodbye, box of stuff Mommy won't let us take with us but we don't want to throw away. Goodbye, house, I'll never like Mommy as much for making us move!"
"Samantha! Why don't you say goodbye to that little horseshit attitude, okay, because we're not taking that in the car."

I went to the theatre planning to see A Most Wanted Man, but when I found out that Boyhood was playing for one night only I decided to take that opportunity instead because I've been waiting to see it all year. This movie definitely lived up to the hype. It was my most anticipated movie of this year and it looks like it's going to be my favorite movie of the year. The idea for this movie was executed as great as I thought it would be and there were times where I forgot I was watching a movie. That's how real this movie felt. The acting is essential, the writing was great and not once did this movie feel too long or drag on. This movie tops Before Sunrise as Richard Linklater's best movie and he had a lot of patience to keep working on this project for 12 years.

September 20



"Dad, were you scared today? The truth."
"There's nothin' wrong with being a little scared."
"Then why didn't you look scared?"
"Lots of practice."

This was pretty good and it's a different kind of Jason Statham movie. It's still an action movie, but this one actually has a compelling story and James Franco was a decent villain. Jason Statham's character is also somewhat different because although he still plays a tough guy, he also is a father figure which is something we haven't seen from him in a movie before. It's a really good movie and it's great to see Jason Statham starring in movies that's more than a typical action movie.

September 22



"Are these monsters gonna kill me?"
"Not as long as they think you're a monster."
"That's kinda racist."

This movie was better than I was expecting it to be. It was surprisingly very funny and Adam Sandler was pretty good as a comedic version of Dracula. It does have some toilet humor, but it still has a lot of clever jokes like the stab at Twilight for example. It was a very nice surprise and it's one of Sandler's better recent films.

September 23



"It's sad, isn't it? I've been working with you seven years. Seven years. I always liked you. I Always looked after you. But I never trusted you."

Out of all the movies that were influenced by Quentin Tarantino, this one is at the bottom of the barrel. They mislead you on the front cover by making you think that Bruce Willis and Forest Whitaker are the main stars in this movie, but they're only supporting roles. Hell, excluding the opening before the credits Bruce Willis doesn't show up in this movie for almost an hour. What's worse is that they're the ONLY good thing about this movie. The main characters are terrible and the writing sucks. There is this one scene near the end of the movie where Forest Whitaker and Bruce Willis' characters actually interact with each other and I'm not going to lie, but that wasn't a bad scene. The worst thing this movie does is that at the end of the movie they killed off the only good characters in the movie. That's just insulting! Avoid this movie at all costs! Even if you're a fan of Bruce Willis or Forest Whitaker!

September 23



"Life, every man holds dear. But the dear man holds honor far more precious than dear life. Especially if that man happens to be Japanese."

This was a pretty cool movie. It looks great visually and it had some very good action scenes. It's a very entertaining movie and it's too bad that it didn't get the U.S theatrical release it deserved.

September 25



"Hello Miss Sad Pants, and her friend, Serious Sally! How about a nice cool mint to help turn those frowns upside down?"
"Do you think a nice cool mint would help if I shoved your head up your ass?"

This movie was pretty generic. You can tell how it's going to end and the characters are not that great. It can be funny at times I'll give the movie that, but it's nothing special and I just felt like Kirsten Dunst's character didn't deserve to win and I won't say why because I don't want to spoil this movie just in case you want to see it for some weird reason.

September 25



"Where does he come from?"
"He was brought up from hell..."
"And where is this hell?"
"On the other side of the ocean."

While this isn't Nicolas Winding Refn's best work, it's still a pretty solid movie. It's not a dialogue-heavy movie, but I can tell that it was the director's intention. While I was somewhat bored with a few of the scenes without dialogue, whatever it lacks in dialogue it makes up for it with its fantastic cinematography. I can understand why it has a low IMDB rating because it's not a film that will appeal to the general public. One of the things that's great about this director is that he's not afraid to take risks. Only God Forgives is another great example of that. I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard both good things and bad things about it.

September 26



"I'm Don Johnston and I'm doing nothing interesting right now. God, my life sucks."

That image perfectly represents how I felt about this movie. I had been putting off watching this movie for a long time because while I heard good things about the movie, it seemed like the kind of movie I would hate. I finally gave in just because I wanted to find out what my opinion on this movie was. Unfortunately, I was right. It's basically a movie where Bill Murray's character does nothing with his life and it just seems like he wasn't interested in being in this movie which is what makes it boring for me. The shitkicker is that I actually liked Jim Jarmusch's other films that I've seen. Night on Earth was pretty good and Down by Law was a near-masterpiece. This movie does not have the same sense of humor that made those movies good. There's barely any humor in this movie. It just people mistaking Bill Murray's character for the actor Don Johnson and just stuff that's devoid of anything laugh-worthy and a movie like this NEEDS comic relief. This movie just proves that Bill Murray isn't cut out for serious films. If he wants to keep starring in Wes Anderson movies then that's fine, but he needs to stop considering himself to be serious actor because he's not. He was a fun actor and it should've stayed that way. This is just a movie that had nothing to offer and the ending was just awful. Ooh! A car with Bill Murray's son drove near him and he looked a lot like Bill Murray. What a twist!

September 26

Re-watch

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"Which did you like better? "Jedi" or The Empire Strikes Back?"
"Empire."
"Blasphemy."
"Empire" had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All "Jedi" had was a bunch of Muppets."

This movie keeps getting better every time I watch it. I loved it the first time, but the hockey scene bored me at the time which kept me from giving it a perfect score, the second time I watched it that problem didn't exist anymore and now it's even better after watching it again for the third time. It's hilarious, it's got great characters and it manages to be an engaging movie that's mostly just made out of dialogue. The acting is great especially considering that the cast is filled with non-actors. (At least before this movie.) I also like how this movie was shot in black and white. If I ever make a list of the top 10 best comedies then this movie would definitely be on the list. After watching this movie again, I realized that I need to revisit Clerks II sometime since I've only watched it once. It was pretty good, but it's not even close to being as good as the first one.

September 27



"Do you think maybe we've gone too far? I'm a child of divorce and I sympathize with them."
"My parents love each other, and I think it's hilarious."

This was a surprisingly funny movie. When I originally saw the trailer for it, I thought it looked like an awful and unfunny movie. It also had Zac Efron in it which wasn't a good sign since he was never a good actor. However, when the reviews for this movie were mostly good I decided that I would watch it sometime. This movie turned out to be another victim of the bad trailer curse along the lines of 21 Jump Street. The weak jokes that were in the trailer were either tweaked to make them funny or weren't in the movie at all. It's definitely funnier than most of the comedies that came out last year and it was a pretty good satire on the whole fraternity party scene. The biggest flaw I have with this movie is Zac Efron's performance. I'm sorry, but I still don't think he's a good actor. It's clear that his comedic timing can be good when given a good script, but when he tries to portray emotion like anger I didn't think it was convincing at all. It's one of the funniest movies of the year and it's better than I thought it would be.

September 29



"Six years in the Donegal Militia I don't get a scratch. Three hours as a grave robber I get shot in the arse."

This was a nice return for director John Landis. Sure it doesn't rank up with some of his best films, but it still is a very funny dark comedy and Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis were very well-casted.

September 30



"I think they've left me. I think my family have left me. I don't know how. I can't remember why. You see, there's something wrong with me. There is something seriously wrong with me."

This is a very odd movie. It does have a very strong performance from James McAvoy and it does have a lot of interesting ideas, but some of the humor in this movie doesn't work as well as it should and it kind of feels like this movie is just going for style over substance at times. It's still a good movie, but it's nothing really memorable.

September 30



"In my business you prepare for the unexpected."
"And what business is that?"
"I help people with problems."
"Problem solver."
"More of a problem eliminator."

I've been slowly catching up on watching all the James Bond movies and I haven't been doing a good job at it, so I might dedicate a month to watching them sometime. Anyways this is a pretty good movie. It's far from being the best movie of the series, but it's still very entertaining. Timothy Dalton was a decent Bond and it was surprisingly dark for a James Bond movie. The action in this movie was solid and it's too bad that this is one of the more overlooked films in the series.

September 30



"The downside of coming off junk was I knew I would need to mix with my friends again in a state of full consciousness. It was awful. They reminded me so much of myself, I could hardly bear to look at them."

This is a film that I've been wanting to see for a couple of years now, but never got around to it until now because I thought I should finally see it now because I already saw Filth and I thought that I might as well see this one on the same day. Turns out it was the perfect film to end the month with. I'd even say that I loved it more than Requiem For a Dream. It's got great dialogue, it had a few creepy parts like that damn baby scene and it's also darkly funny at times. This is the best movie I've seen from Danny Boyle and I doubt that any of his other movies will top this one.

September 8



"Why the fuck did you make her in the first place? Huh? For the betterment of mankind? You never wanted a normal child because you were afraid of losing control."

This was a really weird movie. It has a somewhat original plot and it has some very good acting. Even though there are some people who say that the ending ruined the movie, I actually really liked the direction it took at the end. The movie isn't without it's flaws though. I felt like there were some scenes that could've been trimmed down a little and I thought a few of Sarah Polley's lines of dialogue were poorly-written, but it's still an interesting and weird movie and it's better than I thought it would be.

September 12



"Whatever is on my mind, I say it as I feel it, I'm truthful to myself; I'm young and I'm old, I've been bought and I've been sold, so many times. I am hard-faced, I am gone. I am just like you."

I couldn't stand this movie at all. It was overdramatic and the majority of the characters are unlikable. First there's the students. I'm not sure if their supposed to be likeable, but if they are then the writers failed miserably at doing that. If they aren't supposed to be likeable then they need to be written better. Then there's this young prostitute who is introduced as a complete bitch and then later on the movie expects us to care about her? Then there's the most obvious character, the depressed and overweight girl. When the movie reveals that she's depressed, I just knew that character was going to commit suicide. Then near the end of the movie when she said that the frowny face cupcake was for her I said "There's poison in that cupcake isn't there?" Turns out that there was and she ate it at the bake sale for attention. THERE WAS A FROWNY FACE ON THE CUPCAKE!!! COULD THAT BE ANYMORE OBVIOUS? There are a few good things about this movie like Adrien Brody and James Caan's performances and the chalkboard animation scenes were very well-done. This was just a terrible version of movies like Dead Poets Society and Dangerous Minds and it thinks it's more important that it actually is.

What's really sad is that Netflix's best rating guess for me was a 4.9!!! I already know that the whole thing is inaccurate, but I can't believe that Netflix would think that I love this movie.

September 19



"When you're dead, the one thing you want is to come back."

This movie was kind of disappointing. It's just a bland, underwritten time travel movie that's just not interesting. The characters aren't great, the plot was poorly-executed and Adrien Brody's performance was kind of weak compared to his other roles. It's not a bad movie, but it could've been better.

September 21



"What happened to you? What made you so fucked up?"
"There is no hunting like the hunting of a man. And those who've hunted armed men long enough, and like it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
"That's pretty poetic. Did you come up with that all by yourself?"
"No, actually. That was Hemingway."

This was a pretty good sequel. It's not as good as the original Predator movie, but it's a good movie in it's own right. It's got some good acting for this kind of movie and the final showoown with the Predators was great. It's a much better sequel than Predator 2.

September 28



"I often wondered if you and my son bonded because neither of you was fond of speaking. You're very kind. You must pardon my manners; I haven't slept in many nights."

This movie was around the time when M. Night Shyamalan was still taken seriously as a director and even though it wasn't well-received with critics, it is more accepted by the general audience and some considered it to be his last good movie. I thought this was a pretty solid movie. It has a very strong story, a pretty good cast and it really knows how to develop its characters before putting them into conflict. Some people were dissatisfied with the ending, but I really liked it. It's not a great twist, but I really liked that it had more than one meaning to it.

September 24



"You're just like Don Quixote. You think that everything is always something else."
"Well, he had a point. 'Course he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be, well... All the best minds used to think the world was flat. But what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what might be, why we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes."

This was a pretty good movie. It's not great, but it's still an entertaining movie with a good story and it's pretty funny. If I had a complaint it would be that this movie is too short. It felt like it ended too soon and it just could've been longer.