Rant by Elliott
This week, we are taking a look back at 2014 and seeing how the movies we were looking forward to most turned out. Here’s a recap of my comments on what I was looking forward to most in 2014 and whether my expectations were met. Note: If we reviewed a movie that I mention, I’ve linked the title to the review.
(Comments from last year in italics).
1) The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies (Dec. 17) – The Desolation of Smaug was awesome and I can’t wait to see the final chapter of this epic story! Peter Jackson is my hero!
Well, this is a tough one. I liked the movie, but afterwards I didn’t have the same excited feeling that I had after the 2nd one or the Return of the King. Tons of action/battles as expected, but it just seemed like it was missing something. Overall I think Peter Jackson did a stellar job bring the Hobbit to life and I look forward to them making the Silmarillion!
2) Guardians of the Galaxy (Aug. 1) – I know very little about this, but what I do know is that it is going to be a sci-fi animated story based on the Marvel comic. I’m sure I could probably look it up or read the comics, but I will probably just go see the movie without any background. All I need to know is that it is Marvel and that makes me excited!
Like so many other people, I loved this one. This was my favorite movie of the year. It felt so much different than the other Marvel movies, yet so very similar. I really liked how it wasn’t at all serious and the humor was right up my alley. The soundtrack was great and fit in perfectly with the story. I could keep on going but you could just read my review instead.
3) Divergent (Mar. 21) – A Dystopian story based on a young adult book series. Yes please! I read the first book of the series earlier this year and thought it was quite good. Although it shares the same genre with The Hunger Games, these two series share very little as far as story/theme goes. The story takes place in Chicago and from the trailer looks like it will stick pretty close to the book.
I was very happy with this conversion from book to film. It had been awhile since I read the book, so if they left out many details or changed minor things I didn’t notice. Overall, I thought it was great and I look forward to seeing part 2 of the trilogy.
4) Noah (Mar. 28) – Although there has been some controversy regarding this movie, the trailer looks quite good. Russell Crowe will be playing Noah and Emma Watson as one of his daughter-in-laws. I’m curious as to how they are going to portray this story, how accurate they will be to the bible, and how much they just make up. Although I have mixed emotions, it’s exciting to see stories from the bible being made for the big screen. As a side note, a movie called “Exodus” is scheduled for next December.
This is the one movie I didn’t end up seeing yet. It has received a lot of harsh criticism, but I don’t like to establish an opinion until I see it myself. I still plan on seeing this, but for now you can read Gene’s review.
5) Edge of Tomorrow (June 6) – After watching the trailer for this, I would best describe it as Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers. Hopefully that won’t scare you off. It stars Tom Cruise and looks similar to Oblivion, which despite my skepticism ended up being a solid movie. Hopefully this will end up being of the same quality.
I really liked this one, it was even better than Oblivion in my opinion. I thought that the restarting of the day each time he died would get tiresome, but they did a good job of showing things in a different way. There was also some subtle humor, which I loved. This is one I could watch multiple times without getting tired of it.
This year my wife and I didn’t make it to the theater quite as much as we had hoped. However we still ended up seeing a lot of this years releases after they came out on bluray. Here’s the majority of other movies I saw in 2014:
The Lego Movie – Due to the ridiculously annoying song, I put off seeing this one for awhile. That was a mistake, I loved it and even began to like the song by the end. This was one of the best animated movie of the year.
The Monuments Men – This was pretty good. The premise of the story was unique and interesting, but at the same time nothing else really stood out. I enjoyed it well enough.
Non-Stop – This is best described as Taken on a plane. I really liked it and they did a good job of keeping me guessing the whole time, as to who the bad guy was. Rent it, don’t buy it. Once you know how it ends, it isn’t really worth watching again, but the 1st time is definitely worth it.
God’s Not Dead – I wasn’t really interesting in seeing this, but decided to see it anyways. It’s pretty cheesy, like most christian movies, but not as bad as I expected. More than anything it made me want to go back and watch the Andromeda TV series.
The Amazing Spiderman 2 – I loved Andrew Garfield in the first installment and was just as happy with this one. Great action and witty lines, just what you should expect. I know some people didn’t like it but their opinions don’t matter… 🙂 The only thing I didn’t like was at the end and involved a girl. Why?!?
Godzilla – Overall, I was pretty happy with this film. I liked the story and setup. The fights were pretty awesome, however they were too short and there weren’t enough of them. My only other complaint was that Godzilla’s thighs were really wide, they just looked weird.
X-men: Days of Future Past – I really like X-men: First Class, but the this one fell flat for me. Maybe I should give it another shot, but I don’t think that would help. In general I’m not a fan of time travel and this did nothing to change that. At this point, do we really need any more X-men movies…? I think not.
Maleficent – This was an interesting twist on Sleeping Beauty with beautiful visuals. I really enjoyed it and would say it was one of the better movies this year.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 – This was great till the end….so sad, but I did like it despite the ending. I really want a pet dragon.
Snowpiercer – I really like dystopians movies, however, I didn’t think this was nearly as good as people claimed. I didn’t hate it or love it, it was decent but not nearly as interesting as I had hoped.
Video Games: The Movie – This documentary brought back lots of great memories from my childhood. In it they interview people in the industry and well known nerds and go over the history of video games. If you are at all interested in video games this is worth watching.
The Giver – Didn’t hear about this? Well I’m not surprised. I knew of it, but this movie didn’t get much press or fanfare. Despite that, this was a much better dystopian story than snowpiercer. Having never read the book, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I just wish it had been longer and that we found out what happened to main characters after the concluding events.
The Maze Runner – This is probably the first time I’ve said this, but this was just as good if not better than the book. Many of my complaints regarding the book were resolved in the movie. I’m looking forward to seeing the 2nd part of the trilogy this coming fall.
Big Hero 6 – This was basically an animated marvel superhero movie and it was awesome. Characters were great, story was great and it had a awesome closing credit scene. This will definitely be one we will purchase.
