Better Late Than Never: 2009 in Review!

I had planned on getting my shit together and getting this blog up and running at the beginning of 2010. But fate intervened and decided that I had more death in the family (and then some) to deal with. But I had started work on some of this quite a while ago, so I thought I would get some of these things out there, no matter whether the expiration date on them had passed or not. Dig it...

Best sequel of 2009: Crank: High Voltage – Taking things as far as you possibly can has to be one of the joys of making a sequel to a hit film. With that idea in mind Neveldine/Taylor shot for the stratosphere and fell back to Earth with a giant middle finger for every one, even fans of the first film. The Maury Povich-style sequence with a young Chev, the kaiju battle between giant Chev and Johnny Vang, the score by my idol Mike Patton – all this and more make for a delirious follow-up to a film that was already out of its mind.

Worst sequel of 2009: Halloween II – God damn it I just can’t get in step with everybody else on anything. Rob Zombie’s film career is one I have always been in constant dispute over. I like House of 1000 Corpses and most seem to dismiss it. I thought The Devil’s Rejects was okay and everybody else declared it a masterpiece. I thought Halloween could have been worse and everybody else acted like Zombie took a giant shit in their cereal and their childhood’s cereal. So when I came to the realization that (barring the opening sequence) Halloween II really was a piece of shit, I thought I had finally locked in with my fellow film-nerds. No. Now the people who hated the first film were giving some praise, slight as it may be, to the second one. Fuck. I’ll never fit in.

Sequels I didn’t finish in 2009: TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, ONG BAK 2 – I went to see Transformers 2 weeks after it opened. I don’t know why. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I kinda liked the first film, Bay’s masturbatory military shit aside. But it wasn’t until the opening weekend of GI JOE: The Rise of Cobra that I got around to seeing Transformers: ROTF, as the second half of a double feature with the former at my local drive-in. Now let’s get the first part out of the way – GI JOE: The Rise of Cobra is a great movie! Better than Transformers 1, it is exactly what it needed to be and that was fun, fun, fun. It’ll hopefully get a reappraisal in the near future, much like the virtually ignored Speed Racer will get some love after the bullshit Wachowski backlash eventually (???) wears off. But Transformers: ROTF suffers from being too over-loaded with goofy plots, bad characters and a self-seriousness that defeats the purpose of watching a movie about GIANT, TRANSFORMING FUCKING ROBOTS. I couldn’t hang. Not two minutes after John Turturro showed up on screen did I look at the people around me and decide it was time to bail.
Ong Bak 2 is another story. I loved the first film with all of my heart. Seeing it the first time was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in a crowded theater. It is on my list of the best films of the 2000s. But when I saw the trailers for the sequel I was underwhelmed and couldn’t muster the energy to see it in the weak-ass release Magnet gave it theatrically. So I picked it up as soon as it was on Netflix. Popped it in as soon as I got it and took it out after only around 15 minutes. I was so bored. Every scene felt like it was stretched out to infinity by slow-mo that bordered on fetishistic. Whatever. I may get around to finishing both of these if anybody out there can persuade me to do so.

Just for the hell of it ---
My Top 10 of 2009:
1. Away We Go
2. Inglourious Basterds
3. Big Fan
4. World’s Greatest Dad
5. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
6. Coraline
7. Tyson
8. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
9. Where the Wild Things Are
10. Drag Me to Hell