2012's Movie Disappointments

If you went in to the theater to watch Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, then you probably have set your standards low enough to not have a bad time. But when you think a movie is great and then you sit through it to realize how wrong you were, feeling betrayed by the internet who has hyped that shit you are tolerating now. And you just can't wait to finish it and blog about it and just about how unfair life is and you cry and wish to see your therapist. That's what normally happens right? No? Oh...

Anyways, with 2012 almost out the door, I am recounting my ten most disappointing movie experiences of the past year. This is not exclusive to movies initially hyped as good and completely falling short, but also for movies that didn't come on time or those that failed to meet box office expectations. So without further ado, let's begin.

Carano on top of Fassbender's neck. One of Haywire's most
intense fight scenes

10. Haywire is actually boring

Sodebergh is my hero after what he has accomplished with last year's medical tragedy cum social commentary film Contagion. Thus, in my books, he can do no wrong, even with the controversial casting of an MMA fighter, Gina Carano, to lead his latest film. Then voila, I ended up regretting hyping the film. Let's just say it's not for everybody, and it tends to be boring when there aren't any fight scenes. And while the fight scenes were gritty and cool (remember how Fassbender died here and how Tatum smashed Carano's head on the table), it just doesn't have enough energy to keep it going. It worked for me on some cases, but it felt mediocre at best. I wouldn't say Carano was a bad actress, she felt surprisingly at home and the camera loved her, but perhaps it's the story. We've seen this before and some did it better, more intense, more spirited.

Marilyn Monroe (Williams) gets a pep talk from
her acting coach Paula. They're late to the set as usual.

9. Hugo, War Horse, My Week with Marilyn, The Descendants, The Muppets, The Artist, and Moneyball only came to theatres middle of 2012

It will be forever a thorn on my movie-watching side, this MMFF. The once home to Filipino filmmaking greats is now nothing but a moneymaking machine for the moviegoing masses who don't mind seeing the same jokes played out year after another and that cinematic cockblock to film buffs eager to make love to Oscar frontrunners released late of the current year. This year, the MMDA film fest has cockblocked Life of Pi (to  to a January 9 screening, thank God!), Zero Dark Thirty (January 11), and Les Miz (January 16). The Silver Linings Playbook still hasn't gotten a playdate (come on, dudes, that's Bradley Cooper and Katniss Everdeen!). Last year, it blocked Hugo (screened February), War Horse (got a slot in January, then moved to May), My Week With Marilyn (March, limited), Moneyball (April!!!, limited), The Descendants (April), and The Muppets (May, limited). The Artist didn't get a wide release either, and that's an Oscar Best Picture film for 2011. Sigh!

Yikes!

8. Gangster Squad moved to 2013 screening, so did The Great Gatsby

Someone went mad and killed people in the moviehouse. That's how Gangster Squad got moved to a 2013 screening as they need to remove a scene reminiscent of this incident. This is disappointing as I felt the movie lost some of its mojo already. So it was also annoying to hear word that the December release date for The Great Gatsby was moved to May 2013. Bummer!

The most "emotional" scene in Ang Nawawala

7. Ang Nawawala's aimlessness

I could not believe how Jamora's entry to the Cinemalaya 2012 got a standing ovation for minutes, based on what was hyped around the internet. It's like the hashtag #firstworldproblems coming to the big screen. And it baffles me to this date, how it got the good word of mouth in the internet. Buoyed along by an unrelatable lead (who does not let us in to what he is thinking because does not speak) and obnoxious women (the main love interest and the mother were both annoying, maarte women), Ang Nawawala felt lost for me: too contrived in its workings, wandering along scene after scene, accomplish nothing. And come on, in what remote reality does a privileged teen-ager listen to Kundiman and feeling orgasmic about it? It felt flat out fake and contrived to me that when the built-upon ending happened, I blew raspberries and felt this was a big bad joke orchestrated by the hipsters who run the internet.

The only thing this movie has going for it

6. We don't really need a Spiderman reboot

Individually, Maguire and Dunst outperforms Garfield and Stone, but together, the reboot duo outdoes the original pair. Great great chemistry, possibly because they're dating in real life, too? And that's all the reboot has going for it. Everyone else from the original trilogy was more likable than this new one. And seriously, Garfield's Peter Parker is a boring anger-fueled teen who's better off cast in Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Without Ethan Hawke, this movie is as dead as
the pagan gods it is built upon

5. Sinister is a big fat fluke / There is no really scary movie this year

Word was out that Sinister was this year's Insidious. How wrong was I to believe that. Halfway through the movie and I am already bored. It's only Hawke's performance that glues it together. The scares weren't that scary and the story is actually predictable. What a waste of time and what great sadness that we don't have any scary flick this year, at least like in the caliber of Insidious. And don't even try to raise in Cabin The Woods. It's too camp to be really scary.

Not even Eastwood and Adams' performances
can save this tired film

4. Trouble with the Curve sucks big monkey balls

You put drama heavyweights like Adams and Eastwood in one film and boy, am I stirred. Too bad Lorenz's snooze-inducing so-so direction ruins it. And that last scene, how everything fell into place just like that is a big middle finger to Eastwood's works where it's always a heart-breaking ending. Here, everyone reconciles without having to know what exactly happened. It just all got fixed. The last time I saw a movie like this, it was a Filipino movie that adapted another Filipino movie. SMH.

Hanks: What you looking at?
Berry: I'm looking for where the money of the
investors of this film go

3. Great movies like Cloud Atlas and Dredd flopped

Tom Twyker and The Wachowskis were unfortunate that Cloud Atlas was only able to recover about 60% of its production budget, while Miramax's Judge Dredd reboot also failed to cash in. Normally, I wouldn't care if movies are a hit or a miss, but in the case of Cloud Atlas, it felt bad for me because the material was good, the movie was well-made, and I'd give the directors some credit for taking the risk of using a different narrative rather than straight-out adaptation (even if this approach kind of didn't work for me), but maybe it just didn't evoke the same emotional pull the trailers did. So too bad. As for Dredd, I felt Karl Urban was great in it, so as Thirlby. And the critics agree, but it's just bad marketing, failing to create hype for the movie, which I only knew because of Rotten Tomatoes. The bad thing is that, we won't see a sequel to this more or less, so let's hope the DVD picks up and that Miramax reconsiders putting Thirlby and Urban for another go.

I love me some Emily Blunt, but I felt the extended TK
storyline was more of a bust

2. Looper's plot shift

I may be a minority here, but everyone who I watched Looper with felt it was a weak movie, particularly how Rian Johnson felt the need to shift the story to the TK subplot was completely the turn for the boredom. Then when you think about it, the time-travel cause and effect logic is kind of screwed. And, oh, that ending, mighty predictable. 

AND THE MOST DISAPPOINTING MOVIE EVENT FOR ME IS:

This is probably the funniest scene in the movie
after this follows an hour more of slapstick.

1. Kimmy Dora 2 ruined it all

When Kimmy Dora came out some 3 years ago, I felt as if Filipino comedy has found its new spark, making way for smarter comedies like "Here Comes the Bride," that odd film "My Amnesia Girl," whose one liners worked for me as well as the quirky narrative, and last year's Cinemalaya runaway winner, the Eugene Domingo and Chris Martinez quirkball "Ang Babae sa Septic Tank" that actually saw Domingo in a Septic Tank, then later a hospital for treatment of infection. Then what happens next? Vice Ganda and his money vehicle "Praybeyt Benjamin" happened, posing a counter-thesis to the idea that comedy movies need to be smart and need to have a story to tell, not just jokes and slapsticks. So it angers me that Kimmy Dora 2 happened. The posters excited me, this is really happening and I only dreamt of this. My friends knew how much I love Kimmy Dora and how it felt to me as a modern Filipino classic--at once witty and arresting, with Domingo claiming her seat with the comedic greats. Then the trailer came, and I was, "uh oh, that didn't look good. Horror comedy never worked. But I might as well give it a chance. It might be a surprise hit." And it was a surprise hit. A hit on my face that it. Domingo and Martinez ruined everything that the original Kimmy Dora stood for, that is, make a good comedy and make it witty. Put jokes, but don't make the movie itself a joke. And it was a joke. A very bad joke played on us believers that Filipino mainstream and commercial filmmaking will actually improve. With these bad movies easily earning bucks, like MMFF cash-in winner Sisterakas, we can only wish.