Summer Movie Awards 2013

Well hey internet! As we head towards these last fleeting days of summer I find myself asking questions about where I have been. Pondering who I am; asking myself “Why did it rain EVERY DAY this summer? Whose idea was that? Did someone put Noah in charge of this summers forecast?” And of course (as I am wont to do) I found myself looking back over my cinematography shoulder at movies gone by. Sounds like it’s time for:

Micah’s Third Annual Summer Movie Awards: An Award show with no significance, no awards, and very few actual movies!

Let’s get started!  

Most Gwenyth Paltrow

Iron Man 3. Stand up Iron Man, accept your round of applause, and this statue made entirely of pepper and pots. You took a great character and a cool ending and you decided to put more Gwenyth Paltrow in. This is like having a Delicious glazed donut and plugging the whole with a pickle. I have nothing imparticular against pickles it’s just… they shouldn’t be the focus of a donut. Similarly, I have nothing against Gwenyth Paltrow but she is not the one I paid to watch, I paid to watch Iron Man, and you hid him from me.

Most “Old boy” in any movie ever.

The Great Gatsby. Did they really say “old” that much in the 20’s? Like every third word in this movie was “old boy” “old fellow” “old man” “old spice” everything in hear was old. The Great Gatsby was a big pile of interesting costumes and parties, topped with a heaping helping of pretentiousness; but it seemed like we forgot the little things like plot, characters, and making people give a care. The whole movie I kept waiting for the Planter’s Peanut to walk in with his top hat and monocle and start trying to sell me his “old mixture of salt and deliciousnouss.”

Most Ironically Named Movie

Epic. A movie that was a lot of things… except epic. It wasn’t epically bad, nor was it epically good. Epic just sort of existed. Which is Ironic.

Least Cares Given

After Earth. After spending months hesitantly watching After Earth slowly look worse and worse After Earth ended up being really bad. To the surprise of no one.

Movie With the Wierdest Ending

Now You See Me. I really liked this movie. A lot. It was fun and surprising and well-paced but the ending was just a little… strange. You’ll not this isn’t the award for “worst ending” that’s coming later. This is just the award for the ending that I kind of saw coming but didn’t necessarily want to end the way it did. Still a good movie but the ending kind of left you going… “huh.” Like if you went to a delicious Chinese restaurant that instead of giving you fortune cookies they passed out after dinner mints. It’s not bad just… “huh.”

Wait– there’s an ambivolent ending coming! NOOO!!

Best Plot Holes Man of Steel. Let the record show I didn’t not like Man of Steel. Nor is it winning the award for “most” plot holes (there isn’t one as I try to avoid such movies.) But Man of Steel definitely wins “Best Plot Holes” as it’s practically a party game at this point. “So what was your favorite Man of Steel Plot hole?” “Well I just don’t understand why Superman didn’t ask his Space-Daddy who Zod was as soon as he turned up. I mean he spent days walking around going “Man if only I had some guidance or something,” meanwhile Russell Crowe is just sort of hanging out with this repository full of Alien knowledge.” Once again it wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, just the one with the most fun plot holes!

Movie that most turned out to be really stupid.

RIPD. A movie I was originally excited about but when a movie comes out and every reviewer who sees it comes out of the theater clutching what’s left of their IQ to their chests you usually just leave it alone.

Worst Ending

A surprisingly stacked category in a summer where a couple different movies kind of ran out of steam towards the climax. Fortunately for us, there’s the Lone Ranger. A movie whose ending hit the trifecta of not making sense, not really fitting with the rest of the movies feel, and being really unnecessarily confusing. The Wolverine gave it a run for its money but in the end the Lone Ranger rides again.  

Worst Relationship Choice:

The Wolverine. Shoulda dated the hot, useful, actual-mutant powered, red headed girl, Wolverine. I’m a little ashamed of you.

Most Unnecessary Movie:

Grown Ups 2. Why America? Why? It’s a tribute to this movies horribleness that the Smurfs 2 wasn’t even considered to be in serious contention for this award.  

Movie that most made me want to watch another movie:

Monster University. Sure Monster University was a good movie, it just wasn’t as good as that other Monster movie so it mostly just made me want to go watch that.

Kind of like real college, Mosters University made you appreciate what you hadbefore it.

And finally the one serious award I give out every year:

Movie of the Summer:

Star Trek: Into Darkness. In a summer where most movies we’re slightly below what I was hoping they would be Star Trek: Into Darkness ended up going above and beyond my expectations (and I had HIGH expectations)! It was a great movie for Trekkies, Trekkers, and checkers the world over and if you didn’t get a chance to see it you really missed out! (check out the full review here)

Anyway, thanks for reading everyone and thanks for following along on yet another summer here on Thoughts We Might Have Had. You all are the greatest!

Summer Questions Part 1: May

Internet!! How in the world are you? What’s the shizzle? How’s the drizzle? Where’s Miss Frizzle? Oh good. Glad to hear it. No really, I am. I mean I was worried for a sec there.

All right, well, now that our formalities are out of the way I (at long loving last) am gonna talk about the movies of the summer!!! I’ve been really trying to hold off on going crazy with the blogging about movies that weren’t coming out for a few months but bear in the mind the entire months of January, February, and April featured roughly two movies that were even vaguely sort of kind of, but not really at all, even a little bit interesting. But now summer is coming and here I stand laptop in hand ready to kick some movie-butt!!! Starting with:

Micah’s Annual Summer Questions blog 2013 ed. Part 1:

Questions of May

Man I have got to work on writing shorter titles. I mean pyramids were built in the time it took me to write out the TITLE of this article. Sheesh.

Question Number 1: Will Iron Man 3 (being released on May 2nd) help us rinse out the stale growthy taste of Iron Man 2?

Let me say that I didn’t think Iron Man 2 was a bad movie per se. It just wasn’t even close to being up to par with some of the other more recent Marvel movies. Iron Man 2 was the little ADD kid running around class chewing on crayons and bragging that he could count to “bear” backwards. Meanwhile the other honors students like Thor, Iron Man 1 and Avengers just sort of tried to pretend he wasn’t around. Iron Man 2 lacked any sort of narrative focus, it got caught up in it’s own weird sense of humor and decided it wanted to tell about four hundred stories too many.

What I wouldn’t give to have a glowy death hand. Also, this poster makes me feel a lot better about this movie.

Iron Man 3 seems to be taking itself a little bit more seriously so that (while still featuring the awesome hilarity of Robert Downey Jr.) it’s story will be more focused and it’s narrative a bit more impact-full  Also, Mandarin (as played by the ever awesome Ben Kingsley) looks to be a much MUCH better villain then Whiplash who never really did much then pointlessly eat up screen time, playing with a bird. Let me type that sentence again: the primary villain spent large portions of his screen time playing with a BIRD. Yeah, Iron Man 2 was that sort of movie.

Question Number 2: Will The Great Gatsby (release date May 10th) be as much of a pretentious waste of time as its trailers make it look like?

Have you seen the trailers for this movie? I mean… I got bored and annoyed at the characters and it was only like three minutes. I like Leanardo Decaprio but is it just me or does all the dialogue in this movie seemed to be delivered with the facial expressions of someone with a severe stomach cramp? I’ve read the Great Gatsby and it’s a little pretentious and overly dramatic anyway but it seems like the director of this movie decided that rather then try and ground his characters in something vaguely resembling reality he would feed them all grey poupon and make them watch the first twilight movie over and over again before shooting. I could be wrong with this one but this movie looks about as entertaining as a copy of war and peace soaked in oatmeal.

Question Number 3: Will Star Trek Into Darkness (May 15th release) break my geeky little heart?

I was as surprised as anyone when Into Darkness was named as my most anticipated movie of the year, and as time has gone by and trailers have come out I’ve actually gotten more excited about it. If this movie isn’t good I might just stop watching movies all together and become a Chinchilla farmer in rural Baghdad. That said, my hopes are still super high on this and I think the cast and story and visual style are gonna be well worth the price of admission. I’m not saying we’ve got another Dark Knight on our hands here but I’m more then ready to find out if all the hypeing I’ve been doing has been worth the hypage.

Also: Evil Sherlock!

Question Number 4: Will After Earth (coming May 31st) be completely ruined by M. Night Shyamalan?

I really like the idea of After Earth. I like that Will Smith and Wee Will Smith (Will’s son whose name is in no way actually Wee Will Smith) are probably the only two humans in the entire movie. I do NOT like that M. Night Shyamalan has gotten his dirty little mitts on it. I mean let’s take a look at the last two big budget movies old M has given us shall we? The Happening was a horribly pointless somehow boring movie that featured pollen that for reasons that we’re never entirely clear, made people kill themselves. And Avatar: The Last Airbender was a movie that somehow ruined an amazingly popular cartoon series, and may have been the worst movie (non-Adam Sandler division) ever released. After Earth sounds like it could be really good but let’s bear in mind that all Shyamalan has done in the last decade or so has been take good ideas and make REALLY bad movies out of them. Shyamalan directing this movie is like letting blind Aunt Bertrilda back you a cake, sure there’s a chance she makes it, and yeah it’s a great recipe but… you’re letting someone else try that cake first aren’t you?

Question Number 5: Will Now You See Me (Also coming May 31st) be as awesome as it could be?

Not a lot of people have heard about this movie but it’s one of my sleeper picks for best movie of the summer. I mean it looks like someone took Ocean’s 11 and threw it really hard at a copy of the Prestige and took thay Hybrid of sweetness and stuck a great cast in it. Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenbergh, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo and Woodie Harrelson all in the same movie?? Umm… yes please! I’m super excited about this movie and would much rather watch it then risk watching M. Night single handedly stomp all over the Father-son combo of the Smiths.

Though granted, stealing Ocean’s 11 poster may have been taking things a little too far.

So there you have it friends! The Summer Questions of May!! Come back Thursday and check out Part 2 as I continue to work my way through what looks to be a summer full of awesome!!