2012-366 Day 38 – 2011 Movies

Well, originally this post was going to be about how few movies I saw this year and how many more I was looking forward to seeing in the upcoming year, but then I went and actually looked at the release list and realized that I had seen a few more than I thought. Look at the list below and see if you can spot any similarities:

Thor
X-Men: First Class (twice, actually)
Green Lantern
Cars 2
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Moneyball
The Muppets
The Artist
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

That’s right! Nearly 50% of the movies I saw this year began with the letter “T” (assuming you count “The”, which we totally are for this example). Okay, maybe it’s more the case that 3 out of 9 were superhero movies (I swear I saw Green Lantern at the discount theater, so not that much money was wasted), 3 out of 9 were nostalgic (I swear I only enjoyed the part where stuff blew up in Transformers, it wasn’t that hard), and 2 out of 9 were actually nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (I swear I only went to see Moneyball for the baseball. . . okay, actually the baseball part wasn’t all that accurate). And I’m fairly certain that Cars 2 was actually an experimental film dedicated to the dangers of over-saturating the market with product (at least that’s what I’m going to believe, it keeps Pixar’s strong movie string intact).

Here are my one sentence (or so) reviews:
Thor – Part of the whole Avengers build up, a serviceable origin and a whole lot of hammer slinging fun, although I almost enjoyed the cameos and shout outs more than the actual movie itself.

X-Men: First Class – A loose tie in to all the X-men films (a sort of origin which I think they tied TOO strongly to the film continuity, even when it didn’t make sense), I enjoyed it despite being pretty predictable (don’t get me started on poor Darwin).

Green Lantern – Was slightly less painful to watch then I believed it would be (keep in mind, I went in with phenomenally low expectations), I think an over-reliance of CGI is what killed them here.

Cars 2 – Like I said, between all the cross promotion and toys being sold, I’m fairly certain this was an experiment of some sort. The movie itself was okay, but pretty unnecessary.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon – I enjoyed most of the parts that didn’t feature Shia LeBeouf on the screen (i.e. the actual Transformers). Sadly Shia was on the screen a lot.

Moneyball – A good movie, unfortunately the more you know about what actually happened with the A’s of that time period, the more you see the holes in the story. Once I took off my baseball geek hat, it was a lot of fun and very well done.

The Muppets – Just a fun, nostalgic blast (which is what I was hoping for), I very much enjoyed the way they updated the mythos while staying true to everything that came before.

The Artist – While it came out in 2011, Jess and I actually went and saw this on our anniversary in 2012, but it still counts. I thought it was well done, but found that watching a silent film was a lot more work than watching a regular film, as I was constantly afraid of blinking lest I miss a vital plot point or clue. It wound up being an unnecessary bit of work, but I just didn’t want to miss a side glance or gesture that would tell me more about what’s going on. I am also apparently terrible at lip reading.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – Huh, went way over a sentence for The Artist, and since I almost left this one off the list they almost balance out. Despite my distaste for Tom Cruise, my Mission Impossible nostalgia won out, and it was decent, but seeing as I nearly forgot it all together, I guess that pretty much says it all.

There’s already a significant list of 2012 movies I’m looking forward to (The Definites: The Avengers, Brave, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit Part I. The Strong Possibilities: The Raven, Rock of Ages, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Amazing Spider-Man, Skyfall, Les Miserables), so I’ll probably get to more movies this year than last. As is my tradition, I went to many of these movies alone (it used to be that after my last final every semester, I’d go see a movie by myself to mark the end of another set of classes. Now I just do it for fun), although I did catch one showing of X-Men with Stephen and saw Cars, Muppets, and The Artist with Jess. In all, I do enjoy the sense of scope seeing a movie on a big screen provides, but it gets increasingly difficult to justify the expense as it rises.

Weight: 233.4 Max: 240 Min: 233.4 Body Fat %: 24.7
Yearly Mileage: 17 miles (+3.5 miles)
Current Belt: Purple – Next Belt: Orange – Next Test Date: 3/3/12
Fitocracy Level: 12 (15016 points, 1166/2750 to next level) – ID: disciplev1

UPDATE (2/8/12): Yup, I missed one. Realized last night when I noted that I had seen one of the Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature Film and it wasn’t Cars 2 (since Cars 2 wasn’t nominated, ouch). Nope, not Kung Fu Panda 2 or Rango, but actually Puss in Boots, which I enjoyed a lot, mainly due to the fact of how well it captured cat behaviors while being funny. So up that count to 10, I guess.