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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The 5 Most Overrated Movies of 2012

Just as each film year brings dozens of great movies that I eagerly recommend, it brings just as many terrible movies that no one should see. A tradition of most critics is to make a year worst list. This is very difficult for “amateur critics” like myself: It is hard enough seeing all the good movies of a year, it is near impossible to see all the bad ones. Anyway, I don’t want to spend too much time picking on indie movies with a small cast and small budget.
Therefore, I decided to make a “most overrated” movies list. Obviously I am not the first person to think this concept up, but I don’t think there are as many of these lists out there as there should be.
Chances are that most people will think I am crazy after reading this list. I get that. I probably agree with the status quo 90% of the time, but by writing so much about the 10% when I don’t, I seem like a lunatic. However, I feel that challenging the most popular movies will get the most discussion, and someone needs to address these issues.
These movies are ranked based on the margin between their perceived greatness and actual greatness. There ARE spoilers.

The Cabin in the Woods

I know, I know. Everyone says this movie was a flop. That is true; sort of. $42 million domestic gross with another $24 million overseas isn’t great, but it probably paid off the production budget (if not the marketing cost). And really, that is all it needed to do: This is exactly the kind of movie made for the DVD market. Just two years ago, Kick-Ass was declared a box office bomb when it grossed under $50 million domestically and under $100 million worldwide, but excellent video sales means that a high profile sequel will be arriving this year. Snakes on a Plane suffered a similar fate in 2006 (it grossed less than Cabin in the Woods): it was a flop in theatres but it remains popular to this day, with its famous line quoted all the time and even its direct-to-DVD knock-off (Asylum’s Snakes on a Train) doing decent business. This is how it works for these quirky, R-rated, genre-mashing, lowish-budgeted films. Cabin in the Woods will remain popular for years (if not decades), thanks to its high-profile names (secured at a low price when the film was completed back in the 2000s), its favorable reviews, and its legion of passionate fans.
And boy are those fans passionate. According to them, Cabin in the Woods isn’t just a fun horror-comedy, it completely revolutionized the film-industry. Joss Whedon (Cabin’s writer/producer) is a god, and this is his greatest creation.
Well, that just isn’t true. Cabin in the Woods didn’t revolutionize the film industry, it isn’t even particularly clever or funny. The whole concept is based around the idea that it is a classic horror story (five teen-agers spending the week-end in a cabin in the woods are attacked by zombies) which is being orchestrated by a group of government officials trying to appease the ancient ones (the audience) lest the world be destroyed. The film instantly identifies “cliches” like stoners always dying, promiscuous behavior being punished, and the “final girl” idea. Then it does...nothing to challenge these notions or explore these ideas. It just identifies them.
Well obviously they are standard pieces of horror films. That is because the horror genre, more than any other, is made up of morality plays. Characters who exhibit selfish or foolish behavior (and the protagonists of this film are experts in these skills) are punished. The more innocent characters have a chance at survival because they remained “pure.” If you don’t think the horror movies ideas of what is pure and impure are accurate then by all means make a movie explaining that, but don’t just simply point out the conventions as if they are meaningless coincidences that you are the first to discover. And by “you” I mean Joss Whedon.
The other problem with the film is one I am hesitant to mention as I fear it will turn off some of the Screened community and negate what I previously said. Please don’t let my next sentence keep you from seeing anything else I say. I take umbrage with the movie’s non-chalant attitude towards marijuana usage. Study after study shows it is dangerous, and furthermore it is illegal. I don’t think viewers should simply accept an unsubstantiated idea like “marijuana is harmless” being pushed onto them, just like the film industry did with racist ideals in the 30s and sexist ones in the 50s.

Amour

Amour was the little indie that could. Despite its dark subject matter, its low budget, its lack of a big-name star, and being in a foreign language (probably the four biggest risk factors for a movie), it managed to get nominations in both the Best Picture category (beating Skyfall and Moonrise Kingdom) and Best Director category (beating out Ben Affleck for Argo and Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty).
That doesn’t mean this success was deserved.
Amour is phenomenally made. The acting is perfect, the direction flawless, the tension unrelenting, and every scene bursting with emotion and genuity. In the end, though, it is all wasted. Amour is a miserable, bleak, depressing movie. A look at a couple trying to cope with old age, Amour subjects its viewers to over two-hours of non-stop misery and offers no hope at the end. The climax is a ten minute mercy killing scene a la One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest where the husband kills his near-catatonic wife with a pillow as a completely stationary camera watching on (with no musical score). Then it continues for another thirty freaking minutes with the man living with his wife’s body, writing her love letters, hugging a stray pigeon for comfort (it is implied the pigeon may have suffocated), and then finally dying.
The theme is that the picture shows real, genuine love, and also demonstrates the pains of aging and life in general. I guess it does. That doesn’t justify the emotional strain it puts on a viewers who are subjected to this kind of torture.

The Avengers

For all its witty dialogue, great acting, cool visuals, and...cool visuals, The Avengers is kind of stupid. Some would say this is because it is a comic-book movie. They are wrong. As a die-hard comic-book nerd, I have read hundreds of Avengers comics and can attest that it has character development, political and ethical scenarios, and exciting conflicts this movie never touches upon. 2012 was full of comic-book movies that were exciting, funny, and action-packed that also brought real emotion and real themes to the story (The Dark Knight Rises, Dredd, MIB3). The Avengers is stuck back in the 70s when superhero films were just empty-headed popcorn flicks.
Now, yes, I am the person who insisted Battleship was awesome (in this article) when it was just as (if not more) silly, stupid, and action-packed as The Avengers. However, The Avengers falls in a trap most adventure flicks fall into (and Battleship, miraculously, did not), which is to end up filling the void between explosions with morally questionable ideas. I am not a huge fan of the government, but I don’t think it is constructive to suggest that they would okay the nuking of New York City. Yeah, this isn’t meant to be taken seriously; but this gives credence to those who would break laws “here and there” because they don’t feel any sense of patriotism or affinity with the nation they live in.
And what exactly do the Avengers represent? Sure, they are funny and fun to be around, but unlike their comic book counterparts they are selfish, arrogant, impulsive, and altogether not admirable. At no point do any of the heroes act selflessly (aside from fighting in one battle to save Earth, and you never got the feeling they were in any real danger). In fact, they are constantly bragging and bickering and never seem to feel a sense of unity to SHIELD, the agency that seems to actually be behind defending the world. Now I’m all for unconventional, flawed heroes, but I think having them actually learn something or demonstrate an ideal we should strive for would be nice.
Controversy has surrounded writer/director Joss Whedon (the Cabin in the Woods guy)’s decision to replace War Machine, the badass partner of Iron Man who already had his origin story told in Iron Man 2, with the dorky Green Arrow-wannabe Hawkeye. Some have suggested it was racism (War Machine is black, whereas the closest The Avengers movie has to racial diversity is an eastern-European played by New York City-born Scarlett Johansson). Others say that it is because Hawkeye has appeared in more Avengers comics than War Machine (though Hawkeye didn’t join the team until two years after its creation). I think while the second reason probably played a big part, Whedon also chose to ignore War Machine because that character didn’t represent the ideals Whedon wanted in the movie. War Machine is a military veteran who has a strict code of honor and patriotism and even chases down his friends when ordered to: Apparently that isn’t a trait modern action films want to encourage.
Also, The Avengers loses points for the worst attempt to work the film’s title into a sentence since The Dark Knight.

21 Jump Street

Okay, so I get a lot of people found this funny. I really do. But please, please think for a minute of what the morals behind this R-rated action comedy are.
The original show (that the movie is based on) was a drama, where the cops are supposed to be cool and everything is taken seriously. It might have become a little ridiculous at times, but it still was really entertaining to watch the cops go undercover in high schools and take down villains. Plus, it served as great PSAs for teaching middle schoolers and high schoolers about the dangers of drugs and child pornography.
The new movie is a wish-fulfillment comedy, where two cops get to redo high school on an undercover assignment, and have no obligation to perform like normal adults or obey the law. I’m guessing that most people in this situation would act responsibly, since they are decent human beings. But not these two. They break into the evidence room, steal a ton of confiscated marijuana, and give it to the students to gain popularity. They host a giant party with tons of alcohol, where they are the only guests not underage. Every scene is just shock humor, and the joke is “wouldn’t we all do this if we could.”
No, we wouldn’t. Because actions have consequences. Tons of kids lives are screwed up every day by drugs and alcohol. Acting like they are harmless is stupid. As is mocking the idea of police who actually care about their jobs and do the right thing.
I get that I am probably the only person who will actually hate this movie (don’t worry: I hate it enough to make up for the rest of you). But I really hope--and this is not meant to sound arrogant or self-righteous, though it probably does--people actually take a look at what it all means.

Argo

When a movie opens with a voice-over, everyone groans. This is because it is lazy story-telling. The whole point of watching a movie instead of reading a book is that the movie is going to show you what happens, not just tell you. However, sometimes there is too much back-story to fit in a movie, so a voice-over is really necessary (Looper comes to mind). Generally, it doesn’t matter, since the movie is fiction and it is okay to take the narrator’s assessment of history at face value, since everything is made up to begin with.
This does not work when it is a true story. A five sentence summary of Middle Eastern politics from 1850 to 1979 is not sufficient information. It is a back-handed way of pushing a particular political interpretation into the public mind without offering any supporting evidence.
Argo continues this style of abandoning the truth (it is based on a plan to smuggle six Americans out of the Canadian ambassadors home during the Iran Hostage Crisis) throughout the film in order to support its own political agenda. For example, when the Americans--who worked in the US embassy--find shelter with the Canadian ambassador, the CIA official says that they were turned away by the British and Australian ambassadors. This isn’t true. In real life, they spent a day with the British ambassador, but when it became clear that Iranian extremists were about to break down the door and kill everyone, the British ambassador had them smuggled to the Canadian embassy at great risk to everyone in his home. Later on, there is an order given to the protagonist--CIA spy Tony Mendez--that he abandon his plan to quietly get the Americans out of Iran because if it fails, it will make the government look stupid, but having it end in a bunch of deaths from a shoot-out will look good to the press. Tony then tells the CIA to shove it and disobeys orders like he is John McClane. This never happened. Never happened.
What is particularly infuriating is the circular logic employed by the film’s fans. Why are there all these factual inaccuracies? Because a realistic story would be boring. Then what makes this more special than any run of the mill spy thriller? It is true.
That's all, folks.

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