A little over a week ago, I set up a poll on
Surveymonkey.com and asked you guys to vote on what your favorite movie from Summer
2014 was and I’m really pleased with the amount of responses the poll got. In
the end, 43 people submitted their votes so with that said I would like to
thank all of those who voted. So now that the voting process is closed, it’s
time for the fun part of all of this. Now you guys get to see which films
earned your votes as your favorite films from these past four months of the
year. Now despite what I said in my ‘End of Summer Announcement’ post, I’m ultimately
not going to do a ‘Top 10’ list. The main reason for this is because ultimately
19 films earned votes from you all and a lot of them had similar amounts of
votes (some had 2 votes each, some 3 each, etc…) so it’s actually rather
impossible to do an official ‘Top 10’ list. So instead of doing that, I will be
listing all of the films that got votes, going from those that earned the
lowest amount of votes to the ones that got the highest. So without further
ado, here are your favorite films from the Summer 2014 movie season.
9 FILMS EARNED ONE VOTE
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2
If this film hadn’t gotten a mixed reaction from both
critics and audiences, I’d be more comfortable in saying that this was the best
year for comic book movies yet. For the record, I do think this has been the
best year so far for comic book movies mostly because of the other three
superhero films that came out this year which all earned glowing reviews from
both critics and audiences. But Spidey wasn’t as lucky as ‘The Amazing
Spider-Man 2’ pretty much became the ‘Man of Steel’ of the year as both critics
and audiences were mixed on it though overall I’ve heard QUITE a lot more
negative reviews than I have positive ones. I may be in the minority here, but
I really loved this film. I may have been hesitant at first about these
‘Amazing Spider-Man’ movies due to their status of being a very rushed reboot
(just five years after the Sam Raimi trilogy had ended) but after seeing these
films, I actually find myself preferring these two to the Raimi trilogy because
I like the characters in this series more, specifically Andrew Garfield and
Emma Stone as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy, respectively.
The common complaint towards this film was that it was too
overcrowded in both ideas and characters and while I do see where people are
coming from with this, I didn’t really think it was that ‘bloated’. It’s clear
that with this film the writers did not realize the major problem of
‘Spider-Man 3’ in that it had too many villains. Both films have three villains
each but overall I feel that ‘Spider-Man 3’ is still the bigger mess in terms
of its characters and plotlines. But even with that said, I don’t think that
film is as bad as the entire internet is putting it out to be… and the same can
be said for ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ as well. Despite the multiple villains,
the film does clarify who the ‘main villain’ is, I found the story to be pretty
self-contained, and while I’m not trying to compare the quality of the
following films, the direction by Marc Webb is much more confident here than it
was in the first film, similar to Christopher Nolan when he went from ‘Batman
Begins’ to ‘The Dark Knight’. It’s clear that Sony wants to do a ‘Sinister Six’
movie and that is something that I do want to see. But if I did have any
complaints about ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2’, it is that the lead-in for ‘Sinister
Six’ is just a minor tease during the ending. Sony, if you want to make
‘Sinister Six’ happen, actually start making it happen!
CHEF
In between all of the summer blockbusters that came out this
year was this charming little indie film from Jon Favreau about a chef who
quits his job at a major restaurant when he feels that he is unable to express
his culinary creativity. He also becomes infamous on social media when he
berates a food critic both online and in person for criticizing his food (which
was because he had to stick to the ‘classics’ and was forbidden from trying new
things). It’s fairly clear that this film’s story mirrors Favreau’s own
frustrations with the Hollywood system. After directing many big-budget summer
blockbusters like ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ and the first two ‘Iron Man’ films, he
returns to the more low-budgeted films where he got his start as a director.
‘Chef’ is an incredibly charming film, with an excellent message that stresses
the importance of freedom of expression. I especially loved the sequence in
this film when Favreau’s character, his son (Emjay Anthony), and his best
friend (John Leguizamo) go on a road trip across the country in their new food
truck. Now I can’t say that it’s the ‘best film’ of the year because I didn’t
really find it as funny as a lot of people were saying it was but at the same
time I still appreciated the charm of this film and its strong message. All in
all, ‘Chef’ was a very pleasant change of pace from all of the summer
blockbusters.
MILLION DOLLAR ARM
This film, released during the weekend that ‘Godzilla’ came
out, is based on a true story about a sports agent who, looking to find new
talent for the Major Leagues, establishes a new contest in India in order to
find new talent. His first two contenders, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel) became
the first two Indian men to sign U.S. pro sports contracts. Now I didn’t see
the film but from what I’ve seen online, it looks like the film got pretty
decent reviews from critics. To paraphrase the RT consensus, it’s a pleasant
film that benefitted heavily from having Jon Hamm in the lead role while not
really adding much to the ‘inspirational sports story’ formula that we’ve seen
a lot of times. But really… I don’t really mind that at all. Being a sports fan
myself, I grew watching films like ‘Rookie of the Year’, ‘Angels in the
Outfield’, and ‘Remember the Titans’ and while I know they all share similar
plot points, I still find a lot of them to be very entertaining. In fact, the
same can be said about another sports film that came out this year, ‘Draft
Day’, which I did see and I was rather surprised to find that I really liked
it. I didn’t end up seeing ‘Million Dollar Arm’ in theaters, but I’ll probably
watch it sometime soon.
EDGE OF TOMORROW
‘Edge of Tomorrow’ unfortunately ends up being one of the
most criminally underrated films of this summer season. Now I’m not saying it’s
‘underrated’ from a critical perspective because it actually got really, really
good reviews from critics (something that I did not expect to happen at all).
I’m referring to how the film performed at the domestic box office where it
fared pretty poorly commercially. It only grossed about $100 million here in
the U.S., at least $78 million under its budget. Thankfully the international
box office helped it at least make its money back but still it’s sad to see
that this film didn’t fare so well here in the U.S. It seems like the biggest
reason for the film’s poor performance was due to lackluster marketing which
might have had some people thinking that it was just a rehash of star Tom
Cruise’s most recent film ‘Oblivion’. However, ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ is far from
that; it’s an incredibly well-made sci-fi action blockbuster with phenomenal
performances from both Cruise and Emily Blunt. The first half of the film sees
Cruise go against type as a general who isn’t trained in combat but forced into
serving on the front lines while Blunt more than proves that she can be a
Grade-A female action star. Hopefully this film’s poor performance at the U.S.
box office won’t affect this film’s reputation too hard because it really was
an excellent entry in the sci-fi genre.
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
Speaking of excellent sci-fi films, now we come to ‘Dawn of
the Planet of the Apes’, the sequel to 2011’s surprise hit ‘Rise of the Planet
of the Apes’. ‘Dawn’ is one of the rare sequels that actually manages to
improve over its predecessor. Like ‘Rise’, it gives us characters that we
really do care about but it also does a great job at immersing us in this
‘post-virus’ world where genetically-modified apes are living away from the
human race, who is trying to survive after a virus wiped out millions of
people. Andy Serkis is once again phenomenal as the lead ape Caesar but credit
is also due for Toby Kebbell as the ape Koba. While he is the ‘villain’ of the
film, at times you actually do sympathize with him because of how he was
treated before the virus spread. The human cast is really great as well,
including the fairly underrated Jason Clarke in the lead human role (the scenes
between him and Serkis are phenomenal) and Gary Oldman in a role that, going
in, might have had you thinking he’s the bad guy but instead they actually gave
him a really good amount of depth. So all in all, director Matt Reeves
delivered what could arguably be the best ‘Planet of the Apes’ movie to date; a
film that is not only entertaining, but one that also quite a lot of emotional
depth as well.
SEX TAPE
As the title suggests, this film centers on a couple (played
by Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel) who film a sex tape in order to spice up their
love life. However, instead of deleting the video when they are done, it ends up
getting uploaded to ‘the cloud’ which is linked to a bunch of iPads that they
gave to their friends, resulting in them trying to get them all back before
anyone ever sees their video or, worse, it gets leaked to the internet. Now I
didn’t see this film in theaters because of one main reason… it got TERRIBLE
reviews from critics and considering that it got a C+ on CinemaScore, I’m
guessing it didn’t fare too well with audiences either. My friend Matt saw it
and he told me that it was ‘all right’ with the major highlight being a cameo
by Jack Black as the owner of the website YouPorn. But despite that, I really
have no interest in this film right now and am probably not going to bother
with it.
THE PURGE: ANARCHY
2013’s ‘The Purge’ was one of those movies where, despite
the fact that it didn’t fare well with critics (and from what I’ve seen online,
even most audiences), it was still very successful from financial standpoint
because it was filmed on a very small budget. So because of this, we got a
sequel, ‘The Purge: Anarchy’. Now I didn’t see ‘The Purge’ so I didn’t see ‘Anarchy’
when it was in theaters. The general consensus seemed to be that while it still
really wasn’t that good, it was at least an improvement over its predecessor.
The main reason for this was because unlike the first film, this film took
place in a city during the event known as ‘The Purge’, when all crime is made
legal for 12 hours and all emergency services are shut down. The first film
mainly took place within the home of the main characters which I’m guessing
disappointed a lot of people who wanted to see a lot more of this ‘Purge’ thing
but instead had to be stuck watching this family try to survive when they come
into conflict with a group of Purgers. However at the same time, it seems like
this film still had its fair share of stupid characters (I’m aware that most of
what happened in the first film happened because of one incredibly stupid
action committed by the main character’s son) and was really nothing more than
a series of violent imagery trying to act like it’s smarter than it really is.
But again, I haven’t seen either of these films so I don’t know how I would
actually feel about these films.
LET’S BE COPS
I didn’t see ‘Let’s Be Cops’ for one main reason and it
actually wasn’t because of the reviews which were pretty bad regardless.
Believe it or not the main reason why I didn’t really have my interest in the
film was because of what happened in one of my film classes. My professor had recently
been to Los Angeles where he got to take a peek at some of 21st
Century Fox’s upcoming films, including ‘X-Men’ and this film. He responded
favorably to ‘X-Men’ but not so much for ‘Let’s Be Cops’. So you can chalk this
up as another comedy this summer that I didn’t see.
LIFE ITSELF
Anyone who either is a film critic or wants to become one
absolutely needs to see this film, a biopic on the life of famed movie critic
Roger Ebert who, even more than a year since his tragic death in April 2013, is
arguably still the most famous movie critic of all time. This film gives us a
poignant look back on his life. It offers some facts that you might not have
known, like how Ebert’s co-host on his show ‘Siskel and Ebert’, Gene Siskel,
was once a part of Hugh Hefner’s posse or that Ebert actually wrote the
screenplay for a film, ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’. But in the end one
thing is clear; as the title suggests, Ebert loved life and I’ll always admire
how he continued to do his job and continue to write movie reviews even after
losing his voice around 2006. Like many other film critics, both current and
aspiring, Ebert had a major influence on my development as a film critic
because I read his reviews and while I didn’t grow up with ‘Siskel and Ebert’,
I have watched some of their old videos. One major thing I learned from watching
him on ‘Siskel and Ebert’ and reading his written reviews is to always stand up
for your opinion even if someone else disagrees with you and that is a
philosophy that I still follow to this day.
R.I.P. Roger Ebert.
3 FILMS EARNED TWO VOTES
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
Talk about a franchise that has successfully redeemed itself
after some very mediocre entries. After ‘X-Men’ and ‘X2’ director Bryan Singer
left the franchise to go direct ‘Superman Returns’, the series really started
to go downhill with the highly disappointing ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ and the god-awful
‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’. The series managed to get back on track with ‘X-Men:
First Class’ (which Singer produced) and Wolverine even got a much better solo
outing with ‘The Wolverine’. And finally, Singer returned to the director’s
chair with ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’, which I feel is the best X-Men film to
date. The film of course is based off of the iconic X-Men storyline ‘Days of
Future Past’ from the comics though from what I hear, the film doesn’t stay true
to the original story that much but regardless of that, it is still a
well-written film with the best ensemble cast of any X-Men film to date. Even
though the film does focus on a select few of the cast, everyone does their job
in this and I really have to highlight James McAvoy who is just phenomenal in
this movie. Whereas Michael Fassbender stole the show in ‘First Class’, this
movie belongs to McAvoy. I really like how they’ve been handing the character
of young Professor X as he starts to mature more into the Professor X that we
knew from the original film trilogy. But most importantly this film is pretty
much the filmmakers’ apology to the fans for letting the series go the way it
did with ‘Last Stand’ and ‘Origins’ as this film pretty much eradicates those
films from the series’ timeline. Now we know that this series is back in the
right hands now that Bryan Singer has returned to the franchise that he started
back in 2000. I can’t wait for 2016’s ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’.
TAMMY
This was another summer comedy that I didn’t see in
theaters. I wasn’t really interested in it before it came out and once I heard
it got rather mediocre reviews, I just went to go see ‘Jersey Boys’ again
during 4th of July weekend. As for ‘Tammy’, this is Melissa McCarthy’s
newest film. She of course has been on a roll ever since she got nominated for
an Oscar for ‘Bridesmaids’. In this, she stars as the titular Tammy, a woman
who has a really bad day (she gets fired from her job, she finds out her
husband is cheating on her, etc…) so she takes a road trip along with her
grandmother (played by Susan Sarandon who, despite playing her grandmother in
this, is actually not that much older than McCarthy). Anyway, so the reviews
weren’t all that good for it but another reason why I didn’t see the film was
because I hadn’t really seen a lot of McCarthy’s work. I’m sure she’s a very
funny lady but for the most part, I haven’t really seen a lot of her recent big
hits like ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘The Heat’ so I didn’t really have much interest in
‘Tammy’.
THE EXPENDABLES 3
It’s kind of sad that the newest entry in ‘The Expendables’
franchise performed pretty badly at the box office during its opening weekend.
Franchise fatigue might have been the main factor in this along with the
filmmakers’ failed attempt at marketing this film towards a younger audience by
having the film rated PG-13 (more on that in a second) but clearly a major
factor for this poor performance was because of an incident where a Digital Copy
of the film was leaked online weeks before the film was set to come out. I know
that if the film wasn’t leaked early, it still was at risk at doing poorly at
the box office but still it’s pretty sad because this film wasn’t that bad. I’ll
admit to being a fan of ‘The Expendables’ films, especially the second one
which I feel was a major improvement over the first film by not taking things
as seriously and for having better action sequences. So now we come to this
third film and it’s rated PG-13 following the first two which were both R-rated
and well-deserving of that rating. This change in rating, though, isn’t
entirely a bad thing. Yes, a lot of the action sequences are heavily edited but
at the same time it eliminated the use of those digital blood squibs that I
know a lot of people really hate so it’s not all bad. Plus, even under a PG-13
rating, this film is still pretty damn violent. Like the two that came before
it, ‘The Expendables 3’ is cheesy and pretty stupid but I still found it to be
pretty entertaining.
3 FILMS EARNED (IRONICALLY) THREE VOTES
NEIGHBORS
In terms of the comedies that came out these past few months,
the summer movie season got off to a pretty nice start with ‘Neighbors’, in
which Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne star as a couple who end up getting into a
‘turf war’ with a local fraternity when they move in next door. The main reason
why I feel this movie worked as well as it did is because while this is about a
prank war between the two main ‘parties’ of the film (family vs. frat), this
film doesn’t have a ‘villain’. Sure, the film is primarily from the view of the
couple and they are a likable couple (Rogen and Byrne do have really nice
chemistry) but at the same time it doesn’t portray the members of the frat as
‘a-holes’. They have an admirable goal; become legends of their frat and their
leader, Teddy, is doubtful about his future, which is a nice bit of contrast
with Rogen and Byrne’s characters who want some more excitement in their lives.
So in the end, the frat members aren’t portrayed as being the villains; if they
were portrayed as such I feel that this movie could’ve ended up giving
fraternities a bad name but it didn’t. Two of my fellow panelists on ‘The Feature
Presentation’, Matt and Alex, are in a fraternity and they agree that this film
did a really good job when it came to portraying fraternities so overall, this
is a fun little comedy that may not be my pick for the funniest film of the
year (that honor goes to a film that’s coming up in a few moments) but it is
still an incredibly entertaining comedy that has its fair share of
laugh-out-loud moments.
MALEFICENT
Disney’s latest live-action fantasy film, ‘Maleficent’, is a
re-telling of their classic animated
film ‘Sleeping Beauty’ but told from the perspective of its villain,
Maleficent, who is arguably the best animated Disney villain of all time. Fans
of the character might be a little disappointed, however, that Maleficent is
not the main villain here. Instead, she’s the protagonist but it still works
because unlike the original film, this film actually does give her a motive for
her revenge against the King whereas in the original her motivation for revenge
was that she was uninvited to Princess Aurora’s christening. In this movie, she
befriended a young boy when she was younger but years later when the boy has
the chance to become king, he takes it and betrays Maleficent by cutting off
her wings. We do sympathize with her character, even when she acts like the ‘bad
guy’, and of course Angelina Jolie is phenomenal in the role. But probably my
favorite part of this whole movie is the relationship between Maleficent and Aurora.
There’s sort of this ‘mother-daughter’ relationship that develops between them
and this really is the heart of the film. Of course the visuals are excellent
and at just 97 minutes, the film never overstays its welcome. In terms of the
recent big-budget live-action fantasy films that Disney has made in recent
years, I still prefer last year’s ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’ but I will say
that I did end up liking ‘Maleficent’ more than I did Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in
Wonderland’. So far I’d say that Disney is doing a pretty good job in regards
to these kinds of movies and I’m interested in seeing more of these kinds of
films; live-action versions of their classic animated films.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
Despite the fact that director Michael Bay’s newest film, ‘Transformers:
Age of Extinction’, received some of the worst reviews of the year, it still
became the highest grossing film of the year worldwide as it’s currently the
only film this year that has grossed over $1 billion. Bay’s other major film
this year, ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’, has faced similar scrutiny with
critics. Heck, the film was controversial ever since it was first announced and
not just because Bay was producing it; there was the alleged change of the
origin story, the casting of Megan Fox as April O’Neil, and much more
controversial developments that caused many people to predict that this was
going to be a disaster. Well, considering what the reviews have been like, I’m guessing
many people feel like they were right… however I disagree with that. In fact,
while I do understand the criticisms towards the ‘Transformers’ films, I really
don’t get the hate towards this film. Now let me be clear; I don’t think that
this movie is ‘great’. In fact, compared to the other movies that we got this
summer, there’s really nothing about it that ‘stands out’. But regardless of
that, I still managed to have a lot of fun with it. When the Turtles are on
screen that is where the movie really shines; they had great camaraderie and
while I know I’m in the minority on this, I didn’t mind their CGI design.
But I want to address a complaint that I’ve heard that’s
being thrown around when talking about this movie and that is that some people
feel like this film ruined the TMNT franchise the same way Bay’s ‘Transformers’
films ‘ruined the Transformers franchise’. Again, I get why people would say
that about the ‘Transformers’ films but I call major B.S. on the idea that this
new TMNT film ruined the franchise. The main reason why is because all of those
supposed controversial changes that were allegedly going to happen (e.g. the ‘alien’
origins, William Fichtner being the Shredder, etc…) are not present in any way
in this film. This does feel like a Ninja Turtles movie that stayed true to
what made this franchise so famous in the first place, more so than Bay’s ‘Transformers’
films ever did. In fact, despite the fact that this is produced by Michael Bay and
directed by a Michael Bay wannabe (Jonathan Liebesman), this doesn’t feel too
much like a Bay film. For one thing, there aren’t millions of explosions
happening every minutes. Plus, even with a PG-13 rating, this film is generally
harmless for younger audiences. So in short, I strongly feel that the new ‘Turtles’
film isn’t as bad as the entire internet is putting it out to be. I’ve said the
same thing about the ‘Transformers’ movies but this time, I stand by that
belief.
THIS FILM EARNED FOUR VOTES
BOYHOOD
The most popular film of the write-in section, ‘Boyhood’ is
the highest rated movie of the summer according to Rotten Tomatoes with a 99%
Tomatometer score (Given how much a lot of people are loving this film, I’d really
hate to be the two critics who gave it negative reviews right now). For those
who haven’t heard about this film, here’s the basic rundown about it; the film
was shot over a span of 11 years so that director Richard Linklater could
properly tell a ‘coming of age’ story with the same kid actor (Ellar Coltrane)
as he grew from childhood to adulthood. Just a quick disclaimer; I haven’t seen
this film yet so I know a lot of people are going say that ‘I must see it’ so with
that in mind I assure you that I will try and see it soon. But for now, it’s
safe to say that ‘Boyhood’ is one of the most popular films from this summer as
proven by the fact that it was the fourth most popular film on this poll.
AND NOW… THE THREE MOST POPULAR FILMS OF SUMMER 2014 (AS VOTED BY YOU,
THE FANS) WITH FIVE VOTES EACH
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS
Here’s a funny little story about this film. My co-panelists
on the ‘Feature Presentation’, Matt and Alex, were going to see ‘Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes’ but when they went into the theater they ended up coming in
during the last few minutes of this movie making them wonder if they went to
the wrong theater… thankfully, they didn’t. But anyway, back to ‘Fault in our
Stars’, this being an adaptation of a popular novel of the same name by John
Green about a young cancer patient (Shailene Woodley) who falls in love with an
amputee (Ansel Elgort) when they meet at a cancer support group. I didn’t see
the film but from what I’ve heard online, it’s actually pretty good. As embarrassing
as it is to admit this, I wasn’t really that interested in this film because I
thought it looked like another ‘chick flick’ but thankfully it looks like I was
very much wrong about that. So with that said, I probably will see this movie
sometime soon; I can’t make any promises but given the fact that I’ve heard a
lot of good things about it, it’s more than likely I will end up seeing it in
the near future.
22 JUMP STREET
I’m just going to come out and say it… ‘22 Jump Street’ is
the best comedy sequel of all time. Now to some that may not be saying much
given that most comedy sequels aren’t really that good but this is one of the
rare exceptions of a film that is not only as good as the film that came before
it (21 Jump Street, a film that I’m pretty sure none of us were expecting would
be as good/hilarious as it was) but also better. This film is filled to the
brim with meta humor that heavily plays up the fact that this film is pretty
much note for note rehashing the exact same plot of the first film, a mistake
that a lot of comedy sequels make. However, in this case it works because they continuously
poke fun at this and like the last film, the writing is superb and the
camaraderie between leads Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum is terrific. Admittedly
there are some jokes in the film that come off as being incredibly awkward,
such as when Hill’s character keeps getting called ‘Maya Angelou’, who had just
died a few weeks before the film came out as well as a scene where Tatum’s
character criticizes the fact that some people are still using the ‘other
F-word’ in 2014, which comes off being really awkward considering Hill’s recent
incident in which he used that exact same word on paparazzi. However, the film
more than makes up for that with multiple gut-busting laugh-out-loud moments,
including one of the best end credits sequences ever in which they do numerous
fake sequels to the film. Simply put, ‘22 Jump Street’ is easily the funniest
comedy of 2014 (so far), and directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller strike gold
once again. At this point, having made 4 films that all seemed to be risky
ventures at first but ended up being terrific, they really can do no wrong.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
It’s clear that we all got ‘hooked on a feeling’ with Marvel
Studios’ latest, and strangest, film, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. Remember when
everyone was saying that this would be a major risk for the studio given that
odds are that most people were unfamiliar with these characters (myself
included when the film was first announced)? Well, this ‘major risk’ ended up
being the highest grossing film of the summer (stateside) and is currently the
highest grossing domestic release of the year. Rightfully so, as it truly is a
fantastic comic book film. The film feels self-aware about how this is a much
more obscure franchise compared to something like ‘Iron Man’ or ‘Captain
America’, resulting in an incredibly entertaining space film a la ‘Star Wars’
and ‘Serenity’. It’s also one of the funniest out of all the MCU films but at
the same time it isn’t a straight-up comedy; it takes itself seriously when it
needs to be but at the same time isn’t all gloomy and depressing (looking at
you, DC, and your alleged ‘no jokes’ mandate). It has the best non-Avengers
ensemble cast of the entire MCU with a great cast of leads and some pretty
awesome villains.
But most importantly, this film really benefits from having
a lot of emotional resonance because you really come to care about the
‘Guardians’. While they are criminals and, to quote a line in the film, ‘a
bunch of a-holes’, they’re really just misfits trying to find their place in
the universe. You really have to give Marvel a hell of a lot of credit for
making us feel for a talking raccoon and a tree creature. It is because of this
emotional resonance and the fact that I feel that ‘Guardians’ is actually the
funniest MCU film to date (because it’s more consistent with its humor) that I
feel that ‘Guardians’ is actually better than ‘The Avengers’. Now I know that’s
an incredibly bold thing to say. Also, please don’t misinterpret me because ‘Avengers’
is still phenomenal but after just two viewings of ‘Guardians’, it’s now my new
personal favorite MCU film because I feel it does a few things better than ‘Avengers’
(e.g. humor, emotional resonance, etc…). It’s clear that a lot of you share
that same sentiment because as this poll shows, ‘Guardians’ was one of your top
three favorite films of the summer.
So those are your
picks for your favorite films from these past four months of this year. I’m not
going to do a ‘Worst of Summer 2014’ poll, mostly because I can already tell
which film(s) is/are going to win that argument. So once again, I’d like to
thank all of those who voted on this poll and as the end result shows, there
truly were a large number of great films that came out this summer based on the
various responses you gave me.
I leave you with this... dancing Groot!
No comments:
Post a Comment