Melody has written 432 reviews for films during 2014.
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The Good Son 1993
Honestly there's every chance I've seen this before but I definitely didn't remember the ending… it seems so strangely forgettable despite the subject matter, perhaps just because it's a story that's been done so many times and I already have my favourites (Orphan and Poison Ivy). There are a few interesting moments, Elmer Bernstein's score is beautiful, and it has a similar feel to all those 90s Stephen King movies (Dolores Claiborne, Needful Things, Pet Sematary, etc…) … but I'm glad to be logging it here so that I at least have a record next time I can't remember whether I've seen it or not…
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Home Alone: The Holiday Heist 2012
Points for being mildly slicker than the fourth one… I don't know what Malcolm McDowell was thinking though, Jodelle Ferland either - her presence here isn't even as aesthetically pleasing as I thought after being surprised by Scarlett Johansson in the third movie, and her character is so clichéd it left me clamouring for even her worst appearances in bad horror movies that were admittedly in danger of typecasting her…
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Snowpiercer 2013
"A blockbuster production with a devilishly unpredictable plot…"
Only this movie would have a character literally describe itself with that exact line… forget the Mockingjay, the true revolutionary spirit is alive in this one with anger and celebration in equal measure. It's a little game-like structure-wise, but it's hard to care when each "level" is so distinct… it's the most unpredictable movie I've seen all year.
Tilda Swinton is mind-blowing as I'd heard, but I found Alison Pill's scene even…
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Home Alone 4 2002
On the one hand it has Missi Pyle and French Stewart as the villains… on the other… how the f**k did this get made while John Hughes was still alive? If these weren't supposedly the same characters as the first two movies (the family is the McCallisters, the boy is Kevin, French Stewart is Marv…) I'd be willing to be so much nicer to this movie - it's as background-friendly as the 3rd instalment only lacking the minimal Hughes heart that that had - but when does this movie even happen? I'm not even gonna spend one more sentence wondering…
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Dumb and Dumber To 2014
(reviewed while still watching, I'll come back and edit as necessary…) This is so completely out of touch with the zeitgeist it's some kind of beautiful art unto itself.
(nope, nothing much to add… "It's in my head and I can't unlearn it!" …I laughed tons watching this, that's all… n the way it doesn't even try to fit into todays mores and morals is frankly damn refreshing… and I hate when people call things "refreshing"…)
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Home Alone 3 1997
Honestly, I didn't give this the fullest of my attention by any means, but why would you expect me to? Yet it had plenty even in the background to let me know it wasn't that bad at all. Alex Linz is really cute - Scarlett Freakin Johansson plays his sister and she's adorable. Nick Glennie-Smith's score is that wonderful late nineties bombast that would've probably had me all over this movie had I actually seen it when I was 17…
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Pierrot le Fou 1965
Uh… quell ending lol… not sure I was quite in the mood for this, though. Godard always feels way ahead of his time, but I was slightly amazed to find this came after A Woman is a Woman. Just about everything he does here was done better either there, or in Week End which came only 2 years later.
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Pride 2014
'cos the way to get a mass audience behind an LGBT story is to coat it so much in sugar it feels like it was made not long after the time it was set… seriously, this made Smoky Mountain Christmas (which I watched before it) seem hard-edged… I almost couldn't finish it. I avoided it in cinemas because on two separate occasions I witnessed audiences eating up every godawful, obvious, ancient, "the welsh lady just said 'the gays'! now she's…
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A Smoky Mountain Christmas 1986
I googled the title of this immediately after Roger mentioned it on American Dad recently and, upon reading it was a Christmas movie starring Dolly Parton, directed by the Fonz, tracked down a copy as soon as I could. It seemed like it could be the exact kind of new, old, super cheesy Christmas movie I love to find at least one of each year… sadly, it's kind of forgettable. The songs are moderately catchy, the kids are moderately cute, and the magical elements are moderately weird… but it didn't up my Christmas spirit nearly as much as I hoped.
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Belle 2013
“Sometimes you cannot fight it because you are a part of it…"
I had a feeling this would be better a second time around, because I found myself thinking about it a lot since first seeing it - the scene where Belle beats her chest and pinches her face in the mirror in particular reminding me of when Disney's Tarzan pounds at his own reflection in one of my favourite movies of all time, and the final line "I love…
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Nativity! 2009
So, you know how much a fan I am of this whole series from my love of even the third one that everyone is having so much fun finding unique ways to deride… the series as a whole is all about Mr. Poppy - that's the direction they've gone in, and I have no problem with that because society as a whole is so skewed the other way (clearly, from the response to those movies). But, I'll be honest -…