Me vs Movies in 2017
Some of you already get the gist of what this is just by the title alone, but for those who don’t, I’ll give you a brief summary. You watch 365 movies in 365 days. How about that for brief!? “Where did this idea come from?” asked no one… I heard of it from a comedian, Doug Benson, on his podcast Doug Loves Movies.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this… I just wanted to watch some of the movies nominated for Oscars from the past few years, ya know, the good ones. Then I thought it could be fun to watch some bad movies too. Those thoughts quickly morphed into a solid excuse not to leave my couch and go to the gym, so… here we are.
I created some self-enforced rules for this challenge. They are as follows…
- No movies I’ve already seen unless enough time has passed and my memory of the movie has faded.
- A feature-length film, according to The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, must be at least 40 minutes. That will also be my requirement. Nothing shorter.
- Everything else counts. Everything. Well, not Comedy Specials but that’s a given.
This challenge will be done by the honor system, coming from a questionably honest person at best, which should make things interesting. I hope to do a weekly post, which will include the growing list of movies I watched. Crowning a Best/Worst movie winner for that post, but for now, I will sum up my first month.
January Edition:
Without further ado…
Best Movie of January: The Imitation Game
Runner-up: No Country For Old Men
Worst Movie of January: Central Intelligence
Runner-up: True Memoirs of an International Assassin
January, unfortunately, had more bad movies than good, but in my defense, I was not fully committed to the 365 movie challenge yet and just kinda stumbled my way through a handful. I enjoyed some movies, but the runner-up and winner of January were far above the rest. No Country for Old Men star, Javier Bardem, stole every scene and left my stomach in knots repeatedly with his performance and I loved every second of it. I could have easily made No Country for Old Men the winner, but I had seen it years ago back when Netflix was mainly a DVD delivery company. I chose to go with a movie I had seen for the first time. While I could go on more about NCFOM, The Imitation Game was better, in my opinion. The performance by Benedict Cumberbatch was amazing and the movie was based on a true story that I found fascinating and well told. A guy named Alan Turing, who was played by Cumberbatch, helped England crack Germany’s Enigma machine which allowed the Allies to decode German messages that helped them win WWII. Turing’s work also helped inspire what are now known as computers, which as I type this on a computer is pretty cool.
The top two worst movies I watched in January starred comedians I find pretty funny, Kevin James and Kevin Hart, which was pretty disappointing. True Memoirs of an International Assassin did a poor job at getting me to laugh at its jokes and often left me asking “What?”. Kevin James’ character is a book writer who gets mistaken as an assassin then turns into an assassin and foils the bad guy’s plan….or something like that. However, Central Intelligence might have been worse. This movie had the biggest, badest dude in entertainment, The Rock, playing a quirky fanny pack wearing member of the CIA and Kevin Hart as an accountant. Together these old high school classmates team up to stop the bad guys from doing bad guy things. While moments made me laugh, most of it felt forced. The movie could have been better with it featuring a top level comedian and an A-list action star/Tooth Fairy…if ya smell what I’m cooking…but it wasn’t. For those reasons, Central Intelligence was January’s winner of Worst Movie watched.
Way Too Beautiful Reviews 
Loved Central Intelligence! Love what you are doing! Good luck keeping up!
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