Saturday, April 30, 2016

The Films That I Saw: April 2016



I fucking hate 2016. There, I said it. It’s bad enough that David Bowie died and the fact that I’m still not over it. Now Prince is gone and this is too much for me. While I’m glad to wrote a tribute to his Royal Badness, it’s starting to hit me though I’m glad to see his videos again on YouTube though I don’t know for how long. It hasn’t been a good year for my parents either as the husband of one of my mother’s cousins suddenly collapsed and died instantly. This is just fucked up and now rumors that this person will die or that person. I can’t take it anymore. Unless it’s Donald Trump, the Kartrashians, or Justin Bieber as I ain’t going to miss any of those fuckheads.

Then there’s WWE as well… it’s over. WrestleMania 32 was the final straw as I didn’t just delete my wrestling blog but I deleted links to various wrestling websites. It had been a toxic relationship for the last few years and WrestleMania 32 for myself and some very devoted hardcore wrestling fans was like a big “fuck you, we got your time and money” to those fans. I’m surprised that a riot didn’t happen. Reading about it through Twitter had me like “what” and “huh?” as I think the moment that I found myself realizing how unhealthy it has become is when Shaquille O’Neal made an appearance at the Andre the Giant Battle Royal where I nearly had a stroke. Seriously, I found myself twitching as it just was really an awful night that featured the Rock now becoming a cocksucker and telling the fans that they broke the all-time attendance record but also lied to them about the number which was really about 97,000 and not the 101,000 suckers that WWE will claim that was there.


While I made the decision to watch Ring of Honor on TV and not know what is happening though the episodes are taped. I can live with that as it’s just part of me just really wanting to disconnect myself from WWE. Once CM Punk makes his UFC debut, maybe I’ll watch MMA fighting. As for me and WWE, it’s over. Now we go to the world of films. In the month of April, I saw a total of 38 films in 26 first-timers and 12 re-watches as the highlight of the month was definitely my Blind Spot assignment in The Killer. Here are the top 10 First-Timers:

1. The Diary of a Teenage Girl


2. The Driver


3. Midnight Special


4. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl


5. Les silence de la mer


6. Woodstock


7. Antonio Gaudi


8. Les enfants terribles


9. Ant-Man


10. Ginger & Rosa


Monthly Mini-Review

Self/Less


Whatever is on HBO to pass the time or something, I’ll give it a look as I decided to see this just to see how bad it is. Well, it wasn’t as bad as I thought but it has no idea what it wants to be. Ryan Reynolds isn’t terrible in the film but he’s not given really a lot to do while Matthew Goode is just too good to play the villain as he’s given much to do. It’s a chase film, it’s a sci-fi film, it’s a mystery, a suspense film, and a fantasy film. Those are among the things that really hurt the film in a lot of ways while it also gets some points knocked off for allowing Ben Kingsley to do so little with the small amount of time he’s in.

Top 10 Re-Watches:

1. Never Let Me Go


2. Purple Rain


3. Black Narcissus


4. Being There


5. Marie Antoinette


6. Dressed to Kill


7. The Karate Kid


8. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me


9. D.C. Cab


10. Junior


Well, that is all for April 2016. Next month will be the annual Cannes Film Festival Marathon that will commence from May 11 to May 22 as well as reviews of other films including hopefully, Captain America: Civil War. In my music blog, I plan to start the new series of lists called Ranked as it will profile the work of a band and artists in their body of work and their ranking of them as the first will be Prince as myself and many others at the NIN-forum Echoing the Sounds are doing a project similar in what we did for David Bowie in February as it will be called 31 Days of Prince but I won‘t be writing reviews this time around and instead just listen to his work and rank them. The Auteurs pieces on Spike Jonze and Ramin Bahrani will come next on this blog instead of Cinema Axis which I’m no longer a part of. Why? Long-story short, I fucked up. I said something really stupid and offensive at another site. Courtney saw what I said and confronted me about it. I told the truth and I apologized to him and we both agreed to part ways as I thank him for allowing me to write for the site and editing my work.

On one final note. I just want to express my condolences to the family of Chip Lary of Tips from Chips who recently passed away. He was someone I liked though he and I had different views and opinions on film but I always respected him. We will miss you Chip and we thank you for your contributions in your love of cinema.

© thevoid99 2016

3 comments:

Dell said...

2016 has been tough, indeed. It's taking notable people from us left and right, including Chip Lary for us bloggers.

As for the movies, fun times with Austin Powers and D.C. Cab in the mix.

Ruth said...

I bet a ton of people watched Purple Rain in April. It hit me so hard when that song came on, though watching the entire film was quite emotional now that he's gone.

Self/Less was awful, I mean Kingsley and Goode, two perfectly excellent actors are completely wasted. I didn't care for Reynolds in that flick at all. Haven't seen Never Let Me Go again, man that was a beautiful but heartbreaking film.

thevoid99 said...

@Wendell-Chip is so going to be missed. I just hope he has fun arguments with Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael. The 2nd Austin Powers film is actually my favorite of the three as I saw that in the theaters and had fun. Heather Graham was Austin's best girl.

@Ruth-Yeah, it's more emotional to see it now as he the man himself is gone. I'm kind of thinking of seeing the rest of his work as I have the Sign O' The Times concert movie in my external hard drive as I think it's a very underrated concert film.