With Titles Like The Losers and Kick-Ass What Am I Supposed To Think?
On Friday the 16th, one day prior to my PC crash, I saw Kick-Ass and had one heck of a guilty-pleasure good time.
I was kind of tense, though, because this film, more than any other comic-book adaptation I've seen, tried to convince me it was taking place in the real world. I don't so much like being that particular flavor of tense, but I had fun anyway.
I neglected to do a write-up because about the time I would have been blogging it my blogging platform sank, and I was too stressed to try writing about movies. I was too stressed to try writing about anything. It was a dark time.
Ten days later I saw another comic-book adaptation, The Losers, and realized that I was going to have to blog two movies at once. So... here goes. We'll start with how these films shape my 2010 rankings:
3) Kick-Ass
4) The Losers
6) The Wolfman
7) Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
9) Repo Men
10) Cop Out
11) Book of Eli
A-jillionty-five) Legion
Let me indulge in some meta-commentary and say that this list is going to be unmanageably enormous in six weeks. Rankings work great for summer movie seasons, but to do an entire year what I really need is a graph that shows the distance between these films. Films #4 through #11 are all on the hump of the bell curve. #3 starts to step ahead, as does #2. #1 leaps as far ahead of the curve as number a-jillionty-five falls behind it.
Kick-Ass was vulgar, violent, darkly funny, and wins the "guiltiest pleasure of the year" award for me. So far, anyway. Would I see it again? Nope. It was fun once, but I needed to take a shower afterwards.
The Losers most noteworthy failing was that it was not The A-Team, which is the film I wanted it to be, a condition which I confess is not fair. Neither is life.
Recommendations? Spend your movie money on a good book this week, or save it for really GOOD movies. Kick-Ass was lots of fun, but I can't in good conscience send anybody there. The Losers just made me want to see The A-Team, which is what I think I'm most looking forward to right now.
Well, no. What I'm most looking forward to right now is Penguicon 2010, which is not a movie, but which is coming to a Troy Michigan near you this weekend.