Sunday, January 2, 2011

Bonesys - Movies

So here we are, the toughest category for me to pick from, based simply off the fact that I watch way too damn many movies every year. Sure, most are duds or can only be appreciated by someone with a meager intellect like mine, but picking favorites out of the multitude is always hard to do. For you guys though, I'm here to try. Here are the Bonesys for the best in movies from 2010.



Best Movie I Saw in the Theater

As has been well documented, I don't get out to the theater much. This year I did manage to see a handful of movies though, of varying levels of quality. When I began to think about this award, I decided to not just give it to the best movie, but to the movie I had the best time watching at the theater if that makes any sense. Being perfectly honest, this is in part due to the fact that I don't think I can remember EVERYTHING I did go see. I know I saw and loved Splice, Scott Pilgrim, The Crazies, Let Me In, and Iron Man 2, and I saw Predators and the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, but aside from that I can't remember anything else. Those few I have memories of for one reason or another, but it was The Wolfman that I enjoyed the most, because I watched it with a fellow classic monster enthusiast, and the person mostly responsible for my love of almost everything I love, my dad. Say what you will about the flick, I dug it, but I had an absolute blast watching it with PhilPhil.



Most Overrated Movie

Sure, it would be easy to just throw up a Twilight movie poster for this one, but there are two problems with that, one, I have never seen a Twilight movie, and I never plan to, and second, I wouldn't post a picture of a Twilight poster at my blog if you paid me. So in keeping with only giving Bonesys to movies I actually watched, I had 3 movies in mind for this one. Kick-Ass, I gave the least consideration to, because I know why everybody loved it, hell I wanted to love it, but fuck me I just couldn't get past the Nic Cage thing, and the changing of Big Daddy to be a "Batman with guns", it just pissed me off royally. Second was "Lake Mungo", which the internets assured me would creep me the fuck out, but it didn't at all, and honestly I had quite a bit of trouble staying awake both times I tried to watch it. And finally, the winner. Everybody, even my own brother, assured me that Ben Affleck made one of the year's best films. That sentence alone invokes laughter from yours truly. But I watched anyway, thinking maybe I had underestimated him, I hadn't. The Town is probably the biggest waste of my two hours that I sat through this year. I lost count of how many times I said out loud, "How fucking stupid are you?" at this movie. This was one of those where I actually felt stupider after I watched it, and I can't afford to watch many like that if you know what I'm saying. 

Best Re-make or Re-Imagining

Only really one flick that ANYBODY should be talking about this year in this particular category. Sure you can argue the point of whether or not it was necessary, or should've even been done (in my opinion, no), but you can't argue the fact that Let Me In was a fantastic example of how a remake should be done. Plus, it did a lot to throw some well deserved attention on Let the Right One In, and that makes me happy. Honorable mention in this category for The Crazies, which was fantastic, but really not much competition.









Worst Re-make or Re-Imagining

A surprise to absolutely nobody I'm sure, but the Bonesy for Worst Remake goes to A Nightmare on Emo Street, and it wins by a fucking landslide. If you missed it before, you can read all about how I felt about this piece of shit here. For those of you too lazy to click the link and read my rant, just know that I absolutely HATED it.












Most Disturbing Movie

Only a handful of movies to consider in this category, and most of them were from my Ryan Nicholson movie-fest from this summer. That dude makes some twisted shit. In fact Hanger was a shoe-in for this Bonesy until last week. Oh my Jesus, last week. A week in which I assaulted myself with a movie that tested the limits of my own morality, and how far I was willing to let a movie go to offend and sicken me. Here's your Bonesy "A Serbian Film", now please exit stage (and my brain) left. 








Best Direct to DVD Sequel

Not exactly easy to pick a "best" here, as most of the ones I saw ranged from disappointing to flat-out awful. There are still two that I had intended to watch, in fact I own them both, but I haven't gotten around to Cabing Fever 2 or Lost Boys: The Thirst. Out of what I did watch though, I got the most enjoyment from The Descent 2, even though it's not anywhere near in the same league as Neil Marshall's original.










Worst Direct to DVD Sequel

This is a pretty easy one, not all that long ago, I had the displeasure of watching the sequel to one of the best comic book AND vampire movies of all time, 30 Days of Night. The dtv sequel Dark Days was horrible in every imaginable way, and an insult to both the comic series it was based on and the original movie. If you want more of my bitching about this one, feel free to read that here.











Best Foreign Flick

. Caught several movies from other parts of the world this year, most of which were pretty good. Most of which were also horror films, as to be expected. I enjoyed Martyrs, Pontypool, and Dead Snow, and had mixed feelings about The Human Centipede. There was one movie I saw though, that absolutely blew me away. I watched the entire movie with my jaw on the floor, and I've done everything I could to get more people to watch it. There was no foreign flick that I watched this year that had more "Oh shit", "that's fucked up!", or "what the FUCK?!" moments in it than Australia's The Loved Ones, and for that I loved it.





Best Teaser Trailer

No need for me to say a lot here, this teaser speaks for itself. It does exactly what a teaser should, it shows you just enough about the movie to get you interested, a "tease" if you will. See what I did there? I saw the American Mary teaser earlier this month, and since have been hanging on every detail that's been released about the movie since then. I can't wait to see the first full trailer, and am clinging to desperate hope that the movie will play in a theater within driving distance. The Twisted Twins and American Mary take home the Bonesy for Best Teaser Trailer!


Best Example of Me "Just Not Getting It"

I'll admit it, I just don't. Human Centipede is a movie about a creepy doctor guy who has some sort of weird obsession with sewing things together ass-to-mouth. I didn't think it was disturbing, I didn't think it was scary, it didn't creep me out, and I certainly didn't think it was the best horror film this year. It was a little disgusting, a little funny, but overall I didn't really care for it all that much. I also don't believe the poster when it says "100% Medically Accurate" and I weep for anyone who disagrees with me on that. First runner-up in this category goes to The Last Exorcism by the by.








Best "I Had Fun Watching That Movie" Movie

Easy, easy, easy. I fully expected to absolutely hate it, I even debated on whether or not I was even going to bother watching it. When I did though, I was taken completely by surprise. I laughed, I cringed, I saw LOTS of boobies. It had some brilliant came performances from Eli Roth, and even Richard Dreyfuss, and is without a doubt Jerry O'Connell's finest work to date. Everything about Piranha 3D was so freaking great, I couldn't help but love it. 









Best Comedy

Gotta be honest, comedy isn't my favorite genre of movie. You're shocked, I can tell. I tend to find humor in strange places, like The Exorcist, which if you've seen unedited, you can't tell me isn't hilarious. I do enjoy some comedy though, I like Kevin Smith's movies, I liked Grandma's Boy, and even on rare occasion, a teeny-bopper offering like Superbad or something. For the most part though, I'm pretty hard to please when it comes to comedy. This year I only gave a chance to a few things, and only two of those did I really get a kick out of. I thought Get Him to the Greek was fantastic, but I also love Russell Brand, and kinda like that Jonah Hill dude. The Bonesy is going to the other one though, and the simple reason for it is that I hate Will Ferrell. I know I sit in the minority, but I just really don't think he's funny at all. I liked Anchorman, everything else he's done I either hated, or never bothered to watch. In The Other Guys though, he and Marky Mark had me in tears. Between them, and Rock and Sam Jackson, this was by far the funniest movie I saw this year.

Best Animated Movie

I really, REALLY want to give this to a DC Animated movie, as I thought Under the Red Hood was very good, and I want to go against the masses who all seem to be in agreement on this subject, but I simply can't. My children seem intent on making me hate it, demanding that I watch some of, if not all of it EVERY FUCKING DAY, and yet despite their best efforts at this point I still really like Toy Story 3. It has enough laugh out loud moments to keep it interesting, and Michael Keaton is brilliant as Ken. Pixar always impresses with the computer animation, and this is some of the best I've seen. Visit my house at any time, and you're almost assured to hear "I wanna watch Woody and Buzz" at some point. Jacob and Caitlin are my special presenters of this Bonesy for Toy Story 3.




Best Action Movie

As with gaming, this is a typically difficult genre for me to place movies in, as most movies I like have some sort of action sequences in them. I was only able to come up with a few movies to consider for this one, and it was pretty hard to pick a favorite between them. Even though it basically only borrowed the base concept from the comic and went out on it's own as far as details, I thought Red was a pretty good flick. Of course the biggest deal this summer was Iron Man 2, and yeah I gotta admit it was pretty good. Predators was ok, and even A-Team was surprisingly not awful. I skipped Salt, Machete, and the Expendables, but have plans to see them at some point. I'm giving the Bonesy to a flick that was pretty overlooked in both comic book and movie form, but I loved in both, The Losers.




Best Thriller

Another one that I'm not sure which movies fit into, and the one that I'm most likely to look like an idiot as to which one I picked. Not that my pick is a bad movie, most people seemed to really enjoy it, I'm just not sure if it's widely considered a "thriller" or not. Dammit though, it certainly thrilled me. I only really had two movies in mind for this category to begin with. One was Shutter Island, which I really enjoyed despite my not being a Scorsese or DiCaprio fan, and the other was Adam Green's Frozen. In my opinion, Frozen is by far his best movie, I like it much better than I do either of the Hatchet's, and you gotta give props to any director and actors who can make a ski lift scary. It has it's problems, but overall I thought it was fantastic, and an easy pick for Best Thriller.




Best Comic Book Movie

You might think that Iron Man 2 would be a no-brainer for this one, but pump them brakes, friend. Although there weren't that many comic book films this year, there were a couple of pretty good ones. I previously mentioned The Losers which was a very well done adaptation of a great comic, Iron Man 2 was definitely a fun popcorn flick, and much better than the first in my opinion, but in terms of overall comic book geekery, I don't think any movie filled my heart with more fanboy pride than Scott Pilgrim vs the World.  It not only represented the source material perfectly, but it cemented Edgar Wright as one of my favorite directors, and was the first time that I've loved Michael Cera since Nick and Norah. It also had both of the year's best cameo performances from Brandon Routh and Chris Evans.





Best Horror Movie

Hah, the one that's near impossible to pick. The one that I should know better than to even try. The one that I'm likely to cause the most questioning of my taste in movies with. I'll even admit to looking at other lists on the internet to see what everybody else was picking as their favorites to see if it would help to sway my decision. I see lots of mentions for Hatchet 2, Black Swan, Let Me In, The Crazies, and even some love for Pirahna. Of course I also see some mentions of Human Centipede and the Nightmare remake, but obviously myself and those people don't exactly see eye-to-eye. In the end though, I decided that this is my awards show, at my blog, and I would make my picks whether anybody agreed with them or not. The best horror movie I saw this year, the one that I honestly felt like was the complete package, disturbing, atmospheric, creepy, all of the things I look for in a horror film, was Splice. There wasn't a huge body count, there wasn't a ton of gore, this wasn't that kind of horror movie.  Splice was beautifully done, the story was interesting, the acting was very good by horror movie standards, it had great creature effects, had some extremely fucked up subject matter, after I left the theater almost speechless. Not many movies that I claim to have actually enjoyed have that kind of effect on me. 

Best Movie

Already talked about it, absolutely loved it, strongly recommend it to anybody who will listen, have seen it several times, want to watch it again right now, the winner of the Bonesy for Best Movie of 2010....


God Bless anyone who actually reads all this, my hand is absolutely cramping. The Bonesys are a labor of love though, and I had the most fun handing out the ones in the Movies category. Tomorrow the 32nd Annual Bonesys come to a close with a few awards in the Random category, a rare glimpse of the softer side of Mister Bones, and a haunting musical number. Be there!

5 comments:

DrunkethWizerd said...

It's a sad year when best horror movie (that wasn't a remake or some other sub-genre) goes to Splice of all things.

Good job on the lists.

Mister Bones said...

Heh I figured I might get a little flack for the best horror one, but I loved Splice. Can't help it.

Drake Sigar said...

Kick-Ass was the best comic-book movie I’ve seen since Sin City. As I said in my review though, it’s jarring to the point of madness, provoking laughter then doing a complete 180 and making you feel guilty for something IT first encouraged!

Didn’t see the remake on Nightmare on Elm street, but I’m assuming they removed everything that made Freddie interesting and memorable.

Unknown said...

I agree with most of them and those I don't agree with, I didn't see. The Loved Ones has gained the titles of "one of the best" for me. Loved that movie! The Losers is pretty awesome as well. I'm saddened that the Horror champion is a movie I chose not to see. Maybe I was wrong, but that will be determined at a later date. Scott Pilgrim actually somehow made me strangely happy. So all in all, I'd say either I'm in agreement or I didn't see it. In which case I need to sit and spend some time playing catch up.

Lissa Lycan said...

We saw quite a few of these movies together... I have to say, Piranha and Splice were my favorites.