For me, The Oscar’s season is my “most wonderful time of the year.” I love going to the box office to see all of the year’s most critically acclaimed movies. But there’s also a pleasure of going to the movies to see something you know you’re not going to like.
I swear I’m not sponsored, but Movie Pass was the best investment I’ve made in a while. For only $9.99 a month, you get to see one movie a day for a month. Most large chain theaters participate (Regal, AMC, and the Brattle Theater in Cambridge do too). For me – a snobby, snobby film boy – I would have never paid money to see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in theaters. But since I felt like I wasn’t paying for it, it was one of my favorite movie going experiences of the season! It’s cool when spending too much isn’t a factor in what you want to see.
That said, I had a good time watching some pretty bad movies. Here are some of my top clunkers. By the way, it’s only fun if you go with a friend. Save your alone movie theater experiences for something like The Florida Project (which was excellent!):
Justice League
Personally, I haven’t been following superhero movies for a while because they’re not my taste. But this is, like, CRAZY misguided. Henry Cavill’s CGI mustache looked pretty bad. Batman is kind of a psychopathic murderer. The color palette of this movie looks like when your friends were at an Applebee’s and mixed all of the condiments together in a cup. And who were Ezra Miller’s jokes supposed to be directed towards? Crazy
Loving Vincent
The concept seems cool, right? A biographical piece about Vincent Van Goh in which every different frame is an impressionist painting. But the gimmick wears down quickly when the canvass thin, Nancy Drew Mystery Computer game plot goes in circles. Also, the motion of the paintings looks really weird!
The Greatest Showman
Some really cringe-ey dance sequences (one in particular set in a bar) and non-musical theater music with ultra-generic lyrics. If you had a hunch that Hollywood romanticized Hugh Jackman’s character, check out this Entertainment Weekly Article. (tl;dr: P.T. Barnum was not a good dude).
The Room
Okay, while technically bad, The Room is really exceptional work of film. Most live screenings have a similar atmosphere to a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening, where audience members yell at the screen, dress up, and dance around. I used my Movie Pass to go see it and it was a blast. People were throwing spoons!
