A few weeks ago I had this great idea to do a movie playoff.  I took the 8 highest grossing films and the 8 highest scoring Metacritic films and paired them up against each other.*

It turned out to be a dumb idea, but what it did do was allow me to watch movies in a more objective and critical way.

I created 5 categories and gave each movie a rating from 1-10 based on that scale.  The categories were direction, writing (sub-divided into story and dialogue), acting, cinematography, and editing.  Direction and writing were weighted 3x more than the other categories, and acting was weighted at 2x more.

I’ll start with the bottom 8:

#9 — Cove, The (initial ranking: Metacritic #6) — The Cove was a really well-made documentary about the annual dolphin killing in Japan.  It had more suspense than most Hitchcock movies, and they used some really interesting filming techniques.  However, for me it never answered some basic questions like why these dolphins were more valuable than cows or chickens.  Well, it tried to answer that question, and the best it could come up with was a seemingly-crazy guy who used to be on Flipper (yeah, that Flipper from the 60′s), fell in love with Flipper, and thinks dolphins are really smart — therefore we shouldn’t kill them.  There’s also way too much ethnocentrism and lack of cultural understanding for my taste.

#10 — Still Walking (initial ranking: Metacritic #2) — Still Walking is a Japanese film about people with daddy issues.  It pretty much runs like any movie with people with daddy issues.  It’s well made, but the pacing is torturous.

#11 — Avatar (initial ranking: highest grossing #1) — Where does on start with Avatar?  It would be too painful to start with the script.  It would be too mean to start with the acting.  I know… the special effects were awesome!  Avatar is an awful, awful movie wrapped in shiny paper.  But, I did really like the paper.

#12 — Blind Side, The (initial ranking: highest grossing #8) — First of all, if Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar for this movie, I will be so eternally pissed I might look favorably upon Julia Roberts winning over Ellen Burstyn and Laura Linney in 2001.  As in all of her movies, she’s such a pleasure to watch, but she certainly doesn’t deserve any superlative that comes close to “best” on her resume.  Now that that’s out of the way… The Blind Side is not a good movie.  And by “not a good movie” I mean that it’s hokey and predictable.  So hokey and predictable, I cried in like 3 different parts.

#13 — Hangover, The (initial ranking: highest grossing #6) — This movie was just dumb.  It took from some really great “guy” movies like 40 Year Old Virgin and Forgetting Sarah Marshall and created a nightmare… like literally, a nightmare.

#14 — Goodbye Solo (initial ranking: Metacritic #3) — This movie has to be the biggest letdown of this project.  It got stellar reviews from almost everyone, and now I’m saying I’d actually rather re-watch The Hangover than sit through this predictable odd couple driving around town.  As I said on my Facebook page, “I hated it. I felt like Elaine watching The English Patient:  I can’t do this anymore, I can’t. It’s too long. Quit telling your stupid story… and just die already. DIE!”

#15 — Transformers (initial ranking: highest grossing #2) — Does it really need to be said why Transformers is a bad movie?  There are many reasons, but if you must have one, here you go — Michael Bay.

#16 — New Moon (initial ranking: highest grossing #4) — Congratulations go out to anyone who actually made it safely to the 130th minute.  I considered several options to end/forget things: jumping out my window, burning my computer, getting a lobotomy… but I finally decided that pressing Stop was the cheapest way to end the torment.

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*to be fair I didn’t exactly take the highest Metacritic movies.  I took the top 4 from “Limited Releases” and top 4 from “Wide Releases.”  I thought this was best given reviewers’ tendency to rate foreign films and documentaries very differently from more popular movies. Also, some movies were simply not available for me to watch — like Ponyo.

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