December 29: Strictly Dishonorable 

Yet another terribly uninteresting picture. I can’t wait until these reviews are over and I can just delete crap that I don’t like. Only two more. Only two more. Only two more. I can do it. I can get through this. It’ll be wonderful to watch for a few minutes, yawn, and hit delete. My heart beats faster at the thought. This was just awful. A whiny, bitchy girl is espoused to a jerk, but she loves an opera star and somehow gets locked up in a mansion? I really could not follow the plot. It was dreadful. I almost want to have the originals of this one melted down and then tossed into the sea. Loathsome. [My Rating: 0/10]

December 30: Pitch Perfect 

I wanted nothing more than to love this movie. I wanted to adore it and worship it the way the rest of the gays do Mean Girls, for reasons that are completely understandable. That movie is all kinds of amazing. But…I just couldn’t do it. It was funny and the acting wasn’t awful and the singing was great, but there was not one sprinkle of originality in the entire picture. It spent the entire time trying to find itself, I felt, only to be shot down again and again as a kind of remake of Mean Girls meets Joyful Noise. As amazing as that sounds, it didn’t work for me. Did I laugh, though? Yes. A lot. It’s a very funny movie! Fat Amy was the real savior of the picture. If it hadn’t been for her, I couldn’t have made it through. I guess I was wrong, she doesn’t seem to be a rehash of anything, she’s a completely new character. I firmly believe that she was inspired by the way that Jessica and I act in public. Much like Marilyn Monroe, Rebel Wison seems to constantly be playing herself instead of a character and that really works for her. She’s great. I really look forward to seeing more of her work in the future as I think she has potential to be one of the next great comedic actresses. Anyway, on to the film. It was about a cappella groups getting ready for a contest. They all sing songs. They are rivals. They tell jokes. It was very basic. The film felt very disjointed and never seemed to find it’s narrative path, so it felt like a bunch of scenes tossed together to make an almost coherent story. Maybe I’m being too bitchy? If the lead actress had been Fat Amy instead of that wannabe goth girl, I would have probably loved it. There were some nice abs, though, and a quirky magician.

[My Rating: 6/10]

December 31: Serenade

Oh sweet Jesus. I cannot stand Mario Lanza. I’ve tried and tried, but it’s just not working for me. He sings so very loudly and it makes me jump and I find it all very unpleasant. I always feel like Emmett in Keeping Up Appearances when Hyacinth starts to sing at him.

I do adore that program.

[This little GIF is better than the entire film.]

Anyways…Mario is shouting and shouting and shouting, trying to convince us all that he’s singing. If that’s singing I never want to hear music again. Then Joan Fontaine drives up in the middle of a vineyard looking just stunning and I’m saying, “Hey, everybody!” [I’m at home alone.] “That’s my good friend Joan Fontaine, she bummed a fiver off me!” That’s true. It’s not like my Beyoncé fantasy, Academy Award winner, Joan Fontaine, did literally ask me for five bucks. It was amazing. Then Vincent Price is trying to make jokes and failing then finally says, “The coffee in Paris tastes like seaweed.” That’s true, I laughed. Then Mario is in like an Middle Eastern version of blackface makeup and singing in Othello, and I’m sitting there, my margarita frozen halfway between the table and my lips, unsure of what I’m seeing. Suddenly he’s madly in love with Joan’s character, but I must have missed that plot development during one of my blinks. Now we’re in Mexico and he’s either drunk or sickly and marries somebody there to make Joan jealous…or maybe he really does love her. I didn’t get it. He sings again. And again. Then a dozen times more. Finally Joan hosts a cocktail party and hilariously offends Mario’s bride by having her impersonate a toreador. She runs out and gets herself hit by a bus in a magnificently campy fashion. She could have danced the Charleston and skipped away in time, but she just stood in front of the bus screaming. Mario sings a bit more and we’re finally done. THANK GOD. [My Rating: 2/10.]

FILM of the WEEK: Pitch Perfect When competing with such crap, how could it lose?

FILM of the MONTH: The Queen of Versailles Truly a magnificent film that I can’t stop talking and thinking about. See it.

WE DID IT, BITCHES! THIS RESOLUTION IS OVER!

My next post will highlight the best films that I saw this year and we are done! On to more important resolutions and leisurely viewing schedules.