Critical End!

Midnight in Paris and The Artist? When the hell did we get so classy? Anywho, remember you can check our respective IMDb pages (Logan here and Ryan here) year round if you want to see what we gave a particular film. But here, for your reference, is each of our complete ratings for 2011.  And below that, our respective best and worst lists.

To hear us chat about this year in movies, make sure to catch our 2011 Wrap-Up podcast.

All ratings are on a 10 point scale.

LOGAN’S LIST

Johnny English Reborn – 8
Midnight in Paris – 8
Super 8 – 8
Chillerama – 7
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – 7
The Adventures of Tintin – 7
Contagion – 7
Rise of the Planet of the Apes – 7
Limitless – 7
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold – 7
Apollo 18 – 6
Blitz – 6
Conan the Barbarian – 6
Captain America: The First Avenger – 6
X-Men: First Class – 6
Hanna – 6
The Beaver – 6
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop – 6
Hall Pass – 6
Our Idiot Brother – 6
The Resident – 6
Kill the Irishman – 6
The Muppets – 5
30:Minutes or Less – 5
Cowboys & Aliens – 5
Lucky – 5
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – 5
Horrible Bosses – 5
Larry Crowne – 5
Priest – 5
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – 5
Scream 4 – 5
Sucker Punch – 5
Paul – 5
Source Code – 5
Battle Los Angeles – 5
Red Riding Hood – 5
Take Me Home Tonight – 5
Drive Angry – 5
I Am Number Four – 5
Unknown – 5
Rango – 5
Husk – 5
The Green Hornet – 5
Faces in the Crowd – 4
Abduction – 4
Colombiana – 4
The Caller – 4
The Change-Up – 4
Mr. Popper’s Penguins – 4
Green Lantern – 4
Something Borrowed – 4
Thor – 4
The Task – 4
Seconds Apart – 4
The Mechanic – 4
Hobo with a Shotgun – 4
New Year’s Eve – 3
Shark Night 3D – 3
Fright Night – 3
Your Highness – 3
Mars Needs Moms – 3
The Adjustment Bureau – 3
Beastly – 3
Attack the Block – 3
51 – 3
National Lampoon’s Dirty Movie – 3
The Roommate – 3
The Rite – 3
Season of the Witch – 3
Not Another Not Another Movie – 3

RYAN’S LIST

The Artist – 9
50/50 – 8
Fright Night – 8
Captain America: The First Avenger – 8
X-Men: First Class – 8
Midnight in Paris – 8
The Muppets – 8
The Descendants – 7
Moneyball – 7
Real Steel – 7
Rise of the Planet of the Apes – 7
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop – 7
Bridesmaids – 7
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – 7
Super 8 – 7
Thor – 7
Source Code – 7
Drive Angry – 7
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – 7
Horrible Bosses – 6
Drive – 6
The Change-Up – 6
The Hangover Part II – 6
Red State – 6
Cowboys & Aliens – 6
Hobo with a Shotgun – 6
Larry Crowne – 6
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – 6
Scream 4 – 6
The Adjustment Bureau – 6
Limitless – 6
The Roommate – 6
Red Riding Hood – 5
The Mechanic – 5
The Rite – 5
Unknown – 5
Margin Call – 4
Green Lantern – 4

We return for our first episode of the year and our fourth annual best/worst show. REVIEWED: The highlights and lowlights of 2011. PLUS: Vampire squabbling.

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I trust you all had a great weekend.  Ryan and I spent most of it cleaning out the ol’ “Critical End Podcast Theater” (or, as it’s officially called, “The Tim Burton’s Career Pre-Planet of the Apes Memorial Theater”) in order to get ready for the recording of our big “Best and Worst of 2011” show tonight.  Unfortunately, all the imaginary tickets to the event sold out months ago.  However, no worries as you’ll be able to download the full show soon enough.

Speaking of sold out events, we’re also proud to announce our annual “Critical End! Oscar Live Blog 2012!”  Granted, things may be a bit harder this year as the Oscars had to go and finally get a competent host, but seeing that this is our fourth year of doing this thing, I’m sure we’ve got lots of past zingers built up to please both young and old.

Expect to hear more news about both of these things in the upcoming days! 

Oscar host Billy Crystal (with CGI Jack Palance) on the set of "City Slickers 3: Throw Curly From the Train"

Remember, kids, you can check our respective IMDb pages (Logan here and Ryan here) year round if you want to see what we gave a particular film. But here, for your reference, is each of our complete ratings for 2010.  And below that, our respective best and worst lists.

To hear us chat about this year in movies, make sure to catch our 2010 Wrap-Up podcast.

All ratings are on a 10 point scale.

It’s our third annual best/worst show. Place your bets! REVIEWED: The highlights and lowlights of 2010. PLUS: Our first same-room recording since the beginning.

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Kudos to fellow movie nerd Harry Hanrahan, who has put together a great list of the 100 best movie insults.  The great thing about this list (besides the fact that it features it’s fair share of movies I love AND Chevy Chase) is that it’s in easy to digest video form.  It’s also a lot of fun to attempt to name all of the movies, so why not set aside ten minutes today, gather around your co-workers, and have a good laugh on company time?  You’ve earned it.

Remember, kids, you can check our respective IMDb pages (Logan here and Ryan here) year round if you want to see what we gave a particular film. But here, for your reference, is each of our complete ratings for 2009.  And below that, our respective best and worst lists.

To hear us chat about this year in movies, make sure to catch our 2009 Wrap-Up podcast.

All ratings are on a 10 point scale.

Can you believe we’ve been doing this for a whole year?  Seems like only yesterday you were disagreeing with our 2008 wrap-up.  REVIEWED: The highlights and lowlights of 2009.

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This man has more money than you'll ever see in your entire life.

In the upcoming week you’ll get a chance to both hear and read your ol’ pals Logan and Ryan’s “Top Ten Films of 2009” lists.  Until then, why not read what Stephen King has to say over at Entertainment Weekly.  I think he’s put together a great list (featuring several films that have made most peoples “worst” lists), and I’m especially fond of what he had to say about both the original Last House on the Left and the 2009 remake.

It’s once again that time of year when families gather around the warm glow of the television and watch such holiday classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to name a few.  Sure, your pals here at Critical End! watch those too, but when the hour grows late, the fire has died down, and the kids from Ryan’s third marriage have all gone to bed, that’s when the real Christmas fun begins.  Logan mixes his “special” eggnog (Ingredients: Eggnog, mostly booze), while Ryan warms up the DVD player for those holiday slasher films known as Silent Night, Deadly Night.  This year, in honor of the birth of Christ our savior (Okay, and the release of Parts 3 to 5 on DVD), we thought we’d let Logan share his opinion on each film in a special 5 part series each week until Christmas. 

This week Logan looks at Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.

Body Count: 24 (But to be fair, 12 of those are from clips of the first movie)

Best Death Scene: One poor soul is killed simply because it’s garbage day and he’s disposing some trash.  Fellas, let this be a lesson next time the wife/girlfriend wants you to take the garbage out.

Oh, where to start?  I guess I need to get the most important thing about this movie out of the way first: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is my favorite bad movie of all time.  Yes, some people may tell you that you could never get worse than, say, Troll 2, or to a more recent extent, The Room, but for my money, this film has them all beat.  And do you want to know the weirdest part about the whole thing?  More than one third of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is made up of, yeah, you guessed it, clips of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 MINUS most of the gore and nudity.

Following the video success of the first film, producers begin to search for a way to extend its shelf life a bit.  Due mostly to the fact that nobody in Hollywood likes to use their brain (See any Adam Sandler film for further analysis), they collectively decided that the best thing to do would be to hire an editor to re-cut the film, adding two more scenes that would, get this, feature a mental patient telling the story which would have  made the original film appear to be nothing more than the ravings of a lunatic.  Hollywood, this is why you have no friends.

Lucky for us, Director/Editor Lee Harry (and yes, that is his actual screen credit in the movie), and a team of six writers decided that the movie needed a bit more.  Now, when I say a bit more what I really mean is about 30 minutes of new material.  The rest, as I mentioned above, is nothing but clips from the first movie edited for content.  Wow, it took six writers to come up with that?  Maybe this film was some sort of tax write off…whatever the case, the movie comes across like the equivalent of listening to your drunk Uncle Steve attempt to explain the first film.  It’s now several years later and Billy’s little brother, Ricky, is all grown up and in the nut house.  How he got there is the only real mystery in the movie (Spoiler: He killed lots of people), and is revealed mostly through what I have dubbed “eyebrow acting” and in flashbacks that bring the grand total of Ricky actors to a staggering EIGHT people.  My God, that’s a lot of eyebrow acting.  At one point the film really jumps the rails (and Ricky’s eyebrows threaten to jump off his face), when he decides that he needs to flashback to his first date.  The movie then becomes a love story about a killer Santa for a few minutes.  The best part?  They go to see Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 on their first date.  Just when we thought the film had finally stopped showing clips from the first movie, the filmmakers decided that what we really wanted to see was people watching the first film.  God, I love this movie.

Oh, there’s more, but just take my word for it: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is NOT to be missed.  If you’re a lover of bad films, then this will be like the holy grail for you.  I can’t end this review without mentioning the fact that this film features one of my all time favorite lines and scenes from any movie ever.  The clip from this scene is all over YouTube, but it’s worthless unless you actually made it through the rest of the film.  I guess what I’m saying is that you have to work for it…and believe me: It’s worth every second.  Happy Garbage Day, folks!

Rating:
3 out of 10

In three days: Ricky returns for some more yuletide slayings, but due to the head injury he received in the last film, he now wears his brain in a glass dome.  GENIUS.

I think South Park said it best: “There’s a time and place for everything- and it’s called college.”  The following movies are the finest examples of why this statement is true.  They’re also insanely funny, highly quotable, and will hopefully remind you why it was worth the money you’re still paying on those student loans.

5.  National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002)
“Crazy kids with their crazy VDs.”
-Van Wilder
Allow me to be honest: National Lampoon’s Van Wilder has an incredibly weak script, a finale that revolves around lots of pooping, and the “acting” ability of one Ms. Tara Reid.  But you know what?  It’s easy to forget about all of that when you have Ryan “I swear I’m not Chevy Chase” Reynolds as your title character.  This was the role that finally brought him to Hollywood’s attention and it saves what otherwise would have been yet another straight to DVD National Lampoon film. 
Rating:   7 out of 10 

4.  National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)
“Grab a brew.  Don’t cost nothin’.”
-Bluto
There’s really not much I can say about this film that you don’t already know.  If you went to college/been within 20 feet of a college/heard of the word “college” before, then you’ve most likely already seen this film more times than you care to mention.  What can I say?  It’s a classic.
Rating:   7 out of 10

3.  The Rules of Attraction (2002)
“He’s not OD-ing.  He’s a freshman.  Freshmen don’t OD.”
-Paul Denton
Chances are that you’ve never heard of Roger Avary, which is a shame.  Here’s what you don’t know: He’s the other guy who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Pulp Fiction.  Yeah, he could have cashed in on the  Tarantino name for years to come, but he chose instead to take his career as a writer/director in a different direction when he adapted Bret Easton Ellis’ satirical 1987 novel. Unlike the other films on this list, this is not a college movie about the goofy guy with the wacky friends that gets the girl in the end…this is a film about the people you tried your best to avoid in college.  Oh, and as long as you’re not easily offended, it’s also damn funny.
 Rating:   8 out of 10    

2.  Slackers (2002)
“I like you.  I’ll probably give you a nickname.”
-Cool Ethan
I always thought that this would be one of those little seen comedies that would slowly build a large underground following, much like Office Space.  Seven years later (and a 4.8 average rating on IMDB) and I’m still wondering when it’s going to happen.  The biggest problem that people seem to have with this movie is that Jason Schwartzman is not acting like he’s in a Wes Anderson film.  Unlike Anderson, it’s obvious that the director of Slackers just let Schwartzman go nuts with the character.  That, combined with Critical End! fav Devon Sawa and a large cast of people you’ll recognize from the late 90’s, make this a must see.  Oh,and good luck getting this Schwartzman written closing tune out of your head:

Rating:   8 out of 10 

1.  Dead Man on Campus (1998)
“You can’t be suicidal if you’re singing show tunes!”
-Cooper
Looking back, it seems like it was one of those all too rare nights when the comedy gods were on my side: It was my second night of college life.  I was in an entirely new world surrounded by strange people and experiences which I was totally unprepared for…when suddenly this movie came on TV and taught me everything I would need to know about the next few years.  Simply put, Dead Man on Campus is the greatest film about college life ever made.  It’s one of those sneaky films that you’ll find yourself quoting for months after and wanting to watch again and again.  While the very funny and original script is to blame for much of this, it’s really hard to mention this movie without bringing up the fact that it should have launched Mark Paul Gosselaar’s post Saved by the Bell career.  This is definitely one of those “time and place” movies, the likes of which we may not see again for a long time.
Rating:   9 out of 10

Okay, now it’s your turn.  Agree?  Disagree?  Let me know what I missed.

It’s back to basics with an old school list show. Five best and five worst remakes. PLUS: The usual blather.

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What’s that on the horizon? Why it’s Critical End! (The Podcast), the wise-cracking sidekick to Critical End! (The Blog). In this, our inaugural show, Logan and Ryan discuss the best and worst movies of 2008.

CORRECTION: Jerry Zucker directed Ghost. Not David.

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