Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
Literally, everyone I knew who had seen Netflix’s The Ritual urged me to watch it. Not one person had anything bad to say about it – I was planning on watching it anyway just from catching the trailer, which intrigued me, but mostly because while watching that same trailer, I felt I was seeing a few already familiar movies. I finally got around to viewing it, and it turned out mostly as I expected: good, but far from great, for a number of reasons.
I have to admit, I don’t place “importance” on genre movies, and I’m mystified by those who do. Both Wonder Woman and Mad Max: Fury Road were described in such glowing terms when they were released, and I flat out don’t get it – especially given that both movies had major problems, and were not really that great. Both movies had strong, well portrayed female heroes, and while that’s a great thing, it’s not a strong enough attribute when so much else is weak. Now it’s the turn of Marvel Studios to capitalize on strong public sentiment, with Black Panther!
As obscure as the source of the title for this movie is, it’s also a major spoiler for the largely inexplicable events that happen in the second half, because I expect that some people would approach the movie by Googling the meaning of it. In that respect, it’s too clever for its own good. I waited until after the movie ended to do it, and you should too.
I reviewed 87 movies in 2017, five less than my first full year writing this blog, but between selling and buying homes, and moving late in the year, the second half of 2017 was thin on movie watching.
Not all of the movies I reviewed were released in 2017, so that’s my one caveat for this list. My rating system remained at 0 to 5, in 0.5 increments, which still seems like I should switch it to a 0 – 10 in single digit increments, but we’ll see.
When we saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi on December 28 of this year, that day was notable for three reasons – my brother’s birthday, my wedding anniversary, and 40 years to the day I went to see the first movie in the franchise. 40 years – that’s almost half a century. Amazing. This was back in the day when the UK would get a movie literally months after it’s initial US release. Over the Christmas period, and a little after, it was almost a competition to see how many times you could see it more than your friends. I don’t recall if I beat anyone, but I went to see that movie 13 times in maybe a three week period, staying in the cinema to watch it two or three times in a row. That won’t be happening with the latest in the franchise.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 