Five Movies Of The Past Decade That Disappointed Me And Five Movies That Pleasantly Surprised Me

Five movies of the past decade that disappointed me and five that pleasantly surprised me.

The last decade saw many historical and ground-shattering changes in filmmaking. Alright, well what we really got was special effects becoming almost exclusively CGI and an inrodinate amount of sequels and remakes. The overuse of CG is troubling. While it's expensive and impressive, computer graphics often don't feel real. Sure you can do ANYTHING with CGI, but that's part of the problem. Special effects can be just as impressive even if there's a degree of restraint. I often feel that today's movie makers are trying too hard with over the top CGI. Anyway, here's five movies of the 2000's that didn't live up to their hype and five movies exceeded my expectations. If there's anything I've learned from making this list, it's that I watch wayyyy too many action movies and movies based on comic books

Disappointments

#5 Hancock- I like WIll Smith, but I'm still waiting for his one great movie. He's been in plenty of alright movies, but he's due for a masterpiece. I was sort of hoping this movie could be it. A drunken, grouchy superhero and his quest for redemption has a lot of potential, but they ruined it all of it by throwing a ridiculous, nonsensical love story. Even when the movie was focusing on Hancock as the asshole superhero, it wasn't as funny as it could have been. Oh and Jason Bateman was a total wiener in this movie.

#4 The Village- I loved both Signs and The Sixth Sense. I never saw Unbreakable, but I heard that was decent. The setup for the movie seemed appropriately creepy, but when the tweeeest came around, I was totally disappointed. I also questioned the sanity of some of the characters in the movie. "Hey, let's send my blind daughter to stumble in the woods to get medicine because we don't want people to learn about the outside world." It's a shame because I haven't been able to get into the man's movies since. This is probably a good thing because I heard Lady in the Water was ass.

#3 I Am Legend- Another Will Smith movie? Yeah. Sorry. My biggest problem with this film was with it didn't live up to what the film could have been. On it's own, it's a decent zombie/vampire flick, but the original story does so many more interesting things with the main character. The movie ends with a pretty standard heroic sacrifice to save some innocents, but the book ends ends with Neville committing suicide while being captured by the vampires and coming to the realization that he has become the stuff of legends in the vampire society, hence the title. In the movie, the title doesn't even really make sense.

#2 X-Men 3: The Last Stand- I really enjoyed X-Men 2 and I was looking forward to this one. After all, it looked like it was going to focus on an all-out war between the humans and the mutants and was going to wrap up the Phoenix storyline. I didn't necessarily hate the movie while I was watching it, but I walked away from the movie wondering what the hell I just watched. It was a total waste of a good plot and good characters. A lot of the deaths in the movie felt unncessary as well. Was there any reason to kill Cyclops and Professor X? Especially since it looks like they're gonna revive the Professor in the most ridiculous way possible anyway?

#1 The Matrix: Revolutions- It's easy to forget, but when the Matrix first came out, it was a great sci-fi/action/martial arts movie. The plot had elements of a mind screw storyline, but it was still easy enough for most movie goers to grasp. The sequel ended up feeling like a bloated mess. It was too long, filled with wayyy too many philosophical discussions, and unnecessary padding like the rave sequence. I remember feeling the special effects were kind of a mess too. Sure, watching Neo fight 100 Agent Smiths is kinda cool, but it also looks like a damned video game. I think the main reason I find this movie so disappointing is that it was the first movie I ever went to a midnight showing for. I consider something like that to be a huge event, and if I'm going to do that, then I want to be blown away. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case here.

Pleasant Surprises

#5 GI Joe- The first Transformers movies was kind of a mess and the sequel is probably the most spectacularly awful mess of a movie I've ever seen. The only reason Transformers 2 didn't make my list is because I was expecting it to be horrible. Anyway, as you can probably, my expectations for GI Joe were pretty low considering it was another movie based on a Hasbro toyline. I watched it and it really wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be! Yeah it was stupid, but it was a fun kind of stupid and it didn't aggressively insult my intelligence, so that's enough to make me leave the theatre happy.

#4 Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy- Let me make one thing clear. I hate Will Ferrell. He just got to the point of overexposure where I found him incredibly irritating. It didn't help that he seeemed to play the same character in every movie. Naturally, I passed on this movie for a while. However, when I got around to seeing it, I couldn't believe how much I was laughing. The humor isn't sophisticated, it's just goofy as hell and that usually resonates pretty well with me.

#3 Rambo- I never watched the Rambo movies growing up. I mostly remembered the movies being parodied in other movies like UHF. I just assumed First Blood was a dumb movie that got way too many sequels. When the new Rambo movie came out a while back, I rented it out of curiosity and walked away impressed! You have to appreciate this movie for what it is, a well-done sequel to a series of over the top, violent action movies. Speaking of violence, this is one of the mos ridiculously violent movies I've ever seen. Rambo is not high art by any means, but it's a fitting installment for the series and even had a good one-liner here and there.

#2 Closer- I figured I needed something on this list that wasn't a ridiculous action movie or a low-brow comedy. I normally don't dig romantic movies, or chick flicks or what have you, so I wasn't looking forward to this. The only thing that really got me to go see it was Natalie Portman playing a stripper. Hey, I never said I was a classy guy. Anyway, I was surprised to see it really wasn't a chick flick, rather it t focused on the ugly side of love and how spite and infidelity can ruin relationships and your life.

#1 The Punisher- This was the only movie I was expecting to be flat out awful. It got bad reviews and it had lackluster box officer performance compared to other superhero movies. I ended up seeing it at a second-run movie theatre and I thought it was great! I figured since it was a Marvel movie that they might pull some punches. Fortunately, the movie doesn't and it pays off. It's not often you walk away from a movie wondering if the designated good guy really is the good guy. For example,he tricks the evil mob boss into killing his own wife and best friend. I think my favorite scene is the absolutely brutal fight between Frank Castle and The Russian(played by Kevin Nash!!). When it comes down to it, if I want to see a movie, I want to be entertained. The occasional "deep" movie is alright, but nothing beats a solid, well done action movie in my book.