I Watched 500 Movies in 9 Months

Django Unchained, the movie
that started all this

Two weeks ago I submitted the final revision of a book I wrote about movies, namely the 493 top-grossing movies of 2000 to 2019. In the course of my research for that book, between December 2020 and August 2021, I watched almost every one of those movies. (My research focused on American dialects, so I skipped movies that don’t contain any, like the Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings series. I admit I also did a lot of fast-forwarding.)

That project has rewired my brain in ways I’m just beginning to understand, but that’s a topic for another post. In the meantime, here are my lists of the worst of the worst and surprise gems.

No spoilers.

The Worst of the Worst (ordered from least worst to most worst)

The Twilight Series

What can I say about these movies that hasn’t already been said? The filmmaking itself is merely mediocre; the bigger issue is the messaging, and this isn’t alarmism talking. Bella and Edward’s relationship is legitimately bordering on abusive, full of red flags. If young girls grow up believing this is what romance looks like, I am genuinely concerned.

G-Force

Did you know that there’s a movie about genetically modified hyperintelligent guinea pigs working as secret agents, and that the female guinea pig is grossly sexualized by the camera à la Phoebe Cates in Fast Times? And that this movie came out in 2009? Neither did I.

American Wedding

It’s just tedious and unfunny, full of recycled jokes and gross-out humor, populated by unlikable characters and reinforcing extremely stale gender tropes.

The Peanuts Movie

Surprisingly, multiple extended (and I do mean extended) sequences of Snoopy pretending to be in an aerial battle with the Red Baron do not make for riveting film viewing. The Peanuts gang belongs in comic strips and 30-minute holiday specials, not a full-length film.

Nutty Professor II: The Klumps

The moral of this film is that fat people are super gross, and that it’s really funny to watch Eddie Murphy in a variety of fat suits eat, belch, fart, and talk over other versions of himself for an hour and a half.

Into the Woods

I’m not a fan of musicals unless the music is particularly inspiring (Les Mis, for instance, or The Phantom of the Opera). The music of Into the Woods seems to be a single, unmelodious tune that spans the entirety of the film and sounds like the characters are making it up as they go. It is monotony defined.

The Rush Hour Series

Chris Tucker’s Carter is one of the most obnoxious characters put to film. Tucker seems to think that simply talking nonstop is the same as being funny, and his exaggerated high-pitched delivery gets very grating very quickly. The culmination of the grossness happens in a Rush Hour 3 scene in which Carter pretends to be a costume designer so as to get a dressing room full of women naked, after which he lines them up and inspects their nude bodies like a military general.

The Cat in the Hat

This film has a 9% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. I’ll let those critics speak for me:

“Represents everything corrupt, bloated, and wrong with mainstream Hollywood movies.” —Ty Burr, Boston Globe

“It's so bad that Dr. Seuss should sue from the grave... It is one of longest eighty minutes you'll ever spend in a theater.” —Steve Rhodes, Internet Reviews

“… a shrill, soulless and disturbing void of imagination that murders the spirit of a beloved children's book—which the filmmakers obviously have not read.” —Jonathan R. Perry, Tyler Morning Telegraph (Texas)

“A vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy that Universal has the temerity to call Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times

“82 of the most wretched minutes ever imprinted on celluloid.” —Lawrence Toppman, Charlotte Observer

Surprise Gems in no particular order

(This is not a list of the best of the best—rather, these are the movies that I enjoyed much more than I expected to.)

Men in Black 3

I didn’t hate Men in Black II as much as some, but it was pretty uninspired—basically a remake of the original, complete with recycled jokes. That’s why the third installment surprised me so much. Among its strengths, the film introduces a delightful new character, a time-jumping alien named Griffin. The scenes of time jumps are awesome, and the ending is emotional and poignant.

The How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy

All three films are funny, exciting, touching, and gorgeously animated. The second film in particular contains an incredible, emotional scene in which two long-estranged people are reunited. I cried.

Super 8

I don’t remember this film making much of a splash when it came out in 2011, but it should have. The story is told in black box style, where both the characters and the audience are kept almost completely in the dark about what’s actually happening until nearly the very end—a risky technique, but this film pulls it off. The child actors are also extremely impressive.

Gone Girl

Based on what I knew of this film, I didn’t expect it to be so fun. It has a pervasive but subtle, dark sense of humor, a bit like a heist movie filled with antiheroes.

Panic Room

The number of female film protagonists with strong, non-tropey storylines is still shockingly small, especially in big-budget film (as you can read about in my upcoming book!). Jodie Foster’s Meg is one of them. She and young Kristen Stewart are both excellent, and the movie is as taut as a violin string from start to finish.

The Polar Express

This movie has been criticized for the uncanny valley effect of the animation, but I think it works well with the tone of the film. The main character is constantly encountering creepy and bizarre situations and characters—it’s meant to feel uncanny. It's also been criticized for not having much of a plot, but you can make an interesting film without a strong plot as long as you make up for it with a consistent tone and a strong theme (see Lost in Translation, The Breakfast Club, Adaptation), which The Polar Express manages.

The Planet of the Apes Prequels

I didn’t expect to enjoy these films at all—what little I’d seen of the trailers seemed to over-anthropomorphize the apes, plus I find it difficult to watch scenes of animal abuse. But they surprised me, especially the second in the series, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. They’re not gratuitously violent, and the ape characters have a surprising amount of pathos without being characterized as humans in furry body suits.

Honorable Mention

Daddy Day Care

I can’t quite call this film a gem, but for an early 2000s comedy about three men running a daycare, it did exceed my very low expectations. Early 2000s comedies are mostly a trash fire (see American Wedding and Nutty Professor II), filled with gross-out humor and sexist jokes that were stale by the 1970s, and that’s basically what I expected from Daddy Day Care. Before watching it, I assumed the premise would be something akin to, “Isn’t it hilarious to watch men try to take care of children???” But that isn’t what the film delivers at all. Yes, the men do make some comedic blunders when they first open the daycare, but they learn from their mistakes fast, and they actually demonstrate a lot of insight into the children’s behavior and how to form cooperative relationships by treating the kids with respect. The film rarely goes for the easy jokes and avoids the obnoxious old trope of the bumbling, incompetent father. It also has some surprisingly progressive messages about how childcare isn’t taken seriously as real labor and the discrimination that men can face in traditionally female jobs. I didn’t see that coming. The biggest knock against the movie is that it’s just not very funny, though there are a few decent jokes and funny scenes (including a Star Trek joke at which I actually laughed out loud).

My book, Stigmatized on Screen: How Hollywood Portrays Nonstandard Dialects, will be out later this year. Check back here for the obligatory self-promotion when the time comes.