The Last Crapshoot: Giving Due to What's Cataloged

Time to dive into what I have seen before exposure to the bullets I dodged.
Before Crapshoot can get properly underway with the cinematic horrors I’ve yet to be exposed to, it’s only fair that I take some time to give some well deserved “love” to the monstrosities that I did witness throughout the year.

So with minimal delay, I present the Crapshoot Awards for…

The Pain that Won't go Away

Expect to see Sony pop up quite a bit on this list. Although it wasn’t intentional, I can’t lie and say that I don’t take some sort of glee in any moment they get to live up to being the whipping boy for farcically out of touch Hollywood bigwigs.

On sheer level of execution relative to available resources, “Venom” is perhaps one of the worst crafted films that I have seen in quite some time, saved from unwatchability by how sheerly unintentionally hilarious it is.

That laughter starts to become far more bitter however when it’s ludicrous box office numbers get factored in, tapping into a nondiscerning fanboy mindset and milking a release window with virtually no major competition to ride its way into enough success to make the same shitty movie for release in about 2 or 3 years to lower box office returns before they scramble to pivot and overcompensate with worse products in sequence.

I’d call this burgeoning “non-Spider-Man Spider-Man” franchise the new “Transformers,” but that would be inaccurate because as of late last year, “Transformers” not only put out a solid product but its executives proved themselves capable of actually learning from mistakes.

That’s clearly not the Sony way and when this “turd in the wind” made double what “Into the Spider-Verse” made, maybe it’s time we all start to blame ourselves for the problems with Hollywood.

The Illogical Conclusion of Extreme Prudishness

February opened with the worst relationship break-up I’ve ever had in my life and ended with me bedridden with the flu for 2 weeks. Yet of all the pain I suffered that month, being the only freshly single man in a theater under the eyes of women and couples all at least 5 years older than me, eyeing me up in several less than PG ways, is perhaps the discomfort I would have surgically removed from my memories first and foremost if possible.

Covered in anticipation of this moment nearly a year ago to the day in my original review for the movie, all I can really add to my assessment of “Fifty Shades Freed” is, for the love of god, just watch porn.

“Fifty Shades” is porn. It was written as porn. Its endgame purpose was that of porn’s in literary format.

Even its author seems to understand that on some level, so the notion that somehow packaging pornography as mainstream storytelling, without writing around or recontextualizing the many sex scenes in this movie frankly represents a level of repression that is just disturbing to sit through, even when the “story” manages to finally land at being so bad its outright hilarious.

Let's end the judgement once and for all and just masturbate freely.

The "I don't know what I just watched but I'm happy I saw it" experience

When you really strive to embrace objectivity whole heartedly the way I have, you start to notice that despite coming across movies that you don’t really like in theaters, there are very few that role around with little to no redeeming value.

Even the worst turd crapped out from by corporate executives tends to be so slickly produced that it could easily fool the naked eye or slip by the less discerning viewer.

“Show Dogs” is not one of those movies.

From the bad CGI mouths of talking dogs, to toilet humor galore, to Ludacris as a headliner, “Show Dogs” is a true throwback to the who-gives-a-shit kids cinema of decades past with utterly no redeeming value whatsoever and god bless it for being a member of such an endangered species.

I don’t know whose idea it was to green light this in 2018 but it certainly breaks up the monotony of watching bad movies with budgets that could fund the infrastructure of some countries.

Best Nap Ever

One more chapter in the book of Sony tastelessness, one of the studios many bright ideas around the height of long passed “Slenderman” hysteria, resulting in the near death of a young girl at the hands of mentally unstable children was to make a movie, capitalizing on the psychological phenomenon as a trashy horror film while the legal proceedings were happening.

Fortunately for the victims, the movie was clearly shredded in editing after backlash became apparent only for its release to be limited anyway.

The resulting train wreck of editing that is “Slenderman,” however, is left feeling like a product constructed of procedurally sequenced deleted scenes from better bad horror movies that never rises above being a dull and dim flatline.

Fox News' Dream Come True

The original “Sicario” is an underappreciated masterpiece that deserved more money than it got. Its sequel raked in more money than it deserved despite substantially underperforming.

Gutting the nuance of the first movie in favor of a dumb brutal action movie coming across as intellectually offensive, culturally insensitive, and just flat out wrongheaded, even Benicio Del Toro and Isabela Moner’s admittedly terrific performances can’t cover up another instance of why Sony can’t have nice things.