The Greatest Fan of Jennifer Aniston

The IMF is shut down when it's implicated in a global terrorist plot. Ghost Protocol is initiated and Ethan Hunt and his new team must go undercover to clear their organization's name. No help, no contact, off the grid. A mission grittier and more intense than ever. ...more

Another year has ended and every critic and blog writer has posted their top ten movies of the year.
There is a big push to have Harry Potter 8 (out of a possible 7) be nominated for Best Picture. There is a lot of Michael Fassbender lying around out in the open. And there are a lot of high fives over at Soul Surfer for getting the film made. But what have we learned about making movies this past year? Aside from the fact that Mars definitely does not need moms, read on.

The Dilemma - Just because you cast Vince Vaughn in an Oscar winning director's movie doesn't mean you'll have a hit. The premise is funny. Vince catches his best friend's wife cheating, should he tell him or not? The ending however is not funny.
Eventually in a film like this, the best friend will find out and be crushed and then all comedy goes out the window. It's hard to make a comedy when the last act is not only not funny but sad as well. Comedy always needs to end on a happy note. Like in Night Shift, Ron Howard.

Sucker Punch - Just because you're a great visual storyteller doesn't mean the studio should indulge you and let you make your passion project. Zack Snyder is good. In fact he's so good he's currently making a new Superman (this one is different because he flies in it).
But he should have never made Sucker Punch. Someone should have read that script and said not only does it not make any sense but it really does not make any sense! Have Zack stick to making other people's scripts into movies.

Lion King in 3D - Before this movie was released there was a lot of talk that the 3D fad had gone the way of the leg warmers from the 80's. Many films were converting their product to 3D in post and flooding the market with crap. Then Disney releases a cartoon from the 90's in 3D and they start counting cash faster than a Kardashian after a 72 day marriage. What does this mean for the future of 3D? I don't know.
But I do know that if Titanic and the Star Wars films rake in money like a landscaper in October, every studio will be opening their vaults looking to put out old films in 3D. Personally, I'm looking forward to The Exorcist and all the Ernest movies.

Fast Five - The fourth picture in this series taught us that if you bring back the original cast you can breathe life into a dying series. Number five showed us that after you do that, you can literally change what the series is all about. Fast Five is less about street racing and more just a straight forward action thriller. And a good one at that.

Midnight in Paris - He may be in his 70's and married his ex-girlfriend's daughter but never count out Woody Allen. If you make a film a year for over 40 years you'll hit the mark more than once.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Captain Jack Sparrow is still big....overseas.

Bridesmaids - There's been a lot written about this movie, how making raunchy comedies for women can pay off, how women can be funny as well and how women buddy comedies are not dead (still waiting on The First Wives Club part 2). But the main thing we learned from Bridesmaids is that if you make a funny movie, people will show up. I'm not dismissing the arguments for more female comedies, and as we all know movies today are made with demos in mind before the cameras start rolling.
But I've never been a bridesmaid, never been a bride, never even been a maid and I laughed my ass off in this movie. Quick side note, someone needs to give Melissa McCarthy a starring vehicle ASAP, and an Oscar nomination wouldn't hurt either.

Green Lantern - Before this movie began filming Ryan Reynolds admitted he did not know the history or story of Green Lantern. That's too bad, because if he had he might have read the script and never signed on to the movie.
This movie proved that just because you cram a movie star's six pack into spandex it does not a successful comic book movie make. This film had less imagination than Eddie Murphy's Imagine That, and that movie had the word Imagine in its title.

Horrible Bosses - How do you differentiate your rated R comedy from the rest? Surprise casting. Rated R comedies have been the soup du jour for the past few years. So when you're late to the game like Horrible Bosses is you need to grab people's attention and the best way to do that is cast someone you would never expect to see in a raunchy rated R movie. Someone like Jennifer Aniston. It certainly helps that she was the best part of the movie and knocked it out of the park.

And finally, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - People keep saying Tom Cruise is back. I don't think he ever left. Tropic Thunder proved the guy had a sense of humor. Knight and Day was a good film although it didn't set the domestic box office on fire. Mission 4 is a huge hit and raking in lots of cash.

Personally, I don't think Tom changed anything about the way he makes movies. He usually puts out pretty decent ones, this time he happened to release one when there is little competition from other contemporary action films. Also, it's pretty cool watching him hang off a mirrored skyscraper.