025 – Dirty Grandpa (2016)

cool reference, bros

I off-handedly mentioned all of the bad choices I’ve made recently the other day – well, I’ve made another one. Other critics (professional critics) have panned Dirty Grandpa: Glenn Kenny said the movie made him “[giggle]… for all of humanity,” Mike Ryan called it “the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a movie theater,” and Matt Singer wrote “I can’t believe how bad this movie is.” Despite the obviously negative message they hope to convey, these quotes only served to make me more curious about the picture – after all I watched and greatly enjoyed last year’s Zac Efron vehicle We Are Your Friends (and I won’t apologize for that), despite near-unanimous antipathy (it was self-aware and critical of the lifestyle it’s characters coveted). My embarrassment at asking for a ticket to Dirty Grandpa at the box office should have been an indicator though that I wasn’t in for a good time in any sense of the word.

319 – Beyond the Lights (2014)

No movie is intended to hit with every viewer. Sure, studios try to appeal to the widest possible swath of the consumer base, but every film has a target demographic. Can you imagine how completely bland a universally-appealing film would be? I am squarely not in that target for Beyond the Lights; I wasn’t confronted with any trailers for it leading up to the release, and the only posters I’ve seen have been on the sides of buildings. So why did I see it? If you had asked me about it 48 hours ago I would have put Beyond the Lights on my list of “never gonna see it” movies. But there exists two categories of people in the world: those who haven’t seen Beyond the Lights and those who have. And I now forever reside in the latter.