movies | Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for movies

My Favorite Movies I Saw in 2023

Posted in Blog Series, Movie Board, movies with tags Movie Board, movies, reviews on February 8, 2024 by Paxton

So. Beginning of the year and my favorite movies countdown. We meet again.

This is my 17th year making this list, guys. How is that even possible?! As always, I’m keeping up with my movie watching throughout the year on my Letterboxd account. Check me out there to see more reviews!

So, on to my list. Rules are like my books, only movies new to me in 2023 are eligible. Normally, starting Jan 1 through whenever I post this article, I put a moratorium on 2023 movies that are new to me. I don’t watch them. I have to wait until I’m done with this article. However, this year, I did actually watch a few new 2023 movie that I hadn’t watched within the calendar year of 2023. So I’m trying new things. Look at me, all growed up.

First, I’ll do a list of my favorite movies released in 2023. Then, possibly, depending on how things go, I’ll do a second list of my favorite movies I watched for the first time in 2023. Those can be from any year. But in this article I’m focusing on 2023 released movies and a few stats from Letterboxd.

So let’s see what my favorite things to watch in 2023 were. This was a tough decision to make. There were three big tentpole releases that could have made it into this list, but I made a decision to nudge them out and do a couple other movies I felt needed the exposure.

Here are my top 5 favorite movies of 2023. I got most of my images and links from Wikipedia.

Barbie
Barbie – I don’t know what I expected here, but I did not expect *this*. It’s lovely. It’s hilarious. It’s thought provoking. I was already getting a major man crush on Ryan Gosling and this just furthered that cause. It’s amazing what Greta Gerwig did with this movie. I love what it wanted to say, I love how it said it. Just a wonderful movie and if pressed, I’d probably almost call this my favorite movie of the year. Almost, this is a tight top 5.

Across the Spider-verse
Spider-man: Across the Spiderverse – Man, they managed to do it again. The first one was such a masterpiece, I’m like, how are they going to follow that up? And they managed to do it by making almost every frame of the movie a work of art unto itself. The way they have art styles blending through the movie and even within one scene, it’s breathtaking. And they brought in one of the more interesting villains, Spot, and made him crazy and weird and totally awesome. I can’t wait to see the final installment.

Three Musketeers: Part I – D’artagnan – This was the movie that benefitted from my new rule this year where I could watch movies from 2023 that I didn’t get to before Dec 31 and it could still count towards this list. I’m a big fan of the Alexander Dumas novel, I read it in college. And I love all of the adaptations I’ve seen of it. A particular favorite is the Disney version from 1993 with Chris O’Donnell, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt, and Tim Curry. Anyway, this version is not only an excellent adaptation of the novel, but it’s a great movie with amazing sets and costumes, and the cast they got is KILLER. I thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to Part II, which doesn’t drop until December, unfortunately.

Air
Air – I’m really getting personal in this list. You’ll notice neither Fast X nor John Wick 4 have shown up yet. Air hits every kind of button I have. It’s a “behind the scenes of a bit pop cultural event. It’s about the 80s NBA. It has Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck in a fun role as Phil Knight. This scratches all the itches for me and it’s a great movie. I watched it twice last year.

D&D:HaT
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – Again, I’m picking the movies that entertained me the most here. This movie looked good, but man oh man, this was better than even I thought it was going to be. I love the humor. I love the awesome cast. The world is wonderful. The easter eggs for the D&D cartoon were a salve to my battered heart as it’s one of my fav Saturday morning cartoons. They need sequels to this. NOW.

There you go. I did it. I picked 5 movies to be my favorites this year. Like I mentioned, that was hard this year. I had a lot of good choices. Fast X, John Wick 4, and Mission Impossible 7 all could have been in this list. I only didn’t include them because I’ve included iterations of these franchises in my list before. These movies are a given. I’m of course going to like them. The above movies I loved and there was no guarantee that I was going to love any of them (well, maybe Spider-man).

Let’s take a look at some of my movie watching stats from my account over on Letterboxd.

Here’s a graph of the number of films I watched throughout the year broken down by week. My overall total was 233 movies watched, which is exactly the total I got last year. Weird. That’s 4.5 movies per week. My highest weekly total of movies watched in 2023 was 12. It happened the week of Oct 23-29. That was me finishing out some Halloween watches. Next highest total was 10 movies in a week, and then 9 movies.

Here is the list of actors that I watched the most movies of this year. I’m in the middle of an Elvis filmography marathon so that’s why Elvis is way out in front with 16 movies watched. Seth Green seems an odd #2, but we watched all the Austin Powers movies with the kids as well as a few other of his movies randomly. Courtney Cox and Roger Jackson are there because I did a Scream franchise marathon with the kids. We watched all 6 of them. I also rewatched Mission Impossible 3-6 (Tom Cruise) as well as watching all of Bruce Lee’s martial arts movies. It’s interesting to see who pops up based on your watching habits.

This is the top 10 list of directors I watched this year. Again, you see where marathons shape these lists. Norman Taurog directed Elvis’ movies. Wes Craven directed the majority of the Scream films. I watched a couple of the Zorro films, and Mr Deters and Mrs Wermers-Skelton directed the Prep and Landing shorts which we watched over the holidays.

According to my milestones, the first movie I watched in 2023 was See How They Run, a murder mystery starring Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan on January 1. The last movie I watched in 2023 was Gran Turismo on Dec 29. Surprising I didn’t watch any movies between Dec 29 and Dec 31 last year. You can see my other milestones there, the 100th movie I watched in 2023 was Air.

Anyway, that about wraps up my 2023 movies list. I’m kicking around the idea of doing a few “honorable mentions” articles. Talk about some TV shows I watched, and maybe some other movies and books that I read last year that might be worth talking about.

My Favorite Movies I Saw in 2022

Posted in Blog Series, Movie Board, movies with tags Marvel, Movie Board, movies, reviews on January 26, 2023 by Paxton

Here we are again. The beginning of a new year and me picking out my favorite movies of the previous year. Where does all this time go? Insanity.

I’m really trying to keep up with my movie watching throughot the year on my Letterboxd account. It has nice stats which I’m going to use to go through my 2022 movie watching in this article. So check me out there.

So, on to my list. Rules are like my books, only movies new to me in 2022 are eligible. So first I’ll do a list of my favorite movies released in 2022. Then, I think in a separate article, I’ll do a list of my favorite movies I watched for the first time in 2022. Those can be from any year. But in this article I’m focusing on 2022 released movies and a few stats from Letterboxd.

So let’s see what my favorite things to watch in 2022 were. I got most of my images and links from Wikipedia.

Favorites of 2022

Top Gun Maverick – I love the original Top Gun. I saw it with my dad in the theater. He went to the Naval Academy so he loved it too. They have been talking about a Top Gun sequel for YEARS. I didn’t want one. Especially as we had entered the 2010s and I thought the moment had passed. But I was wrong. Holy crap, this movie is amazing and fun and it had everything I did (and did not) know I wanted in a Top Gun sequel.

Dr Strange 2
Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – This one snuck up on me. And my love of this movie is directly tied to my love of WandaVision. The movie is a direct sequel to WandaVision. They both deal with different kinds of grief in different ways. One is the grief of loss, the other is the grief of realizing you’ll never have what you want the most. And after dealing with the first kind of grief, you decide that you aren’t going to stand for the second kind of grief. Elizabeth Olsen is so good as Wanda in this. I love her darker turn here. I love Cumberbatch as Strange, and he excels here as well. Getting Sam Raimi was perfect, his dark touches make this movie almost a horror movie. I love it, I really do, and Wanda’s story is heartbreaking. And we need to see more of America Chavez, she’s awesome.

Everything Everywhere All at Once – I had NO IDEA what to expect with this movie. I wasn’t even sure I understood the trailer the first time I saw it. But I love Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Stephanie Hsu. This thing blew me away. To be honest, the first time I watched it, I loved it, but it was almost too much. By the end of the movie I was finding the story a bit hard to follow and I just didn’t know what I thought. After watching it again a few months later, I get it now. I think the movie throws so much at you visually, it’s hard to process some of the story because you’re busy processing everything. The second viewing I was able to better focus and I got everything better. This movie is throwing a lot at you, but I like that it doesn’t spoon feed you and believes that you are able to keep up with it.

The Gray Man – I love this cast, but I heard a lot of people trashing the movie for some reason, so I was concerned. Then I watched it. I watched it twice last year. I almost watched it a third time. I loved it. I love the action, I love the humor. Gosling and Evans are so good in this. I want to read the book now, but part of me wonders if the humor carried over from the book, or did Gosling and Evans bring all that humor to the roles? I don’t know. Regardless, this movie is awesome and I loved it.

Prey
Prey – Unfortunately, like most everyone, I knew this was a Predator prequel when I pressed PLAY. I think the filmmakers intended it to be a surprise. That being said, it didn’t stop me from loving this entry in the Predator franchise. It is now my second favorite Predator movie. And every time I watch it I like it a little bit more.

So that was all movies released in 2022. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ll do a second part of this list where I talk about movies made before 2022 that I saw for the first time in 2022.

Let’s take a look at some of my movie watching stats from my account over on Letterboxd.

2022: Films by week

Here’s a graph of the number of films I watched throughout the year broken down by week. My overall total was 233 movies watched. That’s 4.5 movies per week. Last year’s overall total was 193. My highest weekly total of movies watched in 2022 was 10. There were two weeks where I watched 10 films. The first was Aug 28 – Sep 02. I was about to do a podcast on movies from the year 2012, so I rewatched a bunch of 2012 movies that week. The other week I watched 10 films was Sep 12-16. That was when I did my Friday the 13th rewatch going from the first movie up through the 2009 remake. Next highest total was 8 movies in a week, which I did 4 times. It’s interesting, I watched more total movies this year than last, but I had two weeks in 2021 that I watched more movies. The highest weekly total of movies watched in 2021 was 13 and 12.

2022: Top Actors

Here is the list of actors that I watched the most movies of this year. JK Simmons being first seems odd, but he’s been in a ton of movies. And we did a full Spider-Man rewatch last year as a family before seeing No Way Home. He also popped up in a couple of the 2012 movies I rewatched. We watched a bunch of Keanu’ filmography last year. We showed the kids the Bill & Ted movies, the Matrix movies, Speed, and I showed my son two of the John Wick movies. So that’s where he came from. And Kane Hodder was in a bunch of the Friday the 13th movies I watched. Pretty good eclectic list of actors there.

2022: Top Directors

This is the top 10 list of directors I watched this year. You see where marathons shape these lists. Sam Raimi for Spider-Man 1-3 and Dr Strange 2. Kenny Ortega did a lot of those Disney musicals we watched with the kids like High School Musical and Descendants. I love George Romero made it in there from my finally finishing his original Dead trilogy.

According to these stats, the first movie I watched in 2022 was Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie on January 1. The last movie I watched in 2022 was The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery on Dec 26. Surprising I didn’t watch any movies between Dec 26 and Dec 31 last year.

Anyway, that about wraps up my 2022 movies list. Stay tuned, like my books, I’ll have a second movie list where I’ll go over the movies made before 2022 I watched for the first time last year. And maybe I’ll also talk about some of my favorite TV series I watched, as well as some other “honorable mentions”.

1 Comment »

I Read Movies’ 2022 Year End Round up

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, movies, pop culture with tags Book Report, books, I Read Movies, Movie Novelizations, movies, podcast, reviews, Year End Books on January 9, 2023 by Paxton

As you probably know, I host a movie novelization podcast called I Read Movies. Every month I read a movie novelization and then on the podcast I talk about the differences between the movie and the novelization. A few years ago, I decided to add a year end round up for I Read Movies to my other “year end” lists. It’s been fun and some of you seem to like it. So here I go again.

2022 was a good year for I Read Movies. It switched over to the Cult Film Club podcast network. It also got its own online home on the CFC website where you can browse previous episodes of the show.

I’m really liking how this online database is shaping up, I hope you guys like it too.

So, in 2022, I covered 12 novelizations for I Read Movies. I’m very happy with the group of novelizations I picked this year. I kind of love all 12 of these books for different reasons, but I took a few moments, really looked inward at myself and all I hold dear, and came up with at least 5 of the novelizations that were my favorites this year and why they were my favorites. I say “at least 5”, because I may cheat and include an extra or two. We’ll see.

So let’s see which novelizations I most enjoyed covering on the show in 2022!

FYI, I decided to use the photoshopped IRM episode images for these entries instead of just the covers from movienovelizations.com. They are so much fun to make and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to showcase them more. I’ll link each entry to the IRM show page on CFC.com.

This is list in the order of show release.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace by BB Hiller – The very first episode of the year. Cult Film Club covered this movie back in episode 31. I go back and forth on this movie. Sometimes I think it’s terrible, and sometimes I find it so bad it’s charming. My hope was that the BB Hiller novelization would shed some light on things, like Superman’s Great Wall constructing eye beams, and why he gets radiation poisoning from Nuclear Man. The book didn’t answer everything, and it’s a tad shorter than I’d like, but it has several deleted scenes from the movie, including the scenes with the first Nuclear Man, and it keeps the somewhat weird zany tone.

Batman and Robin by Michael Jan Friedman – This novelization was the only one of the original four (Batman 89, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin) that I didn’t read during the original release of the movie. And right up to when I did it for the show, it was still the only one I hadn’t already read. To be honest, I don’t love the movie, so I had never really intended to actually cover it on IRM. Then I was on the Authorized novelizations podcast talking about the movie and the novelization and realized there’s a lot of fun stuff to mine in that book. So after I recorded with Authorized, I decided to do this book. I still don’t really love the movie, but the book was a lot of fun.

Spider-Man by Peter David – I’m a big fan of Peter David. Throughout the years I have read the vast majority of his novelization output. And a good bit of his novels. I had read all three of these Spider-Man novelizations by the time I did this on IRM. I remember there being a lot of Easter Eggs pointing to other heroes in the Marvel Universe. This show was a lot of fun to do because I attempted to do the JK Simmons “J Jonah Jameson” voice. Regardless of the success of that, I enjoyed attempting it. This is a great novelization, if you like this first movie, you will love the novelization.

Blade by Mel Odom – I’ve owned the Blade novelization for years. I didn’t get it when the movie was out, I got it many years later, but before even IRM was a gleam in my eye. And I’d never read it. So digging into it for IRM was a lot of fun. There’s a lot of good stuff in this one. It makes me sad that Blade II is the only book in the series that did *not* get a novelization. Blade Trinity did. And I own it. I’d like to do it for the show, but I’m not sure I want to even read it. It’s a big one. Nearly 400 pages. I know when watching Blade Trinity recently the one thing I didn’t say was, “You know what, this movie should be longer.”

Return of the Living Dead by John Russo – 2022’s Halloween episode, voted on by you listeners! I love this movie. I discovered this movie during the 80s home video boom. I had this one-sheet in my bedroom for years. My dad and I were such frequent renters at our local video store that they pretty much gave us first choice on posters when they came down from the wall. I’ve since lost it, and believe me, this is the one poster from my childhood that I regret not holding onto. This novelization is really good and evokes the feeling of the movie; grungy and punk. Underground. Dirty. It’s a great adaptation of the movie. If you can find a copy, read it.

Home Alone by Todd Strasser and Home Alone 2 by AL Singer – The last episode of the season. Both original Home Alone movies. I’m not going to lie, I love both of these movies so I was very excited to cover both of these novelizations this past December. The booby traps and physical harm that happen to Harry and Marv don’t come across as bone crunching as it does in the movie, but they were both still a lot of fun to read.

So those were my favorite novelizations I covered on the show this year. Let’s take a look at a few overall stats for I Read Movies.

Over the course of the show I’ve covered just over 70 books and novelizations. That includes the 64 episodes of the main show, as well as the Apendix special episodes, and any other special episodes I did for Nerd Lunch and Cult Film Club. How about an author breakdown?

Currently, the author I’ve covered the most on I Read Movies, and the reigning champion from last year, is Craig Shaw Gardner. I’ve covered five of his books including Batman 89, Batman Returns, The Lost Boys, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III.

The rankings haven’t changed much since last year. In second place is still Alan Dean Foster with four books on the show (Star Wars ’77, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, The Last Starfighter, Star Wars: The Force Awakens).

Third place is a four way tie between James Kahn, Jeffrey Cooper, Glen A Larson, and Peter David, with three titles each. Then there are a bunch of authors where I’ve covered only one or two titles. Will any new ones emerge next year to join this list? Since I know what the book list is for next year, I’m going to say…yes, there is some movement in the rankings next year. Stay tuned!

So, that’s my I Read Movies year end novelization round up. Hope you enjoyed this past year of the podcast. I believe I have a lot of good novelizations coming up in 2023. I’m going to do something different with this year’s book selection. Normally I just pick the books I want to cover and that I think will make an interesting show. However, this year, I used a different method for picking the books, and it’s something I got from my other podcast, Crestwood House. You’ll hear all about it in I Read Movies’ first show of the year soon enough. And in that show I’ll be covering Adventures in Babysitting by Elizabeth Faucher. That should be a lot of fun.

My Favorite Movies I Saw in 2021

Posted in Blog Series, Movie Board, movies with tags Marvel, Movie Board, movies, reviews, Star Wars on January 14, 2022 by Paxton

2021 continues to be an odd year for movie watching. I got to go to the theater for a few things, yes, but most of the movies I watched this past year were at home.

Anyway, I keep my list of movies watched (with some small reviews) in two places, similar to my books list. The first is the usual Google Spreadsheet. That list is easier to get an overall view of the year and pick out favorite entries because I have it all color coded based on rating and year released. The other place I keep a list of the movies I watch is over on Letterboxd. So check me out there. I’ve been trying to keep up with my reviews on that site much better than I have previously.

So, on to my list. Rules are like my books, only movies new to me in 2021 are eligible. So in 2021, I was able to see a bunch of “released in 2021” movies. Not all of them. Probably less than I really would have liked, but it was a good amount. So I can go back to the original way I used to present this list, before having to abandon it last year. So first I’ll do a list of my favorite movies released in 2021. Then, I think in a separate article, I’ll do a list of my favorite movies I watched for the first time in 2021. Those can be from any year. But in this article I’m focusing on 2021 released movies and a few stats from Letterboxd.

So let’s see what my favorite things to watch in 2021 were. And like my books/comics, I’ll give you a “Baker’s Five” (which means 6).

I got most of my images and links from Wikipedia.

Old Henry (2021) – This movie snuck in at the literal last minute. I watched it on 12/31/2021. I had heard a podcaster talk about this for their year end round up, and I was intrigued, so I looked it up. It sounded interesting, so I watched it. And WOW. This movie was fantastic. An old farmer and his son are living in the Oklahoma territory in the early 1900s when they discover an unconscious man with a saddlebag full of cash. He claims to be a lawman. But a group of men show up to the farm asking about the man and they claim to also be the law. Go in knowing only that much. I don’t want to give away any of the twists and turns. Enjoy. So happy to have a western on the list this year.

The Harder They Fall (2021) – What’s this? A *second* western made it on the list this year? Honestly, a third western could have also made it on the list here but it was made in 2020, not 2021. Anyway, this western has a dynamite cast with Idris Elba, Regina King, Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, and Lakeith Stanfield. They are all playing actual historical figures like Stagecoach Mary, Cherokee Bill, Rufus Buck, and Bass Reeves. It’s a super stylish western, that reminds me of old spaghetti westerns, but it also has a more modern soundtrack with a super eclectic mix of music that sounds like blues, gospel, rock and rap. It’s a revenge western where Nat Love is after Rufus Buck and his gang for something that happened when he was a kid. Like I said, very stylish, great dialogue, wonderful cast. Check it out.

Army of Thieves – This movie is a prequel to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. So I saw that movie last year and didn’t like it. It was two half baked ideas smashed into one; an okay zombie movie and a not very good heist movie. So when this came out, I was not interested in a Zack Snyder prequel to Army of the Dead. AT ALL. However, then I realized that Zack only produced this. It’s directed and produced by the movie’s star, Matthias Schweighöfer. And Schweighöfer’s character, Deiter, is the only one that shows up from the previous movie. It’s about Deiter’s first heist job that puts him on the path to become the best safe cracker in the world. Also in this is Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays Ramsey in the last few Fast & Furious movies. This movie was a lot of fun. It was very stylish. And most importantly, you don’t need to have seen Army of the Dead to enjoy it.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – I had a hard time nailing down the final three movies in this list. Two of them are Marvel movies and one is a DC movie. But they could have been three others. But I’m sticking to my guns. Shang-Chi. I’ve been a fan of kung fu movies forever. And comics books. So I became a fan of Shang-Chi back in junior high when I discovered him in one of those Handbook to the Marvel Universe character guides. I used to draw pictures of him for extra credit in art class. Anyway, this movie was simultaneously not what I expected, but almost everything I wanted. The lead, Simu Liu, is a great Shang-Chi. I love Awkwafina as his comedic partner. Michelle Yeoh. The fight choreography. The epic storytelling. Tony Leung as Wenwu. And Trevor Slattery. I loved it all. If I had to nit pick something, it’d be the end. When the giant CGI dragons come out. I didn’t need that. It took focus away from Shang-Chi and his dad. But again, that’s a nit pick, I loved everything else.

Black Widow – Here we go, another Marvel movie. Yes, I am 100% in the bag for most of these movies. This one is no different. We finally get the Black Widow movie we should have gotten back after the first Avengers movie in 2012. I’m sad Hawkeye had virtually no part in this. However, ScarJo and Florence are amazing as Natasha and Yelena. We are introduced to Yelena here and if she’s becoming the “new Black Widow”, then I am totally on board. She is awesome. I love Rachel Weisz, and she’s pretty good in here. I’m not a big fan of David Harbour, but he’s actually pretty funny as Alexei. If I have any problem at all, it’s with how Alexei is written, not Harbour’s performance. At the beginning of the movie he gives up the two girls to the Red Room too easily. He knows where they are going. He should have said something. I get it, he’s Russian, he does what his gov’t says. But he barely looked torn or upset at what was happening. Just reserved. Then, when he returns later, the character is all laughs and one-liners and it felt like they were trying to make you forget the fact he gave the girls up to the Red Room in the beginning of the movie. I really didn’t like that. But, that’s a small problem in a movie I loved so much else. I also liked this movie’s version of Taskmaster. Lots of fun action beats and a good amount of humor, especially between Natasha and Yelena, which is the heart of this movie.

Suicide Squad – I had revolved through several choices for this last pick. I’m going to go with this for several reasons. It surprised me. I saw the first Suicide Squad movie in the theater, and I watched it later on home video. I liked it in the beginning, but it went WAY off the rails by the middle of the movie. The Birds of Prey movie I saw on streaming and while it had a few funny moments, it was only ok. So even though it’s directed by James Gunn, who I mostly like, I was not very interested in this sem-sequel-reboot. But Michael May assured me it was good, so I gave it a shot. And he was right, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Idris Elba is a better version of Will Smith’s Deadshot. Robbie’s Harley Quinn is awesome as usual. John Cena’s Peacemaker is really funny. And Joel Kinnaman’s Flagg is a character I *did not* like in the original movie. He is *much* better in this movie. He feels a little more loose, a little more natural of a character. I actually reallly liked him in this. So, I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie and that’s why it made it here. I’ll definitely give the Peacemaker show a shot.

So that was all movies released in 2021. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ll do a second part of this list where I talk about movies made before 2021 that I saw for the first time in 2021.

Let’s take a look at some of my movie watching stats from my account over on Letterboxd.

Here is a graph showing how many films I watched broken down by week. The week I watched the most movies was Dec 24-30. I saw 13 movies. Steph and the kids were gone for a few days and I did a Fast & the Furious/Paul Walker marathon. The second biggest week was Mar 5-11. I was actually at my dad’s that week pretty much by myself. I saw 12 films. June 11-17 gets third place for most movies watched. I watched 9 movies that week. All that led up to me watching 194 movies in 2021. Which is 16.2 movies per month. 3.7 movies per week. That’s just 6 away from 200. SO CLOSE.

Here is the list of actors that I watched the most movies of this year. Scott Adkins had the most with 12 films. I have been exploring his filmography a lot this year. He’s quickly become one of my favorite action stars. In second place, surprisingly, but also not so surprisingly, is Paul Walker. If you look at the rest of the top 10, you will notice a trend. I did a full Fast & Furious rewatch this year; Fast 1 through Fast 9. And this list clearly reflects that. But I also went on a small Paul Walker non-F&F marathon, so that’s why he’s second. Tony Todd snuck in there at the end because I did a full Final Destination marathon as well as watching two of the Candyman movies. I love this top 10.

This is the top 10 list of directors I watched this year. Again, Justin Lin is in there because of my F&F rewatch. Isaac Florentine is tied for first place because he directed 5 of the Scott Adkins movies I watched last year. And James Wan directed Furious 7 as well as the Conjuring movies, which I watched this year. It’s really interesting to see how these lists develop based on what you watched over the year. I did a few full franchise marathons and you’re seeing that reflected in these lists.

According to these stats, the first movie I watched in 2021 was El Dorado on Jan 16. The last movie I watched in 2021 was Timeline on Dec 31.

Okay, that about wraps up my 2021 movies list. Stay tuned, I have a second movie list where I’ll go over the movies made before 2021 I watched for the first time last year, maybe I’ll also talk about some of my favorite TV series I watched, as well as some “honorable mentions” articles for books, comics, and movies.

1 Comment »

I Read Movies’ 2021 Year End Round up

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, movies, pop culture with tags Book Report, books, I Read Movies, Movie Novelizations, movies, podcast, reviews, Year End Books on January 10, 2022 by Paxton

As you probably know, I host a movie novelization podcast called I Read Movies. Every month I read a movie novelization and then on the podcast I talk about the differences between the movie and the novelization. Last year, I decided to add to my usual “Best of” lists a year end round up for I Read Movies where I listed out my favorite novelizations that I covered on the show. So, this year, I’m doing it again.

September 2021 was a big year for I Read Movies. Not only was it IRM’s 4th birthday but September was the show’s 50th episode! Hard to believe I’ve done that many episodes. On the main podcast, I covered 12 novelizations in 2021. You can see the covers of the novelizations I covered above. I say, “on the main podcast”, because I did cover a few extra books on other podcasts. I did the 1995 Mortal Kombat novelization for Cult Film Club, as well as an Appendix episode on the original Stephen King novel, Running Man, that inspired the movie.

So that makes 13 novelizations covered by me in 2021. I’m very happy with the group of novelizations I picked this year (and you guys, you definitely helped me decide). Out of 13 novelizations, it would have been easy to pick nearly 10 as my favorites. But I really dug deep and narrowed it down to my five favorite novelizations.

So let’s see which novelizations I most enjoyed covering on the show in 2021!

FYI, most images and links are to movienovelizations.com.

Batman Forever (1995) by Peter David – I covered the first two Burton Batman movies back in 2019. So I continue the coverage of the 90s Batman movies with the third movie in the series. Like the previous two, I had read this novelization when it originally came out and remember loving it. So I was very excited to cover it for the show. And it is still very good. David manages to squeeze in lots of Batman easter eggs as well as lots of early story elements that did not make the movie. Like the giant bat. It’s definitely a fun read. I originally had no real intention to cover the final movie, Batman & Robin. I had read it several years ago and my memory was that it wasn’t very different. Well, I recently appeared on the Authorized Novelizations Podcast and we discussed Batman and Robin, so I read it for them, and I discovered I was wrong. There was lots to talk about. So, now, expect to see Michael Jan Friedman’s Batman & Robin novelization on IRM in 2022!

The A-Team (1983) by Glen A Larson – A few years ago I started trying to cover at least one TV novelization during the year. I covered two Knight Rider episodes the last two years. This year, I decided to do The A-Team. This novelizes the very first episode, Mexican Slayride. It’s a lot of fun and adds a lot of fun tidbits and scenes to the action of the show. On the other side of the coin, it also doesn’t add any context to things in the episode that aren’t great. Like Hannibal dressing up as a *very* stereotypical Chinese laundry owner, and the part of the show where Hannibal doesn’t help Amy when she’s accosted and nearly raped by two dudes coming out of a strip club. That being said, the book is a lot of fun and I think the show turned out to be a good one. 2022 will bring another TV novelization to the show, so stay tuned!

WarGames
Robocop (1987) by Ed Naha – Shawn had covered this in an article on movienovelizations.com. It sounded bonkers and could be a lot of fun. I mean, in it, Robocop gets a dog! And Murphy’s wife, who shows up in all the movies, actually moves to the moon in this book! They colonized the moon! So yes, I was excited to cover it, and the book delivered. It’s definitely a lot of fun. And actually, I had so much fun, I decided as soon as I finished it, that I wanted to cover the Robocop 2 novelization right after it. And so I did. And it was just as fun. This was a reallly fun 1-2 punch and the episodes I think show how much fun the books were to read.

Back to the Future Part II/Part III by Craig Shaw Gardner – For my first anniversary back in 2018, I covered the first Back to the Future novelization by George Gipe. That was a *lot* of fun because you could tell the book really followed the original version of the movie that had Eric Stoltz. A lot of the gags from the Michael J Fox version just weren’t there, like all of the “Coast Guard” and “life jacket” jokes from the movie. Plus the “Darth Vader from the Planet Vulcan” scene was extended. It was a lot of fun to do that episode. So for my big 50th episode I thought, it’s time to cover the sequels. So I did both in one episode. And while these books weren’t as bizarre and different as the first book, they had a lot of fun diversions in them. They even address one aspect of time travel I had always wondered about in the BTTF universe. When does a person from the future receive updated memories from a timeline change? Like Marty at the end of the first movie, will he receive all the memories from his childhood with a more loving and healthy version of his parents? Or will he always have that hole in his memory and when the family is reminicising he just has to play along? These books, at least a little bit, address that. And I appreciate that.

The Mummy 1999
The Mummy (1999) by Max Allan Collins – This one was a surprise to me. I forgot how much I love this movie. Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weisz are so adorable. It’s just a lot of fun to watch this movie. And when I rewatched it for the show, I found myself not taking notes and just watching the movie. And the novelization continues that fun. It front loads the book with a lot more of the ancient Egypt stuff, and adds a few extra scenes at the end. Like I said it just surprised me how much I enjoyed revisiting the movie and reading the novelization. So, now I want to do the sequel, The Mummy Returns. Max Allan Collins actually wrote all three Mummy novelizations as well as the very first Mummy spin off with the Rock, Scorpion King. And you know how much I enjoy one author writing multiple books in a franchise. So, this may be the beginning of another sub-series on IRM.

So those were my favorite novelizations I covered on the show this year. Let’s take a look at a few overall stats for I Read Movies.

Over the course of the show I’ve covered just over 60 books and novelizations. That includes the 53 episodes of the main show, as well as the Apendix special episodes, and any other special episodes I did for Nerd Lunch and Cult Film Club. How about an author breakdown?

Currently, the author I’ve covered the most on I Read Movies is Craig Shaw Gardner. I’ve covered five of his books (Batman 89, Batman Returns, The Lost Boys, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part II).

In second place is Alan Dean Foster with four books on the show (Star Wars ’77, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, The Last Starfighter, Star Wars: The Force Awakens).

Third place is a tie between James Kahn and Jeffrey Cooper with three titles each. Then there are a bunch of authors where I’ve covered only one or two titles.

So, that’s my I Read Movies year end novelization round up. Hope you enjoyed this past year of the podcast. I believe I have a lot of good novelizations coming up in 2022.

What usually happens with IRM at year end is that I take a break in January, and then new episodes start again in February. And this February IRM is going to debut new episodes on the CultFilmClub.com podcast feed. However, due to behind the scenes stuff, I want to move my break to later in the year, so I’m going to go ahead and do a January episode this year. So expect that soon. And I’ll go ahead and reveal it to you now, I’ll be covering the novelization of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Up, up, and Away!

1 Comment »