Fifty Shades Of Black (2016) - Movie Review

Since starting my month-long movie marathon, have to admit, the results have been a lot more positive than I was expecting. Sure, not all of them have good but, at worst, we’ve only really touched the realms of lame instead of outright bad. Well, time to change all that. I’ve talking before about watching movies as a form of emotional therapy, and as masochistic as it is, that involves bad movies as well. If there is one thing that cinema has taught me when it comes to the emotional condition of humanity, it’s that even anger has its place in the output. As such, it’s time for me to delve into Fifty Shades territory again, which once again means that I’ll discuss indulging in painful acts under my own volition, as well as revisiting the spoof movie. Let the airing of grievances begin! This is Fifty Shades Of Black… ugh, even the title of this thing makes me cringe.

Bad Santa 2 (2016) - Movie Review

Over many decades of cynicism burrowing their way deeper into the collective subconscious, what was once the most wonderful time of the year is now incredibly demented. Yuletide cheer has given way to soaking those festive colours in many darker shades, resulting in a time of year that is joyous but for entirely different reasons and for entirely different people than it was originally intended.

It’s with this in mind that Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa might be the most perfect representation of our incredibly warped and yet still loving attitude towards Christmas. Dark and bitter with a foul-mouthed and violent demeanour, Billy Bob Thornton’s titular character brought a whole new kind of Christmas champion to mainstream attention, one that was more likely to smack the baby Jesus than bring it any gifts. It was delightfully demented without really sacrificing the sense of goodwill associated with the holiday (not entirely, at least) and made for a quite enjoyable watch, especially around this time of year. And then the guy who made Mr. Popper’s Penguins was brought on to make a sequel to the story thirteen years later. Insert your own joke about unlucky numbers here because, quite frankly, this film has had enough unnecessary derision laden on it already.