The year 2015 was a mixed bag. Donald Trump was Donald Trump (ugh). The New England Patriots won another Super Bowl (yawn). Employment rates went up (yay!). Adele remained the most overrated thing since the Sleep Number bed (just stop!).

Equally mixed was the year in film. Filled with some stunning highs and some diarrhea-inducing lows, it was difficult to define it as an up or down year in the ol’ cinema.

As always, I’m tempted to dismantle the shit storm of terrible films that passed through our sacred cinemas in 2015 (“Furious 7,” “Aloha,” “Hitman: Agent 47,” “Inherent Vice,” Taken 3,”  “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” for example). Alas, this is the sole exercise for which I try to look at the brighter side of what is put in front of my eyes.

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There may be a spoiler or two here, folks. Read at your own risk.

Like so many, I grew up infatuated with anything and everything even remotely attached to the Star Wars universe. It’s hardly a unique badge to wear, but I wear it proudly.

The original “Star Wars” was, without a doubt, the movie that got me hooked on the movie-going experience. The opening battle on Hoth in “Empire Strikes Back” remains, to this day, one of my favorite movie sequences ever. And when “Return of the Jedi” came to the Isle Theatre in Cumberland, WI in 1983, I attended the 7 p.m. showing every evening during its two-week run, going as far as picking up yard work around town each day to earn the $1.75 ticket cost each night.

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Merlot may have stained Cindy Mancini’s suede outfit in Can’t Buy Me Love, but it was her beauty that stained my heart.

1987. The year I began to truly understand the world and all of its wonders. The year I awoke from an adolescent slumber to understand that nothing but possibilities await the hopeful spirit. The year I discovered my heart’s expansive, never-ending capacity for love. The year I found Cindy Mancini.

To most, Cindy Mancini was simply a fictional character from the film Can’t Buy Me Love. They would be wrong. In truth, she was irrefutable proof that hopeless dorks had a chance to win the love of the head cheerleader—as long as they could afford to buy her a $1,000 suede outfit after a classmate spilled red wine on her mother’s outfit at a super lame high school party. As an awkward 135-pound eighth grader with tinted prescription glasses and a proclivity for wearing leather ties to junior high dances, even the smallest bit of hope can buoy you for years to come.

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For the sake of full disclosure, I’m a bit of a hypocrite on this one. Just one week ago, I promised I would never give a single cent to this film franchise again. The complete lack of worthy movie choices this weekend, however, left me with no other option but to swallow my pride, hand over a few bucks, and try my best to hold my lunch. It was either this or clean my bathroom. So, yes, I’m a bit of a fraud on that front. With that said, here we go…

Close, But No Cigar
Three years ago, I walked into a theater to see a movie I had been anticipating for months: “Red Tails.” The previews had made it look amazing, and I was a WWII history buff, so the story intrigued me. I made it 30 minutes in before walking out. I had never walked out of a movie before, and it hurt my heart to do it. If I hadn’t, though, there is a better-than-average chance that I would’ve been forced to commit ritual suicide due to absolute horseshit fest I was being exposed to. “Furious 7” is no “Red Tails,” but I still was tempted to adios it at several points. Truth is, it is what a popcorn movie is supposed to be in some ways. Plenty of action, lots of close-up shots of female asses, and even a few instances where the action intersected with close-up shots of female asses. Beyond that, though, this blockbuster (and it is raking in the dough, to be sure) is a shining example of the direction Hollywood needs to go if it wants to ruin itself. So, it’s not the worst film I’ve ever seen in a theater, but it is awful. Shitty and awful. Shitty, stupid and awful.

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Los Angeles, CA — Actor Mark Wahlberg has been charged with trespassing and attempted breaking and entering for the 39th time since 1996 after security officers in the exclusive gated-community of Brentwood Circle discovered the actor screaming terroristic threats outside Reese Witherspoon’s $3.4 million dollar mansion.

Witnesses reported that Wahlberg approached Witherspoon’s home—which was unoccupied at the time of the incident—at 10 p.m. on Tuesday evening and proceeded to pound his fist on the door and scream “Let me in!” for approximately thirty minutes. Following several failed attempts to break into the home through a second story window, Wahlberg was seen starting the four-car garage on fire with a lit cigarette and a can of gas he retrieved from the trunk of his car. Damage to the home is estimated to total more than $400,000.

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If I were to compare the year in movies to a sickly animal, I would call 2014 a legless kitten. You’re sad that there’s not more to love, but what there is too love is so damn cute you can’t help but smile. Sure, it might be more fun to dissect the worst movies of 2014 (“Ride Along”, “I, Frankenstein”, “Robocop”, “Anchorman 2”, “Noah,” and “Divergent”, to name a handful), but I would like to provide a positive take on movies before the calendar turns over. I know, I’m as freaked out by this as anyone!

Anyway, here are my top ten films of 2014*:

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Auric Goldfinger. Dr. Julius No. Francisco Scaramanga.

For over four decades, Britain’s dashing, debonair and deadly super spy James Bond has squared off against the most dangerous criminal masterminds in motion picture history. In the latest installment of the 007 film series, however, the bullet-proof may finally have met his match—genital warts.

Set to be released in November 2012, Skyfall reportedly follows 007 as he attempts to save the world—and his crotch—from a collection of soft growths determined to sprout on the surface skin of the super-spy’s genitals and/or anus. The warts represent the first non-human antagonist to square off against Bond, a risky departure from the tried-and-true formula that has made the film series one of history’s most profitable.

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Bender, Clark, Reynolds, Standish and Johnson in 1984.

In 1984, five unique, yet similar, students gathered at the Shermer High School library on a cold Saturday morning in March to serve detention for their various crimes. Eight hours, one awkward dance scene and several emotional ephiphonies later, each would exit their adolescent prisons with a new outlook on life. They were the Breakfast Club.

For the world outside of that library, the story of these intrepid teenagers ended moments after their sentence was served. For the members of the Breakfast Club, the story was just beginning.

The following are brief snapshots of the lives that emerged from Shermer High School on the fateful day.

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London, UK – Christopher Nolan, the director known the world around for his dark, complex and visually inventive film-making, is taking his craft to a new level. The mind behind The Dark Knight trilogy, Memento, and The Prestige, has announced plans to simultaneously film three separate sequels to his box office smash Inception and insert each into the plot of two yet-to-be-filmed Inception prequels.

Released in 2010, Inception told the story of Dom Cobb, a thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the dreams of his targets. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabee, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page, the film featured a number of sequences where characters entered multiple levels of their subject’s subconscious in order to manipulate their conscious actions.

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