Greetings, reader!
It's time for the penultimate chapter of my ten-week project: next week's post of the best 10th instalments will be the final one. Today we're still going strong, despite the quality of top 10 -worthy instalments having deteriorated to a hilarious point by the #9 instalments. Still, out of that fairly rough group, these are the best ones out there!
Here are my honorable mentions: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).
10. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
Man, this film is bonkers - but it's not all bad. Sure, the level of elements like cinematography and dialogue are what you'd expect from the ninth instalment of a slasher franchise. But, for all its flaws, Jason Goes to Hell is definitely not in the worst tier of such films, while not being in the best tier either. The worst tier is reserved for films like Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), that are lazy and boring and generic and predictable.
Say what you will about the ninth Friday the 13th, it is not boring and predictable.
The plot goes places, from the technically-killing-off the main villain in the very first scene, to the whole posession storyline, to the Cronenberg-esque body horror, to the lowkey set-up for the Freddy vs. Jason crossover. We don't get to see a whole lot of classic hockey-mask Jason in this film, but what we do see is a chaotic mess that unfolds in a glorious manner.
9. American Pie: Girls' Rules (2020)
Hell yeah. The female-lead American Pie spin-off is not as good as the films with the original cast, but by far the best out of all the many spin-off films that have been made. Mind you, it does belong to the same style of D-class cinema as the rest of the spin-offs, but it's certainly more fresh and therefore more fun.
The main cast has good chemistry, and I thoroughly appreciate the execution of the film's take on feminism: instead of making it even a bit more chaste and less vulgar than the male-lead American Pie films (a route many filmmakers would've taken, with a misguided approach dictated by existing gender stereotypes), it celebrates that us dudes don't have a patent on being gross and obscene.
8. The Nun II (2023)
The eighth film in the Conjuring franchise is the long-awaited Nun sequel, and if nothing else, it's better than the first Nun. It's still not in the same ballpark as the franchise's finest offerings, but it more or less fills the quota on what one would expect from a successful horror flick. The scariest moments are legitimately creepy in a well-built and suspenseful manner, and the titular villain is as awe-inspiringly frightening as always. This makes up for the semi-forgettable plot, making this a decent, middle-of-the-road addition to the Conjuring universe.
7. Halloween (2007)
After the ever-escalating cascade of Halloween sequels had passed a point of no return, the franchise did what such a franchise is bound to do in an attempt to keep itself relevant: a remake. While Rob Zombie's Halloween remake is no masterpiece, it is most definitely an above-average member in the world of horror remakes. Not a high bar, I know.
But, yeah, this one is surprisingly decent. I especially like the pacing of the plot: while the original Halloween starts with a single flashback scene of Michael Myers' childhood and then cuts to the night before his Haddonfield massacre, this one fills in the gap of the missing years. We follow the events before the childhood flashback and after that, following the years Myers spent locked up, slowly building up to the events of that dreadful Halloween night. What makes for most of the original film's runtime is just a half-hour climax at the end of this film, which makes the plot feel climactic and delightfully rapid at the end.
6. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Ah, I long for a time when the first thing to come to mind from the word 'Insurrection' was the ninth Star Trek film and not a bunch of MAGA-cult worshippers storming the capitol at the behest of their führer.
Anyways, this isn't the best of the Next Generation sequel films, but also not the worst. If anything, Insurrection feels like a feature-length episode of The Next Generation, for better or for worse. The stakes aren't super-high and the plot isn't especially powerful, but the tried-and-true chemistry of the main cast is ever-present, and many classic Star Trek tropes rear their head to the delight of sci-fi nerds such as myself.
5. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
Many viewers didn't like this X-Men flick, but I have somewhat of a soft spot for it. It may not be as deep as X2 or as groundbreaking as First Class, but it's an entertaining addition to the franchise that kept things exciting. Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), one of the most legendary villains from the X-Men comics, gets his silver screen introduction, and the lore around the character is quite compelling. Also, the film contains what is probably my favorite moment in the entire franchise: Quicksilver (Evan Peters) saving everyone from the explosion, to the tune of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).
4. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
While some might count the first Fantastic Beasts film as the first movie of a new franchise, I'm lumping the Harry Potter spin-offs in with the originals. Different film series, same film franchise. So, after the eight Potter movies had been released, this is the ninth film in the larger Wizarding World franchise. It's a pretty decent one - not as good as the Potter flicks, but a solid and refreshing spin-off, with cool worldbuilding full of potential for its sequels (that have not really lived up to the hype, sadly).
Anyways, f**k J.K. Rowling. It's not my place to tell anyone to stop enjoying the books or movies, as that would be extremely hypocritical among other things. But I'm also very much not going to say that it's totally okay to keep enjoying them, because it is part of the problem that much of the 'separate the art from the artist' discourse is cis people affirming other cis people. Listening to trans voices and their experiences is what I'd recommend more than anything else - I strive to do that myself, and this has been a part of how I personally landed on still being okay with enjoying these works while being very aware of Rowling being a bigot who deserves zero respect. But that's just where I landed, and I suppose everyone ought to think for themselves and find a solution fit for them.
3. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
The ninth James Bond flick is Roger Moore's second outing as 007, and it's a wild ride. Sir Christopher Lee, who I consider the hands-down greatest villain actor in Hollywood history, is unsurprisingly one of the most memorable Bond villains, truly realizing the 'James Bond, but evil' premise with his character Francisco Scaramanga. The end result is cool and entertaining, with a high point being the iconic car-spiraling stunt.
2. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
The eighth episode of the Skywalker Saga (which is the ninth instalment in the franchise because of the Rogue One spin-off in between) is an opinion-splitting one, but I'm all for it. While there are some flaws that prevent The Last Jedi from being the full-on masterpiece it could've been, the positives destroy the negatives in my book.
After Episode VII was criticized for playing too close to home with its risk-free plot, Episode VIII does many things differently, making for a bold film that made many man-children cry on the internet about how their childhood is ruined now that Star Wars isn't Star Wars anymore. In my view, this just makes The Last Jedi an interesting expansion of what the franchise can be, and a nice alternative route to clichés and fan service.
1. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
By the ninth film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the franchise had hit a 'golden era' where fans were just dying to see whatever the studio would come up with next. This film, and I mean this in the best possible way, honestly feels like Kevin Feige and company just messing with the audience and testing their limits - "If our next project is adapted from one of Marvel's most obscure comics, the series where the main characters include a raccoon and a f**king tree who only speaks one sentence, will we still smash the box office and get excellent reviews?".
And the answer was yes.
Guardians of the Galaxy isn't a though-provoking masterpiece or a genre-defining groundbreaker. What it is is one of the most entertaining films ever made, carrying on the tradition of Back to the Future with its fast-and-loose, not-too-serious, banter-filled-dialogue, fun-for-the-whole-family approach to sci-fi cinema. It's Fun with a capital F, and sometimes that's the best thing a movie (escpecially the ninth instalment of a franchise) can be.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for the final post of this 10-post series: the top 10 tenth instalments from movie franchises.
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