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Django Unchained 2012
The best way to summarize my experience is that this movie made me excited about what movies can do. And like when I saw Compliance last summer, a huge part of the experience is how you share it with a theater full of other viewers. Powerful, thoughtful entertainment that makes you think about why you’re entertained.
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The Dark Knight Rises 2012
Don’t get me started.
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Drive 2011
Second viewing. I told myself I was just going to watch the opening scenes again, but I kept going. This time around I find myself enjoying the directing and mechanics even more and the plot/characters so much less. I can’t handle the beach scene. Still, those first 20-40 minutes? That’s some good stuff.
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Looper 2012
Pretty solid scifi. Just take a nugget of a concept and let it spool out around a handful of people. It makes movie sense in the moment even if it doesn’t later. I love this vision of a possible future. Dystopic, but not totally dire. Just worn out. Good job with the makeup, and especially how Gordon-Levitt takes on some Willis mannerisms. I love Jeff Daniels’ character. There is some violence that a certain demographics won’t take to very well,…
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Prometheus 2012
It’s not all that bad, but, still… it’s kind of a mess. No good when you find yourself laughing at a heavy movie. I was sold for the first 70-80 minutes, though. Mostly. A better script and serious editing would be a good start. Also handicapped by a cookie-cutter score. Cue the French horn! My first draft for this post was longer, but it was turning into a pile-on. Shame to see talent like Fassbender, Rapace, Theron, and Elba not put to full use. You’re better off staying home and watching Alien again.
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Moonrise Kingdom 2012
Wes Anderson is simply not my director. When I wrote about Bottle Rocket, I had the thought, "I wonder if I’d like his movies more if I’d seen them as serials?" I wonder about this because the structural repetition really wears on me over the course of a movie. Repetitive framing, symmetry, truck here, pan there, dolly now and then. It’s like a slideshow sometimes. I respect the precision and fastidiousness, but for most of it I just couldn’t sustain…
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Zero Dark Thirty 2012
I can’t think of many movies with such a steady build-up. Really well done. Setting aside any moral/political/veracity issues you may like to bring up, what I really loved was the simplicity of the plotline. Like Steven Shaviro wisely points out (must read, I say), it’s a procedural film. There are people who want to locate a man. It’s really difficult. They spend a decade working on it. Although we have a single protagonist, there’s no love interest. There are…
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Life of Pi 2012
Awesome special effects and photography, almost worth watching simply for the spectacle. (Reminds me of The Fall in that way). I’d like it sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more overall without the (blunt, preachy) narrative wrapper. I DNFed on the book several years ago. Not sure how it compares.
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The Hunger Games 2012
Well, it’s got plenty of flaws (script, directing, plot, length), but it’s entertainment. Good enough to kill my interest in the books. More than anything, it makes me want to watch Winter’s Bone again. Jennifer Lawrence is the real deal.
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The Master 2012
Phoenix was robbed, right? Where DDL takes an amazing script written for a national hero we love to love and embodies it just like we imagined, Phoenix plays a dummy the likes of which we’ve never seen. Maybe the awards don’t capital-m Matter, but man, I can see how it would sting. But the movie: I liked it, but I didn’t really feel it. I felt the same was with There Will Be Blood. Like, I didn’t want to blink…
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Iron Man 3 2013
I liked it more than Iron Man 2, maybe not as much as the original Iron Man, though I don’t remember it well at this point. This was definitely funnier than the first sequel, with some Kiss Kiss Bang Bang-ish genre awareness and biting humor. The villains, though, were a letdown, and the silly action spectaculars were kind of a mess. Fun, though. And yeah, it is kind of a feature-length damnation of wearable computing.
