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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.
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To the Wonder 2013
This is probably a Malick-fans-only affair, given that he’s brought all his Malickisms to expected highs/belabored lows. So I liked it, naturally. It’s very chopped and fragmented, both within scenes and through time, but there is a clear arc here. Yet maybe it’s understated enough that you get as much drama out of it as you put in. The thing starts with Kurylenko’s narration, her camera, her self-documentation, so there’s an interpretation that most of it is her record. Regardless,…
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Upstream Color 2013
The speculative hook is a strange cycle of events driven by some sort of parasite, I guess. A microbe that seems to enhance empathy or connection in all of its hosts. And you can interpret the rest in about seven million ways. I’m thinking: identity and self-construction. The first half-hour or so, with the thief, is just perfectly tense. Interesting that the personal resolution at the end of the story is misplaced justice. We don’t always know better. Oh, and…
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The Place Beyond the Pines 2013
It’s a bummer that the wind goes out of the sails when Gosling leaves the screen, but that’s still to his and the director’s credit for those parts of the movie. And Mendes was fantastic. What a talent. I just wish the third act hadn’t run out of gas. But, then again, I think that’s partly me being snob-weary-dreary-bonehead, “Oh, another fathers and sons tale” and not wanting to give in to it. It’s good, though. Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine is pretty sharp, too.
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Spring Breakers 2013
Great movie. Surface appeal is dangerous, no? It feels a little exploitative sometimes, but then again our protagonists have such undeniable agency that you wonder whose fantasy(-ies) you’re watching. So now what creeps you out? The movie repeats itself over and over. It’s the promise of spring break and sunshine and fun and release and anything but *this*, but looping to exhaustion. Interesting also that the movie borrows a contemporary sun-drenched/lens flare/desaturated/neon/present-tense-nostalgia fun aesthetic to undermine itself. Some dialogue I…
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Girl Rising 2013
Got suckered into seeing this two-hour commercial. Some vignettes are better than others (depending on the spunk of the girls and the writers’ adaptation), but some seemed a dangerous mix of exploitative and/or pandering. And the didactic interludes just grate after a while. Like, say, a Michael Moore film, I’m not sure that anyone who agrees really needs to see it, no one who disagrees (and who might that be?) will be persuaded.
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Stoker 2013
When it comes to character and plot stuff, this didn’t seem very good. I got over the (I’m assuming intentionally) stilted dialogue. The problem for me was that I didn’t care what the truth was. I don’t need to like any characters, but I need to have a reaction to whatever the story reveals and develops. It kinda lands with a thud.
I wonder again how I would have liked the movie if the story were told linearly, instead of…
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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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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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Lincoln 2012
The best movie about the legislative process released this year! For real, historical biography isn’t my thing (Lawrence of Arabia excepted), so I liked that the condensed timeline here moved it more into political drama with horse-trading and cajoling and backroom negotiation. I have my complaints (over-teaching; soft-focus soap opera lighting; lens flare; tokenism; etc.), but still… DDL is the man. His storytelling, along with the other individual performances, make it worthwhile.
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Holy Motors 2012
Incredible. Amazing, amazing performance from Denis Lavant. There’s no traditional plot, but the structure involves Lavant’s character being driven around Paris in a limousine to a series of appointments, each one requiring a different costume, makeup, identity, and performance. The logic is bent and ambiguous. A couple hours of mad and weird invention, wholly invigorating.
