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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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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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Compliance 2012
Man. I have never been so uneasy in a movie theatre. (Not even during the (spoiler!) C-section in Prometheus.) A sustained hour of dread, not entertainment. Powerful stuff. I love when art can make you feel something so strongly, even if what you feel isn’t pleasant. Excellent score, too.
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The Bourne Legacy 2012
If you tend to like the Bourne movies, you’ll like this Bourne movie. Favorite moments: the wolf rivalry, the climb from basement to upstairs window and the con to enter the factory. We even got a little fruit cart cameo. I’d love to see more more movies that show how insane and terrifying drones are.
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The Dark Knight Rises 2012
Don’t get me started.
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The Queen of Versailles 2012
Change is hard. I was ready to settle in for some good, smug hate-watching, but this family won me over, all of them. Yeah, they’re ridiculous, but still. They couldn’t have cast it better with auditions.
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Beasts of the Southern Wild 2012
I loved this movie and recommend it to all living creatures. It’s about endings, and how we react to and prepare ourselves and others for the inevitable. What we leave behind. Best soundtrack of the year so far? I might have cried twice. YMMV.
Also, I read about aurochs after watching this and was intrigued to find the connection to the old rune Ur, which also means water or rain. Cool!
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Magic Mike 2012
Soderbergh! Best movie ever about the economy and strippers. I’d rank this one behind only Haywire and Out of Sight. You’ve got Tatum’s stripper-slash-roofer-slash-artisan muddling through, but it’s hard to change course when he’s great at something he doesn’t love that’s still addicting in its own way. You’ve got Pettyfer’s teenage socially-tone-deaf bro drifter who’s having a great time being showered with money and attention—at long last! You’ve got McConaughey’s (too?) serious entrepreneur-impresario-emperor. There’s the promise of Miami as the…
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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…
