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Django Unchained 2012
Baggy, overlong, indulgent re-hash of the ideas originally essayed in Inglourious Basterds, this time set during the slave plantation era of the antebelllum South. Salty dialogue from Tarantino, terrific performances by Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel Jackson, and a soundtrack that steals wholesale form earlier, better Spaghetti Westerns can't disguise the threadbare ideas and flawed execution. Not to mention the privileging of male movie myths over historical reality. (c.f Inglourious Basterds)
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The Avengers 2012
Watching this again on Bluray I was struck by its cluttered storyline, over abundance of sketched in characters, and typical super-hero movie structure: i.e.spend more than half the film setting up the plot and explaining the origins of the characters, before staging an over-extended climactic punch-up, in the hope that the sheer scale and bravura of the spectacle will erase the viewer's memory of the dull first hour. While it's leavened by Joss Whedon's characteristic wit, this is just more…
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The Avengers 2012
aka Avengers Assemble (UK only|).
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The Dark Knight Rises 2012
An adequate conclusion to the trilogy, but too long, too thin, and has too many endings. Adult themes toned down for 12A .
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Looper 2012
Superior, low-key, grown-up science fiction that prioritises ideas and emotion over futuristic set-dressing. Time travel plot is spoiler-bait. Good performances by Joseph Gordon Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt and the ever-wonderful Jeff Daniels. Writer/director Rian Johnson borrows from other sci-fi movies, but makes their ideas and images his own.
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Silver Linings Playbook 2012
An absurdly over-praised, trite and manipulative love story featuring a manic depressive (Bradley Cooper) and a young grieving widow (Jennifer Lawrence). There are some cute scenes involving dancing.
Like Paul Haggis's Crash before it, this is one of those films which, in years to come, will be cited as an embarrassing, over-hyped anomaly on the Oscar roll of honour. Jennifer Lawrence did not deserve her Best Actress gong, and the nominations for her, Cooper, Robert de Niro and Jacki Weaver…
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Prometheus 2012
I swore I'd never watch this again, not even to try to sort out the incomprehensible plot. But it was on the pay-per-view and my partner hadn't seen it. Even worse on the small screen, where the plot holes and ludicrous inconsistencies are even more conspicuous, than it was at the cinema - where the sheer spectacle offered some distraction form the grandiose silliness of the whole thing. Also, why is Noomi Rapace still wearing her bandage bikini days after emerging from cryo-sleep?
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Prometheus 2012
My New Empress review: newempressmagazine.com/2012/06/in-review-prometheus/
Summary: "There’s no denying that the film delivers on the level of spectacle, but its sieve-like storyline, muddled mythology, deja vu-inducing creature designs and under-fuelled emotion are as empty as an undiscovered cave."
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The Cabin in the Woods 2012
Witty, inventive, sly and great fun. Is it carping to say that it could have been whole lot scarier?
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Zero Dark Thirty 2012
Kathryn Bigelow's faux-factual account of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, driven here by Jessica Chastian's obsessive female CIA agent.
