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  • Chronicle 2012

    ★★★ Watched 23 Jun, 2012

    Cool idea - HATE the found footage conceit.

  • Sleepless Night 2011

    ★★★½ Watched 23 Jun, 2012

    Tight action thriller that delivers interesting ideas in a confined location.

  • Punch-Drunk Love 2002

    ★★★★ Watched 12 May, 2012

    The real achievement of this film, besides Sandler's excellent performance, is the building sense of tone and emotion. The whole film film's tone makes the viewer feel like what it must be like to be Sandler - on edge, uneasy, bizarre, funny and with a horrible sense of dread.

  • The Avengers 2012

    ★★★★★ Watched 25 Apr, 2012

    Pretty much fucking perfect. Saw it twice today.

  • Young Adult 2011

    ★★★½ Watched 06 Apr, 2012

    Had moments of insight and greatness, usually when Patton Oswalt was on-screen, but ended up not saying anything, and the final conversation COMPLETELY undercuts the whole film.

  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001

    ★★★★★ Watched 30 Mar, 2012

    Two minutes in I was already back to being the teenager whose imagination exploded in the cinema in 2001. One of my favourite film(s) of all time.

  • The Hunger Games 2012

    ★★★ Watched 24 Mar, 2012

    A stellar performance by Lawrence but a film that is hindered by its mediocre source material.

  • Helvetica 2007

    ★★★ Watched 26 Mar, 2012

    Very watchable. Geeky font nerds are charming and fun. Probably wears on a little too long, and doesn't offer much more insight than a quick Google search would.

  • The Muppets 2011

    ★★★★ Watched 17 Mar, 2012

    It's good fun, but I never grew up with The Muppets, so I feel like I was missing something. But the more I think about it, the more joy it gives me. But Jason Segal's constant mugging and horrible self-awareness takes its toll on me with everything he is in.

  • Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 2011

    ★★½ Watched 28 Jan, 2012

    Ridiculously faithful and so pitch-perfect for the period. Oldman's performance is masterful. It's an interesting look at the actual world of spying, but it's so deliberately obtuse and cold that you don't care about any of the characters, and it's near impossible to understand the ramifications of what they are doing. Each character is so remarkably indistinguishable from the next that none of them engage you in the stakes of the plot, meaning when the final whodunnit is revealed, not only don't you care about whodunnit, but you're not entirely clear what it was they dun.

  • Hugo 2011

    ★★ Watched 11 Mar, 2012

    It's pretty much the worst kept secret in Hollywood that Martin Scorcese adores old films. In Hugo this adoration comes through in great, heaping, sweeping sequences of pure, unadulterated joy. These are fun, but only to a point. The saccharine nature of this film's attitude towards its predecessors grates quickly. The other thing that quickly gets annoying is the dialogue. It's classic breathless, children's fantasy.

    "Is it a secret?"
    "Yes."
    "Oh goody. I adore secrets!"

    It's Lion, Witch & Wardrobe stuff,…

  • The Master of Disguise 2002

    ½ Watched 10 Mar, 2012

    Ugh.