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Django Unchained 2012
Tarantino is one of those filmmakers where you either enjoy his schtick or you don't, and he's nothing if not self-indulgent here, dragging every scene out and milking each moment for all it's worth. Yes, it's ill-disciplined and probably a good hour longer than it needed to be (the original DJANGO runs for only 90 minutes, lest we forget), but by the same token, some of the film's most enjoyable moments are the parts that would have been left on…
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The Avengers 2012
Snark, snark, snark. Boring CGI action scene. Snark, snark, snark. Boring CGI action scene. Repeat ad nauseam.
Full disclosure: I didn't finish this film. I couldn't. It's the first film of 2012 I've seen where I was so disengaged that I had to give up before the finish line.
I know I'm not in this film's target audience. I've never read any of the Marvel comics. I haven't seen any of the recent Marvel superhero films of which this is…
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Argo 2012
If you can tolerate the historical inaccuracies, which blatantly short-change certain participants in this dramatisation of a rescue mission that really was stranger than anything a writer could have dreamt up, then this is easily the most gripping and engaging thriller of the year. The last 45 minutes in particular are edge-of-your-seat material, and I suspect it helped that I didn't know the outcome of the mission going in. I wasn't too impressed by Ben Affleck's GONE BABY GONE (haven't…
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The Dark Knight 2008
I'd hoped, after seeing and genuinely enjoying BATMAN BEGINS, that its sequel would go up in my estimation on a rewatch. Sadly, it wasn't to be. While there are a couple of great action set-pieces and Heath Ledger's Joker is hugely entertaining to watch, the overall effect is muddled, over-long and poorly paced. The moral centrepiece, involving two groups of people each given the means to damn the other while saving themselves, is interesting in theory but botched in its…
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Inception 2010
Time for me to get my hard hat on and prepare for a barrage of dissenting viewpoints: I didn't like INCEPTION. No, I can't say I'm entirely surprised, given my reactions to the other Christopher Nolan films I've seen: his monotonous THE DARK KNIGHT, his bland remake of INSOMNIA and the uneven MEMENTO (the only one I have any real time for). Still, I was prepared to give it a chance and was even, to an extent, cautiously optimistic, particularly…
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 2012
Over-long and self-indulgent, THE HOBBIT (Part 1) is confirmation in my mind that Peter Jackson has become a director too big to edit. The source material is a slim 250 pages, and yet Jackson and his co-writers have somehow managed to make it span three instalments, each of which will no doubt rest somewhere on either side of the three-hour line. Let's put it this way: if THE LORD OF THE RINGS had been adapted with this little efficiency, Tom…
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Prometheus 2012
The best ALIEN film since the original. There, I said it.
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The Hunger Games 2012
Pleasantly surprised by this after the mixed reports I'd heard. Yes, it's essentially BATALE ROYALE lite and yes, the camerawork and editing render the action scenes largely incomprehensible (presumably the intention, chasing the coveted PG-13 rating and all that), but I found myself engaged by it throughout and actually thought it was refreshingly unwilling to pull its punches for a film aimed at a young audience. I doubt I'd stretch to reading the books, but I'll check out the sequel when it comes.
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Wreck-It Ralph 2012
The references may be a little too on the nose and some of the dialogue is decidedly "writerspeaky", but I enjoyed it immensely. Disney Feature Animation's first genuine CGI heavy-hitter.
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The Social Network 2010
I purposefully avoided writing this post until after the release of Movie Matters Episode 5, because otherwise it would have been blatantly obvious what my personal number one film of 2010 was. That film is indeed THE SOCIAL NETWORK, pipping TOY STORY 3 to the post at the last minute and a welcome return to form for David Fincher after the toe-curling THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.
Someone (I forget who) recently wrote (I forget where) that Fincher is…
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2011
For me, this second viewing of Fincher's readaptation failed to improve on the first. In fact, if anything it went down in my estimation: the pacing in the first act still feels incredibly wonky, and the brisk efficiency with which the major plot turns are dealt with results in their potboilerish nature being laid bare for all to see. The final act still drags (do we really need to see all the steps Lisbeth goes through to embezzle Wennerstrom?), though I do think the last five minutes are better than those of the Swedish version and more faithful to the tone of the novel.
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Black Swan 2010
As Mike Sutton says in his review of BLACK SWAN at homecinema.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/73892/black-swan.html, Darren Aronofsky's latest movie is essentially "high-trash melodrama". It's frequently over the top and absurd, and revels in all sorts of daft clichés about mental illness - particularly the A/B white/black personality split from which its heroine suffers... and yet despite all this it's a dazzling, visceral piece of work if you accept it on its own terms. I don't personally think Natalie Portman deserves quite the degree…
