Doug's Favorite Movies of 2012

The Silver Linings Playbook
Cabin in the Woods
The Hobbit
Argo
John Dies at the End
The Queen of Versailles
The Avengers

Honorable Mention:
End of Watch
Bernie
Django Unchained
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Raid: Redemption
The Master
Seven Psychopaths
Cloud Atlas

Special Category -- Movies I hated that everyone else loved:
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Holy Motors

 

Jack Reacher

Felt like it was made in 1987 and directed by Richard Donner. There’s a great, old fashioned car chase (everything Drive should have been) and plenty of bone crunching fights from the Jason Statham playbook. It’s a serviceable low-budget thriller, and it’s fun to see Werner Herzog as a creepy and clichéd European villain, BUT… Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike have about as much sexual chemistry as oil and dark matter.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I enjoyed the hell out of this. I saw it in RealD in the high-definition 48 frame projection and I thought it was gorgeous. Yes, it takes a little while to get going. For what will ultimately be nine hours of movie, I can see why it takes an hour or so to establish characters. Nevertheless, the dancing, zooming and swooping shots of the shire, of the mountains and of middle earth were amazing. The exteriors of Peter Jackson’s beloved New Zealand were beautifully rendered. It’s sincere, it’s exciting, and there are several action scenes that are as good as anything in any movie all year. It almost seems unfair that the ticket price is only three dollars more than other movies, because the value is worth so much more.

Django Unchained

Lacks the gravitas of Inglorious Basterds, but it’s still a really fun night at the movies. Jamie Fox knows he’s not in an important drama about slavery. Nobody’s fooling anyone. Fox hams it up, embracing the revenge-porn genre-fusion as it truly is. The same is true for the rest of the cast, all of whom chew as much scenery as possible. Especially Christoph Waltz, nailing his weird, hitman wordsmith with unabashed glee. The final third drags on a bit, and I wonder if they could have ended the movie sooner. Nevertheless, it’s a barn-burner.

Hitchcock

This did nothing for me. It’s not bad. There’s nothing wrong with it. But there are no real stakes. Hitchcock is the master at the beginning and the master at the end. The script tries to inflate the notion that Hitchcock was worried his wife might be having an affair, but that doesn’t play out in any kind of dramatic or compelling way. So it’s a nice piece of history, but ironically there’s no suspense. The HBO movie about Tippi Hedron, The Girl, was much better.

Silent Night

A remake of the old, schlocky horror movie Silent Night, Deadly Night. The cast was decent but hammy. The script, at least, made sense. The problem is there’s no theme. Or no effort to showcase a theme. And when you have Santa going around murdering people, there should be some kind of point about commercialism or Christianity or something. But there’s no subtext. Just Santa murdering people. Not that there's really anything wrong with that, per se...

Skyfall

Yep. Saw it again. Certain things that seemed stupid the first time I saw it made a little more sense this time. But pace is significantly slower the second time, too.

Life of Pi

Ya know that scene in Cast Away when Tom Hanks and Wilson set sail from the island on that little raft? Now imagine if that scene was two hours long. That’s The Life of Pi. Yes, it’s beautifully made. But I’m not sure I GOT it. Was the mom an orangutan? Is it all a metaphor for something? I’m also not sure that Pi was really the most interesting guy in the world to spend two hours with. Pi yelled at the tiger a lot, but both he and the tiger had less personality than Wilson. Aw, heck. I’m being nitpicky. It’s a beautifully filmed movie by Ang Lee and company. I just didn’t have the transcendent experience I was thinking I was supposed to have. I thought it was kind of slow.

The Silver Linings Playbook

One of my favorite movies of the year. I’ve considered myself a fan of crazy David O. Russell for years, but I thought The Fighter was a bit overblown. There’s no good reason why this should have worked. It’s a weird mix of drama and comedy, sports and dancing, mental health and romance. It’s a hodgepodge and it could have gone horribly wrong. BUT IT DIDN’T. I’m not sure why! Everyone involved is walking a tightrope and at the end of it all, I felt SO FULFILLED. I felt so satisfied. I knew I had just seen a great movie. Again, I’m not sure why. But in the way that salmon sushi and cream cheese shouldn’t work in Philly rolls, but it does, the same holds true for the Silver Linings Playbook. There’s video proof that David O. Russell is an out-of-control, hot-tempered asshole. But hot damn, the guy can make a movie. Highly recommended.

Wreck It Ralph

This did nothing for me. Ralph's existential crisis gets sidetracked and the story shifts focus to another character and her problems. Voiceover work is strong, and the animation is sublime. But the script, which attempts to appeal to too many demos, is a mess.

Flight

This is not about airplanes and it’s not about flying. It’s about alcoholism. Denzel sinks his teeth in, embodying his toxic, barely functioning addict with consummate purpose. Supporting roles are strong too, including Kelly Reilly as a drunk whose moment of clarity comes before Denzel’s. The subject of alcohol will give us humans infinite volumes of art for eons to come. Nothing profoundly new is depicted about the complicated subject in Flight, but the honest portrayals are worth seeing.

Skyfall

The script is paper-thin. It’s less of a plot and more like just one, long sequence. One long, wildly implausible sequence. But man, they shot the hell out of this. Every frame is beautifully rendered. It’s GORGEOUS. But thin. Maybe the thin plot helps it translate better in all the different territories and cultures? Maybe that’s why it’s the highest grossing Bond movie ever? Maybe?

Lincoln

It’s a well-made history, akin to Amistad or Munich. The primary focus is not on Lincoln but instead on the 13th amendment and the mélange of characters who helped Lincoln and voted for it. All the talk has been about Daniel Day Lewis, but it’s the supporting parts that make this interesting: Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader, Lee Pace. It’s a movie about policy, which means that some of the big, climactic scenes involve men voting, which isn’t all that suspenseful since we know what happens. As good as it is, I didn’t feel like it was some transcendent, trail-blazingly original drama. It’s not that risky, and therefore, not that emotional. But it’s Spielberg’s best movie in years (Are we counting Tin-tin?)and a hearty and fulfilling enterprise.

Antiviral

The son of David Cronenberg makes his debut with this goopy, icky essay on celebrity obsessions. Some of the sci-fi concepts and ideas about celebrity culture are really cool, but man, oh man this thing is SLOW. It would be a modern-day masterpiece if they would just pick up the pace!

Cloud Atlas

It’s an unusual movie because I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t tell you the story or the plot if I had a gun to my head. It’s a bit like Malick in that way, it’s a movie driven by theme. And even the theme is a little vague. Overcome your prejudices? Stand up to the status quo? Improve yourself, one lifetime at a time? Despite this ambiguity, it’s a fun movie to watch. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant and the rest of the cast disappear into their multiple characters, with the help of amazing makeup. It’s beautifully made. Every shot is carefully nurtured. The music is great. It doesn’t feel three hours long. But again, I’m not sure what it’s about, though I’m grateful to The Wachowskis for trying something original. As Greg Hobson says, sometimes you just have to swing for the fences.

Holy Motors

I hated this. It’s a plotless, pointless mishmash of pretentious European art-house bullshit. It seems intent on angering, excluding and irking. It’s too bad, because some of the locations and production resources were pretty cool. There's also a nice bit from Kylie Minogue. It’s a shame it was all wasted on this jerk off.

The Impossible

It reminded me of one of those fantastic Irwin Allen disaster movies from the 70’s. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts are great as the disaster victims, struggling with their own injuries, surrounded by death, and confounded by the chaos and confusion during the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the deadliest natural disasters in history. Naomi Watts especially shines in an unselfconscious role as she tries to lead her son to safety and survive her own severely icky injuries. Although it’s based on an amazing true story, there are brief moments of this that seem a little sappy. The music swells too much, some people cry a little too hard, and there’s a conspicuous lack of subtlety during certain key moments. Nevertheless, it’s emotional when it needs to be and casts some light on a worthy topic.

John Dies at the End

By far my favorite movie to come out in a long time. It’s like Bill and Ted’s meets a Richard Kelly movie. Two funny stoners, possibly alive, possible dead jumping through time and dimensions. Paul Giamatti listening to the story bemused, and finally, screaming. It’s an adrenalin rush of surreal insanity, a brave leap so far from convention, it deserves some kind of award just for existing. Big kudos to Don Coscarelli and company.

The Man with the Iron Fist

The RZA obviously has huge love of old martial arts movies. So much so that he tried to make one. It’s clear the love is there, but yow! The cutting and pacing are completely wonky, weird and choppy. It’s like they turned a 6 hour cut into a two hour cut and decided to remove all the plot explanations to save time. It feels more like a coming attractions trailer than an actual movie. It’s fun though, and will please many a martial arts fan and/or stoner for years to come.

Here Comes The Boom

Kevin James is a likeable lead, but even for a simplistic comedy like this, the script is nonsensical. There are several amateurish and stupid plot turns, that, if you stop and think about them for two seconds, you would realize they’re are less sophisticated than the average cartoon. But, whatever. The kids seem to like it.

Led Zeppelin - Celebration Day

It’s a filmed Led Zeppelin concert from 2007, which the band supposedly spent years mixing and finishing. With minimal visuals and showmanship, it’s a great concert and the band sounds fantastic. Not a lot of horsing around between songs or chit chat and the film itself is too cutty. But there are solid renditions of many of the famous tracks. Even though the band sounds tight and well-rehearsed, it’s not completely clear that they were having a good time. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones wear permanent scowls, as though they’re concentrating way too hard to enjoy themselves. Jason Bonham, however, seems elated to be there.

Seven Psychopaths

Sam Rockwell has this way of taking supporting roles and stealing movies. He does it here, too, in spite of the super-cool pedigree of the rest of the cast. It’s funny, and it was about some things I wasn’t expecting it to be – the plight of the blocked screenwriter, for one thing. So there’s lots of screenwriting jokes and lots of killing people jokes. I don’t know how the rest of the people in the world will like it, but I did.

Argo

It’s kind of an “easy A.” It’s adapted from a book based on a true story, it’s a period piece, it’s suspenseful, it’s political, it has a happy ending. It was practically guaranteed to garner a best picture nom before the cameras even rolled. Only a moron could fuck it up. Nevertheless, Ben Affleck and company go the extra mile, filming with an epic scope, pushing the suspense and basically nailing every aspect of this. The result is an almost perfect movie, combining suspense and drama, historical weightiness with Hollywood corniness. I found only brief moments of this to be hokey, like an excessive last-minute chase. But it’s lovingly hokey, a celebration of all old-fashioned Hollywood chases. A gloriously heroic, nick-of-time escape. They could have played Rossini’s William Tell Overture and it would have been okay. Kudos to Smokehouse, Affleck, and everyone involved.

Arbitrage

Richard Gere, who doesn’t have any of that neck fat that old guys get, is consummate as the anti-hero in this “the villain wins” cautionary tale. The problem with anti-hero movies is you’re not sure who to root for, and not rooting for someone can make you look inward, and who wants to do that?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

As the first half of this movie rolled by, the soundtrack was great, but I wondered what was the point of it all. The movie takes its time but it does eventually end up being “about” things – dramatically sexual things that can completely define someone’s personality for the rest of their lives. The cast was great and delivered their teenage characters easily, maybe because they’re all adults portraying children with no orthodontia, acne, or any other body issues. (Man, I could have CRUSHED high school if I had been 21!) Anyway, it’s a lovely, poetic movie, treating the very serious subject of high school with utmost artistry and seriousness. And of course, the soundtrack was good, as it should be.

Hotel Transylvania

This was a cute and inoffensive animation with a kind of manic energy normally reserved for TV cartoons. No point in rushing out to see this one, but kids might like it.

Looper

**SPOILER-RAMA!**

It’s basically The Terminator. But the filmmakers go out of their way to pepper the plot with futuristic gismos and rules and subplots and paradoxes, all seemingly designed to distract you from realizing that it’s basically the same plot as Cameron's opus. Another way they try to distract is to anchor the movie with great actors giving great performances, raising this from a b-movie, time-travel gimmick into an intensely watchable sci-fi parable. So while it might not be completely original, it’s a fun night at the movies.

End of Watch

Made in a faux documentary format, it reminded me of the show “Cops.” The acting and cop detail are top notch. The personal lives of the main characters are explored deeply and respectfully. But it’s the moments of levity, when the cops are giving each other the business, that really make the movie shine. It makes you want to go up to a cop and thank them for all of their hard work and service, but know that they’re going to laugh at you behind your back as soon as you walk away.

The Possession

Don’t have a lot of strong opinions about this. It’s a low-budget, PG-13 creep fest that adeptly maneuvers through all of the well-worn clichés of a “child possessed” movie. Efforts to make it unique by making it the “Jewish Exorcism” are successful, in that it’s a slightly different spin on the familiar tale. There are no embarrassingly bad moments, but nothing trail-blazingly original, either. (I laughed several times when the demonic girl screamed, "Don't touch my box, daddy! No one touches my box but ME!") Religious stuff tends to be really scary to some. God, the devil, demons, and spirits remind people about their mortality, which is innately terrifying. But in terms of a movie plot, the spiritual hullabaloo can always be resolved by the simple reading of some book or incantation. Story-wise it’s kind of anticlimactic but cinematically there’s always plenty of set dressing askew and child vomit to be mopped up.

The Master

Is it or is it NOT about Scientology? It sure seems like it is. But more specifically it's about one guy, a war tarnished, sexually frustrated simpleton, played with balls and intensity by Joaquin Phoenix, who falls for the sci-fi sermons of a charismatic author. Impeccably directed, it imprints lasting scenes and images that dare to confront but never resolve the reasons why someone would join a cult. I found my mind drifting away during sequences that float separately from the plot, which intend to be symbolic or just cinematically pretty. But the one-on-one face offs between Phoenix and his life coach, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, are riveting. My mind also keeps going back to a scene on the beach, where Phoenix first hilariously assaults a woman-shaped sandcastle, but then lies next to it, longingly.

ParaNorman

Norman can see dead people. They’re everywhere! So it’s not a mind-blowingly original premise, but the animation is very cool and there are parts that are actually pretty scary. It seems like the producers are hoping for A Nightmare Before Christmas holiday tradition -- something timeless that kids will watch over and over again, every Halloween. I’m not sure if it’s all THAT. But it’s still an enjoyable family flick.

Cosmopolis

This reminds me a lot of Cronenberg's movie Spider from 2002. While Cronenberg stamps his name all over it, there’s none of the action, suspense or brutality of his many great movies. That doesn’t make this a bad movie, it just makes it a very boring one. It’s absolutely minimalistic. This makes A Dangerous Method look like Raiders of the Lost Arc. Performances are good, and I’m sure some of the ideas talked about in the dialogue are meaningful. But it’s so intentionally slow and sullen, Indy might say it might be better off in a museum.

Premium Rush

Having proven his stunt performing abilities in Inception, the busy JGL delivers a fun and tense diversion here. While not truly weak, the script and motivations of the extra creepy villain (Michael Shannon) are pretty thin. But that’s not the point of Premium Rush. The point is a ticking clock and one long bike chase. Filmmakers wallow in wild, “Go-Pro” style shots of bikes racing in, around, and OVER New York city traffic. (How’d they shoot some of that stuff??) It’s a bicycle fetishist’s wet-dream, and truly a cinematographer’s movie. It’s like one long, amazing Red Bull commercial. It’s definitely worth seeing if you like this sort of thing, i.e. bikes and/or camera gadgetry and/or Manhattan settings. And most people looking for a decent action movie will probably like it, too.

The Expendables 2

Embarrassing. Especially the lame efforts to work in all the action stars’ bygone catch-phrases. How many more “I’ll be back” jokes do we really need? The miracle of this movie is the actors who managed NOT to embarrass themselves. The real stunt fighters, Jet Li and Jason Statham, manage to make it out unscathed. Chuck Norris, not so much.

Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!

A wildly entertaining and inventive concert film of a Beastie Boys show from 2004. 50 audience members were given cameras and the film cuts between them, often creating rhythmic and almost stop-motion animated movement. Directed by Adam Yauch, it’s an undiscovered gem.

The Campaign

There’s nothing really new here, and the resolution is clunky, but I laughed. Filmmakers take jokes all the way up to their R-Rated potential, which is refreshing these days, when so many other comedies are pulling punches.

The Bourne Legacy

There isn’t an action scene in this movie for the first hour. Kind of risky for an action movie. It’s all exposition, except for a very un-fun gun massacre in a research lab. The former “Bourne” director Greengrass kept the talky scenes moving with a dancing camera and crazy cuts. But the current director Gilroy slows it all way down, requiring a little bit of patience. Once the action starts, though, it never stops. It’s fun, but you can tell they did it on a lower budget. During the chase, all the onlookers were staring at the camera!

Beasts of the Southern Wild

They should have called this movie Where the Fuck are all of the Social Workers? Because it’s competently shot, this movie has a way of tricking you into thinking that it’s better than it is. Despite a really good child performance, this movie is a mess. It’s all pretentious, abstract symbolism. There’s nothing tangible or coherent. There’s barely a story, barely a plot and there’s no real point. I felt empty, angry and dirty when I left the theater. Imagine if, in Slumdog Millionaire, the little kid who dived into the shit at the beginning stayed covered in shit for the whole movie and there was a very sad, pointless ending. You might ask yourself, why did I watch this? That’s how I feel about "Beasts." But I’m sure everyone will say how important it is. I say: ew!

Total Recall

It’s amazing to me that I could still be impressed by computer effects, but well, here I am. Swooning. Seeing the cityscapes, future-cars, and super-elevators was awesome. Unfortunately, the script is joyless and dead serious. While the performances are skilled, I didn’t wind up caring very much for the characters or their peril.

The Amazing Spiderman

…shouldn’t be called “Amazing”. Maybe “The Usual Spiderman.” This feels like a TV movie version of a Spiderman movie, with none of the gravitas of the Sam Raimi movies. (I still maintain that Spiderman 2 is one of the best superhero movies ever made.) Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are appealing leads, but they’re both WAY too old and sophisticated. It’s like watching John Travolta and Olivia Newton John in Grease all over again. They could be teachers! It’s not so much that it’s a “bad” movie. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se. I’m sure the kids will like it. But it’s just a shame that Spiderman is no longer Jesus.

The Dark Knight Rises

After a few days to think about the movie, and in light of the people in Aurora who died to see it, it seems like bad form to say this but, here goes: this movie doesn’t make any sense. The plot and the timelines don’t track, the motives of the villain, Bane, are foggy, and the villainous plan is terribly flawed. In The Dark Knight, the Joker had some flawed plans too, but he was crazy and he was trying to produce some large-scale joke-shop trickery. Bane, who sounds like a cross between Darth Vader and Tim Curry, isn’t named “the Joker”, so his plans can’t be big jokes. They need to serve some purpose. And when all the twists come to light, it’s way too easy to deconstruct the plan and say, “What the fuck?? What did he WANT all this time?” Nevertheless, there are some epic, bone-chilling action scenes and a very good ending, so it’s still worth seeing, even if the plot has holes you could drive ten batmobiles through.

Bernie

A likeable dark comedy featuring Jack Black in one of his best performances. Director Linklater intercuts real interviews with actual accounts of Bernie, thus bringing a more realistic, docudrama feel to the story that might otherwise come off as too creepy to be true. The cast is great, the pace is speedy, and the creep factor, especially when Jack Black sings in the church choir, is high. It’s a fun movie.

Brave

** SPOILER TIME!!**

Is this a feminist parable? Is it symbolic of anything greater than itself? Is it based on some great Scottish fable? It’s really hard to tell. One third of the way into the movie, the main character accidentally turns her mother into a bear. A Bear! So then the rest of the movie is spent trying to figure out how to turn her back into a woman. Is that symbolic of anything? I know in many fairy tales there are candlesticks, toads, wooden puppets, and “beasts”, but bears? It feels like a Non sequitur. A beautifully animated Non sequitur.

Ted

A predictable bromance hitting all the major beats of the boy-meets-bear, boy-loses-bear, boy-gets-bear-back arc. Many of the jokes aren’t funnier just because the teddy bear is saying them, so they’re missing some situational potential. But the cast is likeable and committed, and the laughs come often enough, so no harm, no foul.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

…could be cited in a screenwriting textbook as a perfect example of what NOT to do in a screenplay. This was awful! Characters have weak goals, they set out on quasi-quests that go unfulfilled, they leave notes for people they hope to confront. It’s a disaster! They all DESERVE to die! There’s one funny scene in a TGI Friday’s that hints at what this movie could have been. A bacchanal. A balls-to-the-wall, petal-to-the-metal sex and revenge orgy. Then as the Earthlings stand naked and bloodied, awaiting their fate, the asteroid cruises right on by as the credits role. That’s the movie I want to see. This? This was terrible.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

An amazing, unknown piece of history! Some of today’s best historians, including Bill O’Reilly and the publishers of textbooks in Texas, have discovered brand new facts about historical figures and scientific theories that bravely and completely redefine what less enlightened “scientists” and “historians” have been teaching us for years. This is no exception. Not only do vampires exist, but they caused the civil war. Lincoln was secretly trained to kill them! The cinematic depiction of Lincoln’s secret life is a bloody, flaming bonanza! Here’s hoping this information, along with the truth about where we come from, creationism, makes it into text books as soon as possible.

Savages

It’s actually kind of tame for an Oliver Stone movie. The ad campaign cultivates hope for another Natural Born Killers, a funny, insanely violent satire. But Savages falls more in line with U Turn, a dirty, dustbowl crime-fiction noir. A world in which there’s bad people and then there’s WORSE people. So it’s less dangerous than the title and the trailers would have you believe. Not that that’s bad. There are fun moments. But the ending’s a debacle so this is a mixed bag.

The Do-Deca-Pentathlon

The busy Duplass brothers just put out a movie in March, Jeff, Who Lives at Home. This seems like the same movie, but not as good. It’s more ugly, more “mublecore”, and the motives of the characters are less worked out. I admired this movie for the low-tech, improv style in which it was made. Five characters, one house, and lots of tension. This looks like it was made with a couple of credit cards. But the story of the feuding brothers in Jeff Who Lives at Home, along with the great cast, makes it a much better movie than this.

Safety Not Guaranteed

A pleasant romantic comedy about a reporter who at first investigates then befriends a kook who believes he can travel through time. The reporter, Aubrey Plaza, impressively acts with her eyes more than anything else, to great effect. The kook, played by Marc Duplass, is a little hard to believe as a sincere but misunderstood geek, since I’ve seen him play the wise-ass in so many other things, including The League. The movie says a lot about love, and wanting to go back to the past for no other reason than to take another shot at a long lost crush. It runs a little slow at times, but it feels pretty honest.

The Queen of Versailles

Great, great, great documentary. Funny in all the wrong places. I can’t pronounce it, and I can’t use it in a sentence, but the word “schadenfreude” comes to mind, which is to say that watching these obnoxiously dumb and outrageously wealthy people go from being billionaires to millionaires is both hilarious and painful. The trophy wife at the center of the story is Jackie Siegel, a beauty queen who married a sleazy time-share billionaire thirty years her senior. When she gives a tour of the 90,000 square foot house she’s building, talking about the ice rink and the bowling alley, you want to strangle her. Watching the money disappear, watching them layoff the servants, and watching Jackie try and keep her family together is hilarious and poignant. As I was watching, I could almost FEEL my worldview changing. I thought about how out-of-touch these people were. About ugly and nasty extreme wealth could be. I thought about poor people. And I thought about myself, and areas in my life where I waste money. In the end, Jackie Siegel comes off as a pretty decent person who really just wants a nice life for her family. She likes the bubble that she’s in -- she more or less admits that. But when she buys her son a bike, and the film cuts to a garage full of at least a dozen bikes, you can’t help but wanting to grab a sign and head on down to the nearest occupy Wall Street protest. A must see movie.

Prometheus

It’s possible that I was so happy to be seeing this movie that I may not have been able to watch it objectively. I can admit that and I think it’s perfectly fair to feel that way. Nevertheless... Ridley Scott’s long-awaited prologue was fantastic to watch. Every frame and every sound was beautifully expressed by the actors, the designers and the crew. It’s true: the script leaves a million unanswered questions and there are times when characters do really stupid things that smart scientists in space just wouldn’t do. But there are great performances here, too. From Noomi Rapace to Michael Fassbender. There are suspenseful sequences that terrified me. There’s a four-minute “surgery” scene that’s one of the most hilariously tense scenes I’ve seen in any movie in years. And in spite of all of the unanswered questions, the movie fulfills EXACTLY what it promises to: the origins of the Alien. Beyond that, we’ll just have to wait for the sequels. I’d buy my tickets now if I could.

Crooked Arrows

A really corny underdog sports movie with all the best intentions. Make a movie about a less popular sport. Check. Make a movie featuring Native American culture and Native American actors. Check. Have the team win the big game against the rich white dudes. Check. Have the hero learn a valuable lesson about himself and his heritage. Check. Have a “Spartacus” moment. Check. Have several wise elders dispense pearls of wisdom like, “You have the speed of the eagle.” Check. It’s a very by-the-numbers movie, but the 12-year-olds I saw it with liked it.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Expertly designed. The dark and creepy contrasts beautifully with the fairy tale utopia. It’s Charlize Theron’s movie, and she dives enthusiastically into her crazy, narcissistic queen, having a ball the whole time. Conversely, Kristin Stewart pouts and sulks throughout, even at the end when she’s supposed to be happy. Would it kill her to smile once in a while? Show some fucking levity? Yeesh. Still, it’s a fun movie to watch, seeing the fairy tale world rendered with bona fide imagination.

Moonrise Kingdom

It’s so Wes Anderson it’s almost TOO Wes Anderson. The only thing missing was a Wilson brother. Otherwise, the cast was amazing. Famous character actors drop in one right after the other, which helps prop up the main kids -- two new young actors, inexperienced, but trying their best. They don’t do a terrible job carrying the movie, but it’s still a relief when they cut back to Bruce Willis. I liked Darjeeling Limited more, maybe because the principals we’re closer to my age group. So I’m not saying I disliked this, I just had a little more trouble connecting emotionally to the circumstances, if that makes any sense. But it’s still very well designed in that precious and whimsical Wes Anderson style, a world of analogue color and nostalgia.

Men In Black 3

I liked this. It’s funny, it moves fast, and Will Smith’s comic timing feels perfectly in tact. Press reports say this was hard to make. Lots of rewriting and reshooting, etc. But I didn’t notice.

The Dictator

Funny, but didn’t blow my mind. I think the expectation is that Cohen will always be more outrageous than last time, so there’s nowhere for him to really go. I’m not always fond of comedians fucking with real people, even though it’s funny sometimes in Borat, so it’s a nice change of pace to see Cohen juxtaposed with an equally funny fictitious counterpart – Anna Feris. Departing from her klutzy blonde bombshell caricature that she’s mastered, she plays the tolerant, so-liberal-she’s-crazy lefty with wide-eyed perfection. Without her, Cohen’s dictator would just be an unlikeable maniac, but she sees the potential for good in anybody, a key strength/weakness of the bleeding-heart lib she embodies. The whole movie seems to be geared toward one big speech in which Cohen’s reformed dictator unloads about the hypocrisies of American democracy. It’s more political than most movies, which is good, but the comedic build up to this is a mixed bag, especially the scenes without Feris.

Sound Of My Voice

We walked out of this about halfway through, so I can't really give it a fair review.

The Avengers

Relished Tony Stark’s lighting-fast blabbermouth even more the second time around.

The Avengers

It’s really exciting to see the whole Marvel/Avengers plan come together. Since the first Iron Man, there was talk that this would happen, and I almost didn’t believe it. Could they really get everybody? Well, they didn’t get EVERYBODY. There’s no Ant Man… YET! Robert Downey is the glue that holds it all together, his heroics mashed with signature Joss Whedon zingers make for great tension and release. But the Hulk moments are the best. When you don’t have to “develop” the Hulk’s character, fill him with angst and regrets, feed Edward Norton’s ego; when the agenda is for the Hulk to SMASH, it’s primal joy. With a project this huge and with this much going for it, it would be hard to fuck up. There are still flaws. The secret hideout of the Avengers seems startlingly impractical, and the villain Loki’s vague plan to destroy the world seems a little Saturday morning cartoony. Also, Sam Jackson seems exceptionally tired. It’s probably exhausting trying to keep up with superheroes all day. But the rest of the cast is perfect. Their camaraderie is like jazz, and it’s impossible NOT to fantasize about sequels. Also, the traditional Avengers post-credit gag is hysterical. Don’t miss it.

Safe

I thought I would miss Jason Statham’s snappy one-liners, delivered with the Guy Richie, working class London brogue. But after the ridiculous set up, the plot draws you in, as bad guys raise the stakes and Statham kills as many of them as possible with karate or guns. So he doesn’t really play it English or funny, but he still kicks ass, which is good.

Lockout

Guy Pearce certainly has the physique and the witty repartee to anchor a big time space version of Escape from New York. But to make a great action movie, you must have a great villain. A villain who believes HE is the hero of the story. Alan Rickman. Dennis Hopper. Malcolm McDowell. Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. And Lockout tries its best by casting a couple of crazy Scottish dudes. But they don’t really pack the punch. The effects are fun, the action is taut, but the stakes seem low, lacking the potential urgency triggered by a first-rate movie scoundrel.

The Three Stooges

What I can’t believe is that the Catholic League would actually be offended by this! And that the Farrellys would actually remove scenes based on the objections of the Catholic league! Isn’t the point of the stooges to poke fun, and/or put a thumb in the eye of the establishment? I could go on and on. Nobody can take a joke anymore. It’s not even that the jokes are all that funny. It’s more of a kids movie than anything else. Silly and unsophisticated. So why censor it? I sure am sick of religious people getting to decide everything.

Cabin in the Woods

A completely unexpected jolt of joyful movie insanity. A meta-film that both embraces and redefines the teen-horror genre. Except that it isn't that genre. It's its OWN genre. And it's one of those movies wherein you can't discuss WHY it's so good because you'd be giving everything away. And even if you tried to describe it, people would say, "That sounds stupid." So, most people won't see this movie because of the title and because they THINK they know what it's about. But they're missing out on a vitamin shot of pure elation. It's intoxicating. Extremely fun. I highly recommend it.

Wrath of the Titans

Seen in Real-D rather than Arclight 3D, I’m pleased to say that the movie was not too dark and flying swords and chunks of lava jumped out of the screen at me appropriately, as they should. The cast is strong and bring the right amount of gravitas to the oblique tale of gods, demigods, and monsters at war for some reason. There were several effects I really enjoyed, including long-computer-aided tracking shots, an appearance by forest dwelling giants, a cool land of stone mazes, and a massive lava monster. The story and the drama don’t really resonate, it’s a forgettable movie, but I was pleased nonetheless to have seen it.

American Reunion

The American Pie movies worked because they were always 75% funny and 25% sentimental. The heart behind all of the dirty jokes was always there. The problem with American Reunion is there’s TOO much sentiment, and not enough funny. Yes, it’s fun to see the big cast reunited, and it’s always a pleasure to watch Eugene Levy awkwardly trying to impart pearls of wisdom to his well-meaning son. But the reunion lacks the really raunchy dirty jokes, firmly rooted in truth, that made the other movies so refreshingly honest.

Hunger Games

Is it a criticism of reality television? Is it an indictment of the 1%? The allegory is slightly vague here, and it seems intentionally so. What sticks out in my memory is when Woody Harrelson is dispensing a last bit of advice to Jennifer Lawrence’s stoic contestant, “Look for fresh water.” Priorities, right? I never read the book, so I can’t comment on how closely it was adapted. But it’s an entertaining and thought-provoking sci-fi parable that probably would not have worked if it weren’t for the dumb-luck casting of Jennifer Lawrence. She brings a world-weary acceptance to the brutal hunger games, of which nobody ever seems to question the purpose. Yet.

The Raid: Redemption

It’s a super-violent, super-action-packed Indonesian martial arts movie, and it’s a lot of fun. The plot is something like: an Indonesian SWAT team tries to take down an Indonesian drug dealer holed up in a big, Indonesian building. One Indonesian SWAT guy, the good guy, knows the martial art that involves a lot of stabbing people and grabbing their legs and throwing them into things. (It might be called "Pencak Silat".) Anyway, it’s all really exciting and violent and there’s a lot of kicking and stabbing. A lot! Yay, violence!

Dose of Reality

A low-budget "Mamet" play set in a bar in which three people talk about their lives and stuff. It’s admirable for the tight budget, and certain twists come unexpected, but lead Fairuza Balk, MIA from the zeitgest for a while, acts circles around her co-stars, who always seem to be playing catch-up. This unbalance makes some sections of the movie tedious, and one wonders when the movie will get to the point. Still, I can see people getting drawn into this and being pleasantly amused by the ending.

Casa de mi Padre

Ya see, the joke is that it’s bad. Plenty of movies and TV shows have been made intentionally bad, as that is the central joke. I've liked some of them. I loved Black Dynamite. So that’s the whole deal. At times it’s funny because it’s bad. And at times Will Ferrell and company seem to be trying too hard to make it bad, if that makes sense. So it’s not a loving tribute to bad, but instead a criticism of bad, which is less funny, and therefore, more bad. So I guess I’m saying… it’s a mixed bad. (Hey-oh!)

Silent House

** SPOILER-RAMA **

At some point, after the questions have been answered about whether or not what the audience is watching is real or imagined, Silent House bravely plunges into psycho-sexual terrain. It could have gone horribly wrong. It comes close to being pretentious. But filmmakers dexterously walk a tightrope between realistic and thematic, and thanks to a daring and engrossing performance from Elizabeth Olson, the end result is a gimmicky but satisfying no-budget thriller.

John Carter

Well, first of all: they fucked up the title. It should be called "John Carter of Mars." And it’s not like it’s a bad movie. Lead actors are sincere and shapely. Creatures are animated skillfully. Landscapes, both real and computer-generated, are rendered beautifully. Costumes are inventive. So it’s not so easily explained why this movie landed with a thud. They say it’s the science fiction on which all other science fiction is based. So maybe that’s the problem. Maybe there’s just something about it that seems a little too familiar.

W.E.

Madonna takes the fascinating story of the love affair between Wallis Simpson and King Edward and bookends it with a modern-day story about a woman trying to find the courage to leave her husband. The segments featuring Wallis Simpson were gripping, emotional, and feature a great performance from actress Andrea Riseborough. But the modern day segments drag and suck power away from the historical romance. So it's a mixed bag. If the movie could be recut to only include the Simpson/Edward romance, Madonna would have a pretty good movie on her resume. But the dull modern segments, though they're not terrible, undercut the resonance of the whole movie.

Act of Valor

It’s funny that the word “act” is right there in the title, because this movie is about everything BUT acting. Footage of “real” Navy seals doing training exercises is impressive, but as soon as one of them speaks, my skin crawls. Navy Seals are really good at being Navy Seals. Actors are really good at pretending to be other people and embodying their characters. Movie stars are the Navy Seals of acting – they can’t really be underestimated. Thankfully, Act of Valor is mostly action and not acting. During the show, there's a 10 or 15 minute action sequence, and at the end of it all, one guy turns to the other guy and says, “I’m doing this for my family.” As good as the b-roll is, the Seals should stick to sniping Somali pirates and leave the line-readings to the experts.

Wanderlust

There’s an old saying: there’s nothing more unfunny than somebody trying too hard to be funny. Actually, that’s not an old saying, I just made it up. But in the case of Wanderlust, it’s unfortunately true. I’ve always admired the David Wain/Ken Marino/The State projects, from Reno 911 to The Ten to Children’s Hospital and so on. But Wanderlust lacks a premise beyond the initial yuppies become hippies, and the filmmakers hope that improvised shtick will fill in the blanks. It doesn’t. There’s so much potential here for satire that was squandered by Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston and the meager attempts to bookend comedic non-sequiturs with bad romantic comedy hokey-ness. It’s a lazy enterprise from a troupe that’s capable of much better. Nevertheless, I will tune into the new season of Children’s Hospital eagerly.

Safe House

I didn’t hate this but it didn’t blow my mind either. Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington both seem to be slumming it. They’re each a lot better than this lazy action movie fraught with typical fights and chases. Plus with the blue-ish color correction (over-correction) the whole experience is gloomy and forlorn. One wishes Reynolds would return to comedy and Washington would try something different.

The Woman In Black

In a departure from his Harry Potter days, Daniel Radcliffe is a one-man show here. It’s an old fashioned ghost story -- it could be an episode of Masterpiece Theatre. There are stuffy British actors, period costumes, and most importantly, creepy-ass toys. You can’t really make a scary movie these days without featuring creepy-ass toys. There’s also a spooky-ass castle and some scary-ass jump scares, all of which makes The Woman in Black worth the ticket price for those who like this type of thing. Despite the stuffy, old-timey setting, and a resolution that lacks kick, there’s good filmmaking here. It’s a successful endeavor by the newly resurrected Hammer Films.

Chronicle

DUDE #1: Okay. That’s it. From now on, I’m videotaping everything that happens in my life.
DUDE #2: How come, dude?
DUDE #1: Dude, I don’t owe you an explanation. Just go along with it.
DUDE #2: Okay, Dude. But good luck keeping those camera batteries charged.

There is inevitably a bunch of awkward dialogue to justify the home movie/found footage gimmick. Once the teenage heroes get that out of the way, and you stop asking yourself why anyone would be running a camera at certain points in the story, the story ITSELF is actually pretty good, and boils down to this: what if Peter Parker was bitten by the radioactive spider and turned into a giant dick? After a while, the “found footage” part of this spreads out to police footage and news footage. Kind of a cheat, but it reminded me of Look, a clever security camera drama that came out a few years ago. This is not mandatory to see in theaters, but it’s worth checking out…

The Grey

Never in the history of movies has a part been cast so perfectly. With every cell of his being, Liam Neeson embodies this great, Jack London archetype. Not for a moment do you doubt that this suicidal, poetry spewing oil-worker will gladly punch a giant wolf in the face. It’s uncanny how believable he is. The rest of the cast is also good, never shirking common sense, but vulnerable and trapped, they naturally lash out at each other in frustration. We were slightly baffled by the ending, as the screenplay doesn’t follow a traditional three-act structure and the conclusion seems abrupt. (We got lucky and stayed after the end credits.) Still, it’s two-thirds of a good movie that deserves a Nobel Prize in casting.

Underworld: Awakening

The simplicity of the plot is kind of inspiring: There’s a little girl. She’s “the Chosen one.” (Of course.) She’s been captured by baddies. Get the ass-kicking vampire chick out of cryogenic freeze to rescue her, and kill as many baddies as possible. I respect and admire the aspiration to be simple and clear, especially since the previous Underworld movies are horrible mazes of weird history and back-story, which was all meant to be filler in between leather-clad, vampire-chick beat-downs. The consummate Kate Beckensale delivers swift vampire justice elegantly, while the Shakespearean-trained villains chew the scenery reliably. There’s a lot of noise, but not a lot of emotion, and that’s what I expect from my vampires vs. werewolves movies. I guess if I wanted my vampires to emote, I’d watch Twilight, and, come on, I sure as hell ain’t gonna do THAT.

Haywire

This is a custom built vehicle for MMA fighter Gina Carano, who can stunt fight with the best of them and crush men’s balls with a mere gaze. There are some fun fights in this, prolonged, brutal, and absent of the typical action-movie cuttiness. Director Soderbergh is also clever enough to surround non-actor Carano with some of the best in the business, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, and newly crowned leading man Michael Fassbender, all of whom appear to have been ordered to, “Make her look good…” There’s not much story here, and it could easily wait for video, but it’s a successful b-movie spy bruiser that might make Pam Grier or Jennifer Garner proud to have blazed the trail.

The River - Episodes 1 & 2

It’s the first time in the six year history of this weblog that I’ve reviewed a TV series. But I saw The River in a theatre, and if I see it in a theatre on a big screen, then it goes on the blog. Those are the rules.

It seems like a natural progression to take the haunted jungle from Lost and mix in the found-footage, documentary style that’s so popular with the kids these days. The River is a successful fusion -- exciting, dramatic, and also "realistic", thanks to the faux doc structure. But the main reason why it works isn’t the jump scares, of which there are plenty, but because the makers focus on the central family, their fame, their estrangements, and all the weird baggage that comes with that. Quintessential strong mom Leslie Hope and methody British stud Joe Anderson embody their characters expertly, while a motley film crew rounds-out the roughnecks who machete their way through the haunted jungle looking for Dad, who disappears after becoming obsessed with black magic. There's a lot of potential here. Introducing a new kind of black magic each week allows for the creators to have a new set of spooky rules. Hopefully, this will help to avoid violating the previously established spooky rules, the way that Lost so often did. Here’s hoping The River is a long and windy one.

Young Adult

Thankfully Academy Award winner Brook Busey stays away from her claim-to-fame Juno-esque teenspeak to develop these complicated characters through their choices. Charlize Theron uses her natural ability of attractive to skillfully embody this very flawed alcoholic home wrecker. The key relationship is with the high school nerd Paton Oswald, whose growth is also stunted, and the relationship they form is fascinating. Both characters seem to hate themselves, yet each character is completely unwilling to change. It’s a strong character study and a well-made movie, although it reminded me a lot of Bad Teacher, which was better and funnier, IMHO. (Uh-oh! Teenspeak!) On a very positive note, it’s an original screenplay by Busey -- not a spin-off, sequel, prequel, adaptation, historical adaptation, throwback, or any other safe movie-making gimmick. It doesn’t pander to any demographic and there seems to be no cynical effort to cram this movie down our throats, and that is commendable.