The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)

8/10
I think critics have been a little rough on old Baz. Or we're a little too overprotective of our literary giants. Or my expectations had been sufficiently lowered by the bad press that I was able to be pleasantly surprised. But either way, damn it if I didn't enjoy The Great Gatsby. Okay okay, so the grand theme of the crumbling of the American dream has been pushed aside in favor of the central love story - are you surprised? And wasn't the love story still handled well, and faithfully (no pun intended there)? Luhrmann brings the requisite overdose of glitz and flash that Gatsby demands, and while he can't hope to bring the depth of the characters to the screen, does a good enough job in giving them believable souls...you can say he makes them too empathetic and not grotesque enough, but you might accuse Fitzgerald of the same.
Unfortunately things that were subtlely nudged at in the book are driven into your forehead with a sledgehammer here, but again, it was expected. That, combined with the typical Baz Luhrmann movie flaw (starting off so hot that the movie feels like it's sinking when it comes time to tell the story), are the main drags here. But I felt the movie overcame the latter complaint in a way that Moulin Rouge did not. The acting is all very good: I read some unflattering things about DiCaprio's performance but I thought he was fine.

Mud (Jeff Nichols, 2012)

7.5/10
Writer/director Jeff Nichols had Take Shelter in 2011, one of my favorite movies of the year, and returns with Mud. kihei said it best in his review - if Take Shelter was a home run, Mud is more like a solid single. It's a good movie, doesn't make any major missteps, but just doesn't reach the same heights of Nichols' prior effort.
The acting is excellent all around (say nothing else for Nichols, he gets a great performance out of his leading man - Matthew McConaughey, here) and the two young boys in particular. The atmosphere and setting of rural Arkansas is great too, obviously coming natural to Nichols, a native of the area. The story is good, and always interesting.
I guess my biggest problem is that what initially starts out with a lot of mystery and hidden meaning turns out to be quite simple in the end. There's a lack of subtlety throughout that foreshadows many major plot developments, making the movie feel clumsier as it goes along. And overall I just felt that the story between McConaughey's and Reese Witherspoon's characters was...askance - not fully fleshed out, and not sitting comfortably beside the coming-of-age story of the two boys, which the movie dealt with very well.
In any event, it's been fun watching this sort of 'late period resurgence' of McConaughey, as seen in Killer Joe, Bernie, and now Mud. Hopefully he continues on this streak because it turns out he's quite good at this acting business.

Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J. Abrams, 2013)

6/10
The first Star Trek reboot film was the first Star Trek anything I'd ever seen, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I can't put my finger on what it was, but the magic just didn't work for me a second time around. It was entertaining enough, but lacked any real 'wow factor' (I got more goosebumps from the Man of Steel trailer preceding the film, actually). I think part of the enjoyment of the first movie was meeting the characters and seeing them define themselves - there wasn't so much of that here, just the same group thrown into a skirmish that seemed less like the world-saving effort we're accustomed to in these kinds of movies and more like a minor annoyance...with a predictable end.
And I've complained about this in my last two reviews of J.J. Abrams movies, but seriously, turn the lens flare effect tool down by about 600%. It's stupidly distracting and constantly calling attention to itself as an unnatural special effect.

Jack Reacher (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012)

4/10
This was, you know, whatever. The best review was given to me by a friend halfway through, remarking that it was like a "Tom Cruise wet dream". Hard to disagree, and not hard to see why he produced it. He gets to flirt effortlessly with all the ladies, take out all the bad guys, and say all the zippy one-liners. It's like James Bond with an unearned sense of smugness. I thought Rosamund Pike was really bad and I want to say Werner Herzog was criminally underused but he's probably not a terribly great actor to begin with, so maybe less was more...he should have been allowed to script his own lines though. The plot is very predictable but passable enough to keep you watching.