The Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, 2012)

8/10
I thought it was pretty fun, and very clever. In fact I thought they could have done even more with the genre pastiches and parodies, and it veered off too soon into becoming an "actual" movie (i.e. when the cabin-goers find the lab technicians perpetrating all this violence on them).
I feel like the movie was really close to saying something interesting and insightful about the cabin-goers "becoming" their character stereotypes but it let that thread drop pretty quickly, which was disappointing. But overall it was a lot of fun to see so many well-worn horror tropes being sent-up like this.

12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

8.5/10
When the credits rolled, I found myself thinking that this is was more a great story than a great movie...even though it was a great movie. Does that make any sense? What I mean is that it didn't fall into many of the trappings of conventional cinema, and instead just focused purely on storytelling, and did that job extremely well - which made it a great movie too. But I have to say I was expecting a little more, given the effusive, borderline ecstatic praise the movie has been met with. I wasn't moved to tears and didn't have my belief system shaken to its core or anything that I associate with a really monumental film, as much as I enjoyed it. Maybe it's unfair to press those expectations on a movie just because of the hype it's gotten, but it's inevitable.
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender were as good as advertised, as was everyone else (I was surprised watching the movie at how many "name" actors showed up). The music was actually an unexpected pleasure, a little unconventional but it worked really well.
The movie did give me a lot to think about, however. I mean, we tend to see slavery as a cut-and-dry "white owners, black slaves" situation, especially since that's its conventional portrayal in pop culture (and that was the predominant "arrangement", of course), but the movie did open my eyes more to the complexities of slavery - the different "levels" of freedom, ownership, and so on. And not only how blacks perceive whites and vice versa, but how blacks perceive blacks, which was interesting and important and not something I've ever really considered before.
Overall it's a very impressive work by Steve McQueen, light years ahead of the dreck that was Shame but still just a notch below Hunger in my book.

Lawless (John Hillcoat, 2012)

6.5/10
This movie really nails the atmosphere of 1930's gothic America, not that I was there to experience it or anything, helped along by its really great soundtrack (re-working the Velvets' "White Light/White Heat" as a bluegrass-y number was a very inspired choice). Actually the setting and the soundtrack probably made this a better experience then it had right to be. The script can best be called 'perfunctory' - it's pretty rote stuff with no real surprises along the way, and a few bizarre decisions. Gary Oldman's gangster Floyd Banner sits uncomfortably against the rest of the movie, not on the outside but not integrated well enough either. As far as casting, Jessica Chastain also seems a little out of place. I got the feeling she was playing a part originally intended for Christina Hendricks or somebody. Chastain always brings it as an actress, but I didn't feel she was right for this part. Guy Pearce is very good and very unlikeable as the sniveling deputy.
Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf and Jason Clarke play the three bootlegging brothers, and they all do well enough, although the script trying to occasionally paint Hardy's character as a kind of philosopher-tough-guy was worth a few groans.
Given the players involved, it's reasonable to have expected more from Lawless. It's decent entertainment for 2 hours but outside of its soundtrack, it's nothing particularly memorable either. I also wish they had stuck with the original title and the title of the source material (The Wettest County in the World) instead of slapping a vague, meaningless title like "Lawless" on it.

The Counselor (Ridley Scott, 2013)

7.5/10
There are movies I was born to like, and despite being a critical and commercial flop, The Counselor was one of them. Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author, and he wrote the screenplay, and it stars three of my current favorite actors: Fassbender, Pitt and Bardem. Plus Penelope Cruz. I don't care too much for Ridley Scott or Cameron Diaz, but as long as they didn't interfere too much, I didn't foresee myself not liking it, and I was right about that much.
Actually I'm surprised the movie did so poorly critically, as I found it reminded me a great deal of No Country for Old Men. Okay maybe it wasn't as artistic, but Ridley Scott ain't the Coens either. But it mined a lot of the same territory. You have an everyman (at opposite ends of the wealth spectrum, mind you) involving himself in a drug deal, being way out of his depth, coming up against an unstoppable force. Fassbender's Counselor is a comparable to No Country's Llewelyn, Pitt's Westray is Carson Wells (they might as well have used the same wardrobe), and Diaz's Malkina is Anton Chigurh. Unlike NCFOM, there is no Sherriff Bell as outside respite, this time we're mired in the muck with the creatures themselves.
Thematically the two movies evoke similar questions - questions of mortality, of the decisions we've made, and as kihei perfectly put it, "that we sometimes believe there are still choices to be made long after the opportunity for choosing has passed". No big answers are given except the brutal, expected ones but the conversations that raise these themes (Pitt vs. Fassbender twice, Fassbender vs. the drug lord, Diaz vs. Cruz) are the meat of the movie and the things I could watch endlessly.
My friend who saw the movie with me (and who was the only other person besides myself in the theatre) complained that the movie didn't make clear things like Westray's involvement in the drug deal, or exactly how the deal went bad (the gizmo attached to the truck, etc). My position was that these things don't matter. It doesn't matter how Westray is involved, just that he is. Similarly, in No Country, it didn't matter what happened to Llewelyn, just that it did.
Maybe it's that frustration at not having the basics explained that led to such a poor critical showing? The characters themselves don't have much depth, but their situations and their themes do, to me. And while it wasn't a brilliant movie, I still thought it was very interesting and had enough going for it to warrant a better reception than what it's getting.
Also I'm still stumped regarding McCarthy's position on women - whether he hates them, worships them, is terrified of them, or some combination of all three. Regardless, Diaz's Malkina was a really different, interesting character, and some of the best work Diaz has done in ages.