Bad Moms (Jon Lucas & Scott Moore, 2016)

0/10
This wasn't my choice to watch but wow this was putrid. Basically motherhood wish-fulfillment porn. Plot-wise, you know what to expect if you've ever seen an Apatow thing (this was written by The Hangover guys) - a bunch of like-minded characters, moms here, lash out at the restraints imposed upon them by society's expectations, decide to Go Wild, learn some lessons about moderation in the end, blah blah. Curiously, Bad Moms kicks off on a decidedly anti-feminist note - the central character Amy (played by Mila Kunis) has her life go completely off the rails when her husband leaves. This is even more interesting because Amy's husband, of course, is portrayed as an oblivious, do-nothing loser. So it's weird that him leaving is what sends her life spiraling into chaos.
So Amy joins up with 2 other moms who want to Go Wild - Kristen Bell playing the timid one and Kathryn Hahn playing the brassy one in roles you've seen before being played by Tina Fey and Amy Schumer - and we're treated to excruciatingly implausible scenes like Amy struggling to get laid at a bar because she doesn't know how to talk to men and can only talk about "mom stuff" like her kids' bathrooms habits. I will remind you that Amy is played by Mila Kunis, who could probably brand a swastika into her forehead and still go home with any number of men of her choosing.
The whole movie is like that, extremely tone-deaf and lacking in self-awareness. It doesn't care much beyond being obnoxious and hoping that some very deluded individuals will identify with its cartoon character protagonists.
Most of this ground was already covered well by Bridesmaids, or covered well enough by Sisters. It's cool that female ensemble comedies are an established thing and more prominent than ever but this does no favors at all to the genre.

The Girl on the Train (Tate Taylor, 2016)

6/10
I haven't read the book. The movie wasn't as bad as I expected, in fact the reviews seem a little harsh. It's a functional enough thriller, keeps you guessing reasonably well (I didn't figure out whodunnit, but I'm notoriously lousy at that) and features a really good performance by Emily Blunt, even if it's a little showy. The most annoying thing in the movie (vague spoiler talk): and this probably worked better on the page, is that it relies upon misleading its audience as the foundation for its "twist". Similar to Gone Girl, but at least it doesn't have the same pretentions of artistry that movie did. So when you show me something taking place, and then show me something later that basically says "no this is how it really happened", it just feels like a cheap trick, not clever moviemaking (or storytelling).
As a decently entertaining night at the movies, you could do worse.

Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015)

7/10
I guess The Social Network set us on a path of movies showing us how clever jerks got to be really rich jerks as each global giant successively gets their entry into the canon (stay tuned this year for Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc! Who will play Colonel Sanders in his biopic in 2018?!). Aaron Sorkin scripted this one as he did The Social Network. The dialogue certainly crackles, thanks in no small part to Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet who are both terrific, but it does veer into portentousness at times, with characters in the heat of an argument delivering clunky lines that are heavy-handedly meant to be interpreted as a metaphor for the scene as a whole.
The three product launch sequences that make up the movie are impressively mounted, although each feels more rote than the last - the movie has Jobs commenting on this repetitiveness in an attempt at self-awareness ("I feel like before every product launch people get drunk and tell me what they really think about me") but it doesn't make it feel less paint-by-numbers.
Like Moneyball, another Sorkin adaptation, there seems to be a fear of getting too technical - there with baseball stats, here with computer specs. Any technical sequence is immediately followed up with a hammy father-daughter scene as if to scramble to pull the viewer back in but frankly, as in Moneyball, I found the technical stuff way more interesting than the Hollywood schmaltz.
Overall it's a decent movie, the acting is the strength by far and the writing is solidly in second. I'm just not sure what all we were supposed to glean by sitting through it. We already knew that Sorkin could write and Fassbender could act and Boyle could direct and Jobs was a jerk who took more credit than he deserved.

The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016)

5/10
I'll gamely defend Only God Forgives, it's not a masterpiece on the level of Drive but it's still got enough going for it that it deserves better than it got from a critical point of view. Not so for The Neon Demon. Nicholas Winding Refn's now signature style is firmly in place - mind-boggling costumes, make-up and, well, neon lighting with a great score once again by Cliff Martinez. It's a little more chatty than OGF or Drive, but not by a whole lot. What's disappointing is all this aesthetic is wasted on such a by-the-numbers plotline - the virginal blonde heading to Los Angeles to make it in the cut-throat model industry. It's a little more stimulating than Cronenberg's dive into similar predictable territory a couple years ago with Maps to the Stars, but barely. Refn wrote the movie himself, I just can't figure out what he was trying to get across that hasn't been done a bunch already before. The movie has a cool, totally over the top grand guignol finale that I enjoyed a lot, and I wish the rest of the movie was equally unchained. As it is, it's pretty forgettable aside from some nice visuals.

Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallee, 2015)

6.5/10
I can't really make heads or tails of what this movie was going for. Jake Gyllenhaal's Davis loses his wife in a car accident, lashes out by claiming he never really loved her, and deals with his grief by taking things apart - and yes, eventually, demolishing them. It feels derivative of movies like American Beauty or Fight Club where there's some event that causes the main character to disconnect from society in bizarre and unexpected ways. But as Demolition goes on it turns more and more formulaic. Davis strikes up a friendship with his paramour's oddball son and, you know, The Healing Process Begins and all that stuff. It's okay; Gyllenhaal puts in a good performance, the kid actor is not entirely insufferable, there's good music, some funny scenes, etc. The direction itself is pretty bland though, not really what I would have expected from Jean-Marc Vallee, and overall there is a feeling that the movie thinks it's more clever and original than it actually is.

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (Werner Herzog, 2016)

7/10
Werner Herzog's latest documentary is "about" the internet, in loose terms. As you might expect from a Herzog documentary it departs from a chronological telling of the history of the internet very quickly and instead focuses on the people telling the stories along the way. The film is divided into 10 chapters, although sometimes interview subjects bleed over into other segments. It focuses on pioneers of the internet, world famous hackers, people allergic to radio waves, young adults battling internet addictions, Elon Musk, MRI technicians, a family harassed in a most despicable fashion by internet trolls, and so on. Herzog narrates and asks questions on-camera with his usual mix of detached wonder and dark humor - Herzog's description of the university where the internet was born refers first and foremost to its "repulsive hallways".
There aren't too many great shakes to be had (or history lessons either) but Herzog pokes and prods his subjects in an endearing fashion, and content-wise there's certainly enough to chew on with all the questions inherent to the subject matter. But I wonder if this wouldn't have worked better not as a film but as a series of 10 episodes on a format like Netflix where each subject and topic was allowed more in-depth exploration.

Love (Gaspar Noe, 2015)

5/10
This is just the 4th feature Gaspar Noe has directed in 17 years. It isn't as atrociously awful as Enter the Void, but we're still far from the heights of Irreversible (I have yet to see Seul Contre Tous). Notably, Love features graphic scenes of unsimulated sex. However, recent arthouse films like Blue is the Warmest Color and Stranger by the Lake have featured graphic sex scenes as well as being remarkable films, thus raising the bar across the board. It's not enough to skate by using sex in an attempt to be "shocking", you also have to provide a great movie. Love is not a great movie. As I said, it's not as bad as Enter the Void, but it's not as adventurous either, for what that's worth. Noe is at his best making his case for pure, passionate love and sexuality embittered by what we know is coming (evoking very much his strength in Irreversible) but these moments are too few and far between. The sex becomes monotonous, the acting is dicey throughout, and it's just not that interesting or provocative. The lighting, however, is truly exquisite. And at least Noe appears to have made an attempt to edit this one, unlike Void. But it's just not good enough.

Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

7/10
I find myself saying the same thing for a lot of these Oscar pix from the last year - fine, well-acted, nothing offensively horrible, nothing very memorable either. Cate Blanchett is immaculate and Rooney Mara is very good too. It is directed, ah, adroitly and I have no complaints.

The Nice Guys (Shane Black, 2016)

8/10
I wasn't expecting much but this was actually a pretty funny movie. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are both very good, the script has a lot of good gags (physical and verbal), and it really nails the late 1970's feel. At times the plot of the film feels overly scripted. Writer/director Shane Black seems to be going for something like a Coen Brothers take on Inherent Vice (without the weirdness of either the Coens or Pynchon) and doesn't quite get there, but it's a credible stab and at least manages to remain funny throughout.
As good as Gosling and Crowe are, Angourie Rice arguably steals the show as their 13-year old sidekick. It's nice to see a young female character given room to actually be funny, as opposed to the precocious, insufferably quippy types they're usually cast as in movies like this. It felt like the "buddy movie" genre was dead and buried with all of those awful buddy cop movies that were such a big trend in the early 2010's, so The Nice Guys is a welcome breath of fresh air in that field too.

Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray, 2015)

9/10
As far as biopics go, this one hits pretty much all of the good notes. The only criticism I can really level at it is that it's self-serving, but it wouldn't be the first biopic guilty of irreverence. To go along with that, the movie does a great job at portraying Eazy E as a complex central figure, but frustratingly refuses to cast judgement - was he a shrewder-than-he-looks businessman complicit in undercutting his N.W.A. cohorts, or was he as naïve as the rest of them, being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous manager?
I suppose it's only fair, though - all of the other main figures are still alive, and so control how they come across, and let's say nobody in the group comes out looking too badly. Cube a genius wordsmith, master intimidator and sharp businessman, Dre a genius producer, tortured over the death of his brother and trying to put food on the table for a family, etc.
The strength of the film by far is its acting, especially considering most hadn't appeared in major film roles before. At 2 and a half hours it somehow never really feels long - there are a couple of parts you could probably ditch (let's face it, 2-Pac is only really there so people can go hey, it's 2-Pac) but it remains taut despite its length, and never uninteresting throughout. Pretty close to perfection.

Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)

8/10
It is hard not to be slightly disappointed at the end of Sicario, but this is clearly not a movie designed to send audiences home happy, so I'll try not to hold that against it. It's so unrelentingly bleak and so devoid of any kind of comeuppance you'll say "well that's the point", but it doesn't exactly make for a fun film-watching experience. It almost feels like there should be an extra half-hour tacked on to tie up loose ends. But, of course, that's not how real life works. Sometimes we have to swallow the ugly truths presented to us and we don't ever get closure.
Nevertheless, it's extremely well done and well-plotted. Benicio del Toro is great, and Josh Brolin plays his part so well it's hard to stop hating him when the movie's over. A Rotten Tomatoes review commented that they felt Emily Blunt was miscast, because she so often looks like the smartest person in the room, and in this movie, she so rarely ever is. That's a pretty on-point complaint, and the movie does kind of stretch the bounds of believability with her character.
That aside, everything else was top-notch, and a particular set piece involving a tunnel near the end of the film is eye-popping in how well it's crafted and how tense it is.

Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015)

7.5/10
Another "fine" movie, slightly more "fine" than The Danish Girl and with a more interesting, knottier story, but still not exactly a classic. Tom Hanks plays this kind of role in his sleep - the affable everyman in a situation where he's out of his depth. Not that I think Russian spies would have been well-received in America during the Cold War, but the movie's insistence on treating Hanks' character as the only sane man in the country (even his own wife can't understand why her husband - a lawyer - would defend a spy) is grating. Other than that, everybody does their jobs well and I probably won't remember much of the movie in a few months' time.

Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)

4/10
I'm not much of a Bond fan, but I did enjoy Skyfall. This is scripted by many of the same minds who wrote Skyfall, and shares a director, Sam Mendes. My feeling was they went back to the well a bit too much - is it the trend in every Bond film now where the events have to be so deeply connected to Bond's psychological profile, or his upbringing as a child? And does every gesture have to threaten the entire existence of the '00' section as we know it? What happened to Bond just trying to save the world from a bad dude in a movie that clocks in at a more reasonable, non-epic length?
These re-hashed themes feel very tired in Spectre. After a great opening sequence the movie quickly plunges into monotony. Christoph Waltz finally shows up as Blofeld about 4 hours in, but is totally wasted with a boring backstory that has him acting more like a passive aggressive math teacher who ends up with a cool scar in the end. Not only that but he's on-screen for roughly sixteen minutes of the whole thing. Why hire such a great actor only to give him such a milquetoast part and barely show him? Lea Seydoux, at least, was a pleasantly inspired and thoroughly successful choice as a Bond girl.
I don't blame Daniel Craig for wanting to be done with the franchise after this bloated, boring entry. Let's pick up some new writers and a new director to get some fresh looks all around while we're re-casting the lead role.

The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, 2015)

7/10
The cynic in me says that this was a movie that was made not because it was great material for this movie, but because it was 2015 and somebody had to make a movie about a pioneering transgender woman. So that's all well and good. I wasn't cynical enough to hate it - it's perfectly fine. The costumes and sets and cinematography are lavish and gorgeous. Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander turn in two fine performances but their chemistry is the real stand-out. The movie goes through the paces without too many dips and turns, although it ends very abruptly. Thankfully much of the focus is on the main characters' response to Einar Werner's struggle, and not a boring exercise in "what will society think", save for a rote scene of Einer (as Lili) getting beat up. I wouldn't say it rises too far above its claim to being Oscar bait, but it's not the worst offender I've ever seen.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015)

5/10
I really liked the first Avengers. Also, it's one of the few superhero franchises where I haven't already missed a dozen entries and feel hopelessly behind the curve (X-Men, Captain America) so I'm doing my best to keep up with this one. And I'm having a hard time trying to pin down why I didn't like this one so much. Its plot feels extremely fractured, not so much in a confusing way but just that it's so noticeably all over the place. The amount of time devoted to the in-fighting in this group (just so they can inevitably bond together at the right moment) is bordering on critical mass, and it was already a criticism of mine the first time around. It feels like padding time in a movie that doesn't need any more padding. And OK, I understand it for the heroes, but geez, do you really have to make even the villain a smarmy, quippy, banter-heavy caricature?
The battle scenes were certainly impressive, but maybe the overall effect was like spending two and a half hours with the volume turned up to 11. After a while, things stopped registering and I got bored. Maybe it's me.

Sisters (Jason Moore, 2015)

7.5/10
One reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes said "if we're going to have one more dumb man-child comedy, at least this one has Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in it". That's a pretty good line. Sisters is very much in the Stepbrothers/Ferrell et al. style, but it's better than simply "Stepbrothers for chicks" (granted I didn't think much of Stepbrothers). The movie is probably as raunchy as anything the "Frat Pack" have put out, and it has the old "let's put off being adults as long as possible" trope that those movies (and Bridesmaids, and any other Apatow-produced comedy in general seems to have these days) use at their core.
The chemistry between Fey and Poehler doesn't need to be stated. Poehler plays pretty much the same character she always seems to play, the slightly naïve and awkward but more mature one, but at least Fey gets to try on being more of a brassy shitshow, to more interesting results.
There are some good laughs, but at 2h07m, it definitely starts to wear out its welcome, and that's not helped by the "everybody gets a happy ending" ending that feels very rote and contrived. But it was funny, and that's all I was looking for.

Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)

7.5/10
Contrary to the above, here's one I thought I would like even more than I did. It was good, Brie Larson was as good as she was hyped to me, but I was expecting even more of an emotional punch. Although I liked how the second half of the movie dealt with the aftermath, it was hard not to feel like the movie lost some steam and was searching for a solid foothold. I enjoyed it on just about every level but I still can't say I wasn't expecting something a little more.

The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)

8/10
I stewed on this one for a while before finally bringing it up to an 8 from the 7.5 or so I had in mind when I saw it. It is certainly the most interesting movie Tarantino has made in almost a decade, since Death Proof I would say. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained were cartoony throwaways. The Hateful Eight isn't perfect, and it probably riffs on Reservoir Dogs a little too much to stand on its own as a dazzlingly unique Tarantino creation. But it did feel, at the very least, like QT was challenging himself with this script. These are some of the most interesting characters he's written in a long time, and his knack for storytelling is as sharp as ever. As a theatre-style, locked-room mystery, it's very interesting. As a movie, well you probably could have shaved 20-30 minutes from the runtime, and I don't think it really says much despite the presence of the superficial racial politics that Tarantino is eternally obsessed with, but I liked it more than I thought I would. I was expecting a big action movie and it's quite a different beast indeed. So, not "perfect" but I'll happily settle for "interesting" at this point in Tarantino's career.

The Revenant (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2015)

8.5/10
I don't have too much to say that hasn't already been said, except maybe to sing the praises of Tom Hardy some more because wow he was good. That's not to say DiCaprio wasn't but for a film with such a dominating central role, Hardy held his own and then some.
If you've heard anything at all about the movie you probably know how it's going to play out, so story-wise there aren't any huge surprises but the direction and photography is a marvel, and the final stand-off is one of the most brutal man-to-man fight scenes I've ever seen. And I know it's practically a meme at this point but the bear scene is still something to behold, I have no idea how they pulled that off and made it look so visceral and real.

High-Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015)

7.5/10
I didn't realize going in this was an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard book, but knowing that at the end, it makes sense. The movie starts out very stylishly and very mysteriously. I wouldn't say I liked it less as it went on, but there is a certain sense of "...oh" when the central themes start to emerge and they're quite a bit less mysterious or innovative as you thought they would be at the start of the movie. That's a horrible sentence, does it make any sense? In the first act of the film I was dazzled with reminisces of Terry Gilliam and Stanley Kubrick and by the end of the film I was drawing parallels to the kinda-clunky-but-also-very-showy Snowpiercer from a few years ago. Ben Wheatley has all kinds of talent (see his last one A Field in England if you haven't) and he's really good at holding my attention. I like that he's getting high profile work and even if I didn't love this one I'll be paying attention to what comes next.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (Jorma Taccone & Akiva Schaffer, 2016)

6/10
Even if we all know that's Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island guys pretending to be pop stars and making a fake documentary, what's the point in presenting yourself as a documentary when you just cast big stars in other roles? Tim Meadows is the manager, Sarah Silverman is the publicist, Maya Rudolph is an appliance salesperson. If the movie isn't willing to make any effort to sell itself as a documentary, even if it's a comedy, why should I care? The movie doesn't stop there but even stoops to lame meta-jokes: Justin Timberlake plays the group's chef, and in one scene he's singing to himself, and the guys tell him to shut up and leave the singing to the pros! Get it? Because, in real life, in fact, Justin Timberlake is the pro!!! It's like casting Tony Iommi or Joe Perry as a guitar tech for the Spinal Tap guys and winking at the camera the entire time. Surely this is close to if not the lowest form of comedy?
As if that isn't enough, Popstar is jam-packed with more celebrities, playing themselves, giving on-camera testimonials to the group's greatness - Carrie Underwood, Nas, A$AP Rocky and Ringo Starr to name just a few of the many. In literally every scene there's a new celeb cameo designed to elicit a titter of recognition from the crowd, which smacks of laziness to me.
But that's, overall, my problem (ideologically) with this movie. Everybody is so clearly in on the joke, so obviously having fun with the notions of what it means to be a pop star in 2016, that how could the satire not be completely toothless? How can you offend anyone if you're trying so hard to include everyone?
All of that may maybe be enough to sink the movie on its own merits...but it's actually a pretty funny movie. Notwithstanding my examples above (or once you get past them). Undoubtedly, the Lonely Island guys know comedy pretty well. There are a lot of jokes and lines that are quite funny, and even if they don't land, there's another joke coming up in three seconds that might be more to your taste. So, of course, it's the old dilemma of picking the movie apart versus shutting up and just laughing along. It's easier to say Popstar works on some levels and not on others. If you give up your hopes of Popstar being a biting satire and instead just enjoy it for what it is, you may find yourself laughing more than you expected. At least I did. I'm not in a hurry to watch it again but if I turned on the TV and it was playing, I'd probably stick around till the end. For whatever that's worth.

Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze, 2014)

7/10
I'll give this movie maybe a slightly higher score than it deserves just because I was suckered in by the central premise (gimmick if you prefer): a horror movie where the action takes place entirely on a computer screen, via Skype, Spotify, Gmail, Facebook, Chatroulette, etc. It delivered very cleverly on this premise and handled its central technology very well and believably. As a horror movie, I'm forced to admit it falls short in some areas. It's just not that scary, and for a while the movie dips into a little too much "teenage revenge drama" and neglects the scares for entirely for too long. So I enjoyed it, it moved along briskly (barely 75 minutes long too which is an ideal length for a movie like this) and it kept me entertained and engaged the entire time. No classic but a nice, clever little movie.

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)

7/10
I will confess that I am a sucker for self-referential plots in movies. What I mean is, Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche are rehearsing a movie script in the Swiss alps and the movie frequently and cleverly blurs the lines between the script and their relationship. Even if, admittedly, I'm a little unclear as to the ends it achieved in this movie, I was still dazzled in a couple of scenes. The actresses are both great, especially Stewart (maybe because we expect it more from Binoche and less from her) and Chloe Grace Moretz was very good too. I probably couldn't explain this movie to you very well, but as far as a movie about an actress coming to terms with her aging self and faced with the threat of a younger generation (not at all a new concept in cinema by any means) I found it quite interesting.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015)

9/10
Although I like the franchise, I'm not even a huge Star Wars fan and even I could tell just how much was being borrowed from the original trilogy. But you know what they say...if you're going to steal, steal from the best. I thought the movie was really fun, and to invoke a stupid cliché, It Really Felt Like Star Wars Again when the prequels often did not. I thought the chemistry between John Boyega and Daisy Ridley was a joy to watch. I was not expecting Harrison Ford back in such a big role but he really carried a lot the movie unexpectedly. Even Adam Driver, probably my last choice in the world for someone to play a villain in a Star Wars movie, looked great. So what I liked overall was that the script seemed to draw great performances out of lesser known actors, whereas the prequel scripts seemed to drag down even objectively excellent actors (Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman). Really lots of fun and well done.

Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)

5/10
I didn't think it was bad as some people were saying, but it wasn't that great either. The Jurassic Park franchise relies on very smart people making consistently dumb and illogical decisions, and maybe it's because we're four films (right?) deep now but those illogical decisions feel harder to stomach than ever. The biggest problem for me was that the movie doesn't ever really feel fun, at least not in the sense the original did. Almost from the word go we're dropped into a park where things are (a) motivated by capitalistic greed and (b) going dangerously wrong. Where's the fun in that? Two other problems were the two annoyingly trope-y kid characters and the hilariously shoehorned-in romantic subplot. Some of the dinosaur kills felt remarkably gratuitous (even though, unlike JP, the horror aspect is almost completely dropped, so these gory kills feel weirdly out of place) and you're never totally sure who to cheer for between Chris Pratt and his group, or the militant guy and his crew who do make some decent points, or the heel-turning raptors, or the main "big bad" dinosaur, or what. It just led to disinterest for me.

Foxcatcher (Bennett Miller, 2014)

6.5/10
I intentionally kept myself in the dark about the central story so I could go into the movie blind. It just took me longer than I expected to get around to watching the movie. At first I was very much impressed with the cinematography and direction, which are not usually meant to be eyecatching in a biopic like this. But as the movie started to sag in its second act, it felt more dull than artistic. The umpteenth time we're subjected to a misty shot of the estate with a plinky piano backing score, you start to wonder if these shots are standing in for the fact that the movie doesn't really have a whole lot to say in the end. It never attempts to delve into the psychology behind John du Pont or his motivations, and it generally keeps all of its characters at a frustrating remove. And by the end of the film I was left to wonder "is that all there is?" which I suppose is a natural byproduct of making a movie about a senseless event. Full marks to the three principal actors (even though I felt Steve Carrell's accent, as good as he was overall, was a little all over the place) and the film is certainly gorgeous to look at, I just wish there were more.

Keanu (Peter Atencio, 2016)

7/10
Thought it was okay, not as laugh out loud funny as I would have hoped for but there are some good lines. I thought it poked good fun at the gangster movie cliches, but despite that the structure of the movie felt heavily borrowed from the 21 Jump Street remake - a comedy about two guys in a "fish out of water" scenario, one of them gets somewhat pulled into the lifestyle, they have to prove they're legit, etc. There's even scenes in both of them where they're made to ingest the drug at the center of the narrative. And the semi-ironic love for a pop star (George Michael here) reminded me of the Backstreet Boys in This is the End, and I feel like there's another example of this that's eluding me at the moment. So not terribly original I don't think, but entertaining enough.

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015)

8/10
I don't have too much to say except that it's a really good story, really well-acted that constantly keeps you guessing and has everyone's motives properly kept in the dark. A good soundtrack and fantastic location and set design. Very cleverly written and I enjoyed it well enough.

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder, 2016)

5/10
This was not as downright bad as I expected it to be but it's still an extremely confused, holy mess of a film. In fact that's partly why it's so frustrating, because good ideas, scenes, dialogue, etc constantly rub up against bad ones. It has weird contradictory problems - it's very long and is constantly throwing plot exposition at you but at the same time it feels underdeveloped and half-baked. There is enough about Affleck's Batman that's different from Bale's so as to make him intriguing as a character, but not enough to make his motives throughout the movie feel believable. Jesse Eisenberg did the best he could, but his Lex Luthor was a boring cliché of a character from start to finish. On one hand, I liked the idea of Luthor pitting Superman against Batman, but I don't think it was executed terribly well. We're never given much of a reason to care about why this is happening, and the idea of two of the biggest superheroes in the world being manipulated and acting like children was more lame than anything. The battle scenes are great, although the final one with Doomsday which felt very messy.
That's kind of how the whole movie went for me - anything done well was almost immediately undone or at least marred by something else done poorly. It became very evident that the starting point for this project was "let's do Batman vs. Superman - anybody have any good ideas for that?" as opposed to "I have a good idea for doing Batman vs. Superman". Zack Snyder has to take it all on the chin for this failure but it's also evident that enough things went wrong to suggest this was the fault of the many.

Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015)

6/10
I was a little surprised at the overwhelmingly positive reviews of this movie. It seemed up my alley but I expected to like it more than I did. It had kind of superficial Herzog quality to it, but rather than being mystical and subtle it was kind of heavy-handed and on the nose. The sound design and mixing was excellent, but I'm a little on the fence about the use of black and white. I don't know, the movie did look good too but at the same time I kind of question washing out the whole Amazon, I feel like something was lost. Overall I found it okay, I liked the idea of a character bridging two narratives and being told via the diary of the people involved but as a whole it just didn't resonate too much with me.

Deadpool (Tim Miller, 2016)

7/10
This was not quite the "revolution in superhero movies" I feel like some people hyped it up to be. If you know a little about the Deadpool character going in there probably won't be anything here you wouldn't expect. Some of the jokes land (my absolute favorite being Deadpool's confusion as to whether he's being taken to see James McAvoy or Patrick Stewart when he's being hauled off to meet with Charles Xavier) and some of them, particularly the cruder ones, feel kinda high school-ish and cringey in their attempts to be "edgy".
I saw some people complaining about its obvious low budget, but that was one of its more endearing traits to me. I did find myself hoping for some cameos/crossovers from other Marvel characters just because it would have been fun to see Deadpool interact with them, but he had good enough chemistry with Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead that it wasn't a major issue.
Overall I was entertained and not insulted, and I don't demand too much more out of comic book movies these days. More than anything I felt happy for Ryan Reynolds(strangely, as I have no strong feelings towards him one way or the other) for making a passion project work and pleasing as many people as it did.

Inside Out (Pete Docter & Ronnie del Carmen, 2015)

7.5/10
I thought it was fine, but maybe a step down from what I was expecting because I'm used to setting the bar high for Pixar. I was kind of hoping it would touch even more on mental health issues actually (maybe a lofty goal for a cartoon aimed at children, I know) - it felt like it brushed up against those issues momentarily but quickly backed away and failed to re-address them. It was good entertainment although the ending felt rushed.

10 Cloverfield Lane (Dan Trachtenberg, 2016)

6.5/10
This probably started out as a really cool script. The idea of a man building a huge bomb shelter and essentially kidnapping (or saving) two others to live down there with him lends itself to all sorts of interesting questions. Is he a savior, or a nutjob? Is there really something deadly aboveground, or is it all just a ruse to keep his captures from trying to escape? Unfortunately, the apparent need to shoehorn this script into a movie to kickstart "Cloverfield" as a brand name franchise gives it away up front - if there wasn't something going on aboveground, why call it a "Cloverfield movie" at all? This isn't a spoiler, just common sense that lessens the slack on an otherwise taut and extremely well-crafted first two acts.
I always get a little nervous when I can't figure out how a movie is going to end, allowing for the possibility I'm going to get blown away but fearing that I'm going to be disappointed. Unfortunately it was very much the latter here. It doesn't seem like the writers could really figure out an ending either as what we got felt goofy, unrelated to and undeserving of the solid hour and fifteen minutes that preceded it. John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were both great and there is a much better movie somewhere in here, but what we're given is ultimately a disappointment.

Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick, 2015)

5/10
Thinking that 88:88 had put me in the right mindset, I decided to watch Terrence Malick's new one. His last one, To the Wonder, was godawful trash that made me want to set my head on fire. Knight of Cups is not as hateable, but it's not very good either. For the first 30 minutes or so, it's actually kind of fun seeing Malick in a metropolitan setting like Los Angeles. The fun wears off, however, and then you have 90 more minutes with a mopey, mostly mute main character (Christian Bale filling the shoes here) and a succession of women who are famous (Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Natalie Portman) but who really could have been anyone being that all they have to do is walk around and be lithe. I found myself thinking, around the 78th minute, that just once I'd like to see a fat person in a Malick movie, walking around barefoot in a field or running their fingers along a weathered barn or whatever one does in one of his movies.
Like I said, after about a half hour a certain numbness sets in when you realize this is all the film is going to be and nothing more, but there's a level of melancholy too because I realized that his two most recent movies really just feel like Malick doing cheap imitations of his own previous, better films (I know Tree of Life is divisive but I'm in the "yay" camp). It's really just depressing. Yeah, there are some great shots that maybe no one else in the world would do (the dogs chasing tennis balls underwater was a particular breath-snatcher) but lately it's hasn't been worth sitting through the rest of the junk for those few moments of affirmation. Malick is rapidly eroding the goodwill he's built up over so many years, and I'm not sure how many of these navel-gazing efforts we can collectively tolerate before we say enough is enough.
I did like the score though.

88:88 (Isiah Medina, 2015)

7/10
Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina's first feature 88:88 premiered at TIFF last year to some acclaim. It is much closer to experimental video art than anything else. Images flicker by in seconds, jump-cutting and bleeding into each other. The audio, a collection of whispered voiceovers, freestyle rapping, one-sided phone conversations, sound and music almost never matches what's seen onscreen. An obvious point of reference is latter-day Godard. Another is latter-day Malick, mostly due to the voiceovers. Robert Ashley may also be a distant antecedent.
The title refers to what's shown on electronic clocks after one's power has been cut and then restored. It would be wrong to say 88:88 is "about" being poor, but it's certainly a theme. I saw a tweet once that said something like "I'm first world poor - I use my iPhone or my laptop to check my online banking to see how broke I am". That's sort of a main idea here, where iPhones and weed take priority over heating bills.
Medina is a young guy and there is a "student film" vibe here but I don't mean that in a wholly negative sense. It's simply a film about many themes that a lot of college or university level students would spend a lot of time musing about - money, philosophy, skateboarding, girlfriends, parents, what to do with one's life. Some may scoff at a movie dealing with such first world problems (and the pretentious presentation to go along with it), but it's undoubtedly a film about themes that are real to Medina and his friends and many others his age. Visually it's fun to watch, there are some really great shots, and at 65 minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2015)

6/10
How did they take such an explosive subject matter and make such a blah movie out of it? The problem with Spotlight is that it's a movie on rails, never once deviating from the track that takes it from start to finish. There's nothing in here that you don't expect to happen, in fact, even less happens than what you might expect. In the course of uncovering the central scandal, the Spotlight team runs into almost no obstacles, no resistance, and anything that does arise as a potential obstacle to overcome (e.g. Mark Ruffalo's character getting to the courthouse in time) feels like a screen-written artifice. More cynically you could call this movie "3 Men and 1 Woman Doing Their Jobs" because that's exactly what it felt like watching.
One interesting angle (whether or not certain members of Spotlight themselves were implicit in the cover-up) is brought up and brushed aside almost immediately. It leaves enough of an impression but I wish it was probed with a bit more detail, to give even more of a sense of a community truly and collectively looking the other way.
Seen through the lens of other, similar movies nominated for Academy Awards, Spotlight is closer to me to a thing like The Imitation Game from last year. It gets up on the screen, tells its story, all the actors do their jobs well, and then it leaves without making any significant impact or stirring up any real emotion. It was fine, but not much more for me.

The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2015)

8.5/10
The tone of the movie was exactly what I expected going in, and it straddled the line of serious/comedic very well. With a directing history filled with comedies I was impressed by Adam McKay's ability to stay on the right side of the line. I even enjoyed the "dumbing it down" celebrity cameos which could have felt gimmicky and self-conscious in another movie but felt welcome in this one.
I haven't read the book (yet) but no doubt Michael Lewis provided ample material for McKay and the ensemble cast to work with. Everybody is pretty much great across the board, and the performances feel genuine despite the goofy hairpieces (in contrast to American Hustle, for example, which had goofy performances to match the wigs).
I was also glad they focused largely on the heart of the matter, the financial crisis and the "big short" plot itself. The Moneyball adaptation faltered shoehorning in Billy Beane's daughter. The Big Short veered a little in that direction (the brother's suicide) but mostly stayed on the right side of the line. Entertaining, informative and scary.

The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998)

6/10
I watched this one a while ago but never reviewed it. It was OK. It started off very promising with a really cool, persistent disco soundtrack. At first I thought the whole movie would take place over one night in the club, which would have been great. But as we got to know the characters better the movie took a dip for me. Writer/director Whit Stillman call this part of his "doomed-Bourgeois-in-love" trilogy and that's a pretty apt description of what happens here as you get to watch a bunch of white, well-to-do, attractive people bicker and try to find their way as young adults. Their problems come off as very much the privileged, first-world kind and none of the characters are especially sympathetic, and often they feel more like ciphers for Stillman's unique lines and phrasings as opposed to relateable adults. The beginning is good, the end is good, but I kind of wish the middle was a different movie about different things. Good soundtrack though!