6/10
The more I thought about this one the less I liked it. It started off with a clever, original idea, and I would say the first third is enjoyable, but then you realize just how much of a copy-paste job of better Pixar movies it is (only not as funny or moving) and it feels like more of a disappointment. Like they dreamed up this cool universe with all kinds of possibilities and then just did something pretty boring with it, or at least nothing you haven't already seen before. Meh.
6/10
As a fan of Michael Shannon, I wanted to see this movie for a while. It came on TV the other day so I watched it, and it's easy to understand why it slipped under the critical radar. Despite a solid cast and very good performances by just about everybody, the direction and plotting are so by-the-numbers that the movie never elevates itself to anything beyond "movie of the week" status. The story of film's subject, Richard Kuklinski, the family man-slash-contract killer, is such a strange and unique one that it deserves a way more interesting movie than what it was given here.
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.
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.
7.5/10
I haven’t seen much of Aleksei Fedorchenko’s work, just a short from a triptych I saw last year, so I didn’t know what to expect from this one. It has a curious format – a compilation of some twentyish short stories about girls of the Mari community in Russia, all with names beginning with the letter ‘O’. Almost all the stories deal in some way with the girls becoming women and the rites of passage associated with that – puberty, menstruation, first loves and crushes, and so on. The segments range from the bizarre to the light-hearted to the touching. Nothing mindblowing but fun and interesting to watch.
4/10
As much as I like Terrence Malick, most of his movies make me cringe at some point. That's the risk you take in being a poet, or being a romantic, as Malick likely considers himself (and he has a good claim to both titles). But To the Wonder is like Malick without a filter - a 2 hour stream of the worst bits to ever worm their way into his movies. The constant voiceovers are an unending source of embarrassment, coming off completely mawkish and juvenile. They would appear clunky in anyone's debut feature, but for a vet like Malick, they're unforgiveable. The characters flit and romp and carouse in every scene to the point of obnoxiousness, and god help me if Ben Affleck picked up a cheque for his "performance" in the movie.
Every now and then you get a glimpse of the good Malick can do - I really liked the sterile suburban housing setting, some images are indelible (a girl playing hopscotch in the sunlight pouring through a window) and Malick is still a fantastic documentor/recreator of something classically American in cinema. You can usually count on his pretty images to pick up the slack when Malick's storytelling falters, but they can't bear the entire weight, and even they start to appear cheap and repetitive as the backdrop for a wholly uninteresting, uninvolving and emotionally inert movie.
8/10
I don't know much about Jem Cohen, writer/director of Museum Hours, but I understand he was/is primarily a visual artist. I'm not sure if this is his first feature film, but I think it is. Museum Hours obviously owes a lot to Cohen's art background, being mostly set in a museum, featuring long takes of the art within and the landscape outside, and even including a lengthy diatribe centering around the museum's Breughel paintings. You would expect such a film, especially from an inexperienced feature film maker, to be exceedingly dry. Museum Hours is slow, but not dry at all. It feels very alive, treating not only its subjects (museum guard Johann and fish-out-of-water Anne) very humanely but the art as well. It manages to be mature, philosophical and slow, but it's never boring. Cohen engages the audience instead of lecturing them. I found a quote on his Wikipedia page where he says "art is something people do like breathing" and his movie represents that philosophy very well, free from pretension. I found it inspiring and enjoyed it very much.
3/10
I think this came out last year, and seemed mildly interesting from the trailer, but it got terrible reviews. It was on TV the other day so I watched it, and it deserves all the terrible reviews it got. It uses a three-layered approach (Dennis Quaid/Olivia Wilde tell a story about Bradley Cooper/Jeremy Irons telling a story about...two actors I didn't recognize telling a story) to say absolutely nothing interesting, and the film itself is a total bore. I'll give 3 points for the cast, who all deserved much better than this.
7.5/10
An interesting movie about an Arab surgeon in Tel Aviv named Amin who discovers that a recent suicide bombing was perpetrated by his wife of 15 years. The brunt of the movie is him coming to terms with this fact and searching for answers.
It's a good movie, technically well made, very well acted, and dances a very delicate political and religious line but without ever really passing judgment. In fact the movie almost keeps Amin at arm's distance - for someone who lost his wife of 15 years and who was harbouring feelings completely foreign to Amin, his grief doesn't get much screen time. Maybe the writer was afraid that if you show Amin weeping over a suicide bomber's death (even if it was his wife), it would already be asking the audience to empathize with a monstrous act. By the same token, the movie also impresses in its refusal to provide Amin (or the audience) with simple answers, but this too proves somewhat distancing, leaving the movie and its story, with such potential for emotional impact, a little dry.
Also I looked up afterwards who did the music because I would have sworn on anything you put in front of me it was Explosions in the Sky. Turns out it's a guy named Eric Neveux doing a very believable Explosions in the Sky impression. Regardless who it was it fit the movie very well.
7.5/10
This is certainly an original and surreal documentary. Produced by Werner Herzog, at times it feels like the best documentary he never directed. it certainly has a lot of his hallmarks, down to wondering just how much of what you're seeing is real and how much is scripted. And Anwar Congo is as incredible a figure as you would find in a Herzog doc, one of those creatures too unfathomable to be fiction.
Congo is filmed recreating his crimes as aggressor and as victim, as well as revisiting places from his gangster past and even recreating the dreams that continue to haunt him. We're led to believe this reveals some kind of truth to Anwar, who finally seems remorseful by the end of the "exercise", although it's shown so briefly and alongside so many other fantastic scenes it's hard not to question its authenticity.
I wasn't as enamored with the movie as I thought I would be - it's a little long and feels like a bit of a smoke-and-mirrors act at times, and I wondered a couple of times if the 2 and a half hours wouldn't be better spent educating people more about these crimes instead of partially glorifying them for the sake of a quick payoff at the film's end. What, if anything, Congo has learned from his experience making the film is completely given to the ether. But it's certainly interesting and completely unique and I appreciate it for that.
5/10
A film adaptation of Kerouac's book has been in development for, like, 15 years. I can't imagine anyone who had been holding their breath that entire time waiting for the result would be too blown away with what Walter Salles put together here. On the Road struck me as an unfilmable book and this would appear to be the evidence of that. None of the manic urgency and pulse of Kerouac's story is here, and you get the feeling that Salles knows he's painted himself into a corner with this move...scenes pass by without any real conviction or importance attached to them. Major events in the book (Sal's stay at the farm, the sojourn with Burroughs, Mexico) come and go almost as brief vignettes that appear only in the movie because, hey, they were in the book and we had to film them.
Another strange thing is how rarely it felt like the movie was taking place in the late 40's/early 50's. Rather, I was very aware that I was watching a 2012 movie.
As far as the ensemble cast, I felt Garrett Hedlund (Dean) and Kristen Stewart (Marylou) were solid, but didn't really like Sam Riley as Sal and his forced "Kerouac voice". Viggo Mortensen made the best of what he had to work with and Kirsten Dunst felt horribly out of place.
On the whole, this just felt like a movie that didn't need to exist, illuminating nothing from its source material and failing to entertain in addition to that.
8.5/10
I guess the extraordinarily popular The Walking Dead is going to open the doors for a lot of other zombie-related media, conventional or otherwise. The Battery is a really unique take on the zombie apocalypse - actually, it's more like a buddy film with a zombie apocalypse back drop. Made on what must have been a shoestring budget with Jeremy Gardner writing, directing, producing and starring, it's a really smart, heartfelt, stripped down take on a worn-out genre. The core of the movie (really, the entire movie) is the relationship between two kinda-friends, Mickey and Ben, thrown together after a zombie outbreak hits. How they get along, how they bicker, and how they survive, and of course the success of the movie is owing largely to their chemistry and the believability of their relationship. There are super long, slow takes and a really good indie rock soundtrack - so very un-zombie-film-like traits. Imagine Jim Jarmusch directing a zombie/road movie with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg writing the dialogue - something like that, with the indie aesthetic of the also-excellent Bellflower. A zombie movie for people who don't like zombie movies, basically. I really recommend it.
5.5/10
Takashi Miike's other new movie, supposedly more of a return to his "controversial" and shocking past...ehh only sorta. It's another high budget affair (I don't think Miike has to worry about not finding backers anymore regardless of what he wants to do) but it is a little more transgressive...essentially a well-liked teacher, in response to a variety of logical and illogical circumstances, loses his mind and mows an entire class of students down with a shotgun. More or less.
Of course, the image of a teacher stalking his students and shooting them in cold blood is a little unsettling, but the movie is too cartoonish to really be offensive in any measure. It's not really saying much, and its plot kind of jerks forward making some weird detours along the way. I don't know, it's not inventive enough like a Battle Royale, but it's not funny enough in its absurdity either, so it's just kind of there.
8.5/10
Killing time before the movie below, I went to see Frances Ha not knowing much about it aside its positive reviews and comparisons to Woody Allen and the French New Wave. I definitely get both - in fact, in the first few minutes, I was sort of preparing myself for a pretentious and annoying "hipster" flick. But despite its obvious influences, it really wasn't. In fact it was a very disarming and very charming story about a very awkward twentysomething girl basically trying to get her shit together. It's not really laugh-out-loud funny the way a Woody Allen movie can be, and it doesn't contain many great revelations or insights, but it manages to be constantly entertaining and it features one of the most interesting and well-written female leads I've seen in a while, portrayed brilliantly by Greta Gerwig (who also co-wrote the movie). She's the kind of character you wish were real so you could go home and read more about her. In any event I thought the whole movie was very original and very charming, a very pleasant surprise as I was basically using it to spend time before another movie (that I wound up enjoying less than Frances Ha anyway).
6/10
Well it was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, from start to finish. It was like an episode of Family Guy - too many 80's and 90's pop culture references and the odd offensive line here or there that'll make you laugh out loud (delivered exclusively by the bear, mind you). The "kidnapping" plot seemed a little tacked on, as if the movie was self-conscious about the romance between Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis not being enough to sustain the film. For what it was it was all right, but I expected more.
8.5/10
Over a year after it won Mads Mikkelsen a Best Actor prize at Cannes, I can finally see The Hunt for myself, legally, in theatres. And the studios can't figure out why people download movies? Give me a break. The day this sorry film distribution system breaks down the better we'll all be.
ANYWAY. Was it worth the wait? Definitely. Mads Mikkelsen plays a kindergarten aide wrongly accused by one of the children of inappropriate conduct. It was co-written and directed deftly and with a lot of maturity by ex-Dogme 95 adherent Thomas Vinterberg. It's a story that easily could have been played for over-the-top emotions, but both Vinterberg and Mikkelsen do a fantastic job keeping things in check. The bottled-up rage and injustice is felt in turn by the audience, who are rarely allowed any catharsis or any release from the predicament, just like the protagonist. It's a situation that plays out without any easy solutions offered, which is how it should be (unfortunately for all).
My only minor complaints is that the story plays out pretty much as you'd expect without much coming unseen, and that it felt to me like some of the reactions from the other adults in the film to the child's accusations were exaggerated for the benefit of the plot. However, maybe those reactions would indeed be a true reflection of real life reactions, so I can't criticize it too much. Overall highly recommended, and hats off to Vinterberg and Mikkelsen for elevating the material way above what might have been expected.
6/10
Peter Stickland has a way of making moves that sound like they'd be right up my alley, only to lead to inevitable disappointment. First there was his rape-revenge Romanian road movie Katalin Varga, and now his psychological thriller set in the early 80's giallo sound studio of the film's title.
It does some things really well, nailing the colors and atmosphere evocative of the time, and the soundtrack by the band Broadcast is really good too. But nothing much happens in the movie to make you care until it's too late - and by that point it feels like a parlour trick than a plot point or something of relevance. It feels like the movie ends just as it's really beginning, or that Stickland had half of an idea and couldn't figure out where else to go with it so just dropped it. I'm disappointed I wasn't able to like the movie any more than I did, and it's never a good sign when the fictional film being made in the movie (never shown) sounds more interesting than what's transpiring on-screen. It compelled me to put in a Mario Bava flick from the 70's that I was enjoying right up until I fell asleep, but I blame Stickland for getting me to that point, not Bava.
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.
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.
6.5/10
This is a movie that almost feels like a 3-in-1 package deal, like it's compiled from three intertwined stories. The problem is that the movie divulges all of its secrets and mystery in the first act, and then is left with little else to do but beat you over the head with its raison d'etre for the following two, excluding the occasional plot divergences to pad the running time.
Despite that, though, it's not a particularly boring film...the acting is top notch all around, the movie looks good, and the music is excellent (Mike Patton channelling Angelo Badalamenti?). But after about the first hour, there's not much less to do but wait around while Cianfrance gets exactly to where you knew he was going. The two words that kept coming to mind to think of how best to describe the film would be 'clunky' and 'overbearing'.
