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.

White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932)

4/10
A Haitian zombie movie from the 30's starring Bela Lugosi, it mostly wastes its Haitian setting for a predictable love-story-with-zombies thing. I thought it was fairly boring and nothing really stood out in any way.

The Monuments Men (George Clooney, 2014)

4/10
This is a strange, uncertain movie, done in by the fact that it can't decide if it wants to be a comedy or if it wants to be a drama. The end result is that it's not particularly funny and it's not particularly dramatic. George Clooney casts himself and a bunch of buddies who can do comedy (Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean DuJardin, Bob Balaban) so you might think you're getting a WW2-set Ocean's Eleven, but frankly the comedic moments here are so light they make Ocean's Eleven seem downright edgy.
But this is a WW2 movie after all and there has to be some sad parts (spoilers: not everyone in the ensemble makes it to the end) but the characters are sketched so shallow that nothing really registers. And while the real Monuments Men mission was undoubtedly important, the movie is a complete failure at creating any real tension, which makes the whole expedition feel mostly like a lark.
The tonal shifts make the whole movie feel messy and uneven. Murray and Balaban, for instance, are paired off and have a nice, grumpy old men kind of comedic chemistry...meanwhile Cate Blanchett plays her character like she was told she's in Schindler's List II, wringing melodrama out of just about every word.
There's an interesting story in here, and it probably deserved better than this movie, which is not inept enough to be hateable but it doesn't offer much to like about it either. Mostly it just glides by.

Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard, 2014)

4/10
My great shame is that I didn't see this in 3D, which is seemingly a sin on par with watching Avatar or Gravity on one's smartphone. I saw it in the officially-released 2D Blu-Ray version, so that still counts for something? I would like to see it in 3D, not because I enjoyed the movie but because apparently there's some pretty impressive and rule-breaking 3D shots that I think would be very interesting to see "for real". The way the movie is shot (by cinematographer Fabrice Aragno) is by far its strength as there's a real hypercolor beauty to a lot of the shots. Goodbye to Language is if nothing else a really strong and convincing argument for how beautiful digital filmmaking can be.
As for the movie itself, well, to me it's an arthouse Avatar. Avatar was beautiful but packaged with a dumb plot that a 5 year old could understand. Goodbye to Language is beautiful and packaged with a dumb plot that nobody on earth could possibly understand. Where Avatar quotes anyone-can-get-it fare like Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas, Goodbye to Language is its polar opposite, jammed with no-one-can-get-it references to Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Rilke, Solzhenitsyn, Ellul and too many others. And if you stripped away the technical marvels of Avatar you were left with little of interest; the same, I think, applies to Goodbye to Language. Or at least it did for me. And maybe Godard wanted it that way too. But his movie still bored me to tears. Even after watching it in part or in whole three consecutive times (it's only 69 minutes long) and reading as much as I could about it, and deconstructing and piecing back together its twin narratives and double actors and obscure references, the value of the movie was almost entirely lost on me and I have my suspicions that it would have been lost on a whole lot of other people too if it didn't have the uncriticizable name of Jean-Luc Godard attached to it.
Nonetheless I do remain impressed that Godard has not gone quietly into his twilight years - this is a movie as provocative and impenetrable as anything released by any younger filmmakers out there, and it still could not have been made by any other filmmaker but Godard. Not many directors in their 80's have ever continued to try to push boundaries as aggressively as Godard has without dipping into self-parody at any point, and I have plenty of respect for that.

The Fall of the House of Usher (Ivan Barnett, 1949)

4/10
One of many adaptations of Poe's story, this is the 1949 version by director Ivan Barnett. It's not particularly good, especially the story which gets muddled in a hurry. The director elects to use a strange device in which the story begins in the present day with a bunch of men sitting around a smoking lounge telling tales, and one of the men decides to recite The Fall of the House of Usher, which leads to the main story portion of the film. I'm not sure why this was done, but it was pretty unnecessary.
The movie gets points for making "the hag" creepy enough and there's some cool black and white gothic shots, but one of the other adaptations probably did this story better.

Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

4/10
I read the book last year in anticipation of the movie. It was no masterpiece - messy and convoluted, as expected from Pynchon, but not worthless. Doc Sportello is a great character (the book is full of great characters honestly) and the almost-but-not-quite-post-hippie fried California 1970 vibe was nailed.
The book was fun and frustrating, and obviously any attempt to bring its mess of plot and characters to the screen was going to be a challenge. PTA does a reasonably good job of paring Pynchon's novel down into something that could be put on screen, although in 2 and a half hours he still doesn't ever really come close to saying anything worthwhile or telling a compelling story. What's shocking is how boring the movie is, which the book rarely was. Maybe it's Pynchon's language that made the book compelling and was lost completely in translation. I was reminded of an earlier adaption, Walter Salles' On the Road, which put the book on the screen but completely lost the charm of the author's voice in doing so.
I found the movie really dropped the ball on my two previously-mentioned favorite parts. I really didn't like Phoenix's portray of Doc. Doc in the book reacts to the ridiculous circumstances he gets caught up in with a fried, bemused, mildly curious detachment. Phoenix reacts to almost everything with a furrowed brow and a scowl. Paranoia is a theme in the book but Phoenix's portrayal takes it too far. Sportello as a character to me is way closer to someone like the Dude in the Big Lebowski - solving the mystery of the story almost because he has nothing better to do so why not.
And the other aspect, the stoned early 70's in California, was almost completely absent. Too much of the movie takes place in mostly cramped, unattractive interiors. The era was endemic to Pynchon's book, Anderson treats it almost as an afterthought. The movie could have easily taken place in the present day and there would be little difference.
Finally I was really disappointed in PTA's direction, which was so bland and unadventurous I never would have guessed it was the guy who did There Will Be Blood and The Master at the helm of this thing. A director for hire could have put together a similar effort.
So there you go. There's almost nothing in here worth recommending to anyone for any reason. A huge missed opportunity to make something really cool, in my opinion.

American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013)

4/10
Being annoyed by a David O. Russell film is becoming something of a masochistic year-end tradition, but I've never been bored by one, until now. American Hustle spreads roughly thirty minutes of entertainment over a painful near-2.5 hours, taking forever to reach a conclusion that's mildly interesting instead of being jaw-droppingly clever. It's representative of the movie as a whole, however - this is a movie that should be so vibrant the screen it plays on should be shaking. The characters should be more interesting, the jokes should be funnier, the soundtrack should dazzle, the con in the plot should thrill...none of these things happen. This feels like Russell doing his best Tarantino impression and failing miserably. What results is indeed a mildly interesting, occasionally entertaining, mostly boring, sloppily-scripted mess.
As far as the much-hyped cast goes, it's hit and miss. Christian Bale and Amy Adams fare best, which is good because they're the center of the movie. Bradley Cooper is all over the place, trying anything in vain to make his character into something. Jeremy Renner either sleepwalks through his role or simply isn't capable of bringing anything more. But Jennifer Lawrence is the true travesty, stuck with an awful, obnoxious character and resorting to painful histrionics to try and make it work. She deserved better, instead of having to lower herself to the gimmickry seen here.
For a movie that lasts as long as this one does, and with so much screen talent, to be only somewhat entertaining in spurts, is simply not good enough.

Story of My Death (Albert Serra, 2013)

4/10
Albert Serra's first two movies, Honor de Cavaleria and Birdsong, are among my favorites, retelling the journeys of Don Quixote and the 3 Wise Men respectively. Story of My Death features two more historical characters, Casanova and Dracula. Like his previous two, Story of My Death is very slow and very long (about 3 hours). Unlike his other two, it features a lot of dialogue - this is a hideous miss on Serra's part. Casanova takes up the first 2 hours of the movie, and it's a slog - annoyingly reciting Serra's lousy speeches on women, religion, history, as well as eating food forever, laughing like an idiot, having sex like an idiot, and taking a straining dump. He's a terrible character and the movie is only slightly saved by the appearance of Dracula and the threat of something - anything - happening. If you lopped off the first hour entirely, you might convince me that this is a good movie. As it is, it's borderline unwatchable.
The one "new" thing Serra did get right was the music - there are about 4 music cues in the movie (as opposed to none in the other 2, by my memory) and they're all exquisite. But as far as branching out into dialogue and conversations - keep em mute if this is the best you can do.

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)

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.

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.

She-Devils on Wheels (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1968)

4/10
I found myself with some birthday money to spend, so I bought a couple of collections of shlock legend Herschell Gordon Lewis' movies. I've seen and enjoyed Two Thousand Maniacs and The Wizard of Gore, and the sets are as cheap as the movies themselves, so why not. I popped in one I didn't know much about, She-Devils on Wheels. It's about an all-girl motorcycle gang who go about having orgies (kissing fests, really) and brawls and rough initiations. It was pretty much a dud - there's not enough here to titillate either on the sexy side or the gore side, and no real plot of any importance emerges to hold one's attention. I'm sure Tarantino had this in mind among others when making Death Proof, though.

Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff, 2003)

4/10
A lot of people like this movie - I didn't. It wasn't funny and I wasn't hoping for any kind of redemption for Billy Bob Thornton's character, so with very few laughs and no rooting interest, what am I doing here? I will concede that it was a great acting job on his part, definitely the movie's highlight. Otherwise, who cares?

Clip (Maja Milos, 2012)

4/10
With the worldwide buzz garnered (for better or for worse) by A Serbian Film, it's not much of a surprise that other Serbian films would try to one-up it, or at least hop on the bandwagon. And why not - billing a film as another "shocker from Serbia" is an easy way for festivals to sell tickets. Maja Milos' Clip dispenses with the blood and gore and focuses on sex and nudity - namely full-frontal, explicit nudity amongst barely-legal teenagers. Given Clip centers on one girl and her three friends (mostly centering on them having sex and doing drugs) and the fact that it's directed by a woman, it's easy to paint this as the female version of Larry Clark's Kids...but that was 15 years ago, when it seemed fresh and dangerous. Now it seems trite and obnoxious, existing purely to shock and failing at everything else.

Dead Man's Burden (Jared Moshe, 2012)

4/10
I keep going to these new, indie western movies hoping someone is going to revitalize the genre. Meek's Cutoff came the closest, but others like The Last Christeros and this one fall well short. This is more a family drama set in the west than a real western, but bares none of the spark of, say, The Furies, an example of such a thing being done a million times better. I won't bother detailing the plot much - a woman, her husband, and her long-absent-since-returned brother squabble over the woman's land - because it would probably be as boring to write as it was to watch. Aside from the grave mistake of being boring, Dead Man's Burden fails in a major way: at least two of the main characters don't look like they belong in a western - they look like they've been pulled from Central Casting and given a layer of grime. The woman in particular has brown roots showing through her blonde hair the entire film - I wonder what brand of salon dye they used in the 1800's? The music for the movie is also terrible, barely soap opera caliber obnoxiousness. Maybe next year someone will get it right...

Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol, 1966)

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Hot Tub Time Machine (Steve Pink, 2010)

4/10
This had "looks stupid but actually is pretty funny" hype so we watched it...yeah it was only stupid. In fairness, I already disliked half the main ensemble (Rob Corddry has been shrill and obnoxious in everything I've seen him overact in and John Cusack has the charisma of a baked potato) so the movie didn't have much of a chance with me. I do like Craig Robinson and Clark Duke was okay but I thought his role had a lot more potential. There were a few good jokes and a lot of throwaways, but the actual plotlines were pretty boring in themselves, so it was lose-lose in that regard. Just wasn't for me.

Wicker Park (Paul McGuigan, 2004)

4/10
Weird romance/thriller that I watched with a friend on Netflix...it jumps through a lot of hoops in trying to keep our starcrossed lovers seperate (mistaken identities, stalking, and a lot of information being withheld from the viewer until just the right moment), only to unite them inevitably in a standard Hollywood "crying together at the airport" finale. Apparently it's a remake of a French film called L'appartement which, by all accounts, did it a lot better and more coherently.

War Horse (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

4/10
I won a couple of passes to an advance screening of Spielberg's latest, and I'm happy to not have paid for it. The story follows that of a horse born on the precipice of World War I - from being raised by a teenage farmhand named Albie, through his entry into the war via the British army, and subsequent owners, protectors and guardians that include two young German defectors, a French girl and her grandfather, a sympathetic horseman in the German army, and others. The film is of epic scope and epic length, but its simple story can't support of the weight of this blockbuster that was built around it. It failed to strike any emotional note whatsoever with me, and was just a big bore. The battle scenes felt slapdash and way too sanitized and the emotions were one-note and hammered home with an ending you could predict upon seeing the commercials. Spielberg also fails to imbue the horse itself with any true sense of personality or character, although characters in the movie all fall in love with it minutes after crossing its path, so I guess we were supposed to as well. Some nice-looking photography aside, there was little to enjoy here.

Vinyl: Tales from the Vienna Underground (Andrew Standen-Raz, 2010)

4/10
Maybe I was disappointed with what this wasn't rather than what it was. There's some stuff in the Viennese arts that interests me from Hermann Nitsch up through Christian Fennesz, but almost none of it was touched on in this documentary, which instead focused on the current Viennese techno "movement", if it can be called such. Unfortunately the movie has a tremendously narrow scope - no attempt is given to explain why this movement is more important than any similar scenes around the world, where it came from, and what it means. A disappointing amount of face time has been given to musicians who can only spew out horrific clichés like "vinyl is like opening a book, CDs are cold and plastic" and "the question all artists have to ask themselves is what's more important - making money or having your music heard". Clichés that, in any event, aren't even Viennese-centric, so who cares? Probably a documentary worth watching on Youtube if you're already a fan of the artists; definitely not one for an outsider to see in a theatre.

Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2011)

4/10
Alexander Sokurov's "non-adaptation" of the Faust legend is told as something of an adult's fairy take, I really don't know what to make of this one, except that I didn't enjoy it. Too ludicrous, too over the top, too uninteresting to ever get me into it, the best part was the actor playing the Devil as some kind of deformed black humorist. Most of the movie is focused on the Devil and Faust's friendship, and helping Faust get the woman he desires, but it's way too ridiculous to register anything. It won the Golden Lion at Venice which I understood more when I found out Darren Aronofsky was head of the jury...this very much reminded me of an Aronofsky film, and all that entails.