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.

The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance, 2012)

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'.

Evil Dead (Fede Alvarez, 2013)

7.5/10
I've never seen the original, so I can't compare the two. I went with a friend who's a diehard fan of the original, and he said the movie departed so much from the original they could have made a few more changes and had a brand new movie, without having to worry about comparisons to a cult classic. So why didn't they? Is this where Hollywood is at now, where we have to attach our film to an existing one if we ever hope to get it made? Yikes...
Incidentally said friend didn't like this remake, but I thought it was pretty good. Although honestly, the state of new horror movies is so pathetic that I think I call one good if it doesn't piss me off. Evil Dead didn't, much. Sure there's typical survival horror stupidity, but that's to be expected. The scares are good, the movie is incredible to look at (both cinematography and effects) and I felt it was pretty original, for what it is.
On the downside, the acting is terrible, the dialogue is stupid, the music (especially the "emotional" music) would be brutal for even a Twilight film, and the subtle nods to the original in certain musical cues and editing choices would have been better avoided altogether.
Despite all that, I had a good time. Not bad at all.

Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)

8.5/10
This is a movie with a ludicrous premise, a ludicrous existence even, and naturally it's a ludicrous movie. Too weird to live, yet here it is. It's almost too easy to give this movie a positive review out of sheer autoresponse - a movie like this can only be a big inside joke, right? And no audience member wants to feel like they're not in on it, so I better say I liked it.
Well, not entirely. Indeed, I'll allow for the fact that this may just be Korine having a big laugh at everyone - the studios who spent money on it, the actors who think they're in something genuinely subversive, the audience who tries to find a deep meaning to it...all the way to the bank to finance his next project about old people humping trash. But I think if Korine's movies to date have displayed any consistency, it's his fascination with America (Americana?). If his scripts for Kids and Gummo explore America's suburban and rural near-retardation, isn't Spring Breakers just the other extreme of an identical exploration? There is a bit more plot to Breakers, although it's still pretty flimsy, and a lot more style (the neverending soundtrack is excellent). While the four girls are barely given a shade of personality, James Franco steals the show as the hip hop/gangster/savior/alien Alien. There's a scene involving Franco, the girls, and a brilliantly selected Britney Spears track that any other movie this year will be hard-pressed to top.
Say nothing else about Korine, he supplies indelible, twisted images in all of his films, but it's never been as much fun to watch as it is here. Even if it's more parody or pastiche than biting critique or commentary, it's a blast and needs to be seen to be believed.

Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

5/10
To give you a sense of how alien Park Chan-wook's Stoker is, there's a moment early on where Nicole Kidman's character suggests to her daughter that they go shopping together, and the word "shopping" hits like a slap across the face. The movie seems so much like a movie that it's impossible to fathom these characters doing anything remotely human, let alone something as mundane as a trip to the mall.
As the movie plays on and you get increasingly immersed in the world of Kidman, her daughter India and her dead husband's brother, the movie starts to work a little bit better, but there are still oddly jarring moments whenever the "real world" creeps in, such as when India is at school. So it goes with the rest of the film - it takes place in a seemingly indeterminate time period, mixing past and present styles (emphasizing its sheer movieness and its stylistic overload), and the overall feel of the movie is the Addams Family gone Stepford Wives with a Hitchcockian twist.
It's not a total bust. The acting is great all-around and the movie is gorgeous. Park Chan-wook directs with flair, but ultimately his showy style is let down by a script that underdelivers. The whole thing just seems out of whack, a failed experiment that I wanted to like more than I actually did.

Oz the Great and Powerful (Sam Raimi, 2013)

7.5/10
A friend won free passes to this and the trailer made it look like it could be good, so I went. And it was. I haven't read the reviews but I think it deserves better than its 63% on the Tomatometer. It's a fun ride, with gorgeous visuals and a strong group of characters (both human and animated); it's funny and light without being vapid. James Franco as Oz is a good choice, though he isn't doing any heavy lifting, and Michelle Williams seems born to play the Good Witch.
A couple of complaints would be that the special effects are sometimes clunky, particularly when the humans are interacting with the background/animated characters, and the plot is Disney by the books, down to the unlikely misfits rising up against seemingly indomitable adversaries using heart and clever trickery. Which is symptomatic of the biggest problem with the movie: while it's good, it doesn't do anything great or separate itself from the pack with much originality. But it's fun, and considering the current cinematic fare on offer, you could do a lot worse for a night out with the family.

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.