Wetlands (David Wnendt, 2013)

7.5/10
Germany's Wetlands belongs in a small but, uh, esteemed category of movies along with Kids and Gummo as the type of movie where you just want to take a billion showers after watching it. Unlike those two movies, Wetlands' protagonist is a teenage girl, obsessed with being an unhygienic as humanly possible owing to a childhood trauma. After one of her more horrifying transgressions lands her in the hospital, she forms a friendship with a male nurse while attempting to engineer a reunion between her parents from her bed. At the same time we learn more about her past through flashbacks, being spared no sickly detail or disgusting bodily function along the way.
The reason why this movie stands out as more than just a throwaway gross-out affair is Carla Juri's performance in the lead, undoubtedly one of the best performances I'll see all year. She gives her body to the role in a way that is very rarely seen in movies (maybe for the better...) but has such a natural charm and vulnerability that it's near impossible not to be won over by her, regardless of what repulsive behavior she's engaging in.
Unlike Kids or Gummo, Wetlands is more of a twisted comedy, and improbably (and owing in large part to Juri) makes you cheer for its protagonist...all the while being grossed out by her. Not a movie I'll forget any time soon, at least.

Summer of Blood (Onur Tukel, 2014)

7/10
Summer of Blood is easy to describe - Woody Allen doing a vampire movie.
Writer/director/producer Onur Tukel stars in the central Woody role and shares a lot of his traits, particularly paranoia, aimlessness, and a fear of commitment. The movie is even set in New York, as if to hammer the point home. "Playing Woody" is a dicey game, but I have to admit, Tukel does a good job. The writing is crisp and funny and not without cringeworthy moments that are closer to what you might get from Larry David, Ricky Gervais or Louis C.K.. The acting is extremely natural (from Tukel and the supporting cast) and the conversations have a slapdash, quasi-improvised feel to them that feels authentic.
What drags the movie down a bit is that Tukel probably doesn't recede into the background as much as he should - he's in virtually every scene (almost always talking a mile a minute) and there's a lot of soapboxing in the movie that feels unwelcome at times. With all the dialogue spouted, his character inevitably grates and it makes a short movie (86 minutes) feel longer than it should. The ending is also a letdown. It felt like Tukel ran out of time or ideas and the movie departed with a lot less steam than it rode in on. Nevertheless if you're looking for a horror comedy that's a little bit more brainy than, say, Piranha 3D, Summer of Blood is a good one to check out.

Frank (Lenny Abrahamson, 2014)

8/10
I am usually averse to what I call "Sundance movies", those quirky little comedy/dramedies with characters just weird enough to be cloyingly likeable instead of interesting or challenging. Frank is very much a "Sundance movie". Its central buzz is behind the fact that it stars Michael Fassbender, who spends the entire movie under a bizarre papier mache head despite being the lead singer of a band.
The movie's main focus is on Jon, a geeky keyboard player who gets recruited into this band of weirdos. Jon is a would-be songwriter and is both in awe of and jealous of Frank's almost nonchalant musical genius. Much of the movie focuses on the band's isolation in an cottage in Dublin, cooped up together to seek musical inspiration to record the album that will (Frank believes) launch them to superstardom. Jon tracks the band's progress via updates on his Twitter, Youtube channel and blog, eventually gaining enough interest to get a small showing at the SXSW festival in America.
The movie has some good laughs, and the music is genuinely cool, although there's definitely a little fun being poked at the creative process of young, hip, indie musicians. The ending packs something of a startling emotional punch. I could see it coming across as a little forced for some, but it really worked for me. The movie slows down as the band heads to America and the story gets a little messy but it recovers nicely in the last 10 minutes or so. I wish, like most of these quirky/cute movies, it was a little more unafraid to take a stand or make a statement instead of just being kind of glib and irreverent at times, but there's still enough charm, humor and genuine heart to make it more likeable than most movies of its ilk.

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, 2013)

6/10
Snowpiercer is a frustrating mix of interesting ideas and tired, well-trodden ones. The concept of a train hurtling around the world on endless year-long round trips with the last survivors on earth trapped inside is a good one. The direction it takes, wherein the poor huddled masses rise up against their opulent opressors is an extremely boring one. We get the usual cliches - the have-nots are forced to sustain themselves on some gross substance, a child is abused, a limb is sacrificed, everybody's face is dirty...cinematic shorthand to make us cheer for Chris Evans and his team and boo whoever stands in his path to emancipation.
The movie is entertaining as they move through the train. And Bong Joon-ho certainly has a way with impressively cramped (but visually appealing) spaces. I didn't have many complaints with its action-movie middle. But, although I haven't read the source material, it feels like Bong was forced to cram too much into the beginning and the end, resulting in stilted character development. For too much of the movie I just didn't much care about Evans or his freedom fighters and their uprising. Maybe as a mini-series with a bit more background on the events leading up to the train takeover and the people involved I would have been moved to care a little more.
In the end I just found that I wanted to like Snowpiercer more than I did. At its best it was mildly interesting and entertaining, at its worst it was goofy, but mostly it was just kind of there.

Open Windows (Nacho Vigalondo, 2014)

1/10
I was drawn to Open Windows because of its interesting premise - the whole movie takes place on a computer screen, with open webcam windows, videos, chats, etc. showing us the action we need to see to move the plot along. It stars Elijah Wood and Sasha Grey (still desperately seeking some kind of vehicle for her limited acting talents) so how bad could it be?
The initial plotting was intriguing - Wood is a geek obsessed with Grey's actress character. When she stands him up at a contest he won to have dinner with her, a mysterious third party hacks into his computer and grants him access to Grey's phone and effectively turns it into a camera, trying to play on Wood's feelings of betrayal after being stood up for this unknown party's equally mysterious end-game. Even this minimal plotting is rife with ideas - besides the betrayal and want for revenge the movie could have easily dealt with society's increasing voyeuristic tendencies, our ultra-connected worlds, our perpetually-shrinking privacy, the separation of our "real lives" from the internet, etc. Instead, writer/director Nacho Vigalondo dodges all those for bombs, explosions, car chases, ludicrous coincidences, enormous leaps in logic (and technology) and at times painfully old-school ideas about the internet and "hacking" that would have been cringe-worthy in a CSI episode from 2001, let alone in a 2014 movie that should be as tech-savvy as it presents itself.
Maybe I'm not being fair in holding Vigalondo responsible for not making a movie that conformed to my expectations of what his movie should have been about, but the movie he did end up making was so atrociously bad that it only magnifies what a missed opportunity this was. Judging from the numerous guffaws and groans of disbelief in the audience, I wasn't alone in this sentiment.
Also it's probably worth mentioning the theatre's speakers malfunctioned several times during the film, leading to explosive noises at a decibel level unheard of even at most rock concerts and two stoppages during the film to turn the lights on and get things under control. So that put everyone on edge and probably only served to stack the deck further against the movie. But it was a lost cause anyway if you ask me.

Animosity (Brendan Steere, 2013)

6/10
This is an ultra low budget U.S. indie horror with a plot that I can't talk much about because it spoils most of the fun in seeing the movie. The film falls into the usual low budget pitfalls - the acting is spotty, the special effects are weak, and the camera work leaves a lot to be desired. It also, for some reason, has an instantly forgettable, anonymous kind of title that won't do it any favors. But there's a really good, interesting idea at the heart of Animosity. I won't say its failure to execute that idea was 100% owing to its budgetary constraints, because it could have done with some tighter editing or scripting. But it was something different, at least.

The Lego Movie (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2014)

8.5/10
It was, of course, very funny and very clever. Maybe not up there with Pixar's top shelf efforts (it lacked the emotional punch for me) but a notch below which is not a bad place to be at all. Much better than it had any right to be, certainly, in the face of a zillion "they're making a Lego movie?" reactions.