Again an unfortunate couple of weeks of being too busy to write reviews, but here comes the inaugural catch-up session. Let's do this.
DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
Tagline: Kids, when you turn off light, shit's gonna try and eat you. Way of the world.
Plot: Move into an old house where people got murdered? Yeah nothing's gonna happen to your children.
Best thing about the movie: Small monsters can be as creepy as big monsters.
Worst thing about the movie: Timeless in a bad way, people making 1950's mistakes to 2010 problems.
Best In Show: Bailee Madison
In Summation: I didn't hate this movie, and it felt like a serviceable run through of all those cliches we've come to know and love but, you know, for kids. 5/10
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Tagline: Imagine if you could meet all your heroes from generations past and have them tell all say you're awesome.
Plot: Dude travels back in time to 20's paris, to meet all his heroes. As you do.
Best thing about the movie: Yet another Woody Allen movie paid for and bought by a European tourist board.
Worst Thing About The Movie: For a movie about Paris, shockingly low amount of Parisians in this movie.
In Summation: The whimsy sort of powers through being irritating to being charming, and Owen Wilson is a good lead, but this is essentially a wankfest right? Woody Allen's most egotistical movie to date, secretly about how he was too good for movies and his talents should have been spent on novels, AKA, real writing. But whatever, nice to look at. 6/10
TYRANNOSAUR
Tagline: No-one is having fun at this movie.
Plot: Domestic abuse. the PSA.
Best Thing About The Movie: People who hate dogs, you've come to the right place.
Worst Thing About The Movie: Nowhere near enough musical numbers.
Best In Show: Peter Mullan
In Summation: Films about serious issues like domestic abuse are important, its important to force into people's brains how unacceptable it is. Yet one also has to view these things as films, as stories, and Tyrannosaur, despite all the great performances here, had no nuance to its characters, no subtlety to it's story-telling and almost no understanding or care for the reasons why. The Eddie Marsan character here is a monstrous, villainous cartoon, and while I don't doubt that there are people who beat their wives for no reason, it would undoubtedly be more harrowing to have some understanding of this relationship and that character, rather than insisting on portraying it in such a black and white, simplistic way. Marsan was just a ghoul, and while that might be the most politically correct way, its sort of like when you get films where you get a cartoon racist or a cartoon sexist. Dramatically, its just not the most engaging way to discuss the point. 6/10
PERFECT SENSE
Tagline: Have you seen blindness? No? Great, then this movie is a one-off original, bitches.
Plot: What if you couldn't see, touch, taste smell or hear anymore?
Best Thing About The Movie: Eva Green is in it, so naturally that means Eva Green's boobs are in it too. Yea boi. (Also Ewan McGregor penis for those the other way inclined. Democracy for all)
Worst Thing about the movie: So like, its blindness with all 5 senses instead of one. But you haven't seen blindness so its cool.
Best In Show: Eva Green
In Summation: I liked this. maybe it's my fondness for post-apocalyptic fiction, but this is yet another reason why David Mackenzie is one of the most underrated British directors. Smart and haunting. 7/10
FOOTLOOSE
Tagline: Let the shoes cut loose.
Plot: Dancing is illegal, a premise as hilarious in the 10's as was in the 80's.
Best Thing About The Movie: Mostly sharp dancing sequences, has enough of a sense of humour to get by, Craig Brewer is a good director.
Worst Thing About The Movie: Julianna Hough. Not a good actress. Why are modern kids listening to 80's music with such frequency?
Best In Show: Miles Teller
In Summation: I actually didn't hate this, and I thin Brewer did about as a good a job as could be done. The attempts to be dramatic, including the legendary angry dance, sort of fall flat but there was fun here for the undemanding. Rating: 5/10
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
Tagline: See that money, you just wasted it.
Plot: Oh go fuck yourself
Best Thing About The Movie: Suck my dick.
Worst Thing About The Movie: It's existence. Find Paul W.S Anderson and kill him. Seriously. Stop reading and do it now. I'll wait..
In Summation: A violation of time and space, and all that might circle therein. A stupid, gross dumbing down of a book that was already a pretty simple piece of mass entertainment. Anderson appears to have had free reign just to make the thing into the scribblings of a 12 year old boy circa 50 million dollars. Truly, it did go full retard. Rating: 2/10
REAL STEEL
Tagline: Violence without consequence for all the family.
Plot: Hugh Jackman learns what it truly means to be a father by......ZZZZZZZZ. Oooh, robots fighting.
Best Thing In The Movie: Some pretty epic robot fighting, I feel unclean just saying that, but I was invested in which scrap of metal won. Yes I was.
Worst Thing In The Movie: Erm, phoned in Spielbergian father-son story. Nobody cares. Really.
Best In Show: Hugh Jackman. He should play Indiana Jones in the inevitable remake.
In Summation: You know what, I kind of appreciated a family film as utterly non-threatening as this. Charisma generated by Jackman and robots pounding each other will do you for a good time (low bar) Rating: 6/10
CONTAGION
Tagline: Germs comin' to fuck you up.
Plot: See above. Haters of Gwyneth Paltrow would be well-advised to see this movie.
Best Thing About The Movie: It was certainly a well-studied movie, and enjoyed the immense detail, and the sense of realism. A number of great performances, and a cast that surely has to be up there amongst the starriest in recent memory.
Worst Thing about The Movie: It's PG-13 rating. Lacked the ferocity to explore the human impact of a virus to the extent that a better movie would have explored it.
Best In Show: Kate Winslet
In Summation: Its an internet blogging cliche, but this really needed to be darker. I liked a lot of what it was trying to do, but there simply was too much optimism in regards to the human race. I wanted to see the worst reactions, the less nobly convicted. Instead we just got one ridiculously stereotypical characterization of a soulless internet blogger that was just petty. Not quite Shyamalan killing a film critic in Lady In The Water,but still. Rating: 6/10
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3
Tagline: We're in a recession.
Plot: Totes the same fucking movie, you all knew that. Did I mention DOLLARS ALL UP IN YOUR FACE. Gonna buy me some hookers, gonna buy me some blow, gonna have a good time, gonna last all night.
Best Thing About The Movie: Slightly more exaggerated here then in the past, but this formula works man. There's yet to be an absolutely terrible PA movie, and I challenge you to name a horror franchise that got to 3 without producing at least one piece of assaultive dogshit. (Alright George Romero. But whatcha gonna do with genius)
Worst Thing About The Movie: Things got a little too arch here, and the more like a horror movie these films get, the less effective they are. Just about made it I think.
Best In Show: Chris Smith
In Summation: Yeah its the same movie, same beats, same scares, same ending. But it's a well oiled machine, that may now lack the ability to amaze, but it sure can shock you. It's just the shocks are getting cheaper and cheaper, and I do think there's been a slight decline each time out, but not enough to stop these movies being around for a decade. Rating: 5/10
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
Tagline: Kids Today
Plot: What would really happen if your kid was evil, and will Ben Linus just be Ben Linus regardless of what his mother does?
Best Thing About The Movie: Lynne Ramsay, who directed the under-seen mini-masterpiece Movern Callar, is equally adept here, and I can't imagine too many more captivatingly put together films then this this year. Plus a pretty stellar performance from Tilda Swinton.
Worst Thing About The Movie: The Kevin characterization is stuff of fantasy. Can't claim to be a serious psychological drama when you have such a broad unflappable Machiavellian villain from the age of 4. More in common with The Omen then Elephant.
Best In Show: Tilda Swinton
In Summation: I liked this movie. I really did. And I've had a couple of post-match debates that have lead to fire and brimstone, but for me Kevin is almost a cartoon in conception, despite Ezra Miller's mostly terrific performance, and that affects its psychological credibility. It plays fantastically as a horror movie, but it doesn't want to be one, and in that, in spite of how much I liked it, it fails in the main thing it came here to do. Still, an excellent piece of film-making if you can accept the fundamental flaw in its premise. Rating: 7/10
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