The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson, 2012)

When it comes to trying to write on here about a movie as tedious and silly as this dumb movie, I begin to see that it takes a very special kind of person to review films. Everybody knew the plot going into this thing. I mean, I never read any of the books, but I saw the cartoon when I was a child and understood the rough sketch of the plot. So all that's left to talk about here is how silly it all is because it takes itself so absurdly seriously. I found it dull. It seemed to me, that it was being presented as a spoof of the previous films since it had all the weaknesses and none of the strengths of that film. D

End of Watch (David Ayer, 2012)

There are a number of reasons I'm not generally a fan of cop dramas. My stepfather was a cop, I'm generally resistant to authority, I find them strong on machismo and weak on sociology. They tend to feel sad and tense and generally oppressive. More generally, they tend to overly simplistic, reactionary, and borderline fascistic. This film is a typical buddy cop drama in a lot of ways, but it sidesteps a lot of the frequent weaknesses. The characters are more developed and the dialogue is stronger, for starters. The approach is more naturalistic, even though some of the subject matter is really kind of sensationalistic. Given the news reports about the Mexican drug cartels, it doesn't seem like anything here is particularly implausible though.
The focus of the story is the relationship between two beat cops who work in South Central LA. Played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña , they seem relatively authentic. Gyllenhaal is the war vet taking courses so he can go to law school. This higher education justifies the film's strangely half executed found footage conceit. He's recording everything for a documentary class he's taking to satisfy an arts requirement. The found footage conceit in the original script was apparently scaled back during preproduction, and some viewers seem to find its vestigial presence more confusing or frustrating than anything else. Personally, I didn't get too invested in the conceit. While watching it, I assumed that the video would somehow come into play as evidence, a turn of events that is foreshadowed by another cop's remark about the dangers of filming their work because it could be subpoenaed. Ultimately that ended up as something of a red herring, but I still found that that constant thread of the filming somehow made the characters seem more human. It was just this running bit that gave a sense of continuity. Peña's character is sort of a romantic and the head of a young family. There is a certain sweetness in the way that Gyllenhaal seems to follow Peña's path with his best girl Anna Kendrick, whose milquetoast quality works oddly well here.
I made a mistake partway through the film of looking at the film's Wikipedia page because I wanted more information about the director and supporting cast. It turns out there's a spoiler embedded in the title. It seems like it might not be much of a spoiler if you've seen the trailer, which I haven't, but as someone who knew nothing, it alerted me that the film was going in a somewhat different direction than I was anticipating. After that, it became pretty clear how the film would end. I thought it would surprise me for a while, but then it didn't. So sad. Oh well. As a whole, I found the cast relatively strong and the characters relatively sympathetic, which is probably something of a feat in a film like this.
When I was thinking about this movie it reminded me of my thoughts during the film festival. How do you give an objective assessment of a film? I have my own ways of assessing films, usually based on how much they stir me in the gut or in my head, but sometimes the rubrics people use in assessing film don't seem to make sense. This isn't really my genre. It's sort of predictable, the characters may be a little sanitized, it's kind of dour sometimes. Still, considering the genre it really excels. It made me appreciate what cops do in a way that few films have inspired. I grew very fond of many of the characters, even a couple of the thugs in the neighborhood. There are these great ironic moments, like the one where the dynamic duo is arguing about a rubber band while gangland assassins are in the car behind them discussing whether or not they will attempt to kill them at the stop sign they're approaching. I don't know that I'd watch it again, but it impressed me in what it did well. I don't know that everyone would like it, but I'd probably recommend it to most people, as long as they don't mind movies that are kind of serious. It's strange to me that this film was written, directed, and produced by the writer of The Fast and the Furious.
B

Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012, UK)

A few years ago I had only seen a few of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films and Dr. No. At the time I had a job where not much happened, but I could basically watch TV all morning, and Spike had a Month of Bond thing where they played almost all of the Bond movies in chronological order. Honestly, I'm not that huge a fan of the series. I liked some aspects of some of the installments and I liked some films better than others. I probably liked Sean Connery the least and possibly Pierce Brosnan the best, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I say all this to put in context my assertion that I think that Skyfall is probably the best James Bond movie I've ever seen. It has a lot of the weaknesses that characterize the previous films, and it leans heavily on the template that pretty much every James Bond movie is structured by. As usual there are two love interests here, but the interesting one (aka, the bad one for whom things don't work out too well) is probably among the most mesmerizing Bond girls in history. Honestly, I'm having trouble writing about this movie because in order to discuss how it fits in with the tropes of the series there are all kinds of spoilers that come into the equation. I guess what's interesting is that this movie fulfills most of the expectations you'd have for a Bond film, but it does so in ways that are sometimes inventive or even challenging to the canonical representations, particularly the role of Moneypenny, who appears very late in the film.

My boyfriend, like some of the reviewers I've read, complained that many of the action sequences seem weirdly slow or non-thrilling. I agreed, but I felt like it fit into the larger agenda of the film, all character development and ruminations on what it means for him and M to still be at this. Much of the acting is pretty good, particularly by Bérénice Marlohe (the bad girl, pictured above) and Judi Dench (as usual, M). Daniel Craig, Ben Whishaw (Q for Quartermaster), and Naomie Harris (Eve) are pretty strong as well, though Whishaw and Harris have weaker moments to offset their stronger moments. Javier Bardem is generally strong in his performance, though it sometimes (as is probably appropriate for a James Bond film) borders on cartoonish. The one off note for me was Ralph Fiennes. In fact, his first scene is a conversation with Judi Dench, which really becomes an object lesson in why she's considered such a great actress. Compared to him, she's so present in her role, so in command of what she's doing. There are a few criticisms you could make, particularly about the tightness of some of the action sequences, but except for one thing, which takes up less than thirty seconds of screen time but still manages to almost sink the entire film, I wasn't particularly bothered. But then, there's that thing that happens. I'd heard people talking about how absurd it is what the characters do in a pivotal moment of the film, acting stupider than anyone ever would for no particular reason at all, and as the movie progressed I had started to wonder if I was somehow missing what those actions were. Let me tell you, if you go see the movie, you will know it when you see it. It's like something from Scooby-Doo or one of those stupid spoof comedies like Scary Movie. I really couldn't believe it. The shock of it has dissipated and I'm not bothered by it as much as when I was watching the movie, but last night in the theater, I felt like my mind was blown by the inexplicably stupid direction the film seemed to be taking. Oh well.
B
For what it's worth, I also quite liked the Adele song and think it fit in with the movie better than they sometimes do, and the opening montage was also generally well executed.

Deadfall (Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2012, USA)

One of the many strange things about this movie is that it was directed by the director of the Oscar winning foreign language film The Counterfeiters. Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde star as siblings on the run after having robbed a tribal casino in what I took to be Michigan. Their flight toward Canada has been deranged by a freak car accident on a snowy country road. I'm not sure whether I should start with the strengths or the weaknesses here, because they probably balance each other out.

Their stories smash up against a few families in and around the community of Beaver Lake. All of the people involved seem to be struggling with the same sorts of family troubles that fuel the madness of our pair of siblings, particularly Eric Bana. Eric Bana's character seems to have some weird incestuous energy flowing toward his sister, but she ends up looking for redemption with a disgraced Olympic boxer fresh out of prison, played by Charlie Hunnan. The boxer's parents are a retired sherriff or something played by Kris Kristofferson and idealized homemaker Sissy Spacek. The boxer and the father naturally have issues. The new sherriff's daughter, a friend of the family, played by Kate Mara, also has issues with douchebag father.

Basically everyone in the whole movie has trouble with their fathers, probably because aside from Kristofferson's charcter, they're all total scumbags. The actors are all pretty good and they really tip the scales toward making this film worth watching. The only trouble is the film gets kind of weighed down in sorting out everybody's endless family dramas which keep playing out all over the place. It's also tricky becayse you're trying to follow along with Eric Bana, but he does a couple of things that are hard to forget about, which makes the ending a little flat. It's a mess, but it's probably worth renting from VOD if you're pining for something new on the VOD.
C

Mission: Impossible (Brian DePalma, 1996, USA)

It's strange that I'd never seen this film before, or maybe not, since I've rarely ever liked Tom Cruise (possible exceptions being largely films he starred in from 1999-2002, and possibly Collateral). On the face of it, it seemed relatively promising. Brian DePalma, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Béart, Vanessa Redgrave. Add to that that I saw John Woo's M:I-2 in a second run theater because its coincided with the time I was assigned to write a paper on John Woo and auteur theory during my brief stint as an intended film studies major. I haven't seen M:I-2 in a dozen years, but I can only hope it's nowhere near as dated and unsatisfying as this one. It's funny, I think I've been wanting to see this movie since about 2001 when my French teacher, in one of those oddly random foreign language class moments, showed us part of the sequence on the train, to demonstrate, apparently, that the TGV (train de grande vitesse) was in fact de grande vitesse.
I kind of feel like the most remarkable thing about this movie are the talents it squanders. It's amazing that Brian DePalma produced such a dull film. As tedious as any lesser James Bond movie, it seems to follow the same blueprint, which naturally includes offing the most interesting woman in the first fifteen minutes. Kristin Scott Thomas is riveting in her scenes, but so are Emmanuelle Béart and Vanessa Redgrave. Weirdly, Emilio Estevez is also quite effective in his small part. Jon Voigt and Tom Cruise on the other hand are beyond tedious. Not that it would have mattered if that plot had made sense at all. It's this weird combination of setpieces connected only by the most strained bit of logic. Ving Rames and Jean Reno are brought on halfway through the movie to steal some data from CIA headquarters in a dull, drawn out "action" sequence notable only as a potential missing link between the 70s and the 21st century. Ving Rames is completely wasted in a flat characterization, but Jean Reno is relatively effective given the limitations of the script.
blah blah blah
There was a nice moment at the end where Mazzy Starr is playing at a cafe.
C-

Total Recall (Len Wiseman, 2012, US)

I think it's borderline hilarious the way people compare this to the original as though the original film were any good. For me, the Schwarzenegger film is hard to watch, since the only redeeming qualities I found in it were Sharon Stone's shoulder pads. It's silly and the special effects are embarrassing as is everything about the plot and the acting, pretty much.

Given that I don't hold the 1988 version in very high regard, despite my sometimes affection for Paul Verhoeven, it should come as no surprise that I found this version superior. I mean, I would certainly rather spend two hours with Colin Farrell than Arnold Schwarzenegger. In theory, I prefer Sharon Stone to Kate Beckinsale or Jessica Biel, but while I found Beckinsale a little flat, I liked Biel in the film, though her role was slightly limited. In this film we follow Farrell, who may or may not be a spy in what may or may not be reality. I prefer to think the movie deals with reality, improbable as it sometimes may be, because if it isn't really, the logic of the film is severely flawed. I like the themes of this movie relating to stark divisions among classes and the exploitation of workers. It seems to bear reminding that the workers paradise that seemed to emerge in the west in the latter half of the 20th century was likely an aberration which is now dissolving into the mists.

The film was generally engaging and sort of energetic and sort of compelling, but for me there was just something flat about it. Maybe it was like listening to someone else tell you their dreams.
C

Black's Game / Svartur á leik (Óskar Thór Axelsson, 2012, Iceland)

Pretty much everybody I met at the festival liked this movie. Ever the contrarian, perhaps, I wasn't quite as impressed. I thought it was a tacky, violent movie that glorified violence, nihilism, substance abuse, and cheap sexuality. The main character Stebbi is a miscreant who has just stumbled out of a jail where he's been booked for fucking some kid up when he was drunk. He runs into an old acquaintance from his hometown, Toti, all muscles and Satanic tattoos. Eventually, Stebbi does a dangerous job for Toti so this gangland lawyer will get him off of this heavy assault charge. Things go wrong during the job and Stebbi proves himself by going psycho on some important gangster or something. This earns him the nickname Psycho. Things go okay for a minute and then go out of control when this Satanic black metal looking criminal mastermind shows up and pushes it to the fucking limit. I didn't really buy all the plot elements, particularly a string of things toward the end of the film. It's also hard to care too much about these people because they're all evil, even though Stebbi is kind of attractive.
C

The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012, USA)

A few weeks ago I was listening to a movie show on Chicago public radio and heard a discussion where two of the three hosts said that The Avengers was, in their opinion, the best movie of the summer. They really layed it on, too, like this thing was ripe for Oscar season or something. I was skeptical, but I ended up seeing it last night. Weirdly, I've actually seen a few of the movies that could claim it as a sequel and I found it most similar to Captain America, although it certainly pulled from all the previous films. I don't know; it was certainly better than Transformers, but these movies all seem the same to me. I liked the cast, especially Scarlet Johansson. Even though I hated The Hurt Locker, I also confess to feeling that Jeremy Renner generally adds gravity and respectability to unlikely films. I am also convinced that the guy who plays Loki in this film and Thor is secretly that annoying fur-wearing figure skater Johnny Weir.

I'm not really sure what I can say about the film. It was mostly exactly what you'd expect. The explanation for the absence of Natalie Portman wasn't very convincing, which was a little surprising. I was also pleasantly surprised that they slipped in a little political content wherein they talked about how stupid it was for everyone to be loading up on nuclear weapons. There were scenes in the film that really felt like reading a comic book, which for me wasn't a good thing. What's believable in a comic book pane isn't necessarily that believable in a more three dimensional space. The whole New York City thing was kind of odd in that the damage being done to the city would have killed thousands of people, but I guess the aliens came when all of Manhattan, tourists and all, were out on Long Island re-enacting all those media representations of weekends in the Hamptons we've been inundated with these past several years. Thank god for jitneys, I guess. Anyway, this seemed silliest when they made a big thing about getting all these people out of a city bus. And I'm like, girl, if you're having this much trouble liberating a city bus, I don't know how I can trust you to save the city from an alien invasion. And what about the thousands of people dying or being injured all around you. Anyway, it wasn't bad, was probably better than a lot of these movies, but, again, they're kind of all the same. B-

Red (Robert Schwentke, 2010)

It's poorly written and ridiculous. It's morally inconsistent and places too low a value on human life. Nonetheless, it manages to be engaging throughout. C-

Cell 211 / Celda 211 (Daniel Monzón, 2009, Spain)

Gosh, on the one hand it's a genre film. It's a movie about a prison riot and it features many of the expected tropes. Unlike A Prophet though, its production values are probably more in line with those of a made for television movie. Still, it really won me over. Beautiful Juan has left his pregnant wife at home so he can go in for a sort of orientation at this prison where he'll be working. He finds himself in the middle of a prison riot and poses as a prisoner. The prisoners are using a guard and three Basque prisoners as hostages. There are all sorts of moral and political considerations at play.
I sit here after watching the movie feeling really moved, pretty close to tears. It's interesting the way the film sets up the guards as civilized and the inmates as animals throughout most of the first twenty minutes. I mean, I was prepared for the inevitable reversal but I really found it to be done suavely. I appreciated the moral complexity, as most American mainstream films are about as morally complex as a tater tot. A-

Harry Brown (Daniel Barber, 2009, UK)

Harry Brown is a sort of vigilante justice movie about some old men living in a council estate (England's answer to the projects) that is somewhat reminiscent of the milieu of the apartment building at the center of Gomorrah. There's rampant crime involving drugs, sex, and illegal weapons, in addition to robberies and senseless harassment that calls to mind A Clockwork Orange. It gets to a point where Michael Caine has enough and decides to clean house. Emily Morter shows up as the heir to Helen Mirren's lady detective from Prime Suspect and she kind of represents the moral voice in the movie, which naturally gets drowned out. It's dark and gritty and a spare in parts. I generally liked it but I wanted it to go a little deeper. Instead of saying, "Make the world a better plays and flush the scavs into a fiery sewer," I wanted there to be some suggestion or indication of the structural elements that bring us to where we are in the film... C+

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

My boyfriend was in the mood for a gritty crime drama last night and neither of us had seen this one so he went and rented it. I really didn't like it much from relatively early on and I never liked it much more as it went on. It's four hours long and the screenplay seems like a mess. It's yet another American glorification of criminality and it's particularly kitschy. It's sort of on the elliptical side the way it bounces around between three different time periods but that might just come off as a way to camouflage the holes in the plot. My boyfriend and I both saw the twist ending coming a mile off and it was completely gratuitous. I don't think I'm morally corrupt enough to know what the point of this movie is. It seems to be shot well and the acting is fine but pretty much every other aspect is kind of terrible. D-