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

ParaNorman (Chris Butler & Sam Fell, 2012, USA)

A young boy who can see and speak with the dead must save his Salem-esque town by resolving a 300 year old curse, which ultimately means learning how to forgive bullies. To be honest, I found it tedious for the most part, and intermittently grating. The stop motion animation is creepy and weirdly ugly. It was like looking at ugly carpeting for an hour and a half. A promising enough cast is wasted on recycled storytelling and unappealing animation. Really, the animation reminds me of that hideous animation you see these days on children's television programs. The basic shell of the story is compelling, but it's buried in so many cliches and under so many shrill characters spouting so much bad dialogue that even the things I liked about it started to wear thin. I have friends who liked this, so I guess other people like this sort of blander than Tim Burton childhood kitsch. I didn't see anything particularly interesting or engaging though.
D

Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh, 2012, USA)

 I keep seeing established film critics defend Magic Mike. Defend might not be the right word, because many of them don't seem to understand that it needs defending. I think this is in part because a lot of working film critics have lowbrow tastes and exalt the likes of The Avengers or Magic Mike as the best movies of the year and all that absurdity. Not that it matters. I'm trying to figure out what it is about the absurd Magic Mike, which more or less seems like an updated movie from USA's Up All Night, if you can remember that far back. The USA network used to play racy movies late at night that were always about some dream that rested on some amount of money and it always revolved around strippers or nightclubs or something. I don't know. I feel like the plot of Burlesque borrowed heavily from that genre, as does Magic Mike, but for some reason people seem to lap it up with Magic Mike.

I have two theories. One is that Channing Tatum (or is it Matthew McConaughey?) somehow tapped into this sea of latent homosexual desire, and these film critics respond to these uncomfortable feelings by defending the plot of this silly movie, thereby avoiding cogntive dissonance. Conversely, it could be that it taps into some phenomenon whereby men are deep down in love with their best friends and it's somehow cathartic to see this worked through as Tatum eventually channels that romantic energy into his bromantic partner's sister, literally. Anyway, these are just stray throughts, as you can probably tell. This phenomenon could all boil down to the fact that Steven Soderbergh benefits for one reason or another from a love affair with auteur theory.

D

Caesar Must Die / Cesare deve morire (Paolo & Vittorio Taviani, Italy, 2012)

I can't believe this movie won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival. It should play well with the sort of middle class elderly person that seemed to eat it up when I saw it because it's simplistic, phony, unoriginal, sentimental, and generally tedious. It presents itself as a documentary, but it seems pretty obvious that there is no spontaneous dialogue in the film. I can't tell for sure if the dialogue is as annoying and fake sounding in Italian as the English subtitles seemed to suggest, but I sure enough hated this movie all the same. Such a strange bit of well-intentioned exploitation.
This film, at least as bland as The Secret in Their Eyes, was submitted by the Italians for best foreign film. Given the track record of the award, I'll be surprised if this stupid movie doesn't take the whole shabang.
I think the only reason I'm not giving it an F is that it was at least handsomely filmed.
D

Burlesque (Steve Antin, 2010)

All Cher's whores and all Cher's mens could not put this turkey together again. Cher was pretty fun to watch in this movie but the rest of the movie was pretty much a waste of time. The songs ran the gamut from bad to mediocre, generally. There wasn't really anything inspired about the movie except for the casting of Cher and Christina Aguilera. Christina Aguilera is magnetic but she acts at a level that is appropriate for a music video. I'd probably like her to make more movies but only if she studies acting hardcore before doing so. The guy who plays her boyfriend is unnaturally pretty and has a lovely form from head to toe but he's not that interesting. In fact, none of the characters are any more interesting than the story. I got the feeling the script was salvaged from some bin of unproduced screenplays from 1988. Financially strapped nightclub threatened by an unscrupulous real estate developer? Add a couple of hired goons and this becomes a flashback to USA UP ALL NIGHT. Rhonda Shear is on the line, Mr. Antin. D