I thought this was good - probably better than my grade suggests - but the thing is I just couldn’t enjoy it like the people around me seemed to. It was just too sad.
I remember calling Lars and the Real Girl “a modern age fairy tale for the damaged, not quite grown-up” and I love it for that. This is pretty much the opposite. Charlize Theron’s character is fucked up in the worst way and so many of the laughs from the audience came at moments where I was too sad for her to really join in. There was one particular moment near the end involving her and Patton Oswalt that got big laughs and I just couldn’t see the humour - or at least not enough to supersede the genuine emotion of it. And it feels weird to be saying this because black comedy is usually my thing, but on first viewing at least it felt a bit more like laughing at than laughing with.
I look forward to seeing it again. Maybe when I find it less jarringly sad I’ll find it funnier.
Grade: ***
I thought this was pretty enjoyable. It’s really about as predictable as it gets - to the point where even a bare outline of what it’s about tells the whole story - but as a guy who grew up loving movies like Best of the Best and other martial arts tournament movies, it’s a fun return to a genre I once loved, set inside a sport I still do.
One thing that bugged me slightly as an MMA fan was how much they tried to crank the tension by making the sport seem extra dangerous. Lots of talk from various points about how fighters are taking their lives into their own hands when they step into the cage and how each fight is a dice with death. It’s not completely over the top with it, but considering most of the MMA in the movie looks pretty decent, that kind of characterisation of the sport lets it down a little.
Not bad though.
Grade: ***
After I saw this the first time a friend asked about it and I said, after gushing a bit about I felt about it, that I thought it was “good, but probably not Oscar good”. But, y’know, now I’ve started watching some of the other Oscar crop, I may rethink that opinion. It really is a very tight, smartly written movie that offers both emotion and insight. And, true, I’m still not sure how easily someone who doesn’t know or care about baseball would digest it, but there’s definitely a lot of quality there. I’ll actually be surprised if, apart from Midnight in Paris, there are too many Best Picture nominees I think are as good as this.
Moreover, seeing it again convinced me that it’s a movie I’ll be able to watch again and again. It is, as an A’s fan, as good as it could have been, I think. Yes, the streak was before my time as a fan, but that probably helps me in terms of not recognising potential inaccuracies etc.. And as it is it stands as a brilliant portrait of the team I fell in love with just a couple of years later, so I reckon it will pretty much forever own a place on my shelf.
Grade: ****
This was good. Of course it was. Best Picture nominee, Golden Globe winner… obviously there’s quality there. Yet I have to admit I’m finding myself slightly bored by the Oscar crop that is is popping up every year of which this movie is quite representative. There are so many movies like this; that drip with class and quality and yet never really move or affect me in any way. It’s frustrating. I’m getting bored of saying “it’s classy, it’s solid, it’s good” and I wish the movies that were celebrated were the ones that allowed me to use more exciting adjectives.
That said…
I did enjoy this film. It’s pretty funny, it has strong performances from almost everyone and it’s anchored by this unshakable sadness that pervades everything. I liked that, of course. In fact, it even kind of made me question whether I might one day like this movie more should I ever develop a more “normal” response to death and/or loss. I guess I’ll revisit it if that ever happens.
Grade: ****
This was pretty fun. There’s a lot about it that’s not particularly original - in fact, “foreign, first person, found footage” sounds like the blueprint for overhyped - but the whole premise of the trolls and the execution is cool enough to make it feel fresh despite that. It creates that sense of wonder, you know? And that feeling will trump anything I see in most modern monster movies.
Good.
Grade: ****
I guess they would call it “building anticipation and/or suspense”, but as with Paranormal Activity 2, so long goes by without anything happening that I was utterly disconnected by the time everything starts to kick off. Too long goes into justifying the existence of the footage and not enough time goes into making me care about any of it. I think if I just turned off my power for ninety minutes at night I’d experience more scares than I did with this.
I guess this franchise just isn’t for me.
Grade: *
This was pretty good. The cool thing about Clooney as an actor is that he has a very old-school look and style to him, sometimes reminiscent of the likes of Cary Grant, and it’s a quality I think that has carried over to his directing too. The movie starts by scanning over newsreels, the movie ends on a very tight close-up; I watched it and thought, “this is like something from the 40’s”. And that’s a good thing, of course. In terms of style and class, Director Clooney seems completely in step with Actor Clooney, and everything is very polished and pristine.
The success it has is in providing a good snapshot of political campaigning and weaving a compelling, intricate story around it. Where it lacks maybe is that there’s not a lot in terms of character development. Ryan Gosling’s lead is the exception, but it’s a fairly simple shift.
Solid and interesting, but a little lacking in spark.
Grade: ****
It’s a weird movie, this. There are a lot of positive things I could say about it in terms of the experience it offers. It’s tense, atmospheric, mysterious, jarringly violent and it keeps you off balance the whole time. But in terms of narrative it leaves you wanting in such a big way that it’s maybe the most frustrated I’ve been by a movie in a long time.
I won’t run it down for daring to be different because a lot of it works, but the truth is that when I think of this movie in future I know I’m going to remember my dissatisfaction with the ending more than the positives that came before it.
Grade: ***
When I first saw the trailer for this I thought it looked unbearably stupid, but it actually wasn’t so bad. Nothing about it is unfamiliar, you know how the whole thing is going to play out without even thinking, but it’s all very nice. And seeing as I watched it with my parents and we all kind of enjoyed it, I guess I can say definitively that it makes the grade as a family film. Sure, there wasn’t anyone in the room who could technically qualify as a child, but I figure I come close enough.
Nothing special, but I’d watch it a hundred times before I watched Transformers again.
Grade: ***
Most of the time I’d choose the poster, but this image says so much more about what Colombiana is. It’s a sexy girl, with a fuckload of guns, often in her underwear. And, y’know, I won’t run it down completely, because essentially it’s a revenge thriller like 90% of revenge thrillers, but it lives well inside its limits and there’s nothing about it that stands out as interesting or memorable.
In fairness, Zoe Saldana is pretty decent, and this movie mostly feels like that’s all they were trying to get across, but if you want to see her in something better, just watch Star Trek. And if all you want is to see her in her underwear, just watch Star Trek. You’ll enjoy it more than this.
Grade: **
