Seven Psychopaths

This film was made to order for me to like it.  I absolutely love director Martin  Mcdonagh 's last film, In Bruges,  and the cast (Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits, and Colin Farrel) made me super excited before I knew anything else about the film. Then I saw the trailer and was all in.  Therefore, when only ended up finding it intermittently entertaining, I was pretty disappointed.   This review    actually does a pretty good job laying out the problems with the film.  I enjoyed it more than that reviewer did, but ultimately you could feel the film trying to hard to be 'cool, 'edgy' and post-modern.   As any high school student can tell you, if you can see someone trying to be hip and edgy, then they're really not hip and edgy.  I get that the film is supposed to be a deconstruction of action films.  But it still needs to be coherent.  Compared to something like Cabin in the Woods (a deconstruction of horror films, but is still incredibly entertaining on its own) seven Psychopaths just doesn't cut it.  Still I'm looking forward to what Mcdonagh does next.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I really felt like going out and seeing something, and it was either this or Pitch Perfect.  As the reviews for this one have actually been pretty good, I thought I'd give it a shot.   Unfortunately, it falls into a genre of films that just don't work for me.  Specifically, the navel-gazing "Waah I'm a high school outsider and everyone hates me even though I'm white and fairly well-off.  Lets go listen to The Smiths" type films.  They just never ring true, and the fact that I typically find their portrayal of high school utterly false means that I'm automatically predisposed to disliking them, no matter how well they're executed.  Therefore, the fact that I didn't find Wallflower completely annoying is actually a compliment. Since the film gives the main character significant mental problems, brought on by real trauma, I could buy his general darkness and alienation, even though I couldn't identify with the general setup of the film.  Therefore, as this genre goes, this is probably an above average entry.

That's not to say I'm completely in on the film.  Its still achingly sincere (almost eye-rollingly so) and there is still too much of the "Wow high school is the most important time ever, and is going to define the rest of my life" attitude.  Again, I fully admit that because I never felt particularly moved one way or another by High School that I am not who the film is targeting.  I'm sure there's a certain segment of the population who will find this type of story, and consider it as speaking directly to their life experience (kind of like Crank 2 does for me).  Really, its kind of  like that HBO show Girls.  I really tried to get into it, and I can see that there's some real skill going into its creation.  However, it's just portraying a certain type of person, and life experience, that I have absolutely no identification with and as a result can't get into it.  I'm not sure if this means that there's a problem with the show (since theoretically great art should be universal).  Actually, since I'm always right that's exactly what it means.  Glad we cleared that up.

The Master

I'm not going to bother with a plot recap, because the plot (such that it is) isn't really that important.  The film is really about performances (and really the film really spends all its time with the two principles - Hoffman and Phoenix) and its going to live and die with how engaging they are.  Thankfully, they are, otherwise the 2 and 1/2 hour runtime would have been unbearable.  Still this is definitely one of those films that I'm glad I saw once, but will probably never watch again (kind of like your mom).  This of course puts it way ahead of Paul Thomas Anderson's last work, There Will Be Blood, which just annoyed me.  Anyway, The Master is worth seeing for the performances, but I don't know that you need to go out of your way to do so.

Brief tangent.  I'd be interested to see PTA do something like Punch Drunk Love again, instead of these 'important' event films.  I think that these critically adored filmmakers can get a little too wrapped up in their own hype, and run the risk of falling into unbearable pretension.  Doing something like an Adam Sandler film  or some other genre exercise like Steven Soderbergh's been up, would be a good a way to stretch.  And interesting to watch as well.

Looper

Here's a plot recap .  I really liked Brick, and thought the first hour of Brothers Bllom was great, so I was looking forward to this film from director Rian Johnson. I don't have a lot to say about it other than I enjoyed it.  It makes time travel about as logically consistent as any film has, and actually has a nice sense of humor about itself.  I'm feeling lazy, so that's all you get.