Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol

I saw this in IMAX so I could watch the first six minutes of the Dark Knight Rises, and it was worth it. As for Mission Impossible, I generally enjoyed it. Unusually for a sequel, its actually the best of the series (though to be fair the first two were really not good), and director Brad Bird has a nice touch balancing the inherent ridiculousness of the subject matter with some very well-executed set pieces. Unlike its predecessors this installment actually has a sense of humor about itself and thankfully, pretty much, abandons the trope of everybody wearing a mask to explain any plot development. Speaking of the plot, its pretty much just an excuse to deliver the action, which it does well, but its engaging enough to keep everything from getting boring. Incredibly deep its not, but in general its a well-crafted action film which is saying something given a lot of what is floating around out there.

Okay, I think that's it with blockbusters. I'm hopefully going to knock out some Oscar contenders over the next couple of weeks to restore my artistic credibility (says the guys whose written about 30,000 words recapping One Tree Hill episodes).

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So I haven't read the books, or seen the swedish original. Other than a passing knowledge of the main character I really came into the film uninformed so I think I can actually give a pretty clean opinion. Basically I just found the film to be okay, but ultimately flawed. Oh its watchable, but I found the central mystery to be pretty run of the mill and uninteresting. This is a big problem since much of the film's (two hour and forty minute) run-time is devoted to trying to find this girl that went missing from a family of a bunch of rich ex nazis 30 years ago. Since I didn't substantially care what happened this left me just sort of feeling kind of 'meh' at the resolution.

That said, I think Lisabeth is actually a pretty interesting character, and I'll check out the subsequent films just to see if they can do anything substantial with her. It didn't interest me enough to check out the books though which I think indicates its ultimate failure.

Also, this has been pointed out elsewhere, there is a scene that will absolutely change the way you listen to Enya (which I know you all do, you are only human).

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows

I generally enjoyed the first Sherlock Holmes film, but this one just kind of left me feeling blase. It had all the elements that made its predecessor enjoyable, but just in greater quantities and amped up to 11. Here's an example of what I mean. At one point we learn that Holmes is afraid to ride a horse. Smash cut to next scene of everyone riding a regular horse, followed by Holmes on what can best be described as Li'l Sebastian . So okay that's moderately amusing once, but its repeated about four more times in a row, and the returns diminish quickly. This is the main problem with the rest of the film as I eventually just got tired of watching bullet time sequence after sequence, and wondering what just happened. By the time we got to the ending denouement, I had stopped caring much at all.

Just so this isn't a complete rip job, I will say I still generally enjoyed Downey's portrayal, and could still some potential for future films of the series. Its not as much of a step down as the Pirates of the Carribean sequels were, but its still a step down all the same.

Bonus: Exit Through the Gift Shop

I finally caught up with this documentary from 2010, and I really enjoyed it. Its an interesting look at street art, and also functions as an almost satirical look at the art world in general. Its well worth checking out.

The Muppets/The Descendants and a bonus because it took me so long to write this post

I actually started this post two weeks ago, and now I"m no longer motivated to write something coherent. So there's that.

The Muppets

Don't you dare say anything bad about the Muppets. They're consistently one of the few forms of children's entertainment that can walk that fine line between genuine sentimentality and cloying, without becoming annoying. This film pretty much continues that. If you liked the old muppets stuff, you'll enjoy this, if you didn't you probably think Thomas Kinkade makes great art.

And Jason Segal is pretty much a real life muppet so he fits in well.

The Descendants

I've come to the conclusion that Alexander Payne just doesn't work for me. I sort of get, intellectually, why people go crazy for his films (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways) but they always just end up leaving me cold. Its not that there un-watchable, in fact they're generally well acted and have some moments of real humor, its just that I never really end up caring about the characters and spend most of the proceedings disengaged.

The Descendants takes place over the few weeks after George Clooney's wife is thrown into a coma after a boating accident. He soon learns that she was cheating on him before the accident, and on top of all that, he's dealing with selling 25 million acres of pristine Hawaiian wilderness that his family owns. Not quite hilarity, soul searching, and Matthew Lilliard ensue.

The preceding two paragraphs are what I wrote two weeks ago. Its how I still feel, and I can't really be bothered to write more. The film didn't make angry, it just left me cold and kind of restless. If you liked it that's fine, I just think I'm done trying get Alexander Payne.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Saw it on a plane, pretty contrived and forgettable, though it does have some appealing performances. Don't go out of your way to see it.

Take Shelter/A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Take Shelter

This film follows a man who starts to have very distinct dreams about a coming apocalypse, and as a result starts to build a storm shelter in his back yard as a sort of Noah's Ark to protect his family, while engaging in increasingly erratic behavior. The interesting thing is that he (Michael Shannon) suspects that he's probably going insane the entire time that he's doing this, and most of the film concerns his struggle with trying to come to terms with what may very well be the onset of schizophrenia. It does a really nice job portraying this, and leaves whether he's actually crazy or not undecided until the very end.

Otherwise, the thing I appreciated about this was that even when Shannon's wife thought he was going insane, she didn't make a big speech, run off crying, or try to make his life any more difficult. No, rather she calmly sat down with him and they tried to work their way through it like, you know, normal people. Sort of the anti-Adrian Balboa. Its sort of sad that this is considered ground-breaking behavior in a film.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D christmas

While I'm not going to deny that I laughed quite a bit during this film it lacked the, dare I say, focus of the first film in the trilogy which kept it from being more than an moderately entertaining divergence. Still, these are likable characters, and as long as the film focused on them it moves along at a nice pace. The obligatory Neil Patrick Harris cameo was also fun, and I enjoyed the heck out of the waffle-bot, particularly the 'commercial.' Its incredibly crass, but not in a mean-spirited way, and the 3-D adds nothing. So I guess what I'm saying is its not a horrible way to pass 90 minutes.

Real Steel

Either the prospect of Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots the Movie makes you smile, or it doesn't. If it doesn't there's no way Real Steel has any chance of entertaining you so I wouldn't even bother going to see it. For me though, well I sort of enjoy the over the top ridiculousness of the premise and felt that, if executed correctly, the film could be a successfully 'dumb' action movie. It sort of succeeds.

The plot is pretty basic. In the future people have decided they'd rather watch robot's fight than actual people (why this is, is never adequately explained. Its difficult for me to believe that watching guys play video games will ever replace a real live fight, Its not like battle bots was tremendously popular, but whatever). Hugh Jackman is a washed up boxer, fighting robots around the country with the occasional help of Kate From Lost (Note, the actress who plays her will always be Kate from lost. She's not quite good enough to ever escape the role so I hope she just accepts it). Eventually a son he never knew shows up, they fight, they bond, they find an old robot and turn it into a fighter, etc. Nothing new here, all that matters is whether or not there's enough Robot on Robot action. There is, and its much better executed than say, Transformers (i.e. I could actually tell what was going on), and that's good. But man is the film too long. Over two hours. They should have chopped a half an hour out (anything involving the Robot dancing would have been fine) and it would have been so much better. Also, as much as they tried, I couldn't get that emotionally involved in what robot won the fight. I mean I love my quesadilla as much as the next guy, but if it suddenly got beat up by the neighbor's Cuisinart I can't say I'd be that broken up (not as much as the quesadilla maker at least - zing).

But whatever, its more watchable than you think, and features some of the most blatantly self-aware product placement I've ever seen. And if there's one thing I can always appreciate, its wholesale selling out.

Moneyball/Contagion

Its appropriate that I saw these films back to back since Steven Sodenbergh was two weeks away from shooting the former, before production was stopped, and ended up directing the latter instead. So that's something, and shows what an informed blogger I am.

Anyway Moneyball first. I'm a fan of the Michael Lewis book, and was definitely curious about how the film would get a conventional narrative out of the story of a small market baseball team that initiates a statistical revolution, but doesn't end up winning the big game. They get around this issue by focusing on the triumph of an idea rather than a team, and focusing a character who had no more than a passing mention in the book (Billy Beane's daughter). Overall the approach works. I wouldn't watch this film for a 100% accurate representation of the Billy Beane (just like I wouldn't watch the Social Network to learn about Facebook), but its entertaining, well-acted, and moves along at a nice pace. Its radically simplifies the basic idea, but in general captures the spirit of the book, which is more than I can say about The Blind Side (which in the interest of full disclosure I haven't been able to bring myself to watch even though somebody gave me a copy that is sitting on my floor. If I want to see a film about a brave white woman whose gumption helps her save an under appreciated black child I'll just watch the help. No I won't).

Contagion on the other hand attempts to show how a pandemic would affect the world, but in the most clinical, non-thrilling manner possible. Really for most of the film its almost as if Sodenbergh wanted to just do a meticulous live-action simulation of the mechanics of a pandemic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. By stripping out most of the normal gyrations of this genre (namely worrying about who's going to die), you're able to really just focus on the effects of the disease and consider its implications. Really the only times the film doesn't work is when it jumps away from this approach and focuses on a completely unnecessary side plot involving a paranoid blogger (Jude Law). Still overall its engaging (if a bit draggy at times) and will make you try to avoid physical contact with other people (thankfully I'm already way ahead of them on that count).

Note: Two girls in front of me thought they were going to see The Ides of March (playing in the next theater). When they realized there was no Baby Goose in this one there was much consternation for a few minutes, but I'll give them credit that they actually sat through the whole thing.