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.

Lawless/Total Recall

And we're back.  What can I say to explain my absence? Well, its been a so so month for movies, and I got HBOGO this summer and had to knock out Game of Thrones (Yes), Rome (meh) and the final two seasons of Entorage (because I'm a masochist).   So its interesting that in one weekend I saw two films that were pretty much polar opposites of one another.  At least in terms of my reaction to them.

Lawless strives to be Goodfellas for the prohibition era.  It stars Shia Labouf (I know I butchered that spelling and I don't care), Tom hardy, and another guy, as three brother running moonshine.  There's a conflict when Guy Pearce and Guy Pearce's hair (seriously look at it, its amazing)

Arrive in the form as a crooked U.S. marshall.  Stuff ensues.

The film looks great, has some fine performances (including a barely used Gary Oldman) and an amazing soundtrack.  However, there are two problems that keeps it from being wholly successful.  First, the story isn't as epic as the film thinks it is.  By treating it as a story with more ramifications then it actually has, the film ends up feeling a little forced.  The second problem is one inherent in these type of stories - that the protagonists are not really that likeable.  Other films get around this by still treating them as heroes, but here it felt like the makers knew it and couldn't get completely behind the characters.  While I think this is a truer approach, it did keep me from fully engaging with the story.

Finally a note on Shia.  I haven't really had an opinion on whether he can act or not because, up to this point, I've only seen him in really bad projects (Transformers, Indiana Jones).  And after this, I'm still not sure.  He's not horrible, and since his character is supposed to be a doofus his lack of polish kind of works.  Still its obvious he's out of his depth whenever compared to the rest of the cast (Hardy in particular who pretty much communicates with unintelligible grunts,  and makes it work) so I still can't say I've made up my mind on him.

Anyway the bottom line on Lawless is that it's ambitious, has a lot of good elements, but doesn't stick the landing.

Total Recall on the other hand,  well, its just cinematic white noise.  It actually reminds me a lot of the Tron remake from two years ago.  If competently executed, not really boring or offensive, and completely and utterly rote and forgettable.  Sure it has problems but I don't honestly care enough to talk about them.  So I won't.

To Rome With Love

This is definitely one of the more inconsequential Woody Allen films.  And really, its successfully entertaining only about 1/2 the time.  It basically follows four unrelated sets of characters (Alec Baldwin/Jesse Eisenberg, Roberto Benigni, Woody himself, and Penelope Cruz/some italian actors I can't bother to look up) around Rome engaging in vaguely whimsical behavior.  Only two sets of stories (Baldwin & Woody) work, and the Benigni story line is particularly tiresome (yes we get it, people are famous now just for being famous).  Had Woody chopped the two extraneous plots, and just focused on the first two this would have been a nice tight little comedy.  As it is the whole thing ends up feeling bloated.  That said, the guy still throws off interesting dialogue like nobody else, and there's enough going on in the good 1/2 to keep me interested.  No doubt its inconsequential, and not something I'll be revisiting any time soon, but hey I'd rather have a minor Woody Allen film than  another generic romantic comedy.  

Ted/The Dark Knight Rises

Ted


I had more thoughts about this when I say it a few weeks ago, but now I really don't care.  It's not great, but I laughed more than a few times, and its better than I thought it would be given how lazy family guy became after the third season.   There's no real reason to seek it out, but you could do worse if it shows up on a plane (one with individual players, not the edited common screen.  Taking the profanity out of this film sort of kills half the jokes.  Seeing a teddy bear say frak isn't as funny).

The Dark Knight Rises


Its pretty much impossible to evaluate this in a vacuum.  Its a follow up to arguably the greatest super hero film of all time, and has to tie up this Batman trilogy in a satisfactory manner.  Not falling on their face would have been an achievement, and in general they didn't.  The best decision was not trying to replicate the Joker.  They weren't going to recapture that live-wire energy, and sense of anarchic danger, so it was the smart call not to even try.  The new main villain, Bane, isn't as memorable but he's sufficiently threatening and destructive to represent a real threat.  His plan is a little too similar to the second film, and there are a few logical holes, but overall his story line works.

Other than that, the performances are good, and the new characters don't feel too forced (though the way the Batman/Catwoman relationship resolved did feel a little arbitrary).    Also I think they did as good as job as the ending as could be expected, given the requirements of the genre (the 'twist' for Joseph Gordon Levitt's character was kind of cheesy though).

In short its good.  Probably not as good as the second film, but a solid ending to the trilogy.  I don't really want to compare it to the Marvel universe, since those are essentially lighter and goofier.  The batman films definitely have weightier themes they try to use the stories to comment on (even if they often are a little too heavy handed and on the nose with the speechifying), which means they're probably 'better' than the Marvel stuff.  However this also means I'm probably less likely to re-watch them if they pop up randomly on basic cable (because I'm shallow you see) if that makes any sense. Whatever, see The Dark Knight Rises, its worth supporting the conclusion to one of the more ambitious studio-franchise efforts in recent memory.