Point-By-Point: Cabin in the Woods 7/10

I know this was critically acclaimed and my dear co-author on this blog called this is "favorite movie [not film] of 2012", but I have to say: I just didn't think it lived up to the hype. It was good, shiny and well-done; it just didn't didn't have the "wow" factor I was expecting.

The Good: 
Unicorns and mermen and neato fantasy baddies of all kinds! Really, I would watch an entire movie just based around exploring all the holding cages in the elevator cube scene. This would be a far prettier, trippier movie.

I also really liked most of the characters. Joss Whedon does a very good job of making douchey archetype characters at least marginally charming, and he had fun with a lot of the stereotypes in this. Not many of them were given much to work with, but they're fun while they last. Fran Kranz (who was really the adhesive who held Dollhouse together and who deserves more chewy roles) and Richard "Master of the Deadpan" Jenkins are wonderful.

I love movies without happy endings.

Mise en scene FTW!

The Bad:
It's very rare that I say this about a horror movie, but I actually wanted this to be longer. The whole thing just felt really perfunctory and edited-down. I feel like that was, perhaps, a dig at the cookie-cutter nature of horror movies. but even the denouement felt like there was something missing, something that got left on the cutting room floor, which ended up looking less like self-aware snark and more like a let-down.

Movies that take glee in causing pain give me a terrible taste in my mouth. It's a philosophical thing. I hated Kick-Ass and Dodgeball for the same reason. I realize that in this case, that's kind of the point of the movie -- turning torture and death into a corporate game too banal to even be looked on as sadistic; it's just hard to find it fun from an audience perspective. All the wink-wink, nudge-nudge generally makes me feel dirty and a little sick.

I wanted to see the Old Ones! The Lovecraft nerd in me was piqued!

I'm sure there's some super-deep meaning behind making the only non-white person in the movie the ONE person with a sense of morality/disgust... but honestly, I don't care enough to really tease that out.

The Ugly:

You're welcome.

Points Pondered: 

• Characters alternately talk about getting calls frum "upstairs" and "downstairs". The Old Ones are "downstairs", it's assumed, but I'd like to see this company's org structure! 
• Further, I feel like this movie was intended as some kind of veiled Office Space-esque take-down of corporate wickedness and consumer society: rich, bored fat-cats gambling on the fact that they have an endless supply of kids lining up to kill themselves for their product. Only the counterculture nerd sees through it. Is this a valid reading?
• If the whole idea is that you need a Scholar, Athlete, Slut, Fool and Virgin, what's up with the classroom of Japanese schoolgirls? 
• Who's Kevin?

AMF's Top Movies Of 2012

Most years, I think back on the movies we've watched and loved and I have to winnow things out of my Top 10. This year, I had a hard time padding out my Best Of list. There just weren't a lot of movies I got super excited about... but then I started writing about some of them and realized that while there weren't a ton of whole-movies that grabbed me by the ears, there were a fair number of really striking scenes -- in both good and bad movies -- that were truly beautiful. Sometimes, it really is about the little things.

Top 10 Movies of 2012
Perks of Being a Wallflower 
This is the high school experience you wish you had: a little uncomfortable, a little stagey, a lot confusing, and filled to the brim with those moments that shine like diamonds because you are in them and you are with the people you love. I was leery that this book could ever be made into a movie, but with the author at the helm, I was willing to give it a go. It turned out to be my favorite 2 hours at the movies this year. Exquisite. 

Cloud Atlas 
This movie shouldn’t have worked. It’s ambitious, incredibly non-linear, and, some could argue, bloated (hell, there are six complete timelines at work here). But it works; it works so, so well. The editors for this must have had the toughest job since I-don’t-know-when, given the number of stories and images they needed to intertwine, ensuring that all the circuitous paths made sense. This whumped me in some dark emotional way that I can’t quite articulate, but it hung with me for days. 

Beasts of the Southern Wild 
Find the most impressive child actress out there. Throw her into a magic realism fairytale that looks like nothing else you’ve ever seen, let her work her fierce, preternatural magic. Layer in a gorgeous soundtrack and some of the most stunning images captured on film this year. Sit back and let it wash over you. 

Safety Not Guaranteed 
Somehow, what was advertised as a fluffy little romantic comedy tore me to emotional smithereens in a way that nothing has since Up. The beautiful tragedy of hope and one of the sweetest musical interludes ever. 

"It's that time and that place and that song, and you remember what it was like when you were in that place. And then you listen to that song, and you know you're not in that place anymore, and it makes you feel hollow. You can't just go find that stuff again." This may be the new "But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in." I don't care: it's still beautiful.


The Soderbergh Two-fer: Magic Mike and Haywire 
Soderbergh could get an incredible performance out of a piece of tofu if given the chance. I didn't think I would ever rave about the acting of Channing Tatum... but here I am, saying that he does a damn good job in Magic Mike. That, if nothing else, is why it's is on my list. Somehow, the movie walks the perfect line between beefcake exploitation (c’mon, you went to see the dance scenes, too. It's OK.) and an elegant little mediation on the American dream for “a normal life”.  

Then there's Haywire. While the story and the action scenes are really nothing special (although Gina Carano is a physical phenomenon), this is the most feminist, most gender-neutral action movie I've ever seen. It blew me away. An action heroine who is almost entirely non-sexualized? Who doesn't rely on men to save her pretty little high-heeled ass? Who is filmed and treated -- gasp -- like a MALE action star? Amazing.

Argo  
Ben Affleck, you amaze me. You came back from Gigli and Reindeer Games to become one of the most interesting new directors of the past few years. The texture of this movie was amazing, and the sheer sense of place-and-time doubly so, all without feeling cheesy. The biggest compliment I can give this movie-- and I do mean this sincerely -- is that it does not feel like an American movie made in 2012. It feels like a throwback to the gritty dramas of the 1970s (Dog Day Afternoon, oddly, is what kept coming to mind) or perhaps something coming out of the current Eastern European aesthetic. 

Note: While many of the reviews complained that none of the journalists were given personalities, and that this was a flaw, I found this to be a huge mark in the movie's favor! I appreciated the choice to keep the action focused on the logistics of the situation, rather than on the messy interplay between six characters whose personal motivations are, at heart, not important to the story.

Moonrise Kingdom 
Paul hates Wes Anderson. I love him. While I may never convince him to watch this, I feel like this may be the Anderson movie he might most enjoy. While, ostensibly, a simple plot about pre-teen first love, it’s also the saddest, most adult movie that Anderson has made to date. Frances McDormand will break your heart. 

(personal side-note: it’s creepy how much the lead girl looks like one of my sisters. The fumbling make-out scene was incredibly awkward).

Looper 
I love Rian Johnson's eye for style, and this is one of the sexist movies this year, in terms of sheer panache. It has its flaws, sure, but it's ballsy, smart, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes one hell of a Bruce Willis impersonator. The Best Audience Nudge Of The Year award goes to the scene in which Bruce Willis refuses to explain how time travel works because: "if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws." It's a cop-out, but a fun one.

Also: time-loop vivisection. That is all.

The Grey
This wasn't on my original list, but the more I thought about it, the more I think I liked it. If anything, this movie is on this list for one brutal, amazing scene: a scene where Liam Neeson calmly talks a man through dying. No histrionics, no melodrama, no soundtrack. Just quiet talking and a man's breath. Stunning.

Honorable Mention For "Best Movie I Saw in 2012"
Attack the Block
While this was released in 2011, I did not see it until 2012 and it was the most straight-up fun I've had at a movie in ages. This is what you can do with a barrel of enthusiasm, some hilarious teenagers, and a strong appreciation for monster movie tropes. Excellent.

Biggest Disappointments
Bully 
I wanted so much for this to be good, as good as everyone promised. I wanted this to be the redemption, the “it gets better” promise of hope for my own years of being bullied (and, let’s be honest, being a bully). This was not that movie. It could have been -- the structure was there -- but it just wasn’t. Want a good "up with outsiders", "bullying is bad" movie? Watch ParaNorman.

Prometheus 
Notable for two of my favorite scenes (Michael Fassbender imitating Lawrence of Arabia, and the star-map scene that reduced me to tears), but also for some of the stupidest character development and most pointless plot gyrations of the year. I wanted so much to like this: it had so much potential. What a mess; what a beautiful, idiotic mess.

Brave
This movie isn't bad; it really isn't. If it had been made by any other animation studio it would have been excellent... but coming from Pixar, I was just expecting more. Pixar has created some of the most emotionally resonant, most adult animated movies out there, but Brave is very much a kids' movie: slapstick, sappy and overly "cute". It's pretty, it has some very elegant scenes, but it's not Up, it's not Wall-E, and it's not even Finding Nemo (although that's probably the closest corollary). This just feels like a Dreamworks production, or maybe a middleweight Disney effort.

Haiku: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World 10/10

Jane Austen for boys:
A captain/surgeon bro-mance
Look! An albatross!

Full Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I have been excited to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for weeks. The ads looked gorgeous, it has actors in it whom I can happily ogle watch for hours upon hours, I am generally a sucker for costume or period dramas (especially of the early 1900s sort), and yes... I had high hopes.

Honestly, I cannot remember the last time I was this disappointed in what could have been a very fine film. To put it simply: it is very capable, but it is entirely pointless. The acting is great, the set design is sumptuous, and overall it looks very good. Somewhere in the 17th hour of runtime, however, you realize that Benjamin is merely a flaccid foil for the much-more-interesting people around him, that Daisy is an annoying bitch, that your bum has gone numb, that your brain is going numb from the inane voice-overs (all done in a maddeningly slooooooooow monotone), and that even after all this time, all this exposition, you still know absolutely nothing about any of these characters. Nor are you all that interested in changing this fact.

Generally, the movie gives you no reason to care... and you know what? I followed its advice, and didn’t. For the last 45 minutes, maybe, it does finally hit its stride and for a bit actually offers you some kind of emotional incentive to pay attention... but it’s a pretty long slog to get there. And by that point I was almost too annoyed to care. The set-up (guy ages backwards) is a positively FASCINATING opportunity for a psychological case-study -- or at least some mention of how this defect affects one's conception of the world -- but no. That would be far too much depth.

That being said, Benjamin Button is very, very pretty to watch. It’s slow as hell and almost entirely brainless, but man, they must have spent a lot of money on its production. Even the smallest details are exquisite and well-composed. Whole tableaux are art-installations through which the camera wends, and the director (David Fincher, light years away from the tight, effective film-making of Seven) clearly has fun with emulating an old-film “look” and the nostalgic nuances sepia tone can bring. Too bad, then, that the people and actions that fill up this beautiful space are so vacant.

If you are in the mood for gorgeous, easy-to-ignore background noise, Benjamin Button works quite well (file it next to Girl With the Pearl Earring, Snow Falling on Cedars and The New World in that category). It’s just not that compelling as a piece of cinema worth focusing on.

This gets my award for “Biggest Frickin’ Disappointment Of The Year”. Good job!

5/10

PS: For Pitt oglers, the scenes where the special effects manage to anti-age him back to his A River Runs Through It young gorgeousness are quite a treat. To refresh your memory. Gosh, that man was pretty.

Best of 2008 list

2008 was an odd year for movies. I watched a lot of them, I enjoyed many of them, and a disturbing number of them evanesced out of my consciousness the minute I walked out of the theatre. Therefore, coming up with a Best Of list has been interesting... but I think I’ve been able to at least pare down the list a bit.

1. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, Slumdog Millionaire was the best movie I’ve seen this year. It whumped me in a way that movies don’t often do, which I was not expecting at all. The reviews that I’d read prior to having watched it made it sound facilely cute and I saw multiple blurbs for it being the “feel-good film of the year”. I’ll give you a little warning: it’s not. Not in the traditional “2 hours of warm fuzzies” kind of way. It’s brutal, hard to watch, and seriously heart-breaking... but the payoff is the most amazing endorphin rush I have ever experienced. And so you walk out of the theatre crying, yet walking on air. It’s an electrifying feeling. And one I recommend whole-heartedly to everyone.

2. Rachel Getting Married is not a feel-good film. It is frustrating, depressing, and (if you have ever acted in any way like Kym, or had a sister, brother, friend like her) strangely, compellingly embarrassing. Anne Hathaway is utterly light-years away from her Princess Diaries persona and god, is she good. And by “good”, I mean “powerful”, “terrifying”, and “oh, so self-destructively tragic”. I’m usually not a big one for dysfunctional family dramas, but I was struck dumb with awe by this film.

3. Hellboy II is my pick for “totally awesome popcorn flick of the year”. Yes, it’s a graphic-novel-based action movie (and a sequel, at that!), but it’s visually stunning, terrifically clever, and features some of the most beautiful CG work this side of Lord of the Rings. Generally I am a whore for anything Guillermo Del Toro does, admittedly, but this manages to keep the visual splendor of Pan’s Labyrinth intact while being much more emotionally palatable than that film (yes, I felt emotionally abused by that film -- it just cut a LITTLE too deep). It’s some of the most genuine fun that have ever had at a fantasy-action movie; a feat made possible both by the ogle-worthy visuals and the hammy charm of the cast (in especial, Ron Perlman as our eponymous hero).

4. Happy-Go-Lucky is a bit like a stew: when first consumed it’s good, but not mindblowing. Let it steep a day and go back to it, though, it’s amazing. The story of a by-hook-or-by-crook optimist, this British import is one of those rare films that actually gets better the more you think about it and mull over just how complicated the simple story and its characters really are. It’s one of the more fascinating character studies I’ve seen in recent years, and one that deserves to be sought out by more viewers. PS: I do not recommend seeing Rachel Getting Married and this back to back (as I made the mistake of doing). The rollercoaster of conflicting emotions and convergence of strong female characters is a bit overwhelming.

5. The Orphanage/ El Orfanato is going on this list because it is a near-perfect study of horror. I will never watch it again, but I can still respect it for its elegance, its emotional power, and the fact that it scared the bejeebers out of me for days. It’s one of the few horror films that somehow still makes you want to cry with compassion -- yes, it’s terrifying (even the opening credits are supremely creepy), but it’s somehow terrifically sad. You genuinely care for the characters and by the time the denouement comes around, it’s heartbreaking. Anthony Lane, in the New Yorker, has a great article on it here. He’s more eloquent than I could ever hope to be.

6. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. I dare you to find a movie containing more enthusiasm and dippy fun than this aimed-at-teens-but-smart-enough-for-adults romp. It also gets my “Sweetest Sex Scene” award. Who knew that handjobs could be so damn romantic?

7. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It’s not going to win many awards, but man, it was funny and heartfelt and a damn good watch.

8. Burn After Reading. This gets my “WTF Moment of the Year” award... and somehow manages to win it multiple times. Brad Pitt is pure awesome.

9. Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr. rocking the hell out of what could have been a pedestrian superhero-comics movie adaptation. Yes, please.

10. Dark Knight. Yea, yea, everyone else has listed this, too. The Batman franchise really should just shut down after this film -- there’s no way you’re going to top it. It’s going to be sad to see them try.

Haiku: Slither 8/10

Worms bore into brains
Folks change into Zombies/nests
A gooey delight

Point-by-Point: Near Dark 6/10

A young cowboy-type immediately falls for a girl he sees at the local drug store. Turns out she's a vampire, and quickly makes him one. He's forced to join her gang and must either adapt to the new lifestyle or die. Well, die again.

The Good: The movie has lots of style and an interesting cast of characters. The story is interesting if only because it addresses vapirism as a disease - you're still you, you're just superstrong, can't die, are allergic to sunlight and need blood to live. Plus, I always like Lance Henrikson, who plays the head of the vampire clan.

The Bad: There are a few ridiculous events that just make you wish the writer wasn't quite so lazy. The acting is a bit over-the-top, but it's a vampire movie, so it's to be expected.

The Ugly: The vampires have a tendency to catch fire while outside in the sun. But it's a slow burn, so think charcol more than POOF.

Points Pondered

• The vampire life is a bit more realistically portrayed than the uber-romantacised stuff of Anne Rice. Really, these are killers who are constantly on the lam. They must murder to eat, and convince themselves they're not human to do so.


• I'm not sure I buy blood transfusion as a cure to being a vampire.


• The clan gets into a shoot out with perhaps the most inept police department ever. If you see a bad guy making a run for a car, you should probably disable the vehicle.


• Apparently vampires prefer shaved victims. Seems fair.

Haiku: Let it Ride 8/10

Day at the races
goes from good to amazing
I laugh at addicts

Point by Point: The Proposition 7/10

A bandit (Guy Pearce) and his little brother are in jail, but the chief of police makes him a deal: He'll let them go free if he goes into the outback and kills his older brother, who's basically a sadistic yet smart jerk. He accepts, because otherwise this would be a short film.

The Good: The setting is simultaneously harsh and beautiful, very much by design. Glorious shots of the Australian wilderness show just how barren it can be. The acting is top-notch, although it takes a few minutes to get an ear for everyone's accents.

The Bad: There are a fair amount of "this is important" cinematography, which can be a little overbearing. The meandering pace accented with brutal violence may definitely throw some people.

The Ugly: It's never fun to watch someone lashed, but the winner here is the townfolk - they got a lot of butt-ugly people to stand around and look cross.

Points Pondered

• If you don't like flies, you should probably avoid Australia.


• Ray Whinstone does not quite look as fit as he did in Beowulf. I think he probably got some CG help with his abs. Just maybe.


• I bet that if you recite a line from a poem after being shot, and the guy that shot you enthusiastically continues the quote, it's of little solace.


• Are you still allowed to call it a Western if it takes place in Australia? Does it get a funny name, like Kangaroo Western?

Haiku: Sleepy Hollow 7/10

LOTS of severed heads
turn horror to comedy
with each bloody thwack