March, Onward
Keeping up with the official movie-writing:
Identity Thief review is here
Safe Haven review, the third installment in my "review Nicholas Sparks movies for some reason" trilogy, here. The movie must be romantic; after I saw it, Marisa and I went out for Valentine's Day for the first time in a bunch of years (although: she was relieved not to have to see Safe Haven).
Beautiful Creatures review here. It's not very good slash better than any Twilight movie I've seen.
Dark Skies review here. Of all the horror movies to hide from critics, I'm not sure why this fairly well-crafted and not-boring (if still too beholden to genre conventions) one warrants the sneakiness. I sort of liked it.
Phantom review here. This is not short for Phantom of the Opera or that other musical about the Phantom of the Opera that's not the famous Phantom of the Opera. Oh, speaking of theatrical experiences: I finally saw Sleep No More. It was pretty neat. I don't really have a desire to go again, although if it was thirty dollars instead of eighty, hey, sure, I'd give it another go. I am not a huge fan of expressive dance-fighting, it turns out. But I am a fan of being able to walk away from expressive dance-fighting if I'm bored and want to go root through cupboards! It also made me realize that I claim Macbeth as my favorite Shakespeare play but do not have a strong recollection of what happens in a lot of it. Anyway, Phantom: you probably haven't heard of this movie. It's fine. I hadn't heard of it, briefly got stupidly psyched to see it, and then bam, it's just another bad indie movie with some good actors in it. Only in this one, the good actors are playing Russians, and don't speak Russian (OK), don't speak with Russian accents (hmm...), in fact speak with pure undisguised American accents (pretty weird).
I did not exactly review Stoker but I did write about it after seeing it and a Q&A with the director at the Museum of the Moving Image. It's really damn good (much better than Park Chan-Wook's first film from ten years ago!) . So is Side Effects, which I walked through a blizzard to see, for it is the last ("last") Steven Soderbergh movie ("movie") for a long time ("probably two to five years"). It's not quite up to the level of my favorite Soderbergh movies, but it's solidly on the level of Contagion: a Soderbergh twist on a familiar genre. Odd how Soderbergh often releases movies in pairs, but those movies often pair better with movies from other years. Contagion and Side Effects match up nicely; Magic Mike came out the same year as Haywire, but is more of a flipside to The Girlfriend Experience. Full Frontal accompanied Solaris in 2002 but the former makes more sense alongside Ocean's 12 in 2004. The Informant! is almost like a spoof of the kind of movie Erin Brockovich is.
Anyway: I'll never understand the faction of moviewatchers who consider Soderbergh's 1998-2001 period an unreplicated golden age and everything else since then faintly to extremely disappointing. I'll give you that Out of Sight and The Limey, the two movies that kick off that run, are two of his best ever, maybe his actual top two ever, but I'll take five or six genre riffs over Erin Brockovich (itself probably something of a genre riff; maybe I should rewatch it someday but the Julia factor really sours it for me) any day of the week. Hell, I like most of Soderbergh's genre deconstructions more than the big-canvas drama of Traffic. There's something quicker on its feet, more experimental but also more pleasurable, about a movie like Side Effects. As far as I'm concerned, he's been on a major roll since 2009, so I'm sorry to see him take a power/retirement/sabbatical/hiatus/whatever. And I eagerly await the non-theatrical release of Behind the Candelabra this summer.
I did not review A Good Day to Die Hard but I did walk through the first four after rewatching them all on Blu-ray. Watching Live Free or Die Hard (or, for that matter, Die Hard 2) again made me think, OK, look, the first Die Hard is really good, but a Die Hard sequel doesn't even have to be as good as Die Hard with a Vengeance for me to like it, so all A Good Day to Die Hard has to do is give me John McClane and some cool action sequences, and who cares about the fidelity to the premise of the original Die Hard. This cavalier attitude did not prepare me for how, in the word both Nathaniel and I used separately without the other knowing it to describe this movie, dispiriting the fifth Die Hard would be. There are some cool parts here and there, and Willis is definitely better as even a revamped, hardened version of McClane than he is at most other action-y roles, and I'm not even taking real issue with McClane's newfound superhero status. I just wish: (a.) John Moore, the director, knew how to cut an action sequence, and I'm not talking about how everyone needs to slow down and stop cutting so fast because I can't see what's going on; I'm talking about how I could identify each shot of the movie's big car chase easily, but it still made no sense because of how nonsensically they were cut together; (b.) McClane had motivations and feelings that made sense, rather than moments that actually make him into a total asshole that the movie thinks is just a charming blue-collar guy who gets shit done; and (c.) that the movie had a middle, rather than a protracted set-up, a brief and sleepy interlude, and then a protracted climax where even its enjoyable moments don't feel the least bit earned, even on an action-movie level.
I saw some other movies just for fun. Like Amour! Oh, the fun I had! Just kidding, it was really upsetting and made me think about death and stuff. I did like it more than other Michael Haneke movies I've seen but it's hard not to wonder, having seen Funny Games, how much sadism may be lurking behind his supposedly more humane and tender movie. As far as upsetting dramas in French go, I do prefer Amour to Rust and Bone, which held my attention (as any movie with the super-talented Marion Cotillard probably could), but lets a lot of its subplots ebb and flow at convenience, and ultimately, I don't know, felt a little melodramatic and sluggish even though I admired the acting.
I'm glad Marisa and I made the effort to get out and see John Dies at the End, a loopy horror comedy that I can't say makes a ton of sense (and sometimes seems to be obscuring itself for no real purpose), but made me laugh and smile a lot with its weird attitude and commitment. It was sort of like the chaos of the Ty Segall concert I went to with Derrick and Marisa earlier in February: after thirty or forty minutes, the songs started to sound pretty similar. But I loved what was happening, the crowd moshing and stage-diving and crowd-surfing like it was 1993 again, and even though I did not understand why, during the encore, some dudes from the audience jumped up on stage, apparently impromptu, and sang the songs instead of the singer, I found it pretty delightful.
On the other hand, Snitch did not aspire to make me laugh or smile at all. In a way, I appreciated that about it: it totally looks like a Mark Wahlberg style crime thriller and/or a retro action vehicle a la the spate of post-Expendables stuff we've seen (I missed Bullet to the Head and even-older-guy crime cinema companion Stand Up Guys, by the way, which I did not expect to, but feel fine about), but it's actually more of an earnest, gritty drama about the unfairness of drug sentencing. As an earnest, gritty drama, it's not especially skillful. But Dwayne Johnson, playing more human being than superhero, is pretty good, and the movie places its characters in some interesting (if sometimes implausible) moral dilemmas and tight spots. It's still pretty simplistic and I didn't really get much out of it, but it aims higher than you might expect from a movie called Snitch.
So that was another month or so worth of movies and other stuff. I want to write a books post but at this point I'm a solid eighteen months or so back, I think, on writing up books I've read. But there will continue to be a movie starring The Rock on the last weekend of the month for three more months, so there's my motivation right in front of me.
Identity Thief review is here
Safe Haven review, the third installment in my "review Nicholas Sparks movies for some reason" trilogy, here. The movie must be romantic; after I saw it, Marisa and I went out for Valentine's Day for the first time in a bunch of years (although: she was relieved not to have to see Safe Haven).
Beautiful Creatures review here. It's not very good slash better than any Twilight movie I've seen.
Dark Skies review here. Of all the horror movies to hide from critics, I'm not sure why this fairly well-crafted and not-boring (if still too beholden to genre conventions) one warrants the sneakiness. I sort of liked it.
Phantom review here. This is not short for Phantom of the Opera or that other musical about the Phantom of the Opera that's not the famous Phantom of the Opera. Oh, speaking of theatrical experiences: I finally saw Sleep No More. It was pretty neat. I don't really have a desire to go again, although if it was thirty dollars instead of eighty, hey, sure, I'd give it another go. I am not a huge fan of expressive dance-fighting, it turns out. But I am a fan of being able to walk away from expressive dance-fighting if I'm bored and want to go root through cupboards! It also made me realize that I claim Macbeth as my favorite Shakespeare play but do not have a strong recollection of what happens in a lot of it. Anyway, Phantom: you probably haven't heard of this movie. It's fine. I hadn't heard of it, briefly got stupidly psyched to see it, and then bam, it's just another bad indie movie with some good actors in it. Only in this one, the good actors are playing Russians, and don't speak Russian (OK), don't speak with Russian accents (hmm...), in fact speak with pure undisguised American accents (pretty weird).
I did not exactly review Stoker but I did write about it after seeing it and a Q&A with the director at the Museum of the Moving Image. It's really damn good (much better than Park Chan-Wook's first film from ten years ago!) . So is Side Effects, which I walked through a blizzard to see, for it is the last ("last") Steven Soderbergh movie ("movie") for a long time ("probably two to five years"). It's not quite up to the level of my favorite Soderbergh movies, but it's solidly on the level of Contagion: a Soderbergh twist on a familiar genre. Odd how Soderbergh often releases movies in pairs, but those movies often pair better with movies from other years. Contagion and Side Effects match up nicely; Magic Mike came out the same year as Haywire, but is more of a flipside to The Girlfriend Experience. Full Frontal accompanied Solaris in 2002 but the former makes more sense alongside Ocean's 12 in 2004. The Informant! is almost like a spoof of the kind of movie Erin Brockovich is.
Anyway: I'll never understand the faction of moviewatchers who consider Soderbergh's 1998-2001 period an unreplicated golden age and everything else since then faintly to extremely disappointing. I'll give you that Out of Sight and The Limey, the two movies that kick off that run, are two of his best ever, maybe his actual top two ever, but I'll take five or six genre riffs over Erin Brockovich (itself probably something of a genre riff; maybe I should rewatch it someday but the Julia factor really sours it for me) any day of the week. Hell, I like most of Soderbergh's genre deconstructions more than the big-canvas drama of Traffic. There's something quicker on its feet, more experimental but also more pleasurable, about a movie like Side Effects. As far as I'm concerned, he's been on a major roll since 2009, so I'm sorry to see him take a power/retirement/sabbatical/hiatus/whatever. And I eagerly await the non-theatrical release of Behind the Candelabra this summer.
I did not review A Good Day to Die Hard but I did walk through the first four after rewatching them all on Blu-ray. Watching Live Free or Die Hard (or, for that matter, Die Hard 2) again made me think, OK, look, the first Die Hard is really good, but a Die Hard sequel doesn't even have to be as good as Die Hard with a Vengeance for me to like it, so all A Good Day to Die Hard has to do is give me John McClane and some cool action sequences, and who cares about the fidelity to the premise of the original Die Hard. This cavalier attitude did not prepare me for how, in the word both Nathaniel and I used separately without the other knowing it to describe this movie, dispiriting the fifth Die Hard would be. There are some cool parts here and there, and Willis is definitely better as even a revamped, hardened version of McClane than he is at most other action-y roles, and I'm not even taking real issue with McClane's newfound superhero status. I just wish: (a.) John Moore, the director, knew how to cut an action sequence, and I'm not talking about how everyone needs to slow down and stop cutting so fast because I can't see what's going on; I'm talking about how I could identify each shot of the movie's big car chase easily, but it still made no sense because of how nonsensically they were cut together; (b.) McClane had motivations and feelings that made sense, rather than moments that actually make him into a total asshole that the movie thinks is just a charming blue-collar guy who gets shit done; and (c.) that the movie had a middle, rather than a protracted set-up, a brief and sleepy interlude, and then a protracted climax where even its enjoyable moments don't feel the least bit earned, even on an action-movie level.
I saw some other movies just for fun. Like Amour! Oh, the fun I had! Just kidding, it was really upsetting and made me think about death and stuff. I did like it more than other Michael Haneke movies I've seen but it's hard not to wonder, having seen Funny Games, how much sadism may be lurking behind his supposedly more humane and tender movie. As far as upsetting dramas in French go, I do prefer Amour to Rust and Bone, which held my attention (as any movie with the super-talented Marion Cotillard probably could), but lets a lot of its subplots ebb and flow at convenience, and ultimately, I don't know, felt a little melodramatic and sluggish even though I admired the acting.
I'm glad Marisa and I made the effort to get out and see John Dies at the End, a loopy horror comedy that I can't say makes a ton of sense (and sometimes seems to be obscuring itself for no real purpose), but made me laugh and smile a lot with its weird attitude and commitment. It was sort of like the chaos of the Ty Segall concert I went to with Derrick and Marisa earlier in February: after thirty or forty minutes, the songs started to sound pretty similar. But I loved what was happening, the crowd moshing and stage-diving and crowd-surfing like it was 1993 again, and even though I did not understand why, during the encore, some dudes from the audience jumped up on stage, apparently impromptu, and sang the songs instead of the singer, I found it pretty delightful.
On the other hand, Snitch did not aspire to make me laugh or smile at all. In a way, I appreciated that about it: it totally looks like a Mark Wahlberg style crime thriller and/or a retro action vehicle a la the spate of post-Expendables stuff we've seen (I missed Bullet to the Head and even-older-guy crime cinema companion Stand Up Guys, by the way, which I did not expect to, but feel fine about), but it's actually more of an earnest, gritty drama about the unfairness of drug sentencing. As an earnest, gritty drama, it's not especially skillful. But Dwayne Johnson, playing more human being than superhero, is pretty good, and the movie places its characters in some interesting (if sometimes implausible) moral dilemmas and tight spots. It's still pretty simplistic and I didn't really get much out of it, but it aims higher than you might expect from a movie called Snitch.
So that was another month or so worth of movies and other stuff. I want to write a books post but at this point I'm a solid eighteen months or so back, I think, on writing up books I've read. But there will continue to be a movie starring The Rock on the last weekend of the month for three more months, so there's my motivation right in front of me.