2012 - LOOPER, very entertaining time travel thriller.

 The writer/director Rian Johnson is a very clever fellow.  Lately he's been concentrating on mysteries involving his character Benoit Blanc a apparently gay upscale private detective.  Looper was Johnson's third film and it was a combination of a science fiction time travel story and a thriller. 

The plot involves a criminal organization with a time machine who use it to send people they want killed back in time.  After the victim arrives in the past a hit man is waiting to kill him which will in effect erase him from existing in the future.  One of the hit men  played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt awaits his next victim who when he arrives back in time turns out to be his older self played by Bruce Willis.  Willis manages to escape being killed by his younger self and as they say let the fun of this elaborate plot begin.

 

Joseph Gordon Lewis is very good as the younger assassin trying to sort out this time travel paradox mess.  Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis as usual apparently his motivation in this film was hie ten million dollar paycheck.  There is a subplot involving Emily Blunt playing a mother with a son who has powerful if undeveloped  telekinetic powers that eventually figures into the plot as well.

 

Rian Johnson's inspiration for this story probably was Brian DePalms's Carrie, the very clever Spanish thriller Timecrimes and Shane Carruth's Primer one of the most complicated time travel films I have ever seen.  If I have a criticism of this film it's mostly because it turns into another tiresome Bruce Willis Die Hard type shoot-em up.  Was this in the screenplay?  Did Bruce Willis insist on a large scale action scene as was usually the case with his films?  Anyway annoying as the Bruce Willis bloodbath is it is it doesn't ruin the film.

The film was a financial success and led to Rian Johnson's next film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the only one of the recent trilogy that was any good.  Looper is a very good commercial entertainment that doesn't insult the audience's intelligence for a change.

The running time for Looper is 118 minutes.

2012 - MEN IN BLACK 3, third in the series obviously.

 Considering the law of diminishing returns when it comes to sequels, Men in Black 3 is actually a fairly decent action comedy.  The film was notorious for being one of the most expensive comedies made when it was released.  Men in Black 3 started without a complete script and actually shut down while the script was finally completed.  For the mess the production was the film turned out well.  It got  decent reviews  and good box office results which must have been a relief to everyone involved.

This time Will Smith as Agent J, travels back in time to keep his partner Agent K,  played by Tommy Lee Jones from being killed by an evil alien.  Tommy Lee Jones is K in the present time and Josh Brolin is K back in the 1969 period during the last half of the film.  Brolin is actually fairly funny playing a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith does know a thing about comedy timing, he is funny.

 

Probably the real stars of the film are the special effects team.  Rick Baker was responsible for the actual physical aliens and the director Barry Sonnenfeld knows a thing or two about filming comedies.  I don't want to over praise this film, after all it's still a sequel as it does repeat the usual "aliens are among us"gags from the first two films.  Still, the film is entertaining 

 

Written By Etan Cohen, no relation to the Cohen brothers, the running time is 105 minutes.

2012 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 8

They probably should have called it a day after season 7 but incredibly CBS squeezed two more seasons out of this series.

The cast and the writers seem completely on autopilot by this time. Frankly the relationship and engagement of Robin and Barney always seemed very contrived to me.  Clearly the plan was to pair Robin up with Ted.  But as we shall see in season 9, a funny thing happened on the way to the end of the last episode.

 

The  cast really has to carry the load because the producers/writers sure couldn't seem to get the season jelling.

517 minutes, 23 episodes.

2012 - GAMBIT, another remake

Going to the same well yet again we have a remake of the old Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine comedy thriller.  This version does at least attempt to work in some new situations instead of just completely aping the storyline of the original.  This time Cameron Diaz and Colin Firth fill in for MacLaine and Caine.

The basic plot is the same,  a mismatched pair of thieves attempts to swindle a millionaire out of a chunk of money.  As in the original film we see the caper executed flawlessly which as it turns out is just a fantasy "flash forward" to how the crime should go.  Back to the real world when the actual caper is being executed, everything goes wrong and our thieves have to deal with one crisis and then another

This version of Gambit is notable for the screenwriting presence of Joel and Ethan Coen. However I would have to say this is one of their minor efforts.  Nobody will be talking about this film in their oeuvre.

The film tries to be stylish and I guess the actors do what they can with their parts.  About the best you say for the film is that it has a kind of a clever trick ending.

89 minutes.

2012 - THE EMPEROR, another piece of pretentious crap

Was Emperor Hirohito a part of the Japanese War planning efforts against the United States?  Is he a possible war criminal who should be tried?  General MacArthur sends one of his top aides General Bonner Fellers to investigate.

However Fellers has other things on his mind than the complicity of the Emperor of Japan during World War II.  Feller seems to spend most of his time looking for his old Japanese girlfriend, after all priorities are priorities. 

This film is just a piece of crap.  You get no insight into the Japanese character other than the Japanese can be real nice or real mean.  The film is a complete failure in what could have been an interesting story about the American Occupation of Japan.

Utterly worthless as a movie and as the old saying goes it's a couple of hours I won't be getting back.

106 minutes.

2012 - THIS IS 40, a really long drawn out comedy

Since Judd Apatow wrote, directed and literally put his wife and daughters in this film the assumption would  be that this is an extremely autobiographical film.  It is also a long meandering film.

There is funny stuff but this film just goes on and on with really no plot to speak of.  Apatow also loaded up the supporting cast with a lot of actors that show up in films he has directed and produced.  This group is reminiscent of John Ford's famous stock company that constantly showed up in his films sometimes almost to an absurd level.  That's the same issue with this film.  Melissa McCarthy and Lena Dunham are friends of the director but when you stick them in your film their personalities rob the film of any verisimilitude.

The real family

Not a perfect film but not a failure either.  The film really needed more structure to it.  Apatow was probably too close to the subject matter to pull a really good film out of it.

133 minutes.

2012 - HITCHCOCK, fantasy based on the making of the film Psycho

As close to a travesty about filmmaking as you could find.  Hitchcock is supposedly a recreation of the events behind the making of Psycho.  The film gets almost nothing right about this trend setting film.  Well about the only thing it gets right is that Hitchcock made a film called Psycho.

They put together a good cast for the film, Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, Helen Mirren as his wife Alms, Toni Collette as Hitchock's loyal assistant Peggy Robinson, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, well you get the picture. 

There are a lot of recreations centering around the Hitchcock's personal lives. The film tries to get inside Hitchcock's head regarding his need to shake up his career to stay relevant as he moved into the 1960's.  There is a real goofy storytelling device which has Hitchcock having imaginary conversations with the real life Psycho character Ed Gein.  In another particularly icky scene the film postulates that Alma Hitchcock may have had an affair with the writer Winfield Cook.  The film also show Hitchcock acting up on the set due to his emotional turmoil. All of this stuff is mostly untrue or exaggerated at best.

The big problem this film has is trying to explain Hitchcock's creative process.  It's well known that Hitchcock created his films in his office behind a desk working with the writer to define scenes and create characters.  Hitchcock also usually story boarded his entire film before he began filming.  Sitting in an office working doesn't really make for dramatic storytelling.

98 minutes, written by John J. McLaughlin.

2012 - TO THE WONDER, Malick is out of ideas

This is an indefensible piece of pseudo artistic claptrap from Terrence Malick who it's starting to appear has seen better days and completely exhausted any ability to tell a story.

The film appears to be a story about a love triangle told almost without any dialog or character development.  Malick's chief interest in this film is to photogrqph scene after scene of pretty young women running through fields of hay with the sun glistening into the camera lens.

Malick has made a few good films but since his return from his extended 10 year break his films have been lacking particularly in story content.  Malick's chief interest seems to be in photographing stuff without even remotely attempting to tie it together.  Malick's best film in the second half of his career was The Thin Red Line, but even that suffered from a meandering story structure.   It's been kind of downhill ever since with indulgent films like The Tree of Life and this so called film.

This kind of fim is what happens when you let a pretentious director run amok with a budget.  Commercial  and particularly artistic failure on a large scale.  No one was going to get their money back on this one.

113 minutes

2012 - CLOUD ATLAS, decent attempt at trying something different

At least everyone involved was trying for something different this time.  From the opening of the film where it is announced that no one likes stories that jump back and forth in time the film proceeds to do just that.  You get five interconnected stories and a prologue and epilogue.  The film also has a cast that plays multiple roles throughout the film. 

The film is clearly ambitious.  It wants to say something about the inter-connectivity of man throughout time.  Frequently this comes off as a lot of philosophical babble and is somewhat of an ordeal to get through.  But when was the last time a big budget film even attempted to be about something?

Cloud Atlas is extremely well made from a technical standpoint.  When in comes to integrating special effects in a film, The Wachowskis have the drill down.  There was a lot of criticism of the makeup effects used on the actors playing the multiple roles.  But I believe the idea was not to disguise them beyond the point of recognition.

This is an interesting film that for once does not feature a Marvel superhero.

Written by  Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski and Tom Tyker.  The running time is 172 minutes.

2012 - DJANGO UNCHAINED, more Tarantino more of the same

Guess I wasn't in the mood for another Tarantino genre mash up.  This time Tarantino mixes spaghetti westerns with blaxploitation films in a tale of a bounty hunting ex-slave searching for his wife somewhere down south before the Civil War. The slave Django hooks up with another bounty hunter a German speaking dentist.  They shoot a lot of guys before the even more  bloody climax at some southern plantation called "Candyland. 

As usual Tarantino has loaded the film up with lots of actors most of them who are past their prime.  These actors starred in the exploitation junk that Tarantino grew up on.  Tarantino also has lots of his hipster dialog and situations that he has channeled from watching LOTS of other films.  Tarantino seems to be making some point that slavery in the old South was bad, like I needed to be told that.

The problem I had with this film was the constant over the top violence.  People just don't get shot they get shot and erupt in geysers of blood.  I mean really?  Although it can be fun listening to good actors delivery his dialog, there were long stretches where some of these dialog scenes seemed unusually indulgent even for him.  I'm starting to wonder if Tarantino has finally hit the wall rehashing genre films.

Django by the way is also a restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa,  They specialize in a sort of French cusine, but I looked at the menu and it looks like a mash up of French food, Italian food and burgers. It's kind of like Django Unchained.

165 minutes.

2012 - UPSIDE DOWN - very silly science fiction film

This incredibly stupid science fiction love story has to be seen to be believed if you handle sitting through it.  It seems that in outer space there are two planets literally next to each other due to something called "dual gravity." 

The upside world has all of the rich people while the downside world has all of the poor people.  Naturally one of the upside people falls in love with one the the downside people. To spend time with with his backwards or upside girlfriend the downside guy has to make a vest filled with upside material so he can be right side on her planet, got that?

As if this concept isn't dumb enough an amnesia subplot is worked into this film.  The female lead Kristen Dunst falls into her world while visiting her boyfriend in his world and loses her memory.  Dunst is really the only recognizable actor in this film and I think it's safe to say she has definitely lost her cuteness.

Although the film looks kind of cool but by the end the whole concept is just incredibly silly. 

107 minutes.

2012 - PASSION, sub par Brian De Palma

Whenever Alfred Hitchcock had not had a box office success for a few films, he would "run for cover" as he called it.  This meant that he would return to the suspense thriller formula he knew how to do.  Brian De Palma clearly was trying to "run for cover" with Passion.  Unfortunately this extremely disappointing thriller was a critical and commercial flop.  

Probably De Palma's biggest mistake was in the casting of the central character.  Rachel McAdams just does not look like a cold hearted business executive who will stab anyone in the back to get ahead.  De Palma tries to sex McAdams up, but she comes off more like a little kid dressing up in some of Mommy's naughty underwear.  McAdams is apparently some kind of bisexual or lip stick lesbian who may or may not have the hots for her assistant played by Noomi Rapace who gives a real monotone performance throughout the film.  These two actors really throw the film off and it just never really recovers.

As far as De Palma's famous technique goes, he has all his trademark shots.  The moving camera, the split-screen shots however they all seem to add up to nothing and are kind of pointless from a story telling aspect.  In fact the famous Brian De Palma style is looking a little tired in this film.  

A director who could usually mix sex and violence in interesting thrillers.  Passion is not particularly sexy or violent.  A real disappointment from one of the cinema's top stylists

94 minutes, written by Brian De Palma based on a film called Love Crimes.

2012 - BATTLESHIP, another U.S military vs space aliens epic

I will have to give the production team of Battleship credit, they actually managed to work in the Hasbro board game into the film and it wasn't entirely silly it was only sort of silly.  This is the second space aliens vs the military epic I sat through this weekend.

Against all odds and trapped behind a space alien force field the plucky crew of the John Paul Jones led by their hot head temporary captain take on some wacky alien gizmos that spin around and grind up ships with circular saw blades and blow stuff up with some kind of crazy depth charge bombs.

Compared to Battle: LA the other space alien epic I watched this weekend, this one has a higher budget and is better directed and written.  The cast is a bunch of young good looking actors and even manages to slip in a couple of hot women.  The film was targeted as a big summer release from Universal studios and was a mighty flop.  The whole concept behind the film was just too stupid.  At the very least with Battle: LA you knew that by the numbers film was a pack of cliches never to be taken seriously.

However with Battleship, the director Peter Berg who is a big fan of the United States military wants to make some statement about the "profession of arms" and the plight of the disabled veteran.  Apparently someone forgot to tell him this was a film based on a board game I was playing back in grade school with pencil and paper.

Battleship's other problem is the incredible two hour plus length of this film.  It just goes on and on from one action set piece to another.  The whole thing could have easily lost a half and hour during then editing of the film.

131 minutes, written by Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber.

2012 - JACK REACHER, a decent crime thriller

 A shot at reviving the movie crime thriller.  Tom Cruise is some sort of mysterious former army super cop investigator.  He's been called in to investigate a supposedly random mass shooting incident.  

In films like this the trick is in the storytelling and the director/writer Christopher McQuarrie does a decent job of keeping the plot straight and the action moving along so it all doesn't seem to improbable.

The acting is low key, even the female lead Rosamund Pike plays it so cool it's almost like she is in an episode of Dragnet.  Cruise is Cruise so if you like Tom Cruise playing a super cool tough guy you will like this film.  A very odd piece of casting is German director Werner Herzog as some sort of Russian bad guy who is behind the plot.

If you enjoy a decent old style car chase and lots of people getting their heads banged together you will probably greatly enjoy this throw back to and old style glossy crime thriller.

130 minutes.

2012 - THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN, or Spiderman redux

Emma Stone is Gwen Stacey and she's as cute as a kitten. That's about it for this redo of Spiderman. Sam Raimi the original director of the first three films walked away from the franchise, Sony pictures turned around hired the inexperienced Marc Webb to direct the film. 

The decision to reboot this series is about as cynical as you can get.  This is a watchable film but nothing special and it's all by the books.  What this film is about is a studio unable to walk away from a money making series.

Marc Webb may have been the director but the studio is calling the shots.  All the fights are computer  generated action images, the editing is frantic and all over the place and the plot is "been there done that."  This isn't an awful film just an unnecessary one.

Doesn't anyone who watches these superhero films find it a little odd that once one of these super hero guys shows up with their special powers a super villain just happens to pop up at the same time.

 Just didn't care about this one.

136 minutes

2012 -LIFE OF PI, the kid on the lifeboat with the tiger epic.

I am relieved that I did not see Life of Pi in 3D there would have been only some many "tiger jumping out of the bottom of the lifeboat" 3D shots that I could have put up with after a while.  As it is this film really lards on the visual imagery with glowing fish, bright orange sunsets, and hurricane like storms all probably created or enhanced in the computer to overwhelm the already ADD movie going audience.

The Life of Pi appear to be a film that is trying to create a sort of mystical or fantasy like journey where Pi, the main character has a spiritual awakening about God or the Divine Power or "The Force."floating around on the Pacific ocean allows the viewer to be privy to lots of Pi's interior monologues which seem to consist of a lot of cut rate mystical mumbo jumbo.

Why was Tony the Tiger passed over for the part of Richard Parker?

This film was clearly a huge and expensive technical undertaking, all these computer generated animals do not come cheap and probably every scene has some type of visual enhancement to it.  The lead actor was not a trained professional and adding 3D to the mix probably complicated everything.

Life of Pi is OK however I don't think they really pulled this one off.  But, what do I know, this film is extremely successful with the movie going audience who seem to respond to the story, the religious stuff, and the special effects.  To me, Life of Pi is just a rehash of the insipid Jonathan Livingston Seagull although a lot better made.

127 minutes.

2012 - THE SAPPHIRES, is slick but entertaining.

Well here's an interesting idea for a film, dramatize the real life story of an Aboriginal singing group who toured in Vietnam during the war.  The film was co written by the son of one of the women in the group and the opening credits say inspired by the true story.  They should have put the word "inspired" in very large font because I doubt there was a whole lot of real life story that made it into this film. 

That said, this is a very entertaining film for what it is.  The film has lots of great old soul music, pretty appealing performances from the female cast, humor, a little social criticism and a secret audience pleasing weapon.

The secret weapon is the actor Chris O'Dowd as the burnout manager of the group.  O'Dowd basically steals the film and saves it with his funny and sly performance.  He helps keep the audience connected to all the improbable plot turns in the film and there are a lot of improbable plot turns in this thing.

The Sapphires is the kind of film you can take your date on.  Your wife/girlfriend will love the girl and love story parts and the boys in the theater can enjoy the shooting and explosions during the Vietnam scenes, something for everyone.

103 minutes

2012 - THE HUNGER GAMES, long very long very very long

Current movie star flavor of the month Jennifer Lawrence is involved in a contest set in the future which as every other critic or nerd blogger has pointed out is essentially the same contest as the one in the Japanese film Battle Royale.  It seems for entertainment value a group of teenagers are given weapons and told to kill each other for the enjoyment of the futuristic television audience.

The humorless and sullen Jennifer Lawrence plays the extremely unlikeable main character Kittycat Evergreen or something.  She is surrounded by a bunch of character actors like Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland and Toby Jones.  They all represent the corrupt and corpulent elite class that rules the nation of Panem.  But Jennifer Lawerence is going to show them what a spunky young adult woman pretending to be a teenager can do to their corrupt civilization.

I have no idea why this film was so successful but I will take a guess.  Since most of the teenage contestants of The Hunger Games are really mean, nice but moody Jennifer Lawrence can kill them with her trusty bow and arrow.  This fulfills a fantasy of every teenager who was ever picked on or snubbed in school, or maybe not.

This film was aimed at the teenager girl crowd, the violence is all very PG-13.  The Hunger Games also runs over 2 fricking hours for a story that could have been knocked out in about 90 minutes.

142 minutes.

2012 - DREDD, good action film but meta violent

Another shot at the Judge Dredd cult comic book character.  The first film Judge Dredd, had Sylvester Stallone as Dredd walking around without his helmet on for most of the film which was ridiculous, (even I know that Judge Dredd never took off his helmet in the comic books).
That film was also a vomitess mess with Rob Schneider as the comic relief. 

This version was made by people who obviously knew and liked the comic, no stupid robots or hammy overacting by past their prime action stars. 

The action scenes are entertaining and exciting but you better have a very high tolerance for watching blood and brains getting sprayed everywhere because this is a very violent movie.

A highly entertaining science fiction film that did not do that well with the general public.  I believe the intense violence probably killed it with the word of mouth crowd.

95 minutes.

2012 - LES MISERABLES or what are all these people singing about?

One of the strong points of Les Miserables is that it was written by a master story teller, Victor Hugo.  Hugo is remembered as the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Man Who Laughs and The Toilers of the Sea amongst others.  So now that we got that out of the way, this film is really bad.

Whoever had the lame brain idea of recording this cast of off key actors live clearly hadn't seen At Long Last Love.  Apparently no one remembers how well that film turned out.  After an hour and a half of listening to these out of tune actors trying to sing, I made my way out to the lobby of the theater to watch the theater staff munch on their Chipolte snacks which was a lot more interesting.

The non singing female cast of Les Miserables.

No one expected that Russel Crowe was the modern day Howard Keel so you get what you get with his singing.  The freakish ostrich necked actress Anne Hathaway who relentlessly campaigned for an Academy Award almost as soon as the film was released is barely in the film.  Amanda Seyfried who plays the virginal innocent Cossette can't even come close to carrying a tune and should probably stick to playing prostitutes.  Even the star Hugh Jackman who actually has some experience performing in musicals can't seem to cope with this low rent operatic music.

Poorly directed, drowning in computer graphic effects and unending soliloquies particularly in the last hour of the film.  This is probably the not unexpected result from Tom Hooper the director of the extremely overrated The King's Speech.  But in the end what's the point, both the play and the film are  extremely popular with audiences.

158 minutes.