Movie Diary
a) The Hunger Games
My wife was all excited about this and had read the books, so we made one of our rare trips to the theater. I thought it was pretty good, but that the story and the cast were way better than the direction, which was really annoyingly stylized with all the deliberately shaky camerawork and moody silences. Also I know the costuming is supposed to be kind of garish and cheap-looking but it somehow missed the mark for me, felt like it could've been done a lot better. But as far as these kinds of movies go, it surpassed my expectations, and you could do a lot worse than looking at Jennifer Lawrence for two hours.
b) Friends With Benefits
I am kind of becoming a huge stan for Will Gluck, who previously directed Fired Up! and Easy A (and worked on two of my favorite short-lived TV shows of the 2000s, "The Loop" and "Andy Richter Controls The Universe"). I will need to see this a few times to really get an idea of how it measures up to his first two movies, but it seemed pretty strong, if not quite as memorable. Gluck has a thing about self-conscious genre framing devices (the cheerleaders in Fired Up! memorizing every word of Bring It On, the teen movie protagonist in Easy A wanting to live in a John Hughes movie) that I find a little tiresome but the romcom-within-a-romcom thing here is at least a little more fun.
c) Bridesmaids
After all the box office and awards and raves, maybe there's no way I could not be underwhelmed by this movie but I dunno, it didn't really do anything for me. And I pretty much love everyone in the cast. Again, with comedies, the real test is whether it's better on the third viewing, but it was pretty hit and miss for me, in addition to being way too long like all Apatow productions.
d) Cedar Rapids
This was a pretty nothing movie, a few funny moments but mostly a big predictable rote waste of a good cast.
e) Drive Angry
I think maybe people don't want Nic Cage movies to be too knowingly ridiculously and more like Wicker Man or, well, Know1ng, but I thought this was pretty enjoyable, actually had more of a grindhouse vibe than a lot of recent Hollywood movies deliberately trying to capture that. Mostly it was just funny that they could have done almost the exact same movie without any supernatural elements but just threw that stuff in and made it all more weird and fun. And I mean, Amber Heard, man, what a babe.
f) The Roommate
I think I mostly watched this movie trying to figure out if Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester really do look that much alike or whether I think one is cuter than the other. I started preferring the latter, then by the end of the movie was leaning toward the former. Pretty boring thriller, though.
My wife was all excited about this and had read the books, so we made one of our rare trips to the theater. I thought it was pretty good, but that the story and the cast were way better than the direction, which was really annoyingly stylized with all the deliberately shaky camerawork and moody silences. Also I know the costuming is supposed to be kind of garish and cheap-looking but it somehow missed the mark for me, felt like it could've been done a lot better. But as far as these kinds of movies go, it surpassed my expectations, and you could do a lot worse than looking at Jennifer Lawrence for two hours.
b) Friends With Benefits
I am kind of becoming a huge stan for Will Gluck, who previously directed Fired Up! and Easy A (and worked on two of my favorite short-lived TV shows of the 2000s, "The Loop" and "Andy Richter Controls The Universe"). I will need to see this a few times to really get an idea of how it measures up to his first two movies, but it seemed pretty strong, if not quite as memorable. Gluck has a thing about self-conscious genre framing devices (the cheerleaders in Fired Up! memorizing every word of Bring It On, the teen movie protagonist in Easy A wanting to live in a John Hughes movie) that I find a little tiresome but the romcom-within-a-romcom thing here is at least a little more fun.
c) Bridesmaids
After all the box office and awards and raves, maybe there's no way I could not be underwhelmed by this movie but I dunno, it didn't really do anything for me. And I pretty much love everyone in the cast. Again, with comedies, the real test is whether it's better on the third viewing, but it was pretty hit and miss for me, in addition to being way too long like all Apatow productions.
d) Cedar Rapids
This was a pretty nothing movie, a few funny moments but mostly a big predictable rote waste of a good cast.
e) Drive Angry
I think maybe people don't want Nic Cage movies to be too knowingly ridiculously and more like Wicker Man or, well, Know1ng, but I thought this was pretty enjoyable, actually had more of a grindhouse vibe than a lot of recent Hollywood movies deliberately trying to capture that. Mostly it was just funny that they could have done almost the exact same movie without any supernatural elements but just threw that stuff in and made it all more weird and fun. And I mean, Amber Heard, man, what a babe.
f) The Roommate
I think I mostly watched this movie trying to figure out if Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester really do look that much alike or whether I think one is cuter than the other. I started preferring the latter, then by the end of the movie was leaning toward the former. Pretty boring thriller, though.
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on Thursday, April 05, 2012 at 9:44 PM.
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