a) Zero Dark Thirty
I wasn't the biggest fan of Hurt Locker, but I thought this was pretty damn compelling. Maybe because it felt like a more inherently interesting story, maybe because I liked the way they traced the whole saga around the Jessica Chastain character, and she was just great. Even with something where you know exactly how it's going to end, it still got tense as hell.

b) Les Miserables
My wife has read the book, owns a Broadway cast recording CD of the songs, all that, and I don't know that stuff at all, so it was interesting to watch this movie with her and kinda get her take on this adaptation and how well it was executed. I like plenty of movie musicals but a sung-through/opera kinda thing is maybe too much for me, there were some impressive moments but mostly it ended up just being a comedy as Russell Crowe got progressively more hilarious throughout the movie.

c) Wreck-It Ralph
This was really good. Obviously Walt Disney has been doing computer animated features outside the Pixar umbrella for a while, but this is the first one that felt pretty close to both the Pixar sensibility and their bar of quality -- more early Pixar than recent vintage, though, the concept was practically a variation on Toy Story. More than the vintage arcade game references though, what I enjoyed was just the cast, John C. Reilly and Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch and all, and I thought the story and its ending were pretty charming and well handled. I watched this with my son but I enjoyed it more than he did.

d) Ice Age: Continental Drift
These movies, on the other hand, my son definitely enjoys more than me. The cast and the characters have always been mildly likable but the movies just seem to get more overloaded with new characters (including ones voiced by Drake and Nicki Minaj in this one) and pointlessly drawn out plots every time. I liked the stuff with Peter Dinklage as a pirate ape, though.

e) Argo
Unlike Zero Dark Thirty, I think all the hearing about this movie and knowing what would happen because it happened in real life did keep me from being really engaged in it. It just felt like a pretty low suspense parade of character actors I enjoy seeing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 06, 2013 at 7:46 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.