a) Mama
This was a pretty damn good horror flick -- elements of the story and visual style certainly felt like genre cliches and the CGI alternated between genuinely spooky and a little bit goofy-looking. But it had a strong emotional thread running through it that really got to me, having a small kid myself, and it felt like a good twist on the usual 'couple takes care of a troubled child with a supernatural secret' horror formula. Some genuinely great scares, too -- I left the room for two minutes, and from the bathroom I could hear my wife scream at one scene that she had to run back for me immediately when I returned. The ending was kinda unexpected but I liked it overall. Also weird and fun to see Jessica Chastain all punk rocked out.

b) Springsteen & I
I liked the basic idea of this movie, a doc that focuses on an artist's fans and their connection to the music rather than the artist himself, and as a Springsteen fan I certainly know what a strong connection it can be. But in execution, this quickly became tedious and indulgent, a bunch of boring white people talking inarticulately about why they love Bruce or how one time he pulled them up onstage or whatever.

c) This Is 40
At this point I think it's fair to say there's something almost pathological about how Judd Apatow has practically dismantled his career as a director. He initially found huge success by building starring vehicles for likable comic actors who became bankable stars as a direct result of him making those movies. But over the course of four movies, he's given a bigger role each time to his wife, thrice with their own kids playing her kids, and twice as a character in a fictional marriage that, if it at all resembles their own, makes her seem so mean and unlikable that it almost drives people to suspect she's forcing him to help her struggling film career. And I say this all having really thought Leslie Mann gave a great performance of a complex character in Knocked Up, while also being amazed how much worse both her and Paul Rudd's character come off in this. Making Paul Rudd this unlikable and unsympathetic is almost kind of a singular achievement in and of itself, even Neil LaBute couldn't bring himself to do that. The air of indulgence is intensified by the whole Graham Parker subplot, which seems like the opposite of Apatow putting Loudon Wainwright III in "Undeclared" but then letting him not play himself and actually reveal himself to be a capable actor. All that said, this wasn't without laughs, and the Melissa McCarthy scene in particular was hilarious, but really all attempts to tie the plot up and make the movie not seem entirely depressing and autobiographical utterly failed and made you feel like this movie was Apatow's cry for help and/or last stand as a director. It's almost like his Lady In The Water.

d) Moonrise Kingdom
Speaking of filmmakers who are trapped inside their own compulsions, I don't even know how anybody can deal with Wes Anderson anymore. The Fantastic Mr. Fox was at least different enough on a technical level to be refreshing, even if it was the same old same old in many other respects, but this is just back to all the old stifling tics. It's like he starts every movie with a bunch of presets, the same fonts, the same camera angles and cuts, the same actors, the same character types. It actually makes me uncomfortable watching Bruce Willis and Harvey Keitel and Tilda Swinton and Bob Balaban enter that world and speak in those cadences, seeing more good actors imprison themselves in his aesthetic. At this point I get more enjoyment out of Wes Anderson satires like this or this than his own self-parodies.

e) Cloud Atlas
I haven't read the book, but I watched this with my wife, who has, so I got a bit of her running commentary on how it differed from the source material. It definitely seemed like the kind of adaptation that dropped a lot of nuances or unfilmable elements in the name of pursuing a particular visual or storytelling idea, which I always have mixed feelings about. But the whole thing of having a repertory cast of actors playing several different characters in different time periods worked out better than I expected, Hugo Weaving and Jim Broadbent in particular killed it. But in the end I don't know if the movie communicated whatever the novel's themes or concepts were that well, because I just kinda went along with it as an interesting ride without anything about it sticking with me.

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