a) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
I took my wife to see this, as I did with the first movie, because she's a fan of the books, and as with the first movie, we both enjoyed it though I don't know the source material at all. This one was definitely a major improvement on the previous movie, though -- better director and, really, just a more interesting story this time around, I really didn't know where it was headed the whole time and thought they found a decent way of creating an arc that didn't directly mimic the first one too much. The story is a little ridiculous in parts, but the cast feels like a strong ensemble now, Donald Sutherland and Philip Seymour Hoffman were great and didn't feel like they were operating on a higher level than the movie.

b) Gravity
One day I had two jobs in D.C. a few hours apart, so instead of going home for some downtime, I had a beer with lunch and then went to a matinee to see Gravity on a 3D screen. And it was pretty much one of the most memorable theatergoing experiences of my life. My heart raced, towards the end I cried a little (in my defense I was really low on sleep and, remember, had a beer with lunch. If I had any kind of fear of space or vertigo or something, though, man, this would've made me sick. I loved how the whole thing was pretty much in real time and never let up and there was just enough of a story and an emotional center for it to hit me pretty hard (if you've seen the movie: my kid is four years old).

c) Comedy Warriors: Healing Through Humor
Really fascinating documentary about wounded veterans who want to be standup comics getting training from real comics like Lewis Black and Zach Galifaniakis. All the folks in the movie were just so likeable and had been so much and actually had some funny jokes so you just root for them so much, and the comics do a good job of treating them like peers and giving them real advice and not handling them with kid gloves. There's a guy with incredibly severe burns who just gets in front of these huge crowds and wins them over and puts them at ease with genuinely funny material about his situation, it's glorious to see.

d) Beautiful Creatures
Decent sub-Hunger Games young adult novel adaptation that starts of promising with the guy's first person narration showing a good sense of humor and storytelling tone, but soon it kind of abandon's his perspective and gets a little blander. But it has Emmy Rossum being a hot promiscuous witch and Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson having some goofy fun slumming, so it's not bad overall.

e) The Identity Thief
This wasn't outright terrible but it was pretty rough. A couple scenes where Jason Bateman was a good foil for Melissa McCarthy but for the most part neither of them were at the best and at this point I don't know what Bateman can even do besides the same character in every movie, he's kinda terrible.

f) Brave
Not my favorite Pixar flick but pretty excellent as usual. It's weird to watch a cartoon with an adolescent character voiced by Kelly Macdonald, though, since she has probably the most attractive female voice in the world to me.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 07, 2013 at 10:36 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.