a) 12 O'Clock Boys
There are so many little unique, unheralded subcultures in Baltimore that it's nice to see one like the dirt bike kids get explored in a fairly high-profile documentary like this. I don't know how many times I've driven down Monument Street and heard those engines growling and waited to see those bikes race by. I thought this did a pretty good job of showing all the angles, the good and the bad, although the camera work on some of the bike scenes was so great that they probably couldn't help but glorify it all a little bit. I love the little slice of life stuff, like the kids dancing to Blaqstarr's "Hands Up, Thumbs Down," and how they kinda let you draw your own conclusions, didn't feel like hype or propaganda.

b) Thor: The Dark World
The first Thor was probably the least entertaining of the movies I've seen in the whole Avengers franchise thing, but not bad at all. This one maybe a little better on the action side of things, although I wouldn't mind if it had more rom com stuff with Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings. The cosmic viking funeral scene was pretty cool, I guess.

c) CBGB
I'm never a good audience for pop culture biopics and period pieces, especially when they have to do with music that I've obsessed over. But even as I tried to sit down and take this movie at face value and not get all pedantic about facts or actors' resemblances to the people they were playing, this whole thing just came out a hilarious farce. Some of the actors did a decent job, but the direction was just piss poor and the whole thing kind of low rent -- the Punk Magazine comic illustration framing device could've been cool, and in some ways helped organize a messy story with a lot of different tertiary characters, but in the end it just felt obnoxious and clumsy. By the time Taylor Hawkins-as-Iggy Pop jumped onstage with Malin Akerman-as-Debbie Harry it was pretty much a comedy to me.

d) We're The Millers
One of the better R rated mainstream comedies in recent memory, really just ran wild with the possibilities of the fake family premise and had fun with it. Kinda glad Jason Sudeikis is doing well in movies, he was really the glue that held together "SNL" for a few years there. Will Poulter definitely the standout performance in this, though.

e) R.I.P.D.
I tried watching this twice and never got to the end, went to bed the first time and then just took an afternoon nap in the middle the second time. Jeff Bridges gets a few funny moments but it really just feels like a flop through and through.

f) The Purge
It always seems pretty easy to make a plausible movie about America going horribly awry in the not-too-distant future, but this one just seemed kind of stupid -- 10 years from now, we've completely fixed crime and unemployment AND THEN we decided on a wacky annual day of murder and chaos? Like, c'mon. Once it gets going there's some tense moments but it mostly felt like they did all this work building up a stupid premise just to do a boilerplate home invasion thriller.

g) Alex Cross
I had to watch this just to see how hilariously incompetent it was and I was not disappointed, although I think I still had more fun reading reviews of it than actually seeing it.

h) Laurel Canyon
I remember ages and ages ago, being a big Sparklehorse fan and following the band online, hearing the unlikely news that there was gonna be a movie about a band and the music used as their songs in it would be Sparklehorse songs. So it was weird to finally sit down and watch it, 10 years later, and catch the quick cameo by the late great Mark Linkous himself. Really seemed like a boring indie drama with a bunch of cliche love triangles, though, some good acting but hard to care about.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10, 2014 at 2:42 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.