a) The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
My wife is a fan of the Hunger Games books and has taken me to all of the movies so far, and I'm happy to tag along since they started decent and have steadily improved from there. In fact I think I enjoy learning the story as the movies go along instead of having read the source material. Francis "Bad Romance" Lawrence is obviously a strong visual stylist but I thought the story was especially good this time, all the dry social satire stuff where the rebellion is as obsessed with imagery and media manipulation as the evil empire is. Also the funny meta scene where Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson are sitting around critiquing Jennifer Lawrence's screen presence, that was pretty great. And when J-Law stuffs a cat into her purse and shushes it, that was incredible.

b) The LEGO Movie
I'm totally into the idea of filmmakers being tasked with turning a pre-existing non-narrative pop culture product into an actual enjoyable story and succeeding beyond any reasonable expectations -- Clue is one of my favorite comedies just for that reason. Seeing this well after all the positive reviews kinda took out the element of surprise, though, I was almost disappointed by it. Or at least, I didn't think it was funny as what the writer/director team did with the Jump Street movies, something about the animation and voice work never totally gelled. Still pretty fun though.

c) That Awkward Moment
I regarded this movie with a lot of suspicion, both because it was a generic relationship comedy with a weak placeholder typo that ended up being renamed after a Twitter catchphrase, and because it seemed like one of those comedies where they placed a far higher priority on casting pretty people and not people with any kind of track record for comedy. And yet, I ultimately found it moderately charming. I'll chalk that up to first-time writer/director Tom Gormican, though -- if he gets funnier actors saying his dialogue and maybe some less boilerplate subject matter he could really have something.

d) Nebraska
I generally like Alexander Payne's movies, although I haven't seen them all and some definitely work better than others. I feel like he's almost managed some kind of weird trick of maintaining a pretty strong sensibility and style of humor through all his work while the perception of his movies varies widely in terms of whether they're considered broad and silly or poignant or whatever. This, his first black & white movie and the first one he didn't write, isn't even that much of an outlier when you get down to it -- oddly parts of it reminded me more of About Schmidt than anything else. I enjoyed Will Forte in it and there were a handful of really great scenes but overall I dunno if it totally held together or stuck with me.

e) August: Osage County
A Pulitzer Prize-winning play adapted into a movie with a cast full of big deal actors is a good recipe for Oscar noms but as a viewing experience it can get kinda shouty and overwhelming, if not stagey per se. Streep and Roberts get their big moments and a lot of other actors just kind of show up overqualified for some flimsy roles that practically consist mainly of reaction shots. But the only relative unknown of the whole bunch, Julianne Nicholson, who I mostly know from a recurring role on "Masters Of Sex," ended up kind of being the emotional center of the movie in a really compelling way.

f) Dallas Buyers Club
I like when movies based on a true story restrict themselves to a specific span of time and don't try to give you anyone's life story or make the scope too wide. But this one kinda felt too focused, too hellbent on giving you only moments that drove home the narrative and the aspects of the character that pertained to the story, that it just felt artless and heavyhanded. Like it was written so painstakingly towards good acting that it sacrificed any subtlety.

g) A Single Shot
A nice tense thriller where Sam Rockwell plays a hunter who accidentally shoots a woman in the woods and then things kind of spirals out of control. I was impressed by Rockwell, who I generally like but who usually does schtickier roles, and especially by director David M. Rosenthal, who I only knew previously for the absolutely terrible See This Movie. It kinda lost my interests eventually as it ramped up and got crazier, but it was still pretty good. I wish William H. Macy was in it more, he's great.

h) Fire In The Sky
I remember when this movie came out, when I was 11 -- it opened the same weekend as CB4, which is what my brother and I ultimately opted to see that night, which was totally the right decision, but I was always curious about this one and finally watched it on TV recently. Definitely one of the more interesting and unique depictions of alien abduction I've ever seen, both because it's based on one of the more compelling abduction stories, and because the way it imagines things is pretty visually fresh and unique.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 13, 2014 at 9:44 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.