Here's a great example of how proper expectations can help you enjoy a movie to its fullest potential. Negative reviews for Lucy correctly pointed out its absurd plot and ridiculous premise: the idea that by using more than ten percent of our brains, human beings could be capable of superpower-like abilities. Is it dumb as hell? Absolutely. But I still greatly enjoyed the ninety minutes I spent watching Lucy. This was a fun action movie that tried some really cool things and got away with most of them. Scarlett Johansson was great and Morgan Freeman narrated bits and pieces. I enjoyed Lucy in spite of its flaws and in spite of its detractors, and I'd honestly and earnestly give it a soft recommendation to anyone interested in a quick and easy action flick.
Edge of Tomorrow
Keith's review of this one piqued my interest back in January. Whether you call it Edge of Tomorrow or Live Die Repeat doesn't seem to matter, but the latter is certainly an apt summary of the film's central gimmick. It takes place during a futuristic alien invasion, and Tom Cruise plays a high ranking officer who gets mistaken for a low-level grunt and thrown into the middle of an enormous beach-based battle and immediately killed - only to wake up right before the invasion. It's essentially a sci-fi war twist on Groundhog Day, and in that respect it felt like a great big video game. The movie had fun mining the comedy out of all the various ways Tom Cruise could get killed during and even leading up to the battle on the beach. It's another mindless action movie, and it struggles pretty badly when it slows down in the second half. Worth a watch, but check out Lucy first.
Brave
As much as I wanted to like Brave - a Pixar movie set in Scotland with a tomboyish princess as its heroine - I didn't, really. It was fine. It was meh. It wasn't bad at all, but it was ultimately very forgettable. I'd call it one of Pixar's most mediocre efforts, but frankly, I think the luster wore off of the Pixar gold standard a little while back. Oh well!
Ida
For whatever it's worth (nothing!), Ida was on my radar long before it won Best Foreign Picture at the Oscars. When I found it on Netflix, I gave it a shot. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this one as much as I'd have liked. It's a black and white Polish film set in the 1960s in which a young woman at a covenant learns that she was born to Jewish parents during the Holocaust. She reunites with her only surviving relative, an aunt, and together they set out to investigate what happened to her parents. It's a slow-moving movie, and it feels even slower since every shot uses a static camera. There's sadness in all the stillness, and a lot of gorgeous shots too, especially for a black and white movie. Oh, and it has a 4:3 aspect ratio with some very interesting shot-framing decisions that add a sense of weight and claustrophobia to the ordeal. The whole thing is objectively very well made, but I never fully embraced it for some reason.
Birdman
Years and years ago, when vampires and werewolves were huge, Sweeney boldly predicted that the next big craze to sweep the nation would be bird people. And now, Birdman has won the Oscar for Best Picture. Let's give Sween credit where it's due, huh? At any rate, Birdman is worth the hype. It's clever and smart, and its one-take aesthetic actually fits right in with its stage play-centric plot. Michael Keaton is fantastic, but so are Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, and especially Edward Norton. See it if you haven't yet.
Force Majeure
Another foreign film! Swedish, this time. The premise here is simple. A family is on a ski vacation when one morning a controlled avalanche goes slightly awry. When it looks, briefly, like everyone is totally fucked, the family patriarch turns around and hauls ass, fleeing for his life and abandoning his wife and children. This brief moment of cowardice plants a bad seed, and the pair's marriage more or less falls apart over the remainder of the ski trip. What I liked about this one was its distance from each character. The film doesn't paint either party as a clear protagonist, and as such, the audience really gets to be a fly on the wall. Neither the man nor his wife comes across as a sympathetic person. The man keeps denying that he ran away and abandoned his family, even though that's exactly what he did. Meanwhile, the woman keeps bringing it up, not just in private but also to other couples at the resort. Anyway, this won't be for everyone, but it worked well for me. And it's a pretty movie, too!
Two months, six movies. We'll do this again, I promise! Bye!
Lucy: "So God is a flash drive?" Really did not like this film and, as such, my brain quickly forgot most of it the second I walked out of the theater. I'm pretty sure it left me with less than 10% use of my brain. (Hey-oh!)
ReplyDeleteEdge of Tomorrow: Amazing film. No matter what name you call it. Despite how that Scientology documentary made him look, I still enjoy Tom Cruise's films.
Brave: Eh... Not Pixar's strongest, but certainly not their weakest (looking at your Cars 2).
Ida: Get this foreign crap out of here. We're Americans! USA! USA! USA! Yeah... didn't see it. Can't imagine I ever will.
Birdman: Bird-people? Perhaps a sequel is in the works. Any thoughts on what happens at the end as Emma Stone is looking out the window (supposedly at Keaton) and smiling?
Force Majeure: The synopsis kind of reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Costanza sees smoke and mistakenly thinks there's a fire during a kid's birthday party causing him to run and save himself, pushing helpless children and a clown out of his way while escaping. Although, I imagine this version is a lot less funny. Damn Swedes. WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT FOREIGN FILMS!