I'm in a blah mood
Jan. 5th, 2012 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenHaving been on an emotional rollercoaster today, I remain now kind of wrung-out and vaguely indifferent to my own existence. It seems a perfect time to continue on with my roster of movies seen in the theaters in 2011, especially this particular genre.
Disappointing, Unaffecting, and Other Movies That Were (and Weren't Anything Else)
The Illusionist - Not the Edward Norton "This isn't The Prestige" vehicle, but a French animated movie about a rapidly unemployable stage magician that was pretty goddamned depressing. I'd tip into another category for at least moving me to feel something (depression is a feeling!) except that I was so bored by it, I think I feel asleep in the middle. That never happens, least of all in a theater, so it belongs here.
Rio - Dreamworks continues its "Let's have animals do things they wouldn't normally do while making this face!" trend, this time with Jesse Eisenberg as a (what else?) neurotic bird. Aside from the ear-worm main song and the free version of Angry Birds I got for my phone, nothing else about this movie has stuck with me.
Stake Land - I think Kelly McGillis was a nun. That's all I got.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - The only one of these movies for which "NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION" is not a punch line, it's a plot point.
Another Earth - It had one good idea, and it managed to make a drunk driver a sympathetic character. Otherwise, pretension dressed up as brilliance with sci-fi concepts existing only to cross-market this story, far as I can tell.
30 Minutes or Less - Jesse Eisenberg's second entry on this list. I can't believe he went from The Social Network to this.
Apollo 18 - What if there were monsters on the Moon? Better question: who cares?
Contagion - No, Hollywood, do not glamorize doctors not following orders when there's an outbreak.
The Debt - Nazis are bad. Lies are bad.
Dolphin Tale - It made me cry, even though I know dolphins are really evil. Otherwise, it's schlocky and completely average.
The Ides of March - Boring.
In Time - Preposterous.
Paranormal Activity 3 - Clever staging of the found footage, but otherwise neither revelatory nor scary.
Hugo - You must be joking. This movie is being praised as the second coming of Scorsese. It's a mess, narratively and thematically. Instead of being an elegant love letter to the birth of cinema, it's more like a messy and painful blow job from a stranger in an alley--instead of sharing it with future generations, you're going to deny you ever saw it. I was really disappointed with this one. It was praised to the sky and I had such high hopes; to say it failed to meet my expectation is to say the Titanic sprung a little leak.
War Horse - Despite the veritable stable (ugh, pun) of fine British actors, nothing about this movie could compete with the compelling drama of the stage show. If you can't see that, then see this. There's exactly one devastatingly effective scene (maybe one and a half) in what is otherwise a meandering story. It's not the movie's fault the story has no real drive--that's in the story--but it's harder to take from a movie without distracting spectacles, such as three people animating a horse better than a real live one.
I shouldn't be surprised that most movies are just sort of indifferent. Most works in any field tend to be mediocre, in my estimation. There's just too much put out--too many books, too many shows, too many movies--for even half of them to decidedly bad, much less good. There's always going to be dross that, while not offensive, certainly isn't worth remembering. (Clearly, as it took me quite a while to remember something worth writing for fully half this list.)
Next time, I'm going to elevate to the So-Bad-They're-Fantastic, or the I-Enjoyed-This-For-The-Jokes-We-Have-Made-Since genre. That'll be more fun.
Disappointing, Unaffecting, and Other Movies That Were (and Weren't Anything Else)
The Illusionist - Not the Edward Norton "This isn't The Prestige" vehicle, but a French animated movie about a rapidly unemployable stage magician that was pretty goddamned depressing. I'd tip into another category for at least moving me to feel something (depression is a feeling!) except that I was so bored by it, I think I feel asleep in the middle. That never happens, least of all in a theater, so it belongs here.
Rio - Dreamworks continues its "Let's have animals do things they wouldn't normally do while making this face!" trend, this time with Jesse Eisenberg as a (what else?) neurotic bird. Aside from the ear-worm main song and the free version of Angry Birds I got for my phone, nothing else about this movie has stuck with me.
Stake Land - I think Kelly McGillis was a nun. That's all I got.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - The only one of these movies for which "NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION" is not a punch line, it's a plot point.
Another Earth - It had one good idea, and it managed to make a drunk driver a sympathetic character. Otherwise, pretension dressed up as brilliance with sci-fi concepts existing only to cross-market this story, far as I can tell.
30 Minutes or Less - Jesse Eisenberg's second entry on this list. I can't believe he went from The Social Network to this.
Apollo 18 - What if there were monsters on the Moon? Better question: who cares?
Contagion - No, Hollywood, do not glamorize doctors not following orders when there's an outbreak.
The Debt - Nazis are bad. Lies are bad.
Dolphin Tale - It made me cry, even though I know dolphins are really evil. Otherwise, it's schlocky and completely average.
The Ides of March - Boring.
In Time - Preposterous.
Paranormal Activity 3 - Clever staging of the found footage, but otherwise neither revelatory nor scary.
Hugo - You must be joking. This movie is being praised as the second coming of Scorsese. It's a mess, narratively and thematically. Instead of being an elegant love letter to the birth of cinema, it's more like a messy and painful blow job from a stranger in an alley--instead of sharing it with future generations, you're going to deny you ever saw it. I was really disappointed with this one. It was praised to the sky and I had such high hopes; to say it failed to meet my expectation is to say the Titanic sprung a little leak.
War Horse - Despite the veritable stable (ugh, pun) of fine British actors, nothing about this movie could compete with the compelling drama of the stage show. If you can't see that, then see this. There's exactly one devastatingly effective scene (maybe one and a half) in what is otherwise a meandering story. It's not the movie's fault the story has no real drive--that's in the story--but it's harder to take from a movie without distracting spectacles, such as three people animating a horse better than a real live one.
I shouldn't be surprised that most movies are just sort of indifferent. Most works in any field tend to be mediocre, in my estimation. There's just too much put out--too many books, too many shows, too many movies--for even half of them to decidedly bad, much less good. There's always going to be dross that, while not offensive, certainly isn't worth remembering. (Clearly, as it took me quite a while to remember something worth writing for fully half this list.)
Next time, I'm going to elevate to the So-Bad-They're-Fantastic, or the I-Enjoyed-This-For-The-Jokes-We-Have-Made-Since genre. That'll be more fun.
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