Othello

Cliched, civil comedy/drama at it's purest. Functional on both counts, though I'd be happy to welcome Gordon-Levitt back as the kind of emotionless weirdo who I wouldn't even lend a ruler to that he played so well in Brick or Inception, and Seth Rogen's humanoid portrayal of everything that would make emancipated women burn from the inside isn't exactly capable of inspiring confidence that he'd ever have sex. *SPOILER ALERT* However, I do welcome the ending, which could have been resolved (and I expected it to be) in a fashionably shitty way given the nature of the film (Adam is taken to the operating room – cut and end; the lady surgeon comes up to the parents – cut and end; alternatively, Adam dies – cut and end), but the happy ending won out. And why not, if the film wants us to relate to the main character in some way, then if we were to die in the operation, we'd have a whole different set of problems, whereas by surviving it, our lives begin anew. I'll change my rating when they diagnose me with cancer. After all, my melanomas do move a little strangely at times. Keep in touch.

The Dictator isn't half as funny, apt, or above all controversial as I expected based on the reviews. In fact, it's a little Aladeen in all respects. Cohen's need to cram triple-digit jokes into every scene with a fluctuating tendency is not the most fortuitous choice, because if you want to laugh for two seconds and then feel awkward for two seconds in a repetitive rhythm, all you'll come out with is a permanent cough. Nobody sat on that humor for very long either, as can be seen in the scene in the helicopter, where the main characters talk completely gibberish in Arabic just to make the English excerpts sound like a terrorist attack. Luckily the scene is so long that I decided to take it as a creative intention, and then it really was funny. Oh, and in general, the jokes are long. The movie can bathe in one potentially funny situation for two minutes, which detracts from the effect. The Dictator is just the kind of "American controversy" that comes out of the post-Communism camel-baiting that the US is a specialist in, but a cynical European like me, for example, doesn't understand what's going on at all, because I find the aspects of terrorist paranoia far funnier than its parodies. And yes, there are fecal jokes again, but ironically I found the falling poo joke to be one of the funniest. And, of course, the interactive Munich 1972, which I've already got cracked at home and I'm up to level five. If you want a really incorrect and genuinely funny comedy, get Four Lions.

Even before watching this I was determined to rise above the tendentious crypto-fascism of Harry Brown. In the end, it's easy to cheer for, plus if you mistake Nordhampton or wherever it was for Libeň or Holešovice, it arouses quite a bit of enthusiasm. Comparing Harry Brown to Gran Torino is just skating on the surface, Harry Brown is more in the same vein as Elite Squad. The latter, however, is more uncompromising in its admissions. It also rises above longstanding solutions and sources of "evil" and addresses it in ways that would make a liberal puke. For in its primitiveness, the film divides London into mothers with children, British traditionalists, Chinese victims of their own humility, black filth, and white trash. It so revels in its depiction of this world that a visit to a grow house turns into a descent into a pit of evil of ancient proportions with absolutely comic-book absolute evil (a brilliant scene by the way). Unfortunately, the fall comes in the last third of the film, when the screenwriter hits a wall with his face with the street riots and forgets to justify that moronic storyline with the policewoman and her purse, not to mention the final Bond-esque villain and the laughable digital blood. If I wanted to be a jerk, I'd write that Harry Brown is practically the same thing as if Nudity for Sale had been made by someone who knows how to make movies. I like fascist movies, so I'm not complaining.

SPOILER ALERT!!! Apollo 18 is an incredible strain on the audience's logical tolerance reflex. To keep down all those unflattering notions of Americans netting butterfly debris with a camera in orbit in order to generate this footage, the fact that the second half of the film was definitively now being filmed by some leggy rock walking unseen by the main characters, a space parasite pulling a camera on a tripod in front of the lunar module so that the little pebbles have something to play with and the viewer knows jack shit. Plus, if someone's going to focus on realistically revitalizing 70s filming tech, they might as well do something to make those post-synchros not sound so damn clean, because that ruins the whole illusion. Apollo 18 mainly has three positives – a fantastic setting that pushes haunted isolation to the maximum level possible. Because what can you do in a miniature module with two people somewhere on the fucking moon. The constant switching between formats, which is really the only thing that keeps your attention. And a first half where you trust that the movie won’t be anywhere near as stupid as it ends up being and will unfold a dramatic space race conspiracy. Unfortunately, the walking rocks that make noises like when you reboot a tamagotchi definitely take the cake. Good thing they didn't make it to our planet. PS: the film contains a badass action scene (btw shot with three cameras... ahem) where an astronaut jumps out of a lunar rover while driving. Watch out!

Nineties action movies aren't my bloodline, with a few exceptions, because they operate on the cult of the stars, which for me is terribly outdated. Then again, I love the lack of green backgrounds and the honest special effects. The Fugitive doesn't start off badly at all, Ford's beard works, the death of the woman is handled by the character with pleasant grace instead of a lengthy meltdown, and the action scenes are suitably spectacular, that boom ratatata boom locomotive blown up, that rrrrr helicopter over there, quite fun. Not to mention that Davis has no idea how to film contact action and the battle in the el train, for example, feels like a theatrical staging of a rape. Plus, I was pretty annoyed in the first half that it was somewhere around February, just cold as a doghouse, and yet he kept squelching through the water. I know he's determined and strong, but I’d like to see any strongman who bathes in two-degree water and then falls asleep in the woods in the same clothes who doesn't catch a cold. However, the first half at least maintains a steady dramatic arc, while the second half completely shits on that factor, because this one has Ford borrowing "just a few bucks" from a buddy and then setting up a sublet and walking around in a tweed jacket despite not having any income. He's probably murdering pensioners. Plus, given the first half, where the story unfolded in the simple space of a few hours, it seems a little unfair to me that the film doesn't warn us that its ending takes place about a year after Kimble's escape, and we know virtually nothing about what he was doing during that entire time. The villain is a complete idiot. What else do you say about a guy who thinks that if he beats the shit out of the guy who just publicly criticized him, everything will probably be ok. Thank god for Tommy Lee Jones. In this movie, the delectable asshole and his whole hunting party led by Pantoliano (who must have been raised by negroes somewhere, I mean, black people... oh no, again) is terribly alive, realistic, intersperses serious phases with various off-the-wall jokes and in the movie people laugh at them, basically I'd just rather the movie be about them.

After the two films I've seen from Vaughn (Kick-Ass and this) I'm still not convinced he's much of a director, but he's definitely a cool wingman. Stardust is a not-so-cleverly story edited affair (enough things here could have been resolved in dialogue and didn't need to be unnecessarily shown) that has little will to mask its social budget and devotes its own shot, if not scene, to every digital special effect, no matter how bad. You even realize at the beginning of the film that you hate everything that's been there so far. And yet without it, the gradual coming of age of not just the hero, but the story, probably wouldn't work. First you're delighted with details like the hillbilly Yvaine, the envious witches, the blue blood, and the brotherly shenanigans (with, again, the unbelievably perfect Mark Strong), then the whole direction the film takes with lots of perfect digressions to round out the plot, the best of which I would consider to be the relationship between the fearsome Captain Shakespeare and his crew of cutthroats. And I still enjoy the pirate rapists' tough-guy gesture to this day. "Now remember, Captain Shakespeare has a fearsome reputation."

It's just terribly rewarding to watch antisocial bastards messing with others, which is why I enjoy Igby, even if it pisses me off in equal measure. It's actually quite counterproductive for a screenwriter to try to convince the viewer that poor Igby just can’t catch a break when every now and then they pull him out of the lion's den with some horrible deus ex machina. Our hero's adventures lose a lot of their impact as we realize we're watching another one of the countless sociopathic teenagers who don't know what they want. Which I still wouldn't have a problem with if the film wasn't trying to reflect and parody certain social conditions. It pisses me off that the film has no applicability, and it would still piss me off even if it did.

Excellent Sundance fodder that tries to convince the viewer all along with pretty clear direction that the movie isn't so bad and that it will make up for all the hero's setbacks with the final redemption. Which does in fact occur, but it convinces us that Take Shelter is ultimately a heavy bastard anyway. Right from the start, if you look at Michael Shannon (the brilliant Michael Shannon, by the way), a string gets plucked in your diaphragm that the film keeps humming very unpleasantly for two hours. For every minute of the film where someone smiles, or a hint of hope shines in the distance (learning with a deaf-mute daughter, for example) you are incredibly grateful, because that sense of that impending doom is always just around the corner. PS: *SPOILER ALERT* – I accept the argument about the set and spiked ending, which might leave you gaping at the end credits like a moron (I had a very similar experience with Trier's Melancholia), yet forces you to shift gears a bit from a story thus far about the progression of a rising mental illness.

I find it quite funny that Browning, after his vehement efforts to explain to the viewer who the real freaks really are, still couldn't resist using the appearance of the performers at the end for the film's most impressive scene. But I would have been tempted, too. I'd love a director's cut, but I don't think I'll get one. In fact, the editing detracts greatly from the film, many scenes don't build on each other, and almost the entire film takes place in one place, so that up until the wedding reception I felt like everything was happening in one day. The Siamese twins are mega-appealing, and along with the bearded lady are my favorite freaks. I actually wish the Freaks actors had a whole series of their own in which they saved the world from ever new supervillains. First they'd mow down an army of formalists and then they'd unleash their super freak powers to deal with the main pretty boy, who would attack them with cutting humor and a distinguished air. And when our heroes killed and ate him at the end of each episode, the torso of the guy rolling a cigarette with his nose would tell a joke. A good one. Like the one where three tomatoes are walkin' down the street....

In Mary and Max, the opposing barricades are almost distastefully literally manned on one side by the things I love about movies (and everything else) and on the other with everything I hate from the depths of my soul. Well, ladies and gentlemen, on the right side of the ring comes a flying circus of farting, expletives, boogers, and giant bird shit on people’s heads, abundantly assisted by an inability to work within the feature-length format, crowned by the utter adoration of defeatism and hideous and viewer-insulting emotional blackmail! A potent combination, but what do we have on the other side? Ahhhh, is that Mr. Phillip Seymour Hoffman? And next to him, beautiful pitch-black humor drawing from the social isolation of the characters and a little girl who, in order to shed a tear, has to recall a cat being run over by a lawnmower (a chokeworthy scene)? So in short: for every fart, there’s is a good joke = tied *** + Hoffman = ****, but it will be a while before I talk myself into another Elliot.