Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

OK, when I came out of the 2nd Transformers movies, I did promised myself that I wouldn't go and see the 3rd. The action was better than the 1st (which I enjoyed quite a lot) but the price to pay was too high: too much annoying parents, too much gun porn and worse than the rest, clanging metallic balls...

But then the reviews came in saying there was (almost) nothing of these in the 3rd. So I let myself tricked again.
Because when Michae Bay concentrates on filming all sorts of things exploding, there litterally no one who can beat him.
Well I'm happy to say that my eyes were unscathed, coming out of the cinema. And it's true that the annoying stuff has been toned down. That was a relief...
The parents are still there, but in just a few short scenes, nothing too heavy.
There are still useless robot sidekicks, but at least they don't fart.

As for all sorts of shit blowing up, you get that in spades. And in true 3D, with the editing toned down (otherwise our poor eyes wouldn't cope), it's breathtaking at times. Long sequences of robots in full frame  beating the shit out of each other, Chicago burned down to the ground... Awesome!
One other good surprise is that the story, on the whole almost make sense! I have to admit I quite liked the links with the moon landing and Tchernobyl...
When I say "almost make sense", you have to bear in mind that it's all in the "Bay-verse", a world in which all girls are hotties (btw, I preferred Megan), all cars are extremely expensive, all brands are on full display, etc.
So of course plot point get dropped then picked up from nowhere, but man did I say the robots were awesome?

Also, the military-porn was toned down adn it's quite cool to see a group of people bringing down a decepticon (as opposed to shit loads of tanks and helicopters). I guess it keeps the human factor.

Another amazing thing is to see those fabulous actors (John Turturro, Frances McDormand, John F@cking Malkovitch!) in there, overacting their heart out... I guess it doesn't really add to the movie, but it does add to this sense of awe: there's nothing Bay stops at. He takes it all. No prisonner.
And it doesn't matter that people get to slide off the side of a building that's falling onto another one and (almost) all manage to make it alive. What matters is that, watching this nonsense, you're just clinging to your seat, mouthing "oh shit". That's how good that man is.

Oh Michael, I love it when you let my IQ drop like that...

X-Men: First Class

I have to say I had some expectations for this one.
Because I love the X-Men and that Matthew Vaughn (who did a pretty great job on KICK-ASS) was helming it. I mean it's been a while since X-Men 2, which was the last great movie about the characters (please don't mention Wolverine...).
An origina story to the whole thing wasn't the most appealing thing at first, but seeing the Prof X / Magneto relationship evolve had some good potential...

Well I have to say I was disappointed.
What makes this movie annoying is that there is a LOT of things to love there, lots of great ideas, but to me they were undermined by other annoyances.

The positives: McAvoy & Fassbender are great as Professor X and Magneto and their relationship works brilliantly. This is the core of the film, so it was important and I think they nailed it. Strangely, Magneto comes through as quite Wolverine-y (a loner out for revenge), but it works.
The character of Mystique also works, along with Beast, with the 2 characters struggling with their mutation.
Also, Kevin Bacon makes a great Sebastian Shaw, eventhough I felt he was underused.
The setting is also good, mixing up the events wit the cuban missile crisis is a clever turn.

So you have a good, menacing bad guy, a strong set of good guys, good relationships, so what went wrong?
For starters, I felt there was a lack of cool moments. I mean I haven't seen X-Men 2 in ages, but I can remember the opening with Nightcrawler's attack on the president, the attack on the X-Mansion, Pyro's pyrotechnics or Magneto's escape. Those were cool moments.
I didn't find any substantial one there. I mean it's the X-Men we're talking about, they can do awesome things, and the best we get is just Banshee flying around or Magneto lifting a submarine? They can do BETTER!

But even without this, I found there were scenes that just didn't work. The introduction with Magneto's mom's death for example. I just couldn't believe he wouldn't try to kill Shaw in his rage (I found Kevin Bacon's German accent impressive by the way, as were the ones Michael Fassbender put on show!). It didn't make sense to me. And that happened a few times during the movie. And it's such a turn off! I took me out, made me question what was going on and that's something I find deeply annoying.

And it's a shame, because there are plenty of good moments to counter balance those, but added to the lack of real "Wow factor", it just left me dissatisfied.
But I guess that could be just me. Because as I said, there's a lot to love in there. But I guess the whole movie just feels rushed. Like they just wanted to put it out and didn't take time to really think it through. If they had, I'm quite sure that it could have been the best in the series.
It didn't turn out that way however.

So I'd say it's still better than X-Men Last Stand (although this one has a few cool set pieces), but I would classify it as a missed opportunity...

Fast Five.

Deprivation of things you like can lead to ugly things.
Like here: not having been to the cinema for a while and having missed Hannah (which I really wanted to see) in the meantime, I just decided to see anything.

Fast Five seemed dumb enough and my fear of feeling dirty after watching was overcome by the fact that Bad Boys 2 is a movie I enjoy to watch from time to time. How worse could it be? But I can't say I wasn't slightly worried, as my image of the Fast & Furious franchise is that of automatically generated script and average action.

Not having seen any of the previous entries, I was also worried I might not get all the subtleties of the relationships between the various charaters. Just kidding.

Well I have to say I was VERY pleasantly surprised.
So of course, the script doesn't make any sense. If you look into it, it's a heist movie where they recruit a team of specialists, work out a plan and then do something completely different (not using the people for the skills they have).
But, really who cares?

Because the action IS cool. It's varied, well done and completely (and I mean completely) over the top. So I guess you have to have the right frame of mind. As far as I'm concerned, I was won over by the introductory scene where they make a bus trip over a car...
But yeah each set piece is better than the previous one, it's well shot (ie you know what's going on) and you can feel they made an effort to do something somewhat innovative with some cool concepts (even if it doesn't make sense, which again doesn't matter, as long as it's cool).

I haven't mentionned the actors. Well what can I say?
The girls are sexy and there's that chick from Chuck!
And there's Vin. Vin is awesome. He owns The Rock, he makes bungie jumps without the elastic, he gets girls with 2 stares and 3 words and he destroys LOADS of cars. Vin rocks.

So yeah as far as dumb actionners go (of the likes of Bad Boys 2, The Expendable), it's an entry well worth watching. If you're ready to let your IQ (and your audition) drop for a while (I think I've recovered now).

Thor

So another Marvel character...
Thor is an odd one on top of things, a true god in a sense when all others are normal guys to start with. So possibly less likeable...

So another product or a true success like Ironman? Well more the former I'm afraid. Don't get me wrong : it's good. The actors are really good and everything has the high production values that marvel has got us used to. Special effects are flawless and they convey the true massive scale of something like Asgard.
They also manage to make Thor very likeable.

But I guess the movie gets the problems of a 1st in a franchise. It needs to set up everything, gods and humans alike. As a consequence the human characters feel very 2ary, since the plot revolves around problems in Asgard.
Also the action is slightly ln the backburner, with the coolest bits at the beginning.

But that doesn't prevent the movie to be entirely highly enjoyable, with a nice setup towards the Avenger movie, which holds a lot of promises...

Oh yes one thing worth of note is that the 3D conversion was OK. That means that it didn't feel annoying. But it didn't feel necessary either.

Anyway, just Captain America to go now...

Source Code

This one went completely under my radar. Probably because I'm still yet to see Moon, despite being highly recommended...

Anyway, I somehow managed to catch this one and that was well worth it.
It's simply the best SF movie I've seen in ages.
The Groundhog Day premises is extremely well exploited and manages to be fresh (although some ground has been covered already). But the main success here is the coveralls treatment of the story. You just feel for the main character and the way all is shot has throw backs to gems like 12 Monkeys.

It's funny how because of this, compared to something like Inception (another brilliant mind bender), as much as I love Inception, I would still be tempted to give Source Code the sympathy vote.
Because it manages to give hardcore SF thrills while still being accessible, with an independant feel, and a big warm heart. That's how good it is...

I definitely need to see Moon....

Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch got me hooked whenever I saw the 1st trailer. Katana wielding girls against gatling equipped giant samurai? How much cooler can you get? This had "FILM OF THE YEAR" written all over it (for me at least).
The idea of Zack Snyder running loose on such material was hugely appealing.

I have to admit that the cold shower of the reviews did get me to slightly lower my expectations before I went in. However, as expected, they were wrong. But I'm grateful as that made me enjoy the movie even more!

Although I might already have seen something better this year (more on this later), and despite a few annoyances here or there, I just thoroughly enjoyed this crazy ride.
Snyder has got an incredible eye and his mastery of special effects make this piece a pure wonder to look at. He achieves a scale and ambition that only few can pretend to. I found some sceneries just jaw dropping.
And although he pushes the over the top slomo quite hard, it (almost) always looks just so cool it just works (for me at least).

On top of this visual feast, the movie also manages to be more clever than it looks. Sure, it's more about style than substance (it's pretty much always the case in his movies), don't expect Inception-like mind bends, but still the story and the layering is interesting (as here, the real story is told through a dream) and it nicely links the set pieces together. Did I mention they were awesomely cool?

So it's another awesome rollercoaster ride from Snyder...
Can't wait for his Superman...

Paul

OK, once again, I went to see this ages ago.
I just can't make time. Especially for reporting bad news: this one didn't really work for me.

It's a movie that I would have loved to love. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.
Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of qualities on display. I especially liked the Seth Rogen voiced alien and Jason Bateman as a stiff no nonsense FBI agent.

However, I don't know, I didn't laugh that much... Maybe it's because the movie didn't surprise me that much, which is crucial for laughs.
You see the pitch and you expect something and the movie just gives what you expected. That's fine, but as a consequence, I felt there was something missing.

On the upside you get a few cool references and punchlines, but overall I found too much to like but not enough to love.
I'm thrown back to The Other Guys which had a bit of that problem, but managed to deliver so good franks laughs along the way.

I love Pegg & Frost as a couple ( ;) ), but I didn't quite connect this time.
Maybe next time... !

True Grit

A new movie by the Coen brothers is always an event.

Given their habit to twist rules and genres, you never quite know what you're going to get especially since they also like to make lighter movies (Brun After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty spring to mind).
But you're always sure it will be beautiful and witty (I loved the 2 movies above, although much less than Miller's Crossing or No Country For Old Men, which are instant classics).

So what could they make of a remake of a John Wayne Western?

Well, in a slightly disappointing twist, True Grit feels like their most conventional film to date. Which is far from saying that it's bad. But somehow I missed this crazy touch that makes you really have no idea how it's all going to turn out.

Having said that, it's quite brilliant. The actors are perfect, cinematography stunning and the dialogs are nothing but a joy. I just had a big smile on my face for the whole thing.
Having said that it's also got its dark edge, with bursts of quite brutal violence, as you would expect from a western.

So it's an utterly enjoyable effort, definitely more relevant than their more minor efforts, but just a notch under their best.

In any case, certainly something that should be watched more than most movies out this year...