Nathaniel R at The Film Experience has invited any and all interested parties to answer a series of questions about the Summer Movie Season That Was; being sort of addicted to form-based blog posts these days, and generally speaking a fan of Nathaniel's various interactive blog experiments, I decided to toss out my own response.
Best Movie I Saw This Summer:
Bernie, which combines the clever-nasty cultural humor of mid-period Coens with the laconic observational cinema of Richard Linklater's best work, got the McConaughey Express of 2012 off to a great start, and gave Jack Black his best role ever.
Thing I Actually Learned (at summer movie camp!):
That a teddy bear voiced by the insufferable Seth MacFarlane could be a more appealing CGI character than anyone in the Madagascar or Ice Age franchises.
Major Summer Crush:
Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Not even their characters in The Amazing Spider-Man. Just them, as people, in life. They are THE CUTEST IMAGINABLE.
Moment I ♥ So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst:
Anne Hathaway switching from nervous waitress snooping around to flirty, self-possessed, awesomely dangerous thief in less than the blink of an eye, in The Dark Knight Rises.
Princess Merida, Katniss or Hawkeye?
Merida, for getting far and away the coolest and most accurate archery scene of any of the three, and having bitchin' hair.
If Only "Hulk" Had Smashed...
The script for Lawless, wasting such a top-drawer cast, outstanding design, and one of the great long-lost genres on what ended up being a largely milquetoast period drama.
Mash-Up ~ Summer Movie Characters I'd Like to Introduce (and why):
The Queen from Snow White and the Huntsman and Bane from The Dark Knight Rises: she deserved a much better showcase for her scorched-earth villainy, and he deserved a better femme fatale girlfriend than the criminally under-written and mis-performed Talia al Ghul.
Rank the Magic Mike strippers:
1) Magic Mike (Channing Tatum)
2) Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello)
3) Dallas (Matthew McConaughey)
4) Ken (Matt Bomer)
5) The Kid (Alex Pettyfer)
6) Tito (Adam Rodriguez)
7) Tarzan (Kevin Nash)
At Least The Theater Was Air Conditioned:
So many choices, but I think I will go with Battleship, the most impersonal, narratively inert of the many dull-as-paste effects-driven blow-up-a-thons I watched this summer.
Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me!
Night and the City, a film noir of unusual bitterness directed by Jules Dassin, right before his exile to France. Astonishingly good work by Richard Widmark and drop-dead gorgeous chiaroscuro cinematography, with one of the most effectively nihilistic attitudes I've ever seen even from that supremely nihilistic genre, spiked with just enough genuine affection for the characters to make it all the harsher.
Line Reading That Stuck in My Head...
Captain America, in The Avengers:
"Barton: I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark: you've got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash. Thor: you've gotta try and bottleneck that portal, slow them down. You've got the lightning - light the bastards up! You and me: we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here. And Hulk: smash!"
(Yeah, it's obvious. Sue me).
06 September 2012
6 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
The thing about Battleship, which I haven't seen yet, is that it seemed so impersonal and dull from the outset, and the outside, that it didn't even entice me one bit to go see it. It just seems so mechanical. One of those films that make think their entire existence was decided in a boardroom just to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Just the fact that it's based on a board game and they got a pop star with no apparent acting talent to headline it bothered me.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I haven't seen it yet, but you seem to agree with me.
Here's the thing about "Battleship"....yes, it's undeniably crap. Full stop. It's a stupid retread of a generic alien invasion scenario that plays out every other Saturday night on the Syfy Channel, filled with mediocre performances and rote everything. And it's unforgivably LONG, with a ridiculous amount of backstory that nobody fucking cares about. Shit, it's a good 40 minutes before the aliens get down to business. Chicken burrito? WHO CARES?
ReplyDeleteBut still....why did I find it watchable? Somehow, I did. God knows, the visual effects are really top drawer, which helps. And Berg actually seems to know how to direct an action scene without going the editorial ADD route, which was refreshing.
I don't know, I can't defend it, and I won't. But it was a much better time than the irredeemably awful "Battle Los Angeles".
I still haven't caught up with most of the summer (Magic Mike, Brave) but I will say this: YES to Night and the City!
ReplyDeleteWidmark was in a lot of underrated noirs, but that might be his best. And I especially love the rare, seedy London setting. Thanks for calling attention to it!
Night and the City ruuuuuuuules. Depending on what mood I'm in I might even like it better than Rififi.
ReplyDeleteAmir- Your thoughts on Battleship are EXACTLY mine.
ReplyDeleteRick- And that is why I include it, even though it is undoubtedly not so grueling as Battle: LA or a number of other things. There's a certain giddy self-hate that comes from watching an unenjoyably bad movie; there's no pleasure at all from watching a boring one, even one that, as you say, has pretty unimpeachable CGI (some of the best of the summer, I hate to say).
Andreas/Michael- Oh my God, it's so damn good, right? I've been a Dassin fancier for a while, but this is right up there with Rififi (which, by virtue of That Heist Scene, is still comfortably at #1). And between this and his Fuller films, I have to say that it puts me solidly on the Widmark train.
But, " That a teddy bear voiced by the insufferable Seth MacFarlane could be a more appealing CGI character than anyone in the Madagascar or Ice Age franchises." really Tim that's a very VERY low bar?
ReplyDelete