As hick as a parrot
I was looking forward to watching this, as I’ve known about it for ages and it’s got a fair number of actors I like in it. However, it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. It’s boring and uncomfortable at times, although it does raise a question about whether Blake Lively deliberately takes trashy slutty roles or if those are the only ones she can get. 1/10
The Rock of ages
I’ve had this on my hard drive for absolutely ages and now that Dana had more or less caught up on writing up her movies, we could watch new movies again. While this didn’t spring any surprises it was an entertaining hour and a half. Michael Caine and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson were clearly enjoying themselves, Josh Hutcherson carried the lead well (he’s going to score well in my end of year review) and watching this means I’ve watched all but one of Vanessa Hudgens’ movies. The only real downside was occasionally the plot would grind to a halt so that we could have a scene purely put in to make use of the 3D.7/10
Not a sequel to Friends With Benefits
Saw this to kill time before the Garbage gig at Brixton academy, because we’re both old and neither of us wanted to stand up for any length of time. We made the right choice, as the first half of this film is uproariously funny, before settling down and resolving the plot. The cast are perfect for a comedy, either SNL stalwarts (Rudolph, Wiig) or experienced in my favourite sitcoms (Adam Scott, Jon Hamm) so there was no surprise that they handled the material. Megan Fox didn’t let the side down; it was apt seeing her in a film before a Garbage gig, considering how much she harassed her husband to let her accompany him to work so she could fangirl over Shirley Manson on the set of Terminator. 9/10
A bear! You made a bear!
Yes, I saw this before it was released over here. It was free, too. It’s the first Disney Pixar film to a) feature a female protagonist and b) the first Pixar character to enter the the Disney Princess range. There are some who claim that this is the first redheaded Disney Princess; these people are wrong and these Enchanted deniers are what’s wrong with the world. Thankfully this had no attempt at a love story, it’s more of a mother/daughter bonding story. With bears. And Scottish people. Entertaining, but not as good as Tangled. 8/10
Climb me to the moon
A rather sweet short film about three generations of a family cleaning the moon. Yes, cleaning. 8/10
Island in the sun
I’ll come clean, this was a drunken cheap purchase from Aldi one Saturday afternoon. It starts off the same as Never Let Me Go, but instead of being a thoughtful look at human cloning, it turns into a bog-standard Michael Bay action movie. Nothing special, but not boring. 5/10
Magic Man begins
Surprisingly I’d never seen this before, despite being a fan of Nolan’s work. Like Memento and Inception, this film plays with the the audience’s expectations marvelously. It’s definitely one I want to watch again, knowing the twist, and seeing how it gets pointed out to the viewers. As a bonus, you can pretend it’s a Wolverine/Batman/Black Widow Elseworlds-style crossover set in Victorian London. 9/10
It’s all over the front page, you give me road rage
Watched this over the bank holiday as part of a clean-up of films knocking about my hard drive. I didn’t have medium hopes for it, let alone high ones. However, this was an over the top absolutely madcap bonkers film. The plot – Cage’s character has escaped prison to stop his granddaughter being sacrificed to a cult – is minimal but that works in the film’s favour, allowing for an entertaining ride. Plenty of car and violence porn, Amber Heard is lovely as the eye candy, Billy Burke and William Fitchner are clearly relishing the roles given to them and Cage just channels his Con Air character (which might just be Nick Cage, really). It won’t win awards for profound story-telling or acting but sometimes you don’t want that – you just want a bit of entertaining fluff. It’s a Saturday night beer and pizza movie that you put on to switch off from the world. For escapist amusement it does that phenomenally well. 8/10
Die Sonne scheint mir aus den Händen
As well as Rock Of Ages, this was designated one of the films that we’d see at the cinema this year for me, and Dana will be dragged along as well. I was quite looking forward to it as the trailers had played up the idea of Snow White as a butt-kicking female action hero, who didn’t need no man to define her life. I was excited as this would finally be the film I could show as proof when people call me crazy for wanting Kristen Stewart to play Melaka Fray in the live action adaptation of Joss Whedon’s graphic novel! People will stop seeing her as Bella Swan and realise what a good actress she is! While I doubted that it would get anywhere close to The Artist/Hunger Games/Avengers in the year end charts, I was quietly confident that it would be a solid 7 with potential for more.
I was wrong. The first half of the film was spent alternating between thinking “it’ll pick up, it’ll pick up” and marvelling at Charlize Theron’s scene chewing over the top acting – she was hammier than Jon Hamm and Hammy from Over The Hedge eating a large ham while overacting scenes from Hamlet – until I realised that it wasn’t going to get any better. Large chunks of the time were spent focussing on the scenery. Chris Hemsworth was playing a Scottish Thor (if you’re going to get typecast, at least he’s typecast in fun roles), Stewart struggled manfully with an appalling script, and while the dwarves were entertaining they didn’t appear until halfway through by which time I’d given up. It chalks off all the usual story beats – wicked stepmother, apple, dwarves – but quite frankly so does Rammstein’s video for Sonne and that’s 4 minutes long. Don’t waste money on this movie. Instead watch the Rammstein video, watch Kristen Stewart in The Runaways/Adventureland/Speak, Hemsworth in Thor/The Avengers, and Theron in her episodes of Arrested Development. 2/10
Back to the past. Far back.
I’d been meaning to watch this film ever since it came out but for one reason or another never got round to it. It was actually recommended to me by a customer (in response to me mentioning about my trip) so we made sure to give it a go. It’s rather lovely and twee, with Owen Wilson leaving his absolute bitch of a wife to time travel back to the 1920s, hanging out with his literary idols (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Porter). Back there he meets Marion Cotillard’s Adriana, herself obsessed with the past and despondent with her present (hammering home the point about how everyone is nostalgic for a better time). A rather lovely, sweet film filled with recognisable actors and a much better advert for the capital than Paris Je T’aime. Definitely worth watching. 9/10
About 2012 Movies
