Monsters University
I loved Monsters University. It's delightful, funny, beautiful to look at, and heartwarming.
It captivated my family, which ranges in age from 7 to 45, and it's
the first prequel I've seen in a very long time that doesn't feel
like it's just putting the pieces in place for the movie that
inspired it.
The Iron Lady
This
just in: Meryl Streep is really good at acting. I spent the 90 or so
minutes of The Iron Lady feeling
like Margaret Thatcher was in the room with me.
Unfortunately,
it seemed like she was there only to show me a "greatest hits”
reel of her life. The Iron Lady
skips along Thatcher's biography like it's in a hurry to get to the
end, when I'd have appreciated a deeper examination of one
particularly illuminating period of her life. The
Iron Lady and the Miner's Strike,
for example, or The
Iron Lady and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
As it was, The
Iron Lady
gave me a sense of who Thatcher was, but it really didn't tell me how
she ticked. That's a film I'd have found much more engrossing.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
is a perfect movie. It's well-shot, elegantly constructed, finely
performed, and satisfying on every level.
It's
so well shot that it'd benefit from a scene-by-scene analysis of its
use of framing, lighting, and depth of field to tell its story and
illuminate its characters. It's so elegantly constructed that every
element of the script fits together like an elegant watch. It's so
finely performed that you'll believe in the heroes right down to your
boots, and you'll come away hating Lee Marvin so much that you'll
actually have trouble rooting for him in films where he's the hero.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
works, and it works in every way. If you love movies, you need to
see this one.
Looper
Looper
is basically The Terminator,
with Bruce Willis playing the T-1000, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
as
Kyle Reese, and the wonderful Emily Blunt as Sarah Connor. Looper's
twist is that the T-1000 is a later version of Reese.
I'm
ok with that. It's a good formula, and Looper
executes it well. Bruce Willis is as convincing an action star as
ever, the multitalented Gordon-Levitt
excels
at putting a human face on the most despicable of characters, and I
don't think Emily Blunt has ever been bad in anything. Rian
Johnson's writing is clever as always, and Looper
is
a good time at the movies.
