I HAVE MOVED

Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for reading CinemaSlants these few years. I have moved my writing over to a new blog: The Screen Addict. You can find it here: http://thescreenaddict.com/.

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Wednesday, July 4, 2012

The CinemaSlants 2012 Mid-Year Report



Once more, ladies and gentlemen, we find ourselves sixth months into the year. For those of you who aren’t all that great at math, this is the halfway point. This means that we have already experienced about half of the cinematic output that the world is going to throw at us in 2012. This means that I will continue my annual tradition of a mid-year report, in which I look back on the year so far and tell you what I’ve liked, disliked, and everything in between. So strap in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride! (And other clichés.)


The Best (So Far)
Of all the movies I’ve seen this year, none have given me as much joy as Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods, a film that works simultaneously as a salute to and a criticism of the horror genre. Not only does it brilliantly deconstruct the horror formula that we’ve seen countless times before, but it digs deeper than any satirical horror film ever has before. Goddard and co-writer/producer Joss Whedon (he’s having a good year, no?) clearly had a ton of fun putting this movie together, and for once this translates quite well to the audience experience.

Honorable Mentions:
- No one was excited for a comedy based on a not-good dramatic series from the ’80s, yet 21 Jump Street proved to be a hilarious and ingenious film about nostalgia and the horrors of high school.
- Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom may be the best film he’s made; a quirky but heartfelt tale of first love and the melancholy that comes with growing up.
- The Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid With a Bike is a moving drama about a child that could have been tossed aside by society, but instead finds a home with the caring Cécile de France. The 13-year-old Thomas Doret is something to behold.
- I’m about done with the found footage genre, but the universe of Chronicle is so engrossing that you forget it’s even using the increasingly tired gimmick. The central trio of characters played by Dane DeHaan, Michael B. Jordan and Alex Russell bring it all together brilliantly.


The Worst (So Far)
If you still refer to yourself as “McG” in the year 2012, I’m immediately inclined to not care for you or your work. Luckily, his film This Means War is able to live down to his cringe-worthy moniker. It’s a tale about two horrible secret agents (Chris Pine and Thomas Hardy) who both fall in love with the same horrible woman (Reese Witherspoon) and they use their horrible government powers to spy on her and attempt to win her heart. It’s horrible, and the three central characters are so disturbingly unlikable that the German supervillian (Til Schweiger, who has nothing to do) seems pretty cool by comparison.

Honorable Mentions:
- It wouldn’t be a “worst of” list without mentioning the latest Happy Madison film, and the repulsive R-rated ranchfest That’s My Boy deserves a special place near the top.
- I quite liked the first five-or-so minutes of the thriller Man on a Ledge. After that, it’s nothing but a parade of incredibly stupid characters making precisely the wrong decision at every moment.
- This one came in just under the wire, but The Amazing Spider-Man is all of Hollywood’s worst qualities thrown into one super-shiny, personality-less package.
- As radio host Tom Scharpling recently tweeted: “Project X had a great message: do whatever it takes to be cool to your high school classmates because that glory lasts forever.” That about sums it up.


Some other nonsense:

Good Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen
- Richard Linklater’s comedy Bernie just missed making my list above, but it’s a funny, fascinating true-crime story that features a great performance by Jack Black.
- Believe it or not, one of the best performances of the year was actually turned in by Seann William Scott. “In American Reunion?” you are no doubt asking yourself. No, I mean the hockey comedy Goon. If the movie around him as was good, it’d be a masterpiece.
- The Guy Pearce action film Lockout is as stupid as they come, but it’s the best kind of stupidity. That the CGI is so atrocious only makes the overall experience more fun.
- Writer/actor Brit Marling made something of a splash with last year’s fascinating Another Earth. This year she made Sound of My Voice, which isn’t quite as good but still shows that she’s got—as we say in the business—“the goods.”

The Underrated
- A lot of people have spent the last month crapping all over Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, but I’ve seen it twice and I still love it as much as I did when it came out. It’s a brilliant visual film with several effective, shocking moments and some interesting thematic ideas thrown out there as well. Is it as good as, say, the first two Alien movies? No, but this is higher-level blockbuster moviemaking that we don’t see every day, and it’s somewhat disheartening that people have chosen to focus on the flaws rather than all it does well.
- I am much less spirited in my defense of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, which creates an engrossing universe that was fun to inhabit for two hours.
- I did not love Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, but it isn’t anywhere close to being the atrocity that some think it is. So there.

Steven Soderbergh’s Unlikely Companion Pieces
While Soderbergh’s Haywire and Magic Mike have very little in common from a content standpoint, they both exist for similar reasons: to watch the stars do what they’re good at. In the case of Haywire, Soderbergh just wanted to make a movie about former MMA star Gina Carano kicking and punching her way through a cast of famous male movie stars. One of those stars was Channing Tatum, who went on to star in the recent Magic Mike. Tatum is famous for starting out as a stripper, and this film tells a story clearly based on Tatum’s experiences. Since Soderbergh is so caught up with the premise and cast of each movie rather than the story, both films inevitably fizzle out by the end. But when they’re good, they are both really good.

A Rough Year for Tim Riggins
After making a name for himself on Friday Night Lights, Taylor Kitsch saw 2012 as the year in which he’d break through and become a huge movie star. Well, it hasn’t exactly started as planned. John Carter, directed by Pixar vet Andrew Stanton, became one of the biggest flops in movie history even if much of the negative buzz leading up to it was undeserved. It’s not a great movie, but it’s far better than its reputation suggests. Kitsch had another shot with Battleship, which is just bad and audiences reacted appropriately. The great tragedy is that Kitsch is quite good in both these films; he just hasn’t been given a project that people might actually want to see. Perhaps this changes on Friday with the release of Oliver Stone’s Savages, but that doesn’t strike me as the movie that will break his box office slump.

By the way, I just recently watched all of Friday Night Lights and I loved it. You should too.

And Now, a Look Forward
I’m not sure I can recall a year with more second half potential than 2012. Obviously, everything could turn out to be a stinker, but any period of time promising new movies from Spielberg, Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Nolan and countless others sure has a lot of potential. Let’s take a look at some of the potential highlights:
- Hey, did you know The Dark Knight Rises comes out later this month? Oh, you did? Moving on…
- If done well, Jay Roach’s The Campaign could be a hilarious send-up of election season. Or, it could just be a lot of silliness. Either way, should be fun.
- David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis looks wonderfully creepy, and if Robert Pattinson signs on to more movies like this we may be on speaking terms before long.
- Ruben Fleischer leaves the action comedy genre behind and helms Gangster Squad, which has a killer cast that includes Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and others.
- Rian Johnson’s Looper has quickly leaped up to the top of my “most anticipated” list, and there’s no way around this being a crucial film in his career. If this one hits, he has the potential to really break out like he should.
- Ben Affleck has proven himself to be a terrific director, and he finally leaves the realm of Boston crime with his Iranian revolution tale Argo.
- Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. ‘Nuff said.
- Robert Zemeckis finally returns to the land of the living with Flight, and let’s hope he’s in top form.
- The Sam Mendes-helmed Bond film Skyfall has the potential to be the most ambitious film ever made. Or it could backfire. Let’s hope for the former.
- I keep forgetting the first of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit films comes out this December, which may speak to how relatively indifferent I’ve grown toward the project. I hope I’m won over by the finished product.
- After you all ignored the underrated Funny People a few years back, Judd Apatow returns to the Knocked Up universe for his new film This is 40.
- After winning it all with The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal team up once more for… wait for it… Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Project! We do know it revolved around the killing of Osama bin Laden, and that two of its stars are… Chris Pratt and Mark Duplass? Huh. This’ll be interesting. Kyle Chandler’s also in there, but I suspect it’s because even Navy SEALs need a good pep talk now and then.
- Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. ‘Nuff said.
- Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. ‘Nuff said. (Release date TBD, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of those deals where it gets a limited release in December then goes wide in 2013.)

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Well, that’s about all I have to say that’s of any substance. As always, you can go to this page to see a complete list of films I’ve sat through this year. I haven’t necessarily reviewed all of them in full, so it’s a good place to take a look at what I’ve liked/disliked/etc. We’ve got an exciting six months ahead, and it will be fun to see which Weinstein movie wins Best Picture this year. See you then!

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