After a summer traveling abroad I am back in New York and catching up with movies. Here are tiny reviews of movies I saw recently:
The Dark Night Rises : Overpraised and very loud. I saw this on a lovely sunny day in Wales - there are so few of these - and I regretted leaving the sun to see it. Anne Hathaway was good and its always a pleasure to see Joseph Gordon Levitt but I had several problems with the movie. The politics were very muddled while trying to be topical; is the movie really against the Occupy movement? Christian Bale was doing the same tortured hero he always does; nothing new to see there. Tom Hardy was undermined by the mask covering half his face - really Chris Nolan you hire the biggest sexiest lips on a man in the movies and then hide them, really?
The Amazing Spider Man - Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are very charming together. I totally bought their romance and the chemistry was combusting. The rest of the movie was just blah.
Magic Mike - In my mind the best movie I saw this year to date. It was very refreshing, amid the summer glut of super heroes; to see a character driven movie. Who would've thought this would be it? And I liked that it didn't glamorise striping; the ugly underbelly of drugs and self loathing was all there on screen. Channing Tatum proved his current omnipresence is justified with a charming, understated natural performance. Matthew McConaughey does what I think is a riff on his perceived public persona is wining and probably his best performance ever.
Ted - Opened the same weekend as Magic Mike as the above meme attests and it is perfect counter programing. I remember laughing a lot but can't remember any of the jokes or performances now. Apparently entertaining but not memorable.
Bachelorette - Another very funny movie. But more memorable. This movie about a trio of mean girls attending their fat friend's wedding carrying along years of resentment and dashed hopes is caustingly funny. Its also not afraid of honestly portraying its protagonists in all their loathsome qualities. While Kirsten Dunst is funny and brittle as the main mean girl, Lizzy Caplan steals the movie with an all out funny performance full of pathos as the girl who refuses to grow up lest she face her teenage demons.
More shorts takes coming soon about Fall movies The Master, Hello I Must Be Going and End of Watch.
