Sunday, January 6, 2013

More Movies

I am back in Vancouver, somehow, and this is the rest of the holiday film roundup; more scheduled posts like this one may follow.

Argo is good, a ridiculous spy story that manages to be gripping and compelling without too many explosions. There's a lot of attention to detail that made me wonder where it was filmed: stock and re-creation worked really well. Shit cars from the 70s, the decayed Hollywood sign, hideous moustaches and icky suits...it all worked, and there was a smidge more redemption in it than seemed possible at the outset. There's the standard Hollywood manipulation to be sure, but almost all of it felt close and small and somehow plausible. Science fiction saves lives! Note to Ben: get rid of this lion for the DVD release.

A Late Quartet has Christopher Walken playing a plausibly kind individual with deep feelings for a now-dead wife. Remarkable. The gist of it is that his medical problems set off a chain of responses in the quartet, with various betrayals and measurings of worth leading up to what Walken wants to be his last performance. The quartet's actors all perform well (although the string skillz need work and is Philip Seymour Hoffman a regular jogger?) and the film is good if a little neat at the ending. Presumably I am meant to think that achieving a decent performance of Beethoven's Opus 131 String Quartet in C-sharp minor is worth dedication amounting to insanity; at the end I wondered more about whether the music should be played if it produces people like that (apart from Walken's character, who is, OMG, a swell guy somehow). The worst bit of performance was by Imogen Poots, whose name I really wanted to type, but she gets a plum in the form of a speech blasting someone that I really wanted to hear. Also too it may be worth dedication amounting to insanity to live well in Manhattan.

And back home I took The Lovely Daughter to Rise of the Guardians, which was nowhere near as bad as I expected (though not really worth seeking out in the absence of children) and fairly lovingly animated. Very pretty, good character motion, better than Wreck-It Ralph for sure, and the comedy was not entirely based on whether or not you can get a pop-culture reference. The Lovely Daughter informs me that Ratoncito Pérez made an appearance.

10 comments:

mikey said...

I find it excedingly difficult to sit in a big dark building full of strangers, so I do my movie watching at home.

It was precisely that lack of explosions that led me to avoid Argo. The last movie I enjoyed was "Haywire" starring Gina Carano.

There is nothing so great as a female action lead who can really handle herself, and that list is pretty much limited to Mila Jovovich and Gina Carano.

It had explosions...

The strangers said...

We're not so keen on sitting in a big dark building with mikey either...

M. Bouffant said...

But it still beats a small darkened room full of strangers or mikey.

mikey said...

That's fair. I don't really like sitting in the dark with me either. But I haven't figured out what to do about that.

I REALLY don't want to sit in a small dark room with Ray Lewis.

I'm not sure if he'd tackle me, stab me or yell at me. But I don't want to find out...

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

He knifed through the Colts offensive line...
~

Smut Clyde said...

I want the Lord of Light film, not just films about not making Lord of Light.

wiley said...

http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/document-friday-the-cias-inside-history-of-argo/

Substance McGravitas said...

One of the Hollywoodisms in Argo involves police cars on a runway, which never works because you pull the 747 over to the side of the runway and the pilot can't roll his window down.

fish said...

I really enjoyed Argo for all the things you just said plus the fact I love Alan Arkin like a father.

Substance McGravitas said...

He was very entertaining.