adendum to my previous movie post:
John Carter: This movie is GREAT. Vastly better than it's advertising suggests. This one's a must see if you like either action or fantasy movies. It's a rare thing anymore that hollywood can get fantasy storytelling right, and they hit this one out of the park. 10/10
The Avengers: better than I hoped it would be. my vote for best super hero movie of the year (although if you count Dredd or John Carter as a 'comic hero' movie, then it's a tough 3-way split). 10/10
The Dark Knight Rises: by far the weakest of the trilogy. hard to tell the 2 leading ladies apart in some scenes, plot holes you could drive an aircraft carrier through (sideways), some fairly bad lines in it, ungratifying villain, plot twists are predictable and lean towards 'silly' rather than 'clever', oh... and occupy wall street seems to be the underlying model for the bad guys. Good thing the ultimate 1% super hero poster boy stopped their "uppity poorfolk" terroristic ways... in a word, I wish I had not seen it. Especially after the last batman movie, which was SOOOOOO good. 4/10 (maybe higher if you imbibe something to shut down your higher brain functions)
Spiderman: it was well put together. It "reboots" the creation story for spiderman, and it handles it pretty competently. The crane operators setting up a swing-path for spider man was a bit 'eye-rolling', but overall, a fun spider man movie. It features one of my favorite (but not well known) spidy-verse villains. And it was one of the few movies where 3D was highly appropriate. 8/10
Prometheus: biggest disappointment of the year (handily worse than batman's lame duck finale). I'd like to say that because they spent countless millions making it, that it's at least a 'decent' movie for the average viewer, even if it's not a financial success... but it's not. It just... sucks. I'll qualify that by saying that the acting was first rate. The cinematography was truely phenomenal (possibly oscar worthy cinematography). But that's the end of the list of good things, and there's a long list of bad things. I've tried to find an angle from which this movie can be seen as a "good" movie, but I can't find one. It tries so hard to be clever, but in the end I feel like this moronic film was just ineffectually trying to dry hump my brain without the faintest idea of how to go about it. Bad sci fi, bad science, bad history, bad geography, bad lines, bad character continuity, bad plot twists, bad attempt to hijack the xenomorph fictionverse, bad at running out of the way of a rolling spaceship, bad bad bad. 2/10
Men in Black 3: good movie. possibly better than the first one. big step up from the second one. I really liked how well they handled the time period culture shock stuff. And a really nice story overall (story really is the lifeblood of a movie/book/etc). well worth a watch. 9/10
Dredd: biggest (good) surprise all year. This movie is first rate dystopian sci fi/comic hero genre stuff. Remember that movie in the 80's with Sly Stalone? Remember how it was kinda lovable, but also kinda bad? Forget that movie ever happened. This new film is how you should remember Judge Dredd. It's first rate. And it actually sticks to it's comic cannon (which generally means a superior plot compared to hollywood's sense of writing). If they would have made *this* judge dredd back in the 80's, then people would talk about it in the same sentences with terminator, aliens, and robocop. If you like action, sci fi, or comicbook movies, any of the three, go rent this one. if you like all three, go rent it right now. 10/10
Battleship: 6/10 "not as bad as I feared". Acceptably passable popcorn movie. Ironically I actually rate the transformers movies worse than this one. This one doesn't try (and fail) as hard to be funny or clever. It's plot is simple, the characters are as one dimensional as a sheet of paper, but it works. There's no "cringing moment" where you feel like the director/writers are kicking you in the brain. And that kinda surprised me. It feels like an "above-average made-for-tv movie", you know, like something the sci fi channel would slop together on their own, but with better special effects.
Total Recall: It would have been better if they changed the title, and changed the plot-device 'total recall memory implants' thing. because this is a decent movie, which fails to best it's namesake. The whole time I'm watching it, I'm thinking "this isn't bad, but I'd rather be watching the original..." 7/10
Looper: a surprisingly decent time-travel film. fun action, but more of a character movie than anything. And the characters are pretty good. action movie + vaguely thought provoking, at the same time. it's a winning combo. 8/10
Snow White and the Huntsman: I liked it. In spite of the emotionally flatline twilight starlet in the lead role as snow white... I still liked it. She did better in this than in her better known films. But really, the villain stole the show. Charlize Theron, she's not quite a Keith Ledger's Joker, but she makes an awesome villain, very enjoyable performance on her end. The dwarfs made me want to go dig up my old copy of Krull, because they strongly reminded me of the band of theives who join the young king in that old flick. 8/10
Expendables 2: better than 1... really in the first one, I couldn't actually see any of the action through the 'shakey cam' nonsense. 2 is "better" (if only because I can see what's happening). But, it's still really a "cameo movie", if it didn't have a zillion well known stars in it, nobody would care about the movie. It's 'ok', leaning towards 'semi-good-ish'. 6/10
I still need to see Skyfall, Cloud Atlas, Brave, and a few others
(actually I'm way behind on my animated movies, need to make a rental night of it
)