Proper Herald review of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows available here.

I liked the original Sherlock Holmes quite a bit. I mean, the Guy Ritchie original. Not to say I don’t like the original original Sherlock Holmes. But we’re talking about movies here. Try to keep up. The original Sherlock Holmes, then, was a welcome surprise: witty, offbeat, frenetic, very modern in its steampunk trappings and Ritchie actioneering, yet still faithful to the source. It was good in a way you don’t expect these tentpole franchises to be.

In other words, kind of like the first Pirates of the Caribbean.

Not that anyone was comparing it to Pirates back then. Or if they were, I didn’t hear it, and am going to continue to pretend as if such statements don’t exist. Because if they did, that would make my comparison–that A Game of Shadows is an awful lot like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest–sound much less original.

But the comparison’s pretty great. Big, wanna-be blockbuster that everyone rolled their eyes at becomes surprise success. Everyone’s looking forward to the sequel. Second movie comes out and it’s.. not so great. It’s too much. It tries to deliver everything that made the original so charming and fun, only amped up to 11. It’s overstuffed, confused, sprawling. It’s not horrible, but in its excess and tone-deafness, it’s exactly the kind of Hollywood-bad everyone expected the first movie to be.

That description fits both A Game of Shadows and Dead Man’s Chest to a T. I don’t want it to. I liked both originals. I even kind of enjoyed both sequels (though A Game of Shadow‘s very-forced repartee between Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law almost pushed me into dislike territory). They’re just nothing I ever really need to see again.

Two fucking awesome wordplay headlines in a row. I’m on fire. My full review of The Sitter is available here.

And you know what? Again, I’m not doing an informal review here. I like director David Gordon Green lots and lots, but he barely elevates this above a cliche-ridden script full of some loser venturing into the night to tangle with drug dealers and engage in wacky car chases. The Sitter is in many ways every nondescript comedy since 2008, with only a decent performance from Jonah Hill to try to elevate it.

It’s almost midnight on a Tuesday. I have to go to sleep now. I would much rather do that than write anything more about The Sitter.

Full review of The Descendants available at the Herald.

And actually, there will be no real informal review here, other than to say this is not the best of Alexander Payne’s movies, but it clearly is one of his movies, in that it shows people as petty, shallow assholes who are also capable of being funny and thoughtful and heartfelt. A step down from About Schmidt and two steps down from Sideways, but still one of the better movies of the year. Worth catching once it shows up in your market.

Full review of Breaking Dawn Part 1 available at the Herald.

Actually, still deep in other work, so I don’t have much time to get into it here. As a whole, the Twilight series continues to be so divisive that anti-Twilight sentiment has pushed some of its former detractors into positions as apologists, arguing (with some rightness) that the series has drawn more hatred and mockery just because it’s for girls. Meanwhile, boys’ stuff like Transformers–and essentially all other blockbuster movies–pulls disproportionately little ire, because boys’ interests are infinitely more acceptable.

To which I would say “Agreed,” followed immediately by “But that doesn’t change the fact Twilight is crazy and also sucks.” Breaking Dawn is the best example of that yet. The first half is a conflict-free drift of Edward and Bella’s wedding, Edward and Bella boning on their honeymoon until she passes out and he apparently beats her up(?), which shames him so bad he refuses to bone her again–so long as she’s human, anyway.

Which confused this non-fan, as I didn’t know whether there were plans to ever make her a vampire (and thus capable of handling the vampire-stick), meaning their married life would be as chaste as their prior life, which.. well, quit fucking whining already, big guy. So you gave her a few bruises. She seems to have liked it, but if that’s the sort of thing that will make you decide to never have sex with your wife again, maybe you should have figured that out BEFORE you made a lifelong commitment to her. This just in: Breaking Dawn secretly criticizes waiting until marriage! Abstinence is a farce! It’s werecats living with weredogs!

Then, of course, Bella gets pregnant after their single tumble in the hay. Instantly, her life is no longer singlemindedly devoted to Edward, but to the half-vampire fetus that is literally eating her from the inside and which Dr. Vampire confirms will kill her. I don’t even want to get into the political subtext of this, but it makes her undying love for Edward suddenly feel very mortal indeed, to the point that it can’t help but suggest she was never really in love with him to begin with–just madly, self-negatingly infatuated with him.

Which dovetails nicely with a lot of the criticism of Twilight as a whole: Bella doesn’t really have a personality of her own, and she’s looking to extinguish whatever bits she does have through her obsessions with other people. I guess that’s why the series is so popular: with such a generic protagonist, readers and viewers can instead project as much of themselves as they want onto Bella.

So sure, Twilight isn’t really as bad as twenty Hitlers. (It’s like two Hitlers, tops.) But for plenty of men, women, boys, and girls, its two lovestruck leads offer nothing of interest. Before I could begin to start caring about the crazy melodrama of Bella’s life, she’d need to learn to care a lot more about herself.

Full review of J. Edgar available, as usual, at the Herald.

Wait, maybe I should rewrite that, because that implies there will be a partial review here, and I’m too busy for that beyond saying that J. Edgar is a mess that tries to cover all aspects of J. Edgar Hoover’s life at the expense of finding depth in any of them. Everyone involved is talented–star Leonardo DiCaprio, director Clint Eastwood, writer Dustin Lance Black–but the end product is frustrating and unrewarding. At least it’s better than Breaking Dawn!

My proper review for Tower Heist is here, and I recommend reading that one, because I don’t have the time right now to really get into it here.

Anyway, by all indications director Brett Ratner’s not a very good guy. He decided/had to quit directing this year’s Oscars after a week in which he declared “rehearsing’s for fags.” He meant it in the jokey way, and in all honesty I think he caught more shit for that than he deserved, but if nothing else come on, guy, you work in Hollywood and should know better.

Oh, and it probably didn’t help that this came within days of Ratner saying he “banged” Olivia Munn, but he didn’t recognize her in a later meeting because she “wasn’t Asian back then.” I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be a criticism of Munn deliberately changing and misrepresenting her image (she changed her name, too) to gain Hollywood success, and not, as it appears to be, a bizarre comment about the shape-shifting abilities of the Far East. He may even be telling the truth. But the way he said it is just poorly phrased, making him look like a douche at the very least, and quite possibly a misogynist and a racist.

These are the reasons people don’t like Brett Ratner. I mean, besides his movies. He comes off like a thoughtless prick, an arrogant fratboy, and his films aren’t nearly good enough to make people overlook the foolish things he says and does. Which I’m going to say is a little unfair–I’m not sure these comments mean all that much besides Ratner isn’t self-aware enough to realize he’s a public figure who can’t blurt to the national media the same things he’d say to his friends, who’d understand it’s a joke or at least ask him what the hell he means about that Asian thing.

Meanwhile, Tower Heist is fairly fun, a typical Ratner film in that it doesn’t have any particular style to it but is fairly funny and competent in a slick action-movie way. But it doesn’t matter, because Brett Ratner can’t keep his fool mouth shut. Maybe that’s how it should be. Whiffs of bigotry from public entertainers shouldn’t be brushed off like you would for your friends. At the same time, how much does it matter? What does it say that we’re more entertained by celebrities making asses of themselves than the art and entertainment that made them famous in the first place? Don’t we have better things to be doing with our time, energy, and attention? Like making fun of Kim Kardashian?

I’ve spent too much time on this already, I think. Time to get started on the next review.

Complete review of In Time available at the Herald.

I’d like to say a lot about In Time, but I’m not sure I’m going to, because I’m joining a friend in National Novel Writing Month this…month and completing 50,000 words amidst my other responsibilities (such as reviewing movies) is going to require an extra level of a word I suddenly can’t remember. Seriously, I’m blanking. It means “doing what you’re supposed to rather than what you want to.” Discipline! It will require an extra level of discipline. Meaning I don’t have a ton of time or energy to spend blogging about not-very-good movies I’ve already been paid to write about. Although I should write something about NaNoWriMo, which I think is stupid and valuable in equal measures.

But In Time is interesting because it’s seriously angry about wealth inequality in the United States and is also a Hollywood blockbuster starring Justin Timberlake. Attempted blockbuster, anyway. I think it’s only going to pull in tens of millions of dollars rather than hundreds. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, who’s done several sci-fi movies including the semi-classic Gattaca, In Time has plenty of potential. Good concept. In on the “the rich may be too rich” zeitgeist. An interesting cast, including Timberlake, who appears to want to be a big-time movie star but isn’t yet, Amanda Seyfried, who keeps getting high-profile work despite my never being impressed by her (though she’s kinda good as a rebellious rich girl here), and the always-reliable Cillian Murphy as a semi-bad guy police officer.

The problem is In Time‘s plot is unshaped for a long period of time–Timberlake, pushed into bringing the system crashing down by a mysterious stranger, hatches a revolutionary plan that is indistinguishable from a sexy young dude deciding to spend a weekend in Vegas. Eventually, he and Seyfried go all Bonnie and Clyde all over everyone’s asses, but that is a long, long ways into the movie.

The ongoing mess of coincidence, allegory, and clumsy political zeal turns something that could be as important as it is entertaining into a thing that is neither. Too bad, because what In Time is trying to do is exactly what we could use more of. Maybe next time.