The Master - I was so excited for this movie. Man... I've seen There Will Be Blood dozens of times. It's one of those movies that I like to have on while I'm doing something else. I just let it play and watch bits and pieces of it while I'm cleaning or whatever. I ****ing LOVE it. So I was pretty amped for PT Anderson's new one, especially since Philip Seymour Hoffman is in it. That dude is awesome. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed with The Master.
The execution was all there. The movie looked amazing and the acting was great (Joaquin Phoenix was pretty incredible), but that was all the movie had to offer. The story goes nowhere, nothing happens. With There Will Be Blood, there was actually some amount of character arc. Yeah, the guy is an ******* from start to finish, but there are degrees and you get to watch as his *******-ness slowly corrodes his entire life, but The Master... there was nothing. Someone told me that that was The Point. It's a movie about a cult and how cults don't do anything for you. Seems like a ****ty premise for a film, then, although I have a hard time believing that was PTA's idea for the film. I imagine/hope that multiple viewings would show some subtle difference or something that I'm missing, but I'm honestly not sure I want to spend the time trying to find out.
Dredd - I can't believe this bombed so badly at the box office because it was ****in' great. Super violent and fun. Would love to watch it again and will consider buying it on Blu-ray.
Insidious - Got a little silly at the end, but it was creepy as **** in enough places that I would still give this a definite thumbs up.
House - I remember watching this movie with my dad when I was little and loving the **** out of it, but I didn't remember a single bit of it when I watched it again recently. It's a pretty entertaining ridiculous B-movie about a haunted house. I enjoyed it, but didn't like it as much as I remembered liking it.
Another Earth - This is one of those sci-fi movies that isn't really a sci-fi movie, but just has something sci-fi-ish happening. In this case, it's that a copy of earth is discovered to have been hiding on the opposite side of the sun. And when I say copy, I mean copy. As far as the residents of Earth 1 know, based on some small conversation, everything is the same. Maybe.
A young woman drives her car drunk and crashes into an SUV with a family in it, killing the child and pregnant mother. When she gets out of prison, she goes to see the father, but can't work up the courage to tell him that it was her that ruined his life. Instead, she lies and the two of them eventually become friends, all while she struggles with what she's done, and wonders whether the her on Earth 2 made the same mistake.
It's a really slow, artsy-fartsy film, but I liked it quite a bit. There are a ****ton of shots of her walking down the street or a field or wherever with the other earth showing very large in the sky behind her. It almost seems like filler, but it looks really nice, so it didn't bother me. I would recommend it if you're ok with artsy-fartsy.
Martha Marcy May Marlene - Elizabeth Olsen escapes from a small cult in the Catskill Mountains and goes to stay with her estranged sister. The film jumps back and forth in time between her joining the cult and slowly becoming indoctrinated (or whatever you want to call it) and her being at her sister's and trying to come out of that indoctrination. It's an intense movie and I loved the **** out of it. Elizabeth Olsen was impressive as hell, John Hawkes was great (as usual) and Sarah Paulson was really good, too. Initially, the ending kind of pissed me off, but about 15 minutes later I decided it was a great ending, even if it was a little frustrating. Great ****ing movie. I will be buying this at some point soon.
