Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8/10
Honestly struck me as a Coen Brothers film. Terrific script, great casting, solid efforts from all. Cruel and funny in equal measures. If you can sit through a movie that relies on wit rather than explosions, watch it at your earliest convenience.
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The Hunger Games
5/10
Yeah, genuinely the first time I've seen this, not even joking.
I'm not going to get into the question of whether this story copy-pasted elements of
Battle Royale (it blatantly did) but judging by this presentation against
BR the film and
BR the novel, I don't think it's fair to compare the two.
The Hunger Games clearly targets a younger audience with simpler concepts and cruder instruments.
In a vacuum without such comparisons, the film was still, sadly, rather dull. The characters were boring and poorly developed (if at all) — a criticism I aim at the adaptation rather than the source material, as I have not read the books. The plot proceeded predictably, and not in a way I approved of. At no point would I say I experienced a feeling of suspense and neither did I particularly like either of the protagonists from District 12. Katniss should have been stronger and, frankly, she just baffled me.
The other characters I couldn't even name. Honestly, the performances that stood out to me were those of Elizabeth Banks and Stanley Tucci, in flickering, supporting roles. Their brief appearances were sufficiently fun and bright to perk me up before falling asleep.
Not something I would watch again, and neither something that inspires me to watch the sequels. The film mostly just made me think of how much I enjoyed
Snowpiercer.
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Skyfall
4/10
This being a James Bond film all but precludes any possibility of it getting a good score.
The protagonist is the same womanising action figure, but now with some kind of traumatic childhood that I'm supposed to give a shit about. This aspect made no sense and James Bond being an asshole didn't need any kind of explanation.
The film's saving grace is the antagonist, an agent gone rogue played quite effectively by Javier Bardem. Lacked the aura of unease Bardem created in
No Country For Old Men, but he is, nevertheless, the most interesting thing on the screen for the latter half of the movie.
The biggest eyerolls undoubtedly occur when the villain is taken into custody and a
Big Bang Theory-reject Q spouts some offensively wrong tech bullshit shortly before chaos ensues, thanks to the villain's "years in the making" scheme to escape being taken into custody (lol) and to assassinate his captors.
Prior to this segment of the film, however, nothing of interest had occurred at all.
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Oldboy (2013)
0/10
Skip. Just don't even contemplate wasting your time with this. Watch the original if you haven't seen it.
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Bridge of Spies
7/10
I suspect this is probably a pretty decent film if you're interested in biased, half-true stories of Cold War stupidity.
To be fair, I didn't fall asleep.
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John Wick
8/10
You watch this — and it gets a respectable score — for some of the best gunplay since
Collateral. And for its lack of pretense. Guy kills retired assassin's beloved dog, retired assassin acts accordingly.
