Looper

How funny would it be if Joseph Gordon-Levitt was nominated for an Oscar for playing a young Bruce Willis before Bruce Willis got nominated for an Oscar at all?

Granted, I'm sure Bruce Willis doesn't care about Oscars. After all, he is John McClane.

Looper, starring the above mentioned, takes place in the not-so-distant future where time travel has not been invented yet. However, there are hit-men called Loopers, who are employed by people in the future where time travel has been invented, but outlawed. They use the time machines to send people they want dead back into the past to be killed and disposed of. But when a new criminal is running the futuristic world, he starts sending Loopers back and having them killed by their younger selves.

One day a Looper named Joe comes face-to-face with his older self, and hesitates allowing... uh...his older self to.... get away from... his younger self.

Younger Joe's bosses start hunting him to fix the mess, but Joe hides from them while older Joe looks for the new boss who killed his wife and sent him back to kill him as a child.

I have no idea how the hell Rian Johnson, the writer and director of this movie, pitched this or summarized the script. He's a genius for doing so, because I feel stupid just trying to explain it. But this is also why he is a big-time director and I am a guy writing a blog... I'm a failure.

Some of you may remember Rian Johnson from his first feature Brick, also starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. His writing style is unique and with enough chances could become as iconic as any other writer/director. And if you haven't seen Brick yet, do yourself a favor and do.

Anyways, this movie was not anything that I expected. I thought it would be more about the older and younger Bruce Willis characters fighting each other, but it had more to that. That was only a small part of this story. There was also a lot more to the characters than I thought there would be.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was unrecognizable as a younger Joe. He has Bruce Willis' mannerisms down so well that it wasn't hard to forget who he was and let myself be engulfed in the story.

I should note that Paul Dano, who plays Joe's friend Seth, though he played a small part, was fantastic. Not many actors can take a small part and make it memorable, but that's exactly what Dano did.

Looper is a great sci-fi movie that I'm sure will be remembered for quite some time.

My Grade: A-

Ruby Sparks

Everyone wants a girlfriend (or boyfriend) that they can control completely. Who could complain about having the girl/boy of your dreams doing anything and everything you desire simply by thinking it?

What if you could do that? How would you use it? I'm sure I don't want to know the details of all your perverted minds. But Ruby Sparks tells the story of a man who can do that, simply by typing it.

Ruby Sparks, directed by the directors of Little Miss Sunshine, tells the story of a writer, Calvin, played by Paul Dano, who found fame when he was 19-years-old, but is now struggling to produce his next book. He is frustrated and alone virtually with no friends other than his older brother.

Calvin starts having dreams where he meets a beautiful girl. He falls in love with his own dream and decides to write about her. The words begin flowing through him as he finishes page after page after page. Until one day he wakes up and fines that the fictitious girl he dreamt of and created has become real. And everything he dreamed about her has come true. But Calvin soon realizes you can't have everything the way you want, even if you created it.

Despite writing exactly what he wants, Ruby, played by Zoe Kazan (who also wrote the screenplay), slowly becomes her own woman. Fearing he is losing her, Calvin attempts to control her even more.

I loved this movie. It had me interested the entire time, and I can't wait to see it again. It was funny, romantic, sad, beautiful and every other cliché you can think of, but at the same time completely different. This movie will prove to be one of the best of 2012.

My Grade: A

Dredd

Action movies are kind of a grey area for me. If they take themselves to seriously, I don't tend to like them. When they take themselves to seriously, it feels like they are trying to be something more than the are. Mindless action movies should be just that. Mindless. Which is more fun.

You can turn your brain off for Dredd and still have fun.

In a nuclear radiated future where nearly all land is uninhabitable, there is a Mega-city the stretched from Boston to Washington D.C. In this city, there is chaos. Gangs run the streets. The only justice there is are Judges. They are Judge, Jury and Executioner. Judge Dredd is one of the best. He is given the task of training a Rookie Judge who has psychic abilities.

When they go to investigate a triple homicide at the Peach Trees tower, they are met by a new gang. The Ma-Ma Gang. This gang makes and distributes SLO-MO. A drug that makes the brain feel as though time is traveling at 1% it's normal speed. Mama, the leader of the gang, holds the entire tower hostage promising not to open the 12 steel walls and doors until someone brings the two Judges to her, dead. Judge Dredd and the rookie must fight off the entire block.

This is a remake of the 1995 movie Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone. I haven't seen that one, but I can't imagine it being better than this. That's right, it is possible for a remake to be better than the original.

This movie is a fun movie, filled with violence and bad one-liners. But the thing that makes this movie good is that it feels like the filmmakers had fun making it. They didn't take themselves to seriously and they didn't want the audience to take it to seriously. How could you take it seriously when the main character has the biggest frown in the world on? I didn't even know it was possible to frown like this!

Dredd will have you smiling through the whole movie. It is great entertainment.

My Grade: B+

The Master

I would like to start off by apologizing for my unannounced hiatus of movie reviews. The past few months I have been extremely busy.

I would like to specifically apologize to my good friend Evan Woss, who has been lost in the world of movies without my opinions published on a blog. Please, forgive me, my dear friend.

I started off this rebirth of my blog going to see a movie I had long anticipated. A film that had captivated me from it's first teaser trailer about 4 or 5 months ago. It was also the return of, in my opinion, a very underrated actor after his "retirement" from acting, which subsequently was confirmed by the actor as a hoax for his film, I'm Still Here. That film was written and directed by the Great filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. The Master.

The Master follows the post-war life of Naval veteran Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix, in his attempt to restart a normal life after seeing the tragedies of war. Along the way, the often inebriated Freddie stumbles onto the ship of Lancaster Dodd, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Lancaster Dodd is the leader (or the Master) of the cult called "The Cause", and he makes it his mission to "cure" Freddie of his life-style and "wake him up" from the lie of life.

Freddie embraces the ideas forced upon him by the Master despite being spoken to as if he were a dog or a child, and becomes an active member in the cult. but soon he begins to question the validity of everything his Master is saying.

I'm not going to lie, I'm not one to act like I understood something that I in fact did not. I won't try to make up some false deeper meaning of a film if I didn't come to realize this on my own or at least learn about it and believe it from someone else. I didn't fully grasp everything going on in this film. Perhaps I had to much on my mind, or perhaps I'm too stupid. But what I can tell you is that I liked this movie a lot!

Complete understanding of this film aside, I thought the acting on everyones part was superb. There were times where I completely forgot that Joaquin Phoenix was Joaquin Phoenix. He submersed himself in his character and let Freddie Quell take over. I loved him. I hate him. I loved him. I pitied him. He abused himself in such a way that I felt his pain. He didn't hold back at all. I would be shocked if he didn't at least get an Oscar nomination for his role, let alone win it.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was a perfect opposition to Phoenix. His character was completely in control. He controlled every part of his life. Anytime someone questioned his lies, he made it seem as if he were the victim.

Paul Thomas Anderson, once again, has made a great film. He knows how to tell a story without any dialogue. The first twenty minutes of There Will Be Blood proved that. Lancaster Dodd's whole life is told in one shot because of Anderson's brilliance, just with the subtlety of having his seat in-between his daughter and son-in-law at their wedding showed how self-centered he was. That one shot explained to the audience who he was, and that he only truly cared about himself.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

One thing I did notice was the relationship between the two main characters was completely different than that of the main characters in Anderson's last movie, There Will Be Blood. In that film, they hated each other but were civilized with each other (with the exception of a few moments). And it all ended in chaos.

 In The Master, both Quell and Dodd loved each other. Or at least it seemed that way. Their relationship was chaos with a few moments of them being civil. And it ends with the civility of the two.

END OF SPOILER

Despite not completely understanding it. Despite being to dense to fully grasp what was going on, The Master proved to be a great film that I enjoyed and would love to watch again to better understand it.


My Grade: B+