To say I was dreading the new Spiderman movie would be an understatement. The first reboot was already just OK to me — way better acting than the Sam Raimi trilogy, at the expense of a fairly bland plot and a villain that was “not terrible” at best. Judging by all trailers, reviews, and spoilers I’d caught at SIGGRAPH, the new one had taken the leap from “better-acted version of Spiderman 1” to “better-acted version of Spiderman 3”, complete with an oversized plot, painful CG, and waste of a protagonist from Sideways. Add to that the tiredness of a midnight showing, my general ambivalence towards superhero movies, and the million other things I’d rather have been doing on a Friday night, and the deck was stacked fairly high against (I love that this is the actual director’s name) Webb’s film.

What I got wasn’t a perfect film by any measure, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. In the face of all the brooding Nolan wannabes, the Amazing Spider-Man’s quirkiness and charm gives a much-needed shot of levity to a bloated genre. The plot may be a little overstuffed and the villains one-note, but the 2+ hour film glides by on Webb’s magnetic confidence and Andrew Garfield’s pitch-perfect characterization. The latter might not be as fun as his Parks & Rec doppleganger (Jean Ralphio) but the dude has charisma to spare, and every Peter Parker scene should make Toby Maguire cry. I didn’t quite love it, but I was never not having a good time. It’s a crime that this is rated lower than Captain America.

As a researcher, movies about Artificial Intelligence have me primed for failure before I even step foot in the theatre. It’s a broadly-defined field which is (at best) decades away from being ethically interesting, but sometimes screenwriters — much like Tech Crunch writers, random commenters on CNN, and a few multi-million dollar startups — can’t help but embellish. Which is fine. People who know the science will groan, but we don’t always watch movies expecting realism. If it presents an internally consistent world, where invented premises lead to interesting conclusions, I’ve got no problem suspending disbelief (see: Her).

Transcendence couldn’t quite do either. Realism was hilariously tossed out the moment any “scientist” had a line of dialogue, and for all the premises it set up for its characters, it was too afraid to take them anywhere compelling. Instead we got the standard “absolute power corrupts absolutely” story, where ethical dilemmas turn into obvious good-vs-evil battles and characters change their minds for absolutely no reason except soundtrack cues. Solid production values and some genuinely interesting ideas make it better than its Rotten Tomatoes score suggests. But even though they tried every tool in the box (language processing, cryptography, and coding), they couldn’t quite make a fun movie.

When I left the theatre on Saturday night, I didn’t think I’d ever be defending “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” to anyone. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for “the feels”, and would much rather re-watch Eternal Sunshine or Before Sunrise for the hundredth time than watch chisel-chinned demigods bowl through an endless sea of cartoon villains. Especially when the film, like this one, opts for “gritty” over “corny”. I can’t shake the feeling I’ll call Lone Survivor’s guilt: regardless of what the swelling music and generic foreign villains try to convince me, the protagonist still just valued his life over about a hundred others’. It takes a big suspension of disbelief for me to laugh and cheer.

Ethics aside, this movie was still far from great. But grading on the curve of dumb popcorn flicks, I thought it was at least as fun as the Avengers or the Iron Man sequels, and plotwise it fell a bit right of the superhero bell curve. It doesn’t quite deserve the high Rotten Tomatoes score, but if you like this sort of thing I have a hard time thinking you’d have a bad time here. Especially in IMAX 3D, late at night and mildly buzzed.

Chris, Carson, and I discuss on this week’s ep:

When I saw trailers for Noah, I was not excited. At all. Film adaptations of Bible stories have a roughly zero percent success rate for me, and sword-and-sandal action or disaster films don’t fare much better.

Those intuitions weren’t entirely wrong — this movie didn’t completely rise above the genre, and I was never quite on board (pun intended). But unlike the halo-polishing passion plays and 21st-century persecution fanfics that have hit theatres, Aronofsky’s creative decisions are never less than compelling. Even if I had a few serious reservations about the final product, my familiarity with the source material gave me a lot of respect for the thought that went into adapting it. Like “A Serious Man”, he tackles dark themes (a la Abraham, Job) in a way which suggests a deep respect, not disregard, for the questions. Save for maybe the rock monsters, nearly every addition made sense. People prepared to be offended will probably be offended, but that’s true for most things worth thinking about.

If you come from a Judeo-Christian background or have a passing knowledge of the Old Testament, I think this is worth seeing in theaters for the feat of writing alone. If not, I’m not convinced you’d get any more out of this than I do out of Game of Thrones. Antediluvian, post-diluvian, it’s still a bunch of grizzled dudes shouting at monsters in broad old-timey English. (Don’t hurt me.)

The Wes Anderson phenomenon is one that’s pretty easy for me to criticize. You’ve got a filmmaker with a set of extremely well-defined tropes, quirky dialogue from determinedly simple characters, vintage color palettes, and a cinematic style which you could call “quaint”, “miniature”, or straight up “silly”. The world is an antique dollhouse, and the same handful of actors reunite to play dress-up every couple years, to ironic hipster laughter and critical acclaim.

It’d be easy for me to say that, if he weren’t so damn talented. Anderson is a filmmaker with such a singular vision, it’s impossible for me not to drink the Kool-Aid. Grand Budapest Hotel didn’t have the heart of Rushmore or the Royal Tenenbaums, the childlike soul of Moonrise Kingdom, or the pure joy of Fantastic Mr. Fox. But what it lacks in heart, it more than makes up for in whimsy and complexity. Even if the story isn’t profound, the meta-story of a director and his band of traveling actors committing to their zany plot points and nonexistent country, pulls me in.

Armed with a beer, sore throat, and the level of energy that comes with an 11pm recording, Chris and I review GBH:

Like the LEGO Movie, the 2011 Muppets film managed to take a conceit I was prepared to hate and turn it into something charming and wonderful. Both films came with a message that while the world can be a cynical place, an imaginative spirit trumps all. It’s a story that’s been repackaged a thousand times, but somehow it always feels relevant.

Maybe it’s the lack of a Chris Pratt / Jason Segel man-child character to ground levity in heart, or maybe you just can’t ride the nostalgia train twice. Whatever it is, the second movie didn’t live up to what the first promised. It had self-referential jokes, decent music, and all the ham-fisted acting and pointless cameos you’d expect to make up a fun film, but it felt less like a heartfelt story and more like a writer proving to his friends how funny he is. Which he is. But there’s an ocean between objectively recognizing “funny” and actually having fun, and this one couldn’t bridge it for me. Chris and I talked about it here:

I’ll grant that “300: Rise of an Empire” wasn’t a great movie. It wasn’t even a particularly good movie. And I’ll be the first to admit that its hypersexualized-repressed-male-fantasy-violence-porn style, mind-numbing misogyny, and excessive CG blood represents pretty much everything wrong with our culture.

Waiting for a “but”? You won’t find one from me. This was a terrible movie — a “guilty pleasure” flick that didn’t even manage to be guiltily pleasurable — which I hated so much that it retroactively made me dislike the original. But I had fun talking about it. Listen for our fleshed out opinions of this awful flick, or at least the derailed conversation about Orlando Bloom, Gyros vs Euros, and Spyro the Dragon in the final 10 minutes to get a feel for the mood it put us all in.

“About Time” was a frustrating movie. As a romance, it’s decent but predictably eye-roll worthy. As a time travel movie it’s laughably flawed, and doesn’t even try to abide by some consistent logic. As a character study it’s quirky but shallow. But by the end it’s clear that it’s not meant to be any of those things: it’s a parable about enjoying the little things in life, and it drove that point across with enough soul and poise to (mostly) excuse the earlier, sappy majority. If you’re not lactose intolerant (cheese won’t make you sick), it’s worth a rental. Preferably with the ability to rewind — like the main character’s life, certain scenes feel more meaningful the second time around.

My movie recommendations tend to fall into pretty heavy R-rated territory: the AIDS crisis, slavery, a suicide ward, adults falling out of love, and a documentary narrated by warlords to name a few recent examples. While I still see kids movies, even the ones I love are nearly always graded on a heavily nostalgic curve. Heartwarming but simplistic storylines, one-dimensional characters, and hopefully “a little something for the parents.”

The Lego movie proves that there’s an exception to every rule. This was a quick-witted, hyperactive fever dream of a film, with more laughs than any “adult” comedy I saw last year. Creative style, plenty of fun social commentary, and an all-star voice cast. Kids will love the frenetic pace, and non-dead-inside adults will have a (refreshingly clean) blast. Review below.

Since about 2008, I’ve been an (infrequent) contributor to my friend’s movie review podcast, The Spoiler Warning. Usually two or three times a year, around the holidays, I’d come in and weigh in on the latest Oscar bait film, or end of the year recaps.

Around the start of this year, that infrequent contribution turned into a weekly thing, aided by the magic of Skype. It’s been a ton of fun, and I encourage everyone to check it out — despite the name, there are no spoilers unless we explicitly warn about them first.

Along with the recordings, I also started posting 1-2 paragraph Facebook teasers for the episodes. Since it takes way more effort to listen to a 45 minute podcast than it does to read 8 sentences, those reviews have taken a life of their own. Sometimes they’re phoned in, but there are a few that I’m actually proud of. And thanks to the unknown algorithm Facebook uses to decide what posts will survive, it’s nearly impossible to just browse through them in a readable format. So I decided I’d start cataloging them here — starting in January and working my way up.

I think I’ll let each one be a unique post, categorized under “Review”, with an image and link to the podcast. Hopefully someone, somewhere, enjoys it!