Just the Ticket #88: 12 Years of Critical Quickies
I am behind on reviews again, so I decided to just do a Critical Quickies edition to get myself caught up, beginning with...you guessed it (or maybe you didn't, how am I to know?)...12 Years A Slave.
12 Years A Slave: Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, and (I'll just give it to you phoenetically) Chew It All Edgy Oh Four--Chiwetel plays Solomon Northup, a free black man and respected citizen of the northern states who is conned by two "musicians" and falsely imprisoned by a southern slaving operation. At times hard to watch, but historically important and full of impactful acting performances by veterans and newcomers alike.
A+
The Hunger Games - Catching Fire: Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Phillip Seymour Hoffman--Katniss and Peeta return, supported once again by Bad Hairrelson, Blue Wig Tucci, and Queen Elizabeth Banks as they are entered in a kind of Hunger Games All-Star Edition against past victors. I again urge you to sit back and watch Katniss, but also to pay attention, as a bit of government espionage is in the works and the president (the evil Donald Sutherland) serves as an long-awaited explanation for why the Hunger Games world is the way it is.
A
Inside Llewyn Davis: Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, F. Murray Abraham--Another Coen Brothers movie. That is, it tries to be really cool by using catchy folk music (O Brother Where Art Thou), relying on John Goodman to play an enthusiastically intolerable douchebag (The Big Lebowski), strange subplots and/or running gags (Fargo, No Country For Old Men), and ultimately uses filmmaking as an artistic and expensive way of getting nowhere (Burn After Reading, and pretty much everything else they've ever done). Inside Llewyn Davis is a diamond-studded, computer chip-laden exercise bike with a Van Gogh paintjob that serves only two purposes: it showcases folk music in a way that makes us wonder why we like Imagine Dragons and Mumford & Sons and The Beatles ("There's just no money in it!" a producer tells Llewyn after he bears his soul to the man through song), and tells us why a man we never fully get to see kicks the title character in the crotch after a concert. Could it be Llewyn Davis forced this shadow man to watch a Coen Brothers marathon?
D+
The Book Thief: Geoffry Rush, Emily Watson--Book adapted to a movie, wherein a girl is orphaned when her brother dies and her mother is taken by the Nazis for being a Communist. She is adopted by a kind German couple (Rush and Watson, commendably holding German accents for the entire film) and learns to read, which becomes both a fun game and a dangerous secret when the Nazis start holding public book burnings. As an extra wrinkle, the patchwork family must also uphold a long-standing promise by sheltering a Jewish refugee. Another movie that's hard to watch but socially significant. If you liked War Horse, The Help, and the above 12 Years A Slave, you'll like The Book Thief. I just wish they hadn't made Death the narrator. You heard me; The Book Thief is narrated by the fucking Grim Reaper. Brian Percival (the director) is dead to me.
B-
Speaking of things that are dead to me, I'm going to take a break from movies to do something I've never done on Blogger before. In between movies, music, and books, I've decided to start posting profiles of characters I created using the program Heromachine. So stay tuned for the first edition of Heroes Are Made, coming soon to a chunk of cyberspace near you.
Until then, here's a blast from the past with a little twist:
Whether you Chiwetel up, eat it up, or wash it down, it AAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL comes out the SAME PLACE!!!
Ticketel Masterofor,
out.
12 Years A Slave: Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, and (I'll just give it to you phoenetically) Chew It All Edgy Oh Four--Chiwetel plays Solomon Northup, a free black man and respected citizen of the northern states who is conned by two "musicians" and falsely imprisoned by a southern slaving operation. At times hard to watch, but historically important and full of impactful acting performances by veterans and newcomers alike.
A+
The Hunger Games - Catching Fire: Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Phillip Seymour Hoffman--Katniss and Peeta return, supported once again by Bad Hairrelson, Blue Wig Tucci, and Queen Elizabeth Banks as they are entered in a kind of Hunger Games All-Star Edition against past victors. I again urge you to sit back and watch Katniss, but also to pay attention, as a bit of government espionage is in the works and the president (the evil Donald Sutherland) serves as an long-awaited explanation for why the Hunger Games world is the way it is.
A
Inside Llewyn Davis: Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, F. Murray Abraham--Another Coen Brothers movie. That is, it tries to be really cool by using catchy folk music (O Brother Where Art Thou), relying on John Goodman to play an enthusiastically intolerable douchebag (The Big Lebowski), strange subplots and/or running gags (Fargo, No Country For Old Men), and ultimately uses filmmaking as an artistic and expensive way of getting nowhere (Burn After Reading, and pretty much everything else they've ever done). Inside Llewyn Davis is a diamond-studded, computer chip-laden exercise bike with a Van Gogh paintjob that serves only two purposes: it showcases folk music in a way that makes us wonder why we like Imagine Dragons and Mumford & Sons and The Beatles ("There's just no money in it!" a producer tells Llewyn after he bears his soul to the man through song), and tells us why a man we never fully get to see kicks the title character in the crotch after a concert. Could it be Llewyn Davis forced this shadow man to watch a Coen Brothers marathon?
D+
The Book Thief: Geoffry Rush, Emily Watson--Book adapted to a movie, wherein a girl is orphaned when her brother dies and her mother is taken by the Nazis for being a Communist. She is adopted by a kind German couple (Rush and Watson, commendably holding German accents for the entire film) and learns to read, which becomes both a fun game and a dangerous secret when the Nazis start holding public book burnings. As an extra wrinkle, the patchwork family must also uphold a long-standing promise by sheltering a Jewish refugee. Another movie that's hard to watch but socially significant. If you liked War Horse, The Help, and the above 12 Years A Slave, you'll like The Book Thief. I just wish they hadn't made Death the narrator. You heard me; The Book Thief is narrated by the fucking Grim Reaper. Brian Percival (the director) is dead to me.
B-
Speaking of things that are dead to me, I'm going to take a break from movies to do something I've never done on Blogger before. In between movies, music, and books, I've decided to start posting profiles of characters I created using the program Heromachine. So stay tuned for the first edition of Heroes Are Made, coming soon to a chunk of cyberspace near you.
Until then, here's a blast from the past with a little twist:
Whether you Chiwetel up, eat it up, or wash it down, it AAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL comes out the SAME PLACE!!!
Ticketel Masterofor,
out.
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