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Mid-Term Movie Review 2013

You may have noticed that i've had too much time on my hands for most of this year & my cinema attendance has gotten a little out of hand –I think it might be time for the mid-term review...

The six months since January have brought us Super Heroes – a disappointingly hollow ‘Man Of Steel’ (it felt like i’d spent an hour & a half transfixed by the promise of a perfect specimen of  Superman, only for him to turn around at the last minute & reveal the skid marks on the back of his little red panties) & a worthy Iron Man threequel  (it dragged in the middle, I would have re-cast that kid, but the finale sequences were a master-class in big budget movie making) – Science Fiction - an ‘everything-I-could-possibly-have-wanted’ Star Trek movie (Khaaaaaaaaaan!),  four separate visits to see the visually stunning ‘Oblivion’ & one regrettable trip to see the virtually stunted ‘After Earth’ – Music –the ‘I can’t believe that I’m a grown man crying’ euphoria of ‘Good Vibrations’ & two films with The Stone Roses as their main subject matter (‘Made Of Stone’ & ‘Spike Island’) -Literary Adaptations - 3D F. Scott Fitzgerald (‘The Great Gatsby’) & ‘Life Of Pi’, the flawed, but never less than fascinating  ‘Cloud Atlas’ – Biographical  – the Oscar worthy performances of Michael Douglas & Matt Damon in ‘Behind The Candelabra’ & the most immersive acting job i think i’ve ever seen from Daniel Day Lewis in ‘Lincoln’ (it’s just a pity that the movie wasn’t quite as accomplished) – Zombies – one delivered with a pulse (‘World War Z’) & one that arrived D.O.A. (‘Warm Bodies’) – Weather - a Tsunami (‘The Impossible’) , a storm at sea (‘Life of Pi’), a twister (‘Oz : The Great & Powerful’) & a bit of a wet weekend (Steve Coogan as Paul Raymond  in ‘The Look Of Love’) – All Kinds Of Thrillers – Psychological : ‘Trance’, ‘Arbitrage’ & ‘The Purge’ -  Pulpy : ‘Stoker’, ‘Side Effects’ & ‘Maniac’ – Pacey : ‘Welcome To The Punch’, ‘Jack Reacher’, ‘Olympus Has Fallen’  & ‘Dead Man Down’ & Just Plain Bonkers : ‘The Paper Boy’, ‘Spring Breakers’ & ‘Django Unchained’.

With all that going on, i’m more than a little surprised that an early contender for my film of the year is ‘Before Midnight’, the third instalment of the long gestating relationship saga that I didn’t even know I was waiting for. This is a movie with no special effects, no ‘fast-cut’ editing or emotion prompting score. The takes are long & filled with tightly scripted, but improvised sounding, dialog & it has a main cast of just two actors (Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke) both in their early forties,  neither  of whom (with the greatest respect) would described themselves as A-listers. Maybe It’s the throw-back to Woody Allen at his wise-cracking, relationship analysing best (or maybe that should be a ‘throw-forward’ considering the photogenic locations that this movie shares with Allen’s recent Euro-based output?). All I can say is that despite not particularly relating to the characters circumstances or lifestyle, I cared about what happened to them, I laughed (a lot) & the movie delivered my favourite line of dialog so far this year – Celine is trying to express how difficult it had been raising the couples young daughters alone, while Jesse was away on book tours or writing breaks, resorting to walking the city streets at night with the girls in a double pushchair, trying to lull them to sleep. She recalls an incident when a man tried to attack her, but gave up because she looked ‘so pathetic’ - She says ‘that’s the one good thing about being over 35, you don’t get raped so much’.  If only Amy Adams’ Lois Lane could have been just as quippy - you believed that Margot Kidders’ was.

Originally written 28/06/13