12 Word Reviews: "Brave", "Beasts of Southern Wild", "Moonrise Kingdom"

My 1000+ word review of Magic Mike will be up tomorrow but in the meantime, let's clear the cache with a few words, a dozen in point of fact, on movies I didn't review properly.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin)
A six year old girl learns survival lessons from her father in a drowned world. But synopsis won't due its real poetry any justice. See it!
10WR: Overwhelming sense of loss tempered by vivid originality, guileless acting, flexible allegory.  A-
Oscar? I doubted it at an Oscar contender at first (defiantly weird and filled with first timers) but it has tremendous critical approval, and there's nothing else even remotely like it on the filmscape. It's very difficult to shake once you've experienced it. Could factor in across the board or, more likely, fight for a few key nods. Adapted Screenplay might be the safest bet (so far).

Brave (Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell)
A Scottish princess seeks to transform her fate but the magic she calls on has dangerous repercussions.
10WR: Refreshing steps outside Pixar comfort zones but oddly disjointed. Still... that hair! B
Oscar? A good bet in the Animated Feature category (Pixar has only missed that nomination once -- just last year with Cars 2) but anything beyond that and the music categories will be a tough sell.

What kind of bird are you?

Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
Troubled pen pals run away from home (and scout camp) in this darkly sweet tale of adolescent (and adult) loneliness.
10WR: Amusing affectations are balm and escape from real pain.Anderson's second best! B+
Oscar? That brilliant last movement in the end credits, with the narration of Desplat's music could go a long way for selling Best Original Score. But how about Screenplay and Art Direction? Too affected or just right?

People Like Us (Alex Kurtzman)
A young man (Chris Pine) discovers a half sister (Elizabeth Banks) he didn't know existed but keeps the truth from her and his angry recently widowed mother (Michelle Pfeiffer. 
10WR: Strong actresses but uncomfortably incestuous plot bizarrely filmed like an action flick. C-
Oscar? If it's an unlikely hit, Pfeiffer could win traction in Supporting Actress.

poll by twiigs.com

Peace , Love & Misunderstanding (Bruce Beresford)
An uptight depressed lawyer visits her estranged hippie mother and their cultures clash... again.
10WR: Kindhearted with enjoyable if obvious performances. Too programmatic when complexity is needed. C
Oscar? No. Though it sure is nice to see Jane Fonda back onscreen.

Prometheus (Ridley Scott)
A team of scientists seeks our genetic ancestors on a far away planet and discovers the diabolical origins of those pesky acid-blooded creepy crawlies instead.
10WR: Tremendously visual. Intermittently heart-stopping --  that abortion sequence!. Plot is a tough sell.  B
Oscar? We discussed this! 

YOUR TURN in the comments

Halfway There... Almost

What's on your cinematic mind when it comes to 2012? Our Halfway Mark Specials begin this Sunday so I'm curious how the year is shaping up for you so far? Has your moviegoing been light or heavy? thrilling or filled with disappointed? Or maybe you're stuck in the inbetween.

Here's what I've personally seen or reviewed so far...

• If I haven't discussed it which 2012 release would you most like to read about?
• Of those we have discussed on the blog, which would you like to keep on discussing? 
• Which halfway mark topic -- don't worry we'll talk Oscar -- do you have a lot to say about?

True Blood 5.1 "Turn! Turn! Turn!"

I had such a good time covering True Blood last year that I decided early on that I'd chime in again this year. Unfortunately those slutty Bon Temps whackjobs and their blaspheming god (Alan Ball) did not reward me with a fine debut. Cliffhangers are rarely the best way to end a TV season -- especially one with a really devout fanbase that's coming back anyway. They invariably make the return feel like less of a drunken celebration and more like the clean up after A Lost Weekend. No one remembers how things got so messy but excuse us while we mop up.

Turn Turn Turn... TARA? The angriest bartender in Bon Temps won't be happy about this.

There's so much clean up. Sookie's house had not one but two dead girls to dispose of (Tara and Debby) and icky leftovers (the tooth!) but to avoid Tara's death being a true one, Sookie bargains with Vampire Pam to turn her. This is a terrible terrible decision but Sookie makes notoriously terrible decisions and almost always for selfish reasons so this is par for the course. More after the jump including the usual NSFW shenanigans of those Bon Temps hookers...

Click to read more ...

Mad Men and The Other Women

* an earlier partial version of this article was accidentally published last night. It's complete now.

Have you wondered what happened to our series Mad Men @ The Movies? Well, Matthew Weiner and his team up and ditched the abundant movie references for most of season 5, leaving me to wish that I hadn't required movie references in order to write about the Sterling Draper Cooper Pryce worker-bees each week. Last week's "The Other Woman", a queasy game changing episode is the instant classic Season Five episode but for our purposes The Other Women this season on Mad Men are TV and Music (particularly the Beatles) which have stolen the pop culture referencing thunder from the movies.

Ratings and cinema references may be down (the former an obvious risk when a series disappears for long stretches) but quality, thankfully, isn't.  Not at all. The finale is next week on June 10th, an exhaustive television evening given that True Blood returns and it also happens to be Tony Awards Night and I also have a birthday party to attend... 

The much despised Betty Draper Francis. Still one of the most fascinating characters on television.

Much to look forward to. Much to write about. So herewith brief notes on the last four episodes... 

Click to read more ...

Review: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

This article was originally published in my movie column at Towleroad

"Fairy tale revisionism" has been rapidly climbing the Hollywood idea chart. In the past few years we've seen Alice in Wonderland, Rapunzel in Tangled, Red Riding Hood, and Snow White in Mirror Mirror (reviewed here).  There are several more on the way including Angelina Jolie as Maleficent terrorizing Sleeping Beauty Elle Fanning. This weekend Snow White returned to theaters for the second time in three months. Her timing is apt since the apple-munching princess is celebrating her 75th big screen anniversary (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1937). Why so many fairy tales? Modern Hollywood thrives on branding so the more familiar the movie before it arrives the better. And what's more familiar than fairy tales?

Tale as old as time. 
True as it can be…  ♫

Oops wrong fairy tale. Regret to inform that Snow White and the Huntsman does not have a theme song sung by Angela Lansbury but let's borrow that song anyway as framing device. Snow White and the Hunstman does have a theme song but it's a less catchy dirge-like ballad. One of the seven dwarves coughs it out at a funeral until Florence and the Machine take over on the soundtrack as the heroes rise up against evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) in montage. 

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you can suspend your disbelief that Kristen Stewart is "the fairest of all them all" in a beauty contest with Charlize Theron, read on...

Click to read more ...