It's all there in the title. American Hustle begins with Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) spending a ridiculously long time preparing an elaborate comb over. It's long to the point of hilarity, but it serves to prepare you: this is a film that will work tirelessly into tedium to pull the wool over your eyes. It deliberately presents itself as a cheap Scorsese knock-off so that it may fool you into thinking it's something that it's not. When the big, hugely obvious reveal comes at the end, you're left scratching your head wondering how the fuck none of the other characters saw it coming. The answers might lie in Amy Adam's hilariously awful and constantly-shifting fake British accent: either these guys are that good at bullshitting, or everyone else is just seeing what they want to see in the hope that they can get what they want to get. And at the end of the day, why should they let something as trivial as truth get in the way of their desires? To its benefit and detriment, it really requires two viewings. But hey, any reason to again watch Jennifer Lawrence drunkenly throw two middle fingers in the air and say, "I make this shit look easy. Oscar me, bitch."
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Towards the end of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the titular character (Ben Stiller), negative assets (photographs) manager at Life magazine, asks the big bad suit (Adam Scott) if he even knows what the publication's motto is. Big bad suit scoffs and says, "I'm...loving it?" Mitty stares down at him in disappointment and says, "That's McDonald's." The sad thing is, in a movie that so proudly proclaims the importance of individualism and of identifying the evils of corporations, McDonald's probably paid for that. Money was definitely exchanged for the Life magazine linchpin. But, that aside, the movie still rings hollow. Ben Stiller, who also directed, obviously wants you to be inspired by this story and he's tried to make a character that everyone can relate to. Unfortunately, in creating such a blank slate of a man, he's made a character that you feel like you never really knew. Sure, he used to be a punk and a skater when he was a kid until the day he gave up passion for fiscal responsibility, he spends a lot of time dreaming of all the things he could be, and he sucks at dating - crises of identity everyone can relate to. But it feels like those things aren't really vital parts of a character, but rather a series of "Hi, my name is..." labels slapped on a shirt in the hope that you'll see yourself in one of them. Some of the daydream sequences are great, the cinematography is quite nice even if it graduated from the school of going really far away from the big thing and setting up a tripod while playing an Arcade Fire song, and if you can tuck away your inner cynic it will make you smile. But really, it should have just been retitled, "This Will Make A Great New Year's Facebook Status."
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
I was kind of blown away by the first hour of Catching Fire. Rather than take the easy way out and wipe the slate clean, something that would be very tempting given the ludicrous amount of money these franchises make, we're forced to see very real, very heavy consequences for Katniss's actions in the first film. She cheated the system, she made the dictators look like fools and now she's paying the price. They acknowledge the foolishness of the public, but also how powerful they could be should they realise the fragile balance of power, hence the importance of keeping them entertained. My favourite part of it, apart from the same incredible satirisation of our addiction to macabre reality media, was the acknowledgement that people today don't care about a story unless there's some saccharine, Twilight-esque romance for them to live through vicariously, shown through the falsified relationship between Katniss and Peeta, a relationship they have to fool the public into believing is real if they want to keep breathing. How sad then when it becomes a real saccharine, Twilight-esque romance for no reason other than Katniss doesn't want to sleep alone and Peeta's a clingy little bitch. That disappointment and waste of potential bleeds through the whole film. One of the most confronting aspects of The Hunger Games was when the game started, the sound drowned out and frightened, helpless children were butchered by those stronger than them in a stark and brutally honest portrayal of death. This time around, they're all previous winners and they're all kind of a bunch of dicks, except for the sweet old lady with a Death Clock above her head, so why should I give a fuck? Throw in the fact that it's exactly the same movie once the games begin, and I find myself asking the same question again. Jennifer Lawrence continues to sell it beautifully, but I can see the inevitable love triangle that's brewing between her, Peeta and Thor's brother eclipsing the greater social aspects of this plot. I hope I'm wrong, but there's no denying Team Social Justice won't sell as many T-shirts as Team Peeta.
Walking With Dinosaurs 3D
The third best thing about Walking With Dinosaurs 3D was that occasionally I forgot I was watching it, and was able to think about other things. The second best thing about Walking With Dinosaurs 3D was when Fleetwood Mac's Tusk was used for a scene, and I was able to think about listening to a Fleetwood Mac album. The best thing about Walking With Dinosaurs 3D was that it ended, and I haven't thought about it since. Go see it if you hate yourself.
Frozen
Slowly but surely, Disney seem to be taking inspiration from Pixar's courage. Up taught us that dreams and love can't always beat the cruelty of circumstance but that shouldn't stop us from fighting back, and Toy Story 3 taught us that at some point in life, you're going to have to let go of the things that defined you and it will make you cry really loudly in public. In the last few years, Disney have put out a film with their first African-American princess, a film about a video game character going through an existential crisis and have now produced a story in which the heroic male is an afterthought to the unbreakable bond between two sisters. There's no denying the impact of seeing, for all intents and purposes, a very traditional Disney film in which the heroine sacrifices herself to save the other heroine while the hero looks on in awe of her strength. It's a bit of a pity that the rest of the film is so by the numbers to compensate. In creating two heroines, they forgot to create a memorable villain (or really any sort of true villain at all), the songs are forgettable at best and the setting isn't all that interesting. Plus, though there's no denying the harsh cruelty and coldness in the scene where the princess, dying from a curse curable only by an act of true love, has the prince lean down millimeters from her lips before whispering, "If only there were someone in this room who loved you", it really is just an easy way to cobble some pure evil out of a cast of otherwise "fairly alright" people. How much more interesting it would have been if the prince she fell "in love" with after one night ended up rejected for the man she spent the majority of the film with, going through immense hardships and learning more about herself in the process, as a lesson to children that sometimes you just lose. It's all baby steps, but ultimately, Frozen's themes of female empowerment and independence, along with slight matter-of-fact themes of homosexuality, are well-placed and welcome, and this is far and away the best children's movie to see this season.
Saving Mr. Banks
Early on in Saving Mr. Banks, limo driver Ralph (Paul Giamatti) makes the allusion that author of Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) is responsible for the sun shining today. She replies that she would much rather be compared to rain, as rain brings life. "So does sunshine," he replies. Later in the film, his impossible cheeriness seems to finally put a crack in her bristled-up, pompous demeanour when he explains the reason he loves the sun is because his daughter, Jane, is confined to a wheelchair. The sun frees her, the rain restricts her. When Ralph is saying goodbye to Travers, she hands him a note that reads, "Albert Einstein, Van Gogh, Roosevelt, Frida Kahlo." "They all had difficulties. Jane can do anything that anyone else can do, do you understand?" she says to Ralph, as he, and I, begin to cry. It's so effective because it's so surprising, a moment of genuine human compassion that you can't find on a Wikipedia page. The rest of the film tries to get you to feel the same way, but this is a story that we already know, and the film is desperately struggling to make you think you don't. Everything is so smothered in schmaltz and overblown emotions that it all becomes one big emotional caricature, which makes it all the more painfully obvious that it didn't go down this way. The solution, of course, is to not be a cynical asshole. Forget all of the evidence that suggests Walt Disney was an anti-semitic creep. Forget that P.L. Travers was probably just a stuck-up snob too attached to her story. Forget that none of these events occurred this organically and beautifully. Just let the astoundingly professional film-making, coupled with the astounding performances of Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks tell you a story (that's right, a story) of two damaged people fixing each other. Do that, and you might just be surprised by Saving Mr. Banks. Oh, and congratulations Colin Farrell, you now hold the award for Worst Australian Accent. Commiserations to the dickheads in Pacific Rim.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was full of surprises. I never expected the man who I believe still holds the world record for most gallons of blood used in a film to resort to George Lucas-levels of CGI. I never expected a film with a $225,000,000 budget to use footage from a Go Pro. I never expected to say an Ed Sheeran song was probably the best part of the experience. I never expected to spend three hours watching a film and struggle to recall what actually happened. But above all else, I never expected a movie with a giant talking dragon to be this fucking boring.
The Bottom Line
Find someone who hasn't seen Back to the Future and watch it with them. It's been too long since you last saw it and they'll think it's ace.
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