Five From Eighteen

I just wrote out a list of all the movies I'm behind on reviewing, and it totals eighteen. Eighteen! I will never ever catch up. That said I've got half an hour until I leave work, so let's see how many quickies I can rattle off between now and then, go. (ETA 5, the answer is 5)
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The Two Faces of January - It really really really wants to be The Talented Mr. Ripley, and in the sense that I'm sure everybody had a nice time on location when the cameras weren't pointed at them, I think it was; for the rest of us sitting and watching it though, it ain't quite there. I'm gonna try to make it though this whole thing without mentioning how I never like Oscar Isaac (whoops) - honestly he's fine here (and his best assets are showcased well in those slacks he runs around in) but his sleepy performance is par for the course in a movie that just seems half-sedated when it oughta be riling us up, making us tense with underhanded shenanigans. Everything that could've been curious about the story, any twisted Highsmithian lust or depravity boiling beneath the surface, seems scrubbed clean - it's a lot of pretty pressed clothes folded in a suitcase.

Maps to the Stars - Whenever Julianne Moore's on the screen it's seventeen awesome movies I wanna be watching all at once. She's a spark, incendiary - funny and horrible and genuine and a cartoon all at once. There are other bright spots - Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson have an easy off-kilter charm together, and I appreciate that Cronenberg has no interest in making the movie we want him to make out of this. He's unstoppable in that regard - he has no interest these days in doing anything but following his own whims and letting the pieces fall where they may. (Here's where I pour one out for all the body-horror movies I ain't watching.) But that's not an especially warm appreciation I'm offering - I just wasn't vibing on the majority of your wave-length with this one, Dave.

22 Jump Street - Like the rest of the world I was surprised and satisfied by the first movie, but I've gotta go against the general consensus for take two - this sequel was stale crumbs if you ask me. I suppose the fact that I grew to dislike Jonah Hill in the interim between the two movies (there was one insufferable Oscar campaign too many - two too many, actually) might've aided and abetted my boredom, but man was I not laughing, nope just not laughing at all. (And really, Channing - the football uniform was nice and all but come on, more please.) That said, save when Gillian Bell was around - her nicely bizarre line readings spiced up a sad after-thought of a movie. I hope Channing stays true to his expressed doubts and they don't make a third (but the money, oh how the money will win.)

'71 - Gangbusters! What a captivating little hot-box of a thriller, and Jack O'Connell, man is he fantastic. What a face - at turns brute or beautiful, it's honestly an old-fashioned kind of movie-star face that the light can play all kinds of tricks on; he needs to be a gigantic star. Honestly I enjoyed this much more than Starred Up, which save Jack being once again great in I felt kinda cold to; Starred Up I felt like I'd seen and heard that story a million times before, however well-acted it was. '71 though, made me think of all the best scenes of Children of Men, in a complimentary fashion - what it might lack in that film's magical realism and futuristic sheen, '71 maintains in its captivating movie vérité, its blood on the lens nightmare sense.

While We're Young - I keep describing this as a movie that'll do well on Netflix - the kind of movie you watch in your pajamas at three o-clock in the afternoon on a Sunday with your laptop in front of you, chuckling at a gag or two while you dig for your remote which accidentally slipped to the bottom of a bag of chips. I maintain that. It's broader than anything Noah Baumbach's made so far; it feels as if he's genuinely aspiring for a larger audience with it, Ben Stiller's influence most likely, and the stretchmarks are visible. And that's a shitty obnoxious ending, Noah. But Adam Driver does some more deceptively incisive work, and Amanda Seyfried gets to act a bunch too, so s'all not for naught.
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