Radioactive tampon.

Moon - 7.5/10

I was worried that knowing The Secret would ruin the movie, but it's really treated less as a secret and more as The First Plot Development. And so what is not a tense nailbiter is instead two guys being weirded out by each other and their situation. Which I think makes it a much more interesting movie. Sci-fi just becomes backdrop to weirdo human drama, and Sam Rockwell plays the hell out of it. Something about it, though, maybe Sam Rockwell even, keeps the final denouement, haha I'm fancy, keeps the final denouement from being the emotional crescendo I want it to be. 

We even have almost conversations sometimes.

Warm Bodies - 7/10

I don't know how to say it without it appearing to be a pun, but fuck you, dear reader – it's a very warm-hearted movie. It's strange to me because I'd like to be able to pinpoint that divide between sweetness and sentimentality and how it manages to stay on the former's side of the line. It's not an overly funny movie or even a particularly great one, but it floats in those same honeyed clouds shared with movies like 'Back To The Future' that make you just kind of want to like it. 

Aren't you the great man we've been waiting for?

The Great And Powerful Oz - 5.5/10

Oz is never really redeemed as a character. Neither is he well-performed. I typically like James Franco, but his usual half-hearted-ness is, uh, forgive me if this is stupid to say but – his performance is more modern than what seems to fit the movie? He's from the aughts, bros. And so that performance doesn't really work to make his Oz someone who can half-destroy a woman's life and come out the other side clean. He's a bad hero, and that's the point, but he needs to have lingering feelings of guilt or something, chola. Meanwhile, there are fun bits of Raimi-ness, but this half seems an attempt to do what modern Tim Burton is doing to mysteriously effective effect, and it lacks the same emotion that those movies fail to capture.

Ghostbustin'-ass.

Coffee and Cigarettes - 6/10

I liked it more in theory. Some of it was fun. Some of it, I've forgotten. It will live on as YouTube clips of Bill motherfucking Murray and Wu-Tang. 

Like if you spill a bucket of water.

American Hardcore - 4/10

It's a quick rundown of every hardcore band of a specific period of time. It tells stories, but it by no means gives insight. It feels like one of those PBS 'Sounds of the 50's' infomercials that just gives you a bunch of names and snippets of songs you want to look up later.

I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made of the same material as the sun.

Upstream Color - 7/10

I think to some degree the director's name and reclusiveness works against him, as in: I walked into this movie knowing I was solving a puzzle. And so it felt more like I was watching it a second time moreso than a first time. Intellectualizing it over internalizing it. And while I certainly couldn't put all the pieces together for you, it does make you feel something – an emotional logic that makes you care about people, even if you're not entirely sure what they're going through.

A cursed earth.

Dredd - 5.5/10

Based on the cultish uprising that seemed to be building around this movie since its release, I expected this to be good! And it really is just a generic action movie. If the short Judge Dredd comic documentary contained on the DVD is any indication, it seems like the serious-as-sin Dredd needs lively personalities to react off of and the movie doesn't give anything. He's a brick wall standing next to and fighting other walls of varied constructive material. And that's unfortunate because there are interesting things to play off of. The same level-by-level set-up as 'The Raid' is a concept that can be ripped off a thousand times and I'll not tire of it. The slow-mo drug is a fucking ingenious idea to take full advantage of ultra-violence, but it underuses both of its good ideas. And so you get serious on serious on serious, and I ain't care about nobody and violence ain't got meaning if I ain't got no one to care about. Motherfuckers, y'all got to make me care.

I got shorts, every fuckin' color.

Spring Breakers - 8.5/10

I wholeheartedly hold this up to a place of pop art. And it's only pop because of the colors, my man. There's a genuinely interesting story and what I feel to be a genuinely interesting point to be made (though it isn't even necessarily the point of the movie to make it) – that Spring Break is an excuse to disappear and become a new person, finding your limits and stopping only after you've crossed them. And then you get to go back to the same life you had before. But can you really, bros? Can you really? (Yes.)

An empty life or a meaningful death.

Iron Man 3 - 8.5/10

I just feel like Shane Black is toying with us with how good he is at writing movies. To wit: this is a movie where a 12-year old associate with a sentimental past is possibly the best thing about it. He wrote the hell out of this shit and it doesn't stop with the dialogue – he's a fantastic action director as well. The 30-second Superbowl teaser where he's catching people out of a falling airplane was fucking *tense* and it was just a straight lift from the movie. No need for editing and musical cues to make it exciting. And it's just as tense in full, and it's only a mid-level action sequence! Every bit of action – small, medium, and large – is well-thought out (to the eventual point of it being ballet) and more importantly, everything has that tension to it. The whole movie is approached in the same way as writing jokes – it's not just punch punch punch, it's set-up and punchline. And so it becomes impressive to watch along with being really fucking fun.

Ace! Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders!

Wild Zero - 5/10

Occasional worthwhile pop nonsense, particularly some very interesting visuals and acting decisions. Something happens every five minutes to make you keep wanting to watch it.

Telephone for an axe.

The Great Gatsby - 6/10

I wanted spectacle, and there was indeed a certain amount of pizzazz, but it wasn't pizzazz-y enough. That's an expectation that Baz Luhrman (perhaps unfortunately) is saddled with, but it's what I look forward to in his movies. Here, there was only a little of the bombast, and so there was nothing sensational to look at in a storyline that I've never particularly enjoyed. As a sidenote, I thought his use of rap (more than Luhrman just being himself) was to the point of hip-hop excess being comparable to the lavishness of then. I thought that was something interesting.

Jerkules.

Hercules - 6/10

James Wood is fantastic, spinning the movie around his little finger and it's a damn shame, a crying damn shame that the movie doesn't rise up to meet his villainy. Meg comes closest as a Disney princess who is Least Like The Others, but she'd have more interesting babies with Hades then the chump who rarely shows actual heroics. 

I didn't know I was supposed to be afraid.

The Iceman - 6/10

I go in understanding that there's a solemn hidden-ness to Richard Kuklinski, but it doesn't help. There's a scene halfway in with James Franco as he's given a certain amount of time to pray to god for help. If god shows his hand, he'll be saved. That's a great scene. Or rather, it should have been. The whole movie could have been built around that, but instead it just shows us what happened and what happened and what happened. It tries for depth, but it's only in everything around Kuklinski. Here is a man who's done a lot but has nothing interesting to say.

Quit slow-blinking at me.

This Is 40 - 4/10

It feels long and it makes me think that people can only be interesting and in love up until they say 'I love you.' It turns any banter or funnies into kissies and hard stops on conversations. But that's fine, that's real life and shit, bros. Movie sucks because everyone's a dumbass and it only made me laugh sometimes, a-huh-a-huh. I also hate when Paul Rudd laughs in movies. 

He'd let you die.

Star Trek Into Darkness - 7/10

It's got high-energy and that feeling that you've seen it before! It's fun, but its repetitions are unnecessary. Benedict Cumberbatch didn't need to be Khan. He was perfectly fine being generic caucasian name. The reveal of his being Khan adds nothing but the desire to compare. Anyway. High-energy, like I say. Chris Pine is apt casting for Captain Kirk because he's growing up to have the same Shatner-esque bloat-face.