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Some 2012 Favorites -- Movies, Part Two

Let’s See Action

I’d like to talk about the resplendent emotional landscapes that anchor you to the characters, but I CAN’T STOP SCREAMING ‘CAUSE THAT DUDE JUST GOT SMOKED! AND THERE’S ANOTHER ONE WHO JUST GOT HIS ASS HANDED TO HIM!! HOLY SHIT!!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

--ahem--

The Raid: Redemption and Dredd both featured similar plots – heroes work their way up cramped apartment complex levels and deal death in various jaw-dropping ways to our scummy villains – but they both did it so well that (a) it reminds you how sadly engaged one feels when ultra-violence is portrayed on screen with an artful sheen & (b) how bad such films without such artful details can be, which occurs in the vast majority of cases.  For example, if The Expendables 2 actually had even an ounce of vision as to how to manipulate such an awesome cast, it might have joined the ranks of high low art rather than being, well, expendable.

Indie Interiors

Really, what makes a film “indie” anymore is more that up for debate.  Here, I’m talking about films of a smaller scope and smaller budget that speak more to the collisions between people and personalities than robots or superheroes.  It’s fertile fields of drama and laughter and growth and whimsy, where up-and-coming actors work next to striking newcomers and everyone serves the story.  Of course, Moonrise Kingdom can’t be overlooked in this domain, especially as it’s Wes Anderson’s most comprehensively conceived film (and that’s saying something, given the minutia of his cinematic career), but simple pleasures were to be had from Your Sister’s Sister, Robot & Frank, and Safety Not Guaranteed as well.  Sometimes, a whisper conveys more depth of feeling than a thousand shouts and screams.

Future Shock

Prince once sang “I’ve seen the future and it will be / I’ve seen the future and it works.” The varying degrees of dystopia presented in Looper, Dredd, and Prometheus all see the future in fashions that temper hope with pragmatic realities, even if those realities are futuristic.  Looper is a time-travel tour-de-force built on people (and a person) who time wounds and winds into places that they thought they may never go, while Prometheus has its temporal twists occurring mostly in the brains of people who saw Alien and Blade Runner and thought that Prometheus would be a sequel or prequel or something that it wasn’t.  Instead, it was an effective showcase for a skill set that gave the world those movies but couldn’t give the world a movie of that caliber this time out.

And then there was Dredd.

The world of Mega-City One has been conjured by countless comic book scribes for decades now; Sly Stallone tried to bring it to the screen years ago, and failed on every level.  So the expectations were low for this new visit to MCO through the personages of Judges Dredd and Anderson.  But right from the opening master shot, it was clear that the Sly abomination was forever expunged from the collective unconsciousness, to be replaced by non-stop awesome that captured the spirit of the comics while also bringing some distinctly cinematic flavors of action and editing and, yes, one of the best uses of 3D this year.  In 2011, Warrior took the prize as the best film that no one saw, and this year, Dredd takes that sad award.  My hope is that, like Warrior, the audience for Dredd grows via VOD and DVD and word-of-mouth, because I want more trips into Mega-City One in my future.

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