Entourage
Pretty much what you'd expect. If you like the show, you'll like this, and vice versa. Entourage is one of my guilty pleasures, I know it's terrible and mindless entertainment but sometimes that's what you need, you know? That said, I fell out of the show at around the midpoint when it started taking itself way too seriously. The movie was a return to form in a ways, although it's so inconsequential I can't really recommend it for the layman. If you want to see pampered celebrities living the life with a shitload of cameos, this is your movie.
2 / 5
10 Cloverfield Lane
Really tense, well-directed thriller whose constant genre switches and surprises keep the pace operating at a decent hum. It's better to go into it not really knowing what to expect, and since a lot has already been said about this movie I've kept my review short.
4 / 5
Hail, Caesar!
Solid flick but I got the impression the Coen Brothers intended to go deeper with the movie's central theme than they ultimately did. A couple people here have already said it's a slow burn, but I had no expectations going in so I was fine with that. It's interesting, because this movie can be really funny and really sullen at the turn of a hat, but I suppose that's the Coen Brother trademark.
3 / 5
Pawn Sacrifice
Another solid flick, and something I feel was tuned to be Oscar bait. This film follows the formula of the sports movie genre pretty closely, but what sets it apart is both the looniness of its subject matter and hammy performer of the actor portraying him. Toby goes all out here and while some critics dinged the film for that, I rolled with it and was having a great time. That said, there's obviously a huge disconnect with portraying the final conflict as a patriotic rah-rah for America when the end credits a few minutes later has to state how off-rails Bobby Fischer eventually got. I still enjoyed the movie but the ending was just a disconnect, and I'm not sure how they could have gone another way.
3 / 5
Blue Velvet
I'm not sure how fair this review can be, since this is my first viewing of this movie and it obviously demands more than that to truly appreciate, but I still think I gained a decent grasp of things. This is probably the most muddled David Lynch film I've seen so far - Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Mulholland Drive all had clearer central threads. Blue Velvet in comparison sort of zig-zags, starts-and-stops.
I get the impression Lynch was still refining his editing skills here. Looking up production info after the credits revealed the original cut was four hours, which explains quite a bit. Still, even on its face it's compelling; unfortunately, it didn't make me feel much of anything, unlike the three previously-mentioned films.
Clearly, I recognize several moments that must have been groundbreaking at the time, but with the passage of time their significance has dulled (for me, at least.) But it's in recognizing them that I give Blue Velvet some credit - making Dennis Hopper even slimier than his literal lizard character in Super Mario Bros. years before the fact is quite a feat indeed.
3 / 5
