Monday, January 17, 2011

TRON: LEGACY – joseph kosinski – 2.5 / 10

Make no mistake, TRON: Legacy is a terrible terrible film.  It’s staggeringly stupid, one of the most preposterous things I've ever seen.  The story makes no sense and is nearly impossible to follow.  The performances are uniformly terrible (even from the usually awesome Jeff Bridges).  And the damn thing is too long by half.  Yet, I didn't hate watching it.  I’m not rushing out to see it again or anything, but for as awful as nearly every aspect of the film is, the visuals and the score are so striking that I found it worth watching.  Hell, if the theater I watched the film in had somehow turned off the dialogue completely and just cranked Daft Punk’s terrific score instead, TRON: Legacy might’ve actually been enjoyable (although still far too long).

Friday, January 14, 2011

THE SOCIAL NETWORK – david fincher – 8.6 / 10

Forget all the hype about this being the first great movie of the twenty-first century or the film that defines a generation; The Social Network is just a really good movie told exceptionally well.  It’s not a film interested in critiquing the new ways in which people communicate with one another in the digital age.  It’s not trying to get at some universal truth about the millennial generation.  Instead, The Social Network is a piercing look at the many ways in which men (especially young men) are assholes.