Monday Movies is traveling this week. A few things we liked:
Via Gerry Canavan, a Zizekian reading of Wreck-It Ralph.
At Back to the World, Margaux Williamson reviews Moonrise Kingdom.
I really enjoy this blog, and especially Margaux’s voice for film reviews. She watches with an open mind and notices something about the film and expresses it clearly and simply. Doesn’t sound like the height of ambition but it always works. She’s a painter, I think, and there’s something about her simple but trenchant observations that I like to think comes from cross-training.
How about you? Do you still like movies? Did you see any? Did you make any?
An und für sich 
We watched Avengers and found it boring, frankly. It was supposed to be some kind of huge deal when it came out, but I can’t imagine any but the smallest hard core of fans returning to this one.
I forget if I watched this last week or the week before last, but if you’ve not seen Jules Dassin’s 1968 response piece to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Up Tight!, do yourself a favor and do so. It has been criminally neglected for the most part, and wasn’t even released on DVD until October of this year. Very melodramatic in parts, “stage-y,” you might say, but a hearty reminder that we’ve still not figured out a viable solution concerning the tension between revolutionary and liberal.
We went to see Seven Psychopaths, which was gratuitous and clever. Plus, Tom Waits holding a bunny.
I think I still like movies, though sometimes I’m not sure. Agree on Avengers–just bland. I did wonder that Scarlett Johanssen with a pair of pistols was as able to hold off an alien invasion as Iron Man (would said aliens have had any chance at all if they blundered into a place as well-armed as most of the rural US?), but then I remembered that this was a Joss Whedon thing, and displaying superhuman-but-emotionally-damaged young woman is his purpose in life. I’m pretty sure I’m tired of him.
On the plus side, watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles again. Film pulls off something fairly rare–Del Griffith is deeply annoying, but I like him. I identify with Neal Page (especially the moment of attempting to sing on the bus, in which he is reminded that most people simply have no use for him and his tastes), but can’t stand him. Still confused as to exactly what is going on with Page’s wife’s reaction in the final scene, when she greets him as if he hadn’t been home in years (but without the simmering resentment), rather than on a few day road trip.
I watched Twilight, my first one. Liked it a lot. Also saw Skyfall – utter chauvinistic, uninteresting dross. And The Master (this was my catch up weekend – going to Amour tomorrow!), which I enjoyed. A little self-consciously ‘artful’, but very interesting all the same. Watched A Matter of Life and Death (like I said, a catch up weekend), which was clever and vivid.
I thought Avengers was basically tosh, like too many superhero films, but also that it was enlivened by Whedon – though I have little evidence beyond the circumstantial that he was in fact responsible for all the little funny moments amidst the rote superheroing.