Life of Pi is a visual masterpiece that film purists should not miss. If this movie is all intriguing to you, I recommend seeing it as quickly as possible. To experience the true value of this movie, it must be seen in the theater. The 3D effects are superb, but just as important is experiencing this movie on the largest screen available. As I told a friend, if you only go to the cinema a handful of times per year, there might be better movies to see. I might even recommend a film that isn’t as good as Life of Pi based on your preferences. But if your goal is to see as many great movies as you can in one year, this is not to be missed.
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Category Archives: Genre
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
This review will be brief. Unfortunately, I need to be more well-versed to write a comprehensive review of this movie. I certainly can’t write one as well as a critic who reviews movies as their profession. I’m sure I can’t write one as well as somebody who knows the facts of the takedown of Osama bin Laden. Like the movie Lincoln, this movie is an important educational tool and should be seen by many, but as a vehicle of entertainment, it underwhelms. I told my friends after our viewing that I’m growing a little tired of movies being an hour or longer than they need to be. This is the case with Zero Dark Thirty. Not only was it over two and a half hours long, but it felt like it was two movies in one.
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The Impossible (2012)
The Impossible is flat-out the best movie of 2012. I went into the movie thinking it would be one of the ten best of 2012, but I didn’t think it would crack the top five, let alone take over The Dark Knight Rises. As I’ve stated many times, a great movie has an advantage over other great movies if it is based on a true story. Not “inspired by a true story” or “based upon true events” but “based on a true story.” A great movie can lose a lot in my book if it turns out that much factual information is exaggerated or incorrect. Remember The Titans went from being in my all-time top 25 to fall out of the top 150 because of how factually incorrect it had been. Rather than winning the state championship on the game’s final play, as depicted in the movie, the TC Williams Titans won that game handily 27-0. And while I haven’t sought out any discrepancies between what was shown in The Impossible and what happened, I haven’t heard anybody say that the events were untrue.
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Promised Land (2012)
If you can set aside your belief system for a movie that tries its hardest to be believable, you will enjoy Gus Van Sant’s (Good Will Hunting, Milk) Promised Land. The film takes on a highly controversial topic and an issue that will continue to be discussed more and more in the near future. Because the subject is so contentious and so important, it seems highly unlikely that just two natural gas company executives, played by Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity, The Departed) and Frances McDormand (Fargo, North Country), would be the sole representatives trying to win over a rural town to vote for their company to move in and start drilling their farms.
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Les Miserables (2012)
So it turns out, to no big surprise, that I’m not a fan of musicals. I have yet to see Moulin Rouge! or Chicago. Even though I’ve been told how great both movies are, I have yet to find the desire to give either film a chance. There was something about Les Miserables, however, that piqued my interest. I think it was the Anne Hathaway trailer. I’ve repeatedly said on my blog that Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams are the two best actresses in the world. I’ll go out of my way to see any movie in which either actress stars. I thought the Hathaway “I Dreamed a Dream” trailer was perfectly made. It won me over on the spot. I put aside any reservations and promised myself I would see it.
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