The current cinema

No Comments

• Peter Lenihan says:

  September 20, 2012 at 10:43 am

  I dunno, I think Dredd is one of the bet­ter American films I’ve seen this year, but I’m not famil­i­ar with either the com­ics or the first movie, so it’s prob­ably dif­fi­cult for me to appre­ci­ate a lot of what you’re talk­ing about here. I do think Travis’ use of 3D was tre­mend­ously tactile–it’s prob­ably stretch­ing things to call a film so unabashedly fas­cist­ic sub­vers­ive in the way it expli­citly ties 3D’s hal­lu­cino­gen­ic qual­it­ies to hal­lu­cino­gen­ic drugs, but it’s there if you want it to be. & really it reminded me of prime Carpenrer & Hill–just a really well-done, unpre­ten­tious, visu­ally invent­ive picture.

• Peter Lenihan says:

  September 20, 2012 at 10:48 am

  Just real­ized it’s a British pro­duc­tion. Sorry about that.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  September 20, 2012 at 10:55 am

  Mmm-hmm.

• Not David Bordwell says:

  September 21, 2012 at 4:18 pm

  Did the edit­ors as MSN Movies mean to make Bryan Cranston look just like Clint Eastwood in jux­ta­pos­ing the thumb­nails of TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE and ARGO? Never saw it before, but it’s hard to deny.
  Still want to see Cranston as Blofeld in a Daniel Craig ver­sion of ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. We know he can pull off bald.

• Not David Bordwell says:

  September 21, 2012 at 4:27 pm

  Oh, and please tell me the Amy Adams char­ac­ter is named after Mantle. It seems like that kind of movie.

• Harry K. says:

  September 22, 2012 at 11:35 pm

  I just saw the film, and I have to say that I agree with Peter, except­ing that I have seen the oth­er movie and read,by no means all, but some of the com­ics. It was, to me, an excel­lent rock’em sock’em style R‑rated action pic­ture. I won’t claim it’s any­thing above it, but as one must admit one’s laughter, I will admit I walked out of the movie with a big, uncom­plic­ated smile on my face. That the themes are ques­tion­able at best and nowhere in line with the intent of the com­ics could not put a dent in my hap­pi­ness. Not even the incred­ibly wooden act­ing found pur­chase, with Karl Urban’s ridicu­lous sub-Bale gravel voice even increas­ing the joy that I felt.
  For me, it was the best action exper­i­ence I had at the theat­ers this sum­mer. Obviously, your mileage has varied.

• Bruce Reid says:

  September 23, 2012 at 4:56 am

  Not David Bordwell: Cranston’s dop­pel­gänger is and always will be Charlie Ruggles.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  September 29, 2012 at 8:59 pm

  I enjoyed Dredd, but was dis­ap­poin­ted that it *was­n’t* as con­sist­ently rock-em-sock-em as I wished. I kept want­ing them to reduce the cutscenes (giv­en the video game immer­sion it’s going for, that seems the right word for the talky part) and give me more action, more mutants, more druggy pretty stuff. Also for Anderson to get to use her psych­ic powers for more badassery, rather than keep­ing her quiv­er­ing for the first 75 minutes in order to cre­ate a nar­rat­ive and emo­tion­al arc about which neither I nor any­one else cares. Nothing wrong with big, loud, simple action movies, but MAKE BIG LOUD SIMPLE ACTION MOVIES! We do not need all that talky-talk!