I’ve watched a lot of movies waiting for the Fall TV season to come and most of what I’ve seen can be put into quick hits.

Shame- Michael Fastbender as a sex addict equals Fastbender in a shockingly boring movie. This movie was all hyped up because of it’s subject matter and nudity. I found his character to be so incredibly pathetic and weird that seeing the credits roll was the best part of the movie.

Hesher- Joseph Gordon Levitt is Hesher, a guy who just doesn’t give a fuck. Who is he, where is from, where does he go? No one knows. He befriends a kid, TJ who recently lost his mother and generally hates life. Hesher, through a weird series of events helps the kid through the most difficult part of his life. Liked this one a lot and it took me by surprise. It was on odd but unique and touching story. You’re never really sure where it’s going but in the end the story is a good one. Natalie Portman, Rainn Wilson and JGL are all awesome and Devin Brochu as TJ was really impressive.

Project X- A High School party movie using the found footage directing technique. It’s cast well, the situations get bigger and crazier…even though it doesn’t really do anything terribly new, I thought it was a fun movie.

The Grey- It’s Liam Neeson giving Les Stroud a run for his money! Can this guy do no wrong or what? This time he’s caught in the woods trying to survive. Aside from some awkward looking wolf puppet attacks, it looked awesome and was a fun ride. Really liked the ending.

The Thing- The new one. I’m kinda torn about this one. Carpenter’s the thing is pretty much a masterpiece so it’s really hard for anything to walk anywhere near this universe. I think it did a lot of things right, it looked like it took place in the same time and place, it fits into the beginning of Carpenter’s movie well. The paranoia was played up well and they wisely avoided directly ripping the big moments off from Carpenter. That said. they didn’t really have a huge moment to hang their hat on. They show a lot of the monster frequently and it reminded me a lot of the stuff you see in anime (especially Gluttony from Full Metal Alchemist). I really want to see a making of to see how and why they choose to do things, what’s cg and what isn’t. It looks like they did as much as they could practically, added CG to enhance and full CG where they had to. I’m wondering if just being able to say that they did it with cg makes it less intense. Just knowing it’s digital makes it easier to brush aside [there is some wild shit they did with the attacks]. I got confused a lot because all the guys have beards so they all look alike. When the eating starts it was difficult to remember who was left alive. I’m totally on the fence about this flick. It wasn’t bad, it respected Carpenters movie but there’s just something that wasn’t right. I guess i’m just thinking it shouldn’t have been made which sounds really harsh. That makes it sound like the Psycho remake.

Chronicle is a movie that snuck up on people. There was no buzz while it was being made with no big name actors to draw attention to it. Then the marketing department came up with some great ideas an it caught some curiosity. $100 million or so on a $12 million budget is a cracking good start for everyone involved.

Here’s the story: three high school friends find a hole in the ground that seems out of the ordinary. They go exploring inside and when they make it out they’ve been given telekinesis powers. Slowly they learn to use their extraordinary power and expand what they can do. Soon a power struggle emerges between the boys which quickly spirals out of control.

Chronicle is a bit like a comic book movie, but more established in reality. It’s a “What if…” tale that asks you what would happen if you could move things with your mind? Would you be able to control it and yourself? The classic ethos of “With great power comes great responsibility” is literally told here.

I really liked how this story was handled and shown to the audience. All the actors are good, their motivations clear to understand. For a movie with such a low budget, the FX are done really well. There is some rough compositing and weird fake physics that clearly shows, but for the most part it all works and sells itself well. Really impressive. There’s a lot of great ideas (direction and action wise) at work here.

The choice of going with “found footage” like Blair Witch Project is bold one as you’d think it would really limit on what you’d be able to show as you need a character to hold a camera the whole time. I noticed one or two suspect moments where the camera location would be suspect (near the end, there’s no way you’d hear what the characters are saying in the situation we are shown). The main character, Andrew, is going through a really bad part of his life and decides to record everything. While he learns to use his powers, he figures out how to make his camera float around while doing something else. Not only does this open the doors to camera movement and placement, it also shows how much better he is at controlling his powers than the other two boys. Another character is said to have a video blog, so she is recording everything she does too. While an obvious reach to get another camera rolling for parts where Andrew isn’t around, I let any nagging thoughts go and let it ride.

I’m a big fan of Chronicle, I had a great time watching it. Reminded me a bit of Moon where this little project from the minds of a few ingenious people comes to life on screen. I hope the writer and director continue on from this great start.

This is a very simple review to write. If you are an action fan, you have to see The Raid. I wish I saw this in theaters, for some reason I slept on it and decided to wait for it to hit home screens. Writer and Director Gareth Evans has some serious talent.

Set in Jakarta, there is an apartment complex that is run by a crimelord that no one has been able to touch for years. It’s considered off limits to authorities, until an elite squad of officers are assembled to go in and bring out the crimelord. He’s believed to be on the 30th floor, the very top of the building. The team makes it to the sixth.

This movie is just packed with some of the best fight choreography seen in years. Guns, an alarming amount of knives, fist and feet aplenty go flying for an hour and a half. It’s hard to describe the amount and quality of athletic prowess on display. The direction is expertly thought out and serves up clear widescreen carnage that very few American directors even dare to think about. Really heroic stuff matched musically by Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park).

A must watch, The Raid has it all. Solid actors with a simple and effective plot and a story that keeps you engaged through every tight and explosive action scene. People will be passing this around for years as an example of the best of the genre. If this is just the beginning, the sequel is going to redefine the game.

The Campaign is Will Ferrell and Jay Roach’s latest tag team effort. Calling an audible they take on another sport: politics. Ferrell plays Cam Brady who is a long sitting Congressman for the state of North Carolina. When the Motch brothers decide to swing influence in the favor of their mega corporation they tap the unwitting Marty Huggins (a beardless Zach Galifianakis), an innocent, doe eyed director at the local tourism center.

There’s some really funny parts here, but they’re spread apart pretty far. It’s a big hill and valley kind of ride with this movie. At times it felt a little too real despite all of the more outlandish moments. There’s a kernel of truth to each outlandish set up that kind of marred the experience to me. While fitting for the times we’re in with a good cast, I can’t shake the feeling that this is a better rental than a full ticket price movie.

I’m a huge Batman fan, so I have a obvious bias towards these movies. I love Christopher Nolan’s work and I’ve loved the first two Nolan Batman movies. I like the vision he and his team created and ran with.

I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight just before going to The Dark Knight Rises. So glad I did, it refreshed me on each story and the overall arc of the trilogy. A lot comes back into play in Rises and being immediately familiar helped me enjoy the movie even more.

This is a really epic movie, the scope is huge, and coming from TDK, that’s saying something. While the Joker was anarchy, Bane is a more militant and physical threat. Pulling off a huge overthrow of Gotham, Bane takes complete control of the city while leaving its already “disgraced” hero broken and shattered. The villains win for most of this movie, giving a real sense of a phoenix rising mentality to the end of this Baman tale.

It’s a dark and complex world that Bruce Wayne has found himself in. He relies a lot on friends in this one, especially Jim Gordon and most notably Selina Kyle (Catwoman). I’ve never been a fan of Anne Hathaway, but she completely won me over in her take on Selina. Hathway takes a refreshing spin on Michelle Pfeiffers ‘ Catwoman. She’s sexy and sneaky, but she doesn’t have the feral nature that Pfeiffer goes with. She works really well in scenes with Bruce Wayne and Batman. Tom Hardy also impressed me as Bane, a real unique and daring bit of work (which really describes Rises as a whole to me). Heath Ledger as Joker is the Everest of character acting and while Bane really isn’t as strong of a character, his presence and actions are unique and leave a lasting impression. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as police officer Blake is another wonderful addition, he’s one of the best actors working today.

The movie just looks amazing, there are so many amazing shots and set ups, it’s just too much to describe. The vision and scope is immense and matched perfectly by Hans Zimmer’s powerful score. Christopher Nolan does as much in camera as he can and uses CG to augment the special effects only when necessary. Stunt guys all over the place, very little obvious CG elements, the integration of the real and the fantasy is tightly knit together.

Christopher Nolan likes to keep brewing his story from start to finish and that often makes things more messy than it needs to be. At two hours and forty minutes, Rises is a wicker basket of a story. The set up of a cleaned up city that is still rotten, Bruce Wayne’s tortured soul from the events of the last film, Bane’s underground moves to take over, all the chess pieces of old and new characters being moved around. There’s a lot of foreshadowing and if you know the Batman stories, the big reveal isn’t a reveal. When everything is working, I’m completely sucked in to the world. In the first chase scene with Batman, he’s on the Bat Pod when he goes into a tunnel and hits an EMP device to disable the lights and vehicles around him. You see his shadow flitting around the cop cars and then his glorious reveal as he starts taking down the bad guys actually gave me a head rush. A super hero come to life right in front of me. A few minutes later the introduction of Batman’s new ride The Bat from the alley way? Forget it, just so cool it made me smile like a 6 year old. But when the movie missteps, it feels that much more odd, like a jolt to a train car. Sometimes it’s little things like dialog that could have been improved. Then there are the odd bits of comic book logic and/or strange editing (the opening action sequence would leave wreckage for about 20 miles, wouldn’t look like an accident, sudden skips of time that can be hard to keep track of, how did Bruce get from the prison to Gotham and find who he needed right out the gate at just the right time). The choice to make Gotham not look like Gotham from each movie is really odd though. TDK was Chicago and Rises is mostly NYC and Philly, the aesthetic that Begins started was dropped for reasons I can’t think of. Thankfully it’s nothing that ruined the experience for me. Most of the problems I have I think could be fixed with some different editing choices.

As the credits rolled I felt really satisfied. The Batman book that Nolan brought to us in seven years was complete using his own words and images. The end is a mixture of emotions with some awesome visuals (I just can’t keep saying that enough) that filled me with hope. Even in great darkness, good will always be there to fight evil. Now someone give Nolan the directors chair for the next James Bond movie.