Wednesday, October 3, 2012

MOVIE REVIEW: LOOPER

Last night I saw Looper with my wife, Melia.  We saw it at the Court St. Theatre in Brooklyn.  I liked "Looper" a lot.  It had a ton of mostly original sci-fi in it -- mainly some really good time travel ideas with a sprinkle of decent futuristic production design.  It takes place in a future where the cars of today are all dusted up and falling apart and have duct tape on them.  They ride a flying motorcycle in it, but they didn't seem to have the money to do it right.  It was good that they had a flying motorcycle in it though.  The main thing about Looper that I liked was that the story dominated the film, and moved it along quickly with enough twists and turns.  The actors were good at supporting the story and being comfortable in the world of the movie, but it wasn't one of those scary acting-fests.  Rian Johnson did a good job.


MAIN THOUGHTS:

1. Gordon Levitt has a really slight build.  He's OK.  He was good as Robin.

2. Emily Blunt's American accent was basically good.  She's kind of boring.  I like her better when I was watching her be a bitch in that movie about Vogue.  Plus, she looks different now.  My wife thinks she got something done to her teeth.

3. Bruce Willis is solid, I guess I like him, he feels like an uncle or something.  He's been in a lot of sci-fi stuff, and helped to get sci-fi movies made, so you gotta give him that.  I liked him in the "making-of" 12 Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam.  I'm usually on the side of the directors, but imagine working with Gilliam?  I felt for Bruce Willis in some of the candid moments in the doc.  The best thing about Bruce Willis is two things.  a. There was a tagger in Queens in the late 90's who wrote "Bruce Willis" everywhere.  I loved that.  b. There is a line in a Gangstarr song that goes, "Lemonade is a popular drink and it still is, I get more props and stunts that Bruce Willis."  Oh wait - there's a c. In the 80's he did these Seagram Wine Cooler commercials in his musician alter-ego, Bruno.  I used to sing his jingle on the schoolbus all the time.

4. There is a kid in the movie and he is spectacular. Best acting in a movie in 17 years. Maybe 18 years.

5. There was a trailer for the "making-of" the new Les Miserables movie, which is a musical.  It's directed by the guy who made the movie about the stuttering English king.  The trailer is about how they're doing all the singing LIVE in every take they shoot, as opposed to recording the songs before and having the actors lip-sync it later.  I think Wolverine is the star, and in the trailer he speaks with a full blown Australian accent, and introduces himself as "Shoe" Jackman.  He's sitting in a chair talking to us, and he's trying to tell us about the new way they're making this movie, but he can't resist singing the songs, to show us how it's done - and then he does the song again to show us how he can do it in different ways.  That was starting to be funny.  But then they start talking to all the actors, and they're all so INTO it, it's crazy.  There's a real mental illness quality to it.  They show a part where one lady is drenched, singing her ass off in the fake rain and a crew of camera and sound-people in raincoats are surrounding her, sort of closing in on her.  It's like a Saturday Night Live skit.  But then the crescendo comes when they show Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) - and she obviously LOVES IT.  Her hair is cut short for the part, and she looks kind of pathetic, and they show her crying, like REALLY CRYING and her boobs are kind of out, and then it's raining on her too (I think) and then there are all these quick cuts of all the actors being really into it.  My wife and I were having laughing fits.  It was one of the most genuinely funny things I've ever seen in a movie theatre.  No one else was laughing at all.

6. I've been watching what I eat recently so the only snack I had was some Certs.

7. When we left the theatre, which was Theatre 10 on the 7th floor, there was a cop there and we took the elevator together.  He didn't look at us and he wasn't friendly and I could feel that Melia was feeling genuinely nervous that he wasn't a for real cop.  We got out of there unharmed.

8. It was foggy when we got outside, which seemed nice.

9. When you "Close the Loop" that means you're killing the older version of yourself (or of someone else too I think).

10. Imagine if telekinesis really becomes real?

11. Piper Perabo was in it.

12. The drug in the movie was eye-drops.  I give that a medium+ on the good scale.