Though the "Willisizing" make-up of Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a bit uneven, it's mighty impressive they bothered to try at all!
Well, following a somewhat inconsistent dropoff this summer after THE AVENGERS, including at least one
major disappointment (I'm looking at
you, PROMETHEUS
), from out of almost nowhere comes two outstanding genre movies in the past week. Before I move on to over-selling Rian Johnson's brilliant tour-de-force, LOOPER, let me give a shout out to something I was totally not expecting.
That's right kiddos, DREDD not only exceeds expectations, but does it by a long shot. Even though all the heaps of praise laid on by the critics still seem to point out that the "characterizations" are weak, it doesn't matter to them because the visuals are so superior. Well, I don't know what movie they were watching because the characters were all just fine and a big reason why the rest of the story came together so nicely. Karl Urban exudes a thousand times more personality using only the bottom half of his face than Sylvester Stallone has ever done in anything since ROCKY, let alone the awful first attempt at adapting this character. I've heard many comparisons to THE RAID:REDEMPTION (which I pretty much hated), but a fairer comparison would be ROBOCOP, although this stands alone as a fine piece of entertainment regardless.
I went out of my way to see this in 3D because it was filmed that way, but even though you can't spell DREDD without three D's, the experience was still not enhanced. Until everyone else learns something that only Martin Scorsese apparently knows about how to use 3D to it's full potential, the best I can ever say about 3D most of the time is that it's not distracting, and it isn't here. It appears to be well on it's way to being a major flop, which would make it a good candidate for next Spring's "overlooked and recent" slot in the SciFi Marathon, but regardless it is a must for a future marathon. As is the movie I saw yesterday...
LOOPER has everything you want in a movie. Richly compelling characters, a taut, brilliantly executed script, universally excellent performances, stunning visuals, mind-blowing special effects, guns, explosions, and, of course, boobs. At the risk of over-selling it (too late): go see this movie. In what is unusual in today's market, the trailers actually do NOT spoil much of what this film has in store for the viewer, especially the bevy of surprises in the third act. We'll have to see if history is kind to it, but as of right now, I have no problem declaring it one of the best Time Travel movies ever made.