Les Miserables

Saw Les Miserables. I liked it! Really good acting. The singing was bearable, even for one (such as myself) who really doesn't like musicals. Thought Anne Hathaway was great. Even the Wolverine and Russell Crowe were pretty good in the singing roles. I like the way they didn't lip synch. Good story too! Grade: A-

Django Unchained

Saw Django Unchained. Great acting. Very disturbing content at times. Very Tarantinoesqe (Tarantinoish?). Has a theme parallel with Inglorious Bastards, only, instead of involving Jews and Hitler, it involves race and slavery. It was very entertaining. Like I say, great acting all around. It stacks up well with Tarantino's other films. But it does ask the audience to endure some tense moments. Grade: A.

The Hobbit

Saw the Hobbit. Where do I begin? It's a pretty good film, but it has some “issues.” The best parts are the continuity scenes. The opening scene with Frodo is awesome. Only to be outdone by the elves at Rivendale. Lady Galadrial is actually better in this film. The seen with Saurmon is cool. Elrond is good too, as is Gollum. The camera scenes are, at times, fabulous.

But he's the bad stuff. The lead dwarf actor kinda sucks. He doesn't look like a dwarf and his acting is one-dimensional. The character playing Bilbo looks the part, but the way he plays it isn't right. I see a real continuity gap between the Bilbo of this film and the one in LOR. Also, at times, the movie is cheesy. There are a few scenes that make you feel like it's a Disney flick – like the wizard who travels around in a forest being pulled on a sled by a special kind of bunny rabbit. The only thing missing from the scene is a tin man trying to find Dorothy. One of the film's problems is practical: how can you get psyched for a stupid treasure hunt and a dragon fight, when, in LOR, you've already been through the adventure that saved humankind and banished the physical manifestation of evil from the earth? (Actually, banished all metaphysics). The fact that the Hobbit was both a child's adventure and a precursor to the larger story is looming in the dynamic of film. And you can't really do anything about it. Still, I liked the movie. Grade: A- .

Killing Me Softly

Saw Killing Me Softly. I thought the movie and the acting were good. I liked it. But the cheap theme that it was wallpapered with at the end – the Obama speech and all that – was pretty weak. It's like they didn't know how to end it, so, instead of just saying “stop,” they did that. It would have been better without any wallpaper: just let it be the acting and end it in chaos (the seeming middle), sort of the way No Country For Old Men “ended.” Grade: A-.

Lincoln

Just saw Lincoln. It was pretty good. A bit melodramatic at times. Always enjoy Daniel Day Lewis. Grade: A.