Best of 2012: My Top 5 Movies of 2012

Here are my Top 5 Favorite Movies of 2012. (I’ve also included one Wildcard Pick and an Honorable Mention so I suppose altogether this is my Top 7.)

The Wildcard Pick: Savages (Original Review)

My wildcard pick this year is Oliver Stone’s addictive, blistering Savages about the weed business. Depending on how you look at this brash and reckless movie, you may deem it a frustrating failure or an exhilarating entertainment. Then again, why choose? Oliver Stone does the equivalent of bringing an Uzi to an archery range. He makes quite the mess of things but you can’t say he doesn’t hit his target. The movie is too long and the ending is a strange, ungainly disaster but I can’t say that any other movie this year shocked or thrilled me more. If you’re looking for the most bang for your buck, look no further.

Honorable Mention: Argo (Original Review)

A terrific audience-pleaser and perhaps the best thriller of the year, director Ben Affleck’s Argo is great, edge-of-your-seat entertainment. It tells the absurd, true story of a CIA mission that faked a movie production to retrieve a group of American citizens during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. The movie acknowledges the fraught international politics of the time but is first and foremost a daring rescue movie. This one is loads of fun and smart to boot.

5) The Master (Original Review)

At the end of The Master there are loose ends left untied and mysteries that go unexplained. Frustration with the film’s anticlimax and lack of a resolution is perfectly natural. But part of the fun of this movie – and this is assuming you share my idea of fun – is sifting through this strange and fascinating drama and guessing at what it could all possibly mean.

This is not to say the film is some sort of scholarly exercise; it’s much better than that. Watch the bizarre bond that forms between a mentally unstable WWII veteran named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, unhinged and with a wild look in his eye) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman, never better), the charismatic leader of a dubious New Age church. Their relationship twists and turns as the two men gain power and leverage over one another. The Master is a half-mad swirl of sexual impulses, pseudo-scientific babble and violent outbursts. I can’t say I understood it all but I was never bored.

4) Zero Dark Thirty

There are a number of thorny issues at play in Zero Dark Thirty – the use of torture on political detainees, the gender politics of women in government – but the heart of the film drives at a larger, more encompassing question: Is the ultimate objective of the War on Terror to protect the homeland from future attacks or to punish those responsible for 9/11? For Maya (an intensely focused Jessica Chastain), the distinction is irrelevant. Either way the goal is the same – take out Osama bin Laden.

The film is a historical approximation of the leads and events that resulted in bin Laden’s death on May 2, 2011, but what elevates it beyond the level of a made-for-TV movie is director Kathryn Bigelow’s remarkable craftsmanship and eye for poetic detail. The final assault on bin Laden’s compound – a flurry of night vision green and fiery explosions set against the darkness of night – is as tense as any action movie. When the dust clears, the human drama ends on a note of bittersweet uncertainty. Whether bin Laden was killed for the sake of homeland security or justice may not matter from a military perspective but emotionally how does one reconcile the two and move on?

3) Amour

Amour is a movie of few words so it seems wrong to use too many here to describe its greatness. This quiet, poignant love story follows an elderly couple as the husband grapples with the deteriorating health of his wife. Through the keen direction of Michael Haneke the film reveals intimate depths of its characters’ emotional lives often with little or no dialogue.

Amour is a devastating study of life and love in its final stages. It explores the difficulty of dying with dignity and of finally letting go when the time is right, but it is not all doom and gloom. Few movies are this honest and true. Every moment in it feels real and its message is ultimately life affirming.

2) Lincoln (Original Review)

There’s no sense in hiding it. Director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s Lincoln is a history lesson. But what this impressive, entertaining movie shows us is that the participants of history were real people with large personalities, not some culmination of dates and facts like our high school curriculum might have us believe. They were politicians who were as prone to grandstanding and as stubbornly biased as today’s elected officials are. Lincoln’s thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, was an ambitious piece of legislation and its passage required bravery and political cunning, but also bribery.

There is no mistaking that Lincoln is a Steven Spielberg prestige picture – it is beautifully shot and features a slew of exceptional performances that will no doubt make the Oscar voters swoon – but it is also vibrant and alive in a way few period pieces are. Abraham Lincoln and the congressmen of his time understood they were making history but for them it was a very real present where victory was far from certain. History lessons are rarely as fascinating and exciting as this one.

1) Moonrise Kingdom (Original Review)

Moonrise Kingdom has the warm feel of a half-forgotten childhood memory and director Wes Anderson brings it to life with the visual whimsy of a picture book. The movie breezes by, telling the story of Sam and Suzy (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, each pitch perfect), two lovesick kids who run away from home to be with one another. They are mature beyond their years and yet also heartbreakingly naïve, blissfully unaware of the crushing reality that awaits them outside the bubble of childhood.

This sad fact of life is not lost on the other inhabitants of the small New England island where the film takes place. The remaining cast of characters, a motley crew of melancholic grown-ups, drift in and out of the picture, desperate to find Sam and Suzy while also preoccupied with their own adult problems. Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s script finds bittersweet humor in their characters’ lives but never condescends to them. This blend of comedy and pathos is a delicate balancing act but Wes Anderson and his terrific cast – including Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Ed Norton and Bruce Willis – walk the tightrope wonderfully.

Much like the private cove its young heroes discover and seek refuge in (and also gives the film its name), Moonrise Kingdom is an inviting paradise. One visit is not enough.

- Steven Avigliano, 2/24/13

REVIEW: Lincoln

Lincoln (2012): Dir. Steven Spielberg. Written by: Tony Kushner. Based on the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson and Lee Pace. Rated PG-13 (Bribery, slander, demagoguery. Politics as usual). Running time: 150 minutes.

4 stars (out of four)

The first great sigh of relief in Lincoln comes early in the film. The former president reclines in an armchair, his feet propped up, while he idly describes a dream to his wife. The sight is likely not the image of the famous leader most have in their minds. I suppose my mental image of Abraham Lincoln, culled from a sketch in some grade school textbook or another, is of him standing behind a podium, gesticulating forcefully as he gives a speech. (Fear not, there is plenty of that in this movie too.) Yet there is a hint of familiarity in seeing Lincoln in this relaxed state, speaking freely. He feels like a real person.

Coming into this movie, you may have your reservations. You may presume it has a certain amount of stuffiness that is reasonable to expect from a historical biography of Abraham Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg (one of the few living directors who may end up getting his own biopic one day). But the air is soon cleared of most of that.

You may be relieved to find that Lincoln is not the story of a heroic figure, a demigod who ended the Civil War, freed the slaves and renewed the American Dream for millions. Lincoln instead tells the story of a man – the most unsavory kind of man too! a politician! – who worked hard to do all of the above long before the gloss of history transformed him into something greater than a man.

Abraham Lincoln, compassionately played here by Daniel Day-Lewis, is a sensitive man. He is intelligent, well read and well spoken. He has a gift for orating and bringing crowds of onlookers cheering to their feet. But his skills as a speaker are not limited to grand arenas where his voice rises in thrilling crescendos. He is just as capable performing for a smaller audience – and seems even to prefer it – quietly sharing amusing anecdotes with his cabinet, with soldiers, with whoever is there to listen.

He is humble but, being a man of great conviction, does not wear the power afforded him by his prestigious position lightly. He sees it as his responsibility and his sworn duty to fight for what he believes no matter how seemingly insurmountable the obstacles are that stand in his way.

And here I go hyperbolizing, no better than my old textbooks. Lincoln, however, offers something more interesting than blind hero worship.

This is a remarkably well-researched film, elegantly adapted by playwright Tony Kushner from the nonfiction book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Mr. Kushner’s script, marked by a persistent love of facts over melodramatic interpretations, will no doubt be adored by history buffs. But the film’s emphasis on the nuanced mechanisms of American politics serves a greater purpose. Lincoln depicts the president as a hard working politician who knew how to use the system to achieve his goals.

It is January 1865 and, two months after his reelection, Lincoln is in a position of considerable political power. The Civil War is winding down and his popularity in the Union ensures public support of just about any legislation he seeks to push through Congress. Against the better judgment of his cabinet, however, Lincoln sees a window of opportunity to fight for something riskier. Now is the time, he believes, to pass a thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, one that will abolish slavery.

The ambitiousness of this amendment is soon apparent when we meet the divided and bitterly partisan House of Representatives. The House chamber roils like the Colosseum as members of the Democratic opposition take to the floor for a series of vitriolic speeches condemning the amendment. Among the most vocal of them is Representative Fernando Wood (a fine Lee Pace), the de facto leader of the Democrats whose entertaining sermons paint Lincoln as a power-hungry tyrant who must be stopped at all costs.

Even Republicans in Lincoln’s own party are wary of fighting for the amendment now, when the end of the Civil War is so near. But if the Lincoln administration waits until after the War, the legality of the president’s Emancipation Proclamation, a temporary measure made possible by Lincoln’s war powers, may be called into question, and the fate of so many freed slaves would be uncertain.

So Lincoln must rely on unanimous support from Republicans in addition to flipping a few crucial votes of Democrats if he hopes pass the amendment. The fervent abolitionist and curmudgeonly old-timer (Tommy Lee Jones, who else?) Representative Thaddeus Stevens proves to be a useful ally. His sometimes crude and insult-laden tirades on the House floor help corral Republicans behind the cause.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) recruits a band of lobbyists (John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson and James Spader) to convert vulnerable Democrats by offering them cushy jobs in exchange for votes. Their attempts to do so, chronicled throughout the film in a series of farcical scenes, expose a much less romantic but no less important side to American politics. A vote procured through bribery is still a vote.

Though the nitty-gritty of the political process takes up the bulk of the film, Lincoln also reveals the president’s human side. Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd (Sally Field), tormented by life in the White House, struggles to support her husband publicly though their marriage is in decline. Lincoln also tries to protect his son, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), from the horrors of the War but the boy insists on enlisting, refusing to remain on the sidelines of history.

Captured in the sepia-tinged soft glow of Janusz Kamiński’s photography and accompanied by the strains of a typically powerful John Williams score, Lincoln has the look and feel of a film aiming for a level of prestige worthy of its subject. But the film’s excellence is not superficial. This beautifully crafted movie does not just recount history but pulls an absorbing story out of it and illuminates the past in vibrant, living detail. The final scenes drag on too long and give us more than we need but I'll forgive Mr. Spielberg a few grace notes following such a masterful symphony.

Anchored by a fully realized and wholly compelling performance, Lincoln presents not only a man who led according to the morals and convictions he held so deeply but a man who appreciated the imperfect system that allows an individual to fight for those morals. Watching the relentless feuding and mudslinging of the congressmen in this film, you may dismally conclude that though the contents of the debates have changed between 1865 and today, the tenor of Washington has not. But Lincoln is an ode to that messy and often frustrating democratic process and a tribute to one man who understood better than perhaps anyone how to achieve greatness with it.

- Steven Avigliano, 11/23/12

REVIEW: War Horse

War Horse (2011): Dir. Steven Spielberg. Written by: Richard Curtis and Lee Hall. Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbach, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell, Celine Buckens and Niels Arestrup. Rated PG-13 (Mostly bloodless war violence towards humans and horses alike). Running time: 146 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

My experience with horses is extraordinarily limited. The only time I recall riding one, I was around ten years old and it seemed huge to me. In hindsight I was probably riding a pony but never mind that. My brief equestrian foray left me with two indelible impressions of the animal: its strength – “Don’t pull its tail or it’ll kick you in the face and kill you,” an instructor had gently advised me and the other young riders I was with – and its smell. While no attention is given to the latter in War Horse, the former is more or less its main theme.

You don’t have to be a horse enthusiast to appreciate the beauty of War Horse, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel set during the First World War (and also recently made into a Tony Award-winning play). Indeed, it would be hard to miss the visual elegance of the film, which is almost relentlessly beautiful. Mr. Spielberg and his cinematographer James Kamiński make wonderful use of the English countryside’s landscapes, the blue skies and green pastures of which remain unpolluted by the sprawl of modern society.

This is a movie designed to be seen not on a TV or, heaven forbid, a phone, but in a theater where its breath-taking wide shots can fill the big screen: A windmill reflected in a pond’s still waters. Files of soldiers marching through a golden field. Charred black trenches lit by momentary bursts of fire and gunshots. A silhouetted horse and rider against the blood-orange sky of a sunset. To seal the deal, all are set to a typically sweeping John Williams score.

Though War Horse is indisputably gorgeous, its story is sometimes less captivating than the images used to tell it. The movie follows a horse, Joey, opening with his birth and tracing his path across Europe as he changes hands throughout the War. The first to become fixated by Joey is a haggard, alcoholic farmer, Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), who buys the horse at a market auction and brings him home to his son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine). Ted’s wife, Rose (Emily Watson), scolds him for making such a foolhardy purchase. They need a good workhorse to plow their fields, not a thoroughbred meant for racing like Joey. If they cannot plow the fields, they cannot grow crops and subsequently, they cannot pay their landlord (David Thewlis), an improbably sinister man who revels in the family’s financial troubles.

But how can Rose turn away a horse her son has already so clearly fallen in love with? Albert swears he can train Joey (Albert is the one who christens Joey with his name, though Joey receives a few more names from other friendly humans during his travels) and train him he does. As the leading non-horse in the film, Jeremy Irvine is a passable protagonist. The role of Albert is nothing special and Mr. Irvine seems to have been cast for his pretty face and brilliant blue eyes (which give Elijah Wood’s a run for their money). Still, these opening scenes have a classically Spielbergian feel to them, a wide-eyed and charming innocence.

Once Joey is shipped off to war, however, the film loses some momentum. Had there been more vignettes like the opener, War Horse might have been an overwhelming success but not all of the characters Joey meets or all the situations he gets into are compelling. He charges into battle with a British military captain (Tom Hiddleston), briefly joins a pair of young German soldiers (Leonhard Carow and David Kross), is taken in by a French girl (Celine Buckens) and her grandfather (Niels Arestrup) and eventually finds his way into the trenches.

Steven Spielberg does not depict the trench warfare with anything near the brutal realism of the D-Day sequence from his Saving Private Ryan but he does capture the looming sense of dread in the young soldiers’ faces and there is a stunning moment set to bag pipes when they run out into battle. This segment also features the film’s best scene, a quiet moment when two soldiers – a Brit and a German – meet in no man’s land to untie Joey from tangled barbed wire. The strength of the human drama in this scene eclipses just about every other scene in film.

As you may have guessed from its title though, War Horse is less interested in its human characters than its equine ones. The horses, Joey in particular, are given anthropomorphic qualities such as compassion and self-sacrifice; we can actually understand their motives for behaving the way they do. In one sense, this is remarkable. In another, it’s awfully silly to see a horse glance back longingly at another horse. Whether horses are capable of such emotions I cannot tell you. Perhaps a true horse lover will be enthralled by moments like these.

Watching War Horse is like flipping through a beautifully illustrated history book. It offers an awe-inspiring and romantic view of the past without ever giving you too much of a sense of how it felt to actually live through it. Either you’ll get caught up in Joey’s journey or you won’t. For me, the sheer aesthetic power of the movie was enough even when the story was lacking. It’s probably for the best too that no one mentions the horses’ stench. That might have spoiled the mood.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/13/12

REVIEW: The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Dir. Steven Spielberg. Written by: Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish, based on the comics by Hergé. Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Rated PG (Swashbuckling and a boozing sea captain). Running time: 107 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Steven Spielberg built his career on turning his boyhood fantasies into Hollywood blockbusters. When you watch the most imaginative of his big-budget adventures – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Minority Report – you get the sense that a young Spielberg might have made the same movie had he had the technical skills and financing at his disposal the adult Spielberg does. The same is true of his buddy, George Lucas. At some gut level just they knew the stories in their heads, full of dashing heroes and journeys to exotic worlds, would make fine crowd-pleasers.

So the pairing of Mr. Spielberg and Peter Jackson, that Kiwi who had the crazy idea he could turn The Lord of the Rings into a trilogy of hit movies, makes sense. They share a mutual love of the French comic book series, The Adventures of Tintin, and set out to recreate on the big screen the rich, vibrant world they had already known for years. Mr. Spielberg would direct the first and, should it be a hit, Mr. Jackson would helm the second installment.

The Adventures of Tintin, which was filmed with motion-capture animation and released in 3D, seems to have all the right ingredients – a boy and his dog discover a clue to a mystery and embark on a globetrotting trek to solve it – but the movie fails to capture the magic that seems so effortless in other Spielberg films.

The boy is Tintin (Jamie Bell) and the clue is a cryptic piece of parchment concealed inside a model ship he bought secondhand from a street vendor. He might have known the purchase would spark trouble after a man named Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig) tries to buy the ship off Tintin. Sakharine needs only to utter a few words in Mr. Craig’s ominous, British drawl for us to know he’s the Bad Guy and Tintin wisely keeps the ship for himself, sensing an opportunity for adventure.

And how right he is! Before he knows it, Sakharine kidnaps him and he is onboard a real ship where he meets a drunken sea captain, Haddock (Andy Serkis). Haddock and Sakharine have a longstanding feud that is apparently news to Haddock; their ancestors were rival pirates and Sakharine’s relative cursed Haddock’s after the latter robbed him of his gold. Or something.

The plot details in these sorts of movies are more-or-less irrelevant as long the story takes our heroes from Land A to Land B and back again, which The Adventures of Tintin does. As it turns out, the parchment features as series of cryptic symbols along the bottom that can only be understood when read with two other notes, also hidden inside model ships. So we begin in Europe, where the first two ships are, then hop over to Morocco where the third is. The intervening trip involves travel by boat, plane and motorcycle and there is no shortage of dazzling animated action sequences.

So where does Tintin go wrong? To be honest, I’m at a bit of a loss to say but let’s start with the animation, which, on a surface level, is stunning. How an animator is able to recreate the look of a rainy street or the sun glistening off ocean waves in such a way that looks somehow better than the real thing, I’ll never know. The movie also looks great in 3D; the animation is crisp and sharp, and the added effect of the 3D is seamless.

But the inhabitants of this digital world have an odd quality about them. Because the actual physical performances of actors are being used through motion-capture, the characters of Tintin move like real people. Yet they remain cartoonish; they have big heads, exaggerated features and curvy, rubbery bodies. The strangeness of this look is especially noticeable in the film’s comedy, which is mostly broad and slapstick. The antics of a pair of bumbling coppers (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) are limited by the use of real actors. They appear to be cartoon characters but because their bodies have none of the elasticity of say, Wild E. Coyote when he steps off a cliff, their movements appear curiously stiff.

This creepy middle ground between animated people and the real thing kept the movie at a distance for me. A scene such as a motorcycle chase through a Moroccan town, shown in one long take, is breathtaking but also not as exciting as it should be. There is too much of a sense that these are pixels being cleverly manipulated to look like buildings, boats and boy who ducks and dives between them. The movie is visually impressive but only superficially so.

The failings of The Adventures of Tintin are not so great as to shake my faith in Mr. Spielberg’s talent, but the movie does make me realize how much I take for granted the action movies of his that do work. My inner child is always eager to escape into a movie and who knows, maybe Tintin’s next adventure will allow him to do so.

- Steve Avigliano, 01/02/12

REVIEW: Super 8

Super 8 (2011): Written and directed by J.J. Abrams. Starring: Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Ron Eldard and Riley Griffiths. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, some language and some drug use) Running time: 112 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

At a time when most big-budget summer movies are slick, commercialized products, here is one with an actual story and populated by characters we care about. In Super 8, a Spielbergian take on monster movies from writer/director J.J. Abrams, the characters’ actions provide the foundation for the special effects and not the other way around. I am reminded how much fun a good explosion can be when those running away from the pyrotechnics are as realistically rendered as the film’s computer animation.
 

Set largely in the summer of 1979 in a small Ohio town, Super 8 follows the 13-year-old Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) whose mother died the past winter in a factory accident. Joe’s father (Kyle Chandler) feels that a summer spent at baseball camp would be good for his son. As the town’s deputy, his work has not allowed him proper time to grieve and he needs a few months apart from his son.

Joe, however, does not have time for baseball camp. He needs to help his buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) finish the zombie movie they have been shooting in time to enter a local film festival. An aspiring auteur, Charles is one of the film’s many pleasures. He shoots on the titular 8mm Kodak camera and while his friends double as cast and crew.

On a technical level, their film is surprisingly accomplished (they have no doubt perfected their zombie death scenes over many past summers) but Charles is unsatisfied. The film is missing something. It needs human interest. A story to make the audience care whether or not the characters’ brains are eaten by the undead. For this, they cast a girl from their school, Alice (Elle Fanning), as the love interest. This complicates matters for Joe, whose father has a past with Alice’s deadbeat dad (Ron Eldard).

The film must go on though and in one of the Super 8’s finest scenes, the sci-fi intrigue is introduced. During a late night shoot at a local train station, the kids scramble to film their scene while a train rushes past (“Production value!” exclaims Charles). What the kids wind up catching on camera is more incredible than they could have imagined. A car rushes onto the tracks to derail the train and we are treated to the first of several well-choreographed scenes of the aforementioned explosions.

What exactly the train is holding and why it is derailed I will not go into. The remainder of Super 8 follows the kids as they seek to uncover just that. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force comes into town to hide whatever it was that happened from the local authorities including Joe’s father.

J.J. Abrams has clearly taken a page (or more) from Spielberg’s book here (Spielberg also produced the film). The bobbing flashlights of government officials and overhead shots of quiet suburban sprawl are direct nods to E.T., and the charmingly ragtag band of young teens is reminiscent of the Spielberg-produced movie, The Goonies. Even as the mystery monster starts snatching up the locals, Super 8 remains focused on its young protagonists as they desperately ride through town on bikes and borrowed cars from their parents.

Spielbergian touches aside, this is also a J.J. Abrams movie. And Abrams likes to blow things up real good. After producing the 2008 shaky-cam hit Cloverfield, where a Godzilla-sized sea monster beheaded the Statue of Liberty, Abrams has again delivered a killer monster mash that reinvigorates the genre.

While Cloverfield was content to simply destroy Manhattan and nothing more, Abrams adds some of that human interest the young Charles seeks to include in his own movie. Some of that human interest is a little heavy-handed – the sentimental themes of fatherly love and overcoming grief are not subtle – and the script is hardly flawless. There are some clunky expository lines and a few minor characters are picked up and dropped at the plot’s convenience, but these flaws have a certain charm to them. I was relieved to see that only one person – J.J. Abrams – wrote the film and not the team of writers that is usually a sign of many studio rewrites. The storytelling weaknesses in Super 8 are weaknesses in their own right and not the result of story being neglected in favor of special effects.

The script may not be terribly sophisticated in its exploration of how parents and children cope with grief (Spielberg himself has handled this much better in his own films) but Abrams gives Super 8 some charming touches that set it aside from less personal summer movies. He fills the town with colorful side characters, local inhabitants wrapped up in their own lives, unaware that a monster movie is happening around them and that they are not the stars.

Super 8 is prime summer entertainment and a sign that good genre movies are far from dead. This is a film with genuine heart whose sci-fi elements stem from a love of genre flicks as opposed to a love of box office. The best advice Super 8 takes from the great Spielberg blockbusters is to embrace its appreciation for B-movie fun and to hook the audience in by offering characters that we will remember vividly long after we forget how exactly that monster looked.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/20/11