I gifted myself an out-of-boredom double-feature over the weekend. I got my guerrilla on and paid for the first movie and then snuck into the second. Criminal! Call the fuzz! Listen, I was not paying twenty-six dollars for this crap, alright? Let's take a look at what I seen:
Chronicle - There's some fun to be had watching three hormonal teenage boys (this sentence is not going where that sentence might go in another context, unfortunately) gain superpowers and spin wildly out of control with them, mostly in the set-up. It's the little things that work best - floating legos and that first taste of flight. And I liked the clever cultural touch of narcissism by way of that hovering self-employed steadi-cam. But it starts getting really loud really fast and goes a little bit up its own ass in the final act, losing itself in a whole lot lopsided spectacle.
The Grey - It works in fits, there's definite tension wrung out from some of its set-pieces, but its belligerent machismo is its own worst enemy. It's trying too hard, ya know? You start to suspect all that chest-puffing's hiding its manly inadequacies. It's deeply silly when it tries to be profound, and exceedingly lazy when sketching in the blurry human beings getting tore up bit by bit by the big bads. There's something so pedestrian about the "pick 'em off one by one" way the whole thing structured that I've seen a thousand times, and a couple of notes hit me so sour I just couldn't stay with it. By the time that IV drip made its appearance I was howling louder than any wolves..
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