Short reviews of nearly everything

Boredom is the most dangerous state. Boredom can lead to melancholia and depression, or to stupid/desperate measures to shake off boredom. Therefore it must be banished by all means available, such as the mass consumption of pop culture. These are some of our anti-boredom devices.

 Cabin in the Woods. All we knew of Cabin in the Woods is that Joss Whedon produced it, Chris Hemsworth (Thor) stars in it, and it’s a horror movie. Sold!

A decade ago the Scream series deconstructed the slasher horror movie, mocking its tropes and demonstrating how the characters seal their own doom by making dumb decisions. Now Cabin tells us why good-looking young people who only want a weekend of fun are doomed to grisly torments in countless slasher flicks.

In its spirit of self-referential humor and snappy dialogue, this movie reminds us of one of our all-time favorite TV shows, the Whedon-created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the end of each season of Buffy, the Slayer had to save the world from an apocalypse. Now imagine the world without a Slayer. It’s horrible and funny, with a cameo appearance that demands a standing ovation.

How to talk about Cabin in the Woods: “It’s so meta!” Fie on the distributors for the clumsy deletions. If you’re going to chop up your movie to get a friendlier rating, at least do it neatly.

 21 Jump Street. We laughed hysterically through most of this movie. It is probably not as funny as we thought, but we were remembering the ‘80s TV series. Which reminded us of ourselves in the ‘80s. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum go undercover in a high school universe that has undergone a radical change: Geeks are cool, dumb jocks are outcasts. Watch out for a brilliant yet totally expected cameo.

 Midnight in Paris. In the Woody Allen canon this would fall between Mighty Aphrodite and Small Time Crooks, i.e. middling. It is also the biggest box-office hit in Woody’s career, which tells us that the audience wants to see people talking about the art, literature and music of the early 20th century. That is a good thing.

 Loki plays F. Scott Fitzgerald and the former first lady of France plays a tour guide. All Woody Allen movies star Woody Allen or someone who sounds exactly like him: here it’s Owen Wilson.

My favorite Comp Lit professor used to define Romantic thus: “Anywhere but here, any time but now.” Midnight in Paris takes this literally.

The Avengers: Joss Whedon, we love you

 A Separation. Despite the universal acclaim for this Iranian movie, we were not looking forward to a melodrama about a couple splitting up. We were fools. A Separation is more thrilling than action flicks. Even more amazing: everything that happens in it could happen to us.

Who knew that ordinary life could be so… exciting? This is the best-written movie of the year; it should be required viewing for social realist filmmakers. You no longer have an excuse for being boring.

 Shame. Steve McQueen’s stark and elegant follow-up to his stark and elegant Hunger is the story of a man who is incapable of forming emotional relationships. In lieu of human bonds he has sex, and that’s all many reviewers see — the movie has been overshadowed by its brilliant star Michael Fassbender’s penis. The most common criticism of Shame is that the sex is not erotic. That is the point, you maniacs. Watch it again, this time with your brain.

 The Avengers. We have seen it thrice and will probably see it again. Joss Whedon, we love you. End of review.

 Game of Thrones, Season 2. Joy of joys, this season is even better than the first. There are changes to the source material but they are fairly minor and even (Sacrilege!) an improvement. Character development is deeper and the treatment more cinematic. (The Cersei and Baelish are either underwritten or underacted, but the Theon Greyjoy arc has depths the books only hinted at.)

 GOT is proof that the audience will follow shows with convoluted, interwoven plots and dozens of characters… if they can see boobies. Unlike many reviewers we have no problem with the amount of nudity on GOT, but the producers have to be fair. Listen, you lovely geeks, girls and gay guys probably make up the bulk of the GOT audience. Daenerys, Baelish’s employees, Shae, Osha, and many good-looking women appear naked on the show. There are lots of good-looking men too, but who appears naked onscreen? Not Jon Snow, Robb, Theon, Jaime, Renly, but Hodor. Hodor!

 We are especially pleased at the number of people we’ve spotted in coffee shops reading the books by George R.R. Martin.

 Homeland. Claire Danes plays an intense psychotic bitch CIA analyst whose informer tells her that an American prisoner of war has been turned into an Al-Qaeda sleeper. Damian Lewis plays a returning American soldier turned media hero who fits the bill. The CIA analyst is unstable and the soldier is absolutely sympathetic. Usually this means he is guilty, but the plot is way more complicated than that. We can’t stand Danes, but we must say she is perfectly cast. Lewis keeps us guessing all the way to the end.

Sherlock. Benedict Cumberbatch whose cheekbones start at his hairline plays the famed detective as a high-functioning sociopath in 21st century London. Martin Freeman is his housemate Watson, a doctor invalided out of the British Army after a stint in Afghanistan. The series reconfigures the Conan Doyle stories in a clever, contemporary way: Holmes and Watson are frequently mistaken for lovers, their adventures are reported in Watson’s blog, and Irene Adler is a dominatrix. Sherlock is both annoying and endearing, and the show’s directors find interesting visual equivalents for his mental processes.

 There are only six 90-minute episodes (and a one-hour pilot that was reworked into the first episode), and the third season won’t air until 2014. Watch sparingly.

Downton Abbey. The acclaimed Julian Fellowes series about an aristocratic English family and their servants is a highly addictive soap opera about class, love and money. And we watched it like a soap opera: while washing dishes, dusting the shelves, grooming the cats. Afterwards we heard ourselves thinking with a British accent.

Dark Shadows. Do you see what a good actor Johnny Depp is, how he creates believably bizarre characters and maintains their integrity in the most ridiculous circumstances? Here he is Barnabas Collins, who falls under a foul curse from a spurned witch, turns into a vampire, sleeps for two centuries and wakes up in 1972.  The man-out-of-time gags are hysterical and the cast—Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Chloe Moretz, Helena Bonham Carter—is fabulous, but as with most Tim Burton movies the big build-up leads to a rather perfunctory ending. But it’s still a blast.

 Conversation we overheard in the box-office queue.

 Girl 1: So they’re copying Twilight?

 Girl 2: No, it’s from a TV show made way before Twilight.

 Thank you, Girl 2, though it would’ve been better if you’d poured the Frappucino on Girl 1’s head.