MIXED BAG reviews!

Jupiter Ascending. Holy shit was this a waste of time and money. I’m not being glib when I say Jupiter Ascending is crippled by ridiculous plot threads. Listen, I watch Beastmaster almost every Christmas, so I’m a connaisseur of ridiculous plot threads — and trust me, there’s a fine line between fun ridiculousness and idiotic ridiculousness. By this definition, Jupiter Ascending is running the ball to the Battlefield Earth side of the field. The Wachowski’s (whose Bound, Matrix and Cloud Atlas I loved dearly) are dangerously close to M. Night Shyamalan levels of ineptitude here, and after this and that Speed Racer debacle, their next release is a free-be loan at the library.

Horns. There’s a lot of good going on in Horns (Daniel Radcliffe, Juno Temple, rich locations and sets). I really, really loved the supernatural premise: Radcliffe gets horns that force people to expose their darkest desires and thoughts, then ask him permission to enact them. It’s a great set-up: we’re a morally imbalanced people and the devil’s presence merely compels our honesty, instead of nicely hiding it in the shadows. What I didn’t like was the vehicle the premise was riding in: the central murder mystery became a bit long in the tooth and the third act too far reaching.

Fargo (the series).  I had written Billy Bob Thornton off as either being weird musician guy who passively aggressively doesn’t want to be known as an actor or as the guy who does the gruff, vulgar asshole role in movies that centre around gruff, vulgar assholes. But boy is he great in Fargo. In fact, everyone is great in Fargo: Martin Freeman (between Sherlock, Hobbit movies and this, when does this guy find time to sleep?), Alison Tolman, Bob Odenkirk, Colin Hanks. I even don’t mind Adam Goldberg, that smug dick who I always want to hit with a shovel when I see him on screen (is that just me?) I’m four episodes in, but each one so far is pretty damned solid.

Frank. In my youth, I used to suffer through any movie, but now I don’t have the patience or time — and five minutes into watching Frank I almost turned it off. It had the earmarks of every pretentious, hipster indie released the last ten years (head-on camera angles, charmingly flawed main character, whacky supporting characters). But something in me kept it on, and I’m glad I did. Frank is a meditation on pursuing a dream, which starts off pure but slowly evolves into reasons that are all wrong. It ruminates on the effects of being too close to genius: sometimes it doesn’t inspire you, sometimes you just start to believe that being near it, you’re a genius as well. It also does a great job at showing the blemish of brilliance, that the price of thinking outside the box often comes with the heavy toll of mental illness and personal weakness. It does all this with Michael Fassbender wearing a giant, weird papier mache head, so yeah, I’m pretty happy I held out and didn’t press stop on the remote. If only I could’ve while watching Jupiter Ascending.