Pan: (dir: Joe Wright) Pan is pure, breathless, grand spectacle, colorful and quick-moving, visually inventive, sometimes ingenious. The use of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Blitzkrieg Bop" is inspired and powerful. Hugh Jackman as the pirate is absolutely marvellous. And still it manages to leave one entirely emotionally unengaged.
As in so much non-thinking children's fare, the bulk of the adult characters are cartoonishly evil, a few are angelically good (which means they exist for the sole purpose of loving, nurturing and furthering the boy-child at the film's center), and there is one weak but well-meaning clown-figure to mediate between the two groups. The mermaids, who might be so interestingly dangerous, are instead a boy's wet-dream, identical twin supermodels. The moral platitudes the film winds up promoting are ancient, etiolated (and, arguably, patently false) chestnuts like "a mother's love is perfect and stretches beyond time, space, even death" and "believe in yourself, and you can do anything!" These themes often find themselves attached to Peter Pan projects, but a return to the original book reveals a subtle darkness, and a cynical humor underlying themes of both motherhood and achievement. Wouldn't it be nice to explore some of that?
IN SUMMARY: Turn off your brain and enjoy the prettiness. Or just watch something else.
the Big Short: (dir: Adam McKay) It seems impossible that this story, mostly concerned with communicating the intricacies of banking minutiae, is told in an entertaining fashion, but it really is. Avoiding the linear and conventional, McKay keeps the pace jumping by having his characters break the fourth wall on occasion, usually to assure us either that a thing didn't really happen like they're showing it, or that yes, it really DID happen like this, and by bringing in celebrities (Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez, some naked chick in a bubble-bath whose name I didn't recognize) to tell stories illustrating the twistier expositionary points.
It's not Christian Bale's best work. Steve Carrell's character, depressed and growing increasingly so throughout, seems to be the only one facing the insanity of the situation with a sane reaction. You expect him at every moment to go off the roof.
IN SUMMARY: It's about the build-up to the crash, for Chrissake. As fun as they make it, it's still depressing as hell. Here's the thing: these guys, these underdogs, are betting on the world economy crashing, and we want them to win, and the slimy bankers to lose. But then when they do win, it means the fucking world economy has crashed. As the Brad Pitt character says (I'm paraphrasing), "You won. Just don't dance about it." In the lobby on the way out, I told my boyfriend I wanted to cancel my retirement fund. (I haven't.) In that moment, it felt like poison to the soul, having even the slightest contact with that world of hideous grotesquerie.
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