Moonrise Kingdom (2012, U.S.)

This movie is a charming coming-of-age tale, but beyond that it's hard to describe. These two pre-teens meet each other and become pen pals. The girl is from a dysfunctional, seemingly wealthy family on a New England island, and the boy is an orphaned ward of the state attending camp on the island. They decide to run away together.

There are many laugh-out-loud moments and touching moments alike. The ensemble cast was very well put together, and the new young actors who played the runaway children were especially brilliant.

As I said, it's very hard to describe this whimsical, strange movie, but it is definitely worth seeing.

Rating: 3.5

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012, U.S.)

I hate to say it, but yawn. I was kind of expecting it, to be honest, but it was still disappointing anyway. It started out so well with the arrival of the dwarves, invading Bilbo's home and pantry, cheerfully singing their clean up songs and mournfully singing their treasure songs. I was pretty excited then, because those early scenes in Bilbo's hobbit-hole were perfect. It was all downhill from there.

Mainly the problem is that a book, essentially a children's fairy tale, that should have been made into one movie is being stretched painfully into three. "Like butter scraped over too much bread," if you will. They drew out things that hadn't happened in the books, bringing characters on screen that were simply mentioned by other characters, namely Radagast the brown. Him and his stupid bunny sled were ridiculous. The book is mostly from Bilbo's point of view, and I certainly don't remember any description of what the dwarves were doing while he was lost in the dark in the Misty Mountains, and the giant fat albino goblin type thing that they encountered was just stupid. Also as much as I love them, I could have done without Elrond and Galadriel. Ugh, huge parts of it were just frustrating.

I'm being generous and giving this a 3.0 because of course Middle Earth was as beautiful as always and the casting of Bilbo and the dwarves was great and the early scenes were so enjoyable, but honestly it was just boring for huge parts. Very sad. Should have been one movie only. Duh.

Rating: 3.0

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012, U.S.)

Oh, how sad I was to find this movie so run-of-the-mill. I had heard such great things about it and I'm a huge fan of Andrew Garfield, but alas, it just felt like every other super hero movie, really.

I'm not sure what it was. The cast was great: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans usually stand out to me. Sally Field and Martin Sheen were really great as Peter's aunt and uncle. I enjoyed the focus on the science aspect. The action scenes were good. So why did it seem to fall flat?

The only thing I can think of is that I was not convinced by "The Lizard." His initial transition was good, but then he just seemed to fall on the corny side as far a supervillains go. So that's really all I can come up with. It was good, but it didn't blow me away. Another victim of hype.

Rating: 3.5

Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (2012, U.S.)

I am stunned! I really didn't like the second half of Breaking Dawn (the book), so I expected the movie to be even worse. Mainly, I absolutely hated that stupid kid. However, in the movie you can actually see why she was so appealing to everyone, which makes the second half so much more sensible!

But I get ahead of myself. I want to start with how amazing the credits were. I'm getting them confused in my head (opening and closing), but I believe it was the opening credits that were all black and white with hints of red, really artfully done. The closing credits did this amazing thing where it showed the final words of the novel from the novel, and it felt like a book closing with this sort of finality. Then they did the kind of credits were all the main actors were pictured from the entire series, which furthered that feeling. Pretty awesome on both ends.

And the middle was really good too. Like I said, the kid was not annoying. They simplified the whole "Jay" sideplot to work with the movie. The supporting cast of vampires was really amazing, although I have to say a big part of why I didn't give this a 4.5 is because I felt like they were all short changed on screen time. The big fight at the end was just amazing, especially with all the twists that I had managed to completely forget from the book. I was completely nail-biting, which was completely unexpected.

Everyone belittles "KStew" and "RPattz," but I continue to think that they're both great actors. Maybe this isn't the best vehicle for them, but still. Stewart does a convincing job as someone finally getting in touch with her real self. The contrast between the awkward human and the graceful vampire is very obvious if you compare the early movies to this one.

I thought this was a strong ending to the series, particularly with the above-mentioned credits that tied the movie into the book and tied all the movies together. I'm looking forward to a marathon when it comes to DVD.

Rating: 4.0