The Place Beyond the Pines

I didn't understand the characters' motivations for a lot of The Place Beyond the Pines, but the cinematography was nice, the music worked, and I really liked the triptych format and being able to find out what happened sort of "after" the movie.

I liked the way this movie looked. It was kind of old-school/gritty, but it was really well-shot. The music was interesting, and I liked the format of the movie, how it started out with Luke's story, and then the "passing of the baton," as the director put it, changing to Avery's story, and then AJ/Jason's. I liked that we got to see what happened with their kids, kind of what happens "after" the movie. That's one of the main reasons I was interested in seeing it.

The Wolverine

The Wolverine looked good, but there was a lot of nonsensical stuff going on, and there wasn't enough substance to justify a movie.

I didn't have any interest in seeing The Wolverine. Roeper said it was good, but the trailer just didn't sell it. Okay, Wolverine loses his healing power, and he has to get it back. And then he gets it back, I'm sure. Great. What's the point of the movie, exactly? Turns out there wasn't one, because that's all there was. It looked good, and I like Wolverine just fine, but there wasn't really any reason to make this movie. It came across as just a thing Wolverine did one time, without there really being any meaning to it. I guess it would've worked fine as a comic story arc, or a TV episode or something, but there has to be something more for it to work as a movie.

The Host

The Host had some good ideas, and it did hold my interest for the entire time, but the writing, score, and characters pretty much ruined it.

I probably wouldn't have rented this if I had known it was a Stephenie Meyer (author of Twilight) book. I didn't find out until I already had it, and by then I figured I might as well go through with it, anyway. Roeper didn't review it, and IMDb didn't really like it, but I was hoping maybe it would still be okay. It wasn't. The music was overbearing and melodramatic. It was too exaggerated for what was going on, and it really brought you out of the experience.