Was about to post this....Shane Carruth is not fucking around. And it's actually coming out in my city, so pumped!

Goddamn, it's crazy how fast people are picking this up. That looks super rad. How did you do the shadow? I assume the photo is a flat 2d surface, but the shadow looks like it's projecting backwards the way you'd expect if the environment was 3d

Having seen some new films and re-watched others, I'm revising this a bit, Zero Dark Thirty being the biggest change. The Raid also fell below Dredd after re-watching both in close proximity, and Looper just barely falls off.

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. The Grey
3. Dredd
4. The Raid
5. Seven Psychopaths
6. Dark Knight Rises
7. Cabin in the Woods
8. Django Unchained
9. The Master
10. Skyfall

I loved it. I get what you're saying, but I was personally totally with the protagonist the whole way through, I really respect committed, driven individuals, and don't agree at all that it's bloodless. They get a lot of mileage out of her being a hard-ass, and she actually gets some very good lines throughout, I really don't think she's that muted. I also think it's a success, not a failure, of the movie that you don't have characters "talking" about the implications/effects of torture on themselves. There is a really shitty version of this movie that could've been made (probably by Oliver Stone and Aaron Sorkin) where the characters would monologue at each-other constantly about the implications of this and that, and whether what they're doing is right.

Bigelow and Boal make the absolutely correct and ballsy call to play everything realistic and straight, because guess what, if you're a professional doing a job, you focus on the job, you don't have these Hollywood-style meaningful conversations about the morality of your job and your motivations as a human being.

Frankly, I think the movie does a remarkable job of navigating a political and moral minefield and coming out unscathed, they depict everything straight on, don't shy away from the costs of the job, and avoid making any judgements.

I actually think the people saying the movie supports torture are clearly not paying attention to this movie, because none of the information yielded from the enhanced interrogations in the film actually proves to be useful. It's actually the exact opposite, there's a specific sequence showing the interrogations leading to useless information, followed by a scene where Maya uses a clever, non-violent bluff to get information from a detainee.
I don't know how anyone can walk away from the film thinking torture is justified or effective.

This movie in many ways feels like The Hurt Locker, except with all the stupid and unrealistic scenes replaced with realistic and tense equivalents. As an action director Bigelow is on fire here, and I haven't felt this tense or off-balance during any film this year. What's crazy is I think this movie that is based mostly on true events works shockingly well as a traditional 3-act narrative, and it's kind of a miracle that it even exists.

I strongly suspect this will go down as the definitive film work about American foreign policy over the last decade, an Apocalypse Now for my generation.

I have a theory about the state of sci-fi filmmaking falling so hard off a cliff, that movies that would 20 years ago have been called mediocre at best now get hailed as sci-fi masterpieces. Also see Source Code. This also falls into a more annoying recent trend, where a movie being complicated automatically means it's smart and well-written. The art of movies that execute really well on a simple concept has mostly died away, and then when an actual masterpiece like Dredd comes out, no-one goes to see it and people write it off as being dumb and simple. That movie doesn't try to show off and be clever and elaborate every 3 minutes, but instead has a complete and confident understanding of what it's trying to accomplish, a cohesive sci-fi vision (which feels fresh), and a real strong discipline about sticking to it's throughline.

Edit: Before DocSub yells at me, I should clarify I still like both films, I just think there's a double-standard both critically and commercially at play, and it bugs me that simplicity is automatically seen as a negative.

^^^^ THIS THIS THIS

Quick Change is hilarious, and The Bank Job is excellent and probably has the best performance of Statham's career.

I'd throw Basil Poledouris's Conan the Barbarian safely in with your LOTR music, I adore that soundtrack. Give something like "The Atlantean Sword" a listen if you're not already sold.

More recently, I've been enjoying some of the stuff off the Dredd soundtrack, check out "Ma Ma's Requiem" and "She's a Pass".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096517/

Takes place almost entirely inside a single apartment, the performances are great, the women are hot.

Not surprised, just genuinely shocked that my brain had literally forgotten that movie even existed. Also, to clarify, Cloud Atlas is at the bottom of my worst list, meaning least bad, not most bad, I like certain things about it, but I think its a mess. You should definitely see it to find out what side you fall on.

Lockout is in no way shape or form a perfect movie, nor is it even an acceptable action movie. Completely squanders it's awesome premise, not a single memorable action beat, no violence, forgettable villains who don't even end up facing off with the hero, failure to use what should be an awesome location (a space prison is one of the potentially best action movie settings ever), Guy Pearce is fun as a wise-cracking hero but never gets to do anything cool enough to be the badass he clearly thinks he is.

Nothing wrong with enjoying it, but you're selling the concept short if you think it delivers on the premise.

I'll second Chronicle, I haven't seen it since theaters though, so I can't tell you if it drops any setup/story-threads (maybe the girlfriendish character? Although I think there's an extended cut that adds some stuff back in).

In the vein of Dredd, I'd maybe throw The Raid in there as well, though that's kind of cheating since there's intentionally so little character or story in there.