1. The Fault in Our Stars - Amazon - 6
2. Snowpiercer - Netflix - 7
3. Blue Ruin - Netflix - 8
4. The Imitation Game - Regal Hollywood 20, Beavercreek - 8
5. Proxy - Netflix -
7Went in expecting this 2 hour thriller to be a bit too long for my liking, was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't. The film is well-shot and the score is surprisingly effective... even when occasionally the acting is not. The whole intent is to make the viewer feel uneasy right from the beginning, and the film succeeds at that fairly quickly despite some jarring tonal shifts. My attention didn't lag even when the film has to recover from a near resolution at around the one hour mark.
Also am giving this a +1 for being able to recognize an Elder-Beerman about 40 minutes in (though they for obvious reasons didn't want their brand to be shown)... turns out this was shot in and around Richmond, Indiana. So, kudos to quasi-local filmmakers for making not a terrible film.
6. Divergent - Blu-Ray -
3I think I am suffering from what experts like to call "dystopian future fatigue", as this is film #5 that I've seen in the last 12 months that is based of a YA novel envisioning not the brightest of futures. This one, unlike the 2 Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and The Giver envisions a future where the leaders basically thumb their noses at the living following a great war by trying to create a peaceful society based around the inherent ideas of separate and unequal factions. Good luck with that.
Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this, but I thought this was the most poorly written of the five for the screen, and C-Fan tells me that there were not as many action set-pieces in the book as there are in the film... which helps explain a lot. They tried to Hollywood-up the book, and did not succeed.