Yakoob on 2/10/2012 at 17:36
I went to see it expecting a generic Bruce-Willis SciFi flick, but left completely blown. The movie instantly made it to my top 10 of all time - near perfect blend of drama, comedy, action and thinking-mans-film with good premise, engaging story that grabs you with many different themes and motifs, genuine plot-twists that throw real curve-balls, very plausible but cool depiction of the future, and beautiful cinematography to top it all off.
The premise is pretty basic but interesting, and I love their depicition of the future. On the way to the cinema we actually passed an electric car charging so seeing electric cars with ghetto-strapped solar panels to their chargers was pretty neat but plausible nod to "what future might be." Also liked the "upper vs. lower" class depictions, albeit they did seem a too extreme at times (like the casuality a dude shotguns someone. does police not exist anymore?).
But the thing that sold the movie for me were it's plethora of motifs and themes. First, it's about semi-future and time travel. Then it's about the conundrum of loopers and killing your future self (would you do it?) Then it's about love and "how far you will go to protect your loved one?". Then about protecting and raising children mixed with "great power comes great responsibility" type stuff. Then we can see a bad man turned good go back to being bad (has he really changed at all?) Then it's about the dilemma of killing a kid who you know will become evil, is it justified? Then it's about how all your actions create this looping paradox that creates itself and leads the main character to kill himself to break it. It keeps constantly mixing up things, yet never forgets about them, and everything comes beautifully together in the end.
But the movie also does a good job of NOT over-explaining things and leaving something to the audience. Particularily liked it when the first future-looper to escape started getting marks on his body and slowly losing limbs. You can guess what is going on without the movie being in-your-face about it. And even the ending leaves some nice room for speculation will the kid really grow up good now? was it worth it?
I also loved how the little details were more than just gimmics and actually played a role in the story like the telekinesis gene and floating coins or the stripper girl who turns out to be mother of one of the 3 kids. After the likes and popularity of Lost or Prometheus, it's good to see a structured story that ties its loose ends :)
And Bruce even got some nice action scenes (nod to his former career) without going over-the-top or unrealistic. And did I mention the cinematography is fun-facking-amazing? The shot when everything in the house floats as blood spurs from the guy, the kid lying on the floor holy shit, my mouth agape.
Go see it. If only to tell me how wrong I am :p
P.S. And I also loved Bruce's line in the diner "Let's not get into trying to explain that time traveling shit, we'll just end up sitting here for hours drawing diagrams with straws." Funny and indirect way of telling the audience to suspend their belief about how time travel works (as that's not what the movie is about).
Pyrian on 2/10/2012 at 20:17
Loved the movie. :cheeky:
Quote Posted by Yakoob
P.S. And I also loved Bruce's line in the diner
"Let's not get into trying to explain that time traveling shit, we'll just end up sitting here for hours drawing diagrams with straws." Funny and indirect way of telling the audience to suspend their belief about how time travel works (as that's not what the movie is about).
It's clearly
not standard time-travel, which is cool. The time traveller is, in a sense, a ghost of his own possibilities, which can change from moment to moment
without affecting what he's already done, post time-travel, which is novel. How it actually works is probably better left unexplained, because any relatively simple explanation won't work. You'd need a complex underpinning to tie off the various paradoxes involved, and it still seems like the central conflict
may have been in vain:
for if the child is not at least possibly "bad" by nature, but only by Joe's hand, but Joe's hand was forced by the grown child's "bad" actions, then there's no reason for that causal loop to have ever started in any given possible timeline.
N'Al on 3/10/2012 at 19:49
Quote Posted by Yakoob
generic Bruce-Willis SciFi flick
I sincerely hope you're not talking about (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/) this, because if you were talking about (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/) this I'd be having words with you.
As for Looper, pretty fantastic, yes. I did like one whispered comment by a person in the audience, just before the end credits:
"You fucked your own mum." One way to interpret it ... ;)
Re: the police -
they were all in Abe's pocket, were they not? Would explain why they've become somewhat lax in enforcing the law.SubJeff on 4/10/2012 at 18:16
Said what I think elsewhere.
It was okay.
SubJeff on 5/10/2012 at 20:28
Okay, I'm back from my jollies.
It was quite a disappointment imho.
The right plot, the right cast, good performances, nothing cheesy or over the top. But the pacing was all wrong and it just somehow didn't gel together as well as it should/could.
It's theoretically better than Dredd; in practice it isn't.
Scots Taffer on 7/10/2012 at 02:36
Quote Posted by Armond White
Said what I think elsewhere.
It was okay.
Quote Posted by Armond White
It was quite a disappointment imho.
...
It's theoretically better than Dredd; in practice it isn't.
SubJeff on 7/10/2012 at 09:34
Come on now, that's hardly Armond White level!
Vivian on 10/10/2012 at 23:12
Half awesome, half bullshit, by the end bullshit wins unfortunately, definitely second best bruce willis time-travel movie.
Scots Taffer on 12/10/2012 at 13:34
So yeah ... Cid is Young Joe is Old Joe ad infinitum. Cool!
The flashback/forward of 30 years was confusing but by the time the end rolled around it had all settled.
There were a lot of layers to this flick. Can't wait to rewatch.
Someone has to help me figure out Kid Blue though... there was definitely something else there. At one point I thought he was a young Jeff Daniels, but they kept it frustratingly vague.
