Weekend Muvie Revue

Looper

Here at Yourpopfilter.com we spend a pretty solid chunk of our time talking about Chris Nolan.  We spend even more talking about M Night Shyamalan for some reason and I personally can never, ever shut the fuck about Darren Aaronovsky.  You probably have three very different opinions about those three very different directors but they’re still in the same class.  They’re in the very exclusive class of directors who pretty much get to do whatever they want.  When one of those three makes a movie you can basically say ‘this movie is going to be whatever they want it to be whether that’s good or not.’  Rian Johnson is probably about to enter that category, and that’s very important to know when determining what value Looper will hold for you.   Johnson probably won’t end up like Shymalan.  Looper is about to get talked about a whole bunch but nobody loves it like they loved Sixth Sense and he doesn’t have nearly as many crutches as Shyamalan obviously did in retrospect.  But he is on his way to becoming a mini-Nolan or a mini-Aaronovsky.  There’s going to be a pretty intense wave of dick-sucking for Looper in the next few months.  Then there’s going to be a backlash against all the dick-sucking.  Then there’s going to be a second wave of dick-sucking to counter the backlash.  Then it’s just going to be lashings and dick-sucking over and over again until we’re no better than some god damned colonial merchant vessel.

It won’t be nearly as in intense as it was for, say, Inception – but it will be there and will follow the same pattern.  That’s because Looper is objectively good.  If you think it’s terrible you’re either one of the back-lashers or you’re just wrong because there’s totally enough ‘good’ in Looper to at least get you to ‘meh’.  It’s objectively good but it’s subjectively great and that’s where the disagreements come from.  When someone is the sole creative vision behind a movie you kind of just have to accept that they’re going to put a certain percentage of stupid shit in it.  Looper takes place in the future and yet everyone carries comically large old-western revolvers around.  Sure, why not?  It’s a movie about mafia-controlled time assassins and also there’s a bunch of stuff about telekinetic mutants?  Yeah, throw that in there too.

Looper is a movie that asks a lot of you.  As I mentioned it has a pretty ‘pulpy’ conceit and then it still just keeps piling shit on top of it.  That’s the downside of Dicatorectors.  The upside is that these guys have a very definite vision of the story they want to tell and the movie they want to make, so there’s a certain level of earnestness you don’t find in other movies.  That’s what gets all the reasonable people to ‘meh’.   What causes the dicksuck-backlash cycle is the fact that when some people watch this movie, their ‘vision’ of what it should be is going to match up perfectly with the directors.  Or else they just love the director’s style enough that the extra shit and weird decisions don’t matter.  Which is fine, except for the fact that they then pretend the flaws and weird shit just don’t exist.  They run around throwing up insane reviews about how this is the best movie ever or flooding reddit or facebook with a bunch of posts about how masterful it is.  Then come the people who didn’t love the director’s style.  They enjoyed the movie, but all the plot holes and weird decisions still distract them.  Now they’re annoyed at the first group, who seem to be ignoring the fact that those things exist. They call the first group stupid, and in response they defend the movie even harder.  The cycle continues from there…

I can’t promise you’ll love Looper.  In fact, I fall pretty firmly into the second category.  It’s worth finding out for yourself because there are some really great things about this movie.  It’s also worth it because frankly, there’s not much else going on right now.  Finally it’s worth it because it’s a movie people are talking about.  You can take sides!  The people who don’t agree with you can be idiots!  You can rant about it to anyone who will listen!  You get to watch what you’ll at least think was a passable film and take part in all the silly drama that follows it.  That alone is worth the admission.

Verdict:

*** (out of ****)

 

Am I right or am I right?  Email all opinions, in the form of a yes or no answer, to [email protected] and explain yourself before you cause pain to yourself.  Or, follow me on Twitter @Dan_Tompkins.  You can shout at me there and as a bonus, I will amuse you.