…are best summed up by a giant question mark, probably.
I actually really loved Brick, the first Rian Johnson/Joseph Gordon-Levitt team-up. And I didn’t not like Looper, I just… I don’t know how much I liked it, either. The whole time, I was sitting there objectively going “okay, and I understand that this is pretty well-done as a film,” but I just. I don’t know. I didn’t get into it.
I got into Brick really easily, because film noir in high school? That’s the stuff my dreams are made of. It was a pretty cohesively styled movie, and damn stylish at that, without sacrificing substance or anything. I guess that’s one of my iffinesses about Looper; it didn’t feel super-cohesive. At first, I was thinking it was going to be another noir thing, with guns and all the narration, and then I got excited. And then it turned into a crapocalyptic future (I mean, well, clearly the future sucked some ass, but they never really explained what made that happen) and I shrugged. And then it was a horror movie about a creepy demon child, and then… back to noir at the end, I think?
I don’t know. I’d have rather it stuck with something, or it somehow combined all those things from the start.
Also, and she repeated herself for the thousandth time, characters. I felt next to nothing for most of these characters; Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis were appropriately growly and tough as younger/older Joe, Emily Blunt was fine (kind of Walking Deadsy) as farm-runnin’ single mom Sarah, but there kept being glimpses of being more interesting, and then they retreated back into something flatter. Surprise Paul Dano and even more surprise Garret Dillahunt sufficed, but I wanted more from them. They’re capable of more.
The fact that I’m attached to so many television shows is a problem, because the ones I’m attached to, I often get so because the characters are developed out to my liking, and then I get linefaced when other things don’t develop as much. It’s really hard for me to remind myself that no, Deadwood is the exception, not the rule.
I’m… a little linefaced about this movie re: ladies, yeah. Sarah was decent, and she didn’t get trapped in the damsel situation; she was very confident in her desires. I mean, it was a little frustrating for me that she and younger Joe ended up banging, but she initiated it because she wanted some sex, and nobody was kidding themselves that it would be love immediately. Which was nice enough.
Then you had Suzie (Piper Perabo), a dancer/hooker/it kind of looked like mafioso Jeff Daniels ran a version of the club in the first subreality level of Sucker Punch that wasn’t as glitzy or something and that’s where she worked, and she was there to flirt with Joe and bang Joe and she had a daughter. And you had Beatrix (my darling Tracie Thoms), and she was a waitress. And you had who is literally credited as “Old Joe’s Wife,” played by Qing Xu (credited as Summer Qing), who was apparently the love of Old Joe’s life, because she just did for him till she got killed for it, but she didn’t even have a name. Which, what?
And that was it for ladies. The whole time, I was just sitting there going “okay, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, you’re doing fine, but why couldn’t this movie be about a lady Looper?” Were there any lady Loopers? I sure didn’t see any women except the hookers in mafioso Jeff Daniels’ clubhideoutplace. I just. I want more ladies in movies.
It was a pretty decent flick, though. Nicely made. Just… I’m left wanting.
–your fangirl heroine.
