First Impressions: "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (2012), "J Edgar" (2011) + "Sinister" (2012)

   I rented another trio of DVDs from Xtra-vision for this weekend.

   And, as it happens, we start with the best one! :) It's Beasts of the Southern Wild. I was torn between this and Rust and Bone, but I decided to go with the Oscar nominee. So… it was good. Yeah, I enjoyed it.
   Not only did the opening scenes quickly get me fully immersed in the Bathtub environment, but it's incredibly rare that a movie actually succeeds in making me feel like a kid again. The main character's personality and outlook on life is just spot-on.
   The third act confused me at first, but quickly explained itself, brilliantly putting the cap on a consistently strong film.
   It even manages to work in a message about the melting of the polar icecaps without it seeming forced!
   It's just an all-around thoroughly enjoyable movie, from the instantly endearing opening to the fantastic credits music.
   My rating: 80%.

   Now for J Edgar.
   I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood as a director, so it breaks my heart to say this, but man… this movie sucks! I mean, what happened, Clint?
   All the main comments in the Rotten Tomatoes consensus are true. The lighting is consistently poor, and not just in the scenes where everything's too dark. The old-face makeup is the absolute worst I've ever seen. The narrative is jumbled, sometimes to the point where scenes seem just randomly shuffled. Even Leonardo DiCaprio's central performance is hammy at best, and the rest of the acting is just as wooden.
   The movie juggles two stories at once: the young days of Hoover that you'd expect, and another in his later years. I didn't care about either.
   The really maddening thing is that I saw brief glimpses of what this movie could have been. Some of the philosophy is sound, and the beginnings of what Hoover revolutionised are touched on.
   In short, a great biopic of J Edgar Hoover could certainly be possible, but this definitely isn't it!
   My rating: 30%.

   But the third, just like last time, is the one for which I rented all three in the first place: Sinister.
   Now, horror movies based on the supernatural usually never frighten me. This one too didn't really scare me, but it did succeed in doing the next-best thing: creeping me out. And I think that's mainly thanks to how down-to-earth and relatable the characters are.
   That and the movie has an intelligence to it that very few horror films have – which is hardly surprising, considering it was written by a film critic! It does rely a bit too much on jump scares, but it still keeps you in suspense because it's mainly a mystery story, so you're constantly wondering what you're going to see and how it'll prove helpful as a clue.
   The best moment by far is the music playing over the second film (the "barbecue" one). Something about that music just makes the whole scene very unsettling.
   In short, there were a tonne of horror movies in 2012. I only saw a couple of them, but I think I can quite safely say that Sinister, at least in terms of actual horror, was easily the best.
   My rating: 70%.