I Love Movies! (I Hate Boxtrolls.)

Between Friday and Sunday, I saw FIVE movies.

In order...

GONE GIRL: Awesome. Starts off problematic (Fincher is not great at the "meet cute" routine) but I love where this goes.

THE EQUALIZER: Outstanding. Denzel is great at playing the unkillable monastic killer who helps out white folks and has no romantic interests. (He also helps out Hispanics.) Crazy fun. Hope this turns into a franchise.

ANNABELLE: Disappointing, as expected, but it still had a few good horror ideas in it. It's hard to do horror really well. This is a firmly mediocre effort.

A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES: Awesome. Like Denzel in Equalizer, Liam makes a great unkillable hero. Since Scott Frank wrote and directed this, it's not as aggressively brainless as the TAKEN series.

THE BOXTROLLS (3D): Repellent. I did not expect to loathe this movie as much as I did. The aesthetic is grotesques. Was this supposed to be for kids? Because none of the LARGE GROUP OF KIDS in the theater with me enjoyed this movie. (Vocal review by random girl as the end credits played: "THIS MOVIE IS SO BORING!!!") None of the humor lands. A lot of the characters are simply ugly to look at. The titular boxtrolls are far from endearing. (Watch WALL-E: the Pixar folks take great care in meticulously establishing the character of the protagonist, through very simple, precise actions, making you care about him. They do not simply assume that you will love this character because he does quirky things.) There is one musical number in BOXTROLLS that is so completely unpleasant to listen to and look at: the movie is filled with unpleasant scenes to suffer through. And the messages it tries to bludgeon you with are not convincingly argued: about how class systems in society are bad, about how you can be anything you want to be, about how BOXTROLLS ARE NOT MONSTERS! All the adults are completely illogical morons. The two children are not much better. This is an awful, charmless movie and should not be getting positive reviews. B+