So my husband and I went to see Looper recently and I thought it was pretty great!
(mild) Spoilers for film follow.
Things I liked:
The synopsis wasn't really much of a spoiler. Too frequently the synopsis of a film takes you up to like 3/4 of the way through the movie... but the synopsis I kept hearing about Looper was basically that the guy has to kill the older version of himself. And that's "revealed" very early on in the movie indeed because all the loopers have to kill their older selves: it's part of their contract. I felt like Joe having to fight Old Joe was really the setting for the film, rather than the actual plot.JGL as Young!Bruce Willis. So there was some very impressive makeup that contributed to this but a whole lot of it was Joseph Gordon-Levitt's acting. The way he stood, the way he held his mouth and the way he spoke made the scenes between Willis and Gordon-Levitt kind of freaky and super enjoyable.
Time-travel. What can I say? I basically love time travel movies so much I even voluntarily watched 'Hot-Tub Time Machine'. Looper is much better. I thought that the way it "worked" was very interesting and made much more sense than most time travel stories! I really enjoyed this rundown of the "rules" of timetravel in the Looper universe. I also liked the way they basically sidestepped explaining it all when Old Joe tells Young Joe they'll just get stuck playing with straws in the diner because, of course, it's not the point let's just get on with the movie!
I hadn't remembered to keep an eye out for purposes of the Bechdel test. Did you notice the all-women-are-my-mommy thing? That weirded me out a bit.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the time-travel model discussion by qntm at qntm.org/looper.
JGL's make-up was gorgeous. I half-expected the film to use dynamic CGI on Old and/or Young Joe for making them look more like the same individual.
Ugh yes! All the women were someone's mother and they were also HIS mother. It was super creepy! Also apparently in the future the only work is sex work.
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