Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Scariest. Kid. Ever. Looper (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS Looper (118 minutes) is high- quality, high-concept cinema. The premise is that time travel exists and is used by criminal syndicates in the future to dispose of the peo- ple they don't like. From this little seed is grown a pretty darn good story. Before I saw this I honestly didn't believe Joseph Gordon- Levitt could act. And I gotta tell you — the trailers do not do jus- tice to the film. First off, at a glance Young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) looks like Gordon-Levitt instead of Old Joe (Bruce Willis). However, in the movie you get to see Gordon- Levitt channeling Willis. He clearly put in time absorbing a lot of Willis' movies, because he's got the mannerisms down, he's got the facial expressions down, he even manages a pretty good vocal im- personation most of the time. This is made even more impressive by the fact that he manages this while wear- ing a whole bunch of prosthetics on his face. To truly understand how that multiplies the difficulty of the mimicry, try to do a Christopher Walken (or whoever) impersonation with bits of styrofoam molded to your chin, nose, brow and ears. Second, there are a million tiny little touches that scream near future. For example, the movie takes place primarily in 2042, but the director didn't spend time creating an entirely new look for his world. Instead, he modified current technology to give the entire film a sort of jury-rigged majesty. For example, while there are plenty of hot new model cars, there are also old trucks that have clearly been modified to use whatever new fuel people in 2044 are using. Third, like Brick, another collaboration between Gordon-Levitt and Director Rian Johnson, Looper has a real neo-noir feel. There's cynical dia- logue, dames in danger and tough guys talking tough. The noir-ishness isn't the point of the film and never overwhelms the science fiction, but is always a subtle undercurrent. Fourth, Johnson (who scripted as well) doesn't bother with the tedious and illogical task of explaining time travel. Any geek worth his salt can debunk the average time-travel movie in two minutes or less. About halfway through the film, Young Joe and Old Joe meet up in a diner. Young Joe de- mands answers, Old Joe says the answers don't matter because time travel doesn't make sense. Finito. The End. A clear message from Johnson to the audience … time travel works as a concept to fuel a plot and does not hold up under scrutiny — so sit down, shut up and enjoy the film. Fifth, Emily Blunt finally gets away from playing a polite young Brit. I never from The Ring, the twins from The Shining, Damian from The Omen and the entire cast of Children of the Corn. I would LOVE to see this kid go up against Gage from Pet Cemetery in a 'Who's Scarier Death Match.' The film starts out with a bang, and adds layer after layer of complexity. I would compare this to Inception if I had actually liked Inception, because it has that same movie within a movie within a movie approach. Joe's character is established as impulsive and short-sighted, and you can see the synchronic- ity of Old Joe having matured past his younger self, but still making choices and decisions based on the same fundamental character flaws. Overall, this is the best movie I have seen in a while, and the best science fiction movie I have seen since Source Code. Now showing at Wynnsong 7, Carmike 12 and Carmike Market Fair 15. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM OCTOBER 17-23, 2012 UCW 21 liked her much, but seeing her play an angry young mom on a farm with a gun and a 'tude is lots and lots of fun. Sixth, the little kid playing her son (Pierce Gagnon) is scarier than the girl