I am the perfect audience for The Muppets. A middle-aged guy who has never been a fanatic about the Muppets, but who has frequently watched the show as a child, often enjoying it, sometimes being a bit bored by the celebrity hosts (or most of the times not even knowing these American old people), and who has lived a life with frequently recurring Muppet references. They are a cultural phenomenon today more than they are a tv show, after all. Miss Piggy may be the most well-known star of her generation, Kermit the Frog certainly outshines any other tv show host in terms of popularity and green-ness.
If you were a devout Muppets fan, “The Muppets” might let you down a bit … many of the beloved show elements are missing (no cooking with chef, no scientific experiments with the lab professor and Mimimi – even though both they all are in the film and contribute their share), the voices are different from the original voice cast (Henson died, Oz not involved here), the plot slumps a bit in the middle, and even the announcement of a montage does not save the film’s middle part from slightly dragging along.
But: There is the Muppet spirit all over the film. Walter the initially enthusiastic and then heartbroken hero. His brother giving him all the support he needs to find the Muppets, to bring the gang back together and set up a tv show to save the Muppet studios. The evil Mr Richman who has nothing in mind but to accumulate wealth while laughing maniacally. And the songs… awesome songs conjuring the spirit of 1950s musicals, great big dance-alongs and sing-alongs, Jason Segel (whom I did not know before, to be honest) playing humbly and feebly next to those real superstars who are cast as superstars: Kermit et. Al, formerly performing in the Greatest Show on Earth, THE MUPPETS SHOW!! There are at least three songs on that soundtrack that I will torture my environment with for months to come, I already developed the habit of spontaneously and unprovokedly erupting into “Am I a maaaaaan, or am I a muppeeeeet, ‘caus if I am a muppeeet I am a very manly muppet”…
In short: hardly ever has an icon of entertainment been treated so well so long after its heydays were over. Well done!
Months ago I was checking this out, look at some minutes, loved it, decided to watch it very soon, and forgot about it. Now it came back with a vengeance, animation weeks at home, checking out all those forgotten master pieces that somehow never manage to grab the attention while the big Oscar contenders or the Summer blockbusters are around. Good animation, it seems, is so terribly subtle and humble. 
A rough bit of entertainment for those not faint of heart. I don’t remember how I came across it, but I was surprised that I had not heard of it before. Man crush and up-and-coming superstar Michael Fassbender co-starring in a cruel nightmare about a young couple meeting the wrong people during what was intended to be a romantic weekend at the lake. It took me a while to realize that this is not “
Official winner of the 
I have no idea what that was about, it was one of these cases where a moment of distraction can take you completely out of a story. I needed to check the 
Bloody hell! This is one of the more painful, while impressive movie experiences, a cruel and unmasked depiction of life in rural China, among people with little or no education, with values and habits rooted in the most basic survival instincts, The story of one of the many girls that were sold as wives, in this case based on a proper con-style kidnapping, as is not unusual even today in China’s South, as is sometimes reported. This one suffers more than her predecessors, because she is rather well-educated, she is stubborn, she is not willing to accept what everybody around her seems to be considering her fate. Resistance, escape… all only extends, and intensifies her suffering. The few people in the village she could consider normal are of no help either, too deeply entangled in the prison of family and Guanxi. The inevitability of the story line may be the worst to endure – also because it means that parts of the film are kind of superfluous, you know exactly where this is going, and despite its drama, there is a certain hiatus in the middle act, where she is floating quietly towards the story’s climax.
Why has this film been a disappointment to so many? Maybe because Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender have built up enough star power by now that audiences follow them wherever they go? Even if that involves a David Cronenberg film? Who himself has tricked the adult moviegoers into believing he was a commercial auteur – after all, he had chases and murder and knife fights and shootings and mobsters and professional agents in his last two well known films, “History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises”? And there is Keira Knightley, who tries to establish herself as a character actress, taking daring choices for her roles, and by doing so suggesting to her fans that “A Dangerous Method” is some form of nice costume celebrity biopic? Seems a lot of things come together to create the illusion that this is not a proper Cronenberg movie – allowing people to take a chance to watch it who usually would not go anywhere near his movies.
Now that would be an interesting double feature for those of us whose life is just a bit too happy for comfort: first, see how a little family trying to cope with a seriously depressed sister / in-law now also has to deal with the impending and inevitable end of the world. Everybody knows it’s happening, and only the one person who is not even able to get out of bed alone finds the right attitude to cope with it (that would be 
That was really entertaining! Technically it’s a mess, of course: I am sure the script authors had a blast coming up with completely contrived reasons to move the action from A (forgot) to B (Moscow) to C (Dubai). The product placement managers pulled all stops to the point of annoying the audience (“oh no, another BMW in the film – I wonder what decisive plot point they have invented for that car to save the world!”). The humour is clumsy at best (the message does not self-destruct, so you hit the metal box to help…). But then the helicopter shot races across the desert, passing hordes of camels – or Tom Cruise jumps down the glass façade of the 120 floor skyscraper. Maybe the biggest impression: the apparently just cleaned and repainted Kremlin , all shiny on the crystal clear IMAX screen… never mind all the talk about digital projection, 3D etc.: a 70mm IMAX movie is more impressive done by somebody who understands cinematic imagery is pretty mind- and eye-blowing. You can almost forget the weak script construction that is an uninspired rip-off of everything James Bond has ever done. Whenever there is a trace of boredom, Simon Pegg comes in with a funny intervention, or that terribly pretty girl with the nice green dress walks across the scene – and all is good!
Seems it is the day to slack off the Rotten Tomatoes 97 plus per cent films. “The Artist” is of course overrated, it is a nice enough effort in style, using a regular love story, without fear of hurting or exciting anybody for the running time. It is, as was said somewhere else, one of these movies that people who have fallen out of the habit of going to the movies tend to love. Just like “Les Choiristes” or 
The Interrupters have been talk of the movie critics circle all year – first because of its unmasked look into the reality of Chicago’s underprivileged areas and the omnipresent violence, and the story of fearless interrupters jumping into the middle of erupting violent conflicts, risking their own health and life by doing so. Later, the film made the headlines by not getting shortlisted for the Oscar race for best documentary, a category most people only observe cursorily, but usually do not actually see the films listed. I am very often underwhelmed by documentaries: even highly praised ones, such as this year’s 
thomas4cinema 