Mid-Year Movie Roundup: My Brief Thoughts On What I’ve Seen So Far This Year

Thus far this year, I have seen the following movies:
Chronicle
The Hunger Games
The Avengers
Prometheus
John Carter
Snow White and the Huntsman
American Reunion
The Cabin in the Woods

Not many, I know.  Most of them are genre fiction, minus American Reunion.  There are two proper science fiction movies (The Hunger Games and Prometheus), one that could very well be science fiction, but treats its universe like a fantasy one (The Avengers), and some that are technically science fiction, but really fantasy with some technological wonders (John Carter and The Cabin in the Woods).  The last is a pure fantasy (Snow White and the Huntsman).

The movie I liked enough to see it twice falls to one film: The Avengers.

The movies I thought were quite good: Chronicle (one of the few good uses of shaky cam I’ve seen), The Hunger Games (solid acting with a cool, slightly used-up idea), The Avengers (so far the best movie of the year — Joss Whedon at his best), John Carter (beautiful film with a decent little story), The Cabin in the Woods (Joss Whedon at his best again, ripping apart the tropes of the horror genre).

The movie that were better than I expected: Snow White and the Huntsman (some really nice twists on the classic story). 

The movies that were so-so overall: Snow White and the Huntsman, American Reunion (they tried to take us to a new level, but didn’t quite get there; still, it was a fun movie).

The greatest disappointment: Prometheus (in fact, the more I think about this movie, the more I really hate it)

Have you seen any of these movies? If so, place them in the categories I’ve given above and let me know what you think!