[StarSlayer]

Just saw Looper after Kendo tonight.

It stars The Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levett.  I thought it was pretty slick.

In today's vast sea of reboots its great to see some original IP with a interesting concept. 

[AtomicClucker]

And a horizon without Michael Bay...

[General Battuta]

Michael Bay is making Transformers 4.

I liked Looper quite a bit. It did a good job of conveying that you should not give one **** about the time travel mechanics. I'm still chewing on the gender roles in the movie and whether I think they're annoying or subversive. I was pretty displeased with the racial archetypes they used but thought JGL and Bruce both had great performances. Rian Johnson is absolutely a talent to watch out for.

[Dark Hunter]

A good movie all around, and I like the humor it threw in from time to time.

If I were to nitpick... it'd be about the absolute slaughtering of the Second Law of Thermo near the end. I was disappointed. Yes, it's a weird thing to nitpick, but, dammit, I'm a nerd, and that's what we do!

Although I suppose time travel on its own plays hell with the Second Law anyway.

[spaceman spiff]

Anyone else get creeped out by the kid?

[watsisname]

Little bit. :V

If I were to nitpick... it'd be about the absolute slaughtering of the Second Law of Thermo near the end. I was disappointed. Yes, it's a weird thing to nitpick, but, dammit, I'm a nerd, and that's what we do!

Although I suppose time travel on its own plays hell with the Second Law anyway.

What part exactly, the one where (spoiler tagged cause this is sort of spoileriffic I guess)

Spoiler:

he shoots himself through the chest and Bruce immediately vanishes?  Cause there are multiple instances of this effect going on in the film -- the past/future doubles are still considered causally connected (somehow).
I actually really don't care for that depiction of time travel.  Personally I prefer one such as that used in Primer, where once you go back in time you are no longer causally connected with your past self.  It's still ridiculous, cause if the past self is killed and you trace the world lines, you still get a discontinuity somewhere, presumably in the time machine itself. (Primer has some fun with this where one of the guys goes "I say we shut the [time machine] off while he's still inside and see what happens.").  But at least that is not as hard to take seriously as "Oh snap, my past self just died, I guess I shall cease to exist now!"
On one hand doing it that way fixes the discontinuity, but you're still left with a paradox (if he kills himself then he doesn't go back in time and doesn't cause the events that lead to him killing himself and therefore he lives and goes back in time and causes the events that lead to him killing himself and therefore ARGH).  I guess with Looper time travel, if you cause a paradox of that severity in the timeline then the universe just says "**** you" and resets the timeline to that moment with you no longer in it.

tl;dr time travel is best left not thought about. :V

[General Battuta]

Yeah, that's why Bruce Willis tells you you shouldn't care about the time travel.

Time travel here is an instrument used to explore questions of nurture, destination, agency and control over our own lives. Everyone in the movie is characterized as the sum of their own agency and the influences that act upon them. Time travel allows the narrative to collapse the temporal dimension and superimpose the self as actor and the self as consequence.

JGL 'wins' by understanding that the thing he has always valued as a lifesaver (a man who takes a lost boy and gives him a life) is in fact an ultimately destructive force. Through the Rainmaker he is able to confront the long-term repercussions of a culture of masculine violence and choose to avert them.

[Mikes]

Anyone else get creeped out by the kid?

One of the few instances of a good kid actor - and yeah, very creepy lol.

[redsniper]

I thought it was great!

It was a good portrayal of the future with a lot of present day stuff still around, like all the retrofitted cars. It seems like too often in futuristic settings, even near future, you'll see everything replaced by NEW SHINY stuff with only a few leftovers things from modern times as relics or whatever.