Reviews

The more you know the less you can enjoy... So let's watch this movie being completely ignoring the past...

We get a great opening, a nice plot, some cool visual, good music, good laughs, a catchy movie from the first to the very last second. Quite entertaining!

My biggest problem with it? The media and marketing! All the trailers I had seen would have prevented me from watching this one. Clips felt boring and forced and cold. Same goes for reviews and interviews... It's like this project was doomed to not stand on its own feet.

In detail: The acting feels often wooden and the timing overstretched. Maybe the director was aiming at the the cast's stand-up qualities? Too much ad lib? The development of the main plot was a little under motivated. Questions like "why?" or "how?" shouldn't be asked. So the final act falls behind its visuals...

Something about taste: All female cast + Kevin... maybe overdone, maybe done just right.

Up until here, the movie could easily deserve a 7/10!

Now let's include our memories of the old ones: Many things and motives are simply similar to the old movies, so you can't help but to get a "been there done that"-feeling... maybe this justifies the tone of the all female cast and "Kevin". Since there are so many things that have to be repeated, why not focus on other aspects of the group dynamics. Accepting this, many of the negative reviews simply fade away as a bare expression of taste mixed with the unwillingness for an open mind. People hate exactly two things: when something changes and when nothing changes at all. ;) All cameos felt just right and I enjoyed them all! Though I cannot help it but to feel that Bill Murray simply hated being involved. Still I loved his part. Paranormal cameos: also nice!

Still one of the better movies I watched this year!

Let's express some hope here: Maybe this was just a story to kick off some franchise so the story and motives will be explained in a sequel... maybe there is a good explanation for Kevin, too? On the other hand: this is the feeling I had after seeing Matrix2 and part 3 didn't do much of the needed connecting or answering...

yes, I did enjoy most of this movie. Considering myself as someone who knows the books, backgrounds, chronology etc. by heart I would like to point out, where this movie fails and where not - just imho of course!

pros: - bringing the characters and images to life like this is nothing less but what I would call a great and impressive success! - directing/blending over to the background story works perfectly and is as smooth as it could get! - many references for fans honoring tintin's and Herge'e background. - opening sequence including introduction of Tintin in the beginning works fine! A deep bow for the books and their creator! (though it feels like just another spielberg'esque opening title... don't get me wrong: it worked perfectly! was just nothing new or rare to see...) - references to other books of the series worked just fine withing the situations! - the story preserved and worked on several layers and location together. - The music felt perfect! Original, appropriate and supporting! No annoying pop-songs just to sell soundtracks!

cons: - I still don't see any reason to go for 3D but to make piracy harder to film off the silver screen... it barely adds anything to the movie. It makes everything just darker, which I don't appreciate... Furthermore it seems to make filmmakers go crazy about pointy and flying objects... so far it only worked for me in Tron because it added dimension to the story, literally. - Though the books have their origin in the slapstick comedy in the 1920s it is a little overdone here. But that might be a matter of personal preference. - Haddock is a little to vulgar with his alcohol issues... running on fumes... well... those situations are what I would consider as clearly overstepping the boundaries of the originals... - mixing several stories felt a little bumpy and less thought through... more like a collage with more or less hard edges... - Spielberg... to put this the most respectful and diplomatic way: his way of story telling is absolutely nothing for me! I don't like being told what I see, I don't need characters to think aloud about what is going on... to be fair: he did worse in the past... still: if you need to explain what is going on, if you need off voices or repetition: please consider questioning the approach of directing in first place! - The whole story was cut down to pure adventure and treasure hunt, without leaving room for any deeper connotations...

I was excited when I learned that Moffat would write the script, honestly: I see his work based of the last two seasons of Doctor Who much more skeptical... I was not happy about Spielbergs involvement, though there might not have been any way around him for this project... after Indy and his long time involvement in the making/holding the rights... At least, and last but not least: I believe we all have to thank Peter Jackson for his impact on this work! Visually great and as faithful to the comic books as possible! Sadly Moffat seems not to care about plausibility nor about continuity and Spielberg did not care to fix this...

So it is just like with too many others: watch with your eyes only and skip all other parts of your head. If you are not familiar with Tintin at all: have a great time with a fine piece of movie.

honestly, though loving tron for many reasons I have to admit its naivety and of course its age. The original tron may be more than other movies connected to its time through its style. So what have we here now? Tron: Legacy picks us up where we were left: names, places, situations... and then the original idea evolves without really contradicting its origin. It feels plausible.

Several things has been done to please the fan, the knowing nerd maybe. Still this movie stands by itself. So nothing to be missed when being too young ;-) On the downside: if you love movies, you might have seen it all before. Stunts, perspectives, twists, attitudes... some movies are best enjoyed with a blank mind. So what? The more we know that harder we are to please...

Outstanding is the look&feel. Visuals are beautiful (if you like this cyber-style), Action is well executed and in some scenes nicely use what comes with that certain environment. Clearly a great decision was to have DaftPunk for the music. The rejuvenation did happen on all levels: Story, Design and Music! Several images even reveal that there was a certain awareness of social or political implication, though being rather irrelevant for such a movie. Not as strong as in Singer's x-men but enough to stick out.

Overall: This is more than simple eye-candy. ... and I wasn't this excited about watching a movie for a long time!

...can't decide on my vote yet... I never give 10, maybe I should reconsider... I terms of emotional response: I only had similarly strong responses to bab-5 and Buffy (sorry, if you hate this comparison...) without giving away too much: Russel T. Davis does what needs to be done to serve the story, the characters and the drama. Therefor I would like to put him in one line along with Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski. This time he did not make the same, IMHO, mistake he did with the doctor. He did not just re-arrange his favorite motives and concepts and characters; with this season he wrote a nice story, that caught, at least me, perfectly. In one flow...

I wonder why so many compare this to movies like "hostel"...

There was only one movie coming up my mind after having seen this one: Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" (and other works from him...)

Other comparisons? OK, let's compare this to "high tension"... yes, we get realism. but then? There are too many movies recently that do nothing but hide their lack of spirit and story... in the end the audience is left alone without a believable motivation for what happened...

"Martyrs" is different. It's scary and disturbing. It's painful to watch and still there is some kind of relief. You may separate that movie into three segments... and the first two would make a whole movie on their own. What happens then takes the story to whole new level and the audience to a whole new perspective. With a cynical bang in the end.

I liked it.

This might have been great, but it's not.

Honestly? "Reefer Madness" raised the bar for musical-movies tremendously. And "Repo!" spend a fortune and still failed...

What's good about this? Great exterior shots! No one was afraid of gore. Nice songs, some even more than nice. Great stylish introduction of the main characters as comic. Looks so nice! Prologue and epilogue... classic! Background story? Exciting! (I wish we had Max Headroom on DVD at last...)

On the other side? They spoiled almost everything. The timing lacks. The pace stumbles. The story and motivation gets driven away and hardly coming back. Music? what's so nice about music? yes, you can recognize it. Ever heard of leitmotiv or (as wikipedia translates it) leading motif? IMHO that's what musicals are living from. And of course from the depth coming along when new layers get put on top of each other and moved around... what works with music works also in literature...conditioning somehow... This one does none of this...

Story: nice but lost Story-telling: pretty poor Music: OK till nice... Usage of music in a movie: as bad as the story-telling (even the arrangements of music had timing issues and spoiled most of the fun...)

The budget and the actors tell me that someone tried too hard to deliver something great... they just failed. ...and I am sorry for that.

It could have been easily an 8 but I am so disappointed from this waste of effort.

At least we got to see the long awaited comeback of Rupert Giles as "ripper" ;-)

When I say "not entertaining", I maybe address a rather personal issue. So nothing to worry about... Some movies are clearly fictitious, morally it's easy for me to enjoy what's on the big screen. Some are not... Starting back a few years ago, imho, the story and the setting gradually migrated into something more and more realistic. This way audience gets confronted with voyeurism... that's what I would call a moral dilemma... some movies (e.g. hostel) chose a real-world setting with a (hopefully) fictitious story... others, like this one, gives us a feeling like it could happen anytime and anywhere... This movie may be considered as horror or thriller... just suspense... It also opens space for social reflection. Projection of fears from within our world, our society...

Thus "Eden Lake" might be considered as a perfect horror-movie... confronting us with our real fears while trying to entertain us.

For me? It's too close to reality to be just the innocent pleasure of watching...

(I should copy and paste this... so many movies deserve it...) There are good movies and there are bad ones... both can be enjoyed for their own special reasons... good movies are hard to find... so are bad ones you can enjoy without feeling like someone would be stealing your time and money... this is one of those you feel cheated all the time... Back to those two categories: there is a third one: those movies that are obviously just nothing at all but keep on making you feel like you are watching something meaningful... oh my... the whole movie could have been just 2 minutes in another one... but, to say something positive: the storm was great!

I never had such a problem to decide if I rather recommend a movie or not... never before there has been a main-stream-movie which went this far, depicting this kind of gore. never before I've seen a gore-movie that was this little fun and entertaining. It's true that this movie really made me feel terrible and sick. Not in a way like Peter Jackson's Braindead did to me when I entered a whole new level of horror-movies watching it long time ago. Rather in a way documentaries can make you feel. I couldn't say this is a bad movie or that it's not made pretty well... still I wouldn't recommend it. I'd even recommend avoiding those who simply can enjoy a movie like this. For me there needs to be a a clear line between fiction and reality. Hostel doesn't have this gap so I couldn't enjoy the gore. I still give a 7 because I believe that it's a milestone for the genre... I just cannot tell if it's a good or a bad step ...

childhood-memories... yes, I'm biased... at least in two ways: I love the story and the books and secondly I believe that the first movie with Gerd Fröbe is hard to beat...

now to this one: Armin Rohde is great as Hotzenplotz! no doubt on that! The locations and images are beautiful! And the way they merged the first two books into one story was good! now for the bad aspects: who the hell wrote Amarillis like this? and who casted Barbara Schöneberger into this role??? Every single child in the movie did a better job. perhaps she couldn't do better because she was told to act just this way, but I really didn't like it... btw: could someone please take away this mirror from her? mirrors belong to other stories or just left to Rüdiger Hoffmann ;-) But the most important fact: even if I didn't like the movie the children did and it was fun joining them on the same movie :-)

well... I have to confess: I didn't like memento! I actually don't like movies that keep on repeating themselves over and over again... Still: it could work! but here it does not. Let's think about part one: it was fun to figure out who would be next and how he/she would die and when then death-trap finally collapsed... but here? sorry... perhaps I was in a bad mood but I simply didn't feel like there was any plan at all... people survive, people are confused, people die because of their arrogance and stupidity? well... was that the message of the movie? that movie had no climax, no thrill, no story, no plot... just repeating the first one, and even twice! I'm sorry, but this is really not worth any money at all... for those who still want to see it: don't spend any money on it, don't support the companies to make more movies like that! Well... last but no least: the roller-coaster-ride was nice, not as scary as the plane-crash in FD1 but still... and here are my wishes for part 4: please introduce the death as a person, change the perspective of this idea, don't repeat itself... oh, and if you want to make better traps: ask MacGyver... perhaps he could build a better mouse-trap...

what a waste of time! I guess there was one remarkable line in the whole movie... if I only could remember it... I got to watch this movie in a sneak-preview... well... you have to watch 10 movies there to get a single good one but this movie was even far below average... Some movies are just made to prove that you can even earn some money with nothing... sad for those talented ones among the movie-makers... save the admission and spend it on a movie that deserves your money... hm... so I'm really supposed to write more about such a movie? come on, it does not deserve it... still not enough lines? well... be fair: you can't judge the acting-skills of anyone by watching such a movie: there is simply nothing in it to be judged...

... than this ;-) What would happen if Terry Gilliam and Douglas Adams would have worked together on one movie? This movie starts with a touch of Brazil... when, at a certain point, the story moves straight into the twilight zone... bringing up nothing new, but just nothing... and nothing is great fun! When Dave and Andrew starts to explore their new environment the movie gets really enjoyable... bouncing heads? well... yes ;-)

anyway... this movie was, imho, the biggest surprise at this year's FantasyFilmFest...

Just like in Cube and Cypher Natali gave this one a minimalistic, weird but very special design, which makes it hard to locate the place of the story or its time... timeless somehow...

for the first time again since Avalon I felt completely lifted to another world... I didn't know what to expect when I decided to watch this one tonight as opener for the Fantasy Film Fest in Hamburg... I was skeptical since the last openers were highly promoted but quite dull... This one is different... A team of very different persons work together as ticket inspectors... each of them is differently weird but fun to watch... The whole movie happens in the subway and stations... no daylight... The images are great and the music fits perfectly to this extraordinary composition. Just don't ask what this movie is about... or if there is a story being told... I don't know... I don't care... I loved to watch and I hope to join this ride soon again...

this movie felt much longer than just 87 minutes ;-) The production-design is really amazing and much better than I could have expected... the story is pretty smart for a comedy and the references to Bully's last movie are nice... Bully has a great sense for scenes that combine action and comedy!

Just like the great first appearance of Sky Dumont in the last movie, here are several similar great shot images! Probably a movie that could also be understood somewhere beyond Germany.

What a waste of time! at least it was worth waiting for the movie to end: the closing-titles are nice to watch and you can enjoy the good music without getting annoyed by the brainless story. We should be used by that kind of stories... so why is it even worse with this one? The whole art-design looks like paperwork, the CG looks too artificial, the acting is poor (even Jackman's :-( ), the b/w-sequences look cheap... and so on :-( sorry! I want my money back and we should warn everyone about that kind of movies! where is the 0/10 button?

expensive high-tech shows... so why don't I like them? They can change the story whenever they want since there is NO direction in it. There is nothing that gives us any chance to see anything coming, so everything is possible, let's say arbitrary! every episode a cliffhanger, every episode a twist in the storyline... And how about suspense? There was NO suspense in the first season, just stress! Same in Season 2... Though... the story in Season 2 seems to be much better written, they still had to change the direction too often to fill 24 hours (minus commercial-breaks :-p ) well... and now for the good things: Production design is great! so is Kiefer Sutherland!

sorry, no spoilers... because there is nothing to tell... because there is no story at all... nothing funny about it... several people get involved in one chain of incidents... the story is told over and over again from different angles... why? all situations are bizarre but after the first few minutes you have seen everything you need to know and could leave the cinema again without missing anything...

... the makers watched Matrix? perhaps Avalon? thinking: we can do that, too? well... cut out all those oh so funny scenes, focus on the story-line and you get a nice and interesting movie. Still fun to watch, just don't expect too much and try not to compare this one to any other movie...

Minimalistic, stylish and atmospheric! From the opening titles to the end a fascinating story and design... with some links to Cube in some places ;-) I wish Natali could have cut the explaining dialogues in the end of the movie... well... just an "almost" perfect movie ;-) Clever and entertaining and so beautiful to watch... :-)