foxx_1's Reviews

Battleship (2012)

1/10

30 April 2012

Warning: Spoilers

I was mostly interested in the movie because I saw the trailer with Liam Neeson and he looked quite convincing - too bad I did not pay enough attention to notice that Rihanna (!?!) also "plays" in it... That fact alone would have made me think twice but it is too late now.

So what do we get here? Astronomers discover yet another exoplanet and send a message. The aliens get it and manage to decipher it of course. Right on. It does not take very long and they show up on the radar, obviously capable of flying interstellar flights at the speed of light. So far so good. It is beyond me still how they managed to fly few light-years without any accidents but once they approach the Earth, one of their ships rams a satellite and breaks apart. Logic and plausibility are hard to find and in short supply right from the start. The other storyline: a Barbie-style tall blonde enters a bar all by herself around midnight and wants to eat something. Meaningful dialogues ensue: "What's your name?" "I am hungry" "Hey that's not a name" This romantic encounter makes the main protagonist rob a convenience store and destroy about half of it. Instead of waking up in the police station and spending some time in prison, he bitches about the taser scars on his back and decides to join the navy. Shortly after we see him act as a selfish pr*ck at a soccer game which makes him even less likable. Conveniently, Barbie turns out to be the daughter of his chief commander - talk about small world, heh? As if this mess was not bad enough, we get to see Rihanna in uniform and shooting with a machine gun. I was really hoping she and the above pr*ck would get killed by the retarded aliens but no such luck... as for the aliens: as I said, they seem to have technology way superior to ours but are rather dumb and clumsy. One example: a veteran with two prosthetic legs manages to kick the sh*t out of one alien who somehow willingly engages in a fight instead of pulling a laser gun or another gimmick aliens tend to use... Speaking of gimmicks: the aliens wear suits and helmets that remind of the one that the "Predator" wore. I guess they share their technology achievements at some evil aliens convention...

What follows is hard to swallow, even with a maximum suspension of disbelief. The aliens shoot at the navy with some conventional projectiles which can be even neutralized if intercepted on time. The other weapon is a bit more spectacular but still lacking any logic - big ball-shaped robots with something like circular saws in the middle which destroy highways, helicopters and anything that might be of somewhat military importance. It remains unclear why the aliens consider our inferior technology a threat since they set up a protective shield (deja vu, "Independance day") which can not be penetrated at all...

The nonsense hits a high mark near the end when a museum ship engages in a showdown battle. Of course, a decommissioned ship always has a rich supply of ammunition and former staff readily available, the latter striking poses on the deck, waiting for their D-day - apparently, for lack of better pass-time...

Unfortunately, Liam Neeson did not get enough screen presence. To be fair, the little time he got was enjoyable e.g. when telling the above egomaniac what a selfish pr*ck he is. Needless to say, these 30 sec could not save the film. Lessons learned: always look at the cast before watching a movie, this might save you some extra pain.

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Chronicle (2012)

1/10

Losing faith in Hollywood

29 April 2012

Warning: Spoilers

Let me tell you, I hated "Jumper" for its total incoherence and lack of moral substance - and ended up watching this movie which might as well be titled "Jumper 2"... It is simply insane that more and more directors/scriptwriters are jumping on the bandwagon, making more of those "handheld style" movies. How is something that is amateur and simply annoying e.g. playing with the zoom, swinging the camera around etc. supposed to be entertaining? Unfortunately, this is just one of the problems with this movie. The first 30 minutes we get to watch one of the characters filming around and explaining to everyone why is he doing so. That could have been cut down to 5 minutes and still served the same purpose i.e. who is who and why are they acting like that... but if the scriptwriters did so they would have to think of something to fill in the remaining 60 minutes. So after the boring beginning, out of nowhere, they learn about some noise coming from a cave nearby and just walk in. What was that object inside and how come nobody ever noticed it before? Too hard to explain so we are left wondering. Looking at the mysterious object turns out to be quite beneficial: for some reason the 3 characters gain cool superpowers that they manage to develop further simply by training so they can not only move Lego pieces around but even manage to learn how to fly (?!?) How telekinesis can be fashioned into flying is yet another mystery. Strangely, the one who is beaten up by an abusive father and cares a lot about his sick mother (Andrew) turns into an evil monster who never questions his actions - just because he considers himself a predator. From my point of view, this totally absurd development did not make any sense and is a complete script failure. The film obviously needed some action so I guess the scriptwriters figured "Hey how about a cool battle between Andrew and Matt?" Then all of a sudden Andrew is full of criminal energy and needs a few hundred bucks - so how about robbing some bullies and a gas station. No clue why he did not try robbing a bank with his superpowers and just toss around the bullies as pure act of revenge - let's assume he is not only turning evil but also a complete moron. Somehow the writers expect the audience to be morons too: instead of flying away after his heist, he prefers to run (?!?) Nice. Anyway, we get to a showdown with lots of explosions for their own sake - again, the evil kid might have just conveniently chosen to fly away instead of blowing up downtown Seattle but hey, he is evil, remember? So he has to get what he deserves and the audience gets the mandatory dose of good vs. bad fight.

Basically, another letdown - if you take out the special effects, the remaining story would be totally useless. I expected the car accident that occurred earlier in the film and played such a pivotal role to lead to some interesting developments - but to my great surprise, it simply did not. Dead end, zero. Instead we got to see some extended flights through the clouds which served no specific purpose other than adding some screen time - which unfortunately only confirms my conclusion: story with a lot of potential but lacking imagination and depth.

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Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)

3/10

Sappy snoozefest

13 September 2011

Warning: Spoilers

Well, at least the marketing department must have done their job properly - the poster made me think that I was going to see "The 40 year old virgin" with a twist... needless to say that at some point I was not only rolling my eyes with disbelief but also wondering if I should not get up and leave - alas, I did not and had to endure yet another outpour of deeply illogical hamfistedly conceived schmaltz right at the end. I see that the film received mostly positive acclaim here which makes me wonder if I was one of the few gullible slobs who could not figure out the marketing buzz and ended up in the movie theatre, right beside two women in their 30s - basically the audience that would probably love this so called "romantic comedy"... yep folks, it is supposed to be a comedy - the only problem being that most of the jokes are already in the trailer. Someone falls in love with his high school sweetheart and marries her but after 20+ years of marriage she has had enough of him so she not only has an affair but also tells him she wants a divorce. He is such a schmuck you know - wears funny shoes and is not up to her style so she is somehow entitled to move on. From this moment on, we are supposed to laugh at the poor cuckold and his feeble attempts to gain ground. But wait, although his wife is no longer interested in him, for some strange reason, he is the wet dream of a teenage babysitter - a notion that has some credibility only in the parallel universe of the scriptwriters. To make things complete, the cuckold's son is in love with the babysitter - luckily, there is no kindergarden girl being in love with the son to prolong this chain of unanswered love and affection. Anyway, the poor wretch finds his only consolation in drinking at a bar and whining to strangers about his lost suburban happiness and then - voila! - there goes our deus ex machina: a debonair gentleman who knows how to charm all the ladies. Sure enough he volunteers to reshape the hapless whiner so that the latter does not spoil the atmosphere at the bar with his constant and unwanted confessions... of course the zero to hero trip succeeds and the former loser turns into a lustful predator, managing to bed 9 women in no time. Credibility? Well, yeah - see my above remark. Unfortunately, this is not where it ends. There is a sugary monologue about ice cream and first love which - in the above context!! - made my bowels churn and probably made the women beside me sigh. There is also a twist right at the end which follows the film's own logic i.e. why not throw in more unlikely stuff, it may be fun. To me - it was not and I will be avoiding anything titled "romantic comedy" in the near future.

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Battle Los Angeles (2011)

5/10

Lame story, decent acting

25 April 2011

Warning: Spoilers

I went to see the movie mostly because I like Aaron Eckhart - and had some suspicions about the story... too bad I had to realize pretty soon those suspicions were quite justified. As soon as the movie starts, we are thrown right into the battle and then 24 hours back in time to see the typical character buildup: chit chat and trivial nonsense that nobody cares about, meant to give us some insight into who's who and why. I don't quite understand why they subtitled the appearance of every new member of the crew as if anyone in the audience would remember all the ranks and names in a few minutes. For some reason the aliens don't have any better landing techniques than entering our atmosphere as meteorites: glowing, smoking and splashing in the Pacific. While this might provide spectacular visual effects, it is pure nonsense otherwise. Speaking of nonsense: it turns out the aliens are after our water resources (!) which they manage to drain with perfection. It is quite unclear why they just did not land in the Antarctis where they would be able to accomplish their mission without being disturbed by marines, air force etc. I guess they did not attend their geography lessons. Anyway, not only do the aliens land in the wrong place but they also willingly engage in urban combat for no apparent reason: if they wanted to exterminate us, there would have been more effective ways of doing so. Instead, they walk around and do not seem to use any bullet proof vests thus becoming easy prey for the marines. On top of that, they use some kind of multiple rocket launchers that fire rockets spiraling around as if they were defective... It would make sense that an alien race capable of interstellar flights should have much more sophisticated weapons plus enough intelligence to come and get what they want - but that would have been too difficult for the scriptwriters to figure out... or just to bother about. All in all, a war flick with some strange sci-fi elements that make it look unintentionally funny at times.

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Green Zone (2010)

3/10

Old story revamped, shot in a nauseating way...

10 April 2010

Warning: Spoilers

The previews made me expect an intelligent movie about secret missions or cover-up plans in the aftermath of the Iraq war but what we get instead is a story that has been told so many times: there were no WMDs in Iraq and the whole war was just wrong... So here goes another political agenda dressed up as a movie. While I agree that there was no clear and present danger in Iraq in 2002 and the war was not necessary, I don't really understand why we have to be told that in an almost propagandistic approach i.e. the main character searching for WMD and finding nothing, then complaining that this had been turning out the same way ever since he was sent on such missions etc. etc. In the meantime we meet a lot of cookie cutter characters like some kind of coming home dissident who of course is nothing but a bland US marionette, BAATH general who is just an honest patriot worried about his country and happens to be on the infamous deck of cards(gimme a break), a government official who of course is nothing but a sleaze-bag trying to get in the way of our hero and so on. The only surprise was the CIA agent who - contrary to popular belief - did not spend his weekends torturing Iraqis with electroshocks and syringes.

Last not least: I will gladly join the crowd that wants to whack the director of photography (was there one??) Gee, the shaky hand-held cam went on and on - I hoped it would happen only during combat scenes but alas, no such luck: there was constant swinging around and zooming in and out even during mostly static scenes... what the heck was that for? At some point it felt as if I was watching a wedding shot by a drunk bridesmaid who barely manages not to fall to the ground! That alone made me want to leave after a while and a I had to force myself to stay in the theater just to see the climax which was quite challenging in terms of any logic - our hero heading off to meet the above BAATH general, obviously deprived of any common sense...

To sum it all up - no twists, no new conspiracy theories, mostly motion sickness...

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From Paris with Love (2010)

8/10

Pretty good for what it is supposed to be

6 April 2010

Warning: Spoilers

I can't stand it when people start bashing an action comedy (yes, that's what the flick is!!) for being unrealistic or not politically correct!! If you wanted something realistic, then stick to the news channels on TV or the COPS show... and if you wanted a politically correct "information" then... well, just read the mainstream European media where they avoid mentioning the ethnic background of the perpetrators although you should be blind and/or completely ignorant not to notice who they usually are! It was quite a tragic coincidence that few days before I saw the film, two Muslim women from Chechenia blew themselves up in the Moscow subway - a fact that gave a bitter connotation to a twist in the film I would rather not elaborate on. When I go to a film like this, I expect funny dialogs, improbable but entertaining scenes plus a storyline that is not hard to follow - and guess what, all these ingredients were there. Sure, the last part of the story pushed my suspension of disbelief way past its limits and reminded me of comic books for 8 year old boys but hey, nobody's perfect... Definitely fun to watch.

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Zeiten ändern Dich (2010)

1/10

Überpeinlich

10 February 2010

Warning: Spoilers

Der Film passt irgendwie perfekt zu der Kulisse dessen, was in Deutschland gegenwärtig passiert: die Rütli-Schule, wo Lehrer mit Müllkörben vom Migrantenkindern beworfen werden; Teenager, die Leute mit Zivilcourage tot (Dominik B.) oder fast tot (Bruno Hubert N.) prügeln; No-Go-Areas in vielen deutschen Großstädten, wo man abends lieber nicht auftauchen sollte usw. Jetzt kommt Anis Ferchichi a.k.a. Bushido und will uns zeigen, dass Deutschland selbst daran schuld ist... Allein die Schlüsselszenen am Anfang haben mir gereicht, um das Kino zu verlassen: der Protagonist wird in der Schule aufgefordert, ein Gedicht von Goethe aufzusagen. Das kann er aber nur im Rap-Rhytmus schaffen (!?!?), was dazu führt, dass ein fettes blondes deutsches Kid "Typisch Kanake!" laut sagt, was natürlich zu einer Schlägerei führt. Später wird er jedoch von einem Mädel seiner Klasse rappermäßig mit "Respekt!" gratuliert, wodurch er zu der wichtigen Schlußfolgerung gelangt: "wenn du dir kein Respekt erkämpfst, bist du ein Opfer" Als ob das nicht genug ist, kommt schon bald die nächste Offenbarung: da Bushido's Mutter scheinbar nur auf aggressive Südländer steht, ist ihr neuer Freund einer von dieser üblen Sorte. Natürlich wird unser Held wieder böse zugerichtet, nimmt es aber stoisch: "Gut, dass er mich geschlagen hat und nicht meine Mutter, sonst hätte ich ihn umgebracht!" Das war mir schon definitiv zuviel: mag sein, dass Bernd Eichinger solche hohle Phrasen für publikumswirksam hielt und ins Drehbuch platziert hat - ich frage mich aber dann, welches Publikum er anvisiert hat? Wahrscheinlich dieses, welches auch die Bushido CDs kauft und ihm sowieso jeden Müll abkaufen würde. OK, ich gehöre nicht dazu und wie ich sehe, bin ich nicht der einzige. Es gibt vielleicht doch noch Hoffnung...

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Heat (1995)

7/10

Basically well crafted but with some flaws

5 November 2009

Warning: Spoilers

Solid performance by Pacino and De Niro, although Pacino was overacting at times - all that yelling and sarcastic talk was a bit over the top... I think the director should have jumped in but he probably figured it's better to let him act the way he wanted. Same applies to Natalie Portman who was quite young at the time and needed some guidance e.g. the scene at the beginning where she is arguing with her mother ('Nooo, I will be late...') needed the director's intervention which simply was not there...

This is not the major problem though - it is the script that was rather contrived and implausible quite a few times. I don't know why Michael Mann was chosen to be both scriptwriter AND director given the fact that he had rather modest CV in scriptwriting...

Anyway, the first major plot hole IMHO is the appearance of Waingro: a team that has been "working" together for a while and seems to be like a big family, just gets a perfect stranger (it remains unclear who and why recommends Waingro to Ceritto!!) as an extra hand to do - guess what? Well, nothing more than hold a gun pointed at stunned and deaf guards... How about just disarming them and tying their hands as they did later in the bank? We are talking about experienced criminals here, not some kind of rookies! The next script problem is van Zant's intelligence: he is smart enough to run a drug money laundering bank but also stupid enough to try to eliminate the gang in the most amateur way - namely, by sending two goofs to an open area without even thinking that there might be someone covering it?!? And then all of a sudden he is scared sh1tless and not leaving his office for days - just because he got a threatening call...

Another problem is the very odd romance between McAuley and Eady. At first I thought that she might be some secret police agent, trying to get to him i.e. a cliché we are used to but still plausible... alas, it turns out it's real love and attraction!! So let me get this straight: there is this young and attractive woman who is "very, very lonely" (?!?) and starts hitting on a guy who is 20+ years older! Every time I see that scene I feel like sinking in my chair - it is so hard to swallow. Same applies to all the interaction between those two for the rest of the film - even after she learns that he is a bank robber, she still agrees to flee the country... my guts were already twisting at that point! Unfortunately, the odd parts don't stop here - although there were some technical advisers to assist the director with the shootout scene in front of the bank, it looked like McAuley and his gang were not surrounded by dozens of armed officers but shooting at rabbits - standing upright and not getting hit as if the police were using blanks:)) Well in reality, they were but hey, we are supposed to believe this is serious:)) Of course, the only one who gets to kill one of the big baddies (Ceritto) is Lt. Hanna: the other cops are just good enough to get killed or wounded.

The final blunder was the corny scene with Hanna and McAuley holding hands... how about a hug? What were we supposed to believe here - that this was just a duel between two gentlemen and one of them was less fortunate? It seemed to me that the film tried way too hard to take side with the ex-cons in general: the scenes with Breedan, the one who was just released from prison and gets treated like piece of junk were there to convince us that it is not their fault if they turn back to crime, it's our hostile society who is to blame... so we are supposed to sympathize with those guys? Yep, this is what they do for living, they can't do anything else as McAuley pointed out... I could have bought that too if they were stealing without killing - which was obviously not the case here.

To sum it up - decent action movie but not at par with the big gangster dramas Pacino and De Niro played in before.

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Treasure Island (2007)

2/10

Oh my...

27 October 2009

Warning: Spoilers

I remember watching the TV series when I was a kid and expected to see something similar, only with more sophisticated FX and CGI... instead, I saw a frivolous interpretation of the book turning key characters upside down, bad direction, totally miscast actors, absurd plot holes etc. etc. My suspicions rose at the beginning of the film: instead of adolescent boy, Jim is a young adult (the actor was 18 at the time!) and his mother who thinks that her being a widow will attract more customers (?!?) looks actually like his older sister. Billy Bones appears just for a few minutes - all the interactions and character build-up we see in the book are simply omitted... For some strange reason, two likable characters (according to the book) become a greedy villain (Dr. Livesey) and a total goof (Squire Trelawny). Some pirates wear funny braids reminiscent of Gothic conventions and others (e.g. Israel Hands) have stylish tattoos on their bold heads which looks very unrealistic! As if this was not enough, Ben Gun appears to be a perfect copy of Rambo (First Blood): slashing throats from behind, creating deadly traps, disguised in mud... what a mess!! My advice is: read the book or try to watch one of the older films, this adaptation fails in all aspects!

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Vantage Point (2008)

3/10

Star actors wasted

4 October 2009

Warning: Spoilers

This film suffers a lot from its bad script and the way the story is told. The flashbacks become quite disturbing after the 2nd time and after a while I was wondering if this is what we are going to see through the whole movie. Back to the script: I certainly did not expect it to be like a documentary but there is only a certain amount suspension of disbelief I can handle - and it is stretched way beyond that here. Are we really expected to believe that the NSA and all the other security forces around the president are so inept to the degree of letting him walk into a square where people can easily smuggle a whole bag of explosives and carry handguns after just waving a phony badge? What about noticing a curtain moving but not seeing an open window with a sniper rifle behind it – being on the same side of the building? Speaking of which - what was the joke with this James Bond style gadget of a cell phone being capable of aiming the above rifle just like that? At this point I was wondering if this is supposed to be funny but, unfortunately, the film was still taking itself seriously I don't even want to talk about all the characters only being shown as evil and nothing more: they obviously just hate the USA and its president so who cares about their background and motivation if they are going to die anyway. This one-dimensional approach might work with a C-movie but here it simply adds up to the disappointment. All in all, another proof that great cast can not save a poor story.

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I Am Legend (2007)

4/10

Should have known better...

4 May 2009

Warning: Spoilers

Let's start with confessing that I was rather reluctant to the the idea of watching a film where Will Smith roams the street of Manhattan all by himself armed with a gun... but in the end, I had read enough enthusiastic comments so I decided to give it a try - which afterwards only confirmed my suspicions.

The main problem with this film is that it does not define itself as a pure fantasy/horror genre but tries instead way too hard to create references to real life: scientist announcing cure for cancer, the year being clearly defined, New York scenery, Bob Marley, Shrek etc. OK, this kind of mixing everyday life reality and absolute fiction worked just fine for comedies e.g. "Ghostbusters" or "Back to the future" but here it just made me roll my eyes with disbelief. We have to assume that somehow the above cancer medicine was simply injected into millions of people all over the world without even being tested appropriately and then - oops, it turns out that it actually kills people or turns them into monsters?!!? This not being preposterous enough, we are to believe that the virus spreads way too fast so it can kill everyone including the government (which would have been isolated right away), the Pentagon (same as the government), remote communities etc. It is also not quite clear how the streets are jammed with cars but there is not even a trace of rotting bodies... I guess this was also some kind of flesh, bone and clothes eating virus that made everything disappear neatly:) Anyhow, apart from driving his SUV and shooting deer Will Smith has to hide from the mutants which obviously are debilitated enough so they can only roar and make evil grimaces - in terms of communication. Other than that, they also resemble vampires i.e. start falling apart if exposed to direct sunlight - umm, ooh-kay... this is where it started getting a bit too much for me. Of course there are also vampire dogs (!!) which means that the virus somehow spread among animals too but did not harm the deer, the lions etc. By the way, the vampires/mutants do not seem to harm them either, obviously being vegetarian - which must be a good thing since they are able to jump and climb buildings with the agility of orangutans.

To tie up this story, there is a woman with a kid showing up at the right place and at the right time (talk about deus ex machina) as she apparently was the only one to hear Will Smith's radio messages... And then, towards the end of the movie, we see military personnel which for a strange reason failed to hear those messages and no one bothers to hint why!! Moderatly entertaining movie which will require you to suspend any logic to enjoy it.

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Knowing (2009)

3/10

Another doomsday flick ...

3 April 2009

Warning: Spoilers

...only this time science is sodomized to a much higher degree than in "The day after tomorrow" or "The core". OK, we can live with movies about asteroids threatening the earth (possible scenario), volcanoes erupting where they never have before (quite unlikely but possible), even movies about instant ice age (pure fiction) - but this one went a bit too far. The thing is, I didn't even see it come: the first half of the movie was some kind of a mystery thriller although it required quite a suspension of disbelief - and then it started deteriorating gradually, ending like a cheap B-movie, in a wacky mixture of religious kitsch and science fiction... um, did I say "science"? This may not be the proper word - anti-science or pseudoscience would be a better choice to describe the absurd idea of a solar eruption being so strong that it wipes out life on earth. It also turns out that our main protagonist is the only one who had the "intelligence" to figure out what's coming - obviously he must have gone unnoticed by the Nobel committee for years... What's highly entertaining is the gratuitous use of scientific terms i.e. when Cage's character reveals the fate of the Earth to his colleague, he talks about a "deadly" radiation of 100 µT (micro-Tesla) - which is preposterous as the normal magnetic induction of the Earth is close to that value:)) surely very impressive to those who never heard of microTeslas before!! The final scene showing some kind of rays which for a strange reason seem to advance like a bush fire is just as absurd - everything, and I sh1t you not, really everything goes up in thick black clouds of smoke instantly, be it concrete, steel, glass or even water (!?!?) The buildings start burning from all sides although the sun rays can come only from one direction - a phenomenon which exists only on CGI... and that's not all, those rays are not only capable of setting everything on fire, they are also able to penetrate miles deep into the earth and kill those hiding in caves... wow:)) I guess, nuclear shelters were omitted as a possible hideout as it would distract from the storyline and make it even less plausible i.e. everyone dies except for the chosen ones...

Despite the script which was often kind of moronic, Nicolas Cage pulled off a decent performance. Maybe he was not quite convincing as a MIT professor but I liked him playing the single father except for those schmaltzy parts with the sign language. The kid who played his son (Caleb) needed more support through the director - most of the time he looked like an alien himself, same applies to Lucinda... As for all those religious references - it was sickening, I felt as if they borrowed some ideas from those Watchtower leaflets. Hope to see Nickolas Cage in a better movie soon...

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Quantum of Solace (2008)

1/10

Very disappointing

12 November 2008

Warning: Spoilers

To put it shortly - bad opening, boring midsection because of a dull script and bad ending. The mandatory action scenes every Bond movie starts with were over-edited, confusing and implausible e.g. bullets flying all around conveniently not inflicting any serious damage to a vehicle which obviously wasn't a special "Bond car"... The theme song was so annoying that I was staring with disbelief at the opening credits simply wondering when this overproduced soulless concoction is going to end... Then I really had hard time focusing on the boring conversations which were supposed to tell me who is who and where Bond is going to show up next - so after a while I caught myself falling asleep quite a few times, for the first time while watching a Bond movie!! I guess that speaks for itself... Craig basically kept his facial expression (stern face with protruding upper lip) throughout the whole movie and so did sulky-faced Kurylenko which must have been spending way too much time at tanning booths. Of course there was no chemistry between them which makes me wonder what a "Bond girl" is supposed to mean from now on?!? Speaking of Craig: I thought he did a good job in Casino Royale as the new tough I-don't-give-a-damn James Bond but after Quantum of Solace I want the good old witty, intelligent, flirtatious kind of Bond back. And I think he is not the proper choice to pull that off. What do we get here: no humor, no tongue-in-cheek dialogs, no Bond gimmicks... I assume this movie was supposed to be taken seriously, especially when he did the old trick jumping out of the airplane without a parachute:) To add insult to injury, the showdown tried really hard to convince us that the baddie (Dominic Green), a guy who looks more like a bank clerk on vacation, turns out to be probably the most dangerous combat opponent of James Bond who otherwise is chopping and mowing down every beefy thug within seconds!! Puh-leease... do you scriptwriters think we are brain amputees?? Maybe this is not the worst Bond movie ever but it surely is one of them. I hope the producers will try to get a decent script and a better director next time, if there is one.

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Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

1/10

History regurgitated

11 August 2008

Warning: Spoilers

Since my previous comment was deleted because of an user who found it offensive(??!), I guess I have to rewrite it...Well, I did find the whole movie offensive but it's too bad I am not in the position to have it deleted and rewritten... The viewers are treated as brain amputees who are supposed to swallow down this nonsense and "politically correct" crusade bashing. Historical facts are either "adapted" or omitted so the viewer gets the idea that the Muslim Arabs were nothing but chivalrous gentlemen and the only evildoers were Christian priests and crusaders. The fact that Christian-Jewish Jerusalem was conquered by the Arabs (Caliph Omar Ben Hatav in 638) and placed under Muslim rule is, of course, omitted as is the small detail that in 1010 Caliph Hakim ordered the destruction of churches and synagogues. Instead we see a lot of catholic priests being outright villains (at the beginning), hatred mongers (at Messina) or total sleaze-bags (at Jerusalem). Sure, why not do that kind of vilification: it is quite unlikely that a Christian monk will protest, right?? At the same time, we are treated ad nausea with portrayals of Muslim leaders who are - as opposed to the infidel invaders - men of honor and moral integrity. Who cares about the fact that Saladin would normally have the captured crusaders beheaded and after the siege of Jerusalem he actually demanded ransom from all the Christians in order to let them go - so those who were not able to pay it were sold as slaves? It is much more pleasing to see an alternative history here, as imagined by Monahan & Scott...

I wonder what's coming next: a movie about the battle of Vienna, depicting the Christian armies as cutthroat savages slaughtering the noble Turks who only came to spread multiculturalism and peace? In the context of the above abomination, nothing would surprise me anymore...

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Jumper (2008)

1/10

Hollywood hits a new low mark

29 May 2008

Warning: Spoilers

The film is so awful - I don't know where to start... First of all, Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson are such terrible actors: looking good in nice clothes doesn't make you an actor but Hollywood begs to differ I guess! It is just painful to watch these two moving around: Christensen with an emotionless "I-am-so-cool" face and Bilson acting like a 5-year old girlie at a Nativity play!! What makes them look even worse is the presence of talented actors like Samuel L. Jackson and the less famous Jamie Bell. Diane Lane is totally underused here and seems to be kind of embarrassed by her mini-role... But even if they had cast better actors for the lead roles, it wouldn't have saved the film simply because the script is astonishingly bad. It is not following any internal logic and plausibility: guy suddenly discovers his supernatural powers when he is 15 although his mother knew about them since he was 5 (?!?), then decides to rob banks which don't seem to have any surveillance cameras and just leaves his father behind not caring about him anymore. What he cares about is living a shallow and materialistic life in his penthouse, "jumping" around postcard locations, screwing horny chicks in Britain after watching people drown on the TV news etc. The script does not even try to imply that this is wrong - Christensen's character is portrayed as the main protagonist i.e. the "good guy" and all these actions and behaviour as being just a normal part of his life! The twisted message to all the adolescent viewers is that it's quite cool to steal money from banks as long as you don't get caught and then live it up - it is as simple as that! Our hero shows of course no remorse for his actions whatsoever: even the slightest concept of guilt, responsibility and conscience would have been beyond the scope of this tripe. The final redeeming quality of his character is supposed to be the fact that he did not kill the "villain" but left him stuck in the middle of nowhere instead?!? Wow, how noble and imaginative...

So if you are looking for stupefying entertainment - this film is for you. Be warned - you might lose some brain cells by watching it.

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No Country for Old Men (2007)

1/10

Too much hype and lack of substance

5 March 2008

Warning: Spoilers

Although the film has its merits, I would consider it a letdown - and definitely not worth all the Oscars it received. In a way, it has some kind of a misanthropic note and this is probably the main reason why I hated it more than I liked it.

We are confronted with strong graphic violence right at the beginning when Bardem's character kills the deputy and grins happily after the victim stops moving - the subtext obviously being that this man is simply the incarnation of evil. I guess the scriptwriters wanted to make sure this message really gets through so the viewer has to endure pointless massacres of totally innocent people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it gets even worse - those of you who thought Chigurh is simply taking revenge on the human race are in for a big surprise as he obviously seems to love exterminating life in general i.e. there is a scene where he pulls back to shoot a bird perched right beside the road - just for fun and the sheer pleasure of seeing a creature die...

The film acts mostly according to its own logic which often defies common sense and stretches even the maximum suspension of disbelief, taking a lot of unlikely turns and twists which are only supposed to push the story along the scriptwriters' ideas. One of things that disturbed me most though is the way this film deals with the portrayal of the mass murderer Chigurh is: he has "principles" i.e. lets some of his potential and totally clueless victims gamble for their lives and then teaches them some conventional wisdom, he is polite to the people he is about to kill, he has his own "rituals" such as checking his soles after leaving a crime scene, he is never rude to anyone (no cursing) etc. etc. Such nonchalant and casual depiction of evil is deeply disturbing in that it makes it somehow appear acceptable - a notion I absolutely disagree with. Apart from that, we never learn what made Chigurh become what he is - he is simply there and he is evil and cool, that should do... Too bad all of the characters in this film lack development: Llewelyn is an emotionless and not particularly smart bumpkin who stays that way until he disappears, his wife is nothing but worried and scared of what might happen all the time and then at the end of the film she suddenly becomes quite courageous and refuses to gamble on her own life thus choosing certain death! Plausibility is something that can be hardly found in the whole script so why expect it at the end?

So if you are looking for a message here is one - life is fragile, evil will prevail, generally things tend to change from bad to worse... or was there any message at all? Maybe there was none. Maybe we were just supposed to enjoy the cinematography and the performance the actors delivered. To me, this still did not redeem the film - it left a big black hole and bitterness inside of me... or maybe that was what the filmmakers intended? Who knows...

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The Cat in the Hat (2003)

8/10

The movie is much better than the book, trust me!

6 June 2007

I can't believe how badly this movie gets thrashed by the majority of the voters!! OK, it has some weak spots but it is quite better than the story it is based upon and it certainly deserves more than that. Maybe it is not quite 100% "AA" i.e. all audiences but I must admit that this is the reason why I actually liked it... To all those who are complaining about it not being true to the original: folks, the book is not a movie material! All it is good for is maybe a 5 minute cartoon, and that's it. The characters in Dr. Seuss's poem are cute but one dimensional whereas the ones in the movie are full of life. So - thumbs up for the screenwriters and actors.

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Dogville (2003)

1/10

Self-indulgent turgid pseudo-art

14 February 2006

First of all, I would not call this a film. It is an experiment gone bad and an insult to real cinematography. Actors walking around on a soundstage, houses marked only with white lines on the floor, and on top of that - a narrator explaining with a stern voice what is going on! What an original approach... Obviously only the sublime mind of self proclaimed connaisseurs is meant to truly appreciate this landmark in style and substance! I still wonder why Trier didn't go further and discard all the superfluous clichés the mediocre audience is used to e.g. why see the actors all the time while he could have shown only their shadows instead! This would have meant a new level of symbolism and caused all the jaw dropped admirers to tremble with pleasure.

Some of you might think of Lars Trier as a genius and deem the so called Dogma 95 an ultimate achievement in creativity and imagination. I don't. I would rather consider the Dogma 95 and the above film snobbish pseudo-elitist mental onanism that serves mainly one purpose: giving a group of opinionated so called "intellectuals" a self-validation tool which has to prove their mental superiority "You - unlike us - don't understand deep art..."

I don't mind the fact that he chose to focus on the dialog instead of the scenery - Sidney Lumet ("12 Angry Men") has shown us that a film can be set in one single room and still be grasping and intriguing. Ettore Scola ("Le Bal") proved that a film does not even need any dialog and still touch you. And Lars Trier amply demonstrates that he can have a great cast and storyline with a potential - and produce nothing but huge flatulence.

By the way, I recommend re-reading "The Emperor's New Clothes" - ironically, written by another Dane...

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King Kong (2005)

5/10

Could have been much, much better...

2 January 2006

Warning: Spoilers

This is not a bad movie after all but it has too many flaws. First of all - as many others already complained! - it should have been trimmed down to 120 minutes maximum! The theater I went to stopped the movie halfway through for a 10 min intermission, exactly at the scene where Kong showed up!! Just after completely immersing into the movie's atmosphere, I had to see lights going on again, people getting another load of popcorn etc. etc. I hated that!! Second big mistake - Peter Jackson is totally inconsequent about his approach on handling reality and fiction. Within the first 30 min or so he establishes a quite realistic scenery of New York in the early 1930's: times of economic depression, people living in slums, theaters closing down and so on. The ship travel was a bit lengthy and did not offer a lot of character development but it was still OK and in touch with reality. And then this touch abruptly ends as the ship approaches Skull Island which looked as if it was borrowed straight from the LOTR trilogy: bizarre and menacing rocks challenging the laws of gravity, skulls and skull engravings virtually everywhere (just in case someone forgot what the name of the island was..) and of course - hostile indigenous folks which look like freaks and act like bloodthirsty savages. To me, this is a big flaw: first establishing strong and historically accurate connections with the past and REAL world and then throwing it instantly all away. The original film was set in its own present time, so the viewers had to concentrate on the fantasy part - whereas in 2005, a movie about 1933 could be interesting enough by itself. As you can imagine, I found the parts BEFORE and AFTER the island adventures more intriguing and that speaks for itself. Well, indeed - most of the actions/scenes on the island don't make sense at all. By all means, I was not expecting to see just some bigger gorilla instead of King Kong! Still, this does not mean that I can swallow any kind of CGI nonsense: brontosauruses running and rolling all over our protagonists and killing just a few of them, huge bats with vampire faces (no kidding!) being capable of flying two humans holding onto their claws, gigantic worms with teeth (borrowed from Star Wars!?!) etc. OK, I must admit that King Kong looked very realistic when it was sitting, roaring or beating his chest - not when it was leaping or fighting. The fights with the T-rexes were too fake - despite being bitten seriously dozens of times, King Kong seemed not to care and not to bleed. Then there were other scenes where the running dinosaurs looked like really cheap CGI, it was simply awkward to watch.

Since the original script was changed anyway, I can not help but wonder why the scriptwriters did not look into other potentially interesting developments i.e. the tribe just conveniently disappeared at some point so the crew could face all the CGI cr*p but what if some of the scriptwriters used their imagination and changed that storyline?? I would have been far more interested in watching a fight between the tribe and the crew instead of the generic and stupid CGI-monster vs. another CGI-monster. Then again, as others pointed out, it would have been interesting to see how they managed to transport King Kong back to NY, what if he woke up on the ship etc. A lot of potential which was left unused. Too bad.

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The Village (2004)

2/10

Slow, pretentious, disappointing...

25 February 2005

The opening sequences were quite promising: sombre musical score coupled with slow moving shots of misty tree branches... OK, not very original but convincing. The opening scene adds up more expectations: a funeral of a 7 year old boy, the tombstone telling us exactly the year being 1897. Was he killed by the creatures, the viewer might wonder as during the wake following the funeral distant howling is heard coming from the woods, causing everyone present - except an obviously insane person - to adopt a serious and worried look on their faces. And then... We are confronted right away with Shyamalan's obvious obsession with the color red: while focusing subtly on it in "The 6th sense" was intriguing, reusing it in this film with a vengeance means that there is simply a lack of imagination on his side. So we are treated duly with close ups of a red flower, red berries etc. while being told through the movie's protagonists that this is the "bad" color (for those who don't get it otherwise...) For no apparent reason, we witness a lengthy scene where a minor female character professes her love for Lucius Hunt (one of the major male characters, simply discarded in the second half of the movie) - only to be followed by another lengthy scene of a lullaby for the brokenhearted. This simply cannot be considered as a buildup of any kind but just as a filler - unfortunately, the same can be said about dozens and dozens of scenes that follow, containing pointless small talk in strange English which for sure was not used around 1897 (just look up some contemporary literature or newspaper article from that period). So we see them (i.e. the villagers) talk in a green house, talk in a hall, talk at a wedding, talk outside, talk inside, talk, talk, talk... Of course, after a while I couldn't help looking at the DVD display to see how much of the movie is left. And it even gets worse: through this constant chit-chat we learn that the creatures (called for no apparent reason "Those We Don't Speak Of" - still better than "Those Who Are Hiding In The Woods And We Speak Of But Never Admit To") made an agreement with the village folks not to step over the imaginary border - which would keep everyone wondering how this deal was struck. And on top of that, these creatures seem to be quite good fellas actually - they seem to recognize the fact that the mentally challenged character (played by Adrian Brody) has a pure and innocent heart so they don't harm him at all even if he does enter into their territory - or that's what we are told at least. At the same time, the local children are afraid to death to even stand near the border (as it is shown in one sequence) - which implies that their hearts are neither innocent nor pure so they will be justly killed by the creatures with unique and keen understanding of the human soul. Anyhow, at one point the wood inhabitants seem to be pretty upset by the behavior of the villagers although the latter have not done anything so unusual to provoke them - and that's when the going gets tough: the village gets invaded by one (yes, I am not kidding) creature which is enough to make everyone hide in their basements (!?!). The normal question that will pop up in everyone's mind is: are the villagers actually a hybrid between chicken and human or what? Back then people in villages like that usually kept rifles in their houses - and if they did not have rifles for whatever reason, then what about axes, scythes, pitchforks etc.? But it turns out that the creatures are just out for fun and into some kind of Helloween rituals: they just walk around the village and don't break anything nor do they harm anyone. I guess they should have at least thrown around some toilet paper in return for not getting any candy. After this raid, being so scary and devastating, the villagers seem to be scared stupid - so when Lucius is stabbed by the aforementioned mentally handicapped one, no one dares to even think of crossing the woods to go to "the towns" to get medicine. And of course, why - what if a creature jumps in front of you and goes "booh"? So why not send a blind girl to go through the forest she has never entered before so that she can go to a town she has never been to so that she can get some medicine she has never heard of? It's a piece of cake, right?? To make things simpler, the blind girl is not given any money either - I guess, the "village" despises it as source of all evil... surely there will be a kind soul out there having pity on a blind girl in a muddy dress asking for some life saving medicine!

By the time the "secret" of the scary creatures gets lifted, I was bored enough not to bother who the h*ck they are. Same applies to the second "twist" - I admit I did not expect it since the year was clearly shown in the beginning but so much the worse if Shyamalan is using tricks like that to poke the viewer with a "gotcha" grin on his face - I would just call this cheap cheating.

I am sure though that if Shyamalan had delivered the suspense and chills the audience expected, they would have forgiven him for being fooled like that. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen either: the creatures turn out to be a "farce" as William Hurt's character poignantly admits - too bad this revelation applies to the whole movie as well.

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