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Reviews
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Sadly, not as good as the trailer
[This review is spoiler-free]
The people who are going to appreciate this film the most are people who have read the books, but only once or twice, and not very recently.
The film is visually stunning, although a bit chaotic sometimes... sensory overload, anyone? But that can't help the fact that this movie, unlike it's predecessor, has several problems.
1) The plot is split, trying to focus on three, sometimes four, different but interwoven plot lines. IF you have read the book, there is no effort to keep concentrated. However, if you haven't read the book it might become very confusing.
2) On the other hand, if you are very familiar with the book, you will be a bit disappointed by the story treatment. Sure, most of the things from the book are in the film, but not necessarily in the same order, or even with the same characters, as in the book. As book adaptions go, this one strays frequently off the path quite a bit. To make matters worse, the changes in the storyline have no apparent benefits or reasons; they just exist. I mean, we all understood why Tom Bombadill had to go from the first movie, no matter how much we hate it. Not so with this film.
3) The characters, with a couple of brilliant exceptions, behave rather odd. Merry and Pippin suddenly mature while Gimli is reduced to an axe-weilding homicidal comic relief and Legolas seems to be very dim-witted in this movie.
4) Although visually stunning, the battle is just too unrealistic. Wait, you say, this is a fantasy movie. True, but that doesn't mean you just can abandon the laws of nature... since this review is spoiler free I won't go into any details, but you can only let a character miraculously survive the onslaught of a gazillion enemies so many times before it get's ridiculous.
So, to sum it up; most of the audience will probably like it, since it had great effects, lots of action and Liv Tyler in a skimpy dress. Fans of the book would do well to leave their brains at the door though. It all boils down to how high expectations you have, and how much you love the book. Ironically, the computer generated characters of Gollum and Treebeard are the best parts...
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
The Force is strong with this one
Just seen Episode II and I got to write something to get it out of my system... (No spoilers, I promise!)
I... loved it!
It's far better than Episode I.
Plotwise it is about as complex (or non-complex, if you like) as the first prequel and the following (original) movies. Structurally it is more sound than Episode I. For instance, the climax is at the end of the movie, instead of in the middle.
Visually it is stunning. Lots of visual easter eggs to look out for, both design-wise and character-wise, to serve as tie-ins to both Episode I and the original (following) episodes. (This baby is going to run in slow motion and on repeat on my DVD when it is released!) One Swedish reviewer complained that he could discern which backgrounds where digital and that it looked like a video game. In that case I would like to have his game console, I have never seen a computer game this life like.
Well, okay, so the acting wasn't top notch. Jake Lloyd as the nine year old Anakin in The Phantom Menace is actually a better actor than Hayden Christensen as the nineteen year old jedi apprentice in Attack of the Clones. However, he whines just like Mark Hamill as Luke in Episode IV, very amusing! Jar Jar Binks is in it though, but he hardly has a minute of total screen time. The digital characters are better than ever, and even though the all-digital Yoda sometimes isn't as good as the puppet one, the audience cheered and applauded when he finally reached for the lightsaber...
Lastly, one reviewer complained that while technically brilliant this movie lacked catchy lines for fans to pick up. Not so, you just have to pay attention. I picked up one five minutes into the film: Jedi poodo!
10/10. May the force be with you.
Unbreakable (2000)
What if you had superpowers but wanted to be an ordinary man?
Following up on such a successful debut as "the Sixth sense" would be impossible, so Shyamalan doesn't even try it. What he has done is a low key, eerie thriller bordering on the supernatural, not quite crossing over the line. One could say it has the same theme as "the Sixth Sense", but a totally different perspective.
Short recap of the story: Elijah Price is born with a serious disease making his bones very brittle. (In fact, he is born with both his arms and legs broken.) As an encouragement to make him go outside his home, his mother gives him comic books each time he ventures outside. So he grows up into a successful art dealer and comics collector (Samuel L. Jackson). He becomes fixated on the idea that if people with physical deficiensies exist, there has to be people on the other end of the spectrum wich lacks any physical weaknesses. In other words; superheroes.
When a serious train crash occurs with a single survivor, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), Price is certain he has found his hero. Price then tries to convince Dunn that he really is a superhero. What follows is quite an interesting struggle between the reluctant Dunn, the charismatic Price and Dunn's son who really wants his dad to be something more heroic than an ordinary security guard. More and more we learn that Dunn might be more than he seems at the same time as Dunn and his son do. We also realise that Price might not be so disturbed as he seems, but right until the end we are kept in the dark on exactly who (if not all) of the characters live in a dream world.
Short summary: If you have an open mind and would like to see a different thriller, you will probably like Unbreakable. Especially if you know your comic herobook trivia and recognise the symbolic clues sprinkled throughout the movie. If you liked Sixth Sense and think this is just a sequel with more of the same, you will probably be disappointed.
Remember the Titans (2000)
Politically correct stereotyped drama
This movie insults its audience.
Where should I start? To begin with, the cast is ok. Denzel is as usual, Denzel, but makes a good job. Will Patton is more softspoken and more believable. The rest fills in rather nicely as college students or inbred rednecks.
But every character is stereotyped, you know where the plot will take you, and the lines are so, so, so incredibly stuffed and rigid. Nobody says things like that in real life. Every line is like a well rehearsed speech (which frankly they are, since it's a movie).
The football matches are well shot, but not very interesting. If you don't know the game they are too short to really give a feel of the game. If you do know the game, they are too short to be exciting, as you never actually can follow a game in the movie.
Based on a true story, but nevertheless totally predictable, right up to the ending. Dull, dull, dull.
Oh wait, there's a message; Don't judge anyone because of their colour. Well, the bible could probably tell you that. As for the race issue, there are lots of other movies which both delivers the message better, and are better as movies. Like American History X, which tries to deal with the root of the problem instead of glossing it over like this movie does.
Pensionat Oskar (1995)
The search for your true self never ends.
Brilliant story about a middle-aged man's life-crisis when he realizes that not only he doesn't love his wife, but he may be gay as well. This film is not about homosexuality, rather it is about escaping the cage social rules and expectations have forced you into and accepting who you really are.
Loa Falkman as the frustrated family father Rune Runeberg is very good. Stina Ekblad as his wife however is brilliant, portraying a house-wife in the middle of a crumbling marriage, trying to salvage what can be salvaged.
The script is witty, sharp and very spot-on, detailing the Swedish middle-class suburban hell as we expect from Jonas Gardell. We have some laughs at the expense of the family as their problems get them into various absurd situations, but the next instance we choke on them instead when it dawns upon us just how unhappy the main characters are with their lives.
As the main song goes; "What I was looking for, and what I found instead."
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
A superb movie by Steven Spielberg, which almost, but not quite, fulfills all it's intentions.
I guess you all know what it's all about, and you've heard about how real it is.
Well, for me, it came across mostly as very realistic although the Omaha Beach landing was more a gorefest than great cinema. This might have been intentional, as the purpose probably was to shock the audience with the full horrors of war.
Still this scene doesn't "do it" for me. Why? Because I've read so much about the D-Day and WWII that I know people died in droves (literally) on the beaches that day, such as they always do in war, only this was on a much greater scale. That same scale what is working against the scene because we don't know the characters involved and we do know that those we recognise(Tom Sizemore and Tom Hanks for instance) will make it safely ashore as they have to go and find this paratrooper schmuck named Ryan. It is a good scene though, just not all that it was claimed to be.
Ok, ok, I've rambled on about the landing, how about the rest of the film? Well, it starts off a bit slow, to allow the audience to get their breaths back from the opening 20 minute blood bath and to introduce the main characters to the audience. We are also introduced to the films moral dilemma, is it fair to risk the lives of nine men to save one, just because his three brothers have already died? What price are we prepared to pay and for what exactly are we willing to pay that price? The message is further emphasized by the losses incurred on our small group of heroes as they traverse the French countryside. The whole mission seems like a suicide, especially as nobody knows wether Ryan is still alive at all!
And it's the final battle scene that really makes the movie for me. Because now it's man to man, you know the characters involved and you can see the fear in their eyes, and you can see the same fear in the germans' eyes.
So it's really gritty and intense, and Spielberg has managed to capture all this with a really stunning and up-close photo. The cinematics are incredible, the shots are long with few cuts, just like in the old David Lean movies (Lawrence of Arabia, most notably). All this combines into one, long and really breathtaking battle. It would probably have been easier to start a real war and film that one instead than to shoot this battle scene. When I came out of the theater, my condition could only be described as "shell-shocked".
Sadly, this is a movie which will lose a lot if seen on a TV. But see it anyway if you haven't seen it yet.