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The Revenant (2015)
Fantastic cinematography let down by story
The cinematography is absolutely fantastic. It was the only part of the revenant that made me watch it to the end. Flawless, a dream in 4k hdr. The Oscar is well deserved.
The rest is disappointing.
The movie states it is all about realism. Fight scenes are gruesome realistic, so seems to be the bear attack. However the 'hero' is so badly wounded that he has no chance of survival. Especially when he is left alone, incapable of walking, open wounds, broken legs in the wilderness in the middle of winter. Ridiculous. He survives all that and heals on the way. So much for realism.
If the story would have a mystical aspect or an 'over the top' action hero all that might work. But the film insist on being close to reality. Which it isn't at all. And this disturbed me extremely throughout the movie.
Sadly the characters are one dimensional only. They are not properly introduced as persons. Actually it is very hard to relate to anyone. Character Glass is in survival and revenge mode, nothing else. 'Evil' Fitzgerald has zero development as well.
In the end the cinematography is stellar, the rest is 'meh'. The proclaimed realism is an annoying lie.
1917 (2019)
A BIG Misunderstanding
I do not think 1917 is that great a movie critics and audiences make it.
I really like to explain why I think that.
This film actually FEELS like the depiction of a third person shooter (TPS). I like this kind of games and play them maybe too often.
Nonetheless the movie uses no cuts. Very much like any TPS. The decision to film this movie without any visual cuts seems to be bold at first. But any TPS basically has to do this. This is no groundbreaking cinema. In fact it hinders the cinematic possibilities.
There is no deep storytelling. The main character feels threatened from start to end. And he doesn't change much. A story driven movie would have shown us why he gave his medal away. And how he got it. Nothing here.
I think audience and critics take the way this movie is filmed as a unique decision of the director.
But it isn't. TPSs like Uncharted, The Last Of Us have all the necessary ingredients and are interactive. The thing this film fails the most.
Ad Astra (2019)
Losing the point
Another Hollywood trial to go into deep emotions and intellectual ideas.
The movie is about a father son trauma with a real heartwarming resolution. The whole science fiction setting is a mere backdrop. Contributing almost nothing to the core story.
However the film blows this backdrop up. Perhaps to meet audience expectations. Sadly this supersedes the core narrative.
To make things worse the science fiction backdrop pretends to be scientific correct. But it is just a stupid collection of plotholes, inaccuracies and imposibities.
For example stopping for a craft sending out a mayday while on course for mars. You would waste all your momentum and fuel if this craft wasn't right on your track. Or sending absolute VIPs by car through moon pirate territory instead of flying them.
The core story somehow appeals to me. But most parts of the movie spoil it.
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Cultural imperialism
This movie is absolutely unacceptable.
On the surface it is just another nice but thoroughly meaningless Wes Anderson film, this time trying to compete with Tim Burton.
Deep inside, at its very core it demonstrates how arrogant the United States treat other cultures. How dare you to give this a Japanese setting. How dare you to trample on a foreign cultures values and tradition.
I do not suppose Mr. Anderson is a typical right wing US-american nationalist.
But if even a rather liberal director proves to be a cultural imperialist so obviously, it really makes me feel sick.
5 points for the movie
No points for the horrible set of mind.
Arrival (2016)
Disappointing
Unfortunately arrival is in the end just another trial of Hollywood to go intellectual.
The really intriguing idea of changing the perception of time and time itself by learning a language that has a circular definition of it is just plain beautiful. And linking this idea to a personal life is just great. How does a human cope with the knowledge of all things to happen? In this case getting a child that tragically dies as a teenager. Would you go on living this life?
Unfortunately these things unravel only at the end. The last 10 minutes of the film are convincing.
But the 1:40 before that are uninspired to right out boring. The fantastic idea is superseded by the typical Hollywood stuff.
Instead of telling us a convincing personal story, perhaps even with aliens, the filmmakers decided to drown almost everything in the usual line: military investigates, scientists are summoned under their command, earth governments consider an armed conflict. This is the source of suspense and drama. Missing completely the real point.
This whole setup really buries most of the movie.
It is a tragedy to see this beautiful idea wasted that thoroughly.
Acting is great. Cinematography is spectacular at selected few moments but generally sub par. Music is fine.
Drive (2011)
30 years too late
The movie is simply 30 years too late.
If it had been made in the 80ies, well, then it would have been some sort of innovative and interesting.
But you see, Michael Mann (and the likes) made films like this already.
There is not a minute of new idea, new filmmaking in this movie. Refn obviously just tried to produce a long 1980 music video.
Unfortunately the film itself is so much less creative than the better videos of that era. All characters stay shallow. That would not be a big issue if the pictures would be suggestive enough to let you forget that. And this is the problem of the film.
Either you actually produce a music video. A flow of a pictures and music (electronic music considering the decade), dialog minimized to the bare necessities. Or you try play it cool like an Leone western.
Every minute of watching this film one can sense this conflict. And the movie never decides which way to go.
Better watch the originals from the 80ies.
Godzilla (2014)
Godzilla is back
This American Godzilla is true to its heritage. They added Hollywood budget, changed the location but kept the spirit.
There are some who complain about the story. A Godzilla movie and a logical script? Sure, one would definitely expect that. Main characters and psychological depth? Absolutely necessary?
The story is - of course - full of plot holes big enough to let Godzilla pass. The human characters are more or less one dimensional. But what do you expect. This is a silly monster movie.
And it is really fantastic in showing the thread. For example the bridge scene, where one gets a good idea of the helplessness of man.
And the film excels in showing the size of what is happening. In the last year's I have seen a lot of movies depicting the destruction of cities on a fabulous technical level. Transforers, Man of Steel, just to name a few.
But never I felt the sheer size as in Godzilla. The scene where he gets on land for the first time is a masterpiece in this sense. He doesn't simply leave the sea, oh no. He evokes a tsunami first before wrecking a whole city.
And as in most Toho films Godzilla is the good guy, sort of. While human efforts are futile he saves the world from monstrous muto. The director proved in "monsters " that he can bring alien ecosystems to life and create an eerie atmosphere. He succeeds with the muto. However they look too much like Cloverfield and too little like Japanese Toho monsters.
The human storyline fortunately doesn't interfere too much with the action. Still I would have liked to see more of Godzilla.
A good Godzilla movie and a must for.fans.
The Mission (1986)
Political fail
In an all too simple storyline this film tries to blur the responsibility of religion in the slaughter of people.
This movie tries to tell you, that there is in fact a good (Jesuits) and bad church (rest of the catholic church). And if everyone would follow the good part, well, heaven on earth.
Even though not as brutal as the rest of the catholic church, the Jesuits were in some way pathfinders for the west. And they did not have, and do not have, any respect for foreign cultures and believes. In their blind religious faith they think (until today) that a non-Christian soul is lost forever. In fact losing its eternal afterlife.
And that justifies almost anything to convert heathens into Christians. They were and are in strict accordance with Rome.
A large church of course has a lot of factions, true believers and straight forward earthly politicians. So the roman catholic church never has been a pure spiritual organization and often enough sacrificed believe over power.
So in this example of its history. Big surprise, isn't it? And sure, the natives are living in a paradise and are true angels. The usual romantic stuff. So the audience feels a lot of sympathy for the natives. Classic Hollywood.
This combined with rather uninspired movie-making results in a shallow piece of irrelevance. The simplicity might make it appeal to the masses. But the film fails with all major historic issues.
Do not watch it, if you are politically interested.
Pacific Rim (2013)
American Anime
Pacific Rim is nothing else but an American version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The setting, the cities, even the wording (Kaiju, Jäger) point in that direction.
Monster-Techno-Anime as a real movie, in 3D. Fantastic.
However... The movie turns out to be an empty shell. The visuals are great, the general storyline is just fine. Japanese anime have this fantastic settings too, but they have the tendency to concentrate on the psychology and philosophy of the characters (see Neon Genesis Evangelion, Blue Submarine No 9, Akira, Ghost in the shell for example) This adds enormous depth too the films. Yes, I know, it sounds strange. But the Japanese demonstrate and proof that even a monster movie needs some depth.
This is missing in Pacific Rim. Only in the scenes with young Mako you get a sense of this. And these are actually the only moments where one gets any idea about the motivation of the characters.
So, in the end, I watched this beautiful looking movie, and constantly missed something more than just plain heroism. And hardly ever there was more.
Nice movie for fans, but not a good one.
Man of Steel (2013)
Nothing special
I like most Zack Snyder's movies. He has a very strong visual style. The stories do not always match up. But granted for that.
There is however nothing special about "Man of Steel". It was obviously too expensive for any experiment, for anything different but mainstream.
The opening on Krypton shows off its production value. Yet neither pictures nor story leave a profound impression. The following act is the most interesting part of the movie, when Superman roams through the world. Hiding, without a goal or a reason.
That does not last all too long.
Lois Lane enters the story, a not so pretty and not so interesting character. Fortunately the battle starts pretty soon.
So you sit in the cinema and think to yourself: "Action, finally..." But it does not differ from "Transformers", from "Avengers" (which had some humor, making it cool), "G.I.Joe", "Godzilla", and all the like. But this smashing and crushing is way too long. It is as if someone had turned the volume to max and just left it that way.
"Man of Steel" is better than "Superman returns" but definitely not a very good film. It is just about average.
World War Z (2013)
Waste of budget
I didn't read the book, that said first. So I will not complain about the story differing significantly from the original.
I was only looking forward to see a real big budget zombie movie. Zombies on a global scale, big pictures, big war. A very mild zombie picture though, with PG-13. And I was hoping to get a sort of realistic approach to the matter: Infection spreading, society crumbling, fighting back, and themes like that.
WWZ starts in the middle of it. The big cities all over the world are in the state of getting overrun. The whole movie focuses on one man trying to find out where the "infection" came from. And he wants to get back to his family. The only other significant character is a female Israeli soldier who manages to escapes together with him from dying Israel.
Even with this pretty narrow viewpoint WWZ might have become a nice movie.
But the zombies are way to fast. If you are confronted with 2 or 3 of them there is virtually no escape. These monsters are even faster then they were in "28 days later". Once bitten a victim turns into a zombie within seconds. How should a disease that infectious spread around the world? Every single infected person/zombie would be detected long before reaching any overseas destination. Just take a look at "28 days later", exactly for this reason the infection is confined to Great Britain.
Well, I probably should not complain that much about the logic in a zombie picture.
PG-13 and super fast zombies however destroy all horror. The zombies are most of the time just a fast flowing mass. And these flows are animated pretty poor. What did they spend the budget on? In the last third of the movie things get more claustrophobic. When our hero tries to get some biological samples in a lab complex full of zombies. There are numerous examples for this in other films and mostly done better.
WWZ has some really mass scenes, but the poor animation spoils them. They just do not shock you because they look too phony. And because there is not one person that you really care about. It is by far not bloody enough for the genre. The characters are somewhat remote. One simply does not care that much when someone gets slaughtered. (A lot different from 28 days)
The finale is pretty disappointing. The movie ends exactly where the war would/should start.
The film is entertaining, but no real zombie horror movie. Rather watch the Romero films or the walking dead. Even resident evil is more interesting.
Life of Pi (2012)
A nice movie
It is a nice movie, really nice. But just nice, nothing more.
The film has a light, but thoughtful tone. The fantasy-story is told in an immaculate way. Picture, colors, characters, all fit in just perfect.
But the overall result is just that bit too slick to make you care.
Emotionally the main character is more or less remote. Yes, he shows some grieve about loosing his family. And he is in despair, at times. But only to an easily bearable extend. If the audience would be confronted with the full force of his emotions, the story would not be nice or lovely after all.
The same happens intellectually. A portion of the film deals with man, god, believe. And yes, the main character has a lot of reason to doubt god. But again, this doubt is not going too far. It just scratches the issue, so everything remains easy. Nothing too serious here. So it has hardly any meaning.
Life of Pi is nice to watch, but do not expect something with real substance.
By the way: This movie will work in 2D as well. I felt most of the time 3D was not really adding anything to the film.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Superb technique
I watched the movie in HFR 3D. And that was pretty awesome. The picture quality is outstanding. Full of details, no picture noise. The 3D effect was without flaws. The only drawback is a video look (aka soap effect) in fast moving scenes. That looks pretty strange, but the overall quality is well worth it.
The movie itself is a typical Jackson film. Every single piece of the story is explicitly depicted and displayed in detail. Except for the battle scenes there is hardly any change in speed of narration. One would expect unimportant parts shortened and relevant parts highlighted. Yet that is not a virtue of the director.
So the film has its lengths, well a lot of lengths to my mind. 2 hrs. would have been well enough.
The battle scenes are huge, and hectic. A little less would have been more appropriate, for my taste.
So I think it is an OK-movie, and a technical milestone.
Prometheus (2012)
Wish it had a story
Good things first: Great visuals (really), good acting (Fassbender), no teeny-movie, dark and serious atmosphere, entertaining.
Unfortunately the story sucks. I ignore all the very obvious logic problems, it is a SciFi after all.
Yet all persons in the movie are very flat characters, except for the android David. It/He is in fact the only "person" with any dimension. So whenever somebody in the film was in danger, I hardly cared.
The film has a lot philosophical subplots, it seems at first: Relation between Creator and created; Parents and children; God and science; Believe and free will; Death and what is beyond; Emotions and androids; Being human; Life in the universe. A long list, and that is the problem. All these things are mentioned but never treated. It seems to me, they just put all this "stuff" in the script, to make the movie appear (!) to be full of deep thoughts. "God and science" mentioned, OK, make a mark on the list, go to next theme.
And there is this connection to Alien. Well, it adds some thread to the story. But to my mind it is just a marketing instrument. Prometheus the prequel to Alien sells better than Prometheus.
Obitaemyy ostrov (2008)
Too packed
Phew, what to say about this movie. There is simply too much to discuss. This is quite the impression you will get watching this film. It rushes from theme to theme, literally rushes! Let's start at the very base, a Strugatsky novel. I read a few Strugatsky stories, most notably of course "Roadside picnic". "Obitaemyy ostrov" however is not "stalker", no 10 out of 10 that is.
The brothers Strugatsky were Soviet writers, so some of their stories dealt with the soviet ideal human. In "Obitaemyy ostrov" earth has made it, and no doubt, all humanity transformed into perfect (probably communist) beings. That means every human being utilizes all of his/her potential: Mentally, physically and ethically. The latter is of most importance. A perfect communist is of almost angelic moral integrity. Whatever powers he will possess or obtain, he will not use these in any selfish or abusive way.
That said, our "hero" is a most beautiful, well build "Übermensch" (astonishing blond an blue eyed) from earth, with perfect integrity and morality. He is young, and unfortunately crashes on a strange planet. His spacecraft explodes, he is lost. As he is an "Übermensch", he is not desperate.
In fact he is imprisoned by a totalitarian state, escapes by accident, falls in love, and the story really gets complicated from then on. Right now there are true spoilers to come. So stop reading, if you want to watch the movie unbiased.
The unknown fathers reign over a city, that is (of course) a mixture of Metropolis and Blade Runner, and a little design of Dune. As the story evolves you will learn that almost everyone is controlled be rays send out by so called defense towers. These rays work at a subconscious level. Our hero is immune, as is a group of people, fought by the state as terrorists. Well the (super-)earthling becomes (in order of appearance) a prisoner, guard elite soldier, free individual and lover, terrorist, convict, runaway convict, terrorist leader, member of the establishment, revolutionary and finally earthling again. The hero is somewhat naive. He tries all these positions like a youngster without any prejudices.
In the end, he knows about the foundation of the political system. The political elite of the state resembles a bit Stalin's system. The state's attorney is in trouble. That means he is about to be murdered. He tries to convince our hero to destroy the central of the ray-emitting towers and take over the power after wards. With the help of some co-convicts the hero succeeds, but destroys the central of power instead.
One of the very nice and intelligent moments of the movie is the instance, where the friends of the hero take over power. And one really feels the temptation of power. Almost brilliant.
One high ranking member of the government turns out to be human (thus superhuman) as well. He is furious about the actions of our young hero. The so called roamer tries to change the system since 20 years. But he tries to avoid unnecessary losses or victims. He is the man for the slow change, no revolution. The young hero is the revolutionary, simply incapable of bearing the injustice. While exchanging some intellectual backgrounds the roamer and the hero beat hell out of each other. Really strange (for super-humans) I think. And naturally, the young rebel insists on a quick change.
The movie is optically splendid, albeit the cgi is about 10 years behind. They have enough budget to make things look convincing most of the time. Designwise they steal from a lot of movies.
The film was more entertaining than I expected. But it has too much to tell to be really great. A lot of interesting things just rush by. Well, and the same might be true about this comment.
Cargo (2009)
Simply boring
If the budget is small, the story has to be cool, so money won't matter.
This swiss production has a very low budget but tries its very best to look good. But the story... It is slow paced, it is predictable and it is no good at all.
In a nutshell, earth is inhabitable, everyone exiles to near orbit space stations. But there is Rhea, a second most beautiful earth. Only the rich can make it there. A medical doctor signs on a cargo ship to earn herself the money to do just right that. She discovers Rhea is a fake, just some VR. By the way meets a terrorists and falls in love for him, but tragically in the end loses him.
One does not have to be that bright to guess all that after an hour into the movie. And meanwhile it is the thousands time we see dark, metal clad corridors of a rotten space ship.
The cast underacts to the extreme. I am not sure whether they simply can't do any better. And believe me, it is very hard to sympathize with anyone. It is only in the last 10 minutes emotions somewhat become visible. This is not credible at all. I must confess I think the acting and/or the direction is lousy.
And it is not a problem of the budget. They have a small story and broaden it to almost 2 hours. Boooring!
Contact (1997)
Intellectually disappointing
It was only now that I actually made it to watch this movie as a whole. I always had some kind of sympathy for the shattered parts I had seen before and I was very hopeful for this film to get the theme right, as it was based on a story of C. Sagan.
Well, now I am truly disappointed.
Our main character is a strict scientist, more than most I have ever met personally. She is based deeply in the philosophy of modern natural science. Citing Ocam's razor it is fairly easy to state being an atheist. And she shows some stubborn philosophical issues real atheists tend to display as well.
In the end, a person like that goes on to a journey to the stars. Returning without any serious proof. The experience she has is more than doubtful. Just the notion of meeting her father on another star's shore makes it highly probable, the whole thing is just a hallucination of some sort. Maybe induced by the strange electromagnetic effects of the (alien) machine.
If the main character lived up to her inner believes, she would be the first to admit. But no, she rather ignores this, and winds up with the man, who is - albeit a strictly religious person - her lover. Giving up all conviction, blending with a religious philosophy, losing herself, for a man!? Farewell to Ocam and all foundations of modern science.
This is strictly unbearable, if you got any kind of believe or philosophy. There is no possible accord between religion and nowadays science. These positions are natural enemies. And Contact tries to wipe the fundamental conflict away.
Of course people with contradicting philosophies can fall in love. Philosophy and even religion do not really matter in the end. Well, at least if you kept some sanity to yourself. But they do not need to blend into each other. The main character of this movie for sure would not.
And I am not talking about the logical holes in the plot line. Why would national security get involved, if it takes for any message 26 years to travel to the other side? That means actually you send something and receive an answer 52 years later! Why would the government hold back information (18 hours of video recording that should not exist) if the same government has to justify the costs of 600 Trillion (!) Dollars. Ridiculous! In the end and at the end the movie falls apart. Starting up as a rather credible and accurate story about the first contact to an alien civilization. But definitely failing when the contact is made and the aftermath has to be handled.
Tron: Legacy (2010)
Too long
I'm one of these guys who have seen the original Tron, and thus had to watch Tron Legacy. By the way, the cinema was full of old guys watching a kiddie-movie ;-) The optical quality of the movie is undisputed I think. Light cycles (always my favorites), light cars, light planes, and all the rest. Wow. Beautiful.
I did not expect a great story. Well, there was a story, but a stupid one. A lot of pseudo-philosophical talk, silly descriptions of the digital world.
So what? I did not care with Tron, and I do not care with Tron Legacy. However, Tron Legacy is a long movie, so there is plenty of time to almost spell word by word the philosophy of the movie. And it bores a lot.
If this movie had been 30 or (even better) 60 minutes shorter it would have been simply great fun. But the way it is, it has too little effects and action and too much boring parts.
District 9 (2009)
Different approach
Dstrict 9 is quite a political movie. Too much politics for a truly great movie and still not enough of it.
D9 starts almost completely political correct. Poor refugees (albeit aliens) are somewhat stranded in Johannesburg. Unemployed and foreign they cause the usual social difficulties, especially growing racism. An ignorant government and a multinational and of course evil company threaten the poor existence of the aliens. So far so boring and predictable.
Fortunately the plot takes a turn. The rather stupid company executive, who is in charge for the relocation of the aliens, gets infected and slowly turns into an alien himself. Due to great acting and fine storytelling this kept me very interested and entertained.
In the end this executive defends an alien from the military. The alien escapes (with his son) and promises to return to save his kind. The executive survives and finishes his metamorphosis.
This all is filmed very well, with a fine balance of intellectual input and sufficient blood and gore.
But D9 is a political movie and has to be measured by its intentions and messages. Clearly it is a movie against racism. Fine. However it is extremely racist itself. South Africa has a multi-tier society. White people, black people from South Africa and black people from abroad. Who do you think is living in the worst slums? Right, people from Kenia, Nigeria, simply from the rest of Africa! And what kind of people are the most violent and superstitious ones in the movie? Nigerians! No racism here?! To me this ruins much of the credibility of the film.
And in order not to get too serious the movie has a neat little happy ending. Our hero (the mutating executive) meets an alien. The alien's son is some kind of technological whiz-kid, repairing all alien devices. Swell. So the movie lets father and son escape. Naturally they act not only to save themselves, but mainly to free their people. Seen a thousand times, you know. And nobody would take any precautions to blast the mother ship into oblivion in case anything like this might happen?
D9 is a nice entertaining movie, taking a different approach to tell all of us how bad racism is. But it's political correctness is predictable and the results are sugar-sweet. And it is inherently racist in itself. That makes it worth roughly 7 points.
2012 (2009)
Not funny enough
Well, this movie starts like big fun.
The filmmakers and the audience know, there is some kind of story and explanation at the beginning, but we're sure going to blow up earth. So just sit through this inevitable 15 or 20 minutes and the big fun of crushing everything will start.
During the first 40 or 60 minutes this movie follows this general idea. It is really great fun. Yeah, no sense at all, but a lot of beautiful destruction. Most of the time done pretty convincing.
But hey, it IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE to take this plot serious. There is no need to take anything serious. However, you get the full load of pseudo deep family story. Divorced dad and son saving, well, a lot of people. A strong appeal to acting very moralic. The notion included that politicians are free of any moral.
And that makes the movie fail ultimately.
It starts as a tongue in cheek show with only one goal: Destroy almost anything in the most spectacular manner. And that would have done fine. Yet there has to be some heroism, some moral and some good an bad. And that is just a complete failure.
This inherent story problems are a lot worse than logic goofs and failed special effects. They really spoil the fun in an otherwise mindless disaster movie.
Avatar (2009)
Strictly visual
400 Million and no whatsoever bearable story.
I understand, a project of that size may not be a failure. An interesting story is always controversial and disturbing. And thus risky. And that is exactly how the story is. Predictable to the very last second, good and bad neatly sorted out.
Unfortunately the filmmakers added a moralic momentum. Every fairy tale, every archetypal story is simply about good and bad struggling with each other. Just have a look at good old Star Wars.
Avatar is a lot worse, good is obviously American indians, but pretty ecological, and in deep love with gaia. While white American men, members of the military industrial complex, are out there to destroy everything. I am simply too old and by far not dumb enough to buy that crap.
The pictures are brilliant. Especially the 100% computer generated ones. While live action has some difficulties in 3D, CGI is just plain perfect. Even though Pixar is a serious rival in technological excellence, pixar does not have the money to produce almost 3 hrs of highly detailed landscape.
But that is money only! The extremely convincing animation of the alien characters is the most impressive feature in Avatar. In fact, it is the only real new feature. You could have seen everything else in other movies, not that exhaustive though.
Avatar is impressive, a must see. But ultimately it is a mindless piece of film. I would have enjoyed it a lot more without this childish story.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Not that good
I do not understand what movie everybody seems to have been watching. "The dark knight" simply is not that good.
I am sorry. Heath Ledger is dead. Should we just close our eyes and pretend everything he did in this film was great? I definitely do not think so. He was just re-acting Mr. Depp's pirate! While Depp was absolutely convincing in his role as Cpt. Sparrow, Ledger only copied the whole concept. That was pretty weak acting.
I still do not understand why Gary Oldman plays Gordon. What a complete waste! He could be such a fantastic villain, or brilliant at every role, that has light and darkness about it. Gordon is just a straight honorable man. And you let Oldman play this!? The rest of the cast is doing pretty fine. Even though I think some of the great names are straight forward wasted on stereotype roles! So what about the story line? Does it overcome any of the above mentioned items? No way! Batman is forced to consider his actions. Is it in any way justifiable what he does? Off course not! Taking the law into your own hand is no good idea. There is historic evidence: It is very advisable to place the force into the hands of a state, that is bound to law and that is democratic justified. While it is a romantic idea to overcome the weaknesses of the state by individual actions it is in practice the end of a free society.
On a comic book level batman is cool. But is there any sense in seriously considering his role? No, that's ridiculous. Our hero does not kill villains, he does not judge them. But he is bending the rules to catch them. So he is bending the rules by spying out all cell phones. Is that in fact worse than beating up presumed criminals? Worse than breaking every single piece of law in order to catch th "evil" ones? It is absolutely silly to have this as a theme in a batman comic-movie. Every reasonable state would HAVE to put our hero into prison. No option on that, period.
The movie is pretty good, 5 out of 10 ain't to bad. But that's all!
L'instinct de mort (2008)
Tough but fascinating
When Mesrine and Guido killed an Algerian pimp I instantly remembered "Goodfellas". But "L'instinct de mort" is an European version of that. That means it is a lot tougher, a definite lot tougher and more realistic than Scrosese's film.
Mesrine is depicted as an incontrollable, sociopathic character. There is no way to identify with this man. He is a horrible person. Someone I'd really hate to meet.
He is a stupid idiot: Attacking a high security prison with a friend and a couple of weapons only. He is a real bastard: Threatening his beautiful wife in a most despicable way. He is irresponsible: Leaving his children for a reckless whore.
The superb acting however keeps you interested, keeps you watching this mad person.
Violence is never funny in this movie. It is always horrible. It is no fun watching Mesrine and friends beating up some arabs, or killing some cops. It is not a justified act of revenge, when Mesrine gets tortured in prison.
Except for Depardieu the cast is brilliant. Cassel is so convincing in being a mad bastard. De France is really credible as his lover.
I did not like Mesrine. I didn't even really like the movie. But I was deeply impressed.
I was disturbed by the violence. Even though I do not have any problems with standard splatter movies.
But I felt like watching a true story.
"L'instinct de mort" is definitely a recommendation!
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
What a decline
I did not really like Ang Lee's Hulk. It was so much less than the Marvel Hulk. Too much psychology and too little anger.
Well. After "The Incredible Hulk" I have to change my mind. Ang Lee understood at least Hulk is about anger. About rage. About loosing your mind in rage. Only love could break that.
What the hell is "the incredible Hulk" about? He isn't even really angry. This Hulk is behaving like a big gorilla. Rather status than anger.
This incredible Hulk is just heading straight forward into the realm of the horrible TV series. I am absolutely not looking forward to a new incarnation of Bill Bixby's Hulk. Yuk! The venture is now heading into that direction. What a disappointment.
Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008)
superfluous
What is the sense of making a feature movie about events of the near past instead of a documentary? Well, one can make the audience identify with or at least understand (on a human level) the historic persons. A documentary film must be accurate and is by no means allowed to get you personally involved with the characters.
There are plenty of good, and some excellent documentations on RAF. There is actually no need to have a feature movie telling the whole story again, unless it travels beyond documentation.
Baader Meinhof Kompley unfortunately does not even try to do that. Why is Gudrun Ensslin such a political fanatic? Why is the macho Baader going along? Exactly why and when did they change from juvenile delinquents to icy terrorists? You will not receive even the slightest psychological explanation in the film! The movie (and obviously the book) concentrate pretty much on Ulrike Meinhof. But is there any understanding evoked by the film? Not really!
The complete first half of the film is simply a mindless sequence of pictures. OK, accurate pictures, nonetheless meaningless. It is simply an action movie (with a serious theme) The suffering of the victims is depicted on the cinematic level of a splatter movie. And not even a modern one.
In the second half the "main characters" are incarcerated. For moments they become more than just stereotypes. The story gets some intellectual pace. But by far too little for that theme! Herold, a policeman, played awfully bad by Bruno Ganz, is somehow the only person, to understand some principal ideas, some structure in the events. Come on, you're serious? Police understood what was going on and politics failed? Let us remember that chancellor Helmut Schmidt definitely has been pretty intellectual!
The movie only scratches the surface. It simply is superfluous. Watch or read a documentary instead!