Our Life Is a Movie: Lola rennt (Run Lola Run) (1998)

/
Our Life Is a Movie: Lola rennt (Run Lola Run) (1998)

The movies I have written about here up to now have all been movies I had just seen for the first time. Today I wanted to start writing about movies that I already know and also love and the first one has to be Tom Tykwer’s Lola rennt (Run Lola Run), mostly because I really, really love it, it changed my way of looking at movies and I just recently discussed it with one of my courses and noticed some new things. So, with other movies I’d just talk about the one thing that makes the movie interesting to me, but Lola rennt is stuffed with things to talk about. Again, I could write a long book about this movie and obviously people have written about it already, but that’s not my intention here. I want to focus on some aspects that fit on this blog the most and that are by coincidence the things I only recently discovered (or realized) on my 20th+ viewing. But just so you know how much there potentially is to discuss, all the things I’m not talking about here now:

Read More

Lady in the Water (2006)

/
Lady in the Water (2006)

(spoilers ahead)

Lady in the Water is not a misunderstood movie. It bombed when it came out and Wikipedia says since then it has been more appreciated than critics did then, but seeing it for the first time now, it’s easy to see that it’s a big failure and the definitive tipping point for director M. Night Shyamalan. Sixth Sense was great, Unbreakable maybe even greater, Signs I still liked a lot (even if I was suddenly alone), The Village is not good but somewhat enjoyable, but Lady in the Water hit a new, very low level. It has its few moments, but overall it’s a complete mess. The opening is already confusing and goes on for too long, the movie then goes back and forth on the same ideas over and over again for what feels like forever only to end with one of the most absurd endings ever seen. The bad thing about the ending is that it is supposed to feel grand and spectacular, but you can only sit there and wonder if all of this really happened. The biggest reason for disbelief for the end is that the movie tries to be some kind of metaphor most of the time, but throws of all that out of the window for an effects-heavy fairytale ending that is just laughable.

Read More

Fack ju Göhte (2013)

/
Fack ju Göhte (2013)

(spoilers ahead)

Fack ju Göhte is the most successful film in Germany in 2013. Does that mean anything? Probably not, as success is rarely in conjunction with quality when it comes to movies (or anything). The movie is something like a school comedy, which might be a reason why it is so beloved by students since they enjoy laughing about school. But the plot is… you can’t even call it absurd because it so obviously is just an excuse for the movie to get a bank robber into a school posing as a teacher – that’s the “gimmick” of the movie and the plot behind it (that his bait money is buried under the school) is not believable for a second. Does the movie work? It’s difficult for me to say. My expectations were very low and the movie was better than I had thought. But it wasn’t great. It has its moments but the style of comedy, a sort of constant noisy, over-the-top, aggressive humor, is hard to bear at first, but you get used to it. The characters are mostly clichés, but they are allowed to have some depth at times and even some growth, more or less. Some of the humor works too. The movie strangely grows on you over time, if you don’t think about it too much. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it didn’t hurt to watch it.

Read More

The Wicker Man (2006)

/
The Wicker Man (2006)

(spoilers ahead)

The Wicker Man is one of those notorious movies where it’s hard not to stumble upon YouTube clips before you’ve actually seen it. It stars Nicolas Cage and probably marks the movie that started his downward spiral during which he became known for making crappy movies and overacting wildly in them. The Wicker Man somehow qualifies for both as he acts sleepily for most of the movie before going completely over the top in the end. Is the movie crappy? That is so hard to say, at least for me. I know it is heralded as one of the most unintentionally funny movies ever and I can see that. There are definitely enough scenes that can make you laugh because they are so weird. But the director is Neil LaBute who is normally a very deliberate writer and director of thought-provoking movies that never make it easy for the viewer to make easy judgments. I have read his plays in school and really liked some of his movies (The Shape of Things, Nurse Betty). So what happened here? Cage said in interviews that they intended to make an absurd comedy but the movie does not make that clear enough. LaBute is also known for challenging gender roles and The Wicker Man is full of that. But what is the movie trying to say?

Read More

Neighbors (2014)

/
Neighbors (2014)

(Bad) Neighbors is not a film that made me happy. It somehow tries to show what it means to grow up and have a family but it only occasionally dares to show any of its themes in a realistic way. It goes for over-the-top and silly instead, which is not surprising and not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a shame since there are some glimpses of a better, truer movie in here. Blink and you’ll miss them, but they’re there. Yes, you have less time as a parent and sometimes wish to do something you can’t do anymore, but if your deepest desires are having parties with people who are ten years younger than you and to get high, well… then maybe something hasn’t been working for you even before you had kids. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne do their job well enough, but most of the time you feel like watching some improv scenes that never end. It is funny at times but there is no real structure behind it, as they just seem to keep going. The plot is also annoying because there probably could have been a much better movie if it hadn’t been moving in the “Let’s see who’s meaner” direction so relentlessly. It’s such a lazy thing to show two sides battling each other for no real reason. I felt amusement and embarrassment simultaneously throughout the movie but the more time passes since I've seen it, the worse I feel about it.

Read More

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

/
The Bourne Legacy (2012)

The Bourne Legacy is a very interesting sequel. I watched it in school with my 7th graders because one of them suggested it. Most of them hadn’t known the earlier movies and were very confused by the plot. I would argue that this comes from a rather intelligently written screenplay by director Tony Gilroy and his brother Dan Gilroy. I know the movie was rather panned by critics but I enjoyed it a lot. The plot is demanding, the acting is excellent because of its amazing cast (especially Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton and Dennis Boutsikaris) and the action is well-made and mostly has a story-telling purpose. There is a moment where Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) climbs up a house parkour-style and shoots someone, which is expressive physically (although there probably was some trickery involved) but is also filmed amazingly as the camera (by the great Robert Elswit) follows him from the outside of the house through the window to the inside in one amazing take. The action scenes in Bangkok are less convincing, though, and expect us to suspend a lot of disbelief.

Read More

Winter's Bone (2010)

/
Winter's Bone (2010)

Winter’s Bone is a good and solid movie. It states early on what it wants to do and then follows that plan until the very end. There is a certain suspense to the question if Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) can find her father, so that she won’t lose her house but the movie is not the most exciting one, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It lives through its characters, the performances and its setting. Jennifer Lawrence is as excellent as expected but John Hawkes also does a great job in playing her uncle as an unpredictable man who doesn’t make it easy for us to like him. The scene in the boat is chilling and unexpected. I’m not sure if the movie is really great but Lawrence is so good and the center of the movie that she almost makes you forget everything else.

Read More

3 Months of Movies

/
3 Months of Movies

For about three months I have been watching movies on a regular basis again, after a long hiatus of about 5-7 years. This resurgence in movie-watching was inspired by my year 11 English course students who had to write film reviews. After I read some reviews that made movies I didn’t know sound really interesting, I decided I should start watching them. Well, this evolved into an almost daily movie festival that makes me very happy because I had forgotten (or buried) how much I love movies. Eventually all of this lead to this blog (with some help by Noam Chomsky) because I really wanted to write down the thoughts about Man of Steel or The Wolf of Wall Street that kept me awake at night.

Read More

Never Let Me Go (2010)

/
Never Let Me Go (2010)

(spoilers ahead)

Movie adaptations of novels are an impossible task, at least for anyone who has read the book. It’s almost given that they are worse than the book, you always have this nagging feeling of “there’s so much missing” and it is just hard to judge the movie on its own (unless it's The Lovely Bones that I watched recently too and that turned one of my favorite books into a total mess). Never Let Me Go is a novel that very much lives by its unreliable narration (as I discussed yesterday) which is a hard thing to translate into a movie. Although the movie opens with a voice-over, it doesn’t keep it until the very end, taking the opening and closing sentences of the novel almost word for word. Altogether the movie succeeds as a movie even if it deviates from the novel in many major aspects and, as expected, leaves out large chunks of the story. Nevertheless, it is a successful movie, well-directed by Mark Romanek and almost perfectly cast with Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley (getting the rare “and-role” despite being one of the major characters).

Read More

District 9 (2009)

/
District 9 (2009)

District 9 disappointed me more than I expected. I had heard so many good things about it, it garnered really surprising Oscar nominations and seemed thematically to be right up my alley. And I felt most of that in the first 30 minutes or so and then suddenly everything disappeared and I was watching a decent body horror movie followed by a decent sci-fi-action movie that didn’t have that much to say anymore. The movie felt unsure about itself after that turning point since it had worked well as a mockumentary and continued that style although the content didn’t fit anymore. Director Neill Blomkamp has a good idea on its hand but lets it slip through.

Read More

Prometheus (2012)

/
Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus seems to be one of the most discussed movies of the last couple of years. You find an endless amount of posts about its general meaning, the ending, individual scenes or just lines. I find it fascinating that a movie can have such a strong reaction that is not simply love or hate but thought. People think about this movie to figure it out and even people who don’t like it mostly do because of unanswered questions that bother them. How often does a movie get that kind of feedback, especially one that cost more than $100 million? It is a rare example of a movie full of ideas (even if the execution is not perfect).

Read More

Four Lions (2010)

/
Four Lions (2010)

(some minor spoilers ahead)

Four Lions is a movie that you wouldn’t think exists. It’s brilliant in many ways but it is an unlikely success. The story of five suicide bombers as a comedy could have gone in many wrong directions but Christopher Morris directs this movie so skilfully and determinedly that there never is a wrong beat. The acting is wonderful, the documentary style works and above all the movie is extremely funny. I was laughing out loud several times and that doesn’t happen very often. What a little amazing clever and utterly uncompromising movie this is.

Read More

Remember Me (2010)

/
Remember Me (2010)

Remember Me is a movie I did not expect to like based on my assumptions. But it surprised me even if there were many things I didn’t actually like. What’s great in the movie are the performances (especially Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Ruby Jerin and most of all Pierce Brosnan), the characters and their relationships and… well, that’s it. The problem is that the plot is too constructed, one character is annoying as hell (Tate Ellington as the roommate Aidan) and the first and last ten minutes feel very contrived and unnecessary.

Read More

This 60s Movie: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

/
This 60s Movie: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

(some spoilers ahead, but nothing major)

Lawrence of Arabia came up as another random 60s movie and of course it’s also one the big classics that I had not seen yet. I know many old movies but still admit that I can get impatient quickly because, well, they’re old and often slow. And I grew impatient in the first 30-50 minutes because I found it slow and the movie is three hours long, so I was scared! But somehow the movie managed to turn around for me and got me more than I expected. It’s a weird movie or maybe just a weird main character but still an intriguing one. Peter O’Toole is great and I was really impressed with the set design and camera work. You have to be impressed seeing all those amazing shots, towns and masses of people and realizing this was long before the convenience of CGI. I think, it’s worth for these moments alone. The work that director David Lean has put into the movie is very visible. It is a good movie if you have the patience. I didn’t really get much of a 60s vibe from the movie, though. Maybe it’s a bit darker than I expected, especially the second half went down some surprising roads, but I didn’t see too much of the typical zeitgeist. Then again, the movie and O’Toole didn’t shy away from portraying Lawrence as clearly homosexual (Lean thought he was although experts say it’s not clear).

Read More

This 80s Movie: WarGames (1983)

/
This 80s Movie: WarGames (1983)

After my 70s movie didn’t give me anything I wanted to write about (Mean Streets), I got to an 80s movie. I find it much easier to talk about the 60s and 70s, for one thing because they seem more special to me, but also because I find it harder to grasp the 80s, to get a feel for them. Maybe also because I was born in 1980 and it’s harder to view a decade if you’ve actually been there. Distance certainly helps. Anyway, the 80s to me are somewhat the antithesis of the 60s and 70s, which were a time where real change was possible, while the 80s felt like taking two steps back. But instead of the conservatism of the 50s, the 80s were governed by extreme capitalism and a superficiality that is often mocked but still true. Even if it’s an overgeneralization (as it must be if you try to summarize 10 years in history in a few keywords), there’s a reason why MTV, hairstyles and silly pop music are representative for this era.

Read More

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

/
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is not a great movie but has some entertaining bits. But it’s also very long and at stretches boring, especially since it rehashes so many elements of the first movie which gets tired fast, including Jack Sparrow. Which is surprising since his character basically carried the first movie. I was also frustrated with the depiction of the Keira Knightley character who is supposed to have grown tough but a for a long scene just acts like a pouty girl while the men are fighting.That was annoying. On the other hand, I loved the design of Davey Jones and his crew so much that it almost saved the rest of the movie for me. No, to be clear, these characters are so well designed, produced and played that it’s worth seeing the movie for. The rest, not so much, since it’s mostly action set pieces that feel like action set pieces.

Read More

12 Years a Slave (2013)

/
12 Years a Slave (2013)

(spoilers ahead, even if the movie only has few surprises, since the title tells you most of it, but I will discuss almost every scene of it)

12 Years a Slave is an extremely powerful movie. It doesn’t let you off the hook in showing you what slavery was like. And you have to keep in mind that the protagonist, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was probably better off than the average slave. He had some opportunities because of his education and he didn’t die as a slave. But despite that relatively narrow focus, the movie manages to give a realistic portrayal of slavery. I found the film very impressive, especially the way it was directed by Steve McQueen. I had seen Shame and was impressed by it too but I didn’t feel an emotional connection to it. 12 Years a Slave goes straight to the heart by its sheer force of filmmaking and I appreciate that a lot. Every aspect of the movie – the acting, the music, the script, the cinematography, the editing, the production and costume design, the sound design – is not just a showcase for talent but actually increases the emotional impact of the movie.

Read More

Miami Vice (2006)

/
Miami Vice (2006)

(spoilers ahead!)

There is not that much to say about Miami Vice as a movie except that I found it pretty disappointing. I’m confused by the critical acclaim it got but then again, it seems like a movie that is more or less forgotten by now and that I understand. It’s a bit of a mess, a plot that’s hard to understand but in which also nothing really happens most of the time. The movie on the one hand appears so gritty and realistic but then on the other hand relies on big romantic love and sex scenes that totally feel out of place. I didn’t feel a lot for the characters either. I like both Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx but they were so damn serious all the time that I found it hard to care about them. And why is Justin Theroux in this movie? He has about two lines of dialogue and his face is obscured most of the time. He could have been an extra and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The whole opening sequence was great, though, it felt like the movie was trying something different, there was an interesting mood going on and John Hawkes is just brilliant. But after his death (so after about 15 minutes) the movie quickly deteriorated into long talks between people who didn’t trust each other, dance scenes, racing boat scenes, container boat scenes, plane scenes and a confusing shoot-out finale. And one of the most pointless final shots I can remember. It’s hard not to compare this to Michael Mann’s Heat and not feel sad. (This article seems to explain why the movie is such a mess.)

Read More

This 60s Movie: Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light) (1963)

/
This 60s Movie: Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light) (1963)

Within my project to watch any movie I’ve missed in the last 7 years (since I've become a teacher and time has become increasingly shorter), I started a new project for myself. Watching a random movie from a certain decade, that I haven’t seen yet, to see how far it represents its time. We start with my favourite decade: the 60s.

Read More