The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)

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The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)

I feel almost bad writing about The Adventures of Pluto Nash, because the movie is so stupid and annoying, getting back at it is a real drag. It is not funny, it is not exciting and that’s about all the adjectives you would want from this kind of movie. Everyone looks bored, nothing makes the slightest sense (seriously), the effects look incredibly terrible for a $100 million movie (that made $7 million at the box office) and you will see all the actors involved with different eyes because whenever you see them again in the future, you will be reminded of this movie, asking “Why?” again and again. I don’t think Randy Quaid is a great actor, but his performance here is beyond belief. It's really no surprise I picked this as the worst movie of the last three months. Just look at the stupid poster.

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Our Life Is a Movie: Se7en (1995)

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Our Life Is a Movie: Se7en (1995)

(spoilers)

When I saw Se7en for the first time in a theatre in the fall of 1995, it was a revelation for me. The opening credits, the atmosphere, the structure, the acting, David Fincher’s brilliant direction and above all the twist ending took me by surprise and somehow showed me what movies can do. I watched it again in the theatre just a week later, because I had to experience it again as soon as possible. It was also responsible for me going regularly to the theatre after that, starting a long stretch of cinema visits that cemented my initial childhood love for movies far into adulthood. In that aspect, Se7en is of great importance to me personally, a huge influence for my movie-watching capabilities. I have seen it so many times over the years (I once watched each of its seven days on separate days) and when I watched it with a class for the first time this January, I loved it just as much and saw also clearly what it means for my world view and why I still consider it an important movie when talking about our culture. I won’t explain any plot details, I’ll just assume that you know the movie and if you don’t, go and watch it.

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3 Months of Movies (IV)

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3 Months of Movies (IV)

Another three months are up and so it’s time again for reflecting up the movies I watched in this time period. The good news is that this time I actually found time to watch more movies, which makes me happy, especially since I didn’t watch any movie during the holidays for two weeks. Still, my ambition to watch any movie in existence tells me I could have done better! There is always room for more movies. (check the Film List for all movies of those months, from American Graffiti to Gamer)

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Haywire (2011)

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Haywire (2011)

Haywire is an excellent action movie with an okay plot that falters a bit in the last 15 minutes. But it’s hard to care too much about the story, which doesn’t matter in the end because you enjoy the great actors playing interesting characters and most of all the excellent fight and action scenes that are really impressive and well done. Seriously, those fight scenes alone are worth watching the movie. They look real, happen in interesting locations and have some surprises. And Gina Carano owns all of them. I read some reviews claiming that the movie only exists to show off Carano’s fighting skills and though that makes it sound like a movie I’d normally not be interested in, I totally fell for it here. Most of this wouldn’t matter, if the movie wasn’t directed by Steven Soderbergh because his skills are visible in every scene. It is not a movie he will be remembered for, but he is such a talented director and every scene shows that. I really like the underdog nature of this film and it reminded me a lot of The Limey, Soderbergh ‘s great movie with Terence Stamp that is similar in spirit (and has the same screenwriter). Anyway, it’s a very entertaining movie and if nothing else you get some great actors enjoying themselves (like Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas who are all excellent).

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Real Steel (2011)

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Real Steel (2011)

Real Steel is a movie you don’t think you want to see and which surprises you insofar as it isn’t completely stupid and somewhat entertaining. But it is still a movie about robot fights, so the good will only goes so far. Nevertheless, Hugh Jackman is always entertaining (I think) despite some overly manhood mannerisms and the effects are pretty good too. The plot is mostly free of surprises while the characters are written well enough for the most part. Danny Elfman’s score is terrible, tough, which is a shame. It’s also very much too long. This is no masterpiece by any chance, but it’s entertaining to some degree.

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This 40s Movie: Out of the Past (1947)

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This 40s Movie: Out of the Past (1947)

Out of the Past is considered to be a classic film noir, which doesn’t mean that much to me since I’m not a particular fan of this genre. It has been used for so long that it is hard to do anything new with it, but you can’t expect that from a movie from 1947 of course. You can expect the basic tropes of this genre, stereotypes and sometimes a surprise, if you’re lucky. Out of the Past doesn’t have that many surprises, but it’s a nice enough movie anyway. While the plot becomes rather convoluted in the second half, the movie is never really boring, well acted and has some nice directorial touches by Jacques Tourneur. But it’s also nothing special, really, one of those old movies that are fine to watch, but probably not too memorable in the long run.

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88 Minutes (2007)

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88 Minutes (2007)

(spoilers and some NSFW images)

88 Minutes is a terrible movie, even more terrible for using an interesting concept and not only ruining it, but not really using it at all. If a movie tries to attempt being real-time, it should at least tell the audience that and not fill the movie with scenes of car drives. I mean, screw all of that, the movie is not real-time, it’s just a very stupid, very boring and very cheap thriller that makes no sense whatsoever and baffles you in all of its (accordingly more than 88) minutes. The acting is horrible, even Al Pacino sleepwalks through it as the protagonist. The directing is as amateurish as possible, the script is laughable, so the movie fails on every level. What works is that it makes you laugh unintentionally, like when Al Pacino pays a taxi driver to give him his taxi, but lets the driver sit in the back all the time or when during a dialogue scene the poster of a local improv troupe is featured prominently. As a bad movie, it’s somewhat recommendable because it’s really a different kind of bad and it wastes its actors (poor Deborah Kara Unger, having one of the most pointless roles I have ever seen) spectacularly.

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Northwest Passage (1940) [1940 Week]

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Northwest Passage (1940) [1940 Week]

Northwest Passage is a better film than North West Mounted Police, but that doesn’t really mean that much. What makes it better is that it is filmed better, there are some spectacular scenes, the acting is better and the colors don’t blind you. When it comes to the depiction of Native Americans this might be even worse. At least it shows the extinction of Native Americans as detailed and gruesome as possible, while not taking any moral stance against it and actually justifying it most of the time. This is essentially a war movie, but instead of soldiers killing other soldiers in WWI or WWII, we have rangers taking out Native Americans. While they walk through swamps and forests, there is almost an impossible Vietnam vibe to all of it. It sort of works as a war movie adventure, in depicting the struggles the soldiers have to get through (the action scene in the river is kind of cool), the way they plan their mission and the difficulty of getting back home. In that sense it is almost enjoyable, if you ignore any ethical alarms setting of at watching the glorification of war and genocide.

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North West Mounted Police (1940) [1940 Week]

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North West Mounted Police (1940) [1940 Week]

North West Mounted Police is a bad movie in many ways. It is a Cecil B. DeMille spectacle, which is what he was determined to do, but in this case the very concept of a spectacle for this story seems misguided. Using a rebellion of a minority group against the American government as a background is not a good idea, especially if it turns the rebels into caricatures and uses it to paint the North West Mounted Police, a group of horse-riding Canadian policemen, as heroes. Add in some intercultural romance, betrayal, honor and many stereotypes about natives and women and you get an overlong piece of pseudo-propaganda with overly bright colors and strange acting. It is a movie that has very problematic ethical standards and is not well-made. This is not a movie that needs to be remembered.

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The Great Dictator (1940) [1940 Week]

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The Great Dictator (1940) [1940 Week]

The Great Dictator is a true classic in theory, a movie many people know and that seems to be relevant even today after Charlie Hebdo and The Interview and any satire that focuses on dictators. But I wonder how many people actually know the movie and like it as a movie as opposed to a concept. The movie ranks very high on the IMDb user ranking and after seeing it, I am surprised by that. It is not a bad movie at all and some scenes are really good, but overall I found it to feel forced, uneven and, worst of all, not very funny. I know, sacrilege!, but I watched the movie with the most open mind and was constantly stunned how jokes fell flat and how little payoff there often was. Often the satire is not really sharp and rather relies on slapstick, but, I think, even then slapstick that is mediocre. The editing is off in many, many scenes, hurting the movie’s pace. The acting was great throughout, though. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was disappointed. Sure, if you account the time and circumstances, maybe you can’t really expect more, but the question is if the movie should be judged simply on its intentions or on its actual quality.

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Waterloo Bridge (1940) [1940 Week]

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Waterloo Bridge (1940) [1940 Week]

(spoilers ahead, but you don't care, right, it's a 1940 movie)

Waterloo Bridge is an odd film to judge. On the surface I liked it. The acting was quite good, the dialogue is well written and the direction by Mervyn LeRoy is good. It is an entertaining movie, apart from its plot development and moral, especially concerning women. I have rarely seen such a strange mixture of serviceable filmmaking and questionable ethics. Interestingly, for a movie made in 1940, it is set mostly during World War I but also includes Britain declaring war on Germany in World War II, clearly appealing to audience’s emotions at the time. Anyway, there are worse old movies you could watch and this one at least offers the opportunity for interesting post-watching discussions.

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This 70s Movie: The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

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This 70s Movie: The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

The Incredible Melting Man is another movie where the title tells you a lot already. It combines “incredible” with “melting man” so you more or less know what you’re getting. It is in fact a really bad horror movie that looks awfully cheap, has no real plot, bad actors and many weird trash movie moments. It is the story of an astronaut who comes too close to Saturn and when he returns back to Earth, he starts melting and walking around killing people for no reason. If its gore effects hadn’t make me feel sick (I get that easily with cheap looking horror movies, something about them freaks me out easily), I would have enjoyed the badness of it all. The scene where a nurse is running from the “monster” in slow motion for about a minute, without the monster actually behind her is pretty awesome. And the dialogue scene about crackers is really unique. The ending is fascinatingly anti-climatic and odd. But this is no good movie.

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

(no spoilers)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a really interesting movie, but also a very funny one. I had wanted to see it for a long time, due to both my love for Shane Black scripted movies when I was a teenager, but also because I enjoyed Iron Man 3 so much. And I had heard only good things about this one, so I was eager to see it. Overall, my expectations weren’t quite met as the plot is such a mess. But the dialogue is as great as you would expect from a 100% Shane Black movie, Robert Downey Jr. is really good and I laughed out loud several times, which not many movies achieve these days. There are some jokes that are so well done, not just the snappy dialogue, but also some physical comedy that is just great. Michelle Monaghan really surprised me in her role, too. If the plot was more coherent, this would have been a really amazing movie.

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Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

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Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Birdemic: Shock and Terror has exactly that title, so you might think I don’t have to explain that this is not a good movie. But even if you know bad movies, you have no idea what you’re getting into with this one. It’s not just cheap or poorly made, it’s really the worst made movie I have ever seen. Take a video with your phone of anything right now and it probably looks better than 99% of this movie. Seriously. Anyway, it’s still a lot of fun since you simply can’t believe what you’re seeing most of the time. It consists of scenes that show completely mundane things for minutes on end (driving in a car, buying gas, walking from one place to another, people clapping). If you’d cut the actual plot parts of the movie together, you’d probably end up with a 30-minute movie. Let’s not even talk about the visual effects of the attacking birds because… let’s just not talk about it. It’s a perfect laugh-out-loud bad movie that delivers one insane scene with ridiculous dialogue, bad editing, amateur camera movements, terrible sound and inexplicable plot developments after another. Maybe you need three minutes of driving around in a car to process the absurdity of everything else.

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Drive (2011)

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Drive (2011)

(spoilers when I say so)

Drive is a movie that really got to me. It is one of the intense and most surprising movies I’ve seen in a while and also one of the best. I had high expectations for the movie after having read so many good things, but they really paid off. It’s the first movie I gave a 10 since Looper in August. Director Nicolas Winding Refn creates an atmosphere that is as intense as anything I’ve ever experienced in a movie. This special mood is mostly created through silence, music and brilliantly framed shots (the two of them in the hallway, separated by the editing, but united in negative space is extremely brilliant). The use of unexpected and shocking violence adds to that in an unusual way. The movie captivates you so much that the violence really feels like a hit on the head. It makes the violence also more meaningful because it both has an effect on the viewer and real consequences for the characters. The acting is amazing throughout, especially Ryan Gosling carries the movie without saying much and with only the slightest facial expressions. The same goes for Carey Mulligan, but most of the actors defy character expectations with little gestures, especially Albert Brooks and Oscar Isaacs. Overall, a great movie that stays with you.

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This 50s Movie: Gun the Man Down (1956)

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This 50s Movie: Gun the Man Down (1956)

Gun the Man Down is an obscure 50s Western, which I only watched because I became fascinated by the idea of watching the debut movie of director Andrew V. McLaglen, from whom I haven’t really seen any other movie. Somehow it intrigued me to watch this “first movie” (although it might have actually been his second) and to watch a western. I didn’t expect to like it and it certainly nothing special, but it’s also not really bad. It has some interesting ideas for your run-of-the-mill western, even if the story is short on surprises. It’s a revenge story, bank robber left behind by his accomplices, seeking revenge. I thought when writing about my first western, I could about Native American clichés, but it seems this movie couldn’t afford more actors and locations than necessary. But it still has an interesting female character to talk about.

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The Imitation Game (2014)

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The Imitation Game (2014)

(minor spoilers if you don’t know anything about the plot or Alan Turing’s life already)

The Imitation Game has all the ingredients for a great movie, but wastes that potential on most levels. It tries to tell too many stories at once and doesn't do justice to any of them. The story is compelling enough to keep the viewer invested, the acting is excellent throughout and Alexandre Desplat's score is great. But almost everything about the script is flawed: structure, focus, explanation of relevant plot details, dramatization of events, accuracy and in a few instances dialogue. It takes too many shortcuts when it should get into detail and it overdramatizes when there is no need to. After seeing the movie, I don't find it surprising that it isn't accurate. It's not a bad movie at all, but one that gets worse the more you think about it.

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Kriegerin (2012)

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Kriegerin (2012)

(some minor spoilers)

Kriegerin (Combat Girls, which is a stupid English title as Warrior would work perfectly) is a relentless portrait of two young women who end up in a neo-Nazi organization simply because society doesn’t offer them anything else. It is a very effective movie that doesn’t shy away from anything, making it hard to watch at times. It also doesn’t simply paint people as bad or evil, but mostly as lost, which I will get into in a second. The movie takes its subjects seriously and doesn’t really judge them, it observes, mostly. Marisa, the main and basically title character, is played by Alina Levshin in an amazingly strong performance. I’m unsure if the plot always works and if the off-screen narration at the beginning and end are really necessary (especially the last lines made me cringe a little). The in medias res opening also added a hopelessness that I’m not sure the movie really needed. But this is nit-picking, overall the film is very well directed by David Wnendt and presents a subject matter that is not talked about enough, at least not from this point of view.

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Badlands (1973) [1973 Week]

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Badlands (1973) [1973 Week]

(minor spoilers)

When I checked for 1973 movies and saw Badlands, I knew I had to take it. I had never seen it before, but how I could not use the opportunity for watching Terence Malick’s first movie? I really liked all of his movies I have seen up to now and I really had been wanting to see Badlands for a while. Anyway, it is definitely a good and fascinating movie. It worked better for me in the first half than in the last, but overall the story of those two young people drifting through the U.S. is worth watching and is not at all the way you would expect it. The images are beautiful and haunting and even if you think you’ve seen all of Malick’s insertion of nature images, I always find it powerful. Early on, he shows this holistic view of the world and you see that in Badlands as much as you see it in The Tree of Life thirty years later. The acting is great, the music is excellent (I had an epiphany when I realized that my favorite music from True Romance is no original Hans Zimmer score, but a classical track by Orff that Malick used in his spiritual predecessor to True Romance. I never knew…) and increases this strange, dream-like, melancholy atmosphere that accompanies ever killing and escape from civilization. I’m not sure about the ending of the movie because I felt similar to Sissy Spacek’s character in the end, which made it harder to engage with the movie.

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Soylent Green (1973) [1973 Week]

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Soylent Green (1973) [1973 Week]

Soylent Green is one of those sci-fi-classics where people rarely talk about the actual movie and much more about its famous final line of dialogue. The movie is really fascinating because it is such a dark, extremely dystopian future that is relentless in its hopelessness. It tries to alarm people at the time, to avoid this future, but then again, the way people act here, you couldn’t believe that anyone is able to change or do anything good. I really liked this dark atmosphere, the special effects and some of the ideas about the future. The movie is set in 2022, so there is some of that fun of how much the movie is wrong about the future. And how much it is right. It is not a perfect movie at all, the plot doesn’t really move forward much and is obviously just there to reach the shocking conclusion. The misogyny is almost unbearable (more on that below) and Charlton Heston does not play a very appealing main character. But there is Edward G. Robinson’s amazing final performance and many fascinating little details that keep you entertained.

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