The Dark Knight (2008)
directed by Christopher Nolan
When it comes to TDK I feel like I’m missing some crucial piece. I can’t say I disliked it, but neither can I say I really liked it. It was a competent action movie that, while entertaining at times, left me mostly indifferent in the end. That’s partly due to Batman being more of a supporting character than the focus of the movie. The Joker reminded me too much of Nicholson’s Joker and felt like a cheap surrogate. As for Two-Face: I loved Aaron Eckhart in Thank You For Smoking, so I expected from him an excellent performance in TDK. Which, reading reviews all over the net, seems to have worked for many people, just not for me. The love between his character and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s one had no chemistry, his subsequent slide over the edge and transformation into Two-Face wasn’t realistic or emotional convincing at all. Maybe I like the third one better.
Rating: 3/5
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008)
directed by Guillermo del Toro
The same thing that stopped me from enjoying the first part too much rears its head again. Hellboy and his companions looks so much like their comic-counterparts, but characterwise the movie misses the mark completely. The comic-Hellboy is a smart and self-independent investigator, at times he feels like an old noir detective at work.
The movie hellboy is a goofy and not too smart buffoon. Sure, he can fight and looks impressive, but underneath there’s a teenager who hasn’t grown up yet. This sadly is also true for his companions. And what’s with this stupid the-BRPD-must-remain-secret idea. Nobody cared about Hellboy and the BRPD remaining a secret in the comics. That’s just stupid.
That said, when it comes to monsters and other fantastical creatures, Hellboy 2 is far more varied than his predecessor. There’s a certain opulence to the fantasy elements that reminds me of old, stop-motion fantasy movies. And while the characters never really worked for me, I did enjoy the movie to a certain extend for its pure entertainment value, a mindless but occasionally fun action-adventure. If they tone down the soap-opera elements a bit, the third part could be even more fun.
Rating: 3/5
Juno (2007)
directed by Jason Reitman
While Juno doesn’t feel like a realistic depiction of a young girl who is suddenly confronted with an unwanted pregnancy, because of how nonchalant she and most people around her react, it’s a fun and at times also inspirational movie. Perfectly played by lead actress Ellen Page, Juno is like a small tornado that flattens everything in her path. Her snarky, self-assured manner, while just hiding a teenager who’s not as much on top of things as she tries to make everyone believe, makes for some extremely fun scenes and also makes her instantly likeable. The other characters are likeable too, the competent stepmother (it’s good too see someone portray a positive stepmother instead of the old-fairy tale cliche), the father, her girlfriend and all the others.
Not unlike the previous movie by Reitman, at times you might feel like the style of the movie is far too light for such a grave situation, but while it’s a fun and light movie, it doesn’t presents its main theme as a laughing matter. It’s a question of perspective, just because people aren’t spouting doom and gloom with every sentence, it doesn’t mean they don’t take it seriously. It’s just that they haven’t lost the ability to see some of the absurdity that lives dishes out in it. And instead of feeling sorry for themselves (which makes far too many serious movie an experience in boredom and annoyance), they deal with the situation in their own way.
Rating: 5/5
Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
directed by Satoshi Kon
Another movie with a baby in a central role. Three homeless bums find a baby in a dumpster and try to find out why it has been abandoned and by whom, while fostering it for the time being. While the movie makes the life of homeless look far too easy at times, even if it tries to display some of its elements correctly, its an engaging piece that tries to make its main character seem genuine and human. Those three have found in each other a second chance, a second family, after they left their original one for reasons of their own. During their odyssey through the city to find the mother of the baby, all these things come out and each of those three has to face their past. Mind you, this is not a movie about redemption, but about three people who are lost and get a chance to reconnect to some of those people from whom they are running away. While there’s too much coincidence involved to make the plot feel realistic, the reactions of every character and their stories ring all too true and make you feel with them. And it can be quite funny at times.
Rating: 4/5
Shoot ‘Em Up (2007)
directed by Michael Davis
A highly violent action movie/dark comedy mix about a bum who eats carrots and shoots like the devil. When a women with a baby is followed by some gunmen, he helps her, only to get her killed in the proceedings. He flees with the baby and is followed on every step of the way by people who want to kill him, or rather the baby, to be more specific. During his attempt to preserve the life of the baby, he slowly finds out the (completely inane) backstory and has to shoot somebody nearly every ten seconds. While I do like violence in my movies, its just a bit too overdone here to be completely enjoyable. Not just the action, also the attitude of everyone, gangsters and good guys. It feels like everyone is trying too hard to be cool and funny. And the violence is so numerous, so ubiquitous in every scene, that it becomes boring.
Rating: 3/5
The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)
directed by Mark Waters
Story Skeleton: family moves into an old estate, one of the kids opens a book that collects fairy lore, an evil ogre wants the book to conquer fairy- and menkind, kids to the rescue
This is a pleasant enough fantasy movie for the whole family that is just a tad too predictable and generic for my taste. The movie felt like a melange of scenes from similar movies I’ve seen in the past, the evil trolls, the lovely fairies or whatever they were. Everything is played safe, the good and the bad guys are easily identifiable, the plot becomes obvious in the first ten minutes. Maybe I’m getting to cranky for this kind of stuff, but I miss a little bit of bite and uniqueness. And I find the old fantasy-wisdom of There Are Things That Are Better Not Meant To Be Written Down annoying. I’m sure nobody ever tried to inject such a movie with an anti-science message, it just comes with the territory. Still grating. As is using a deus ex machina for winning.
Rating: 3/5
The Negotiator (1998)
directed by F. Gary Gray
The Negotiator is about a police negotiator who normally deals with hostage situations, but who, due to a small scale conspiracy in his own department, is forced to take hostages himself. To deal with the situation and clear himself of false accusations, he demands an outsider, another negotiator.
Samuel’s portray of Danny Roman, the negotiator turned hostage taker, is very believable, a character who projects strength to people around him, but who’s at heart a sensitive and even vulnerable character. The outside negotiator Chris Sabian is quite the opposite. At first he’s shown with his family, all nice and cuddly, but later you’ll realize that this hides a core of pure steel. As this is a movie about negotiation first and foremost, the action is sparse, but despite that the tension is very high throughout the whole movie, as neither the viewer nor Samuel’s character know who exactly is part of the conspiracy. This is what drives the movie until the final scenes. Overall a well done mix of drama and some action.
Rating: 5/5
Amon Saga (1986)
directed by Shunji Oga
Amon Saga is standard fantasy fare. A lone, silent hero bent on revenge on some generic fantasy villain. There’s also a princess involved, who needs saving and doesn’t do much apart from standing around and looking gorgeous. That said, it’s not a bad movie, just a tad too generic to make much of an impression. The most interesting thing are some of the visuals, for example the fortress of the villain is located on the back of a gigantic turtle, which indeed looks impressive.
Rating: 3/5
Highlander: The Source (2007)
directed by Brett Leonard
H:tS leaves the same kind of bad taste behind, that every piece of really bad fan fiction does. It has all the typical elements of any Highlander movie (save for Lambert, who mercifully got killed off in the last part): sword fights, rolling heads, dying immortals, and yet everything feels slightly off. It’s about some mystical source, for which the immortals quest. Some guardian of said source has also awakened and is out to kill the remaining immortals.
Where to start? The look seems inspired by the hyper-stylized look that became all so common in the wake of the Matrix, but done with a TV movie budget. The plot has holes the size of the grand canyon and is riddled with rampant stupidity, the new characters cannot act and look ridiculous, especially the immortal priest and the evil guardian (who looks like a cheap man’s Marilyn Manson). The locations were everything takes place are puzzling at best, everything feels artificial and slightly unreal, bereft of humans, as if they had not enough money for extras. I really felt sorry for some of the guys from the TV series. I’ve seen them act, at least good enough to entertain and make their roles believable. Here, most of them just felt misplaced, out of sync with their original performances. Only Adrian Paul has some good moments, but they are lost admit the awful rest.
As movie two to four have already shown, there can be only one (cliched, but true). Part five is no exception, beating a dead horse even more. Hopefully this is the end of the road for the franchise.
Rating: 1/5
Jumper (2008)
directed by Doug Liman
The first time I saw the trailer, I thought: This could be good. Really good. I haven’t read the original novel by Gould, so no previous bias from that one. But as it turned out, it was just a mediocre movie. The first stupid thing is how the main plot gets rolling. So your main hero is just suddenly attacked by some people with technology that can stop him from teleporting and he narrowly escapes from them. What’s the first thing he does? Go back to his hometown to see an old friend he hasn’t seen in years. That’s not just normal stupidity, that’s a whole new level of dumb. The rest of the plot is mostly okay, but that was just beyond daft.
Another big problem is how generic the villains were, some organization that hunts Jumpers since the middle ages. While I can put my suspension of disbelief at work when it comes to the Paladins (the evil dudes) deploying their futuristic tech in the modern age to catch Jumpers, I have a hard time believing how they could have been any threat centuries ago and why the Jumpers did not wipe them out when they had the chance. Also their motivation for hunting the Jumpers (they turn bad) is a bit too generic. This makes the whole movie feel a bit shallow. Secret agencies hunting Jumpers down to get their hands on their abilities would have made sense, but this ages old secret organization was bloody stupid.
Overall, some neat action scenes coupled with teleporting sequences that made me think that they are ready to film The Stars My Destination, but do I really want that?
Rating: 3/5
