American Graffiti (1973) [1973 Week]

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American Graffiti (1973) [1973 Week]

(some spoilers)

American Graffiti is an odd movie, I think, not particularly bad, but also not really exciting. There  isn’t that much of a plot and, I would argue, not that much character development to go on. Which doesn’t make the movie bad, but for a coming-of-age movie I found it was lacking a bit of “coming”. Some characters are indecisive and in the end make a decision, but this one night the movie covers doesn’t completely change anyone’s life. Of course it’s George Lucas’ movie before Star Wars, but since it was a hit back in 1973, that doesn’t really matter for its importance and attitude. It really depends on your interest in its setting, more than in its message, I guess. So, let’s focus on that.

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3 Months of Movies (III)

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3 Months of Movies (III)

Another three months have passed already, so it’s time to take a look at all the movies I watched in that period. Which aren’t that many, unfortunately. Last time, I was frustrated that it was less movies than in the first three months and now it’s even less than that. I hope I’ll have more to look at in April. But I just don’t always have time for movies. Or I use my time for other endeavors (like a fallback to video games recently). Or the amount of movies stresses me because I want to write about all of them and don’t find time for that too. Anyway, I think there will be more movies next time. This time, I’m focusing on all the movies from 21 Jump Street to Kriegerin.

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The Interview (2014)

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The Interview (2014)

The Interview is… annoying? It’s the only word I can think of. It’s a comedy that throws everything at the screen it can think of, any joke, no matter how high or low it aims, they just thrust it all out and see what sticks. Not much does, if you ask me, but that doesn’t really matter I guess. It’s not a secret by now that this movie is not worth all the controversy it caused. Its humor and tone is so all over the place that there is not much room for satire or any deep thought. And the movie honestly doesn’t care either, which might be in its favor. I found it, well, annoying, because it’s very long, not many jokes are funny and the direction is lazy. Seth Rogen does his Seth Rogen thing, which is somewhat entertaining for a while but not forever. James Franco… I don’t what to say. I think he is the worst part of the movie as his grimacing and overacting is simply mind-boggling. It is impossible to feel any sympathy for him, but the movie wants us to like him, which is hard if it’s tough just watching him talk.

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Was bleibt (2012)

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Was bleibt (2012)

(no real spoilers)

Was bleibt (Home for the Weekend is the English title) is another good movie by Hans-Christian Schmid who, in my opinion, has not even made an average movie yet. It’s a family drama about a son coming back home to his family and his mother who announces she has decided to live without her medication, which upsets her husband and her other son. It is really fascinating how the drama unfolds, how the family constellation is shifting and how Marko, the homecoming son, tries to remain as a good a man as possible throughout. And even he is not perfect, which makes him all the more relatable. The film challenges us to work through all the family problems and does so very effectively by making all the relationships authentic and not painting anyone as particularly good or bad. The last ten minutes or so didn’t really work for me because the movie sets us up for a more satisfying conclusion we don’t get and the last line is too much on the nose. Apart from that, this is a really intriguing and well-made movie.

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Jonas (2011)

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Jonas (2011)

(no real spoilers)

Jonas is an unusual and unique movie that is hard to categorize. It is a German movie, first of all (which I have been trying to catch up with a little bit more), but it only features one real actor in a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Christian Ulmen is put into a real situation, acting as a student in a school, surrounded by real students and teachers and seeing what happens. To me, it mostly worked because of the fascination with his character and how much you can learn about school from it. Still, the problem is that the movie never really lets you know how much is orchestrated and how much is spontaneous. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but there is an uncanny feeling that remains. Still, Ulmen’s acting is really amazing, especially since he does not turn it into a caricature (apart from the silly love story which is not really working).

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How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

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How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

How to Train Your Dragon is a good animated movie but saying that seems like a backhanded compliment. And it is because it is hard not to say: “That was good… for an animated movie!” The problem, I think, is that most mainstream animated movies are so similar in their structure and their characters. Of course there are great animated movies, like really good movies, but there are hardly any coming out of Hollywood, I think. And I’m still on the fence for Pixar, personally, but that’s another story. Anyway, this one is good, it’s funny and entertaining and exciting. I saw Wreck-It-Ralph not so long ago and liked it, too, but when I looked at both of them I thought, wow, they’re really always the same thing: underdog becomes hero or some variant of it. And sure, you could say that about any genre probably, but there’s so much work and thought put into animation that it baffles me that there is not more variety, but always the same mix of kids-friendly adventure and adult-friendly humor. Anyway, How to Train Your Dragon is certainly one of the better examples of those movies.

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This 90s Movie: Cool As Ice (1991)

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This 90s Movie: Cool As Ice (1991)

Cool As Ice is not the best movie in the world, believe it or not. It actually is something like the antithesis of a movie, having no real plot, no real characters, not great acting and no coherence whatsoever. It’s very entertaining because you’ll constantly wonder if what you’re seeing is really true. Or possible. Or if anyone thought about anything for one second. This movie is beyond belief. Unfortunately, for long stretches, it’s pretty boring but the entertaining bits are really good. Did I mention that this is the Vanilla Ice movie? When I was 9, I was a fan of Vanilla Ice for some months until I realized he wasn’t really cool compared to real hip-hop. So even little me was beyond Vanilla Ice when this movie came out, making me wonder how it ever got made since I can’t imagine what the audience for it was supposed to be. But I know, making fun of Vanilla Ice is somewhat lame and I should save that at least for my Did I Like This? post on his album (yes, that category will come back).

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Trespass (2011)

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Trespass (2011)

(spoilers ahead)

Trespass is a movie you can only call ludicrous. It starts out like a standard home invasion thriller and then somehow never gets anywhere. Basically every minute of this movie feels like it could be anywhere, making it hard to remember any chronology of the movie. Some gangsters enter the house of a family (Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman) to get something and it goes back and forth forever without anything actually happening. There is a lot of threatening and gun waving and lots and lots of shouting, but for most of the time this group stays in the same room to argue. At first it is an okay movie, but it becomes annoying and boring pretty fast. It’s good not to think of the talent involved in this, not about Joel Schumacher, Kidman and even Cage. The basic problem is probably the screenplay, because it is so full of twists and turns and doesn’t notice that this stops being exciting at some point. Watching this movie, it's no surprise to read about its problematic production, in which Cage decided to switch roles between being the hero and a villain for a while.

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Fur (2006)

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Fur (2006)

Fur is an odd, weird film, but unfortunately not in a good way. It’s one of those rare movies I haven’t heard before, despite its star cast of Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr., but I guess there is a reason this has been fallen out of the general consciousness. It’s not a sleeper or anything, it’s just an oddity. It attempts to tell the life of Diane Arbus, who I didn’t know much about and still don’t know much after having seen this movie, because it refuses to tell her story, but instead some fantasy version of a story that tells us nothing.

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After Earth (2013)

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After Earth (2013)

(spoilers for a movie without surprises)

After Earth is a movie that earns my respect for being incredibly bad. A $120 million budget, a big name star and a script revised many times by some big names (that don’t appear in the credits), and this movie still looks and sounds like no one knows what they’re doing. It’s an amateurish, convoluted and silly attempt of pretending to be a movie. It is incoherent in its excuse for a plot, ridiculous in coming up with a future world where nothing is practical and delivers a message that is incredibly dangerous and stupid. I know, if you just squint a little, this might look like a harmless sci-fi movie, but if you really look at it, it is a total mess that made me laugh out loud several times. And let’s not even talk about the (non-existent) acting or that it’s directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

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Source Code (2011)

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Source Code (2011)

(spoilers ahead!)

Source Code is a clever thriller, that toys with its sci-fi elements without ever becoming too much of a geekout. It has an interesting premise that might be familiar, but not so familiar that it’s boring already. Jake Gyllenhaal is brilliant in the lead role, exactly the right actor for this part, showing us the confusion we would expect but also the determination to get out of it without becoming a cleancut hero. He makes mistakes and overreacts at times, making him all the more believable. The movie has fun with its premise and the direction and screenplay constantly keeps up the suspense and surprises.

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The Conspirator (2010)

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The Conspirator (2010)

The Conspirator tells an interesting story in a boring way, which is too bad. The casting and acting is excellent and if nothing else, the movie is almost worth watching many good actors. But not much is done with it, at least not more than is absolutely necessary. It’s a solid movie with an obvious message, which I will get to in a second. The movie takes too long to get going, giving us the whole Lincoln assassination without giving us a clue what the movie will be about for fifteen minutes. Only then the real story comes through and inbetween the movie also spends time with too many things that seem irrelevant.

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Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (2011)

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Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (2011)

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (I’ll never fully get used to those semi-part names) is, well, an entry in the Twilight series and I’m not surprising anyone by saying it’s not great. It’s silly and boring and too long and weird. I haven’t seen the last part of the series but it didn’t really matter, I had no problem getting into the story, which mostly comes from the fact that there is a minimum of story. Enough people wrote about this movie, too, so I don’t need to get into the whole abortion/pro-life debate, also because I find it somewhat boring. I feel the movie is more ambiguous about it than most angry people say and it fits that it raises question it doesn’t want to answer. Just like its incredibly passive main character Bella, the movie is very good at whatever.

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The Land Before Time (1988) [1988 Week]

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The Land Before Time (1988) [1988 Week]

(spoilers ahead, which is only really relevant if you’re under 6, the movie is not that unpredictable)

The Land Before Time is a rather typical animated movie for its time, I’d say. I probably saw it as a kid but rewatched it now because I’m intrigued by children’s movies and the messages they’re sending. This movie is okay, I guess, but so clearly aimed at children, meaning it tries to be cute and soft all the time, with a fair amount of scares to balance it out. There isn’t much for adults here, which in turn means I think it’s not great for kids either. It doesn’t hurt them (depending on how harmful you view its messages), but it also doesn’t challenge them, except for emotional manipulation. It’s not a movie I necessarily would show to my kids.

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Akira (1988) [1988 Week]

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Akira (1988) [1988 Week]

(spoilers ahead)

Akira is one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve ever seen. I didn’t get everything about the plot, but I mostly didn’t mind because the images were so impressive and amazing that every frame is worth admiring. It’s also a fearless movie, willing to go any place it wants to go, no matter if it’s violent or nightmarish or apocalyptic or sleazy. Again, I’m not sure about the story exactly but the movie is never boring and always astonishes you with a new set piece. Its world is complete, so fully fleshed out, that it is very easy to fall into it. Sometimes you don’t know exactly why the characters are acting the way the do, but you don’t care as long as you can follow them through this world of Neo Tokyo, with its fascination for technology and brain power. It is no surprise to see Akira was very influential for many filmmakers. It’s impossible to watch this now and not think of The Matrix, to name just one. It is simply an impressive movie.

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Above the Law (1988) [1988 Week]

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Above the Law (1988) [1988 Week]

(spoilers ahead!)

Above the Law is a straightforward vigilante movie, which is why I picked it. I mean, it’s called Above the Law! (or Nico, but that isn’t as catchy). I haven’t seen that many Steven Seagal movies in my life because most of them are obviously bad, but this is his first and it’s not that bad really, simply seen as an action movie. It’s not too cynical, the plot is not completely absurd and even the acting is fine. It’s not a great movie but it entertains in its own way.

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This 40s Movie: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

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This 40s Movie: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Yankee Doodle Dandy is from 1942. When I was watching it for The Incomparables podcast, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I know some 30s and 40s movies (and I’m anxiously waiting for my randomizer to assign a theme week from that period to me), but I’ve never analyzed them the way I do here. The oldest movie yet was Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 and twenty years is a lot. Anyway, the movie is a biopic about George M. Cohan, who I only realized after the movie, was a real person. It’s somewhat entertaining, without the songs, if you can enjoy the old-fashioned humor and acting. I found it more watchable than 1776, for example, the other movie discussed in that podcast, that I wasn’t able to even finish. It’s enjoyable enough to keep you interested, despite all the things you can expect from a 40s movie. There is not much authenticity to anything as everyone is a “character” and talks as if they’re in the musical of a movie (or the other way around). Some of the direction is noticeable, but nothing jumps at you and the filmmaking is mostly ordinary.

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Borat (2006)

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Borat (2006)

(no spoilers for this unspoilable movie)

Borat is … oh man, where to start? I know I’m supposed to like this movie. Critics loved it. Audiences loved it. Its screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. For a while people were constantly talking about it and I felt strange not having seen it. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I just never got around to it (because every other movie in existence also calls for my attention), so now, eight years later, I finally watched it and, what do you know, I didn’t like it. Strangely, I expected to like it so this was a surprise to me. I have some issues with the movie but it boils down to one thing: I didn’t find the movie funny.  I saw what it was trying to do but I sat through all of it with an earnest face, not even registering a smile. It’s not that I didn’t understand it or that it was too offensive or something, I just couldn’t laugh about it. It was boring to me, especially the “story” parts. The interactions were somewhat interesting, but that was about it. I couldn’t even say it’s a bad movie, but it’s definitely not a movie for me. And I think its ideas don’t translate well to a movie, this is just made for TV.

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Interstellar (2014)

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Interstellar (2014)

(no real spoilers until I tell you so)

Interstellar is certainly something like an event, a movie that is highly entertaining and engaging, but somewhat hollow at its core. The movie wants a lot but ultimately fails to reach its own ambitions. The production values are excellent, the images are stunning, the music is epic, the visual and sound effects are flawless. The editing shows some of the movie’s problems, because it uses hard cuts for effects but overuses them, showing that the movie really wants to be special. This also goes for the parallel montages that are interesting but ultimately don’t lead to much. You find the same problem in many of the movie’s aspects, especially the last twenty minutes, where the movie really tries to be clever but simply isn’t. It’s more show than tell, unfortunately. The acting is very good but some dialogue doesn’t do the talent of the actors justice. My impressions are still fresh, but I’m not sure where the movie lands in my perception. I loved it’s ideas about time and there’s one very emotional scene that I found really effective. It’s worth watching it, I think, but it’s one of those movies that seems more problematic in its ideas the longer I think about it.

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Catwoman (2004)

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Catwoman (2004)

Catwoman is stunning in its badness. I had low expectations, but I didn’t expect just how bad it really was. The movie defies anything you expect from a comic book adaptation or a superhero movie or a movie with a female protagonist. It does everything wrong, looks cheap and amateurish, has a terrible script, some of the worst CGI, an annoying soundtrack and bad (over)acting. This is really, really bad, though enjoyable in its failure because you can’t stop being amazed that they this or that way.

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