The Next Three Days (2010)

/
The Next Three Days (2010)

(spoilers ahead)

The Next Three Days is an odd movie with an intriguing concept that wastes a lot of its potential on the way. The story of John Brennan (Russell Crowe) who wants to break out his wife (Elizabeth Banks) from prison raises questions of plausibility, but they can be disregarded because you can’t argue too much with realism in a Hollywood movie. The movie’s problem lies more with its lack of focus and character development. It’s a case of too much and not enough. It’s mostly suspenseful and Russell Crowe does a really good job, but the movie leaves him hanging pretty often.

Read More

Poster of a Girl - Photoshop Abuse, Sin Kids and Gender Math

/
Poster of a Girl - Photoshop Abuse, Sin Kids and Gender Math

It’s time for posters again! Last time I non-scientifically looked at some posters from the IMP homepage, I found some questionable portrayal of women there, unsurprisingly. Well, today I do the same, grabbing some posters from the site that got my attention.

Read More

The Room (2003)

/
The Room (2003)

(spoilers ahead!)

The Room is the bad movie you wish for when you want to watch bad movies. I know I raved about I Know Who Killed Me as a great bad movie, but The Room is on a different level. It’s pretty infamous by now, so nothing I’m saying here is probably anything new, but the movie is just so awesome and weird, really unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s a bad movie I’d rewatch again anytime because it is really entertaining. But just for someone who doesn’t know the movie, I’m trying a plot summary here: Johnny (Tommy Wiseau, the writer/director/auteur) is in love with Lisa (Juliette Danielle), but she loves his friend Mark (Greg Sestero), who doesn’t really seem to love her but just can’t help himself sleeping with her. Add about half a dozen unresolved plotlines and you have a movie that makes no sense whatsoever. It plays mostly in one room, in which people at all times randomly enter and often leave again after 10-20 seconds. But actually, the less said, the better. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, go watch it now and come back to us trying to look at some of the thematic aspects of the movie.

Read More

Frozen (2010)

/
Frozen (2010)

(spoilers ahead)

Frozen is an example of so-called “survival horror”, though it’s a weird genre, since there aren’t so many contenders. But what else could it be called? It has all the characteristics of a horror movie, only without the monsters or killers. Well, except for the wolves, but that’s my least favorite part of the movie anyway. It’s really effective in making you scared and wanting to look away, which is what a good horror movie should do. The story of three people trapped on a ski lift is inherently scary, especially because the movie makes the situation plausible. You keep wondering how they will get out and for the most part they don’t even act too stupid. The dialogue at times is pretty lame and none of the characters is really sympathetic, but the movie works anyway. And despite the wolves. The problem with the wolves is that they add drama and stakes to a situation that already is as dangerous and scary as possible. They seem perfunctory. The movie would have worked without them and they also seem implausible (even they maybe are not). Anyway, the movie is good enough, I guess, despite its flaws, just because it frightens you so much and that makes it hard to forget it. You don’t remember the flaws as much as the panic of wondering if it’s a good idea to jump off a ski lift.

Read More

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

/
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy is the very definition of a fun movie. It’s extremely entertaining while you watch, exciting, funny and if you get into it even a little touching. It doesn’t completely hold up when it comes to its plot and all of its characters, but that’s not something you’re really aware of until after the movie. Most of the characters are brilliantly written, acted or animated, which is one of the best aspects of this movie. Rocket Raccoon and Groot alone would make a great movie, but in connection with the other characters, they work even better. Even Drax the Destroyer is surprisingly successful. The pop culture references are enjoyable and the jokes are really, really funny, which is not something you find often nowadays, where attempts at humor in a blockbuster movie are often cringe-inducing or infantile. But I couldn’t imagine another movie making a joke about Jackson Pollock and sex and getting away with it. The worst part of the movie is its boring villain, Ronan the Accuser and his scenes are the only parts of the movie that drag.

Read More

You Belong on the Radio - 1980 Edition

/
You Belong on the Radio - 1980 Edition

Of course I couldn’t do a year’s theme week without looking at this year’s songs. Because there is only one 1980 week, I decided to look at the top 10 of the top songs of the year from Germany, the UK and US simultaneously, since they also overlap pretty much. Is the music of 1980 as dark, detached and depressing as everything else this week? We’re about to find out!

Read More

This 80s Movie: Prom Night (1980)

/
This 80s Movie: Prom Night (1980)

(spoilers ahead)

Prom Night is a terribly formulaic and terrible slasher movie. It sets up everything it needs for a by-the-numbers slasher concept and follows it through without even the slightest hint of surprise. It starts out with a wrongdoing in the past, makes a time jump of six years (in which all the characters age by about 15 years), just so that a killer can take revenge on them for what they did as kids. It’s amateurishly filmed and acted, the dialogue is boring and even the murders are uninventive. Actually, the murders astonished me the most, since there is no attempt made to graphically show them at all, although movies like this are all about showing grisly murders. A lot of them happen off-screen and it takes the movie over an hour to even get there. Considering this is one of the first examples of slasher movies, it should have been clear to anyone seeing it in 1980 that there wouldn’t be another gem like Halloween anytime soon.

Read More

Poster of a Girl: 1980 Edition

/
Poster of a Girl: 1980 Edition

It’s 1980 Week! What does that mean, you ask? Well, I decided to try out doing theme weeks from time to time, dedicating each post during that week to cultural artifacts (movies, comics, books, music) or historic events from one specific year. In the future, I will pick those years randomly, but for a start I decided on 1980, the year I was born, because, well, today’s my birthday. I don’t know how this will work out, so it’s an experiment. But I like experiments, obviously, which means I’m very excited!

To get an overview of this particular year, I thought it would be nice to look at its movie posters. I looked at all the posters of 1980 that can be found on IMP Awards and picked out the ones I found interesting. Which is still a lot (49). But because there are so many, I grouped them in categories, because many things repeat themselves. Without further ado, let’s give it up for 1980!

Read More

Book Report: David Levithan's Every Day (2012)

/
Book Report: David Levithan's Every Day (2012)

(no spoilers!)

David Levithan’s Every Day has a central idea that is so simple and brilliant, that it’s hard to believe no one else has written that book already. It’s the story of A, who wakes up in a new body every day, for one day, since his (or her, there’s no definite gender) birth. He doesn’t get involved too much and just follows along the person’s normal routine until he jumps into the next person. That alone would make an interesting book. He’s sixteen when we meet him and just reading about him observing the people whose lives he joins is interesting enough. But then he falls in love for the first time, with a girl called Rhiannon and suddenly he has to live actively if he wants to enjoy this love. This is where the book becomes really interesting. It’s a really good book, well-written and with one of the best endings I could imagine because until the very end, it’s hard to see it coming. It plays with our expectations and I really enjoyed that. I try to keep it short because I do not want to spoil the book in any way, as I think it’s really worth reading.

Read More

You Belong on the Radio: Music Video Edition (1)

/
You Belong on the Radio: Music Video Edition (1)

I know the last time on this series, I basically promised to try something else. My thought was to look at charts from different continents to get a more diverse view on what happens culturally outside of “Western civilization.” But the problem is that you either don’t get charts from specific countries or the lyrics aren’t in English or it’s just the same songs like everywhere else. Then I thought about going back in time, but I have something special planned for next week already. I almost thought of giving up and doing a straight charts analysis, when I remembered something I had wanted to do already: music videos! So, today, I look at the German Singles Charts again, but only at the videos of songs I haven’t discussed already. There’s nothing like good random parameters.

Read More

This 80s Movie: Ms. 45 (1981)

/
This 80s Movie: Ms. 45 (1981)

(spoilers ahead)

Ms. 45 is an example of a vigilante movie, although it goes even more absurd than most of them are. It is one of Abel Ferrara’s first movies and is crude, violent and absurd. I couldn’t call it good convincingly but in a way it was better than I expected after the first ten minutes of the movie. The acting is mostly bad, the dialogue too, the music is torture for the ears, but there is a certain fascination for a movie that mostly does what you assume it would, but sometimes goes along paths that are totally unexpected. And for a movie that deals with a female vigilante (or “misandristic spree killer” as Wikipedia proudly sets right), it sure says many things about men and women. I’m not sure it knows exactly what to say, but it’s interesting to take a look at the messages it conveys. It also works as an era representative for the 80s: a mixture of fashion world and crime infected New York, both typical 80s memes.

Read More

Poster of a Girl: Misogynist Tornadoes and Highway Robbery Girls

/
Poster of a Girl: Misogynist Tornadoes and Highway Robbery Girls

Movies, music, comics, books. I’ve looked for cultural implications concerning gender, authority or violence in all kinds of media already, but I know there is enough left. Today I pick something slightly new: movie posters! I just went to the best movie poster site, IMP Awards, and checked out all the posters I found on the current homepage. I haven’t seen any of the movies and judge the posters only by what I see and know about the movie. But they are all current posters, not some things of the past that didn’t know better.

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