All posts in “Reviews”

Awesome movies seen at the EFC

Posted 18 years ago · 1 Comment

Lilja 4-ever (9/10)
"Lilja is 16 years old. Her only friend is the young boy Volodja. They live in Estonia, fantasizing about a better life. One day, Lilja falls in love with Andrej. He is going to Sweden, and invites Lilja to come along and start a new life."

Very strong movie about a young girl struggling to make a living. One of Moodysson’s best.

Living in Oblivion (9/10)
"Film about filmmaking. It takes place during one day on set of non-budget movie. Ultimate tribute to all independent filmmakers."

Great little movie starring Steve Buscemi and Catherine Keener. Buscemi plays a director struggling to finish his movie.

Grbavica (8/10)
"A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war."

Very emotional, must see.

Reprise (8/10)
"Two competitive friends, fueled by literary aspirations and youthful exuberance, endure the pangs of love, depression and burgeoning careers."

Made by former EFC student Joachim Trier, Reprise is a rather unique movie. The editing is different from what you usually see, but the movie is incredible.

Double Dare (9/10)
"Double Dare is a double-barreled, action-packed documentary about the struggles of two stuntwomen in male-dominated Tinseltown to stay working, stay thin, and stay sane."

Very entertaining documentary about legendary stunt woman Jeannie Epper, and up-and-coming star Zoe Bell, who came, unemployeed, from New Zealand and ended up being Uma Thurman’s stunt double in the two Kill Bill movies. Bell’s story if by far the most interesting, mainly because she is so damn sweet. I saw this twice in two days after purchasing it, something I very rarely do.

RoboCop (9/10)
"In a dystopic & crime ridden Detroit, a terminally wounded cop returns to the force as a powerful cyborg with submerged memories haunting him."

You should all know this movie, and I’ve seen it before coming to the EFC, of course, but after rewatching it here I realized how extremely awesome this movie is. I’m a sucker for dystopian and/or post-apocalyptic movie settings, and the sad, future version of Detroit is incredible.

Garden State (9/10)
"A quietly troubled young man returns home for his mother’s funeral after being estranged from his family for a decade."

Natalie Portman is so fucking cute in this movie. Zach Braff is nice, too.

Primer (8/10)
"Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there’s something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they’ve built, wrestle over their new invention."

This is a real low-budget movie, made for only $7.000. The crew shot 80 minutes of film in total, and the movie is 78 minutes long, incredible. It’s about four guys who accidentally creates a time machine, and the movie is one long mindfuck.

Braindead (9/10)
"A young man’s mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey. She gets sick and dies, at which time she comes back to life, killing and eating dogs, nurses, friends, and neighbors."

Peter Jackson’s zombie classic. I never thought he had actually made a movie I would like more than the Rings trilogy, but this one is amazing, one of the best zombie movies I’ve ever seen.

Nanook of the North
"Documents one year in the life of Nanook, an Eskimo (Inuit) and his family."

Nanook was made in 1922, and is considered one of the first documentaries created, although it’s not really a documentary. It’s still surprisingly entertaining.

Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (8/10), Day of the Dead (8/10)
The Living Dead trilogy, saw them in a row and they are, of course, among the finest zombie movies ever made.

A Real Gangster Movie

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: eastern promises, viggo mortensen · 11 Comments

Hi, this review is going to be a bit different than the usual. I’ve decided to spend some more time on the articles I write in the future, and that’ll hopefully show. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Eastern Promises
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts
Runtime: 100 minutes

With his previous movie, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises Canadian director David Cronenberg moves closer to the mainstream audience, but that is in no way a bad thing. Mortensen’s lead performance is extraordinary, and authenticity is on the top of the list as we’re introduced to the brutal world of organized crime in London.

We follow the charismatic Nikolai Luzhin, played by Viggo Mortensen, who’s working for the Russian mafia in London. His path is crossed by midwife Anna Khitrova, played by Naomi Watts, who’s desperately trying to get information about an orphan child, whose mother had tie-ins with the Russian family. The movie’s antagonist, the cozy, grandpa-like mafia leader Semyon, is well-played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, a character whose darker sides are almost entirely established by other sources, e.g. a diary telling us that he raped a 14-year old girl, a very interesting way of treating the character. Naomi Watts’ character is, on the other hand, very bland, from the get-go you know what she’ll end up doing, and her behavior seems to vary notably, very out of character and rather tedious, although her personal story wakes some interest. As her contrast we have Viggo Mortensen’s character, which’s without a doubt the most fascinating in the movie. With a slick performance worthy of an Academy Award Mortensen makes the rough world completely believable. As always he really did his homework, studying Russian gangsters and their tattoos, learning some of the language, and getting all his dialogue translated to Russian, it resulted in one of the best Russian accents from a non-Russian actor, I’ve ever heard. In retrospect it’s peculiar to think of Ed Harris’ wonderful performance as a tough guy in A History of Violence, and then see Mortensen completely top it in Eastern Promises. I’ve always liked the half-Dane, especially his real life personality, but this is the first movie that’s really opened my eyes to his extraordinary talent.

Like all Cronenberg movies, there’s violence, brutal violence, but it all seems to have a purpose. In the movie’s opening shot we’re witness to a brutal murder, a boy literally saws the throat of a Russian gangster, and we see everything. But it works, and the brutality fits the brutal world we’re about to enter. As in A History of Violence the movie ends with a big fight scene, here a nude Nikolai is ambushed at a bathhouse, by two fully clothed thugs with knifes. Fighting them completely naked – with nothing censored I should add – makes the character seem unusually defenseless. The fighting is typical Cronenberg – over-the-top with neck stabbings and eye gushing – but it all works, it feels real, and it’s simply an amazing scene. The movie’s tagline “Every sin leaves a mark” comes to life rather literally, since the Russian mafia uses tattoos as individual business cards; they tell the story of your life, crimes you have done, prison sentences you have endured, etc. The authenticity of the movie’s tattoos is very high; most of them look like they do in real life and the crew spend a lot of time researching this. In addition to that, the movie also deals with issues like human trafficking instead of the usual gangster stuff like drug dealing and money laundering, and that also adds another layer of realism. Furthermore you have Mortensen’s incredible performance and the fact that most of the movie is shot on location, in London, making Eastern Promises one of the most authentic gangster movies I have ever seen. It is clearly a must see, although the weakest part of the movie is the ending, with a twist that wasn’t really needed, and it ruins some of the integrity of Mortensen’s character. Nonetheless, a great movie from the Cronenberg/Mortensen duo.

8/10

Day of the Resident Evil

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: crappy movies, mad max, milla jovovich, resident evil · 1 Comment

Resident Evil: Extinction is supposedly written by Paul Anderson, but he mainly just ripped off Day of the Dead and Mad Max 2, a mix that actually sounded pretty cool, but ended up being quite a mess. You may not have seen Day of the Dead, but the following is taken directly from that movie: A scientist living in an underground, military base is going to be fired, if he doesn’t start getting results. He is trying to domesticate the undead, to use them as a peaceful working force. Just like in Day of the Dead, a zombie is shown operating commonly used objects, and later a superior officer complains that he is losing men when retrieving specimen for the scientist. Also the entrance to the facility is crowded with zombies. The Mad Max 2 part, which is more forgiving since it’s a somewhat common theme, is about the caravan lead by Claire Redfield (the red-head from Resident Evil 2), they even have a school bus, just like Mad Max. Alice is just like Max, she rides around in the desert, looking for gasoline. Another similarity is when the caravan decides to go to “the promised land”, in Mad Max 2 it’s some beach resort, in Resident Evil, it’s Alaska… The infection spread from America, to Europe and even Asia, so why the hell would Alaska be unaffected? Never mind.

Naturally Alice runs into the caravan, apparently one of the caravan soldiers is also in the sequel, because he and Alice know each other. Alice have been running from the Umbrella Corp., but the underground facility just happens to be nearby and it picks up a signal when Alice uses her psionic powers, she’s a total jedi, moving objects with her mind and stuff. The scientist wants Alice’s blood, he’s been experimenting with clones of her, putting them through various tests, but they all died, now he wants the real deal, because Alice’s blood is apparently the cure to domesticating the zombies. No, I have no idea how that makes sense. Anyway, he sends zombies after the caravan, they’re fought off, Alice finds the facility, goes inside and kills the now mutated scientist (he injected himself with what I assume was an experimental sample of the cure).

In the end there’s no real resolution, we don’t get to know what happened to the people going to Alaska and we didn’t find out if Alice’s blood cured anything, but why would it? The movie ends with Alice getting ready to take down the Umbrella organization for good, but, they’re the only ones trying to create a cure, so wouldn’t that be kind of stupid?

Resident Evil: Extinction – 4/10.

Bonus: Stupid use of creative license: The hidden elevator to the secret, underground facility, appears if you step near it’s hideaway. Awesome security, no wonder Umbrella never succeeds.

Review: I am Legend [UPDATE]

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: crappy movies, i am legend, will smith · 16 Comments

This article contains spoilers.

"In I am Legend a plague has killed most of humanity and transformed the rest into monsters. In New York City a lone survivor (Smith) struggles to find a cure."

The first 50 minutes of I am Legend are incredible, you’re immediately sucked into the desolate, post-apocalyptic world of New York City as we follow the every day life of Robert Neville and his dog, Sam, hunting, transmitting emergency messages, "renting" movies at the local video store and trying to avoid the infected "Dark Seekers". In nightmarish flashbacks we’re presented to his former life, in a deteriorating world some years prior.

We quickly start to find out that the infected are smarter than Neville initially thought, they set a trap for him and set infected dogs after him. He manages to kill them, but not before they seriously injure Sam, who’s infected as well. In an extremely emotional scene Neville tries to save the dog by injecting her with a possible cure, but he quickly realizes it isn’t working, and is forced to strangle his last friend as Sam starts to mutate. He is heartbroken and his desperate longing for human contact climaxes when he goes to the local video store and sobbingly begs a mannequin to start talking to him.

In a fit of rage he goes off to kill some Dark Seekers, probably with the plan to commit suicide as well. You know something big has to happen at this point in the movie, and the easiest way out would be to introduce other survivors. This was exactly what I was hoping wouldn’t happen, I love the abandoned, post-apocalyptic world, and now that Neville is totally alone it could be even more interesting to follow him, unfortunately an introduction of survivors is exactly what happens. A woman (Anna) and a boy saves Smith and brings him home, unfortunately the Dark Seekers follow them and launch an attack on the house.

The movie ends with a weird epiphany, Neville believes there is a god after all and that Anna was sent to him, to take the cure to other survivors. The ending is horrible, not only is it a typical Hollywood ending, it doesn’t make sense either. He becomes a legend because he sacrifices himself and cures everyone, in contrast to the genius, original ending, in which Neville becomes a legend because the "still-living" (infected humans who are partially cured), see him as a horrible, mythical monster, because he kills them and can walk in the daylight. Thus, they punish him for his crimes against their new society. I didn’t know the ending of the novel before I saw the movie, and after reading about it, it’s even more obvious that they didn’t have the guts to make the movie anything else than what it is; a Hollywood blockbuster. Even if they didn’t want to copy the ending from the original, they could’ve still focused on the intelligence of the infected and Neville’s effort to make a cure, without introducing the survivors. Still, it’s worth watching because of the first half and Smith’s superb acting.

I am Legend – 6/10.

[UPDATE]

I can’t believe I actually gave it 7/10, anyway, I’ve changed it now. However, the movie does indeed deserve a 7/10, if you ignore the ridiculous Hollywood ending and consider the alternate one instead. It makes a lot of connections to the ‘legend’ part of the book, just what I missed, and it would really have made the movie a lot better.

Heroes: How to ruin a TV show

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: heroes · 1 Comment

Is it really necessary to yell SPOILERS? Anyway, I know the first part of the second season has received a lot of bad criticism already, but I still feel like giving my 50 cents about it, since I just ran through the entire volume and I’m feeling a bit… agitated. One of the main problems with the first season was the huge amount of creative license, i.e. important people randomly meeting each other in the middle of nowhere, and stuff like that. In the second season they’ve upped the ante, they use creative license every other minute, and the writing is just awful, it seems like every time they stumbled upon a problem in the story they just made some weird coincidence happen, seriously, it’s everywhere. For example: Claire’s love interest West not only has powers, but he’s also been kidnapped by Claire’s dad. Hiro Nakamura goes back in time to the exact place of his hero Kensei, and what do you know, he’s the same guy who’s trying to destroy the world 400 years later. And Sylar just happens to stumble upon Maya and Alejandro in the middle of a Mexican desert.

It’s obviously a result of bad writing, it just didn’t seem like they cared, as mentioned there was a lot of creative license in season one as well, but it seemed to mostly be used at important moments, in season two they just use it all the time, and it’s ruining the show. That and the fact that the new stories are extremely uninteresting, I don’t care about Hiro messing around in Japan. The Monica storyline is so fucking annoying as well, I don’t care about her, and why doesn’t she just watch superhero movies and stuff, she’d be just as invincible as Peter. Then she even gets herself taken hostage, even though she could’ve just kicked their asses. So, to sum it up: unnecessary and/or annoying storylines: Hiro in Japan, Alejandro and Maya, Peter in Ireland, Claire’s love interest, and especially Monica being a douche.

The writers also open way too many solutions, and then I just get annoyed when they don’t use those obvious solutions to solve problems, such as Nathan getting shot in the end, just inject him with some of Claire’s blood for fucks sake…

And what’s with all the fucking gullibility?! Maya believes and trusts Sylar in no time, and Peter protects Adam blindly, even though he’s presented to a hell of a lot of proof that Adam’s bad, just because Adam helped Nathan. Mohinder even fucking joins the company, that didn’t really surprise me though, since he’s more or less retarded.

Kristen Bell is hot though.