DRNKMNKY

While not perfect, this first season of Arrow certainly is very entertaining: it is packed with action, intrigues and not-too-shallow-characters (even though they are not great, yet?).
The main criticism if have are the following:
1. the Green Arrow is depicted as a poor copy of Batman (boy/man lives through traumatic events, hides his vigilanty identity under the cover of a billionaire, lives in a huge castle to name the most important parallels).
2. all the female characters look like supermodels! I mean come on, even for a comic adaption this is incredible unbelievable. I can't shake the feeling that the producers want to attract teenage boys to the series by casting gorgeous looking women (something that works as I know from my own experience: back in the days I watched Charmed not because it was good but because it had Alyssa Milano in)! I think it would be wise to rethink this decision because it is really annoying that they all look better suited for the cat walk than working as attorney, IT girl, boss of global enterprises, waitresses, and so forth and so on.
3. nobody seems to recognize Ollie Queen under his hood. This is just laughable as his face can be seen on a lot of the crime scenes. I didn't like that fact about Batman / Bruce Wayne and he at least wears a mask, but the hood of Green Arrow isn't cutting it for me.

Surprisingly, I liked it quite much! As with Lucky Number Slevin, the 6th Sense or the original Die Hard movies I had no high expectations but Bruce surprised me (-: I cannot say why I liked it exactly and I do get that others, on average, would rate it at only 6.7, but I still like it.

I thought I was in for an no-brainer action flick. And while that is true for certain aspects of the film, I really liked the underlining idea of robots, aka Surrogates, linked electronically to its host, allowing them not only to explore their surroundings but literally to live their lives. I think the scenario of Surrogates replacing real people in most of the daily activities is not all that absurd and could be a likely scenario in a technically more advance society (although a world technologically that advanced would look like depicted in the movie). I do agree that the characters would benefit from more depth but I found it not very annoying that they havn’t.

So all in all I would recommend to give Surrogates a try even though the reviews are not that good and see if you like it! As was the case for me, you may like Surrogates much better than say I, Robot!

The movie begins interesting, promising a quite intriguing story and it ends in a superb way. However, and this is very unfortunate, every thing in between is mediocre, partly even worse: the plot has holes (e.g. why and how do the rebels know about Brightwood after going underground and turning even their cellphones off, why is Joe the AI professor suddenly leading military troops or why are a few single cores for PINN hooked up to some rag-tag equipment in a desolated building enough to analyze Will's mind?), the story is mostly predictable and the performance of the support cast is poor (especially Max (Paul Bettany) and Bree, but also the wooden and lifeless Joe (Morgan Freeman)). All these weaknesses along with same hilarious assumptions regarding quantum- / super-computers and AI make it sometimes nearly unbearable to continue watching Transcendence.

However, as mentioned in the introduction, the ending is superb and makes up for a lot. As a fan of Nolan's films a have to say I am quite disappointed in his 2014 work: Transcendence is nowhere near Prestige, Insomnia / Memento or the Dark Knight movies and Interstellar is the even bigger disappointment! I really hope that his future work will improve again!!!

What is Joss Whedon going to do after the brilliant Season 5 I was wondering. Well, he tried to go on and mostly succeeded in doing so. Season 6 is not as good season 5 but especially the last few episodes were brilliant!

In this season Buffy is resurrected after having died at the end of season 5 to safe Dawn and close the magical portal that Glory opened. However, this resurrection is not as Willow and the gang anticipated "the release from Hell" but a rather a "forceful departure from Heaven" for Buffy. This leads to a lot of confusion and conflicts and is one aspect which pushes Willow into dangerous magical territories and her addiction to magic. This in turn leads to the break-up of Willow and Tara and is also partly responsible for Gilles' permanent return to England and Dawn's becoming a kleptomaniac.

Additionally Spike and Buffy are sleeping together and the season is special in as far as there is no supernatural villain but "The Trio" (Jonathan, Warren and Andrew) who tries to best the Slayer. This leads to far less slaying of monsters and more mundane dangers! The season ends with Spike getting back his soul so that he can be with Buffy, Willow (who is grieve-stricken by Tara's murder at Warren's hand) killing Warren as well as trying to end the world and Buffy coming to turns with being on Earth instead of Heaven.

As expected, this is an absolute no-brainer with a lot of weapons, blood and violence. The story is absolutely secondary and the movie lives only from the gore and the all-star-cast. Some fast pacing action scenes and funny references to the actors previous movies make it an almost enjoyable watch.

However, this is NOT a great action flick and what I find especially unnerving about it, is its propaganda character. The most typical moment showing that is when one (!) of the good guys, an American soldier and mercenary, gets killed and Hollywood wants us to mourn him and hate the man who did it and all his associates (which all are Chinese and middle east villains, BTW, which makes another good case for what I mean when I say propaganda. Because all middle / far east guys are bad, right?!).
Had it been an innocent, a child or a woman that got killed instead of a mercenary, it might have work to stir hatred for the bad guys. However, it was no innocent that died but one mercenary. A mercenary that, with his friends, killed dozens upon dozens of bad guys without a single thought of remorse just some minutes before to rescue a hostage. This hostage is only rescued because the mercenary band gets a provision and I fail to see why the mercenary's death should be a catastrophe of epic size justifying the rampage that ensues.

It would have be sufficient, if the reason for hunting down the super villain had been that he tries to steal and sell plutonium and not the death of the American mercenary to make this a much more enjoyable movie. But this would have been a "good VS bad" theme and director Simon West obviously wanted to make this movie about the "the purehearted Americans VS the evil middle east / Asian faction". This is a pity and ruins a lot of the potential in my opinion.

Surprisingly funny and entertaining to watch for a movie with as simple a plot as Collateral has: professional killer Vincent has to eliminate 5 targets in one night to avoid a trial against an drug lord. To get around fast enough in L.A. he hires a cab for the entire night and by making the cabbie Max his accomplice after the first murder, Vincent tries to force Max to cooperate for the remaining 4 murders. While Max tries to obstruct Vincent as much as possible, he only achieves the killing of bystanders when they get shot be Vincent or the police during the 2nd, 3rd and 4th murder.

Shortly before the last target is located, Max can stage an accident with his cab and thereby escape from Vincent's grip, only to find out that the last target is a recent acquaintance of his: DoJ prosecutor Annie. Max then risks his own life to safe Annie. That he achieves only in an all-out gun shooting with Vincent, which he miraculously wins. This ending (cab driver Max shooting the professional assassin Vincent) and the casting of Tom Cruise for the role of Vincent are the two things that I did not like about Collateral.

After having recently watched "Expendables 3", which resembles RED 2 in that it features quite a few older, very well known actors and a lot of action, I was worried that this sequel would fall short of the original, too. However, my worries were unfounded because where Expendables does most things wrong, RED 2 was, while a little predictable, very fun to watch and I can recommend it wholeheartedly!

As expected, there is a lot of action from start to finish: Moses (Willis) and Boggs (Malkovich) are hunted because of their involvement in a top-secret mission in Russia during the cold war. Every major secret service (MI6, the Russians, CIA) is after them and a deadly device codenamed Nightshade, which the US scientist Bailey (Hopkins) developed and planted somewhere in Russia. However, only Bailey knows where exactly Nightshade is, but he is imprisoned in a high-security facility in London. After freeing him with the help of Victoria (Mirrer), who double-crossed the MI6 by doing so, the three set out for Moscow to retrieve Nightshade. There, only with the help of Katja (Zeta-Jones), a former lover of Moses and now high-ranking Russian military, they can evade capture by the Russian forces inside the Kremlin. When trying to leave the country with Nightshade, it turns out that Bailey made a deal with the CIA and thereby betrays Moses and Boggs and kills Katja. In another double-crossing, Bailey also kills the men from the CIA and plans to detonate Nightshade, an undetectable nuclear bomb, in London. Only the last-minute intervention by Boggs, Moses and his girlfriend Sarah (Parker) stops the catastrophe and they can detonate Nightshade in a plane with only Bailey on board. Throughout all this, a Korean professional killer tries to eliminate Moses, which adds additional entertainment.

Because of the interesting plot, which never gets boring thanks to the various plot twists and double-crossings, the good acting by all the lead actors (especially compared to the performance of the actors of Expendables 3, see above) and funny details, anecdotes as well as punchlines (Boggs stages his own funeral, Sarah is furiously jealous of Katja, Baileys has drug-induced senility and so much more) this sequel makes as want to watch more from the "retired but extremely dangerous" crew of ex-secrete agents!

Predictably, Expendables 3 offers exactly the same as the previous two movies of the series did: a lot of very violent action where whole armies are killed by a hand full of Expendables. The flick features a seemingly endless list of action movie heroes including Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Ford, Banderas or Gibson.

While this is totally OK (and to be honest, the only reason for watching this movie) one has to keep in mind that the plot is very basic, the acting skills of most of the actors are not up to a very high standard and plot twists do not exit at all, which means that everything is fast-forward and predictable action of the "boom-boom, slash-slash, ratatatatattatataa" kind. Also the nearly non-existing plot (after finding out that a former partner but now mortal enemy (Gibson) is still alive, the leader of the Expendables (Stallone) ditches his old crew (Lundgren, Statham, Snipes, Couture), hires some youngsters as new crew and, with the help of a CIA agent (Ford), tracks down and ultimately kills his nemesis) does not help get one invested in the movie. Additionally, in this 3rd installment not a single Expendable is dying, which makes the whole thing even more unrealistic for me, the newly introduced guys (Ortiz, Rousey, Lutz and Powell) have nothing to offer and somehow the slapstick-humor with a lot of catchy phrases from old blockbuster movies of the aforementioned Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Ford, Banderas, Gibson, etc. is far less present than in the first movie, which I find disappointing.

However, if you liked Expendables 2, you probably also like Expendables 3 despite all the mentioned shortcomings. Additionally, the hilarious Banderas (he plays a guy who desperately wants to be part of the expendables but is deemed to old for the jobs and talks waaay too much) would make it nearly worth recommending this flick. However, in my opinion there are definitely better (action) movies out there and I would suggest to watch those (e.g. RED 2, which features also an all-star-lineup and offers as much action as The Expendables) or re-watch Expendables 1, because this was quite a bit better than the 2nd and 3rd installment.

For me, this forth installment is the best Tranformers movie to date. While I watched and even re-watched the three previous movies (which means I liked them quite a bit) I could never get past the fact that the original movie had some laughable moments (e.g. the NSA-Kiddies from college who just happen to detect the security breach? Or the black "Hacker"? I mean, come on, you could have done better then THAT, right?! Additionally I found the US army guys very incredulous!) and that the third and especially the second movie were not much more than very entertaining propaganda movies for the U.S. army with a lot of skin from Megan Fox and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

Therefore it was very welcome for me that in this forth installment of the series:
a) the Autobots did all the fighting with a little help from the humans, and not the humans with the help of the Autobots as in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd movie.
b) that the human help came in the form of a "normal Joe" (and his daughter and boyfriend) instead of some U.S. soldiers.
c) the "skin" in the form of Nicola Peltz is not as obviously just there because "sex sells".

Additionally, the 3D as well as the special effects are the best in the series which make this installment very fun to watch. However, there still are some shortcomings: for example the ending where the Yeagers and Shane hug each other and Joshua says "I can help with that [you do not have a home anymore]" is just laughable. I mean come one, Mr. Bay, could you not have come up with something a little more original for a happy ending? Or what about the short scene where Megatron a.k.a. Galvatron says "We will meet again, Prime... for I am reborn!"? I did not see or hear anything as laughable in a long time and as obviously just to state that there will be a sequel! And then there is the one problem that all the Transformers movie share: during the movie, the "bad guys" (here the man-mad Transformers created by Joshua's company KSI and the Decepticons) are depicted much strong than Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and co. but in the end, the "original" Transformers and the humans can defeat them quite easly.

All in all I would give Transformers 4 an 7.5 / 10 but since that is not possible on Trakt I round it up to an 8 / 10.

While arguable the worst "Die Hard" movie to date, I sill enjoyed this fifth installment of the series quite a lot: more in the way 2013 "Live free or Die Hard" than the first three flicks from the eighties and nineties of the last millennium, "A Good Day to Die Hard" sees John McClane for the first time in some kind of cooperation (instead of just blowing up everything mostly on his own) and on Russian and Easter European soil. The initial goal of John (freeing his son Jack from Russian imprisonment) soon turns into a battle to the death with the Russian mob because together with his son a Russian prisoner (Yuri Komarov, an ex-billionaire involved in some shady nuclear deals) escapes and is thereafter on the run with John.

The fast paced action flick features two major plot twists: the first occurs when Komarov is betrayed by his own daughter, who sells him to his former partner and now mortal enemy, Viktor Chagarin, to get a rich reward. The second one is the revelation that father and daughter have been in cahoots from the start to fool Chagarin into helping getting Komarov into a secret vault in the melted-down Chernobyl atom reactor.

As always with Die Hard movies, the good guys, in the form of the two McClanes, win and safe the world in the end (and, of course, all the bad guys, Yuri Komarov, his daughter, Chagarin and a whole army of Russian gangsters, are killed in the process).

For me, Pacific Rim was a huge disappointment: I mainly bought the BluRay because the flick was directed by Guillermo del Toro (I really liked his first Hellboy movie) and because it had good ratings across all review sites (e.g. currently 74% at Trakt). However, my excited anticipation vanished in no time: I THINK del Toro wanted the Kaiju to be seen as evil monsters that inspire fear and rage in the audience and therefore their slaughter by the Jaegers to be seen as just and noble. However, I never had mercy with mankind being attacked by the Kaiju and therefore never could identify with the glorified pilots of the Jaegers as the saviors of mankind. Additionally, after 15-30 minutes one knows exactly how the flick will end (the world is saved by a odd combination of two pilots in an old and decommissioned Jaeger based on a discovery by "Kaiju hippie" scientist). The sometimes laughable dialogs do not help either.

All in all this makes Pacific Rim an uninspired action flick I cannot recommend to anyone, even though the special effects are decent and their is a quite some action to be had. Why this movie is getting such good reviews I cannot understand: a German magazine wrote that Pacific Rim is an "exiting mixture of Transformers, Godzilla and Inception". And while the references are not altogether wrong, it lacks in many ways because Transformers and Inception are both out of league for Pacific Rim and the word "exiting" is just wrong when talking about this flick!