The movie lives in no way up to it's 9 year old predecessor.
Yes, the visuals are still stunning, yes the acting is overall still pretty good with many big names, yes the violence is still very overdone without turning into a Tarantino movie and yes it still takes place in the same universe as before and even some familiar characters make a comeback.
But it is very obvious they tried to recreate the first movie, but with a different story and characters. There was no real intention in building something new, innovative or unique with this one. It is perfectly described in a review one of the comments here already shared: "Unlike its first incarnation which had an artistic execution and vision, this version is literally all execution without any artistic vision."
Talking about story. You do keep wondering what will happen next, but it is in no way as interesting as it could be. The timeline is very straightforward, and the connection with characters from different storylines are a bit too easy. And in the end it is just 1 guy who does the heavy lifting and finishes everything (HULK SMASH!) oh, but we don't know how he ends up...
If you did not liked the first one, you won't like this one either. And if you liked the first one, there is not a big chance you like this one too (unless you just want to gaze at boobs and enjoy mindless violence.)
Great Miyazaki film with a lovely fairy tale storyline. If only the kids voices weren't so screamish. This made my overal enjoyment of the movie drop :(
Great movie, lacked a bit of common sense here and there but it took it's time for setting up every story aspect nicely. This made it a bit predictable but it didn't bother me for a change.
Also: I deducted 1 point for the story being a too obvious Hunger Games concept copy.
The filming makes this movie worth to watch. There are some exquisite scenes, especially noteworthy is the (seemingly) single-shot scene where the main character has to rescue the pregnant lady from a building where the resistance fighters and immigrants hide and keep her captive. This while the building is surrounded by soldiers and tanks from the UK army.
Note: I edited this comment bc i did not agree with my opinion from that time anymore, and I could not delete it fully.
I almost could not finish this, and turned it off after 1 hour. But I managed to finish watching it eventually.
Even as a mindless animation action it fails.
It is just unbelievably boring and shallow. Dialogue is piss poor, Story is not terrible, but too basic to get interesting. The animation often lacks details and many corners were cut. The characters are well drawn, but anything else lacks details and movements are very choppy.
The movie just looks and feels like it lacked money at every aspect in its production. Skip this and watch some of the DCU animated movies instead.
Proof that doing a 'Double Tap' is not always the best move for movies.
I did not see the first movie when it was released years ago, because zombies are usually not my thing. So when I decided to watch this, I had to see the first movie before seeing ' Double Tap'.
That one surprised me in a positive way. I liked it more than I thought I would. If it wasn't so late at night when I finished 1, I would have watched ' Double Tap' immediately after.
However, when I saw ' Double Tap' the next day, I found out it suffers from the age-old sequel disease. It is still fun, but not as good as the first, less fresh and less inspired.
Since the movie(s) don't take themself too serious, it is still an okay movie and entertaining to watch though.
Enjoyable to see once, nothing more.
With a very weak first and second act and many errors this cannot be called an excellent movie. However, the third act makes more than up for the blandness. The ending makes the movie, in combination with a good atmosphere and nice visuals, into a movie worth watching.
Sheridan Smith (and Nick Frost in a lesser degree) take care of the (few) good laughs while Theron and especially Blunt are the most intriguing characters. I wish Emily's character had a bit more kick in her powers, especially in the final act, but then again It would've made Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain's characters completely irrelevant if that was the case.
It is actually surprising that with such a great cast this movie isn't better than it is. The writing just isn't good enough to get it to that next level. A pity really.
This is an amazing movie.
Sets the bar for 2015, now we just have to see if 'the big ones' (Mad Max, Jurassic World, Hunger Games and ofc. Star Wars) are going to beat it. Maybe I'll write an extensive review later.
Surprisingly good movie, with an extremely low budget.
In this fictional documentary we start of with the surprising news humankind won an alien invasion and survived for a change. In the almost 90 minutes that follow we see the soldiers of a military outpost base battling the remaining aliens in the region and a unique sci-fi war story.
Although this movie wouldn't be considered 'great' by many, it is not as bad as its ratings do make believe. The visuals are pretty nice, but not overdone, the story is surprising at points, and directing choices are somewhat unique.
This makes the whole movie feel very realistic. The Direct Cinema technique (making use of hand-held cameras and the cameraman being a part of the story) amplifies this heavily. The low budget doesn't hurt its realism either.
Having such a low budget does has its downside. The aliens are drawn into the movie pretty late, they couldn't fix the fact that some scenes do feel like being on a set and some of the dialogue and text is a bit corny. The writers even do a (misfired) wink to the Afganistan war. That kind of political symbolism is painfully misplaced in a movie with an overdone amount of macho men.
And even though they do an elaborate effort to make you familiar with the mediocre cast, they don't really stick for the most part. The General might be an exception on this.
However, the aliens do look really badass and so do most of the props used by them and the human props are neat too. The action scenes are solid as well, with a lot of explosions (don't worry, it is not Michael Bay-like) and changing environments.
One of the biggest plot problems is probably on how the soldiers managed to advance, enter and destroy the (most important) base of the aliens with less firepower and more resistance than they had to endure at their own base, but they lost that. Even though they were 1 man down. I have to say they do lose more men at the alien base.
The second problem is the lack of answers the movie provides. You are left wondering why the 'heavy' want to conquer the earth, and they are really teasing you with the 'metal rain' and after-the credits scene they provide us with.
Maybe they hope on a sequel, with a bigger budget. And to be honest, even with all the bad points this movie has, I am all for it.
Pretty disappointing and crappy movie.
I suspected a casual and fun movie with this one, maybe with some puzzles and an interesting premise. However the movie disappointed from the start.
For a adaptation from a book I sure hope this was a bad one. You get thrown into the middle of a stoy where suddenly all kinds of stuff happens. I hope this wasn't the case in the original work, because it is one of the major flaws of this movie, and could be explained as the cause of many of its other faults.
The acting was luckily pretty ok, but many of the characters don't add to the story at all and are just filling up empty screen. The sound was to cry off as well. Soundtrack was ok, but many scenes had no music and felt like a soap because of it.
I am all for being creative with sound, but this was just done badly.
Since I won't bore you with pages of irrelevant texts, like the movie does, i will just make a list of the cons and pros.
Cons:
- Paced way too fast
- No build up for a climax (the film was more of a constant climax actually)
- Not getting time to get acquainted with the characters, therefore not caring about there faith.
- Very little character development, except maybe for Gally (Will Poulter)
- Stating many things as impossible without many explanation
- Revealing the endgame in the first act of the movie with a flashback/memory which makes the whole movie unnecessary,
- Also making the whole story as predictable as a Japanese train schedule.
- Inappropriate absent of sound
- Too much unimportant characters
- Did we really need another Hunger Games movie?
- etc.
Pros:
- Nice environment
- Funny but cool looking cyborg creatures
- Doesn't need many attention to follow, so you can check your twitter or facebook feed in the meantime.
With all the great reviews I suspected a hidden jewel, and it kinda was. However it annoyed me a lot.
Especially the dialog was extremely hectic and kind of retarded in the first 30 minutes. It got a bit better after that, but never really good. The actions and decisions were of people that just did not think, something that doesn't fit in a movie with a smart setting like multiverses. imho it only fits with comedy and some exceptions here and there, but that's just me.
One of the flaws that showed itself a couple of times was the time flow. Time is not really consequent throughout the whole movie. In 1 scene someone drinks up a bottle of wine within a minute, and on a few occasions people were gone for a longer period of time (10-20min) while in the house itself no more than 5 minutes were passed at best. This could be explained by the major plot twist in the end, but it would be nice if there were made 1 or 2 remarks about it if that was the case.
The movie is also not giving the viewer time to make their own construction of the situation but making a few emotional scenes right after an info-dump and repeating this process.
And when the characters finally start to understand how complex the situation could be, they decide to pop open the alcohol and get wasted.... seriously?
It brings the movie to a dramatic impasse that is completely unnecessarily and just slows down the mystery.
Luckily the movie manages to get some points in after that. More focusing on story development, having some very interesting plot twists and using the mystery to its benefit in stead of for the drama.
Those last 15 minutes are a good home run, and the movie sets up a completely other pace and setting. Suddenly moving from a group of people with no clue what's going on, to one main character with an objective.
Maybe they should've done this from the beginning to make it more interesting. The girl (Emily?) who took on this role was from the beginning one of the few actors I did not have many complains about, and was doing a good job.
Usually I am a big fan of the 'quantum multiverse' theory worked into a movie, and the concept in this one is very nicely done. But even though they tried (and to be fair the creators have a good grasp on the subject) it kinda failed with the overly dramatic setting and insulting the viewer by letting characters make dumb decisions.
Since it is a low budget movie, I decided not to be too harsh on the rating itself (it really is a movie that can match itself with the high budget ones) and I definitely would upvote for a remake with some better scriptwriting for dialog and some actions. Because I think that this flick could be even better.
This one is probably in the category: "worst of the best Disney animations of the past few years."
It has the good and lovely mood of the better Disney movies, and it does have a decent CGI and some great songs.
However, the storyline is so incredibly dull and unoriginal. And a lot of problems have pretty lame solutions.
If you had to choose 1, better go with Tangled or Brave (which are of the same style.)
One of the better Dance industry related movies.
Stellar cast, fine set pieces. The rest is utter trash. The only reason this movie is even watchable is because the actors made an otherwise hopeless script into a somewhat enjoyable mindless film. What a waste of talent.
A highly entertaining and well executed film with an unusual short runtime.
The low budget production and down to earth (almost vlog style) environment and script match each other well. The acting is a bit over the top at times, but it adds to the movie's lighthearted atmosphere.
It must have been way more complicated to write the screenplay than how it looks like on screen. It is so easy to understand, a great compliment to the screenplay!
The only nitpick I have is why a regular pc monitor has such an insanely long power cable xD
A tense thriller with some great acting, especially up until the final act. It has some interesting and unique scenes but is ultimately undermined by a script that is cutting corners just a bit too much. Still a decent watch.
It is a lot of fun seeing this cast having fun with this comedic film, other than that it is not recommendable.
Pretty straightforward and fun adventure movie, although does not come close to the greats in its genre. Overall it is pretty shallow and Mark and Tom's comedic talents are wasted on the poor jokes, but it still manages to be one of the best video game adaptations ever made. The bar for that is very low of course, but an achievement nonetheless.
Besides being a thrilling high octane chase movie there is not much here.
While this could be considered as one of Bay his better movies, maybe on par with 'The Island', it still inherits a lot of the flaws that plague many of Bay his films. Especially the editing is of horrendous quality not usually seen with directors and editors with this level of experience. Story is razor thin and of course character writing is non-existent.
95% of the movie is fast paced action that can best be described as an extended theatrical cut of a (good) GTA (Grand Theft Auto) mission.
Where Bay does (not totally unexpected) excel with 'Ambulance' is in the relentless action pounding your screen scene after scene, without giving much room to breathe. And it does create an effective thrill for a big part of the movie. Although there are moments when the lack of more calmer parts start to wear you down.
It is also quite fun to see the actors, especially Gyllenhaal, are having a lot of fun with the material.
The result is still a thrilling, perhaps even entertaining, experience that will probably be forgotten by most in the foreseeable future.
They forgot to write characters.
I am more interested in what will happen after the ending than anything happening in the movie itself.
The 2nd 'Silenzio Bruno!' of 2021 out of a Disney studio. Someone high up at the Disney company must hate someone called Bruno a lot
:laughing:
But great animated film. Music is decent and fun (although nothing legendary because it feels a bit overproduced at times) and animation is fantastic. Original story, and interesting characters. It is a bit rushed over here and there but that's ok.
Total forgettable film.
Tonal issues and irregular pacing make this the least fun of the trilogy so far. It does not know weather to take itself serious or not, which results in extended boring parts interchanged with laughable scenes that break any suspension of disbelieve. They should have stopped after one movie.
I guess the best thing about this movie is that it gave me an excuse to watch the original trilogy again...
In 'The French Dispatch' director Wes Anderson goes all out with his characteristic aesthetic, beautiful visuals, use of colour and attention to detail. The music is great, fantastic even at times. There are more top actors than you could find at an average Oscars party. And visually most of shots are works of art all by them self. It is rather unfortunate that Wes his attention to detail do not translate to a more coherent story as a whole, holding the movie back.
'The French Dispatch' contains three separate stories, only trivially connected by a fourth overarching story about a newspaper and its journalists (based on the origins of a real newspaper.) On their own, each story is serviceable, but unfortunately the guiding story is lacking enough substance to make it work as a whole. The at times rather dense dialogue, riddled with puns and metaphors, also do not help with avoiding confusion. Especially for the average cinema visitor. However, the jokes and puns are often positively unexpected and with a great show of comedic timing, even during otherwise non comedic scenes. And this is without having to resort to the type of subversive humor we so often see nowadays in blockbuster films.
The three stories on their own, especially the rather quirky first one about the convicted murderer, are all interesting and fun enough to make the viewer invested. And although each story is not likely to be strong enough in its current form to carry a whole film, I think they could have benefited from some more time. To give the characters some more and/or better introduction. It would also have the benefit of seeing some more from all the fantastic actors.
I would recommend to watch this movie at (a somewhat larger screen) at home, where you have the option to rewind. That way it is also possible to appreciate the many details in many shots and scenes.
With every movie Wes improves his meticulous and almost obsessive attention to detail in every shot. Considering the visuals; In 'The French Dispatch' he once again trumps every movie Wes Anderson has made before, including the well received 'Budapest Hotel' and his critically acclaimed stop motion films 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' and 'Isle Of Dogs'. Of course there is an ample amount of his characteristic centered camera work, straight angle moving and panning, and the painting-like sets in almost every shot. He plays with aspect ratio and switches between colour and black and white for significant portions of the movie. And there is even a fully (drawn) animated section, which is a lot of fun.
If a movie was only visuals, this one would have been rated a 10/10.
I absolutely enjoyed the music and music timing in this. Composer Alexandre Desplat (who often composed for Wes Anderson his films) made a score that was often subtle, while still reinforcing the atmosphere of the movie and the scene. I also noticed some parts where video and audio were carefully timed to match one another. On a few occasions the music felt like a temporary extra character in the scene, leading the atmosphere instead of only enforcing it, and I found myself actively appreciating it more than I usually do when watching a film.
With all the actors involved, and the limited time they are given, it is difficult to properly discuss acting as a whole. There are so many fantastic actors in this, but the lack of screentime for each of them makes none of them award worthy. I have to mention Benicio del Toro for his acting though. With his menacing performance he outshines most of the other actors. And that is with a cast like this very difficult to do.
Overall I enjoyed this movie a lot, but even though I would like to recommend it, it is difficult to recommend to most people except for people already familiar with Wes Anderson his work. It might be not accessible enough for the average person, with the separate stories and visual style. While for a film fan the story issues can be problematic. Its shortcomings are especially unfortunate, because it likely will be a cause for less people to watch it.
I expected a run of the mill low budget poor attempt at an action scifi movie, so I was pleasantly surprised about this.
About the low budget and scifi I was correct, for the rest I was not.
The opening feels kinda gimmicky with the whole visual representation and introduction. The parts where this 'theme' of the opening the television screen template is used again, are most likely the poorest part of the film. After this we get dumped immediately into the actual opening. It could use some more easing into, because I felt kind of shocked into it. Mostly because of the instant fast paced talking and heavy dialect. It does effectively sets the tone and expectations for the film immediately, and makes clear that this is a dialogue driven film. More action than some mild running you should not expect!
Dialogue is this films strongest point. Not only the way people talk, but rather what they say are very character-centered. This causes very recognizable identifiers between characters from the second they are introduced, as well as an idea of the time period. Even some of the minor side characters feel like actual characters, opposed to the blank slates we often see in many movies.
Through dialogue and with the benefit of some, surprisingly I might add, good acting the main characters are set up. Nobody will win an Oscar for their performance in this film anytime soon, but the (at least to me) unknown actors held their own very well. Especially considering several slow zoom long shots that were used. Because the film heavily leans on its dialogue, it is commendable that these actors can carry this as well as they do. Many have failed or done (much) worse under similar circumstances (including A-list stars.)
It is a shame though, that this character setup does not really lead anywhere. The 2 protagonists lack some kind of progress or journey or anything at all xD Everything was there, but the characters went nowhere and we were left with just the promise of an arc. Of course stuff happens (especially in the conclusion) and there is story development, but the people we met at the beginning were the exactly the same at the end, and nobody ever had to change or work through any personal obstacle. The story itself is also pretty straightforward. Not worthy of the name mystery, but straightforward enough and with enough substance to not totally crumble. Unfortunately, this leaves with a rather lackluster, maybe even unsatisfying end.
Visually it can be a bit (too) dark, and some shots are a bit awkward or 'too much', but besides the aforementioned opening 'theme' it luckily doesn't fully go off the rails. Of course, again, do note expect any large scale blockbuster CGI or anything even close to that. But it would be silly if you would expect that in a film that costs about the same as just 1 car in the Fast & Furious franchise.
All in all, a decent low budget scifi slow burn that fizzles out in the end. I would only recommend this if you are okay with watching something you won't see from the likes of Michael Bay, Christopher Nolan or Marvel studios.
This is is vanilla ice cream in movie form.
Everything from story and characters to action and sound design is rather bland and lacking substance, it is just smooth inconsequential sailing to the credits. An innocent little movie for (older) kids.
After almost 2 decades of anticipation, I finally watched this movie. Truth to be told, I was a little disappointed. It is okay I guess, acting and realism of the environment is most noteworthy, but it could not captivate me. Maybe because I am too familiar with the story already, and I felt bored at several points. The editing was also kind of chaotic at times in my experience. It's possible that 17 years of procrastination made me have too high expectations, and me already not being a massive war movie fan to begin with doesn't help I guess.
Beautiful and brilliant animation with an overly simple story even for a kids movie.
With the latest live action translation 'Cruella', Disney is trying to mimic the successful formula used for 'Maleficent',. Take an antagonist from one of their classics and switch her to an anti-hero protagonist. Pulling the same trick twice is difficult, even for veterans with big artistic freedoms, the strong studio influences don't do them many favors either.
Disney's firm grip on its own material is understandable, but as we see time and time again is more often than not problematic for most of their current live-action translations. There is not much in the story of 'Cruella' that makes any of the characters very relatable or recognizable for people unknown with the 'source' material. Unlike the 2014 'Maleficent' there is no redeeming villain act in 'Cruella', neither is there a positive message (or any clear one at all for that matter) in the film. Add to that some repetitive and dragging scenes, only kept together by flashy visuals and music. I am unsure this is a movie you want to show to your kids, and for adults it can be rather dull.
Most problematic is the soundtrack. First of all, the choice for a focus on rock & roll and especially punk music is very complementary with the themes in the movie (although the whole status/fashion part of that is contradictory.) However, the songs often feel very forced and only superficially connected to what is happening on screen. Secondly, the movie is simply to family friendly to really be able to carry any sort of punk theme. The mix with Disco and R&B was a mystery to me, especially when 'Car Wash' played i was totally taken out of the movie. There is also an overload of well known songs to be recognized by the audience, not contributing much to the film.
Absolutely the most positive part in this film is the acting. Emma Thompson is impressive and steals the show in this movie. Even though Emma Stone performs great, Thompson kind of outshines her most of the time. Emma Stone is a great actress though, and she does notably well here too. Especially noteworthy is Emma Stone her use of voice. She clearly studied the original voice actor for Cruella wel, and her use and tone of voice is done very accurately and fitting.
Besides the acting and some nice visuals every now and then there is not much value in this movie to put your time in. An overly long runtime, unclear or poor message and a soundtrack that does not do more than a good Spotify playlist drag down the movie as a whole. If you want to see Emma (any of them) shine, it can be worth the watch though.
