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A few years ago by accident the first movie I watched with my mother after Sylvester night was an Liam Neeson action movie I did not know (Unknown) and since then this became somewhat of a "tradition". I've been watching Liam Neeson action movies as first movie of the year ever since, and normally it's the movie I watch on January 1st.

This year however we where on vacation and could not watch the movie on 1st, but hey - it is still the first movie of this year, and out of necessity (I ordered The Grey and A Walk Among the Tombstones on Blu-ray but they did not arrive on time) it was Taken, which I've already seen, but my girlfriend hadn't.

We get the story of Bryan Mills, a former CIA operative, who - to get closer to his estranged daughter - allows her to take a trip through Europe with her friend. However, in Paris she get's kidnapped while on phone with him, forcing Mills to reactivate his retired secret agent skillset to hunt down the kidnappers in Europe.

This movie is french cameraman Pierre Morels second movie as director, and he was heavily backed by Luc Besson, with whom he had already worked on The Transporter. It ensembles a great cast with Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Katie Cassidy, and Xander Berkeley who are all but supporting characters to Liam Neeson, with - unfortunately - very low screen time.

I remember watching it the first time and I really liked it then. Liam Neeson is a great actor and his character is wonderfully introduced. He get's a lot of back story, plays a somewhat broken person that has no other desire than to reconnect with his estranged teenage girl that he had neglected in his active days - which is even harder as he is divorced from her mother for the same reasons. He is totally believable throughout the movie and is one of the positive aspects of the movie.

The second positive aspect is the action which is mostly hand made practical effects, hardly any stunt doubles, hardly any greenscreens and CGI, which is really great. The movie is therefore not as action packed, not as fast paced, a lot of steady cams but all the fight scenes are totally believable, and therefore quite thrilling.

The great negative aspect in my opinion - and this was so much more bothering watching it the second time than it was the first time is the story itself, which is totally unbelievable. To start, even the premise is crazy - given what we see, every day at least 20 girls that travel to Paris - apparently mostly from the USA - are kidnapped. And nobody cares? Also, it is inspired by "The Bourne Identity" but does not quite reach that level, and after having seen many current action movies such as The Equalizer, John Wick or Atomic Blonde, this movie seems a bit dated.

Never the less a movie worth watching (but probably not re-watching material).

I've seen this a s a sneak preview and I was really entertained - cool movie, a lot of fun. It's not a master piece, and after the incredible good critics I can understand that some might have been disappointed, but other than that, it's just a lot of fun. I liked the action, the cool driving scenes, some really great compositions as well as the incredible good symbiosis of music and pictures. The thing that bugged me most, is that the general idea of having an action movie married to a great 80s soundtrack is not that new, and since the success of Guardians of the Galaxy somewhat exploited. Only this year we had Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Atomic Blonde, doing the same thing, so this is already the third one in one year. And especially Guardian of the Galaxy has some parallels with the soundtrack and an antique music playing device being in the center of attention.

Other than that it was however a good movie. I liked all of the main actors; after coming out of the cinema I was a bit dissapointed by the small roll Kevin Spacey was playing - at that time I would have liked to see him a bit more (of course that was before the scandals).

Other than that, great action movie.

I believe I've rated this one a bit higher than it actually deserves, and maybe that's because I am impartial when it comes to having a movie with batman.

However, this was - after seeing Spider-Man and Thor, the first super hero comic adaption that is more in tune with what I expect from such a movie.

The biggest flaw of this movie is the short playtime, because you feel like there is so much more missing, so much more backstory that could have been told, so many more quieter moments that the movie could have benefited from, and a bit more character time, for a movie where we have three new heroes introduced (next to the villain, and other story arcs that this movie gets into). Still the movie is alright - you don't feel rushed. The Characters are well developed, each of them has its own personality trades - we have the strong and funny guy (Aquaman), the insecure guy (Flash), and the one with a troubled background who still needs to come to terms with who he is (Cyborg) - a good mix that (in contrast to Marvels Avengers) has some interesting contrast, and that fits well into our fighting "couple" consisting of the broken and cynic Batman and the optimistic Wonderwoman.

And we get some fan service - there where at least two references to the old Batman movies as well as one to the old Superman movies - I loved them :)

Of course, this movie also just reinvents the wheel - there is nothing new, nothing we haven't seen already, no elaborate story, and the typical DC problems in regards to the villain who is shallow, superstrong, and leads to an CGI smashdown. However, it finds the right amount of fun paired with seriousness, which I found refreshing after the other two movies.

Justice League definately falls behind MoS and BvS, and probably also behind Wonderwoman, but not by far.

I am actually not the biggest Disney fan, I grew up with quite a lot of Disney movies and I wouldn't want to miss them, but while growing up I soon realized that somehow they all follow the same storyline and logics and in the end they started boring me; if I am not mistaken, The Lion King was the last Disney movie that I really enjoyed and watched at cinemas, and from there on, most of the Disney movies I've seen where somewhat below the quality standard that I think the first movies had.

Beauty and the Beast is of course a movie that came before, but still as a kid I never got deeply interested in that movie (as opposed to e.g. Aladin, which I had on VHS and watched regularly); I only saw it once and I never rewatched it ever since.

So having this movie be turned into a live-action adaption should have probably not have interested me at all, but strangly seeing the first trailer it did. So I went to the movies and I watched it with no greater expectations and - well - I was blown away. Somehow even though I knew the whole story, this movie kept me on my toes the whole time, the acting was great, it has a great cast, the musik was great (okey, in the beginning I was like "Oh my god, song after song - if that keeps going on, I'm definatley in the wrong movie"), the CGI was mostly great (I discovered that the beast looks funny while walking and then I realized that sometimes they forgot to leave footprints in the snow for the beast -.- ), the jokes where funny and all in all I was entertained the whole time.

I couldn't have forseen this but after having only positive things to say, to me this ends up to be a 9/10 Points!

Great movie, go watch it!

This feature film length documentary is a collage of scenes that where filmed during creation of the movie "The Boondock Saints", which is a pretty interesting but also pretty depressing story, about the rise and downfall of Troy Duffy, the director and writer of the cult classic.

Starting out as a bar tender he meets Harvey Weinstein and that guy is so convinced by Duffy first apperences that he not only buys the script, but also offers Duffy 15 million dollars to create it, and signs Duffys band and even buys the bar Duffy worked in, and made Duffy a co-owner. If he'd only known better. As it turns out, Duffy is so sure of himself, that he has no problems dissing everybody, his actors, his co-workers, his producers and even his friends and family. This paired with his alcohoism - (quote) "I get drunk at night, wake up the next morning hung over, go into those meetings in my overalls, and they're all wearing suits." - leads to his downfall: His funds are taken away, Harvey Weinstein does everything to make sure his movie doesn't sell and in the end, he signs a shitty deal for having his movie shown in five cinemas in whole USA for one week! The end of it: The deal did not include any shares for the home video release, so practically at the end he got nothing and since then has a hard time even finding a job in the movie industry.

While showing this, one of course gets a totally different perspective of what went on behind the scenes of this movie. Wow. However, for me it also showed how pitty some people (Harvey Weinstein, the owner of Miramax) can be, fighting a guy he had some disagreements with - which even leads up to the question if he was in any way responsible for an assult on Duffys life (if it wasn't anybody of the entire crew who all had plenty of reasons for it themselves).

All in all it is a pretty interesting documentary, although I wouldn't call it a documentary in the traditional sense, but rather a collage of behind-the-movie scenes, as there is no narration and hardly any context given; rather the opposite - from the beginning you get thrown in into raw footage that someway inbetween the first days of producing the videos Duffy thought would be a good idea, because from his perspective movie history was written (because in the end we would have gotten the classic dish-washer -> millionair story if he hadn't screwed it up). Now and then there is a textcard or subtitle telling us something like "beginning of shooting", etc. but that is it. No narrator from the off, most of the times even no talking to the camera but rather something like blairwitch-project - a found footage film, so to speak, without the cameraman ever turning the camera arround. Which is somewhat crazy, because we get to see some really fucked-up scenes that no one in his right mind would want himself to be seen in.

To me the found footage style is a bit displeasing which is why I the rating is not as high as it could be. Other than that, it was really interesting, eye-opening, and also disturbing if you like the movie...

"Devil in the House of Exorcism" is an alternative title to "The House of Exorcism" which is a really weird poster to have with this version of the movie, because this one - as title and year clearly state is the original version as Mario Bava intended it (for the other look up "The House of Exorcism" there - I have written a review for that one as well explaining the differences to this version).

This one is "Lisa and the Devil" - Lisa e il diavolo, and it is by some considered to be Bavas masterpiece. You can really recognize the totally different style that Bava uses in this movie, it's poetic, full of symbolism and metaphors. A lot of scenes show his genious for those times, take for example the opening scene that is extremely depressing, or the love triangle during the car ride, where the viewer understands what is going on without anybody saying a word - just because of the way Bava shot the scenes.

Still especially in the first half the movie has a number of weary lengths, and there is hardly any suspence or excitement, except for all the symbolism and metaphores that Bava installs. Only when leaning towards the end does this movie turn into a horror movie.

Thoug having yet another movie with genious camera work I still do also miss all the technical finess, that I used to see in his first movies (think about Black Sunday, that is full of craftmanship, when it coms to inventing new and extrodinary effects for the movies. Stuff that today we ask the PC to do without even thinking about it - but that where - during that time impossible to get shot - and yet he somehow did it and invented innovative ways to film those. I miss that in this movie.

Still it is an interesting piece of art, and something you should spend some time with, when you see it. In the beginning I was like "This is a 5/10", but looking at all the extras, understanding what he did and why he did it - and what makes it ingenious - those where the things that made the movie even more interesting. I guess it's hard - at least to me - to fairly critizise movies from so many decades that we cannot even begin to understand what amount of work simple scenes consumpted. And taking all those factors into consideration I end up with 7/10 Points.

Opera was my first Dario Argento movie and I am really happy that this was the case. Probably wouldn't have been that interested in Argento if it was another movie of his, because I don't like all of his work; this one however, is in my opinion up to now the best movie I know by him.

Just consider the film making taking the first scene: It starts with a raven eye, and we see the entire scenery as the reflection inside the raven eye: an opera stage and the audience sitting in front of it. This is a special metaphor: Eyes and observing things, be it as a voluntary observer, or as a forced observer. But it's also about seeing things and not seeing other things - with a lot of POV shots. This movie is also about unhealthy relationships, psychopaths and music. A large portion is also critizising the opera due to the fact that Dario Argento wanted to create an Opera but was riddiculed. All this is put into a relatively easy but yet really captivating and thrilling story - we have a masked serial killer that stalks an opera singer and forces her to witness his or her kills.

The movie offers a lot of original ideas that one hasent seen as such before - one for example being the needels being sellotaped to the eyelids, to make shure they cannot be closed. Another interesting thing are the elaborate dolly shots that where hard to film because everything had to be done by hand. This makes this movie great even for todays standards and there is no wondering, why this is considered to be one of the most outstanding movies of the italian horror movies.

It's really worth seeing!

On the German blu-ray release it reads "A hybrid of Mad Max and Death Proof!", which will of course set high expectations that this movie will not hold at all - if you expect anything near those master pieces than you are really in for a disappointment.

I try to watch movies as uninfluenced as possible to not have any kind of expectations, because a high expectation can lead to disappointment which will even lower your rating (due to the negative experience, that you might not have experienced when going into a movie without any expectations). However, I had some expectations, therefore I wasn't as happy as I expected. But, if you are in for a B-Movie with some action and some gore, than you'll get what you've asked for. You will however realize that this movie had an extremely low budget. However, they try to make the best out of this situations and in some departments this really works out great. This movie has a lot of the charme of a typical B-Movie or Grindhouse movie, there are some trashy scenes and a few number of times I had a laugh. However budget cuts where made especially when it comes to story, dialogues and mask, which I consider somewhat bad. Especially the mask - take for example the car explosion and then you see the victim survive with some ragged clothes and some makeup on the face - and you just realize how this is just makeup, not the ashes of an explosion. Also: why is the hair totally okey, if the entire face is black and the clothes are ripped? Also because of the bad writing, we get a number of scenes that are dragging, which is especially bad if you count in the short running time of the movie. And all in all you somehow have the feeling that the scenes are just parts that where somehow mixed together into a movie, but that seem disconnected to each other: We have an action scene, then some driving, then again an action scenen with totally different people, again some driving, and so on.

These are not the qualities that comapre with Mad Max or Death Proof. However, the story is nice, the splatter effects are great, and the practical effects are immensly good. CGI is near to terrible, but given it is a movie on a budget, it's okey - there've been hollywood blockbusters that have been worse. Also, the cast is execpetionally good, I love all three of the main actors that bring different aspects to the story, and that know their acting and know how to get the audiences attention. However, to improve the movie, it should have had more trashy gore (I loved the stop sign axe scene) a little bit less draggy scenes (take the Marry Death Badlands scene - I mean how did that add anythint to the plot? how was this in any ways funny or interesting, etc?), and a more natural look (more dirt, more sweat - it just doesn't fit if the actors look neat and clean after a number of battles - and use real dirt instead of bad makeup), and a little bit more and especially better dialoges (yes, it's a B-Movie but still, why not let the audience feel the attaction between our two main characters?). If those points would have been just a bit better, this movie would have had potential for at least 7/10 points.

But in the end, we have a number of positve as well as negative aspects that cancel each other out, so in the end, I end up with 5/10 points.

When I saw the first teaser to this movie, I was like "What the hell is this? Something Peter Jackson created, that looks this fantastic? I need to watch this, even though the CGI did not look that good (yet?)". The first trailer wasn't that interesting anymore as it spoiled a lot. Still, Peter Jackson, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang... that could still be a good movie?

But first of all: The marketing - at least in Germany - was irritating. Peter Jackson wanted to do this movie, he held the rights to making this movie for over 8 years but couldn't get around and therefore decided to pass it on to one of his protegees: Christian Rivers, who has worked as storyboard artist and visual effects supervisor in 11 of Jackson's movies, has his directorial debut - Peter Jackson only contributed his first draft, and of course the rights and budget - which by the way is 150 million dollars - not bad for a debut. But does money equal quality?

Let's take a short look at the plot:

In a dystopian future the few survivors of a global catastrophe gathered together to form mobile predator cities and live in an world order called "Municipal Darwinism", i.e. in the great hunting ground larger cities hunt smaller cities for their resources, to enslave the people, etc. In this steampunk setting London is known as one of the most predatory cities - but the free young woman Hester Shaw wants to travel to exactly this city, because she is hoping to settle a score with one of the leaders of the city.

Peter Jackson has already proven that he has the ability to create new, unseen and absolutely fantastic worlds, and at first glance it seems like with Mortal Engines this applies as well, even though this is not really Peter Jackson. But: It's just the first glance. Yes, the world is cool, it has a lot of beautiful and interesting original ideas that we get to see. The CGI at first glance looks good - but unfortunately only at first glance. Different to Lord of the Rings, where you see a number of details, that are filmed in long slow moving camera to make sure the viewer has the ability to actually see, discover and experience all the details, in Mortal Engine you always have very fast tracking shots, so in the end, everything is blurry giving the movie makers the ability to mask the missing level of detail, as well as often also the physical plausibility of things. And that was something that really bothered me. How do the cities actually transform, or rake up to bigger cities? This happens so fast that you don't actually know - because there is no clever way they do fit together. And what are all the details in London? You don't get to see anything - there are 2-3 spots that are shown in detail - the rest is principally just a hill with a number of glowing spots, that blur due to the fast camera pace. Same with the wall. Why don't show how the people behind the wall actually live? They live a totally different life, why not celebrate it, like e.g. Lord of the Rings celebrated the introduction of Rohan? Because these details actually don't exist.

And at least to me, a movie of this caliber, with this budget and playing in such a world needs to be presented, needs to stun me. And we don't get anything.

But it's not only the graphics and setting - this is probably still the best part of the movie. Talking about the story, this movie is even worse. First, this movie is so packed, that you start to ask: Why did they not make a 2-part movie? Peter Jackson made 3 movies out of the hobbit which is a small to medium sized single children's book. But here, due to packing so much into one movie and not getting rid of certain aspects you feel like a lot of things are touched but not really explained. And this is really sad, as the story has a number of interesting parts. I would have loved to learn something about Anna Fang. Why is she hunted? What is her motivation as leader of an resistance movement? What is that resistance movements motivation? We get nothing - Anna is seen in the wanted poster in the beginning and all of a sudden she is there. The whole backstory with Shrike could have also been interesting, but is also just touched. Same with our antagonist. What is his motivation? No idea. Why does he - all of a sudden - decide to destroy something? No one will know. There are also hardly any quite moments to establish the characters, and this leads not only to the characters being really shallow, but also not rally having time to interact with each other and in the end there is absolutely no chemistry between the characters. All could die, and no one would care. And also the story telling is absolutely minimal. Most of the time is spend in an concatenation of action sequences: I feel that more than 80% was just action, and these action orgies where extremely CGI dominated, so they don't even get that exciting - and to me, after the first 2-3 action sequences I got fatigued.

In the end the actors are not challenged at all and fall far beyond what they are probably capable of, and there is not much else that the movie has to offer - I was bored after the first third of the movie, and it did not get any better till the end. A really great disappointment, I had high hopes :(

I haven't seen this movie for a really long time and just bought the new restoration from a 4k master on blu-ray and was happy to watch it. I thought it wouldn't be as good as I remembered it, because most of the time you realize that movies you liked in your childhood weren't actually that good.

That's however in no way true for Rambo (the German title of "First Blood" which is why I always got confused in the past when I heard the original title and thought that it was a part of the franchise I hadn't yet seen).

The restoration looks really good (except for some scenes that stand out because of their worse quality (mostly due to bad lightning in the original movie, I guess), and besides that, the movie is still really captivating, though it is in no way over the top. The car/motorcycle chase for instance - how unimpressive was the car flip or Rambo falling from the motorcycle? Still it was more captivating than a lot of modern movies with so overrealistic and fast paced cuts, that you just stop caring all together.

Also I totally forgot how funny Richard Crennas persona was: "God didn't make Rambo - I made him. I'm Sam Trautman - Colonel Samuel Trautman. I came to get my boy" - what an introduction :D And then follows a dick-measuring contest between Will Teasle and Sam Trautman. That is great acting. As is the acting of Brian Dennehy as the dislikable villain character - and of course we cannot forget the actin of our main character, portrayed by Sylvester Stalone - I also forgot how extremely moving the last scene was - I remembered that there was this critical moment when Rambo finally opens up to Trautman, but I forgot just how intense it was, and how unexpected it came. It feels somewhat displaced in a movie that builds up as an action movie with the underdog fighting the bad guys who unfortunately have the law on their side. And at the finale all of a sudden this change of tone - that is really bold, it's both strange but because of it strangeness so much deeper and better - as you are simply not prepared to what is going to happen. I always remember to feel sympathetic towards Vietnam veterans even though I am and always was a pacifist. I guess that is an impression that this movie left with me when I saw it the first time at my earlier teen years.

Last but not least I also really liked the sound track and the setting and locations are also really great. All in all a pretty good movie and factoring in that this movie had me so interested even though I've seen it a couple of times in my youth, and feeling that though it is so 80s it is still a movie that could captivate so many young audiences who have never seen this movie before, I am inclined to give it the best rating possible.

And because I mentioned the new blu-ray release: this is really worth a buy. There is more than 1,5 hours of extras, and these are pretty mixed - from the classics like interviews, making-ofs, trailers and featurettes to two serious documentaries, one on the Vietnam war and the other on the training of Green Barrets, as well as a fitness training featurette from the personal trainer for Rambo, there is a lot really interesting and unconventional ground covered. And the steelbook artwork looks just stunning as well :)

I've literally seen this movie decades ago and really enjoyed it then, but during the last years entirely forgot about it - until I saw Split in a sneak preview - when they showed the closing (or after credit?) scene, I was the only one in the cinema hall screaming "Oh my god, this is Unbreakable", while all the other visitors where puzzled. Unbelievable. Even my girlfriend didn't know the movie, so it had to be rewatched, and as "Glass" will be released this month, we finally got to actually watching it:

David Dunn (portrait by Bruce Willis) lives an ordinary life in modest circumstances, working as a football stadium security guy who is estranged from his wife and planing to start anew, when he gets in a train accident which he survives as the only person. He is then approached by the comic book enthusiast and comic art trader Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) who is certain that David is a real life impersonation of all the super heroes written about in comic books. He tries to mentor David who doesn't believe a word...

Being a comic book fan and loving the mid 2000s for all the stunning great super hero movies (Sam Raimis Spider-Man, X-Men, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Hellboy, Constantine, Watchman, 300, Sin City and of course the first MCU movies), I have to say this movie really stands out. It's not a typical comic book movie - it's not based on a comic book, it isn't even seeing itself as a typical super hero movie - it's rather a meta comic book movie, all the while having an integral part of typical comic books and focusing on this relevant mechanism that every comic book thrives on.

All the while this movie is so totally different to any super hero movie you have ever seen. Totally calm, slow paced, no special effects, hardly any fight scenes, all the while absolutely thrilling due to brilliant cinematography, great acting and a killer score. The characters and their relations are as deep as in a drama movie, and nearly the entire movie is a built up to a great finale and an unexpected turn of events. There is no CGI, no action, not even a hero vs super villain showdown. All the while it touches the essence of every comic book story, and does so in an ingenious way.

Because of this, of course not everyone will like the movie - a lot will probably not even consider it an comic book or action hero movie. But it really is a memorization of the comic book genre and given its age, and the fact that it came before the action hero genre took off, it really aged well - even after all the Marvel, DC and independent stuff this movie stands out as a great movie.

And now I am really looking forward to seeing the final movie :)

Wow. This movie is great. it is sick. It is disturbing. But also, it is great. Probably one of the best movies of this year, most definatley one of the top 10 candidates. But also so hard to describe without spoilering that I won't even get into it. Just this much: It's a movie about dark secrets, revenge, blackmail and some strange notion of justice.

The story is especially in the beginning, totally strange, and only after some time you'll start to understand who's who and what's happening. However, from the first moment on you get the notion of "something's not right", which is conveyed in so many ways - the dialogues, the way the people talk with each other, the strange relations they have. There is also some small symbolism to find, but not as much as with other movies of this kind, e.g. Nocturnal Animals.

The storytelling is absolutely great, the movie is totally atmospheric and unsettling from the first scene onwards - I mean, wow was that intro intense - classical music, church-themed, and the close up of an open beating hearth at an operating table - uncomfortably long, hard to look at, even harder to look away. Cut. Discarding of rubber gloves and the scrubs from the operation. Cut. Mundane dialogue of the two doctors that walk down a frightening and disturbing looking long corridor, with the camera being far away and moving in the same pace as the two doctors. Cut.

Especially the camera is also quite interesting - it doesn't matter which scene, which shot, which setting - somehow it is always frightening and unsettling. Wow. What great skill in this shootings. The soundtrack is also absolutely strange and uncomfortable - switching from the imperfect singing of a child that in its way is totally scary (see the trailers), to classical music to a soundtrack that is absolutely grotesque and that bears a lot of resemblance to the soundtrack of the Hannibal series.

The cast is great as well - we have Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman who are absolutely great - but the star is probably Berry Keoghan, who is creepy as hell.

After watching this movie you'll feel the urge to discuss it with other people and it'll keep you occupied for hours and days afterwards (at least if you are open to such thoughts about movies and their meanings) - and this is something that I love in movies - there are many ways a movie can be really good. But to be a great movie it'll have to keep me occupied with it. This one does, so it's already clear that I'll consider it to be a great movie. It is however not for everyone. I think it can be best categorized with movies such as Nocturnal Animals, Enemy or mother! - if you loved those, you'll probably also like this one. If you, however hated those, I don't see any chance for you liking this one.

What a tarrific movie. Again one of this lucky moments at the sneak preview - I hadn't heard of this movie before, hadn't seen any trailers, previews, reviews - it would have totally passed by me. This is director Sam Levinson's second movie as a director and in it he tells ports the story of Salem (the biggest witch hunt in the history of the USA) into the modern times and retells it as a story under high school teenagers who live an excessive live on social networks, in a society that still sexualizes women, discriminates against the different and stigmatizes those who do what everybody does in secret but get outed publicly. In this tinderbox of a society a hacker is doing his mischief by stealing private data from our teenagers and also the adults surrounding them and publicly displaying them on the internet, which first only leads to mobbing of individuals and personal tragedies but soon the entire situation switches into a nightmare and a new kind of witch hunt.

The first thought I had when the credits of the movie rolled was "Wow". The dangers of social networks of information leaking and the effects this has both on individuals as well as the society in its entirety is not new (there is even a South Park episode on this regarding the browser history); yet how this movie handles it is refreshing. This movie is different - you get thrown into the story without any introduction, you are there with a group of girls hearing their ordinary daily dialogues (which is kind of Tarantinoesque) about every day's boring stuff, to introduce the characters and their way of thinking. We get great story telling and a really great camera work that captivates you right from the beginning. From all the main characters only Bill Skarsgard rings a bell, so I guess all of them are newcomers yet they all play very well. The sets, the scenes, the costumes the colors, everything is trimmed to create really stunning images that are combined with a great soundtrack. But best of all there is an incredibly great one-take dolly shot that is really stunning as well.

But what kind of movie are we actually watching? That is really hard to answer, actually. The movie starts quite heavy, only unfolds its story slowly and is packed with social criticism without being in your face. The first part reminded me of Spring Breakers. However, Assassination Nation is also packed with a morbid sense of humor while staying serious the entire time, becoming more and more a personal drama until it actually turns into a Gore movie that starts reminding you strongly of the movie "The Purge". And if that is not enough we get a finale that has a lot of elements of a classic Rape-Revenge-Movie that slowly drifts into the surreal.

As you can see, this movie is hard to explain and I feel that rather than reading about it, you'd really have to experience this movie yourself to get a picture of it. I myself was captivated for the first minute, I was really curious how this story will unfold, I have been thinking about the message or the messages that this movie probably tries to convey a lot, I was entertained by the gore elements and I had a couple of scenes where I had to laugh. All in all a well rounded movie, with only one critizism that I have: I thought the ending was pretty forseeable. Not too worse, but still.

Other than that, a really great movie! And everything is done on a low budget!

Btw. here is a great "Anatomy of a Scene" with commentary by Sam Levinson, published by The New York Times. Worth seeing, but also spoilery of course: https://youtu.be/VJNLmfyNpqk

The Beguiled in a word is best described with "different". The movie disregards typical cinema techniques, which most obviously jumps at you with its antique 4:3 format, which on the big screen looks totally alienating, even if you grew up in the 80s and 90s and still know that television had this as standard format since the beginning of television. Also, you won't find any camera tracking shots, fast editing, cuts, or dramatic music - this movie makes due without.

Instead we get a movie with a colour grading that seems ancient, with flickers in stills, unsharp images, many quiet and really prolonged stills, capturing not only the main part of the scene, but also profane things that one would normally discard as uninteresting. If you didn't know it better, one could come to the conclusion that this movie was made by an amateur. But Sofia Coppola is no such thing, and she know that this unconventional style only adds to the atmosphere that she wants to create, which - besides historic - is best described as threatening; the stills captured of the house and it's surroundings are unsettling, and it seems scary that because of the 4:3 format your vision and your grasping of the scenery is always somewhat constrained - there is a hint of a horror moving feeling in there. As scenery we get this old house, hidden in the woods, behind trees that are moss-grown.

Even though its slow pace, it strangeness and the amateur like long stills, this movie never gets boring. We have an ingenious cast consisting of beautiful and talented actresses such as Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning on the one side, and of course Colin Farrell on the other side. All of them are absolutely superb and especially in this movie they need to be, because so much is not said in dialogue but by using facial expressions and with glances through the eyes - and these things are at times so settle that it is absolutely great acting which makes it work so well.

Colin Farrell is the alien, the guy that changes everything and stirs up a lot, and it is absolutely ingenious how this changes are reflected in every person - with out anything happening or dialogue - just by watching them and their body language. We see the characters question their life, question their faith and the things happening outside. Also the chemistry between the actors is great. Nicole Kidman plays a totally torn personality, Kirsten Dunst is especially subtile - both deserve to be pointed out. Colin Farrell also needs little acting to convey both his longing, as well as his hidden agenda (figuring out how to get out of his situation without any harm by using the girls).

I also love the look, the setting, the gothic victorian southern states style, and the few humorus scenes that every now and then break the gernally dark tone of this drama/thriller movie.

You'd already guessed it: I liked this movie pretty much. I cannot suggest it to anyone - if you don't like more toned down movies, chamber plays, movies without much action, etc. then you will probably be bored by this movie. But whoever has a sense for the subtile things and loves an atmospheric and asthetic movie with sharp dialogs and great mimic play, that asks the viewer to engage with the movie, to think about what's happening (and why) - all those will probably love watching this one.

I rated it 8/10, and it will surely not be the last time I've seen this one.

I am always on the lookout for movies outside Hollywood and therefore was really excited to find this movie as original version with subtitles; I think I haven't seen any Chinese movies before, when it comes to Asian Cinema, only Japanese and Korean cinema. So I had to visit this show to see 影 (pronounced 'Ying').

The movie plays during the period of the "Three Kingdoms" (220-280) in China: The kingdom of Pei lost the important city Jing Zhou to the neighboring kingdom Yang when the commander Ziyu loses a duel to the commander Yang Chang. Ziyu yearns for revenge and wants to recapture Jing Zhou, however the King of Pei, Peiliang is spineless and rather stomaches every disgrace even if it leads to his peoples contempt, as long as he can keep the peace. And thus, in his shadows his subordinates begin to plot and work on their own goals...

While the trailer suggest this movie to be action-packed including foolish martial arts stunts (if you watch the trailer you'll see armies fighting with umbrellas that have razor blades instead of cloth or use them to slide down slopes). However, this is misleading. Zhang Yimou's movie nearly feels a bit arthousy, with a large number of really slow paced scenes, some scenes being totally silent, short dialogues where the subtile facial expressions and subcontext need to be taken into account. Actually, the director trusts the viewer with as much intelligence that he leaves a lot of things unsaid. Instead, the movie focuses on great imagery, and presents a visual feast for your eyes. Also, the whole movie plays with a lot of symbolism. You'll obviously see the "Yin and Yang"-Symbol, with "Yin" meaning wet, feminine, passive, quiet and "Yang" the opposites. And our shadow fighters attack the kingdom of "Yang", using a new, feminine fighting style; all these characteristics can be found and seem to be easily distributed to the different characters, but soon you'll see, that as Yin and Yang, positions will switch, making the story more complex and interesting. Thus also the color grading is focused on the colors black, white and grey, giving the movie a different look that I have never seen. Besides the imagery that looks like Chineese paintings, and all those symbolism we also have a great set and costume design. And last but not least, the music and how it is integrated into the movie is also phenomenal.

On the negative side, I have to say that in the beginning I had a real hard time to get into the movie. The flick starts with a few text screens and than just throws you in, and hearing a lot of foreign names as well as seeing a couple of people that actually look alike (in clothing, hairstyle, etc.) made it not easier. So the first round about 20 minutes I was a bit lost and had my problems following. But I am not sure if I can count this as a negative aspect of the movie. Same goes for rather strange cultural aspects, e.g. there is a scene, where the King asks the commander to play an instrument and sing with his wife, and she refuses, excusing that she has distracted her husband from his duties and that, if she has to play she'll cut of her fingers. She then plays and after that grabs the knife. Her husband stops her and instead cuts of his hair, which is filmed in such a dramatic way, and the entire court is extremely shocked to see this happening. And I was like "uhm... what's just happening?"

These things made it a bit hard in the beginning, but after getting into the movie you'll get a really great move that is worth watching. I'll rate it 8/10 points.

For me, this movie was really hard to rate, because starting with the idea, this movie has a great surreal premises, that fancied me right from the beginning. Seeing the first trailer I was excited because the idea seems absolutely great and crazy, but I had no idea, what direction this movie would take. Seeing the second trailer, however, I was pretty pissed, because crucial story elements are spoiled right away and you get to understand where this movie would probably end up.



Still, the movie has some great ideas, and I liked how it formulates it social criticism; e.g. the people can downsize and by doing so have a great impact on nature and saving the planet, so actively and positively impacting the far future of everyone. Still, by doing so, they also get out of the social system, because their contribution to society also shrinks. And therefore people who decide to not downsize and by choice stay in their position that are already bad, they start hating those who strive to better their own situation as well as the overall future situation of the world in general. And this is something pretty common, whenever change is involved. But that is not the only criticism you’ll find. E.g. we have the problem of dictatorships touched, that are legitimized by us as we still maintain good relationships with these countries, we have the tendency of human being to use anything as a weapon to inflict pain to others. We have the criticism of humans always inflicting systems that segregate us from „others“. Even in a paradisaical place like the shrunk community, where everyone could be filthy rich, we have people seeking personal profit and (in a way) power over others, and segregating those less fortunate into slums - people have the tendency to turn even paradise into hell. And topics like world overpopulation, illegal immigration, etc. are also briefly touched. It even gets philosophical while staring at human annihilation.



So, this actually should be a great movie. But that’s the problem - the creators chose to make a movie, and as a movie this piece of art has a number of shortcomings. Mainly that it has no direction in it’s story telling at all. You feel like our main character is thrown from one situation into the next. These situation are even hardly connected to each other - and never is there a visible story line. So in the end, you keep wondering what is actually happening, and why and how did we get there? This is one of the problems I had with this movie. The other is, that the end was one of the most unsatisfying I’ve seen in a while. I mean, yes, we where presented with some social and global problems, but in the end, what did I learn by watching this movie? I don’t feel like there was any contribution to me personally, there where no new thought processes induced, there wasn’t any answer offered. Nothing. The end feels like it really isn’t an end at all - they just all of a sudden stopped the movie, not at a climax, not a cliffhanger, it isn’t shocking, it isn’t happy, it isn’t sad. It’s just over, unexpected and the first question you ask yourself afterwards is: Why did I watch this.

Because, besides it’s lack of storytelling, there is also hardly anything else this movie has to offer. Acting wise we have Hong Chau, and she is the bomb, she steels the show of everyone with her energy, her charisma, her demanding nature. She makes this movie worth watching. Matt Damon, the main star is interchangeable, Christoph Waltz is as we expect him to be, but nowhere near his high performance that we loved in movies like Django Unchained or Inglorious Bastards. And all the other roles are actually pretty insignificant. Kirsten Wiig doesn’t have many lines and is a story device but that’s it. Udo Kier is nothing more than Christoph Waltz’ sidekick, Neil Patrick Harris actually has a 5 Minutes role, same with Laura Dern, Jason Sudeikis, etc. And each role is pretty mediocre and could have been played by any actor with the same performance. Nothing outstanding here. Soundtrack? Well it has this caching theme from the trailer, but that’s it. Stunning pictures? Nope. Special Effects? Nope. You would actually think, that in a movie where people are shrunk you would encounter some interesting situations where the director had to introduce some clever, some never-before-seen techniques but no - after Matt Damon’s Character enters the shrunk society there is nothing to remind us of this fact, other than a pretty blunt reference to a real rose in his house, or the giant vodka bottle. 



So in the end, what do we have? A courageous new idea of how to tackle our world problems, some great critical views on our society, which are then turned into the self finding trip of one man in a wonderful new world that isn’t wonderful or new at all. We have a story that feels random, we see some great actors in mediocre rolls, there is nothing interesting to experience cinematographic-wise, and we are left with the feeling of having wasted some time.



Why does it still get such a high rating from me? Well for it’s great premises, as well as for Hong Chau - the only actress that managed to connect with you emotionally and made you both, happy and sad. A great performance and so much energy, which actually makes this movie worth seeing, even if it isn’t a good movie.

Alice (portrayed by Reese Witherspoon) is a single mother of two children. She works as a interior designer and is the daughter of a famous moive director (who died). She just moved back to Los Angeles, after living with her former husband in New York.

On her 40th birthday she meets 3 young guys (~20 years old) in a bar, who are on the lookout for someone producing their movie (those three being in the roles of writer, director and main actor). The director starts flirting with her and they end up in bed with each other, while the other two crashed at her living room. The next morning the mother of Alice comes home and is shocked at first, but the 3 guys reckognise her as a famous actress (she played in the movies of her husband, i.e. the late father of Alice) so she is intrigued and offers the guys to live with Alice, building up to a strange love triangle story - and if that isn't enough: now her ex husband moves back to L.A. as well, and starts fighting for Alice.

After long useless scenes, Alice quits her job that doesn't make her happy, finalizes her divorce, breaks up her affair with the young director guy, but still everybody is happy and she has the best time while inviting them all to dine with her. The End.

As if this movie isn't enough by itself - it is accompanied by a ugly, suggary oozing soundtrack - one of the worse I have ever heard. Only one theme, that is used over and over again, over the entire movie. The actors are all overacting, the three guys are some of the worst actors I've seen, the story is totally foreseeable, and the directing is so incredible stupid. I mean do they really think we are so stupid as to not understand what is going on?

Let me give you an example - there is a scene, where you can see (due to the good acting of Reese Witherspoon): "Oh, there's something going on here. There is chemistry between those two". However, the camera keeps on capturing the scene. Witherspoon has to smile bashfully for 2 or 3 times until you think "Okey, now, finally, everybody should have gotten that there is chemistry between those two". But still - it's not enough. She then has to whisper "Oh my god" and start fanning herself. 5 Minutes to tell something that everyone in the audience whould have understood in half a minute.

Only because I really like Reese Witherspoon, I will give it 2 Points. And I am not the only one that was unimpressed. Even a lot of girls in the cinema bursted into laughs because of some of the horrible acted scenes.

This movie was actually a suprise for me, because I would have expected it to be much worse than it turned out to be. However I have to say first, that I do not know the original series this movie is (hardly?) based on, so I will not be able to compare.

However, I was entertained. The story is all right it has some interesting moments, it is not in its entirety forseeable and besides infantil jokes about sex, male close and a rather idiotic depicted Jon Baker (played by Dax Shepard), it even has some funny inovative quotes that I enjoyed.

Also I think Michael Peña is a sympathetic actor, and so I liked his role as "Punch", he has a certain kind of smartness about himself and they added it to his role - that was interesting, because judging just by the trailer both appear to be idiots and you'd expect something horrible - oh and while I am mentioning the trailers - I loved that actually hardly joke from the trailer actually ended up in the movie - therefore there are no spoilers a number of scenes that you thought you knew actually turned out different.

But besides that, the story is rather mediocre, the characters stay shallow, 80% of the jokes aren't really funny, and a lot of story lines where forseeable. Also it often reminded me of a bad immitaiton of the Bad Boys movies - and compared to those this is a cruel joke.

So this movie is neither entirely good, nor entirely bad. And therefore after long consideration I settled with the exact middle. There are far worse movies, but there are also better. If they show it on TV and nothing else is on, you wouldn't go wrong with this, but whenever you can do something better, you'd better do that ;)

This movie has quite an unfortunate history: It was conceived by three film students at the AFI in 2003, and after managing to get some financing (apparently only 750k) and winning friends for cast and crew, it took them three years to actually get the movie done. It premiered on the IFI in Toronto in 2006, and was bought in a fierce bidding war by the Weinstein Company including worldwide distribution rights. But then the Weinsteins where in disagreement about the movie and in the end it went into the archives until the filmmakers managed to convince Weinstein to sell the rights in 2008 to the German company Senator, who got the rights for Germany and Austria and set out to also distribute it in the USA with their US branch. However, they got hit hard by the financial crisis, and the rights went yet again to another party - an investor who wasn't into film business, and who vaulted the rights. In 2010 the producers tried to get the rights back, and finally in 2013 the Weinstein Company bought the rights back again, to stream it on their Radius-TWC VoD service; probably because most of the actors and the director have finally become famous with later productions, and names like Amber Heard (Machete Kills, Zombieland), Michael Welch (Twilight Saga), Luke Grimes (Taken, True Blood) and even the director Jonathan Levine (50/50, Warm Bodies) mad names for themselves. Only after the start on the VoD platform was there also a limited theatrical release. And even though there was hardly any marketing for this movie and not many know it, it can be considered a financial success.

In the movie, Mandy Lane is the perfect survivor girl of a slasher movie. She is smart, she is sexy, she doesn't do drugs or alcohol and she does not fool around with guys (probably even is still a virgin) - this is the cliche of 80s teeny slasher movies, and this movie caricatures this cliche with Mandy Lane, a girl that every guy wants to be with and every girl wants to be like - but because she is so unattainable boys start to do everything for her - even go as far as to kill themselves or others.

While in the 00s a lot of 70s movies where remade in 00s style, Levine wanted to make a 00s movie in the 70s style, and created a wild mixture of coming of age and slasher movie that was suposedly inspired by films like "Dazed and Confused", "The Virgin Suicides" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" manages to do really a lot with its limited budget and has a lot to offer. There is a really slow pacing with a lot of time to get to know the characters, the gore scenes are sparse but when they come they are super effective and even though there's not much shown, it can keep up with rather bloody genre colleagues by intelligent cutting and sound design. And even though at first it seems to be a run-of-the-mine slasher movie, it actually isn't, which can be seen both, in some intelligent and unexpected plot twists, as well as in little details, such as turning around the typical slasher movie setup, which usually starts in the day with the first confrontations and ends in the night with all the slashing (where as in this movie, we start at night and have our grand finale in broad daylight). There is a lot of love and appreciation for the 70s slasher genre in the way it looks and feels, yet it manages to find it's own style and add something new and unseen to the genre, that makes it stand out.

And in the end, it even makes you think and realize one and the other thing, like when you think about the motivation. Why do the guys get killed? Obvious. But why do the girls? Why the change of hearts? What's special about the farm hand? If you think about these, you'll realize that these things are not random, there's a deeper rooting, and some kind of a message in this.

And there's nothing much else you can criticize! It has great acting, great camera work, great post production, a good and solid story with some surprises, but no plot holes or logic mistakes, it's thrilling, the gore scenes are gruesome, it has great music, great pacing, and given that this is a 750k budget release, it feels like a really expensive production.

9/10 points!

I am ashamed to admit it, but I've just seen this movie for the first time now (on Feb. 27th, 2019), so this review has to be seen in that context: We have 2019, so the movie is nearly 45 years old, I am in my mid thirties and a movie enthusiast since at least half of my life, so I've seen a number of movies already.

So, I probably cannot appreciate this movie as much as someone who has seen it in his early years or who was even lucky enough seeing this movie when it was released.

Yet, as you can already see, I really enjoyed this movie. It is incredibly iconic, and if you are a movie enthusiast you will probably recognize a dozen movies that where inspired by, or that pay tribute to this movie. I especially had to laugh at the scene with the white board.

Other than that, it has aged incredibly well. I watched a Blu-ray version that was released by Universal for their 100th anniversary and it has crisp images - there is only one image that is strange, but that's probably due to editing (the scene has both, near focus on a head in the foreground and far focus on the sea at the background and right at the border of these two images you have a really blurry line, so I guess, this scene consists of the image of two cameras that where joined together in editing) - a good sound quality, the dialogues weren't to stale, there are some really great images some of them where you wonder how they managed to achieve those shots in the 1970 on a small boat, and even though the shark puppets are not realistic at all, in general the movie manages to build up a really frightening atmosphere, and there was also one jump-scare-esque scene that really got me (and it's really seldom that I get scared like this by a movie). Also story wise it manages to captivate you and surprises you in the way it evolves. So even though it is that old and even if you've seen so many movies that you feel like you've seen it all, this movie will leave a mark and you will understand why people will tell you that it's one of the best movies.

From today's perspective I'd rate it 8/10, because a) the shark puppets made me laugh - they ARE really bad - b) it had a few lengths and c) some decisions did not make too much sense to me. But I gave it an additional point, because thinking of it, this movie has produced a milestone in cinemas, it is absolutely ambitious and for that time really extremely good produced. And most of all: It has inspired so many movies that followed. I didn't know how many actually where, but watching this I was reminded of a couple of films, and I guess the number is much higher and if I'd watched this one before I've seen all the other movies I would probably realized more movie inspirations than I was able to.

If you haven't seen it already (and let's be honest: who beside me hasn't?!) what are you doing? Please don't wait longer, you are missing out on general knowledge.

This movie is extremely hard to rate, as every word on the story will give away all the fun. You also probably shouldn't watch the trailer and additionally you shouldn't look up the other movie posters as they contain spoilers as well.

The only story you can know: "Rhiannon is a ~15 year old girl that is in an one-sides relationship with her boyfriend Justin. However, one day she gets to know a guy who turns around her entire life".

If you know me you also know that I don't have much love for romantic movies and romantic comedies and even less so if they are teenage romances (or romantic comedies). So it came as an absolute surprise to myself, that I actually liked this movie - which is due to its really strange and unusual story. This absurd idea makes the entire story totally interesting - however it is just revealed in the last third of the movie - two thirds you sit there and keep asking yourself what you are seeing and why you are seeing it and how this all fits together.

In the end, this isn't a classical teen romance story but touches aspects of the fantasy genre and explores a really strange kind of romance. And it's a really great idea and a great take.

There are a number of weaknesses though. Most of all, I think the movie doesn't explore it's idea deeply enough. The romance part is still the main aspect of the movie, and we get a large number of scenes that just focus on teenage romance. One could have shortened this part just a bit and instead could have gone deeper into the aspect of this personality, into the problems and into what this kind of romance actually means. It especially also has an aspect of unconventional love that could have also found a number of parallels to our modern society.

Also the story telling moves towards banality when getting towards the end, even though I liked the resolution.

To end on a positive note: The cast is really good - all of them young actors who despite lacking the experience are already great actors that probably have a great acting career in front of them.

It's not a movie that you'd had to have seen - still, anyone who loves the genre should definately watch this one as it will give you what you love but yet also give it an entirely new spin on things.

The movie tells the story of an ambitious "house keeper" of a CIA safe house in southern Afrika who wants to raise in ranks and become a CIA agent. However he is held back until the day a rouge agent is brought in for questioning. The house gets attacked and the house keeper has to flee with the agent, being targeted by the rouge agent, the misterious attackers, the South African police and getting no help by his people...

To list the positive aspects first: The acting of Ryan Raynolds and Denzel Washington is good - but somehow that was to be espected. The action shots are interesting but not as exciting as they could be.

The story however feels highly constructed, and in its essence forseeable. Also, there are some scenes that make absolutely no sense, for instance, why while car chasing do the bad guys first install their silencers before they start shooting? And why did they take them off, after using them in the attack previous to the car chase? Those scenes that make you question the logic are somewhat aclimatic, which is also not in the movies favour.

It is never boring but it is never so good as to be as exciting and interesting as other movies of this genre - take for example the current bond movies or the Bourne series.

In my opinion, if you want a light movie night with friends where you spend more time talking then serious watching, then this movie is all right - but for a serious movie night you can choose far better.

This movie is a typical Liam Neeson and yet this movie is also refreshingly different. It's like the title suggests: A typical Liam Neeson is what I would describe as a hot pursuit movie - and this time we get a cold pursuit. It's a pursuit non the less, but still different.

The movie plays in Kehoe, a skiing resort in the Rocky Mountains, and Neeson's character - Nelson Coxman - is a snowplow driver. If he wouldn't work, no one could enter or leave Kehoe, which is why he's nominated as citizen of the year, even though he just does his job. But when his son mysteriously disappears, Coxman realizes a set of skills he wasn't yet aware of and with this new set of skills he sets a lunatic chain of events into motion.

When I saw the first trailer to this movie I was a bit torn. On the one hand, I like Liam Nesson action movies - I think Liam Neeson is a charismatic guy and even though a lot of people hat them - and yes, of course they are all the same and all of them reinvent the wheel - I think those movies are great. But a comedy? With Neeson? Oh my... I was fearing something that was more silly and stupid than action, and this movie could become totally stupid.

Luckily I was wrong. To be fair - it isn't a perfect movie either. There are a few weaknesses, but all in all I was really entertained by it and had a smile on my face the entire movie. The humor is really subtle and rather dark. There are no one-liners, no punchlines, nothing that expects you to burst into laughs all the time. It's rather bitter sweet dark humor, that is rather intelligent, and not always worded, but often also just induced by the style of filming, the editing or inappropriate absurd scenes. For instance there is a scene where a corpse has to be identified, and it was stored in a bottom drawer, so after pulling it out, they need to use a lever mechanism - and it felt like taking forever that the guy has to move the lever up and down so that the table is actually at a height so that the bereaved could actually finally lift the blanket and identify the corpse. These scenes remembered me of the first two episodes of Six Feet Under.

Even though it is funny it also has a lot of serious moments, and the movie is also about loss, and coping with loss, and of course about taking revenge. The "cold" in cold pursuit can be taken literally - all in all the movie is pretty slow paced - especially compared to typical Liam Neeson movies - and this is also due to the setting and the way the movie is made. Still whenever we get to the action scenes, it will get ugly. And aesthetic - the movie tries to find a certain kind of aesthetics in violence and also is pretty innovative in the killings, showing scenes you've probably never seen before.

I would think to put this movie somewhere between "The Grey" and "Taken" - a typical Liam Neeson movie that plays slower than his other movies do, paired with the dark humor of shows such as in Six Feet Under or Death at a Funeral, just not as thick and obvious.

I was entertained, I found it refreshing, and really liked it.

This movie is the first from the incredibly great Laika studio that - founded in 2005 had the ambitious and totally crazy idea to specialize in feature film length productions of stop-motion animation movies. They started with contract work but right from the get-go they announced their first movie: Coraline. It took them 4 years and $60 million dollars, but in the end in 2009 Coraline was released. I was intrigued right from the first time I heard about this movie, it looked absolutely fantastic and I love Neil Gaiman on who's children's book this movie is based on.

Still it should take me all the other movies from Laika untill I finally got to this movie. More by accident, and because my girlfriend liked the cover, I bought "The Boxtrolls" on Blu-ray, which was therefore my first movie from Laika. Then - and because I really liked Boxtrolls as a stop motion picture - we got ParaNorman, and it was good as well even though we did not like it as much as Boxtrolls. Then we watched Kubo and the Two Strings (also on Blu-ray), which was incredibly well done, and finally I manged to secure a first edition release of Coraline. Wanting a first edition (wich in Germany comes with a Lenticular O-Card) was actually the only reason that we've watched this movie so late after it's release, because it was already sold out and I had a really hard time searching for it.

But here we are, I could finally see the movie and unfortunately I have to say I wish I'd seen it earlier. After seeing Kubo you are somewhat set up for a disappointment. Still it is a really great movie. The plot is rather simple but non the less good, and the effects are great as well though if compared to Kubo you can see how over the years this company has perfected it's craft more and more. The sets are non the less really fantastic and the effects which are all hand crafted are absolutely worth your while. Here it's worth mentioning that if you actually own this on a physical medium you'll probably get a ton of extras that are absolutely interesting and stunning. A lot of the "magic" is given away, such as how the fire and the fog where done, how the actual dolls look like, and how they make it that these doll animations look so incredibly good, how animations effects of certain scenes where done, such as the "garden scene", and also who is behind the voices and what these actors think about the movie and how it is different to what else they've done.

And if you see these, I am sure you get a totally different appreciation for this craft and Laika as a film studio. What they do is insane. And it is even more insane when you take into consideration that today you could do everything they do with the help of a computer. But they don't use computers, they do everything by hand. The sets, the puppets, the effects. Everything. That's insane. That shows absolute dedication to the art. And that alone is worth at least watching it once, even if you don't like animation movies. It's worth it.

Having said that, I also really enjoyed the fact that they hired great actors for their voice acting, including the - in my opinion - best child actor out there: Dakota Fanning. But also Teri Hatcher is really great and she voices three "distinct" characters which she does great. Also worth mentioning: Keith David!

To sum up: It's an insanely expensive, extremely well done stop motion movie, probably one of the last of it's kind (with Laika being the only one doing "major" Hollywood releases recently and on this level of perfection), with great artwork, a really great dark fantasy story, and fantastic voice actors. Don't be like me: Watch it as soon as you can! :)

After the ingenious first installment "First Blood" of the Rambo series that in retrospect got a 10/10 from me, the second movie named "Rambo: First Blood Part II" can - in my opinion - in no way live up to its predecessor.

This starts with the premises that Rambo - a PTSD Vietnam veteran, who is imprisoned in a labor camp for his psychotic breakdown in part one - is send back to Vietnam (rather then sending him to a mental facility where he could learn to cope with his mental traumas)! And Rambo, of course, agrees to. Because yes, after the heart-felt monologue at the end of the first movie where under tears he describes explicit detail how he tried to scrap together his best friend who stepped on a mine, or how he was tortured by the enemy, this is exactly what you would do. As the tagline reads: "What others call hell, he calls home".

But okey, let's not argue on how well part 2 fits to part 1, let's take a look at it like a solo movie, because after all, except for the character names and their backstories part 2 really does not build upon part 1 at all - it seems like they did not care and wanted to do another kind of movie, so let's treat it as such.

Rambo is released early from prison because he is an expert stealth guerilla war human killer machine, and he is set back to Vietnam, to look at prison camps and - if he should find PoWs he is not to free them, but only take pictures and return. Makes sense to fly all the way to the US, do all the paperwork and go through all the suffering to get out an war expert, who is known to snap, just to have him take pictures... this get's especially weird as at the end it is revealed that all of this is actually a conspiracy and Rambo shouldn't have even seen any prisoners - anybody could have just taken pictures from the camp - they could have been totally staged - why go through the hassle to take a war veteran that is not even in on the plan, so that this plan is risked to be revealed?... but hey. Why not? Let's keep an open mind!

Rambo meets up with his contact, a girl named Co, who actually is just a tag along female hottie, probably to lure in young male viewers. She has hardly any relevance to the story what so ever, there is zero chemistry between the two actors, even though actress Julia Nixon puts her absolute best into acting as she fell in love at first sight. Still there is a romantic part and a dramatic turn of events that is so unbelievable - but I'll get to this later. With the help of her, he gets to a camp, does not obey his orders, but starts shooting everything down, and by this act gets both, the Vietnamese army as well as the Russian army on his tail...

If the plot itself isn't bad already, it gets really bad, when it comes to the action: With no regards on anything, Rambo gets to Vietnam and shoots up everything, using machine guns, bazookas, grenades, etc. to blow up straw huts. No settlety, no stealth, no intelligence that you would believe a green beret to have. There is however, a part that actually is pretty cool towards the end, where he gears up once more and kills his pursuers one by one, actually using guerilla warfare techniques (sneaking and hiding). Those are really fun to watch, but a small portion just before the end of the movie, and up till then the action is in general overdone and gets boring fast. And that's really sad because Part 1 had absolutely stunning and captivating action, that was so much more fun.

As already mentioned the plot isn't that good either: We know exactly from the beginning who the bad guy is, and as if that's not enough, there are not only a number of plot holes but also simply stupid mistakes. Our project leader seems to be a civilian, or at least he dresses as one, but has the rank of major, and operates form an army base but not with an actual army but mostly mercenaries. Still, in the movie he outranks the Colonel, who simply follows his orders even if he doesn't like them and even if they are straight immoral and criminal - there is nothing cool or interesting about Trautman at all anymore. And then there is the end: I mean, really? WTF! It was a conspiracy? The American major ordered the camp to be empty, so that they could fly in Rambo who would take pictures from one empty camp and that would have been proof that there are no PoWs in all of Vietnam? But by accident the stupid Vietnamese who rotate the prison camps put the prisoners into the camp anyways so that the one date that it was important this camp was empty it wasn't? Which is why they get in the Russians to kill Rambo so he cannot tell what he saw? Well...

The message is all to clear: The bad guys are the people wearing suits, who send the soldiers to Vietnam, then make them loose, by discarding them, and in the end it's all about PR. The US are the good guys, the Russians are the war hungry bad guys, and the Vietnamese are wild animals that are easy to kill... oh yeah, speaking of that: I also feel that the movie is rather stereotypical and in that sense a tad racist. Be it the so overdone and downright stupid fake accent of Julia Nixon, who has Asian roots but a native British father, is US-citizen and speaks perfect English, or the way this movie depicts the Vietnamese people (even the tagline does it by calling Vietnam "hell"), as well as the Russians. That alone wouldn't bother me to much - I mean, hey. It was the 80s, standards where different. But it adds up to all the other things I did not like about this movie.

And to close - we again get a kind of "nervous breakdown" monologue at the end, but while the monologue in the first movie comes unexpected, is ingeniously acted and makes you hold your breath, give you goosebumps and/or wet eye, this one will make you either laugh or yawn. Boy was that a bad attempt of tie this movie on to the first one. A really bad knockoff.

It really is a shame. I would have wanted to love this movie so much more. But 4/10 is the best I can do, honoring a) the few good scenes and b) the influence this movie had on pop culture. But I've rather seen Rambo III following into the footsteps of First Blood.