pygospa

VIP

3

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 was really looking forward to this movie, even though I am not the greatest Thor fan. However, the trailer looked interesting, I love the 80s style with the colours, it promised to be a wild movie with a great antagonist - I mean seriously - what could go wrong with Cate Blanchett, and even better in a dark gothic look?

Well, I was absolutely disappointed. Seriously, what where they thinking when shooting/editing this movie? There is no plot, the story is totally random and has no meaning at all anymore. It's just like a bad 90s sitcom that is progressing from one joke to the next, and this time it didn't stop at anything - stupidity, slapstick, vulgarity, we have it all, and without any style or niveau. I mean seriously "Oh, I'm drunk, I will just fall down" (as an entrance of a new and important character), "oh, I just saw hulks penis", "now we'll have to fly into the anus", etc. What's the target audience of this movie, childish boys in their puberty? I think even for them this is rather embarrassing than funny....

Epic, dramatic fighting scenes, e.g. when Hela defeats Asgard are equaly destroyed by stupid jokes as are emotinal scenes. Someone died? Just make a joke. Haha, and let's go on. Due to this, this movie wasn't exciting to me at all, it wasn't emotional, it was just dull. This movie is so jokes-packed, that even after the first three minutes (and did they really just do the stupid rope-joke in the introduction three times?! It was hardly funny the first time, it was annoying the second time, and the third I was angered, because obviously the director must think I am stupid), I had enough. And that is somewhat sad, because in the mass of stupid jokes there are some moments that actually where pretty great and that would have functioned superb in isolation. Take Jeff Goldblums character that is refreshingly eccentric and funny. Or Korg - great humoristic character. But having a more than 2 hour sitcom, this doesn't work anymore, even if it's good.

I do believe the story had potential, I mean they had a great soundtrack, stunning visuals, perfect CGI, absolutely gorgeous colours and scenes, a really great cast, I already mentioned the great Jeff Goldblum, who I found ingenious. Cate Blanchett is always a win, and she could have brought so much to this movie. And Tessa Thompson also stuck out to me - great charisma, interesting character. But none of them gets enough chance to really portrait their character, none of them gets any dept. Especially Cate Blanchetts talent is totally wasted - she could have been absolutly evil, strong, powerful - the perfect villain. But she isn't - the antagonist is (as with so many comic movies these days) a joke and a total disaster. There is hardly any substance, much to short screen time for character develpment, for backgrounds, for some seriousness. Nothing.

Seriously, I wouldn't have been surprised if there was laughter from the off.....

4/10

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.

I've watched this back to back with Unfriended on television, but I've seen this movie once before when I did a Prom Night marathon.

I don't remember how I liked the movie then, especially compared to all the other movies in that "series" - however, this second watch was rather boring. The movie starts a reboot of the movie series that started in 1980 and inspired 3 sequels in drastically descending quality. The original was all right, staring Halloween-Star Jamie Lee Curtis in a classic 70s/80s slasher movie, with everything you expect such movies to have: a masked murderer, sleazy guys wanting to pick up girls in their cars, easy girls that wanna get laid, drugs, alcohol, and of course a lot of very graphic and bloody kills, including stabbing, strangling, beheadings and a lot of blood.

The reboot movie does not in any way try to retell the original story: Except for the premises that girls are getting ready for prom night, there are no story parallels at all:

Donna grows up as an orphan after having witnessed her entire family getting killed by her teacher who was in love with Donna. She finally reaches the end of her High School, but at prom night her killer escapes the psychic ward and tries to get in touch with her again.

The worst thing about the missing parallels is that director Nelson McCormick who is debuting as director of a feature film here, is that it not only applies to the story but also to everything else in the genre. No sex, no drugs, no alcohol, no funny kills, no bloody kills, hardly any thrill at all - it's rather boring, and one might find oneself questioning whether this is an attempt to make a PG rated slasher movie?

4/10 points, because - believe it or not: Idris Elba is in it.

Normally I would not review a different cut seperately, but with this movie things are most definately different. "Lisa e il diavolo" is the original Italian title that was first translated into English as "Lisa and the devil", and should have been released in 1972. It was the one movie that Mario Bava put most of his work into, his final great movie, where everything should have been the way he wanted it to be. However, due to some problems with finding potential buyers, producer Alfredo Leone forced Mario Bava into editing the movie. This was not because of bad critics - everyone at the filmfestivals who saw the movie was excited, however noone was in the market. Leone acted like an businessman, analysed the market and jumped on the train that was currently hyped. And that of course was "The Exorcist"; so Leones vision: Let's turn the movie into an Exorcist movie. So even years later after the movie was already finished, Leone reassembled the cast, and made them shoot additional scenes that should alter the movie entirely. What used to be a nightmare like reallity is this time turned into the wild dreams of a girl (Lisa) posessed by the devil. So we get as new scenes how she gets possessed, then how she is deliverd to a hospital, how she turns crazy and how finally priests are gathered to exorcise the demon in her. And while this is happening, we always cut into scenes of the old movie showing her nightmare-visions. It is a totally different movie, and it is totally bad. The atmosphere that Bava created with his original is totally broken, the new scenes that mostly consists of disgusting pictures, obscenities, and nudity are bait-like and where shot despite the explicit whishes by Bava to not have such scenes in his movie (he actually - as a director - left the room when these scenes where shot, because he wanted no part of it).

What we end up with is a movie that is more direct than Bavas original, easier to grasp, with fewer wearisome lenghts, but also movie that loses nearly its entire atmosphere, that has no originallity anymore, no metaphors or symbolism, plus some things that are actually never said in the original movie but are implied for the viewer to find out himself, are simply put into the dialog by just watching Lisa and the Devil the first time I did not grasp that this movie has for example a part that is about impotence. So in the end this movie gets irrelevant, and that is something that even the critics realized - Leones vision backfired - instead on hopping on to the Exorcism train and giving the people yet another movie they would want to see, people realized it to be a blatant rip-off and therefore was denounced.

That already being bad enough, Bavas original vision was litrally butchered, and he was not okey with it (he actually changed his name on the credits to 'Mickey Lion' because of this), and never even saw this version which was the only one in cinemas. He still read the critics and those made him really sad - it should have been a master piece and his final great work before retiring, but in the end it became a cold and soulless movie created for just financial profit-making. The sadest thing: Mario Bava did not even see his original version being released - he died with the knowledge of nearly no one having seen his masterwork (except for France, where it was released in the original cut at cinemas, but for the home release also only this cut was released) and thinking that no one will ever see it. Only in 2012 where for the first time both versions released - and the original version is much better rated by critics and is today seen as the far superior version.

Based on a true story, Diane Keaton plays a embittered widow who cannot uphold the luxury life she used to live with her husband, while Breandan Gleeson is portraying a cranky hermit who built himself a minimalist shack that is build hidden away on a piece of land, on which he is able to live autarkic. Now, of course exactly this piece of land has to be sold and it is Diane Keatons character that wants to chase Gleeson of the land, but in the process of doing so falls in love with him and at the end fights on his side.

I think the movie had great potential. It had a few really funny moments and of course grate actors. However all in all the movie lacks authenticity. It starts with the lack of chemistry between our two main characters - seeing them on screen you wouldn't believe that there are any feelings involved at all. There is too little build-up, too little investment in the characters, which is why they stay absolutely shallow. Even though the actors themselves are doing okay and the general idea and concept of the movie is okay as well, there is somehow no emotions at all.

To make things worse, this movie has just one song. One single theme, that - if you hear it without context makes you feel like you are watching one of these feelgood advertisements for some care product. Only, this positive feelgood melody is used throughout the entire movie, and I gout sick of it after the first quarter.

The plot is really slow, the characters sometimes not reasonable in their actions, but over all it is so foreseeable that I actually knew the entire outcome after the first quarter. Its a typical love comedy for the elderly from which we have seen so many already, and it doesn't add anything new to the genre that we haven't seen already.

A big negative point however is the ending:

After Keaton being the one pressuring Gleeson to fight for his land to be finally able to live out his days in peace and quiet as he always wanted, and to stand up for his rights and not to give in to the others who bully him arround against his will, at the end she is actually the one who pressures him into selling so that they could move in together. Wow. Seriously? Because he doesn't she breaks up and moves away, and in the end he sells, moves his shack onto a boat, because conveniently enough she lives at a river and now he is anchoring right in front of her house... Happy end.

Way to build someone up to live the life he always wanted only to then pressure him to do something else and force him by emotionally blackmail him...

For me this wasn't a nice movie experience, and these 4 points are just because of me liking the main actors and the few funny moments, but not for the movie direction, editing, sound, or overall plot.

I was happy to get to see this movie in a sneak review, because I did not hear of it, and I probably wouldn't have watched it. We get a distrophy in which everyone lives underneath the earth, as the earth itself was attacked by aliens. Those are called "Nonsuchs" and one of the privates of the army, called S.U.M.1 is serving his duty on the surface; every army member has to serve 100 days on the surface and we follow S.U.M.1 in a movie that is mostly a one-man-show seeing what he is experiencing on the surface.

S.U.M.1 is played by Iwan Rheon (Ramsey from Game of Thrones) and is a German low budget movie, directed by a film professor from the SAE institute. This, at least to me, sounds like a great start. However, the low budget is pretty obvious, especially when it comes to the CGI, which looks like the cheap stuff we where used at the beginning of the 90s when watching TV shows. Even the first 3 minutes will make your toes curl.

However CGI is not everything, and the movie manges to build up tention a lot of time, while showing us one soldier serving his 100 days in solitude; however this puffes out unused. At the end, the movie is really long. Also some of the story elements are so obvious (calling the guy S.U.M.1 = someone, and the aliens nonsuchs = no such (thing))

A good idea, and good shooting overall, with a great actor and good soundtrack - but over all, it did not convince me. There are a number of plotholes, some of the things are never explained, other things only work because of coincidences, and a lot of background story is simply missing; they introduced a rat to whom S.U.M.1 starts talking - why not use this idea to give some background? Some flashbacks, or simply some naration of what exactly happend, how the live is under earth, etc.

I wouldn't watch this one in cinemas and I also wouldn't recommend paying money for the home release. Instead, if you are a really big fan of sci-fi movies, then wait for it, until it is shown on free TV.

Taking into consideration that it is a low budget movie, otherwise it would have gotten a worse rating.

If you want to watch a movie that is really similar
*
SPOILER
*
*
*
then you should rather watch 10 Cloverfield Lane. That one is pretty similar, especially also regarding the ending, and that is a movie wich is so much better.

After a really excellent first movie in the Conjuring universe, this spin-off was created in just a year after "The Conjuring", and the focus on the doll was also a financial one, as it was one of the famous characters of "The Conjuring" where it just played a side role to explain who Ed and Lorraine are and why the family heard of them. And unfortunately, the really short production time has a highly negative impact on the movie.

The plot is rather predictable due to the main points being already discussed in "The Conjuring", but even worse - the things that could have been original and made a story like this interesting, are also taken directly from "The Conjuring". So in the end, we get a demon that wants the soul of a child... well... yawn. However, there is a little plot twist, which could have worked pretty well in my opinion - if the movie wouldn't spoil it by explaining it, right before it happens! All the other story points you see coming a mile away, so in the end, the entire story is rather boring. Then again, a horror movie mustn't be extremely clever or original. Horor movies should be scary, and "The Conjuring" managed to build up a really scary atmosphere and dramatic scenes, has a great spooky setting and manages to give you the chills. Annabelle doesn't even try this; instead we get a bunch of jump scares, that again you will see coming from a mile away. The acting is okey, but nothing special and because Leonetti doesn't spend half the time that Wan spent to introduce the characters, they stay pretty one dimensional, making it hard to sympathize with them.

This leaves you with a rather boring movie, which actually started of really great; I really enjoyed the first third of the movie - up to the attack everything was great, especially the scene in the neighbors house that you get to witness in the background through the window - that was a rather great shot and promised a great movie - a promise that the movie couldn't keep.

Already in the first scenes it is pretty obvious that this is an low budget production, but the introduction showing the previous six months in flashbacks is pretty well done, even though it already makes you wonder about the logic (to battle a Zombie plague, the whole of the USA was bombed with EMP bombs? Why? How does not having electricity affect Zombies?).

The movie stars Taryn Manning who looked really familiar to me (but isn't), and she is soon joined by Ving Rhames (Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Mission Impossible 1-6), and a couple of other actors that are all pretty unknown (a few are extras in TV shows, rest are only seen in a couple (or no other) productions). The acting isn't too bad, especially Taryn Manning has some potential, we know that Ving Rhames can do really good, the rest does okey as well. However, that doesn't make up for a really bad script, bad directing, and really bad cutting.

The story doesn't have much to offer, but it's decent and believable enough: Three people who survived the initial six month by not going out, get out of their cabin for food and news. They get attacked by Zombies, but then another group of three survivors comes along and saves them. They are on their way to the island of Catalina (near Long Beach, CA), where there is supposed to be a camp of survivors. On their way there they get attacked by Zombies, Zombie Dogs and other Zombie animals, a lot of them die, while other surviving groups join them. I won't spoil the end, but so far so good.

Given that this is a low budget production, I wont criticize the bad CGI - they did what they could, and the exploding heads actually are the singular thing in this entire movie that are actually unintentionally funny to watch. They also had a lot of extras playing zombies, using interesting different makeup jobs. Things didn't look too realistic, definitely no Walking Dead, but all right, and I do like it if they use real people for extras and practical effects instead of CGI - especially for a low budget movie this is always a plus (nothing is worse than bad CGI people). I also won't criticize things like weapons that aren't blood-dripping, a machine gun, where the cartridge belt isn't moving, bad CGI fire and explosions, or the really bad and unrealistic looking cracks in glass windows. A decently good job (or a decently bad one) can still make up for these things, and deliver a good end result. Take the low budget production of 28 Days Later, for example. A tremendously good flick, even though it suffered from its budgetary restrictions (such as the bad Canon X-L1 cameras used, that only allow for a digital resolution of 512x492; worse than what DVD is capable of delivering). I also don't care that a lot of the times you see the same extras, even thou they are supposed to be other zombies.

But there are these errors, that are bad enough to bug you, but not as bad, that they are at least funny, and this movie is full of them - plot holes in the dialogue that don't make sense. For instance: the leader of the group is wearing a sleeveless vest with nothing under it, so his arms are basically free. Yet, he insists that our group raids a store, because the new guys aren't dressed appropriately: T-Shirt-Guy has free arms, all of them have no armor. In the Store they find leg pads, but only the most armored up guy takes them. The girl gets new shoes, T-Shirt guy keeps his shirt, and of course vest-guy stays as he is as well. Another example: In one scene they get attacked by zombies, and split up, which makes them vulnerable, so one of the girls screams that they should stick together, especially as her friend gets into a lot of distress. But then she is the one leaving the group, wandering really far off - yet she's pissed at the others when that guy dies because the others went away without helping him. Yet one more example: There are some archers, and they say that they need to be thrifty with their arrows, and reuse as many as they can, asking everyone to pick up any arrows they can. In the next scene, they shoot three zombies with arrows, and then walk right past them, without picking up any of the arrows. These are the script errors, I am talking about. They are so obvious that they'll annoy you, yet this isn't in any way funny in the way that certain B-movies are.

The dialogues are also pretty dull, not even funny. But also in a lot of situations not really believable. For instance, they loose friends tragically during the day (especially one girl lost both her best friends, whom she spent the last six months with) and at night they sit together and talk about their stories. One lost her brother, and got separated from her husband. She was all alone in the end, but then met the other guy of the group. She is telling this tragic story that she actually didn't want to talk about, with a smile on her face, joking around, and the others all cheer in - as if they where on a class trip, rather than in a Zombie apocalypse, which makes the whole thing unbelievable. What also makes this story hard to believe: none of them are dirty, there's no blood on their clothes, even the weapons stay clean the entire time. Yet, the thing they all long for (with their perfectly clean hair) is a bath/shower.

But worst of all, in my book, are the most evident post-production errors, this movie has. For instance, there is this scene right in the beginning, where there is a cut between two scenes: A guy shooting zombies, and the other two people, getting something to defend themselves from a garage and running out into the action. The scene goes like this: Guy shoots a zombie - cut to garage - girl runs out of the garage - cut to guy - guy shoots another zombie - cut to garage - girl runs out of garage again - cut to guy - guy shoots another zombie - cut to garage - again, she runs out of the garage. The fast cut between this scene suggest this happens in seconds of time, and so it appears that the girl runs to the street, then disappears and runs out again, disappears and runs out once more. Or in another scene they add CGI to a scene where a girl cuts off the head of a zombie with a Katana. When she moves the Katana there is a "difference in height" of the CGI Image and the real one where they are stitched together, so the point of the sword is cut off and appears a few centimeters below - as if there was a refraction.

And then there is bad direction and a missing of vision by the director. E.g. actors looking in one direction to see something "in the distance" but once the object they look at is added by CGI, this object is somewhere else than where the actors are looking.

I still think, in its entirety the movie was thrilling enough to be enjoyed, and it had a lot of references to famous genre movies, e.g. someone called Kirkman (after Walking Dead comic book author Robert Kirkman), S-Mart (from the Evil Dead), or a satellite exploding in earths atmosphere (like the Venus space probe in "Night of the Living Dead"). Apparently there are a lot more, that I have missed. But I do like this, and together with the more or less thrilling story, this is worth +1 point, but I do have to factor all the errors in as well - even though it was still somewhat "okey" to be watched once, these points don't make this movie worth watching again. The errors do not have the quality of something that makes you laugh - I did not laugh at all. They are not stupid enough, to have that humorous quality, they are just annoying. So I'll be deducting -1 for Post production, -1 for bad directing and -1 for the dialogues/script.

3/10 Points.

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.

I really love this show - in my opinion it is one of the best quiz and entertainment shows we had in at least a century in Germany, with a lot of incredible moments and guests that you get to know from a totally different side. I was surprised from some guests who I had prejudice against, that I found really sympathetic after watching them in this show.

So in a way it breaks my heart to see this season not being one of the weakest, due to the inclusion of Klaas, who always competes against Joko in the finales, and where all finales felt rather boring because those two know each other so well; but also boring within the shows as the wildcards, plus Lena and Sarah perish between Joko and Klaas interaction during the show.

But that was not the low-point. The low point was the show of Klaas once he finally won it; this had everything: tasteless questions (with the guests knowing the answer but actually saying: "I dare not to give that answer"), unfunny repetitions (like the senseless "sensation" buzzers and the "sensation cam"), and the sad climax in an embarrassing "joke" where Klaas had a naked man dangling from a crane in front of the guess - he actually seemed to get laughter with this, but neither the audience nor the guests where amused at all - Lena saying "I don't believe this", Kathrin saying "I'll leave after this round, this is too much, seriously", and Joko pleading to Klaas: "Please don't drag my show through the mire".

I've actually never seen Joko and Klaas together and I also never saw any other solo shows of those two, so I don't know if this is what you usually can expect from them. This show was the first time I saw Joko and he really grew on me. Klaas on the other hand I'll happily skip in the future...

Worst season so far - and worst overall episode. Hopefully the next one will be better again.

It starts of like a great movie, the actors are fine, the camera and scenes look like that of a high quality movie, the soundtrack is good - all the ingredients are there. However, it starts getting strange already, when the couple Ken and Rachel finally meet up with Marco. Premises set: Marco is an old friend of Rachels and in love with her while she is having a serious relationship with Ken, who is ambitious and successfull while Marco had to travel the world to "find himself" (only to realize that he actually loves Rachel).

Of course these three are on a boat trip, and this is already the first thing that seems strange. However, before they start, there is talk about greek mythology and sirens (oh what a clumsy hint, already?), and of course - Marco changes course to an island because he saw a guy in need of help, they strand (and have to fix the motor from the inside to get off again?), the guy dies so they decide to swim over to the island to bury him only to find a beautiful, misterious blond, and from there on, they move forth and back from ship to island, to actually do nothing but wander around and having dreams and fantasies; and up to the ending of the movie that's it.

The biggest problem of this movie is, that it is utterly boring. Nice locations, great setting, and stunning pictures as well as decent acting apart, actually nothing interesting happens - even all the dramatic scenes are so badly done that it just bores you. Action? Not a bit, Thriller? Do you actually know the meaning of this genre? Horror? Ahahahahaha.

Then there are a lot of actions that seem totally random, or do not have any meaning at all (e.g. they stumbling across the boat and the bodies, where Rachel freaks out even though she didn't actually see the bodies, and even though she was totally calm, when the guy they rescued, died). And last but not least, this movie is far from being settle. Calling it "Siren" already tells you what to expect - talking about Greek mythology does not help being suprised about what they'll encounter on the island, and making it so absolutely obvious that Marco is still in love with Rachel only makes you wonder when this will actually become a problem - and it will suprise you that they even did not manage to action-whise cash in when that situation finally arises in the movie.

Seriously, one of the most broing movies I've seen. Even movies that I've rated lower did actually deliver more thrill than this one. Great potential for a good movie destroyed by a horrible script/director.