After seeing Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters Per Second, I was really looking forward to seeing his latest film, which received a lot of glowing reviews. I was already impressed by his style, but wanted to find out if the story in this movie would be stronger and how much he had grown as a storyteller in then ten years between the films. Continue reading
For years Casey Affleck didn’t get as much attention as his brother Ben. Unfairly though, because in various roles he proved that he is an actor worth watching (just this of his role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). With this movie his talent was rewarded, as he received the Oscar for best male performance. Is it just him who is good, or is this movie top-notch as well? Continue reading
Soemtimes there are movie genres or movies form a specific country you are interested in watching, but where you don’t know where to start. To me that’s the feeling I have with anime. It is such a wide genre that’s its possible to check out so many different directions and where I’ve seen so little. Yes, I did see a lot of Ghibli films and some random other films, but that’s about it. This title is one which I added to my to watch list years ago and was my first introduction to the work of director Makoto Shinkai. Continue reading
Games allow you as a gamer to take control of another character who can perform actions which sometimes would be impossible in the real world. That’s also the case for the Assasin’s Creed games, in which you are a member of secret group travelling through old cities, running with parcours skills across rooftops to fight the Templars. As not all games are set at the same time it introduced the element of the “present”, where a machine (the Animus) is used to allow the main character to jump into the past in order to find artefacts who have a link to the creation story which can influence humanity. With popular game series it seem inevitable that they are turned into movies and unfortunately history has shown it almost always ends up being disappointing (just think of the Warcraft movie last year). Is this one different? Continue reading
In 2001 no one could have predicted that The Fast and the Furious would be the start of a franchise that would one of the biggest in the world. What once started as a story about an undercover cop who had to infiltrate a gang of streetracers as lots of DVD-players were being stolen, slowly (with some missteps) changed into a series which manages to pull in big audiences. The core elements of the first movie remained firmly in place though: that your friends are family and everything you do, of course you have to do it with a car. The family slowly grew with the addition of Dwayne Johnson and bad guy Jason Statham and they added a lot.
When Paul Walker unexpectedly died when the previous movie was being shot it meant a big blow to the franchise. His character was different from the rough and tough machos like Dominic Torettot (Vin Diesel) and Luke Hobbs. Despite him not being present anymore the movie was finished thanks to his brothers and a little bit of movie magic. He is missing in this eight movie and has this impacted the end result? Continue reading
Sometimes there are these movies which are part of a genre you don’t like, but where you have heard so many great stories about that you jsut have to give that a chance. To me that was the case with Get Out, which is part of the horror genre (which I don’t really like). When I recently talked to a fellow blogger he made a comparison to a Hitchcock movie. As that’s one of my favorite directors as he was all about building suspense I just had to see Jordan Peele’s film. And I don’t regret I did that! Continue reading
Before I start this review…yes, the tree in this movie looks a lot like Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy, which probably is coincidence and besides that he’s completely different…now back to my regularly scheduled program:
Kids dare to let their fantasy run wild. A simple stick can change into almost anything and each new space they enter is filled with potential for new stories. Their fantasy can also be used to deal with difficult situations where the things they make up might give them comfort. Continue reading
When the Belgian movie Black had its cinema run I read a lot of positive things about it. It is set in Brussels and focusses on the criminal part of society, specifically local gangs and their rivalry. Because of the subject matter and the fact I had seen various American movies dealing with the subject I watched this with some expectations, but that the movie would be so extreme during a couple of points, shocked me. Continue reading
Hidden Figures tells a story you don’t see in many films. Of course there are enough movies which are about people who are good at something and strive to be the best, but there aren’t many which tell a story about three African-American women who played a very important role in the NASA space program while the United States still had laws in place which treated them differently. Continue reading
According to Arès, Paris will be quite different from now in the year 2035. There no longer is a government and society has changed. There are 15 million people without work and many of them live in the streets in tents. Laws have changed and people are allowed to sell their bodies or part of it or participate in life threatening experiments. This also has had a big influence on sports. Fighting has become the sport everyone loves to watch and bet on. Arès is one of the men who has been fighting for a long time using smartdrugs to enhance himself. He once was at the top of the leaderboard, but his life has changed and he has left the fighting cage behind him. When his sister is arrested and is viewed as a terrorist the only way he can make sure she is set free is to pay the people holding her. To earn money he can only do one thing: Get back into the cage and take a high dose of an enhancement drug which has previously killed everyone who tried. Continue reading