Category Archives: Mystery

by - 5 Comments

The Bridge – Season 2

Review The Bridge season2

Although most popular TV series are made in the US, the Scandinavian countries have proven that they also produce a lot of great shows. On of those shows is Bron/Broen, better known as The Bridge. Season 1 managed to be extremely interesting from the start. A body was found at the middle of a bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden. The departments of justice of the two countries have to work together on the case because of it. It was a thrilling story with an ending you will not be able to forget. That first season wrapped everything up nicely and when I heard that a second season would be made I started to wonder if it would be able to reach the same quality as the first season. My fear was that it would feel extremely unrealistic and forced. That first season everything the story flowed in a convincing and natural way. I also wondered how you would be able to bring the characters together again. Continue reading →

by - 14 Comments

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2014)

Review of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

As adults we seem to be focussed on the practical things of life: Work, our family and friends. The moments where we don’t have anything to do are far and few between. You might still daydream, but I’m sure it won’t be as much as when you were a kid. A time when you could imagine anything and where you didn’t have the life experience yet to realise a lot of those daydreams would never be realised. Walter Mitty is a character though who has kept daydreaming and who zones out when he imagines the most fantastic imagery. It could be him saving people or standing up for something which in reality he doesn’t. He has never realised those dreams, not been anywhere and is stuck in his job. Continue reading →

by - 5 Comments

Bounty Killer (2013)

Review Bounty Killer

With a huge supply of movies you have to make choices about which ones to see. Which way that is done differs from person to person. I usually do that based on IMDB scores, but I sometimes watch movies which don’t score high because a specific actor is in it or if I usually enjoy the director’s work. Bounty Killer is a movie I was given and I decided to watch it without doing any further investigation. Continue reading →

by - 9 Comments

+1 (2013)

Plus one review

Although there are several movies which involve time travel, it is a genre which is relatively small when compared to other genres (at least that is my feeling). It is one of my favorite types of film though, so if there is any opportunity to check one out I always do so. Plus One deals with a specific subgenre, the time loop. Timecrimes and Triangle are two examples of movies which use the concept of time repeating to great effect and they are both movies I really enjoyed. How does +1 compare? Continue reading →

by - 6 Comments

The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

Review of The Thirteenth Floor

During the last couple of months I have played a lot of Grand Theft Auto 5. It is a beautiful looking game which creates a very convincing world. People drive their cars, do their daily business, cinemas play movies, celebrity bus tours drive around, there is a huge number of details, many which I’ll probably never notice/run into. The game allows you to switch between three characters at any moment and if you are not playing with the other two they will just do their own things. Although this is a game it made me wonder at times how these characters would experience me taking control or the impact my actions would have on random passers-by. I basically wondered how real their world would feel for them. It is a subject which has been explored in movies. The Matrix is probably the most famous example, but Existenz and Dark City also deal with it. The Thirteenth Floor is also a very interesting take and actually close to what I was thinking about while playing GTA5. Continue reading →

by - 2 Comments

Profile of a Killer (2012)

Review Profile of a Killer

Serial killer movies are usually quite predictable. They start out with a murder, some detectives get on the case and pretty soon after another body is found and a pattern is discovered. The police and the killer will play a game of cat and mouse trying to outwit each other all ending in a showdown. Profile of a Killer also is a movie about a serial killer, but in this case it twists that well-known storyline into something slightly different. The question is if that results in something worth watching? Continue reading →

by - 7 Comments

R.I.P.D. (2013)

review of R.I.P.D. (2013)

As a movie blogger you carry around knowledge about movies. Whether or not you like it that knowledge will automatically activate whenever you watch any movie. You will notice specific techniques and sometimes recognise certain situations as they remind you of other films you saw before. It is next to impossible to ignore that and that’s something R.I.P.D. definitely has been struggling with if I were to believe the few reviews I’ve read of the movie. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

The East (2013)

Review of The East

Some of you may know Brit Marling as an actress who played in Arbitrage as the daughter of Richard Gere’s character. The actress doesn’t only act, she also wrote and produced Sound of My Voice, Another Earth and now this movie. Ever since I saw her in Another Earth I really enjoyed her work as the previously mentioned movies were unique. Both Another Earth and Sound of My Voice were stories set against a sci-fi background (an actual second earth and time travel respectively). Those elements did not play a big part of the story, but it gave those movies a different feel. Although The East does not contain a sci-fi angle it does share a similarity with Sound of Voice. It is about a woman who wants to become part of a group to investigate it (just like the main characters in Sound of My Voice). That group is called The East. Continue reading →

by - 11 Comments

Obstruction 4: Mr. Nobody (2009)

Review of Mr. Nobody

For my entry for Obstruction 4 in the 5 Obstructions blogathon I decided to rewatch and review (and analyze) a movie which is in my all time favorite top 3 (the other two are Pulp Fiction and Black Swan). There are many reasons I love this movie, but I’ll get to that later. The obstruction itself I though was quite challenging and it did make me look at the movie in more detail, something which I did not mind at all.

Mr. Nobody was the feature length movie Belgian director Jaco van Dormael made since 1996. According to Wikipedia he had been trying to film the movie since 2001. When he finally managed to get financing it turned out that he would be making the most expensive Belgian movie ever made with an estimated budget of €33 million (US$47 million).

When writing the film van Dormael was influenced by movies like Run Lola Run and Sliding Doors. He wanted it to be more complicated than those movies and look at life as a whole and in his words “the abyss of infinite possiblities” that offers and that is exactly was he has managed to do with this movie. It is a movie which unfortunately is not widely known and one I always recommend to people first when they ask me about a movie they should check out. Continue reading →