Before I watched The Happening I already heard a lot of bad stories about it. M. Night Shyamalan supposedly was losing his magic touch he once possessed. Of course I like to make up my own mind about things, so decided to watch The Happening myself.
A word of warning: Normally I try not to spoil too much about what happens in a movie, but for this one I’m going to make a big exception. So if you don’t want to read spoilers stop reading now. Lees verder
Since the start of the internet a lot of things have changed in the way people do business. You used to have to go to a shop and listen to someone in a store to tell you everything about a product without knowing if they were making stuff up. With a bit of googling you can now find more information about a product yourself. As a result the function of a shop has changed quite drastically. The internet has also changed the music industry forever. Any song you would like to listen to can be found within seconds and as a result the record sales have dropped dramatically.
The porno industry has rode the internet wave as well, using it to spread their “product” easily. It’s no longer necessary for customers to go to a dodgy shop to buy a video or some dirty magazines. Just a couple of clicks and a credit card are needed in order to enter the world of adult entertainment. Middle Men tells the story of the first steps of this industry onto the internet. Does that make this movie the The Social Network for the internet porn industry? Continue reading
Revenge movies. It’s a genre in which South Korea seems to be specialised. At least that’s my conclusion after having seen several of them. These films are not afraid to show violence in all its gruesome detail and manage to shock and make you feel something while you are watching it. I Saw the Devil takes the revenge idea a bit further than expected as just getting revenge once does not seem to be enough. While you are watching you will feel uncomfortable about this story in which Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee (The Good, The Bad, The Weird)) wants to have revenge on a serial killer, Kyung-Chul (played by Min-sik Choi (Oldboy)), who has murdered his wife. Continue reading
When the first Toy Story came out it was an event, watching a completely computer generated picture was something very special. By now it seems like almost every kids movie is computer generated and it’s hard to keep track of the amount of new ones coming out each year. For every Toy Story 3 there are ten animated movies which you will have forgotten in a couple of months. After I saw the first trailer of Rango I couldn’t wait to see this though, as the look of the film made it stand out from any other animated film and I wanted to find out if this movie is forgettable or if it has “greatness”. Continue reading
Tron: Legacy was a movie that had a lot of promotion. Disney had high expectations of the sequel to the 1982 original and threw a lot of money at marketing the film. It was almost impossible to not know the movie was coming. If you didn’t see the posters, you would see the toys, the games or other products. Even when I bought my Nokia N8 it had some clips of the movie installed on it. The phone also appeared in the film itself, so it’s logical, but it does show the reach Disney has to get you to notice this film. Luckily I don’t judge movies based on their marketing and promotion, because if I would have done that this movie would have surely received a 10. Of course the most important question is whether or not Tron: Legacy is a good movie. Continue reading
Takashi Miike is known as a controversial filmmaker with his extremely violent movies, like Ichi the Killer. It’s not a movie I have seen myself as I don’t enjoy watching shocking things just to shock. So it was a conscious decision not to see it. The Great Yokai War is also made by him and is supposed to be a movie for kids. Did he manage to succeed? Continue reading
If you have been reading My Filmviews for a bit longer, you have probably noticed that I’m a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock movies. A while ago there was a sale with a lot of his movies in one box and of course I just had to pick it up. I now take my time to slowly work through all these films. One of them was The 39 Steps. A title that doesn’t say a lot about the film itself, but luckily a title isn’t the only reason to decide whether or not a movie is worth seeing.
The 39 Steps is about a man (played by Robert Donat) who meets this woman during a show who tells him that she’s in great danger. She asks if she can go home with him to hide for a while until she feels safe again. It doesn’t take long before he finds out that he’s in danger as well and because of the information he received from the woman he is forced to flee and go on a search to save both his own life and England. Continue reading
Gulliver’s Travels (which was written in 1726) has been adapted for film many times. A quick look at Wikipedia shows this is the 17th film about the story, so there’s a very big chance that you already saw a version of this story about a man who ends up on the island of Lilliput inhabited by tiny people who are in a state of war with a rival island. Does Jack Black manage to give a fresh twist to this story with his humour? Continue reading
The original title of this Korean movie is Madeo, which can be translated into two meanings, both mother and murder are possible as the characters in the language are the same. Hye-ja Kim stars in this movie, in which her son Yoon Do-joon (Bin Won) is being suspected of a crime. As Yoon Do-joon has some mental issues, it’s hard for her to find out if he really has committed the crime. As a mother she’s willing to do anything to find out the truth and get her son out of jail. Continue reading
Nope, it’s not a typo, this movie is really called The Good The Bad The Weird. It’s got nothing to do with Sergio Leone and you won’t see Clint Eastwood acting in it. Despite this it is very clear that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly has had a big influence on this Korean Western. South Korea has a big movie industry and manages to deliver some great quality film like Old Boy. Is this western just as good? Continue reading