A lot has been written about 2020. It is obvious it will go into the history books as a year that has been memorable (in a negative way). Writer Charlie Brooker, who many will know as the creative mind behind Black Mirror, decided to make a Netflix movie. The end result? A satirical look back at the past surreal 12 months, mixing real imagery with interviews with “experts”. These are played by Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Lisa Kudrow and Kumail Nanjiani among others. Continue reading
Creativity and the creation of a work is sometimes elusive. It is sometimes unclear where the urge to make something comes from, how you come up with a certain idea and why you make choices to achieve the final result. That is something that is part of every creative expression, be it movies, paintings, music or anything else. Song Exploder is a podcast that has been interviewing musicians about a song they’ve created for years. The music itself is separated using the original files, sometimes per instrument. You will hear why certain choices have been made, what feeling is behind it or what message is being conveyed. They are relatively short episodes, often less than half an hour, in which you hear the final song in its entirety after the story and the music. With the Song Exploder series, podcaster Hrishikesh Hirway makes the step towards a visual medium with the same concept. Continue reading
Subcultures are sometimes able to surprise you. I can remember watching an episode of Louis Theroux dealing with exotic animals and it was unbelievable to me that some people would like to keep a tiger. Yet this is extremely popular in America. In fact, it is so popular that only in North America more tigers live in captivity than the number in the wild. Mike Tyson had a Bengal tiger for 16 years, but as the Netflix documentary Tiger King shows, there are always people who are even more extreme. Continue reading
You can interpret the above spectacular photo of the Netflix movie 6 Underground in a number of ways. Visually your eyes are immediately drawn to it. Why is an Audi flying through the air? Are those explosions or did someone just play with fireworks? What is actually going on here? Especially the latter is a question that I regularly ask myself when I see a Michael Bay movie. A director who is able to create visually attractive images, but then pastes so many in a row that you as a viewer sometimes lose the overview. When it comes to depth storywise it’s often lacking and because of that the action often feels empty. Does Bay manage to restrain himself a bit here? Continue reading
“Never say never”. That was the saying that came to mind immediately after seeing Uncut Gems. A few years ago, after seeing Pixels, I took the decision not to see a single film with Adam Sandler. His comedies are unfortunately bad and I didn’t want to expose myself to those horrors anymore. However, when I heard that he was playing the lead role in a new film by the Safdie brothers, I had to put my decision aside. Their film Good Time was one of those titles which grabbed the viewer and never let go. It showed how good Robert Pattinson is as an actor. When the brothers wrote Uncut Gems, they had Sandler in mind for the lead role. Continue reading
The perspective that we have has a huge impact on how we see the world. This can be based on ideas, but also on a physical level. As a child I was always curious what the top of a car looked like (that turned out to be a disappointment when I was older), but filmmakers also use perspective to present the world differently. In E.T. Steven Spielberg often placed the camera at the level of the children, so that you were experiencing it from their perspective. But also Honey, I Shurnk the Kids or a Marvel film like Ant-Man show how different your world is when you experience everything when you are just as big as an insect. The perspective in I Lost My Body can rightly be called unique, because there are few films that show you what you experience as a hand without a body. Continue reading
As someone who grew up in the 80s, I always have a nostalgic feeling about my childhood (like probably everyone has). The Netflix series The Toys That Made Us therefore was something I loved, because the subject was toys from that era. It is a fun series to watch because of it’s quick and often funny editing. When it was announced that The Movies That Made Us would be released, I was very curious if this concept could be translated to films. The first four episodes are about four extremely successful films: Dirty Dancing, Home Alone, Ghostbusters and Die Hard. Continue reading
A new Scorcese film creates high expectations and The Irishman is no exception. This director is a walking film encyclopedia and has made several classic movies. Add to that the fact that he again cooperates with Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci (with whom he made Goodfellas and Casino) and also Al Pacino, which makes this a title that you want to watch as quickly as you can. After a very short time at the cinema The Irishman is now available on Netflix. Can Scorcese deliver another classic? Continue reading
The web series Between Two Ferns, in which Zach Galifianakis interviews famous people in a very special way, has always been entertaining to watch. By means of his questions he actually criticizes the other and makes them more or less embarrassed, but his guests like to play along. The short format resulted in a lot of funny moments and it now has made the transition to a full movie on Netflix. But does such a concept work if you have to fill 82 minutes? Continue reading
The nice thing about Netflix is that every week an enormous amount of content is added and you occasionally have absolutely no idea what to expect from a certain title. That may mean that you are pleasantly surprised, but also that you sometimes watch titles of which you think that they should not have been made. A while ago, Rim of the World appeared on the on-demand service. I hadn’t read or heard about it yet, but since the film was directed by McG (who also has directed, for example, 3 Days to Kill, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Terminator Salvation), my expectations were not high, but I was curious about the concept. I always have a weakness for science fiction and a movie in which teenagers fight aliens looked interesting on paper. Continue reading