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
Category Archives: Violence
The Fate of the Furious (2017) – Review
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
Get Out (2017) – Review
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
Black (2015) – Review
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
Arès (2016) – Review
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
Sleepless (2017) – Review
Although statistics prove otherwise, I’ve got the feeling that movies in general have gotten longer and usually are two hours or longer. Of course I have no issue with that (especially if it’s a good movie), but there are moments when you just want to watch something which is shorter and 90 minutes to me is the perfect length. This film which stars Jamie Foxx, seemed like a perfect choice. Something I didn’t know in advance, but quickly found out while watching is that this is a remake of the French film Blanche (also known as Sleepless Night), which I saw a couple of years ago. Although the original wasn’t a masterpiece, it offered enough action to be entertaining enough. Is that also the case with this version? Continue reading
Patriots Day (2016) – Review
Mark Wahlberg lately seems to pick out roles in which real events are dramatized. He played in Lone Survivor, which showed how soldiers had to survive once their mission didn’t go according to plan and in Deepwater Horizon he worked as an engineer on an oil platform which exploded. Both of those movies were directed by Peter Berg and Wahlberg connects with him again here. This film tries to recreate the events surrounding the bombing of the Boston marathon. A terrorist attack which had a tight grip on the city for days and received lots of media attention. Continue reading
Split (2016) – Review
M. Night Shyamalan, once crowned king of the twist, seemed to have lost his touch the last couple of years. Lady in the Water, The Happening (What, no!), The Last Airbender and After Earth didn’t manage to impress and the question was if he would be able to make a comeback. That he still had some humour is something he proved during the last Oscars when he tweeted: “I wrote the ending of the academy awards 2017. @jimmykimmel we really got them!”. When Split started playing at the cinema earlier this year it proved to be a title with staying power as it kept playing for a long time in the cinemas over here in the Netherlands. Does that prove that Shyamalan has proved he still got it? Continue reading
Logan (2017) – Review
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m getting older, but I notice that it’s usually not a good idea for me to see a movie at the cinema when it’s late in the evening. In general I go and see movies when I have a day off or during the day in weekends, but when I visit a showing late at night it will happen once in a while that I can’t keep my eyes open during the whole movie. It doesn’t matter whether the film is a moving drama or filled with action, I sometimes just nod off. It doesn’t mean I sleep during the whole movie, but I will miss between one and five minutes. So I decided I wouldn’t review a movie when that happens as I can’t form a complete opinion about it as I might have missed a key moment. When I saw Logan late at night everything seemed to go fine, but halfway through the movie I was gone again. As the reviews were mainly positive and what I saw didn’t really convince me completely I blamed it on sleeping. So later I headed to the cinema again to watch it a second time. Did that change my opinion? Continue reading
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017) – Review
You are familiar with them, those small, daily frustrations. A colleague or roommate who didn’t clean up, people in the supermarket who pretend they don’t see you when rushing to the register to get ahead of you or that other driver who was driving behind you when two lanes have to merge, but still tries to get in front of you once you have merged. Depending on your state of mind you either let it slide or let it get to you. For Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) those type of moments keep piling up. When she comes home and finds out that a burglary took place and the police states that there isn’t much they can do, she has had enough. Continue reading