One of the best directors currently has to be David Fincher. His resume is impressive with movies like Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the first two episodes of House of Cards. It is a director I always expect much from and he rarely disappoints. His movies have a distinct look and feel (especially since he made the moe to digital) and I couldn’t wait to see his latest, Gone Girl. Continue reading
Should you make a sequel after the original came out 10 years earlier? When the original movie got rave reviews and it has characters which are widely loved it seems like a nobrainer. The result doesn’t always work though. The original Star Wars trilogy was adored, but the three new films disappointed many. A Dame to Kill For is the sequel to the Sin City movie from 2005. Should this movie have been made? Continue reading
Denzel Washington is one of those actors who you will know is responsible for solid performances in entertaining movies. Of course there will always be a couple which are weaker (2 Guns for example), but it is an actor who always gives his best. The Equalizer is his latest film. Continue reading
Ambition can take you quite far and Patria is a good example of this. First time director Klaas van Eijkeren wanted to make the first Dutch movie about the first world war. He based the story on the letters soldier Arthur Knaap (Timothy Flohr) sent to his father while he was fighting. This Dutch-Indonesian young man lived in France and decided to join the foreign legion to fight in the trenches. It is clear that van Eijkeren really invested a lot of time in his research to transform this into a full length film. Ambition unfortunately doesn’t always mean that you will be able to get your passion project financed, which van Eijkeren had big issues with. He finally managed to get a small amount of money, 15000 euros, and decided he would make the movie with this very limited budget. Continue reading
Scarlett Johansson has one of the best years of her career with roles in movies like Her, Captain America and Under the Skin. The life she has breathed into the characters in those movies have all been memorable and she currently seems incapable of picking bad roles. For Lucy she teams up with director Luc Besson (5th Element, Léon). Do they succeed in continuing the success of Johansson ? Continue reading
What’s the last movie you’ve seen made in Pakistan? The only answer I could give myself was that I hadn’t seen any. While browsing IMDB I came across a movie which had a very high score (9) and therefore stood out. It made me curious and I wondered why I had never heard of the film. Was this a relatively unknown masterpiece or simply a heavily overrated movie? Continue reading
If you’d ask me about movies where the Testosteron levels are high I’d probably come up with movies like 300 and this movie series. They are the type of film where the ingredients are simple: action and violence. Primal instincts. Even thought the men in the Expendables 3 aren’t the youngest ones, this doesn’t mean they take it easy to enjoy their old age. Even though I wasn’t too impressed with both the first and second movie I still enjoy seeing these actors on screen. For a couple of them I still check out each new movie they are in (Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Statham). Do they manage to impress in this third outing? Continue reading
After the bad reboot of the franchise by Tim Burton it seemed that it wasn’t possible to breath new life into this old movie series. My expectations for Rise of the Planet of the Apes was extremely low, but the movie managed to surprise me in an extremely positive way and even ended up in my top 10 of 2011. I was looking forward to the sequel and wondered if it could retain the high quality of the first film. Continue reading
Organised crime has always been an interesting subject for both movies and television shows. People are always fascinated by people who live their lives outside the rules. Even though they are always in danger they wield power and wealth allowing them to live a life of luxury. The Godfather movies and a tv show like The Sopranos are extremely popular not because they are all about a violent existence, but mainly because they also show the personal relationship between people and show the effects the environment they are living in can have on them. It is what the 12 episode first season of the Italian mafia series Gomorra also attempts to show. Continue reading
When you grow up watching action movies starring actors like Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone en Arnold Schwarzenegger, then action-DNA automatically pumps through your blood. Because of that I have kept watching movies by some of these actors despite them slowly going towards their seventies. Of course this means you can not expect the same movies as when they were younger, but with Sabotage Schwarzenegger still delivers a violent action thriller. Does that mean nostalgic feelings or disappointing melancholy? Continue reading