M. Night Shyamalan once was considered to be the next Spielberg. Unfortunately he has made a couple of movies which were receiving a lot of negative reviews. The once promising prince had turned into a frog and a lot of people have written him off. Is After Earth the movie which can kiss him back into a prince or even a king? Or Is it a case of the emperor’s new clothes? Continue reading
When growing up I wasn’t big on watching sports and rather played them myself. I might occasionally watch some tennis or turn on the TV when the national team was playing football, but that was about it. Except for Formula 1. During the nineties I wouldn’t miss any of it. On Sundays I would watch it on the TV I had in my room and would love all the excitement a race would bring. It was the age of drivers like Senna, Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher. The rivalries (especially between Hill and Schumacher) are something I’ll never forgot (and one of the reasons I have never been a fan of Schumacher despite him getting the world title several times). As I grew older and moved out of my parents house I wasn’t as interested in the sport anymore. I might occasionally watch a race, but the sport lost a lot of its excitement for me. Documentaries about the sport always interest me and as 2010’s Senna proved, they can be very good. The question is if 1 can match the level set by that documentary. Continue reading
TLC was only a little over ten years ago, one of the biggest female groups in existence. Since they brought out their first album in 1991, the trio consisting of Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and singer Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, was a mainstay in the charts. Their mix of R&B with a hip hop edge earned a big number of fans. Those fans helped the group sell millions of records, but behind the success they did have issues. Their contracts were bad and it meant they were hardly earning any money of their sales. When Left Eye died in a car crash in Honduras in 2002 it meant an end to the career of the band. Although the two remaining members appeared on some shows to talk and sometimes perform there wasn’t any new music available. Crazy Sexy Cool: The TLC Story, which got the stamp of approval from T-Boz and Chilli, now looks back at the history of the group in the form of a bio-pic starting from their discovery until Left Eye’s untimely death. Is it only a must see for fans or will it be able to appeal to the younger generation as well, who did not grow listening to any TLC music? Continue reading
White House Down and the also recently released Olympus Has Fallen both cover the same subject. It is something which we see happening often. In this case both movies are about an attack on the White House. I thought Olympus Has Fallen, starring Gerard Butler was a very entertaining movie and wondered if White House Down, starring Jamie Foxx as the American president and Channing Tatum as the guy who has to save him would be just as entertaining. The movie has been directed by Roland Emmerich, who is known to offer great spectacle (just think of 2012, 10000 B.C., The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day). My expectations therefore were quite high. Continue reading
New Year’s Day 2009, Oakland. After a small fight breaks out in a subway, Oscar Grant and his friends are detained on the platform of Fruitvale Station. Various people are using their phones to record what is happening. The situation is chaotic and the people involved are on edge. The group starts arguing with the police officers and when the police decides to cuff Oscar Grant they are not able to. A few moments later he is shot in the back by one of the police officers and dies as a result.
When the video of this tragic event appeared online it received a lot of media attention. By many it was seen as an example of extreme and unnecessary force used by the police. This movie is based on that event and tries to give the viewer an idea of what the last day in Oscar Grant’s life looked like. Continue reading
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
There are some movies which deserve the term ‘experience’. They manage to completely transport you to another world or place and really make you forget about the world around you. Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void was the last movie I used that term, but Gravity is also a movie which deserves that title ‘experience’. It’s one of those landmark movies which only appears once every few years. Continue reading
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
In 2007 Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel did the short film Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse. It was a short film with just the two of them in a room, mostly arguing. I did not think it was that funny or interesting, but it was that short which would be the inspiration for this movie, This Is the End. The question is whether this comedy also disappoints or if it is comedy gold. Continue reading
How often is your opinion about a movie influenced by looking at sites like IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes? If I were to believe these sites The Lone Ranger is a movie I shouldn’t attempt to watching. On IMDB it only has a 6,6 and Rotten Tomatoes has 31% score. The movie is also a western, a genre I generally can’t really enjoy. Despite those scores I still was interested in checking out The Lone Ranger. Continue reading