Sequels should only be made if you actually have a good idea that could work. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is an example of a movie where this obviously isn’t the case. After the park went out of control in the previous movie, the island has been abandoned and the dinosaurs lived as free animals. As that isn’t an interesting setup for a movie, they are now threathened by a vulcano on the island that will wipe them out once again. Problem solved you could say, but the government is thinking about rescuing them and not letting them go extinct. Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is running the Dinosaur Protection Group in support of this plan. When the government decides against rescue, she is approached by Benjamin Lockwood who has a plan to relocate the dinosaurs to a new location where they can live “in peace”. She must convince Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to join her. Once she does, they head to Isla Nublar and things don’t exactly go as planned. Continue reading
Tag Archives: movie
Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018) – Review
Although many people will know Robin Williams from his stand up and his breakthrough tv show Mork and Mindy, I personally really only knew him from the movies he was in. Whether it were his comedic roles in movies like Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire and Flubber or his serious roles in Awakenings, What Dreams May Come, One Hour Photo, Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society. He was a very versatile actor who was worth checking out a film for. It came as a shock in 2014 when it was announced that he had taken his own life. This HBO documentary takes a look at his life, both his highs and his lows. Continue reading
A Quiet Place (2018) – Review
Sound is such a big part of movies, which by many is an overlooked aspect of experiencing them. Ever since the introduction they have added a layer responsible for how you feel, enhancing it or setting the tone. A lot of time is spent on perfecting it. Just think of an animated movie. When you watch it, it is a breathing living and very real world. But just like the frames themselves, every sound needs to be created in order to make swoop audiences away, whether it’s an action scene in Incredibles 2 or an emotional scene in Your Name. In horror movies too it is used effectively, often making or breaking a scene. A jump scare wouldn’t work as well if it wasn’t accompanied by a loud sound after some silence. A Quiet Place is a horror film which uses sound in a different way… Continue reading
Skyscraper (2018) – Review
We all feel a need to categorize the movies we see. It makes it easy to compare them to other in the (sub)genre and at the same time display our knowledge of the movie landscape. In most reviews I read about Dwayne Johnson‘s new movie Skyscraper (which is about a security analyst who has to save his family out of a burning tower taken over by some evil guys) it was compared to Die Hard and The Towering Inferno. But I don’t think you should make the comparison as those movies were quite different. The Towering Inferno was a disaster movie which happened to be about a fire in a high rise building. Die Hard was an action movie like this one, but a lot more realistic and believable. It’s better to not make the comparison and look at this movie for what it is: A summer blockbuster movie which wants to entertain its viewers by giving them a thrill ride. Continue reading
Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016) – Review
Nostalgia is something everyone and every generation goes through. If you look at the eigthies (for example Back to the Future) people were looking back at the fifties. It’s understandable. As people get older they long for the period they were growing up, so things which were popular 20 to 40 years ago are suddenly more popular. Whether it’s the TV shows you watched as a kid, the toys you played with or the game consoles that were popular when you grew up, people start looking for them again or collect them. It sometimes can also mean the resurgence of old formats. We already have seen this happening with LP’s, but this documentary shows it is also true for cassette tapes. Continue reading
The Bits of Yesterday (2018) – Review
Near the end of this documentary about retro gaming, collecting is compared to an addiction. People get a rush looking at the games and consoles they own, the new ones they are able to buy and comparing them to others. It’s a feeling almost everyone can understand and I myself was into buying and playing old consoles. I still have quite a lot of them, although I never look at them anymore. I’ve stepped away from them years ago and with that they aren’t as treasured as they once were and when I make the time to properly go through it all I will sell everything so someone else will be able to enjoy it. Distance changes your perspective. The same goes for movie watching. For the last couple of years I saw an amazing amount of films every year, but this year I decided to take a break from blogging (I actually stopped on the Dutch version of my blog) and I lost the need to try and see every movie that comes out and actually am fine with that. But back to this documentary. Continue reading
To Catch a Thief (1955) – Review
Some directors have made a name for themselves and as viewer you have specific expectations when you go see their films. Whether it is the violence, dialogue and references to other movies in Tarantino films, the weirdness of David Lynch’s work or the practical way Christopher Nolan shoots everything on film, you have an idea of what to expect. It is something you look forward to when checking their work out. Alfred Hitchcock is also one of those names. I’ve seen a lot of his work and love the look of them (of course because of the era they were shot in), the character interactions and of course (usually) the suspense. To Catch a Thief was a movie of his I hadn’t seen yet and added to my blindspot list for this year. It turned out to be slightly disappointing. Continue reading
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) – Review
On this year’s blindspot movies list I had added two eighties movies, which both had to do something with aliens. I decided to check out The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension first. There is something about movies from the eighties which I really appreciate which isn’t only because it is the era in which I grew up. The movies from that time have a certain feel and CGI wasn’t a big thing yet, which would mean a lot more creativity to realize some ideas. Because of that some things feel a lot more real and actually have weight as things were physical. This is also the case here. Continue reading
A Taxi Driver (2017) – Review
With all the American movies being released there is a huge risk that movie from other countries don’t get the attention they deserve. Although some of them get released to cinemas, they often don’t reach a big enough audience, making it hard for distributors to take a chance on them. Which of course creates a cycle you can’t get out of. Which sometimes is a shame, as they are a lot of movie worth watching. Recently I saw Bad Genius, which is amazing, but A Taxi Driver, a South Korean movie is also one you should check out. Continue reading
78/52 (2017) – Review
Unless you have encyclopedic knowledge about Alfred Hitchock and his work, the title of this documentary will not give you any idea what it is about. That’s bad marketing in my opinion and the only reason I knew about this film was because I read about it being shown at a film festival. Had I come across it another way I wouldn’t have even given it a look. The movie also doesn’t explain its title, but the numbers reference the infamous shower scene in Psycho. 78 different camera angles were used and there are 52 cuts to create an iconic and influential moment in movie history. It was a scene that took 7 days to shoot, which in the end resulted in only 45 seconds, which were very effective though. Is it possible to analyse that during an hour and a half in an interesting way? Continue reading