True Detective has shown that a police drama in which a ritual murder has taken place and which has to be solved by looking into the past can be extremely good. The French Le Passager also takes that idea, but does it manage to reach the same heights as the American show? Continue reading
The 21 Jump Street movies have shown that the buddy comedies aren’t dead yet. Take two friends or two people who don’t know each other, put them together in a specific situation and see what they experience. Kevin Hart already did that earlier this year in The Wedding Ringer, but now also in Get Hard together with Will Ferrell. Continue reading
Richard Linklater might be one of those directors who stands out most among his peers. If you look at the movies he has made there really doesn’t seem to be a strong connection between them. He made his debut with Slacker, a movie which had a structure unlike any other movie at the time and was new to audiences. It didn’t have a real plot and Linklater showed life within a specific community. Looking at his career he has made experimental films (Waking Life/A Scanner Darkly), films the play with time (Before trilogy/Boyhood), comedies (School of Rock, Bad News Bears) and dramas (The Newton Boys, Bernie). Linklater is a director who has managed to inspire many others (for example Kevin Smith/Duplass brothers), but who was also at the start of some very successful careers (including Matthew McConaughey). 21 Years: Richard Linklater is a documentary which tries to give an overview of Linklaters impressive body of work Continue reading
With his movie Bullhead director Michaël R. Roskam and starring actor Matthias Schoenaerts managed to make a big impression in Hollywood. Schoenaerts appeared in Blood Ties and in this crime drama he reunites with Roskam. It would be the last movie that James Gandolfini would act in. Continue reading
If there is one genre which has grown a lot in the last couple of years it is the “young adult” one and more specific the movies which are set against a future society where there (usually) is one special person who is the key to solving a huge problem within that society. The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner are examples of it and so is Insurgent.
In the first movie the viewer was introduced to the world of Tris (Shailene Woodley), in which order was kept by placing people in specific factions based on their character. Tris turned out to be someone who didn’t fit to one of the faction and ended up facing the political leader, having to fight her. It was an enjoyable movie which nicely set up the world. With the world building done in the first movie, it was a question what would be done with it in this second film. Continue reading
Dear Mister Anderson,
The first work of yours which I ever saw was the movie Magnolia, your work impressed me and during your career I’ve seen almost all of your movies including Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood and The Master. Also didn’t want to miss your latest film, Inherent Vice. I couldn’t wait to find out what it was about and what to expect from it. See, I never read the book this movie is based on, but as you know how to make movies I had confidence this would be a nice surprise. Continue reading
As is always the case when a remake is announced, there was a lot of criticism before this movie saw the light of day. The standard reactions like “You should not touch a classic”, “Hollywood can’t create anything original” etcetera could be read everywhere. Those were understandable, but you really can’t say anything about the quality of a movie until you have seen it. I’ll have to admit that I’ve only seen parts of the original, so the story was mostly new to me. Does Annie, starring Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild, 12 Years a Slave), successfully manage to inject the movie with a new energy that makes it refreshing? Continue reading
Although I hate generalizing I do think that the romcom genre mainly appeals to the female part of moviegoers who like to dream about love for a moment watching to people who are “meant for each other” trying to get across some obstacles in their way before they get together. It means I’m not the biggest fan of the genre, being a man, and usually skip a lot of them. But as Miles Tiller managed to wow me with his peformance in Whiplash I had to give this more a chance to see how he did in this genre. Continue reading
Are reviews responsible for the success of a movie? If you look at the ones for the Transformers movies you have to conclude that they are completely useless. According to Rotten Tomatoes half of the review for the first movie were positive, but after it the percentage quickly dropped (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 19%, Transformers: Dark of the Moon 36%). This movie only managed to get 18% of positive reviews. Despite that the movies have been a huge success. Does this mean that the reviewers don’t know how to review or have they lost their feeling with their audience? I have to admit that I don’t go to the cinema to watch these movies, but that at home I do consider them “guilty pleasures”. Continue reading
Time to return to Middle Earth one final time to conclude the story of The Hobbit. Although I wasn’t a fan of the first movie in the trilogy (it was way too slow with not much happening) I thought the second movie delivered what I was expecting, exciting sequences, introduction and development of characters and a finale which had me wanting more. Having not read the book and seeing where the second movie ended, with Smaug on his way to Lake Town, I couldn’t wait to get back into it. Having now seen it i’m not that excited anymore. Continue reading