Each year a new Woody Allen movie is released and every year movielovers wonder whether this one will be worth watching as they aren’t always of the same quality. For each Midnight in Paris there is a To Rome with Love. That last movie had Jesse Eisenberg and in this movie it’s him playing the starring role. He’s Bobby, a young man without much experience who has moved from New York to Los Angeles in order to find a job. Continue reading
After having watched Best in Show earlier this year as part of my Blindspot movies, I was interested in seeing more work by Christopher Guest. This director is known for his mockumentaries, ensemble casts (where various actors return regularly in various films) and his special ways of working, where most of what you are seeing is improvised. Mascots is his latest movie, which is available exclusively through Netflix. Continue reading
Do you ever wonder what happens to specific characters after a movie or show has ended? Generally it’s something I don’t do often, but this movie made the opposite thing happen. The main chracter here, Nikita (Anne Parillaud), caused me to think: “So that’s what happened to Pippi Longstocking after she grew up!” Continue reading
What’s the reason we watch movies? Is it to be entertained? To experience art? Or simply to kill time? The answer will differ from person to person, but movies do offer us the ability to experience something someone else is going through. While watching you might recognise something of yourself in a chracter or how you react to events which you normally don’t encounter. Movies also can be a reflection of what is going on in society. It can look at a specific issue (like the use of drones in films like Eye in the Sky and Good Kill) and make the ethical side understandable. It can make us face our biggest fears. Horror movies might be the first thing you’ll think of, but this is also the case with dramatic films. Bastille Day is about terrorism in Paris. After the various attacks all over Europe it’s a sensitive subject, which is why I started to watch this movie with mixed feelings. Continue reading
The number of fairytales which have had a remake during the last couple of years in the form of a live action version has been huge. In general they are pretty fun to watch. Earlier this year The Jungle Book managed to impress, but that doesn’t mean this is the case for all of them. Snow White and the Huntsman tried to turn the classic story into a movie epic, but didn’t succeed. Now its sequel The Huntsman: Winter’s War has been out for a while and the question is whether this is a movie that needed to be made. Continue reading
True crime documentaries have had more attention lately thanks to shows like Making a Murderer. People are fascinated by cases like this, because you wonder what could cause these people to act like they did (or in the case of people who are innocent, how the judicial system has treated them). My Friend Rockefeller revolves about Christian Gerhartsreiter. A German man who had a dream to be successfull it in America. He managed to do so and was very popular, but he did so pretending to be people he wasn’t, including being a Rockefeller. It turns out he also is a killer. Continue reading
A new movie starring Tom Hanks usually is an event. Through the years the man has earned his stripes and that means he’s usually in great movies. Still this movie kind of crept under the radar. Should that have been different? Continue reading
Through the years I’ve seen many revenge films, from Death Wish to Oldboy and John Wick. They all have lots of violence, but as you are watching them you understand why the protagonists want to have their revenge for the injustice they’ve been through and take justice in their own hands. Because sometimes emotions can be so strong that that’s the only way to find peace. Of course it is something you can say is right, but despite that you understand why in those type of films. Eega is also a revenge film, but its story is so bizarre that you start wondering if you should take it seriously. Continue reading
Wars are as old as mankind and preservation and/or expansion of territory and ideals often forms the basis for them. Since the second world war the way they are fought has changed dramatically. It used to mean that when a country would be in a war you would lose soldiers, but this isn’t always the case anymore. The introduction of drones is a good example. The pilots are safely on the ground on the other side of the world (something Good Kill showed) and the only loss you can experience is of your equipment and possibly some damage to your public image if a mission does not go as planned. Unfortunately the news shows that it sometimes does go wrong. Although there are rules to war, it is a situation in which emotions run high, parties want to achieve their goals and that sometimes might lead to an attempt to stretch the rules. That is also the case in Eye in the Sky. Lees verder
There are these periods in which movies about the same subject are being released. That almost automatically means that you will start comparing the two and that one of them is worse. Examples are A Bug’s Life and Antz, The Prestige and The Illusionist and when it comes to movies about cooking there was Chef and not too long after that Burnt. And as I thought Chef was fantastic I wasn’t in a hurry to watch this movie starring Bradley Cooper, because I had the feeling it wouldn’t be as good. Still I was a bit curious about it and as it has been out on DVD for a while I decided to watch it. Continue reading