Would you like to die at a young age with everyone remembering you or grow old and only be remembered by your friends?
It is a question Andrew (Miles Teller) asks during dinner with his family. He’s a drummer who wants to become the best and be famous. He wouldn’t mind dying young if that means immortality and being mentioned amongst the greats. He is very motivated to reach that goal and is willing to give up everything. Continue reading
Not every movie will immediately appeal to everyone. Sometimes this is because of the subject, but it can also be for the simple fact that the poster the movie is using doesn’t look appealing (which of course is very subjective). Before watching this film the only thing I had seen was its poster and based on that my expectation was that this would be a simple, maybe slightly funny British comedy. It didn’t appeal to me and if it wouldn’t have been part of the programming during a festival I went to I’d probably wouldn’t have seen it. But that’s the great thing about movie festivals: They give you an opportunity to see movies you normally will not check out yourself and in this case I’m happy I managed to catch it this way. Continue reading
Maybe the name “The Sherman Brothers” won’t ring a bell with most people, but chances are that most people will know their work. They were responsible for the music in many Disney movies including Mary Poppins, Jungle Book and Winnie the Pooh. But also songs like “It’s a Small World” or “Chitty Chitty Bang”. If you look at their discography it is an impressive list. Their music is known for the joy it brings, but behind the scenes the two had some serious issues. Continue reading
What If is a romantic comedy which tries to answer the question which When Harry Met Sally also dealt with: Can a man and a woman just be friends? Personally I think it is a question which will be answered differently by women compared to men. It doesn’t matter how good a man is in pushing back his animalistic instincts, they won’t disappear and will appear if the right situation arises. 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
Although I really like going to the cinema there are some aspects I do not like. I decided to go watch it at one of the cinemas pretty close to home, but as I am not a fan of football I didn’t know that there was a game on near the cinema. It meant it was almost impossible to find a parking spot and grab a quick bite to eat because of the long lines. I managed to walk into the theater with food in my stomach, right at the moment the trailers had ended (and as that is usually a huge frustration I didn’t have to endure them). I was ready to enjoy the movie, until a woman in the right corner of my eye decided it was a good time to send some whatsapp messages. Don’t know if it was about the film, but that bright screen (she did set the brightness lower, because you know it would be rude not to) was a distraction. I didn’t immediately want to say something about it, but it took a bit longer before I felt I was fully engaged by the movie. Enough about my cinema experience of that day though. How was the movie itself? 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
When Kanye West release his latest album Yeezus there was a big number of fans who were disappointed by it because the music was very different compared to previous albums. The beats were almost experimental and many didn’t like that. It wasn’t a “standard hip hop album”. Personally I really liked it, simply because it tried to do something different, which made it challenging to listen to. Under the Skin manages to do that as a film. The question though is whether the average movie fan is able to appreciate that challenge. Continue reading
There is a market for just about everything and even for the strangest items there are buyers available. This is also the case when it comes to health. When someone knows he won’t have a long time to live unless he/she finds a donor they will search for any option that might solve their problem. One of the possibilities is illegally having an operation done where you pay someone else to donate one of their organs. This documentary jumps into the world of the trade in kidneys. Continue reading
Recently a computer managed to pass the legendary Turing test by fooling quite a lot of people that they were chatting with a thirteen year old boy. A computer passes the test when it shows intelligent behaviour making it impossible to distinguish it from a human.
The development in this field of computing is going fast and it isn’t hard to imagine that within the next 15 years a lot of progress will be made. It might not yet mean that people will become replaceable, but if an intelligent computer is similar to a human there is certainly some competition. Could that eventually lead to situations made popular by movies like The Matrix or The Terminator? The machine is a science fiction movie which gives its own vision on artificial intelligence and asks the viewer what it is that makes us human. Continue reading