Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) – Review

If you go by the title, you might wonder why you should watch a movie that is about three billboards in a place you have never heard of. If you look a bit further and see that Martin McDonagh is the writer and director, it becomes more interesting. He made the highly valued In Bruges in the past and was also responsible for Seven Psychopaths. And with a star cast including Francis McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell and four Golden Globes (for best actress in a drama, best film (drama), best male supporting role in film and best script) is this one of the first must-sees of the year. Continue reading

Her (2013)

Review Her

Technology is developing at an exponential rate. The machines which once were considered supercomputers and occupied whole rooms now fit in the palm of your hand. That exponential growth does not seem to stop anytime soon and many futurists already try to look ahead and predict where it will lead us. Ray Kurzweil is one of them, who predicts that there will be a moment where our minds simply will not be able to keep up with artificial intelligence, which will end up changing society. He even thinks there will be a moment where we no longer will need our physical bodies anymore and we can just upload ourselves to a computer, basically granting us eternal life and opening up new experiences. It is a subject I have always been interested in, seeing where technology will take mankind. Her is one vision of a future which to me does not sound that far-fetched. Continue reading

Gravity (2013)

Review of the movie Gravity

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

The Act of Killing (2012)

Review of the documentary The Act of Killing

In general I do not seek out movies which have shocking footage in them. I do not enjoy watching such footage even if it’s just make belief. So you will not make me happy with movies like Saw or similar ones. With a title like The Act of Killing you have an idea about what to expect. I decided to watch this since this isn’t fiction, it is a documentary about people who killed communists in Indonesia during the sixties. Within a year more than a million people lost their lives because of it. It was something I had not heard about and I thought it would be important to learn more. What makes this documentary unique though is that the executioners themselves talk about their acts openly. Continue reading

Seven Pounds (2008)

review

There are some movies that manage to grab your attention within the first few minutes and that don’t let go until they end. A very effective way of doing so is showing something which will happen later in the movie. In that respect Seven Pounds immediately had me and I was glued to the screen in this story about one very unique man. Continue reading

The Abyss (1989)

The Abyss is a movie which I had not seen before. It tells the story of a diving team that are asked to find a lost nuclear submarine, but find something else they were not expecting. It’s the first of Cameron’s films where he used extensive CGI to tell his story. When you look at the scene in Terminator 2 where the T-1000 goes through the glass of the helicopter you see that this movie allowed it. Cameron’s use of CGI has only increased over the year resulting in the almost complete CGI movie Avatar. Continue reading

Black Swan (2010)

As it’s the last day of the year I think there is no better way to end it by reviewing my movie of the year by letting it skip the queue of upcoming reviews. With Black Swan I had the same feeling as I had with The Social Network. I was wondering how a movie about a specific subject, in this case ballet, could be interesting. If you check out the dance movies which came out lately you will notice that most of them are targeting a young audience with the drama in those films being equal to the levels you see in your average soap opera. As I try to never watch movie trailers and try to know as little as I can about films in advance, I was in for a big, but very pleasant, surprise. Continue reading

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Singing in the Rain is a classic song from a classic movie which I must have hummed quite a few times while walking through the rain, but I had never seen the movie. As it has a spot in the IMDB top 250 it was enough reason to see it.

Singin’ in the rain is set at then end of the twenties, when Warner Bros was the first to release a successful movie with sound, The Jazz Singer. Other studios needed to keep up. Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen are Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont, two actors who have become stars during the silent era of movie. The current movie they are working in is picked to be the first movie their studio will add sound to. Continue reading

Léon (1994)

Luc Besson is one of France’s most famous directors. He’s responsible for a lot of well-known movies like the Taxi, Transporter and Banlieu 13 series, he wrote the story for From Paris with Love and the Fifth Element. When he had to wait for Bruce Willis (he was doing another movie) to start filming the Fifth Element, he decided to write a script, which resulted in Léon, a story about an assassin who unexpectedly ends up having to take care of a young girl. Continue reading

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) are two friends who are both dreaming of starting their own worm shop. They try to raise enough money with their work to make their dream a reality. When one of Lloyds female customers “forgets” her briefcase he sees an opportunity to see her, Mary Swanson, again. He really likes her and convinces Harry to join him on a journey to Aspen. They are both extremely stupid which results in extremely funny situations. Continue reading