To see a few sights and kill some people

Sightseers (2012)

Where the previous movie from Ben Wheatley was only serving small portions of dark comedy, this one is all out pouring it. Tina (Alice Lowe) is a bit of a nerdish woman whose over controlling mother seems to think she was responsible for the death of her dog and that giving birth to Tina in the first place was a mistake. So family life is not easy for her. She then leaves for a road trip with her new boyfriend Chris (Steve Oram) with plans of seeing such magnificent sights as the pencil museum, the tram museum and the Blue John Cavern. The seemingly boring trip takes a turn to a very different direction when Chris kills a man. Soon enough they end up on a killing spree across England. The comedy in this one is dry and pitch black, just the way I like it. It's a satire about the dull every day lives of couples and serial killers. A mix you'd definitely not expect, but it works surprisingly well. The movie has a very nice realistic look, the shots are not overly staged so the realism comes through nicely, which of course works brilliantly with the crazy story. The cast was great, especially the main couple, both do a brilliant job. All in all I really liked this movie, though I do understand this might not be for everyone. It doesn't really set up any of it's jokes, they just come and as the subject matter is very dark it might get people puzzled wether it's ok to laugh or not. The dialog is filled with brilliant lines which could just as well be on some comedian's stand up act, the delivery is just different. This is one of those movies you either like or hate, as in the humor works for you or it doesn't, there's really no middle ground on that. For me it worked.
85%

Purgatory of a hitman

Kill List (2011)

Had this one on my shelf for quite some time before I ended up watching it. Heard some good things about it when it was playing on the festivals so decided to buy it but never got around to watch it. Then a friend of mine said I should watch it and the director Ben Wheatley's latest movie Sightseers (2012), and so I did. I really hate trying to describe the story of a movie like this which evolves from one thing to another and yet another. But as it's told in the back cover and in the trailer as well I guess you can't really avoid it and luckily there's more to this movie than just an intriguing story. The movie reminded me of The Wicker Man (1973) in quite a few ways. Obviously the last 15 minutes or so, but also the weird feeling of the movie and the tension building from the start to finish. Not to forget the surprisingly good dark comedy. Of course comparing this to one of my all time favourite horror movies is not exactly fair, but it actually holds on quite nicely by itself. The acting is also great, so there's many things right in this movie. But there are some problems, can't go into too much details to avoid spoiling it, it's the ending mostly and some of the events leading to it. I liked the idea of it, but the actions leading to it didn't seem to make much sense and especially the outcome was weirdly predictable but still didn't really seem to make any sense. I mean the movie clearly wants to leave something for the viewer to think about, but the thing is that more you give it some thought the more ridiculous it seems. Maybe this movie needs a second viewing to get the whole point of it. But wether it's unintentionally confusing or intentionally complex didn't matter that much as this movie plays with tension quite masterfully. It's after all easier to forgive the flaws of the plot if the movie works on an emotional level and this one worked quite well.
72%

Cancer is fun, money buys you happiness and even the nastiest selfish billionaires are actually kind and warm people

The Bucket List (2007)

Right from the start I must say I didn't like this movie. It's a story about Carter (Morgan Freeman) and Edward (Jack Nicholson) who are both terminally ill with cancer. Edward is a selfish lonesome billionaire who owns the hospital they are staying in and Carter is the "everyman" a smart mechanic with a loving family. As these two opposites are put into the same room to recorver from surgery and chemo, they of course become friends. One day Carter writes a "bucket list" a list of things to do before he kicks the bucket and Edward of course uses his billions to pay for all that. Then the cancer and families are forgotten and the adventure around the world begins. The main characters of the film are nothing like real people. The cancer is nothing like real cancer. And the story is about as impossible as it can get. After devastating chemotherapy and being diagnosed with terminal cancer you of course want to climb the Himalayas. I don't know but at that situation climbing out of bed sounds hard enough for me. Anyway the story is ridiculously far fetched and I surely hope no one with real cancer sees this. And worst of it all, the message this movie is sending out is that money buys you happiness. The only thing good about this movie is the acting with both of the lead characters giving out good performances, but that's not worth seeing the movie.
21%

A fashionable secret agent

Modesty Blaise (1966)

I know the comic but I have never really read it apart from a few strips long time ago, so can't judge how faithful this movie is to it. As a stand alone movie it's not bad at all. It has a fun, weird and light hearted mood to it and it looks great. So Modesty Blaise, played by Monica Vitti, is this ex cat burglar turned into a secret agent who gets hired by the British secret service to track down some diamonds and the villain Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) who is trying to steal them. Modesty gets help from his agent buddy Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp) as she goes on this weird adventure. Can't really say much about the plot as I kind of lost interest in it as it didn't make much sense, so I just enjoyed the fun mood of the film. Can't judge whether Monica Vitti's character fit that of the comics or not, but I must say she didn't seem like much of an agent, unless you judge the skills of a secret agent by how fast she can get another dress on and switch her hair style. Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde kind of steal the show as their characters are so much wilder than the surprisingly one sided Modesty. There's plenty of comedy in this movie, intentional and unintentional, funnily enough the unintentional comedy turns out to be the better kind. Like those explaining dialogue scenes which probably were intended as those explanation texts of the comics. It's just hilarious how the government people seem to always know exactly what's happening, kind of defeats the purpose of hiring an agent in the first place. But anyway it's all fun and fits the weird mood of the film. And that mood is this movie's strongest point.
71%

There's something fishy going on in Detroit

Crimewave (1985)

A movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell and Brion James amongst others must be good, right? Well not exactly, but one crazy goofball comedy it surely is. Vic (Reed Birney) is a convict on his way to the electric chair, as the officers are dragging him to meet his maker he is screaming for innocence. Then we are told as a flashback a devious tale of deception and murder, in the form of an action packed slapstick comedy. Sam Raimi himself wants to disown this movie and reading about the troubles he went through while making it, I can't blame him. Having his lead actor, editor and composer replaced by the studio is not exactly a great way to make a movie. Anyway this movie is not as bad as it at start seems. The cartoon-like over acting is a bit tedious and as it's boosted with wacky sound effects it goes so much over the top I didn't know wether to laugh or cry. But as the story goes over the top as well, it turns into a quite an entertaining goofball comedy. The acting is rather bad, though mostly deliberately so. The soundtrack is quite annoying at times and the silly sound effects didn't help it at all. But the movie looks quite good and manages to set a great mood for the crazy things happening on the screen. That's the reason why this movie squeezes above the average of it's kind.
66%

Fletch - the man with many names

 










Fletch (1985)

I used to love this movie when I was younger but for some reason I hadn't seen it in ages, before I found this and the one below in a bargain bin of a local market. So I decided to give them another go, funnily enough I wasn't actually hoping this one being that good anymore. Much to my surprise I still found myself liking it quite a bit. Fletch (Chevy Chase) is an undercover reporter investigating the drug trafficking on the local beach. There a wealthy man, Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson), spots him and proposes a deal to him. The deal is that Fletch needs to murder him for 50.000 dollars. The catch is that mr. Stanwyk is suffering from bone cancer and doesn't want to go through a slow and painful death. A murder would leave a large amount of insurance money for his family where a suicide wouldn't leave them anything. Fletch agrees to the deal, but smells something fishy and the movie gets it's mystery plot moving. I quite liked the dry and cynical humour of it all, I actually remembered it being a bit more goofball, but was pleasantly surprised. The best thing about this movie is that you can take all the comedy out and still you're left with a somewhat intriguing crime mystery, so the comedy doesn't make the movie, it just supports it nicely. This movie was done in the wake of the success of Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and you can see some clear similarities to this one. One of the biggest being the brilliant soundtrack by Harold Faltermeyer, who made the soundtrack of Beverly Hills Cop as well. Sure it's extremely 80's and rather repetitive, but still I loved the funky themes of it. Anyway I liked this movie surprisingly much.
75%

 









Fletch Lives (1989)

This time Fletch inherits a mansion in Louisiana from his aunt, so he decides to quit his job and enjoy the country life for a change. But as someone kills his lawyer while Fletch is sleeping next to her, he ends up in trouble with the locals and we have another mystery. This was nowhere near as good as the first one, even though this one had it's moments as well. The story is the biggest problem, it's not as good or interesting as in the first one. The weird thing is that they didn't use any of the novels written by the original author Gregory McDonald for this sequel, even though there were plenty of them, but instead hired Leon Capetanos to write a completely new story for it. Now I haven't read any of those, so can't judge, but it does sound a bit weird to not use the original author and as the end result isn't great I'm willing to bet my money on some of them being better than this. Another thing that troubled me was the editing, at points it was absolutely horrible with very clear editing mistakes. Which is weird as Richard A. Harris has won an Oscar and worked on some very nicely edited movies. I'm guessing the studio had their hands on the editing as they saw the movie didn't really work that well. Anyway, it's not all bad, there's still some hilarious moments in this one as well and I didn't get bored with it. But in the end it's just an average sequel to a good movie.
51%

Sam Raimi going back to his roots

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

I don't know why so many people seem to dislike this one, I think it's a great horror comedy, just what you'd expect from Sam Raimi. Maybe they were expecting another Spider-Man (2002) but instead they got a movie in the spirit of Evil Dead II (1987). I guess I can't blame them as I too was starting to feel he's only making Spider-Men, but luckily this was a blast from the past by him. It's a story about Christine (Alison Lohman) a bank worker who gets cursed by an old gypsy lady, played brilliantly by Lorna Raver. As the curse gets worse Christine seeks help from a psychic (Dileep Rao) and learns that she will eventually be taken to hell unless she can find a way to reverse the curse. The comedy is great and there's even some efforts into tension building, not just the usual cheap scares. Unfortunately Alison Lohman and Justin Long who plays her boyfriend are not exactly great at their parts and that's a shame as some of the supporting cast is rather brilliant. Despite that and the somewhat easy to guess ending this is a great horror comedy.

80%

A misunderstood satire

Showgirls (1995)

Well the story is about a girl called Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) coming to Vegas with nothing more than the clothes she's wearing and a passion to become a show dancer. She meets Molly (Gina Ravera) who helps her out with a place to stay until she can get her dancing career going. Soon enough she's competing for a spot in a show with the biggest star of the business Cristal (Gina Gershon). Then of course money and greed step in and things go wrong. Simple and even stupid story, but yet so familiar from quite a many Hollywood fame and fortune movies, this is just told with a bit more exploitation. This movie rocked the Razzie's in it's days with 13 nominations and 7 wins, but what made it even better was that Paul Verhoeven himself actually showed up to receive the awards for worst movie and worst director. And that's something special right there. It also failed miserably on the box office, even though it later became the highest grossing NC-17 movie of all time. But this movie was a huge success on home video, reeling in more than 100 million dollars, that's pretty clear indication that people rather watch "porn" at home and not at the theaters, even if it's a satire wrapped in softcore sex like this one.

But that's not all this movie is, it's actually a lot more. Even though there's no goofball comedy or witty jokes, this movie is a comedy. It's a satire about the roles of women in many Hollywood movies, the fact that it's done in an exploitative manner is probably why many people seem to miss that point. After all most Hollywood movies are male made male fantasies, they are just politically correctly covered in less exploitative themes. So when this movie hides nothing and couldn't care less about being politically correct it's misunderstood, either intentionally or unintentionally. Those who intentionally misunderstand it see that this could just as well be any other movie out there where a woman is trying to earn a living, just replace the usual romance and comedy with sex and drama and that scares them. Those who unintentionally misunderstand it just can't see the big picture behind the tits and asses. The big picture of course is that satirically every woman in this movie who thrives for success is nothing more than a sexual object for men and advance through their career by deceiving other women. Sure many people see that as a flaw in the character development, but it's the ending which really ties the satire together. I won't give out any details even though you can't really spoil a movie like this. When the movie ends with it's themes of empowerment of women it's just pure comedy brilliance. It's of course tragic as it makes you realize how similar many other woman characters in other Hollywood movies are, but still you have to admit it's also funny as hell.

The acting is from bad to worse most of the time, though funnily enough the black actors and actresses gave out by far the best performances. I'm willing to bet my money on that being deliberate as many from this cast can do and has done a whole lot better. And that's just another indication of this being a satire. My only complaint is the running time, at a bit over two hours this is on the edge of becoming boring at times, but luckily there's plenty of eye candy to balance out those few moments when the comedy stalls. This movie is pure camp brilliance and a great satire, though obviously hugely misunderstood.

90%

The undead love

Dellamorte Dellamore - The Cemetery Man (1994)

I've never been a fan of Michele Soavi, but I think this one might be his best movie. It's a story about Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett), a caretaker of a cemetery somewhere in a small Italian town. Francesco has a problem, the dead buried on the cemetery seem to come back to life after a while and he needs to kill them again with the help of his mentally challenged helper Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro). But that's not all, one day he meets She (Anna Falchi) a griefing widow who he falls in love with. The problem is that Francesco doesn't go out that much or meet any people, the undead keep him too busy for that, so the love becomes quite complicated, especially when She ends up dead. The style of this movie is a surrealistic horror comedy love story or something like that. It has a bit of everything in it and that's a good thing as it surely doesn't get boring. Rupert Everett is good and his character resembled a lot like Clive Owen's Dwight in Sin City (2005), I bet Robert Rodriguez has based at least a bit of that character to this one here. Though who knows as the comic book came out the same year, maybe it was Michele Soavi who based it on the Frank Miller's character, but as it's so different I kind of doubt it. Who knows and to be honest it doesn't even matter. Can't say the same about the rest of the cast, though Anna Falchi was quite pleasing for the eyes. The style as in most Soavi's movies is again great, the cinematography by Mauro Marchetti was at times simply brilliant. There's plenty of comedy and enough twists to keep a constant "what the hell is happening?" expression on my face. So in the end this is a great little horror comedy, well worth watching.
78%

Sometimes even the villain deserves to be a hero

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Ralph (John C. Reilly) is a video game character in a game called Fix-It Felix. He is bored of his every day life of wrecking things and being the villain to everyone in town. One day he decides that he wants to be the hero for a change so he leaves his game to seek out new adventures on other games. That of course creates a chaos in the game universe and he ends up in all kinds of trouble. First of all I have never been a hard core gamer, I mean sure I've played my fair share of them, but as this movie references to so many other games I didn't recognize half of them. So gamers will most likely get more out of this than I did. Anyway this wasn't a bad movie, actually it was quite a good one. The voice acting was brilliant and the animation looked great. So the movie looked and sounded very good, and all in all I can't find a thing to complain on the technical side. But it's the story which got me a bit bored at times. It's just so predictable. I mean sure there were nice surprises and funny jokes I didn't see coming and a few twists at the end, but really the paths that it follows are very familiar. So even though I was thoroughly entertained it left me with absolutely nothing to go with. Anyway, it was well worth the watch.

73%

The return of the buzzz

The Texas ChainsawMassacre 2 (1986)

I wanted to watch this one again after seeing the unbelievably bad Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) to see if this was as funny as I remembered. As there's so many versions of this one, I got the “Gruesome Edition” which should be the one Tobe Hooper intended to have. Well it wasn't as good as I remembered, but it wasn't bad either. It continues some years after the original, the family is back in business again but this time they have a lieutenant (Dennis Hopper) after them. A radio station host (Caroline Williams) gets mixed into the manhunt as she records a phone call where two yuppies get killed. There's a few twists to the story, but it's rather simple in the end. The comedy ranged from horribly bad to very good. The cast was surprisingly good, but no one really stood out. Didn't really like the music, it was a bit too repetitive, even though I do understand the comedic aspect of it, but it just didn't work for me. Without the effects by Tom Savini and the set designs this would be just an average horror comedy. Funnily enough the best scene of the whole movie was left at the cutting room floor and is only on the DVD as an extra without proper sound and with crappy image quality. That scene is the now infamous parking lot scene where the family goes to get some “prime meat” from some youngsters trashing cars in a parking lot. With just that scene in the movie this would have been a good movie, now it's just an above average horror comedy.

66%

Those grumpy old men

Grumpy Old Men (1993)

This is one of my all time favorite comedies and I find myself revisiting it from time to time as I did again today. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau appeared in 10 movies together and I think this is the best of that lot. These two grumpy old men have had a grudge for over 50 years with each other and one day when a woman called Ariel (Ann-Margret) moves next door things escalate to an all out war between them. Sure this movie follows quite common paths and is even predictable, but it doesn't matter at all as it's pure magic. I can't think of a better comedy duo than Lemmon and Matthau and seeing them going at each other like this is something absolutely hilarious. Now I know this movie might not be for everyone, but for me these grumpy old men arguing are simply brilliant. Time hasn't been kind to the movie, but still I found myself laughing like the first time I saw it. The predictable plot and some of the nowadays cliched jokes don't matter much as this is pure warm hearted entertainment.

92%

Grumpier Old Men (1995)

Of course there had to be a sequel for the brilliant first part, but luckily this time it's not bad at all. Despite the story taking a few unneeded turns which kind of drag the movie along, this comes close to the original. This time Sophia Loren plays the woman who starts a chain of events which lead to the peace between the grumpy old men being broken and it's all out war again. Again the predictable plot troubled a bit, but then again I guess I could watch Lemmon and Matthau going at each other without any plot at all, they are just so hilarious. This is a great sequel especially if you like the first part as it's basically more of the same.

79%

Criminal activities through assisted living

Robot & Frank (2012)

Frank (Frank Langella) is an ex-catburglar who is starting to become old and senile. One day his son (James Marsden) brings him a robot caretaker to help out with every day living. Things don't start off too well between them but soon Frank finds out he can use the robot as his accomplice performing the tasks of a burglary he's too old for. The story of this movie is one of it's strong points, it's highly intriguing while covering some rather relevant questions about aging and the treatment of elderly people. The style is a drama comedy and I found myself laughing quite often even though the jokes weren't exactly fresh, but they fit the story very well. The drama was very light hearted even though the story covers subjects that are quite thought provoking and even touching for everyone who has elderly people in their family. I wouldn't have minded a bit deeper look into the problems, but as this is a comedy after all I understand why some of the subjects are kind of passed through briefly. Frank Langella does a great job in carrying the story which is extremely important as he's pretty much in every scene of the movie. The supporting cast were also very strong, even though they don't have that many moments to shine through. This was clearly a small budget movie, so there weren't any extravagant futuristic visions in it despite it being set in the near future, but that didn't matter at all. Actually it made it more realistic. The direction was quite solid, though nothing to rave about. All in all this was a nice little movie well worth the watch even though it didn't leave me much to go with.

76%

The filmography of Quentin Tarantino

As these were not here yet and since I just watched most of them once again, I'll write my thoughts about them here briefly. Sorry about the short reviews on some of them, but really if a movie is perfect there's not much else to add to it. I'll only include the movies directed by Tarantino, even though many of his scripts directed by others are considered as his movies. Maybe one day I'll revisit those as well. You can find my review of Django Unchained here.













Reservoir Dogs (1992)

This wasn't the first Tarantino movie I ever saw, actually I didn't even know about it's existence before I saw the one below. But after that I stormed every video rental shop in the city until I found this. I remember once I finally saw it I was actually disappointed, I mean I still thought it was a good movie, but as I was expecting another Pulp Fiction, I was let down a bit. That of course has changed since then and nowadays I think this is a brilliant masterpiece. Not only is this the best "heist" movie ever made but it's also one of the best crime movies ever made. Can't really say anything about it that hasn't been said a million times, so I'll just say it's a brilliant movie and I'd rank it as Tarantino's third best film.
98%













Pulp Fiction (1994)

I still remember when I first saw this at the theaters, something I guess I'll remember for the rest of my life. I saw it at this crappy small basement theater because I was 17 at the time and the movie had an age limit of 18, but they were cool enough in that theater to not care so much. So me and my date who was a year younger got in without any problems, even though they generally were quite strict about those age limits even back then. Now that I think of it and starting to feel all nostalgic I shouldn't call the theater crappy, I actually wish there still was theaters like that today. They had character and their own feel to them, unlike these multiplexes today. Anyway the reason why I remember it so clearly is because I was totally blown away by the movie. It was something I had never seen before and didn't even think that there could be movies like this. This was one of those movies that changed me in a way. For better or worse that I don't know, but ever since I saw it I've sought out more of these 70's exploitation movies. Seeing this movie today I found some scenes not working as well as back then, like that foot massage discussion seemed to be surprisingly dragging and uninteresting. Then again I still think the second half of this movie is probably the best comedy ever made, so it balances it out more than well. Pretty much a perfect movie, Tarantino's best and one of my all time favourites.
100%













Four Rooms (1995)

For this one I'll give a proper review as this seems to be the one most people haven't seen from Tarantino's filmography. Then again this is only one fourth of a Tarantino movie, but still I think it belongs to this list as there's a clear segment and story of the movie which he wrote and directed. The problem with these kinds of movies is the difference between the makers, which usually makes the movie rather uneven. And that certainly was the problem with this one as well. There was an attempt to glue the stories together with Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth), but unfortunately that was one of the weakest parts of this movie. Tim Roth has never done a worse performance, so much over acting and his character is all over the place all the time. Might be partly the fault of the four different directors, but still it's a weak effort. Anyway this movie has a very bad start as the first story by Allison Anders is just plain crap and even though it's only 15 minutes or so it's still way too long to give any hope for the rest of the movie. The second story by Alexandre Rockwell worked a bit better, though as the bar was set so low by the first one it wasn't much of an effort. Again bad acting and a useless story, though not as painful to watch as the first one. The third story by Robert Rodriguez is where the movie finally gets going and there's some actually funny moments. Antonio Banderas was also very strong, pulling out the best performance of the whole movie. This third story was the strongest one in the movie, apart from the ending of the fourth. Then the fourth story by Quentin Tarantino, it's actually quite a weak story as the basic idea of it is copied from Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Then again that's not the real problem as the idea is what sets up the absolutely drop dead hilarious ending of the movie, it's just the 20 or so minutes leading to it. The dialogue, even though it's nicely flowing as you'd expect from Tarantino, is just plain boring most of the time. Luckily the ending saves a lot, but still it felt like Tarantino didn't really put that much of an effort for this. All in all the movie is not good, with one great episode, one good episode, one bad episode and one just shit, it's way too uneven and mostly badly acted. It's actually a shame as replacing the first two episodes with better stories and better storytellers and someone focusing on directing Tim Roth this would have been a great movie.
45%













Jackie Brown (1997)

Before this movie came out I had become a fan of the 70's exploitation flicks and Pam Grier was one of my favourite actresses, with Coffy (1973) as one of my all-time favourite movies. So expectations were high as always and this one surely delivered. This movie is a bit of an oddity in Tarantino's filmography as it's his only adapted screenplay and it's told in quite a linear format. But that actually only adds to the beauty of this movie. I haven't read the book by Elmore Leonard so can't say for sure how good the adaptation is, but as a stand alone movie this is absolutely perfect. This one probably has the best mood of all of his movies and the best soundtrack to boost it. Tarantino's second best movie.
99%













Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)












Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

I'll put these two together as that's the way they were meant to be, one four hour action extravaganza. I was really blown away by these when I first saw them, but I must say these are the ones I have most seldom revisited out of Tarantino's works. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be amazing, it's just that four hours is a long running time for a movie no matter how great it is. So my only gripe with these is the length, even though watching them again I really can't think of a single scene worth leaving out. It's very hard to place brilliant movies in any order but I'd say this is Tarantino's fifth best film.
95%













Death Proof (2007)

Tarantino's take on a slasher, though this time the usual knife is replaced with a car. The cast is great as always, even though it's a Kurt Russell show. The biggest problem of this movie is that Tarantino kind of forgets that slashers need to have people dying on them, not just chatting along. Sure when the killing starts it's brilliant, but really there's too much talking and not enough action for a grindhouse movie. Tarantino's worst, but still a good movie none the less.
75%













Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The absolutely brilliant cast carries this hilarious movie with maybe Brad Pitt's best performance ever to boost it. The thing that troubles me with this one is the continuity errors, there's way too many of them and even multiple times in one scene. I don't usually complain about things like that and I've seen plenty in Tarantino's other movies as well, but for some reason I keep spotting way too many of them in this one. But that's small details as this is Tarantino's fourth best movie.
97%

Sorry about the short reviews, but really long praising posts are rather boring to read and well I kind of expect most people have already seen these movies.

Vampires indeed are a laughing matter

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

This is one of the finest horror comedies ever made and even though I already know all the best jokes by heart I still find myself revisiting this from time to time. That means this is a true classic that has stood time very well. The plot is simple, a professor and his assistant travel to a small village in hopes to slay some vampires and they end up in a heap of trouble. It's very straight forward even though it does have quite a few twists in it. And that's actually one part which makes this movie so great, it works as fun brainless entertainment but on the other hand it also has some very clever twists in it as well. Then there's the comedy and what a brilliant mix of goofball and witty it is. This movie looks simply stunning and luckily the prints of which the surprisingly few DVD's that are around were made from are in a good shape. My only complaint about this movie is the music, even though it's great most of the time there are a few moments where it goes all crazy and starts to annoy me. But that I can surely live with as this is truly a classic masterpiece.

98%

This movie is a liability for intelligence

The Liability (2012)

I like Tim Roth as even at his worst he's still quite a good actor, that was the main reason I picked up this DVD as well. Adam (Jack O'Connell) is a 19-year old kid who wrecks his stepfather's (Peter Mullan) car so the stepfather decides to offer him a job as a driver. Already here anyone with even a bit of brain function should realize that this is not a smart movie. So Adam needs to drive Roy (Tim Roth) across the country to kill a man. A girl (Talulah Riley) sees them killing the man so things end up quite messy. There was actually quite a many things I liked in this movie. There's this nice feel to the movie as there's some quite dark comedy in there as well and the style is fitting to the genre. Also the acting is very strong, mostly thanks to Tim Roth and Peter Mullan who are both brilliant. Unfortunately the story is so idiotic that this is not even close to a good movie. I mean I can watch people do silly things if the movie doesn't take itself seriously, but as this one tries to be serious it just doesn't work. I got the feeling that the makers of this thought everyone watching it would be stupid enough to not see how idiotic the plot is. So there's a lot of talent wasted in this crappy story and that makes this movie sink below the vast averageness.

45%

Behind every Psycho there is a great woman

Hitchcock (2012)

As I'm a huge Hitchcock fan I'm of course excited about everything related to him, so I was waiting for this one with maybe a bit too high hopes. I've read the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello which I saw was the basis of this movie's script. The movie merely scratches the surface of the problems that went into making Psycho (1960) and focuses more on the relationship between Hitch and his wife Alma Reville. That's not a bad thing as a movie just about the production of Psycho would be only good for the fans of it, now it's quite an universal story about love. Then again as a fan I would have hoped a bit more insight on the production as now this movie skips through it so fast that it kind of gives out a wrong impression on many aspects of it. What I would have liked to see more was the cultural impact the movie had, as it wasn't just a huge box office hit, it really shook the whole movie industry and changed the way people saw movies. But I guess it didn't really fit in after all, then again I wouldn't have minded watching another 90 minutes after the movie's premiere and even about the making of The Birds (1963). Anyway I liked quite a many things about this movie, first of all the cast is great. This is an actor driven movie and that's certainly well in hand in this one. Anthony Hopkins does a solid job as Hitchcock and at times he looks and especially sounds strikingly like Hitchcock. But it's Helen Mirren who steals the show in this one with an absolutely brilliant performance as Alma Reville the wife in the shadow of the master of suspense. Another one I need to pick out was James D'Arcy who not only looks exactly like Anthony Perkins but also gives a stellar performance. Too bad there's not much room for his character so he's left with very little screen time, which was the problem with Scarlett Johansson as well, who was great as Janet Leigh for the short time she was there. Even on the smaller parts were cast brilliantly, like the “Karate Kid” Ralph Macchio as the screenwriter Joseph Stefano and Kurtwood Smith was a perfect pick as the censor.

The acting was not the only thing that worked, I really liked the witty Hitchcockian comedy in it as well. It shows that the director Sacha Gervasi and the screenwriter John McLaughlin are fans of Hitchcock's movies, there's so many witty remarks for them that I lost count. From framing shots and directing scenes to the dialogue the whole movie was quite Hitchcockian. I also really liked the music by Danny Elfman, which sounded like an homage to Hitchcock's favorite composer Bernard Herrmann. All in all this is a very good love story which did leave me wanting a bit more insight into the making of a masterpiece. But in the end it didn't matter that much as otherwise this was a great movie.

82%

It's ok to be a bit mad

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

I have to admit this movie is special, it's one of the very few romantic comedies that didn't annoy me too much. But that really doesn't make this a good movie. Pat (Bradley Cooper) is released from a mental institution and taken to his parents house by his mother (Jacki Weaver). His father (Robert De Niro) seems surprised they let his son out and on we go unwrapping the past. The less you know the better your time passes watching it, so I'll leave it to just that. Bradley Cooper didn't pass as the son of Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, he's missing the Italian aspect of it quite heavily. And speaking of Robert De Niro, he does an amazing performance in this one, despite that one tear filled Oscar bait moment. But what the hell, he surely deserves the nomination and it's not that often you can say that about his performances anymore. And since pretty much everyone in the cast got an Oscar nomination, I'll give out my opinion on them. Bradley Cooper's nomination I just can't understand, he's rather bland throughout the movie and certainly didn't give me any reason to believe he has some mental problems. Jennifer Lawrence however was quite great as she usually is, so the nomination there went to the right address. And finally Jacki Weaver, her part was overshadowed by De Niro, but still she managed to push through as a believable mother in middle of all that madness, maybe not exactly Oscar worthy, but a fine performance none the less.

The biggest problem with this movie was the main character and how his illness is portrayed. It's all just warm hearted fun. Just as an example the scene where Pat accidentaly hits his mother while going through a mental episode, it's portayed as a funny moment. All the while he's supposed to be a bipolar person with anger management issues. I'd see that as a rather scary moment, but no, it's made to be funny so it wouldn't go too deep into the issue. So now the main character's illness is nothing more than a funny gimmick. But as it's brought up so often I kind of lost interest to it and thus to the whole character. The father was actually the character I found most invested in, at least he seemed like a real human being with real problems and emotions. Too bad he was just a supporting character in this movie. And the weird thing is that this movie tries to bring out the drama behind the comedy, so it doesn't shy away from the drama alltogether, but really I think they chose the wrong moments to bring out. In the end this was nothing more than light and quite warm hearted entertainment, something that kept me entertained through it but left me very little to go with.

56%

I meet Abbott and Costello

I have a big gaping hole in my general knowledge as I haven't seen any of the Abbott and Costello movies, so it was time to patch that up. I started with the double feature of Abbott and Costello: MeetFrankenstein/Meet the Mummy as it had the Frankenstein which seemed to be recommended by most as one of their best and the Mummy from the next decade to give some diversity.

 

Abbott and Costello MeetFrankenstein (1948)

This movie should rather be called Abbott and Costello Meet the Universal Monsters as they don't actually meet Frankenstein, but they do meet his monster with Dracula, Wolf Man and a surprise guest at the end. Right from the start I must say I was amazed that Bela Lugosi was playing Dracula and Lon Chaney the Wolf Man, just like they did in the originals. Too bad Boris Karloff isn't playing the Frankenstein's monster, but still two out of three is quite impressive to be honest, though I guess it wasn't that big of a task to get them in the movie as all of the franchises were owned by Universal as was the Abbott and Costello movies. Anyway Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) are working at a postal office and one day they get two crates for delivery to the Museum of Horror. Turns out those crates contain the not so dead bodies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Dracula plans on resurrecting the monster and plant Wilbur's brain on it for more control. Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, joins the party in hopes of stopping Dracula and his devious plan, but as it seems every night there's full moon things don't work out as planned. Abbott seems to be the brains of the duo while Costello is the goofier one always getting into trouble, but they both get their equal share of laughs. I really liked the chemistry between them at times it was like watching an old married couple going at each other. Another character that stood out was Dracula as Lugosi gives out quite a great performance in this one. What made this movie stand out from the other horror comedies of it's kind was that it didn't directly make fun of the monsters, they could have just as well been in a horror movie, it's the duo around them creating the comedy. That works surprisingly well. The comedy is a mix of crazy goofball action, slapstick and witty remarks. And especially those witty remarks really cracked me up. Even though time hasn't been kind to this one, I must say this was one of the better horror comedies out there and probably the best of it's time. I was truly entertained and got some very good laughs.

80%

Abbott and Costello Meetthe Mummy (1955)

Abbott and Costello are in Egypt and get mixed up with a murder of an archaeologist and a plot to raise the mummy of Klaris. Even though this movie had it's moments and actually couple of hilariously funny scenes, it's extremely repetitive from the Frankenstein one. The scene at the archaeologist's office was almost like an exact copy of the one at the Museum of Horror from the previous one with the same jokes just a different surrounding. Sure it still managed to squeeze a few laughs from me, but I started to worry that these characters don't have that many jokes in them as there were very familiar scenes later in the movie as well. However there were some quite original ones in there as well, so it's not a total miss. The start was not that easy as it seemed so similar to the previous one, but towards the end this movie kind of found its place. So in the end it was merely an ok comedy. Even though I didn't like this one that much I must say I'll definitely will be watching more of the Abbott and Costello movies in the future as they truly are a funny pair of characters.

50%

When one psychopath just isn't enough

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Martin McDonagh is probably the most interesting new director at the moment. I've been waiting to see a new movie from him ever since I saw In Bruges (2008) and indeed it's been a long wait. But luckily it was worth it. Marty, Colin Farrell, is a screenwriter with a writers block, so he seeks help from whiskey bottles. Billy, Sam Rockwell, Marty's friend, is an unemployed actor who runs a dog kidnapping business with an elderly gentleman Hans, Christopher Walken. Billy, who is determined to help Marty find a great idea for a script, ends up dognapping the wrong Shih Tzu. The dog belongs to Charlie, Woody Harrelson, a ruthless mob boss who is willing to kill everyone in town if it brings back his dog. As that wouldn't have made things bad enough for Billy and Marty who gets mixed up in the dognapping, the script they are planning requires psychopaths, so Billy decides to advertise on the local paper that they are looking for psychopaths to interview for the script. So there's some weird people destined to knock on the door when things are already going crazy. There's so much going on in this movie that it's exhausting, mostly it's actually a good thing, but at times it kind of loses focus. Still there's that great mood which was in his previous movie as well and the comedy is extremely dark so I didn't care that much, was mostly just laughing my ass off. But it's not just a crazy violent comedy, there's quite a many witty ideas in it as well. The cast is absolutely brilliant, with surprisingly Sam Rockwell stealing the show from the others. And the mood, it's every bit as great as it was in In Bruges, just for that this movie should have been on my best of 2012 list, but unfortunately saw it only now. The scope of the movie is so large that it does tend to crack from the edges, but none the less it's a great movie.

89%