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%

This movie just might possess you

Possession (1981)

This is not an easy movie as it plays on your deeper emotions rather than your rational thinking. So if you won't let yourself go with it, you will only get utter nonsense out of it. It starts out as a family drama where the marriage of Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani) seems to be over. It follows Mark as he struggles to cope with the new life without his wife, it seems that he's slowly starting to lose his mind. But then the movie turns to a surrealistic horror story which builds the crazy plot towards the surprisingly action packed cathartic ending. All the while you are constantly wondering what the hell am I watching here. But the beauty is that it's intriguing, you don't care that the plot makes not much sense or that the acting is at points extremely over the top and even corny. It's shot quite brilliantly and the music fits the mood nicely. Both of the lead characters do a great job at their parts, even though, and partly because, there is so much deliberate over acting. And the supporting cast is not one bit worse. This movie is definitely not for everyone and the first time I saw it I just found it silly, had a few laughs about how bad it was but nothing else. On the second time it scared the hell out of me and on this third time I was surprisinly moved by it. That right there is an indication of a brilliant movie when you can experience it multiple times with completely different feelings. Now there are some things I don't find working in this movie, but to be honest I guess I just haven't figured them out yet, maybe next time they won't bother me at all. This movie has surely grown on me and I think it will grow even further the next time I watch it somewhere in the future, so I will leave the scoring of it a tiny bit of room to grow as well.
95%

The pains of growing up as a wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

I guess I'm not the target audience for these high school coming of age movies, but that didn't stop me from watching this one as I had heard quite a many good comments about it. It's a story about Charlie (Logan Lerman), a quiet introverted freshman who becomes friends with Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson) who pretty much teach him to live his life. That's it in short, of course there's the first love and the usual things you'd expect from a movie like this. Great thing about this one is that it handles some darker themes of life in middle of it all, but that's also the biggest problem of this movie. There's just too many themes squeezed into it so most of them end up staying way too superficial. So the themes of mental illness, child abuse, suicide, drugs and so on are just scratched a bit on the surface in hopes of trying to give depth to this otherwise quite light hearted drama. Another problem was that I couldn't really relate to anyone in this movie, I mean sure school life and growing up is rather universal and easy to relate to, but the people felt very distant to me, so it left me more as a bystander. Though that wasn't such a big problem as the movie was still quite entertaining and well made. It pushes the right buttons at the right times. The cast was quite ok, nothing to complain about them. Tom Savini as the shop teacher was quite a nice surprise. I bet people closer to the high school age will get more out of this movie than I did, but at least I wasn't bored, even though it didn't rock my world either.
65%

The Gladiator gets extended

Gladiator (2000)

The problem with these big Hollywood spectacles is that they are rather one dimentional, they thoroughly entertain and thrill you when you first see them, maybe even leave you with something to think about. But usually the more times you watch them again the worse they get as there's nothing more for them to give and thus you end up paying too much attention to the small details, which usually tend to not work as well. I've seen this movie now about 5 or 6 times and even though none of those times has topped the first time I saw it at the theater, I still find this one working surprisingly well. The reason I watched this one again was because I updated my old DVD to a Blu-Ray which had the extended cut on it and I hadn't seen that before. I must say these Universal 100th Anniversary Collector's Edition Digibooks are absolutely brilliant. You can find good deals on them with less than 10 euros and with that you get the movie beautifully remastered on high definition and a ton of extra material in a nice book cover. Like I said the movie worked surprisingly well even though I've seen it often enough. Though of course the small things caught my eye a bit too much, like the problems with the background action in the war scene where people are just standing around there in middle of the battle and quite a few other small issues. But really I didn't mind them that much as the movie is still a great action packed drama with brilliant performances by the cast. Nowadays I don't see Russell Crowe's performance as great as I used to, it's still not bad by any means, but it's hugely overshadowed by Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris. So pretty much every supporting actor does more or less a better job than Crowe. Another thing which has changed during the years are the visual effects, back in the days they looked amazing, but now not that much, especially on Blu-Ray some of the CGI shots stand out quite clearly. But luckily there aren't that many of them and otherwise this movie looks and sounds amazing in HD. And about the sounds Hans Zimmer's score is a classic already so that of course works great. Anyway, most of the extended cut material was actually not that great. I mean it was very interesting to see the scenes and at parts they brought a bit more depth to the supporting characters, but to be honest those scenes were rather nonessential and well worth leaving out. So in the end they only dragged the movie a bit too much. This rating is for the extended cut, the theatrical cut, and acording to Ridley Scott that's the director's cut as well, would be a few points higher.
81%

Harrison Ford lost in Paris

Frantic (1988)

Funnily enough this is one of the best thrillers ever made but it's also one of the dumbest ones as well. Roman Polanski knows how to build tension and the story telling is the best part of this movie. Too bad the story is so ridiculously unbelievable that I just can't watch this one with a straight face. I need to spoil it a bit, but believe me it doesn't affect the viewing much at all as you'll still see a technically brilliant thriller and how idiotic the story is, even if you know the part which kind of makes the whole movie seem ridiculous. It's of course the whole elaborate plan of switching suitcases to smuggle something into the country but then instead of switching them back they rather kidnap the wife and of course without telling the husband about it, so he's left there to figure things out himself. I mean come on, that feels almost like an insult towards the intelligence of the viewer or then the bad guys are deliberately portrayed as idiots, which would be kind of like saying that your movie is not worth taking seriously. Either way, that's the downfall of this movie. And it's a shame as otherwise this one is a brilliant Hitchcockian thriller. Harrison Ford is great as the doctor lost in Paris while trying to find his wife and Emmanuelle Seigner is a perfect counter part for him. That with Polanski's style and great score by Ennio Morricone make this a highly enjoyable thriller. Too bad I just can't see past the stupid plot on this one, especially since the movie reminds you of it in every turn on the way.

67%

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%

A miserable movie

Les Miserables (2012)

The novel by Victor Hugo is brobably the most adapted book ever written, with hundreds of theatre, radio, TV and cinema versions from all over the world dating from the 1800's to today. Now I of course haven't seen all of those adaptations, but from the movies the 1934 one was quite ok and I kind of liked the 1998 version, but really I just wonder what the hell can anyone add to that story anymore. Well it turns out not much, except for a great cast. But the cast really is almost worth the whole movie. Hugh Jackman is great, Russell Crowe is good as well even though he can't sing that much, Samantha Barks was surprisingly good and pretty much everyone in the movie brings out a great performance. But there's one above everyone else and that's Anne Hathaway, her performance is just about as perfect as one can be. Too bad she's gone after the first 30 or 40 minutes and even though the rest aren't bad either, but you just feel the level going down from there on. Then the music, just about every line in this movie is delivered by singing. Now I'm not a big fan of musicals as they tend to take me out of the movie as it's not realistic in any way, but that being said, I don't hate them. But as the music here isn't exactly diverce, it gets rather boring towards the end when there's only an occasional word or two which aren't sung. After about 2 hours I was basically begging for some normal dialog between the characters, but no chance of that.

I didn't like the camerawork, the shaky cam tried to get some sense of realism to it, but really most of the time it was just annoying as it kept reminding you that you are watching a movie, the complete opposite of what it usually tends to do. Also the framing was simply boring, every single scene was framed with either closeups or some weird angle which left you just wondering why the hell was that angle chosen and does the cameraman have some sort of a balance disorder. And when I say closeups, I mean about 95 percent of the shots in this whole movie. Sure that brings out the emotions from the actor, but I guess they don't know what establishing shots mean or that you really need some diversity for it to keep it interesting. This is painfully obvious at some of the most powerful parts of the story where the movie takes out the scope of things by just giving you a face. Now that's a real problem as this story is really epic and demands some bigger scale to things, you'd expect that a big Hollywood movie would bring that, yet the movie manages to look small, kind of like a small theater play. Another problem is that every scene is built to maximize intensity and thriving for the biggest possible emotional impact, unfortunately that makes the movie annoyingly monotonious. It seems that the director doesn't even know what subtle or nuanced mean. So when you finally get to the end where you'd supposed to feel deeply for the characters, I found myself not giving a damn and just hoping this stupidity would be over. In the light of all that the fact that Tom Hooper gets so much acclaim for the direction of this is just criminally wrong.

In the end this movie was only worth the watch to see Anne Hathaway's performance, but unfortunately even as brilliant as it was the rest of the movie isn't worth it. And it's really a shame that those great performances by Hathaway, Jackman and Barks get wasted in a movie like this.

30%

Unconditional love

Amour (2012)

I guess I wasn't in the right mood for this one as I found it utterly boring and thought the otherwise good story could have been told in 30 minutes instead of the two hours. As the movie starts with a scene from the end you basically wait 2 hours for these old people to die, that in it self isn't really exciting and as the pace is very slow in true Haneke style it does get tedious. Now I'm being too harsh as it's not a bad movie, the story is actually one of the better love stories I've seen and even though I didn't like the slow pace I can see it fitting the story very well. It's a movie about two elderly people offering each other total commitment, there's no candle lit dinners, no fun trips abroad, no sex or any of the cliches you'd expect from a romantic movie. It's just unconditional love. I don't know why Emmanuelle Riva got the Oscar nomination and not Jean-Louis Trintignant as even though Riva is great, it's Trintignant who really carries this movie, kind of literally and figuratively. Would have gladly given him the nomination as well as he's quite brilliant. This movie reminded me of Haneke's first film The Seventh Continent (1989), following the seemingly boring every day life of a family while waiting for something to happen. That something in The Seventh Continent was absolutely devastating, but in this one the shock moment is actually not a shock at all and it's even somewhat of a beautiful moment in it's weird way. With a different mood this movie would have most likely been absolutely brilliant, but now it just dragged on way too long to make a point.

70%

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 Wicker movies

First a bit of background story before we go into the movies. The Wicker Tree (2010) stood in my shelf for over a year before I now finally watched it. Reason for this was that once it came out I of course rushed to get it, but I decided to watch The Wicker Man (1973) before it to refresh my memories of it. That was actually a bad mistake, The Wicker Man is pretty much a perfect movie so it raised the bar so high that I knew the sequel could never live up to it. So I decided to give the sequel a better footing and put it back to the shelf to wait for a better time. Well the “better” time was now as I'm trapped at home with a nasty flu. But first a few words about the original and unfortunately the remake as well.

The Wicker Man (1973)

One of the best horror movies ever made and a movie which would most likely be in my all time top 10 list if I ever had to make one. I can't praise this movie enough, it's perfect in every aspect and especially the mood is just something unbelievable. It does what most horror movies tend to forget nowadays, it builds up tension slowly but surely until it gets scary as hell before the absolutely devastating ending. A brilliant masterpiece that can stand multiple viewings despite the easily spoilable plot.

100%

The Wicker Man (2006)

Even though the best thing to do with this movie would be to just forget it's existence, I'll put it here as well, kind of like a warning to stay away from it. I haven't seen this since it came out so can't say how it would work today, but then again I don't want to ever watch it again. It's one of the worst remakes ever, missing every single aspect that made the original so brilliant, and all in all just a horribly bad movie.

0%

The Wicker Tree (2010)

Sequels are always hard and nearly every time fail to live up to the expectations. This however had all the things on paper that could make it good. It's written and directed by Robin Hardy, the same man who wrote and directed the original so there was a good possibility it would be something like the original. Even though I had very little expectations, mostly just hoping that it would at least be somewhat entertaining if nothing else, I was still disappointed. This continues the story of the village 37 or so years later, though it's left a bit unclear whether it actually is the same town as Summerisle was on the original as this time it's called Tressock, but it's very similar none the less. A young American gospel singing couple (Henry Garrett and Brittania Nicol) travel there to spread the word of the lord and much to their surprise they are warmly welcomed there. Well the town's folk of course have other plans for the naively simple couple and things go along similar paths as the original. The less you know the better. The story in itself was actually quite good and intriguing, but unfortunately everything around it and especially the way it was told didn't work at all. Both Garrett and Nicol were rather bad, though then again their roles were so one dimentional that even better actors might have had trouble with them. But that didn't bother much as that's the way they were supposed to be, it fit the story and gave it a bit of dark comedy as well. The real problem acting wise is the rest of the cast, they were all quite bad. Especially Graham McTavish who didn't fit the role in any way. Only one who at least tried to put some effort into it was Honeysuckle Weeks. But the acting didn't ruin the movie it's the story telling which did it. There's an attempt to a similar tension building as in the original, but this time all the attempts for dark comedy broke the tension as in the original they fit right in most of the time even helping to build the tension. And the mood from the first one was nowhere to be seen. It just proves how hard it is to recreate the incredible mood from the original when even the creator of it can't do it again. Another thing that troubled me was that the movie was quite amateurishly made, some scenes looked like they could be from some cheap soap opera. So even though the story was nice, this is in no way a good movie, rather bad actually. This probably works better as a book and Robin Hardy seems to be a better writer than a filmmaker, so I guess I'll give the book a try some day.

33%

Coppola's greatest failure?

One from the Heart (1982)

This is the movie that put the last nail in the coffin of Francis Ford Coppola's dream factory Zoetrope Studios. Even though the company didn't disappear, it went bankrupt and every bit of income from the following movies until the end of the 90's was used to pay off the debts from this movie. With a budget of 27 million and box office of less than one million it's clear that the movie was a disaster for the studio. Then again reading about how extravagant the production was I'm not really surprised, in a way I'm actually happy that it failed as it showed that you can't make a great movie by just throwing money at it. These “studio killers” are actually very interesting and there are quite a few of these kind of movies out there where the studio decides to bet all it's money on them and end up losing. Maybe some day I'll focus more on them, but for now lets focus on this one.

This is actually the kind of musical that I like, the music carries the movie but the movie does not stop so that the cast can perform their musical number. That's one of the main reasons I hate musicals as the movie stops when the music starts, same reason I don't like Bollywood movies. So the actors don't sing in this one, but the songs from the soundtrack tell the story as we go along. Even though the concept was great, this is still not a great movie. The biggest issues are the story, or the lack of it and the main couple. The story is just too simple and way too common to keep any interest up. And the main couple, even though Teri Garr has her moments, are just not up for carrying a movie like this. They were rather uninteresting and in a movie like this that's just not going to work. That's mostly the fault of the script and direction but also Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr are not the first that come to mind when speaking of captivating screen presence. It says a lot that the support cast, Raul Julia and Nastassja Kinski, would have made a better lead couple for this movie. But the whole movie is not totally bad. I loved the look of it and even though the ridiculously expensive indoor sets were the main reason for the fall of the studio, they really worked brilliantly for the look. That artificial neon lighted look was by far the best part of this movie. Another thing I liked were the numerous split cuts throughout the movie and the music was quite good as well. So the audio-visual aspect of this movie is great, but unfortunately the heart is missing.

54%

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.

Crime novel characters come to life

Hammett (1982)

Hammett (Frederic Forrest) is a writer who just finishes his latest crime story and is ready to cash in a few bucks for taking it to his publisher. But a visit from an old friend Jimmy (Peter Boyle) from his times at the law enforcement gets Hammett himself mixed up in a real life crime story just like his characters in his stories. Set in the 1920's San Francisco and boosted with a bluesy jazz soundtrack there's that breeze of film noir running through this movie. Though I would have hoped that the photography would have had a bit more film noir feel to it, now it's just a bit too straight forward and apart from a very few scenes doesn't play with the shadows at all. It's a shame as the story and the settings otherwise had film noir written all over it. Speaking of the settings, they were created very nicely and the movie looked quite great. And as the soundtrack was very good as well, I really loved the mood of this movie. Frederic Forrest carries the movie with his great performance but the rest of the cast isn't bad at all either. Peter Boyle, Lydia Lei and Marilu Henner just to mention a few were great as well. The biggest problem of this movie, in addition to the fact that the photography kind of misses the film noir aspect of it all, was the story. It's unnecessarily complex so it takes a long time before the viewer can even understand what's going on. That makes the first half of the movie seem quite dull, luckily in the end the story comes together nicely. But it surely could have been a bit simplified as after all this is a movie that relies on the feeling more than the story so a less complicated story would have worked just as well or in this case even better. Despite it's flaws I was thoroughly entertained and even though it's not a brilliant movie it's still well worth watching.

78%

Can't find a trailer for this movie anywhere online.

An escape from conventional story telling

The Escape Artist (1982)

Danny (Griffin O'Neal) is the son of a famous escape artist who after his father's death tries to follow in his footsteps. He ends up mixed in a scheme with the mayors crazy son Stu (Raul Julia). That's about all I can say about the story without spoiling it too much. Raul Julia does a great job with his role and Griffin O'Neal wasn't bad either. Rest of the cast were fine as well, even though no one really stood up from the crowd despite there being some big names in there as well. Caleb Deschanel is more known as a cinematographer and this is his first feature, unfortunately that shows in the pacing of the movie. It lingers on some shots a bit too much and rushes through others way too quickly. And to be honest the movie doesn't look that great to justify the slow pacing at times. Another thing that bothered me was the story or more how it's told. The motives of the characters are left mostly unexplained and that makes it rather confusing. Like I've always said not everything needs to be told, but really the key motives are quite essential for a good movie. As the movie mixes timelines a bit as well I guess the director saw it as a different way of telling a conventional story. Well different it was but unfortunately not really effective. There are some individual scenes which were absolutely brilliant, but the glue between them seemed to be missing. However I really liked the mood of the movie and the music carried it nicely. That managed to keep my interest up throughout even though in the end it didn't really leave much to go with.

65%

This movie didn't really take off

Flight (2012)

This one looked very promising, an interesting story and a great cast. Unfortunately it's a bit of a crash and burn, pun intended. It's a story about Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), one of the best pilots in the world, whose amazing maneuvers in a plane crash save over a hundred lives, but still 6 people end up dead. Then the crash is being investigated and things start to look bad. There's a huge flaw in this movie. It's that the main character is basically a jerk. And the biggest problem was that the movie makes it very clear right from the start. So my feelings for the movie went something like this;

• He's quite a jerk
• Daaamn that jerk can fly!
• John Goodman is great!
• What does this drug addict have to do with the movie?
• Oh, Whip is horny for the addict, that's why
• Maybe he's not a complete jerk after all
• Nope, he's still a jerk
• Oh there was that plane crash investigation going on as well
• Don Cheadle is also quite good
• Could there possibly be some hope for the jerk?
• Nope, why would I even think of that?
• Denzel Washington can't really act like a drunk person
• Now he's being a straight out dick
• I guess the question is will he redeem himself at the end?

To be honest by that time I already lost every bit of interest to the character and couldn't care less. Why would they right from the start establish the main character as an alcoholic self centered drug abusing jerk? And then the rest of the movie is about whether he can redeem himself or not. Everything else is nonessential after that. The intriguing plane crash and especially what follows after that loses all it's meaning. Had they not establish that in the start and leave it as kind of a surprise later on this movie would have worked a lot better. After all it's not totally a bad movie, most of the cast pull off their roles very nicely and the story is interesting. Too bad it's told in this way.

56%

Fighting for The Cause

The Master (2012)

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best directors at the moment, so I was of course looking forward to this one. And as he doesn't rush with the productions of his movies it took almost 6 years to finally get a new movie from him. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is an alcoholic World War II veteran who has some serious anger issues. He meets a cult religiously believing in The Cause and befriends the leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Even though Freddie's anger seems to cause more trouble than anything good they still become depended on each other and together spread the word of The Cause. The story is quite interesting and even though this is not about scientology the similarities are quite obvious at times. The cast is superb, Joaquin Phoenix portrays probably the best performance of his career, Philip Seymour Hoffman is great as always and Amy Adams was surprisingly good as well. The movie looks larger than it actually is, mostly thanks to the beautiful 65 mm photography. Direction focuses on closeups and the sets are usually quite small so the photography gives it the larger scale. Even though I understand why it was used, to bring more scale for the emotions, I still think it could have been utilized a bit better. Especially since the biggest problem this movie had was the feeling it left me with. Even though I was entertained and even amazed at times, still I was thinking “was that it?” when the end credits rolled. And to be honest that's a bit unforgivable. I mean I like open endings, it's good to leave something for the viewer to ponder on, but as this movie does it most of the time right from the start and the characters are quite grand, I was constantly waiting for some kind of closure of epic proportions. The kind which would tie up the movie and leave me thinking how it actually got there, kind of like in There Will BeBlood (2007), but there is none. And that's a huge disappointment in an otherwise brilliant movie.

71%

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%