A dated guide to witchcraft

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

This is another movie that has sat in my shelf for ages before I now finally watched it while recovering from a nasty flu. This certainly was an oddity, it's part documentary, part mockumentary and part fictional horror movie. There's slide show like graphic presentation, acted story telling and even some stop motion animation in it. It's divided into seven segments each of which has a story of it's own but all focused on different aspects of witchcraft. This movie has a rather painfully slow start, the first segment with it's illustrations and history lessons was just simply boring. Maybe if you are more into the subject matter you could get something more out of it, but for me it didn't really serve any purpose. The second part was better but not much, it follows a witch cooking with some surprisingly comic moments as well. But after that the movie gets going and stays quite interesting until the end. The last segment with all it's philosophical aspects is very dated and a bit tedious to watch, but it does have an interesting point to it. I can understand why this movie was banned in pretty much every country when it came out, not because it would be pro-witchcraft, it's actually quite the opposite, but because it's anti-religious. It basically compares religion and people who believe in witchcraft to a mental illness. Then again not long ago I read that some Nepalese woman was burned at the stake for being a witch, so I guess this movie is still relevant today. Which of course it should most definitely not be.

Anyway even though there are some relevant points to the story of this film, it is mostly quite dated. But that didn't bother me much as this movie was pure brilliance for me as a film history lesson. I must say where people praise Lang, Eisenstein and Murnau among others for being the early pioneers of film making, I'd put Benjamin Christensen to that list as well. Technically this movie is a marvel. There's some movie tricks that even today look impressive. And the acting deserves a special mention, the whole movie is rather brilliantly acted without the usual over acting very common in silent films. The makeup is surprisingly effective, I mean sure the demons look a bit goofy, but they are strikingly similar to the old drawing presented at the start from old history books. But what I loved the most was the cinematography, every single frame was lit and framed perfectly down to the smallest details. After seeing this it's not hard to believe it took three years to shoot it. For anyone even a bit interested in the history of movies, this is a must see and well people who are into witchcraft might get something out of it too, but as an entertaining film for the casual viewer I don't think there's much to go with this one. Anyway for me this was an eye opener and showed that some of the early cinema pioneers came from Scandinavia. Oh, and if you are planning on watching this, beware there are two versions out there, the original 104 minute version and a shortened 77 minute version with a narrator. Steer clear from the shortened version as the music is some crappy jazz which doesn't fit it at all and it's missing some very nice scenes, so watch the original or not at all.

81%

Worst movie of the year, no contest

Blooded (2011)

I read the synopsis and thought this sounds like an interesting thriller. I'll just quote the full synopsis here. "In October 2005, five young people were kidnapped in the Highlands of Scotland. Stripped and abandoned in the the wilderness, they were forced into a deadly game where the hunters became the hunted. Their ordeal was filmed by an extreme animal rights group as a warning to others: if you hunt... you're fair game. Combining dramatic reconstruction and compelling interviews with the survivors, BLOODED finally tells the full story behind one of the most extreme internet virals of modern times." What I actually got was simply a horrible excuse of a movie. I had to split the viewing into two parts, even though it's only 80 minutes. After the first 30 minutes absolutely nothing had happened except for some weak effort of character building without characters. Had to stop it there, but next day I decided to finish it just in case it only had a bad start and would redeem itself in the end. No chance of that. First of all it's quite amateurishly made, bad acting, horrible scripting with very uninteresting characters and absolutely no sense of pacing. Second of all there is no thriller, not one bit. I mean which retard actually thinks that the viewer might get scared for the protagonist when you intercut the "hunt" with the protagonist casually talking about the events while it happens. Guess he didn't know that a movie actually needs to be thrilling in order for it to work as a thriller, having a guy run away from hunters with dramatic music while someone is constantly telling the viewer it will be ok is quite far from thrilling. I have no idea what the "statement" of this movie is, I mean it surely tries to tell us something, but the closest I can guess is that hunting foxes is bad, but hunting humans is worse. Well no shit Sherlock. Somebody give this guy the Nobel prize, we clearly have the next philosophical genious amongst us! Idiotic pointless waste of time garbage with highly misleading marketing. I want my 4 euros back and more importantly I want my 80 minutes back.
0%

Not the wildlife you were expecting

The Troll Hunter (2010)

While the Finnish directors are out directing formulaic tasteless crap, the Norwegians are making truly interesting and especially original movies. This is a documentary like movie about a group of students who are investigating illegal bear hunting. They meet a very strange hunter and think he's behind the killings so they start to follow him. But it's not bears the man is after, the man is hunting trolls. The storytelling is similar to Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) and the likes of those, tapes or reels of film or as in this case a hard drive, is found and someone has put the footage on it together as a shocking documentary. The approach is quite good and the shaky camera didn't bother that much as it's done in a fairly smooth way. The movie looks great, the beautiful Norwegian landscape and the trolls are surely a feast for the eyes. I loved the fact that all of the trolls are quite personal in looks, even though they kind of forget the multiple head part after the first troll. The movie is scary at parts, but it's mostly a dark comedy and as such it works great. Especially religion and most of all Christianity gets it's fair share of laughs. Haven't laughed as hard in a long time as in the scene where Hans lures the giant troll away with his car playing religious hymns from the speakers. So the movie has some absolutely brilliant scenes, it's throughout entertaining and fun, it looks and sounds good and it's most of all original, but it's not perfect. There are a few parts that brought the mood down a bit and the movie kind of lost it's track. But I'm not too worried about them, this is so weird and funny movie that it's definitely worth watching and surely good enough as it is.
88%

The paparazzi of paparazzi

Being Michael Madsen (2007)

Well this is an oddball movie. The story is dressed up as a documentary about a paparazzi who claims Michael Madsen has murdered a young woman. Mr. Madsen then hires a documentary crew to dig up any dirt they can from the paparazzi, turning the tables so to say. The story is this movie's best part, raising some quite nice points and being actually quite funny at parts. Too bad not much else seems to work in this one. The cast is quite horrible, and I'm not meaning the people playing themselves but the documentary crew and the paparazzi. They simply can't act. Also the direction seems very lost and the pacing of the movie is quite off. So it's a nice story but sadly it's so badly made that it's quite hard to keep your interest in the movie.
38%

A "documentary" on street art

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Ok first of all street art and graffiti. I hate em. I mean, sure there are some brilliant works that I wouldn't mind seeing every day if possible, but the thing is that there are too many retards who take that whole "the world is my canvas" thing too easily. Then we see these butt ugly "drawings" in every wall and basicly every thing on the streets. I would much rather look at a boring blank wall than a boring wall with ugly scrawls and scribble all around it. So that said lets look at this film. It's very entertaining and very though provoking in a good way. The underlying message this film is bringing out is criticism against commercialising street art. It fails miserably in it as the maker of this film, Banksy, is the highest selling street artist in the world. But that didn't matter at all, as the other and the real underlying message this film gives out is even better. Don't believe everything you see. This is supposed to be a documentary and seeing some reviews of it, people seem to believe it actually is. But this is bullshit, just too many small bits don't add up in it to be believable. And that's what makes it brilliant. You could so easily believe it to be true, but if you look close enough you see the prank is on you. And that raises the point of the documentary format being the modern way of propaganda. Put anything in a convincing documentary format and everyone believes it to be true. Something worth while to think about when you see the next Michael Moore documentary or what ever. Why not whole 100 percent then if it's simply brilliant? Well, there is that thought creeping in that maybe these guys just were trying to say commercialising street art is bad, and nothing more...
90%