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From ZERO to 6 ♥s. 100% ad-free. Run on pure love for movies, documentaries and TV-series. April 2024: Countdown to: Top 10: Best heist movies - Upcoming review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Jack Reacher is summoned by a mass-murder-accused sniper in Pittsburgh, but the horrible crime goes deeper than that ... Dark, good-looking action picture with good actors: German master director Werner Herzog (Die Andere Heimat (2013)) is an evil, cynical villain; Robert Duvall (A Night in Old Mexico (2013)) is good as helper to our hero, and Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day (2002)) is fine, as usual, as an ambitious but uncourageous district attorney. The center is Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)) as our hero Reacher. In a couple of scenes, his self-confidence and nonchalance probably goes farther than is good for himself and the movie, but he still delivers here. Jack Reacher is entertaining, - particularly the Camaro-chase scene, which Cruise did without a stunt driver's help, and the massacre in the beginning are very well-achieved. It is directed by Christopher McQuarrie, whose only other feature directing was on The Way of the Gun (2000). He is now slated to direct Mission: Impossible 5. The film is the first in a series, based on the popular book series by Lee Childs. Reacher came out right along the Sandy Hook Elementary-massacre that shook America to its core and the premiere was therefore delayed. There were hesitations about a sequel, but it seems to be happening now, from the book Never Go Back.
Tom Cruise, the world's greatest movie star, in the Camaro-chase in Christopher McQuarrie's Jack Reacher
Watch the cool trailer here
Budget: 60 mil. $ Box office: 218.3 mil. $ = Big hit What do you think of Jack Reacher?
+3rd Worst Movie of the Year + Most Expensive Flop of the Year
Huge Mars-monsters trying to sell Andrew Stanton's John Carter
John Carter starts well: From the mythic West, with bravado-filmed landscapes, Mr. Carter, who really doesn't want to fight Apache Indians (!), is thrown very mystically to Mars, where another, mythic narrative begins ... - No, unfortunately it does not.
Taylor Kitsch looking at ... no-one knows. In Andrew Stanton's John Carter
Instead on Mars, a silly mash-up of Star Wars, Planet of the Apes and Transformers awaits, with overly powdered 'stars': Taylor Kitsch (Lone Survivor (2013)) and Lynn Collins (The Number 23 (2007)), who plays even less charmingly than he. And the plot is as bad; it seems like a film cut out of a target group template made to forcibly include everyone, but it instead comes out tiring, incredibly boring and about as dumb as corrugated cardboard. Mark Strong (Zero Dark Thirty (2012)) and Dominic West (The Wire (2002-08)) play deadly boring, weirdly costumed, henna-tattooed villains. The good planet in Carter is idiotically named Helium, and the film wallows in violence, but has no sex and is supposed to be family entertainment, but is so boring it is more likely family punishment. After the first hour, the most likable character in John Carter is the monster CGI-dog seen below, and so continues the over-long, romantic western/sci-fi action adventure:
The most likable character of Andrew Stanton's John Carter
Carter is an adaptation project that had lived in Hollywood for decades with different studios and talent involved, before it was finally made into Andrew Stanton's (Finding Nemo (2003)) debacle of a movie, his first live-action feature. The then head of Disney, Rich Ross resigned following the movie which lost a great deal more than 100 mil. $, thus making it spectacular in one, definite way: As a flop. Stanton is getting back to his (much more successful) roots with his next movie, the much anticipated sequel Finding Dory (2016).
The packed to the fullest poster for Timo Vuorensola's Iron Sky
The Nazis fled Earth in 1945 to the dark side of the moon, where they have been planning their invasion ever since. In 2018, the American president unknowingly sends a black male model up there, and so the trouble begins ...
Iron Sky is a very original and consistent satirical universe full of fun misunderstandings and cultural entanglements. Well cast and visually a lot more convincing than one might fear, - actually the visual effects are quite impressive for its pedigree: The film is a partly crowd-funded, mainly Finnish sci-fi comedy. First and foremost, it is the Nazis and the Americans that are ridiculed in Iron Sky, and often very amusingly so, and the keen, underlying barbs towards the Americans are delivered with unmistakably friendly, warm feelings.
There are funny Nazi turns and Julia Dietze and Christopher Kirby quite excellent (and attractive) as the central Nazi/American couple, who find each other on the moon.
Iron Sky is a funny and very unusual science fiction war comedy treat. Its director Timo Vuorensola (Star Wreck: In the Pirkenning, video (2005)) is now attached to an adventure sci-fi-comedy entitled I Killed Adolf Hitler about time-travelers sent to 1927 to kill Hitler! There has also been heavy talk about an Iron Sky sequel, which seems to have found funding now under the title, The Coming Race.
+ Best Spanish movie of the Year + Best Disaster Movie of the Year
Naomi Watts in one of the staggeringly realistic moments of J.A. Bayona's The Impossible
The true story of a family's survival during the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.
Naomi Watts in one of her best performances yet, as the mother in J.A. Bayona's The Impossible
Ewan McGregor (I Love You Philip Morris (2009)) and Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive (2001)), who was Oscar-nominated for her performance, both turn in incredible work in this the definitive movie about the 'impossible' mega-catastrophe that killed more than 230,000 people across several nations. With a fascinating visual side that recreates the disaster in uncanny realism, subdued use of music and brutal reality in terms of the survival on the South-Thai island in the after-wake, the audience is made into sobbing participants in the struggle for unity and survival for the family that we follow. Only the first 20 minutes of the movie could perhaps stand a bit stronger.
Tom Holland and Naomi Watts on a poster for J.A. Bayona's The Impossible
The Impossible is a beautiful, healing film, and the child actors Oaklee Pendergast (Wer (2013)), Samuel Joslin (Paddington (2014)) and Tom Holland (Heart of the Sea (2015)) as the bigger son all play incredibly as well. I have seen the film both in a jam-packed Copenhagen cinema and with Thais in Northern Thailand, and I can attest to its strength across peoples, cultures and borders of all kind. The Impossible is a transcendent, incredible film. The Spanish director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage (2007)) has now also directed a few episodes of Penny Dreadful (2014-) and is also attached to A Monster Calls (2016) and World War Z 2.
Watch the trailer here, devastating in its beauty and tragedy just as the movie is
Budget: 45 mil. $ Box office: 198 mil. $ = Big hit What do you think of The Impossible? If you have any personal stories about the film, please go ahead and share here
'Bad Men Will Bleed' is the tagline of the poster for Kristian Levring's The Salvation
Besides some rather ridiculous earlier attempts, the so-called 'potato westerns', Denmark has never made a real western. - Until now.
Danish post-1864 Denmark/Germany war US settler Jon and his brother Peter are finally met by Jon's beautiful, Danish wife and son after 7 years on different continents. But tragedy immediately strikes in the new, dangerous world, and Jon's revenge is swift. But there follows a bloodshed, which forces him to get more entangled in the small town, ripe with cowardice and bubbling oil ...
The solid script and direction is by Kristian Levring (The King Is Alive (2000)) and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen (The Green Butchers (2003)). The America that is presented here is a uniformly tough place, where greed, cruelty and self-regard reigns, in-line with Danish master filmmaker Lars Von Trier's notoriously America-critical Dogville (2003), (not to speak of follow-up Manderlay (2005) and his musical Dancer in the Dark (2000)), and in this strict focus The Salvation loses a central color of the western, that of the good American. But this is truly an outsider western, more accurately a Euro-western shot in South Africa! It is like a spaghetti western-inspired horse opera, shot digitally and stylistically infused with Sin City (2005) affinity. Salvation is visually impressive, with cool cinematography by Jens Schlosser (The One and Only/Den Eneste Ene (1999)). From the dusty railroad beginning and the following, exciting stage coach scenes, we see classic, well-made western settings. And later the cindered town of the film's gang leader tyrant Delarue is brought to good use as an atmospheric setting more than once. The style is that of a digitally heightened reality, fresh, sharp, simple and handsomely achieved. Complicating the story, - and making for a richer experience, - are some rich secondary characters; Delarue's mute woman played intensely by Eva Green (White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)); Jon's sympathetic, helpful brother Peter played by Mikael Persbrandt (In a Better World (2010)), who seems to be a bit preoccupied with getting his Swedish tongue to sound alternately Danish and Danish-American; and the town's 'yellow' mayor/undertaker, played beautifully by Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)). The Salvation's exciting cast also includes former Manchester United soccer star Eric Cantona as our heavy's right hand man, and Danish popstar Nanna Øland Fabricius, - better known as Oh Land, - who plays Jon's ill-fated wife. Lastly, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Possession (2012)) is good as the self-righteous Delarue. - He liked the movie so much, he's had a tattoo made on his arm of his character's favorite weapon in it! I sort-of understand, because Salvation is a solid good western. The tale is arch-typical and has been done before, yet it still it seems fresh; the Danish settler angle and music (by Kasper Winding (Me and Charly/Mig og Charly (1978)) is different, as is some of the visuals. Though it's shot in South Africa, it looks like the American West. The production is good, and the pacing modern yet graceful. If you are a western-lover, this may very well be your favorite movie this year, however unlikely, it is a Danish western. Rough, violent, with some dark humor and a strong hero in Mads Mikkelsen's (The Hunt (2012)) Jon, who tries to avoid conflict for as long as he can, and is different than any American western hero I can recall, if only because of his look and heritage. SPOILER The title seems to refer to Mikkelsen and Green's outsider renegade characters finding each other and forging a new alliance in their young adopted country (America), which the ending implies will strengthen its people's moral hollowness in extreme wealth (arriving in the form of oil.) - Go see this one!
Mads Mikkelsen as Jon in Kristian Levring's The Salvation
Mads Mikkelsen, co-writer/director Kristian Levring and Eva Green on the set of The Salvation
Budget: 10.5 mil. euros Box office: Not known yet = Still unknown What do you think of The Salvation? Any recent western/s that you want to recommend?
Kevin James as the good-natured teacher Scott Voss on the poster for Frank Coraci's Here Comes the Boom
QUICK REVIEW:
An apathetic biology teacher is outraged, when he learns that the school's music program is being axed due to budgeting. He decides to spearhead turning the development around by fighting in the UFC.
Kevin James carries Frank Coraci's Here Comes the Boom well
Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)) and Gary Valentine, - former colleagues on The King of Queens (1998-2007)), - are fun in Boom, with a sympathetic character for Henry Winkler (Night Shift (1982)) in a story with a lot of heart and a refreshing reality to it. - The money problems that so many have felt the world over especially since the financial crisis came upon us in 2008 aren't dusted under the rug in Boom. James develops into a kind of life coach during the movie, and there are some scenes that just don't work, like the cake-throwing scene in Las Vegas or the stadium singing scene with the You-tube girl phenomenon. Still, Here Comes the Boom is a good (MMA) martial arts dramedy, - a clearly well-meant and very happy film. It is directed by Frank Coraci (The Waterboy (1998)), whose latest, Blended (2014) with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore is struggling to get off the ground right now.
Watch the trailer here
Budget: 42 mil. $ Box office: 73.1 mil. $ = Modest return What do you think of Here Comes the Boom? Are you looking forward to seeing James as Blart again in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)?
+ Best New York Movie of the Year + Best Poster of the Year
The chic, lovely poster for Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha
Frances lives in New York with her 'clone'-friend Sophie, but they might not really be all that similar after all. And there's quite a few other things as well that are not really coming together for Frances lately.
Mickey Sumner and Greta Gerwig in Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha
Greta Gerwig (Greenberg (2010)) really possesses her title character here, - whom she co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, - and does so with a delightful authenticity. The smart lines of the film amuse, - although I'm not charmed by the glib NY-manners. Still, I found myself relating to situation upon situation in the life of Frances. The film has some lovely montages, an original visual expression, - molded in B/W to brush against nouvelle vague and Woody Allen films, - nice music choices, - and Frances at one point delivers an extremely fine, poignant explanation of love. Her dancing around the streets and intersections of New York are certain to make the film a cult hit that will live on. Beautiful, chic and melancholic, Frances Ha was one of the best movies of 2012. Co-writer/director Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming (1995)) made his probably best film yet with The Squid and the Whale (2005), but Frances Ha seems perhaps just as good. Baumbach has several projects in the making; a documentary, an 'untitled public school project' with Gerwig, and a dramedy with Ben Stiller and lots of other good names involved titled While We're Young (2015). Sounding very good...
Los Angeles is ravaged by the Jewish gangster boss Mickey Cohen, but one good police chief wants to get rid of him, and he gets a pertinacious, tough cop to lead the group which is to crush Cohen. Gangster Squad is highly stylized and handsomely produced, but cartoonish in its simplified representation of reality; good vs. bad. Reality yields to action and gore in this forgettable, thoughtless, - but entertaining - shoot-em-up-movie. It is based on true events but takes so many liberties in its storytelling that it is more fiction than historical by any reasonable account. Sean Penn (Mystic River (2003)) goes theatrical with his heavily make-up-created villain. Ryan Gosling (Drive (2011)) not so much plays a character as merely being a sex-steaming model for the film. The macho-picture that is Gangster Squad also mauls over one of its few female roles, Josh Brolin's wife in the movie (Mireille Enos), who only plays functional second banana to the inelegant, stomping picture. It is directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland (2009)), who had to reshoot a scene of a shooting at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood following the Aurora-shooting (during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 people and injured 58). The real-life massacre also changed the trailer and pushed back the release of Gangster Squad by around 6 months. The squad that is the basis of Gangster Squad has also been the basis of another movie, Lee Tamahori's better Mulholland Falls (1996). Since the relative flop of this and Fleischer's movie before it, 30 Minutes or Less (2011), he has reverted to TV gigs for the time being.
Explosive poster for Simon West's The Expendables 2
QUICK REVIEW: The mercenary group of 'expendables' owe money to Church (Bruce Willis (Die Hard (1988)) and therefore take a job, which kills their young sniper. After this, the plot seems like a rehash of some 80's left-overs; a maniac (Jean-Claude Van Damme (Bloodsport (1988)) with plutonium arrives, and there's also the obligatory revenge. Unfortunately, this is a bad sequel to the energetic predecessor. The plot is unexciting and old hat. Mickey Rourke has vanished from the group without explanation, and instead we get an uncharismatic Chinese woman (Nan Yu (Beijing Love Story (2014)) and a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator (1984))-Bruce Willis-Chuck Norris (The Delta Force (1986)) interplay, which unfortunately just isn't very cool. They babble post-modernistic-style around old lines and other action movie references, which almost only works to blow even more air into an already floating construction, this rather bizarre gathering of action star veterans.
Front-man Sylvester Stallone (Rocky (1976)) has said that he thinks this film is much better than the first one, which only shows how wrong the person behind movies can often be about their own creations. - Right around now, he is telling folks in Cannes that with Expendables 3, - hitting cinemas everywhere in August, - they really got it right ... Well, we'll see about that. Simon West (Con Air (1997)) directed The Expendables 2, which was biggest outside of the US, and particularly in China, where it beat The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spiderman with a stunning 54 mil. $ in its first 35 days there. Trivia about the film includes that a stunt man got killed during its long location shoot in Bulgaria, where the film was also sued and fined for environmental damage in the cave seen in the film, where scores of endangered bats apparently died due to the production. West's next film will be a Jason Statham-starring movie called Wild Card (2014).
Tasteless? - Oh yes. The Expendables 2 last supper advertising gimmick
Watch the trailer for the film here, which looks a lot more exciting than the actual film is
Watch the teaser currently out for The Expendables 3 here
Budget: 100 mil. $ Box office: 311.9 mil. $ = Big hit What do you think of the first two Expendables films? Are you looking forward to the coming third chapter?
+ Best Breakthrough of the Year: Ryan Gosling + Best Melodrama of the Year + Best Romance of the Year + Best Screen Couple of the Year: Ryan Gosling & Rachel McAdams + Best South Carolina Movie of the Year
A delicate, sensual poster for Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook
The Notebook is an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember (1999)) novel by American director Nick Cassavetes (John Q (2002)), the son of great American actor-director John Cassavetes (Faces (1968)) and actress Gena Rowlands (A Woman Under the Influence (1974)). It's a story of socially awkward love, as a belle of the high society falls for a lower class working country boy. Their relationship ends by orders of her family, and years pass by, in which he fights in WWII, and she gets engaged to another fine gentleman. The story is told in a frame about an old man, who reads the story to an old lady in the present day in the nursing home where she resides. She has dementia, and by and by, we realize SPOILER that they are the two main characters of the 'story', which is the story of their lives and their strong love.
From the get-go, - a visually breathtaking boating sequence during the title credits, - The Notebook is a swooning, wildly emotional movie. It is securely placed in the melodrama genre and feels comfortable there, without any tinges of irony, elements that are unrelated to the story, or even scenes that do not completely flow with the general, extrovert emotionality of the film. Things are written OUT, and the lines are big, - the characters never hold back. Visually as well, the team go all out, as with the romantic boating scene amongst hundreds of white ducks. This brings a level of unreality to the film at times. As with the facts that Noah (Ryan Gosling (The Place Beyond the Pines (2012))) writes 365 (no more, no less (!)) letters to his love. Or that they are away from each other 7 (!) years, (but obviously haven't aged more than a few days. - This could perhaps have just been 3 years...?) I swallowed these very minor reservations, because the film makes you do that and just go along and love it for what it is, - but totally real, The Notebook doesn't feel. The performances of the two leads hooked me early: Gosling and Rachel McAdams (Morning Glory (2010)) are young and vivacious and sparks fly between them, as they command our attention to them wholeheartedly. There's real movie magic going on in The Notebook in their scenes, which gives us a wonderful, believable, impulsive romance that sweeps us away. The fine cast also includes, playing 'third violin', a good James Marsden (X-Men 2 (2003)). And Cassavetes has cast his own mom, Rowlands to portray the aged, demented Allie, a part which is perfect for her, and she is strikingly beautiful throughout and really made that whole frame-story work for me. Her deeply human face and empathy once again draws you to her.
James Garner and Gena Rowlands in Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook
In other very good supporting roles, Sam Shepard (Mud (2012)) and Joan Allen (Pleasantville (1998)) are solid. The Notebook is bereft of monsters and tough villains, which is liberating. It is an honest and wonderful love story with a beautiful, touching ending. Let yourself enjoy this one; it is a very fine movie and a modern romance classic.
The details: The style of The Notebook is an impressive, well-crafted mix that almost instantly brings back memories of the Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life (1959)) melodramas of the 50's. One also thinks of Gone With the Wind (1939), yet often the camera does move in closer, so that the style never seems dated but still remains modern and fresh. The costumes, hair, production and location work is top notch. Just look at McAdams in this picture and try not to get carried away to long lost times:
Rachel McAdams is a joy to the eyes and ears in Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook
Rowlands, who made her TV-debut in 1954, amazingly, is still in movies; Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (2014) being the coming attraction. Cassavetes has earned tremendous box office but critical disregard for his latest, the vulgar chick flick The Other Woman (2014). His next project will be the real-life period drama Kentucky Rhapsody. Gosling has premiered his directing debut, Lost River (2014) these days in Cannes to boos, ridicule and scattered praise. Cannes verdicts are notoriously unreliable, though, as with Nicholas Winding Refn's Gosling-starring Only God Forgives (2013), which critics chewed up and spat out last year, but which is really a great film.
