Field78 Reviews

Oppenheimer (I) (2023)

Biopic, history lesson and morality tale all in one, made by a megaton of talent

[10/10 · 25 July 2023]

Christopher Nolan's movies are among the best ever made, be it his Dark Knight Trilogy, gritty and trope-challenging crime operas that happen to have superheroes in them, or his science-fiction movies like Inception and Interstellar, which are though-provoking, yet still with the required amusement factor for the blockbuster audience. His last sci-fi movie, Tenet, was as high concept as ever, but also complex to a fault, and somewhat lacking a heart to win over the big crowds. But even though every movie that Nolan makes is big, he tends to alternate between something more mainstream (for lack of a better term) and something that feels a bit smaller and more personal. And though it tackles big themes, few of his movies feel so personal as Oppenheimer.

In the beginning, it may feel a bit confusing why Nolan keeps moving back and forth in time, but as soon as we are pulled into the narrative, it becomes clear that the emotional core is formed by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer being interrogated in a private hearing. It is the scaffolding for a series of flashbacks that illustrate the topics that are being discussed, from the doctor's beginnings as a promising but clumsy student, to the man who saved America, to an enemy of the state who had to be silenced for not walking in sync with the political climate at the time. At the surface, the movie is a re-telling of a decisive moment in human history, and it is easy to see why the parallels with today's situation makes it such a suitable subject: the ease with which allies can change into enemies; governments eagerly exploiting those with opposite ideas when they are needed, but disposing of them when they stop being useful; and people getting cancelled by labeling their views too liberal or socialist.

On another level, Oppenheimer is also a biopic of a man who is brilliant yet also flawed, with many talents and an almost annoying lack of vanity. Apart from his brilliance, his biggest talent is eschewing his own ego by bringing other great minds together on the Manhattan project. He is also a womaniser who has trouble being a family man and a faithful husband, is sometimes too honest, and can step on the wrong toes, like those of his counterpart, Senator Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). Cillian Murphy, Nolan's secret weapon in their sixth collaboration, is great as the man who understands the necessity of what he is inventing, yet is also realistic enough to know where he should stop. None of his shortcomings makes him in any way bad or unqualified, but those are grounds to be silenced even today, especially if one's political views can be easily taken out of context.

Nolan skillfully films Oppenheimer's narrative in color, and switches to black-and-white when showing Strauss' side. Which brings us to the third layer within the movie, as a carefully crafted morality tale. For a seemingly simple story about a country at war with ruthless enemies, and scientists being asked to help invent a solution, the film shows that the science and decision-making was not driven by intellect, but more often than not frought with human shortcomings such as pride, resentment, egoism, desires and revulsion. The great thing is that both sides of the drama get ample time and exposure, so that we see why these people do what they did, with the judgment left to the viewer. We are drawn into the movie so well that we can emotionally understand that no one at the time knew the outcome of the morel dilemma, so basically no one's actions were clearly wrong or right; it is only in hindsight that our minds can decide that.

In selling the drama, it certainly helps that everyone wants to work with Nolan: even the smallest parts are filled with great artists, from Florence Pugh as the strong-willed mistress, David Krumholz as a scientist with a clear moral compass, to Downey Jr. As an unforgettable two-faced politician, an achievement that should get him Oscar gold.

A movie with so many perspectives, topics and timeframes could have easily become a top-heavy mess, and some sides could have been underplayed, but due to a great script, clear direction and skillfull editing, we never get lost in one big jumble of timelines and characters. The makers thoroughly manage to turn it into a great thriller drama in which all the pieces fall into place until the final shot, while still keeping the audience intellectually engaged, captivated and amused throughout the entire 3-hr runtime. And that work of precision may be the biggest achievement of all. Please bring out the Oscars!

(R)Evolutie (2021)

Sci-fi with the subtlety of a sledgehammer

[5/10 · 24 April 2022]

Time and again, Dutch moviemakers think they can play Hollywood's game, but whatever comes out feels like a decent attempt at best, and a bad copy at worst. (R)Evolutie is a valid attempt to make a serious Dutch science fiction movie, which is something I applaud, in between all the romcoms, WWII movies and an occasional auteur film that make up 92% of our output these days.

However, when it comes to presenting a vision of a smothering and tightly controlled future, it is clear that Eddy Terstall is better at writing contemporary Dutch dramas (check his masterpiece 'Simon'), and that he and the other writers have a few things to learn about thought-provoking moral dillemas. They can be forgiven for taking the best ideas of Gattaca, Transcendance, I Robot and Black Mirror and putting them into a Dutch blender. But what those movies have in common is that they present a utopia that looks at least superficially tempting; that is flawed to a degree where immediately rejecting it would be hard, so most people just go along with it. (R)Evolutie shows us a future Netherlands in which no sane Dutch person would want to live, because the warnings about the dangers of technology are not subtly weaven throughout the story; the message is pretty much projected directly into our eyes from 10 ft high neon signs, and bashed into our heads with a hammer.

Genetic manipulation of your progeny? The perfect baby is within reach: just choose which three cancers you want to eliminate (you pay extra for more, and if not, you just sell your house). Refusing is almost considered a felony in the movie, since the only perceived downside is apparently that your kids will outthink you by age 5. Everyone has a personal robot called Alecto that knows a frighting lot about her owners; she will do what's best for them even if they disagree, or force them to have a meeting with the kitchen appliances. The fact that Angela Schijf plays her like how a child would play a robot (including silly walk and weird intonation) makes me wonder why people would allow such a creep in their homes; if the future is really advanced enough to make her look exactly like a human, they could make her sound and move closely like one too.

The deeper message is that those who refuse this kind of invasive technology or tampering with nature (called 'naturalists') are considered worse than terrorists, and the police can apparently just apprehend and intimidate those suspected of sympathizing with hilarious threats like "let's torture them for information". This movie should really have been about how personal robots could have gained so much power over humans (shouldn't they be programmed against that?), or how people would have ever allowed such widespread genetic engineering or shredding of our constitution, including our freedom of speech.

Granted, not all is bad. The best scenes are between Alecto and Dr. Stefan, where the robot can instantly tell every physical ailments, but also explain complex human emotions better than humans themselves can. It's one of the few times where the depiction of future feels darkly realistic instead of childishly simplistic. This movie asks some tough philosophical questions, but answers most of them with a simple 'yes' or 'no' instead of a complex dialogue.

The Hand of God (2021)

Beautiful looking pastiche of emotions, but lacks the hand of a storywriter

[6/10 · 11 January 2022]

Having seen four of Paolo Sorrentino's movies now, I have finally and regrettably seen enough to admit that I am not a fan of his work. For some reasons, his movies don't engage me enough emotionally to care. Le conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love) was an interesting look into the life of a man with a dark secret, but I believed that it would have worked better as a character study if the revelation at the end had come earlier in the movie. I liked Youth better, a modest and entertaining contemplation of ageing, even though as a 40-something, it didn't fully move me either.

His celebrated La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) was voted Best Movie of the Year by many, but it left me puzzled, as I saw little more than short vignettes about Roman life without much of an overall encompassing idea, story thread or theme. I watched it again to make sure that I didn't miss anything, but my response was largely the same: lots of eye candy with little nutritional value for the mind. And that is probably no coincidence, because I have the same problems and more with The Hand of God.

I know that Sorrentino's work is quite beloved and that many people probably enjoyed or will enjoy this film as a lovingly disarming portrait of family and tragedy, wrapped around a coming-of-age story. Good for them, because what I unfortunately saw again was a too loosely connected series of scenes that emotion-wise go all over the place, and felt more like numerous short films tacked together than a sincere chronicle. It took me almost half the movie to get a grip on the many family members who Sorrentino loves to present with all their peculiarities, but most of these characters are merely one-dimensional charicatures with a social or physical handicap who don't get the screen time needed to get emotionally invested in them. This would have been okay if this had been a broad comedy or even a crude farce about a dysfunctional family, but I simply didn't find it that funny. Although some scenes elicited a smile, none of them are exactly laugh out loud, and since they didn't really connect or reinforced one another, I saw little progress in the story.

When the big plot development happens in the second half, things started to look more promising for a while. But even here, Sorrentino barely uses the plot elements at his disposal to pull at some heartstrings. Every time something seems ready to be fleshed out, we cut to a completely different scene where we can enjoy the great locations and photography or another weird character, but instead of depth, it adds yet another new shade to a canvas that is already full of a wide variety of colored spots. I failed to see a bigger picture, to my regret.

Sorrentino is clearly more of a moodpainter than a good storyteller, and that is apparently what a lot of viewers love about his movies. I remember the most famous scene from Youth where Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel watch in dumbstruck awe as a beautiful young and naked woman enters their swimming pool, and Hand of God has a similar scene with Aunt Patrizia that elicits a similar mix of sensations, somewhere between awkwardness and lustful ecstasy. So for those who also loved La Grande Bellezza for its colorful mix of emotions and sensations, go and watch it. For the rest, I would recommend the Italian classic Cinema Paradiso, a deeply moving coming of age story that did work for me, or even Disney's Encanto for a truly funny and heartwarming story about dysfunctional families.

Benedetta (2021)

The Gospel According to Paul Verhoeven

[7/10 · 3 November 2021]

Dutch grandmaster Paul Verhoeven has never made a secret of his very ambiguous attitude towards religion, often comparing it to a mass-delusion shared by the majority of the world. However, he has also admitted to his fascination with faith on numerous occassions, and in his movies, religious allegories are never far away: from Alex Murphy in RoboCop seemingly walking on water, to a catholic cross used to trap someone in a coffin in Blackbook.

Religious visions had already played a prominent part in Verhoeven's Dutch classic The Fourth Man and his American debut Flesh + Blood, but Benedetta is his first foray into organized religion as a setting for a full movie. Though based on a book about a real historic figure, Benedetta is far from a simple biopic. We learn enough of the life of the titular character, but Verhoeven is far more interested in exploring our human shortcomings, and one question in particular: to what extent can people really surrender to faith, and all the rules and regulations that come with their system of belief?

The cynic side of his vision is pretty clear in the beginning, when we learn that a religious order is just like any other business model, only accepting novices for financial compensation; their laws, standards and knowledge seem arbitrary and without any logical basis (usually in favor of men); and independent girls who display too much of a critical opinion about religious rules are quickly silenced. While sister Benedetta (Virginie Efira, who played the neighbor in Verhoeven's 'Elle') suddenly receives a series of visions of Jesus, it makes her believe that she was meant to lead, rather than just blindly follow her superiors. And the sudden arrival of the young and handsome novice Bartolomea strongly challenges her views and former teachings.

Both events serve as story catalysts that severely upset the order of things: Benedetta has always been thaught that lust, especially for another woman, is sinful, but when the free-spirited Bartolomea shows her the carnal pleasures, it is clear that such beliefs don't go very deep. Verhoeven almost revels in showing that some of the higher-ups in the church aren't very strict with there vows either, especially when these don't serve their self-interests. But when Benedetta's miracles and inexplicable acts elevate her standing at the expense of others, it becomes clear how easily some people can hold on to ruling dogmas and regulations as long as they believe that these serve the common good; but as soon as these threaten their own power, status and desires, all religious charity and love for the fellow man go out of the window, and sinful human shortcomings such as jealousy, pride and greed quickly take over.

Verhoeven introduces yet another one of his strong but flawed protagonists, by making Benedetta a woman who manages to rally other people to her cause, in spite of the anti-feminist sentiments of the era. He shows that even though the divine may be largely a physical and mental illusion, the power of religion isn't necessarily evil, and can be used for good. At the same time, his Benedetta is definitely no saint: he explicitly allows for the possibility that her miracles are partially manipulated. However, he cleverly doesn't answer the question whether she truly believes that God is using her body for his works, or that she is knowingly manipulating everyone from the start under the pretense of piety.

As expected, production design and cast are great. Virginie Efira can easily sell her naive character, but we still believe that there can be a calculated demeanor under that. Daphne Patakai is amazing in a very brave role as the whirlwind Bartolomea, and Lambert Wilson is just the right guy to play a pompous and self-serving church leader. Possibly the best work comes from Charlotte Rampling as the abbess, whose moral ambiguity seeps through best; she can believably switch between a money-hungry leader, ruthless opportunist and devout believer, even within scenes.

After his more subtle movie 'Elle', Verhoeven is back to his old trade: all the animalistic sides of human beings, like sex, violence, blood, feces, rape and torture, are amply represented. Some people seem to get hung up by the almost 1980s-grade amounts of nudity that they believe takes away from the feminist undertones, but the man himself has made it clear during the film's promotion that there is (and should be) nothing abnormal about sexuality and nudity in films about the human condition. Indeed, he doesn't hold back in that regard, with the creative use of a Maria statue as the film's most memorable moment. Verhoeven, always the provocateur, seems to openly challenge the contemporary negative attitude towards sex in movies, as if to say that we shouldn't be so squeemish about a bit of skin, or reduce a movie simply to the amount of naked women in it. And indeed, after some initial awkwardness in the audience, I felt that most viewers gradually went with it.

Despite all the Verhoeven ingredients being present, I don't feel that this is another one of his masterpieces, though. Where he normally has a brisk pacing and keen sense of dosing, the first half meanders a bit because there is a lot of set-up to be done. Another complication is that Benedetta's visions are depicted in an almost B-movie kind of way, which is almost unintentionally comical. The second half is where the slowly built-up conflict pays off, and although the movie doesn't have as many memorable scenes as some of his classics, one nasty torturing scene and a riveting climax surely make it an experience you will not soon forget.

This is an adequately made morality tale in the vein of The Name of the Rose, highly recommended for people who are interested in history and religion, and for fans of Paul Verhoeven.

Cargo (2009)

Cargo makes great use of space - in more than one way

[7/10 · 27 May 2021]

This being a non-Hollywood low-budget science fiction movie, it is the kind of film that one is generally made aware of by positive word-of-mouth rather than a large-scale marketing scheme. That also makes it easier to manage expectations, because CARGO has plenty to offer, without redefining or contributing much new to an old genre.

My absolute favorite part of CARGO is its cold and disconnected atmosphere, mainly due to the excellent production design, photography, acting and the intricate sound design. If there ever was a sci-fi movie that really sold the world it is set in, this would be the one. We are aboard the cargo ship Kassandra for most of the film, and it looks, sounds and almost feels extremely realistic. The bleak industrial design and dark corridors imply a corporate future that is unconcerned with esthetics and its employees' safety and well-being. The cast is unknown to me, but their subdued performances really sell the harsh realism of this bleak future. And it is very refreshing to see a sci-fi movie actually spoken in German (rather than dubbed), to show us that not only Britons, Irish and North-Americans get to go into space and encounter problems there.

The photography employs the right amount of lighting in wide, steady shots, to adequately sell an increasing sense of loneliness and paranoia. Coupled with the film's soundtrack, it makes a feast for the senses: with the constant humming of the engines, loud banging of machinery and every sound echoing through the interior, it has rarely been so easy to believe that we're in a spaceship. The ethereal score also adds greatly to one of the best atmosperes and sound ambiences I've experienced in the genre.

The atmospheric highlight of the film is the ship's huge cargo hold, where the protagonists investigate a weird phenomenon that kicks off the plot. Most ship-in-space movies try to use the claustrophobia factor, but this one successfully employs a nearly crippling sense of agoraphobia. The cargo hold is a massive space, dark, cold and snowy, with enormous cubical containers that periodically shift place. Largely rendered in meticulous CGI, it oozes with an almost palpable sense of dread, for fear of falling, getting lost, or simply becoming overwhelmed by its nearly unfathomable nothingness. This applies even more to the huge space station near the film's end, where we really experience a human's puniness, isolation and insignificance in the vast reaches of cold space.

The basic premise of a sparsely populated freight ship in space is of course borrowed from the classic ALIEN, and it is used with surprising efficiency. Those familiar with these kinds of movies know that something will happen during the journey that will jeopardize the mission and/or decimate the crew, but CARGO fortunately isn't interested in little green men or creepy monsters (to the disappointment of some, no doubt). Especially near the finale, the ultimate horror is personified much more by the feeling of being displaced and left out so far from our familiar Earth than by a very present physical adversary. It was here where I noticed very pleasant parallels with Danny Boyle's SUNSHINE or Alphonso Cuaron's GRAVITY. As James Cameron once put it, "the most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent."

That is also the movie's weak point. When its central themes and plot twists are revealed, we easily recognize heavy inspiration from classics like Blade Runner, The Matrix, Silent Running and the aforementioned Alien. The film brings up a few potentially interesting existential questions that give food for though, but it unfortunately doesn't linger too much on these potentially thought-provoking elements as it could have. In the end, the movie's style and appearance easily overshadow its narrative and subtext, and the film's special effects, though impressive for the modest budget, vary in quality enough for Hollywood to not have to worry yet.

So no new classic, but I applaud this good attempt to make a film within a genre that large film industries usually have a monopoly on. The makers show that they have a firm grasp on visual storytelling without making it look amateurish, and I wonder what they could do with a really inventive story. There is an English dub of this movie, but I believe that kind of defeats the purpose of seeing other cultures struggle in space. Whatever the choice, be sure to watch and listen to it in HD for a magnificent home theatre experience.

The East (2020)

A decent attempt to tackle a dark page in history

[7/10 · 20 May 2021]

History is not without its dark patches. With territorial expansion and a worldwide trade that turned the Dutch 17th century into a Golden Age (a term that is already becoming controversial in itself), there also came slavery, colonial subjugation and bloody struggles for independence. Making these topics debatable in history lessons and political arenas is essentialy a good thing: the Germans seem to have no problem with tackling the sins of the past in their art, judging by great movies like Der Untergang (The Downfall), Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others) and Werk Ohne Autor (Never Look Away). Acknowledging a dark past is a cathartic experience, and the more we embrace our mistakes, the less likely we are to repeat them.

Still, the euphemistically called 'politional actions' in colonial Indonesia have remained an underexposed area for years. Director Jim Taihuttu righteously noticed the dozens of war movies full of brave Dutch resistance fighters, but a near-complete lack of movies about the role of the Netherlands in the Indonesian Revolution. The fact that controversy arose before and after this movie was released already underscores how painful this topic still is. So the big question is: can the first movie about it do both justice to the sensitivity of the subject, as well as the complexity of the situation?

In the best tradition of movies based on historic events, we follow a fictional character who draws the audience into an unknown world. In this case, Johan, a young man burdened by the recently ended war and his father's part in it as a German collaborator. Hoping to wipe the slate clean, he volunteers to go to the East Indies and get control back from nationalist terrorist groups. His regiment is full of ideas of colonial superiority, and determined to bring back civilization to this backward country, but they soon find out that they are stuck in a routine of guard duties, long marches and preparing for battles against enemies they rarely get to see.

The first half of the movie has a pleasantly authentic feeling to it. The soldiers are a diverse group of young men from all over the Netherlands, and not just Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague. Taihuttu doesn't pull his punches when he depicts them realistically to the point of being wildly racist, and when they battle their boredom with alcohol, frequenting prostitutes and starting fights in local bars. The mood is almost the same as the one we know from many Vietnam movies, including the horrible plight of the locals who are forced to pick a side, and then have to be prepared for the retaliation of the other , and how traumatized Dutch soldiers were not exactly welcomed back as heroes. However, this part of the movie starts to meander a bit without a real conflict, so a welcome bit of drama is injected when Raymond Westerling, or "the Turk" (Marwan Kenzari) makes his entrance.

In contrast to the ofther officers who show very little motivation to take actions that could actually amount to anything, the Turk has a hands-on approach to deal with hostiles that may be in a morally grey area, but it actually produces results. Johan follows this man with great zeal, until he gets to a point where the Turk's actions get harder and harder to defend. It was a good idea to cast Martijn Lakemeier as Johan, as he is best known for playing a young fledgling WW2 freedom fighter in Oorlogswinter (Winter in Wartime) where he has to make some tough choices. We can totally see him to the same in Indonesia, and get into an inner conflict when the things he does there are not too different from what the Nazis did in the Netherlands.

However, the role of the Turk is the movie's greatest blessing as well as its biggest curse. The story is clearly moving towards presenting a moral dilemma for both Johan and the viewer, but because we see the Turk's platoon use harsh methods (almost to the point of getting repetitious) that are still branded "war crimes" by many to this day, it is not really a dilemma. Critics have indeed argued that Indonesian guerilla groups also did many horrible things that sometimes surpassed the cruelty of the Dutch army, and many locals were happy that the Dutch responded in kind. However, the makers seem to want to keep the sympathy primarily with the Indonesians (perhaps a condition for being allowed to film there?). In the first half, we ocassionally see some of the atrocities done by the terrorists, but the crimes of the "belandas" (Dutch people) get much more exposure, especially towards the end. I really don't mind seeing Dutch people as "the bad guys"; it is disturbingly easy to get dragged into that kind of group behavior. However, I also think that moral ambiguity works much better if there is more balance in how the two warring factions are depicted.

What also starts to work against the movie is the framing story, where Johan is back in the Netherlands and finds it difficult to adapt to normal life. These scenes are interspersed with the main events of 1946, and in an ideal back-and-forth structure, the two storylines reinforce each other, but here, we don't really see the point of the framing story until the very end. Granted, the last scene is shockingly effective, but the impact is somewhat diminished by the Tarantino-esque choice of music during the final shot.

There are still enough moments were the movie works. There is little to none of the cheesiness that often plagues Dutch movies that try to tackle serious subject matter; the performances are good throughout, as are the production values (due to filming on location in Indonesia). There is one great scene in particular where Johan asks a fellow soldier, an Indonesian, why he is fighting against his countrymen. The answer is that he is not: Indonesia is a country full of different peoples at odds with each other, and the Dutch simply treat it as one country. I wished there were more of these scenes where the complex situation is captured so beautifully in a single conversation.

One critic called this movie a 3/5 star film, but he gave it 4 out of 5 stars, just for sheer boldness of finally committing this sordid history on film. I partially agree with that statement, yet I believe that making an 'important movie' does not discharge the makers from telling a balanced story. This was a more than adequate film, but I keep wondering if it would have worked better as a mini-series that had more time to explore both sides of the conflict. But other films like Soldaat van Oranje, Riphagen and De Tweeling were also eventually re-edited as mini-series, so who knows?

The Disappointments Room (2016)

The title describes the living room where I watched this abomination

[3/10 · 26 February 2021]

See if this synopsis sounds familiar: Dana and David Barrow have moved with their son Lucas to a house on the countryside to re-start their lives. Dana, who is an architect, is looking forward to redecorate their new living, but before long, something feel amiss. She seems to be seeing ghosts in the house, which initially is quickly dismissed as her having violent hallucinations from a recent loss, but then she discovers that the house has a sordid history, one that may come and haunt her and her family.

Everyone who has ever seen movies with haunted houses or families struggling with grief can see that they put The Woman in Black, The Sixth Sense, The Grudge, Antichrist, Poltergeist and The Orphanage into a blender for this film. One scene in particular with a boy and a creepy girl in a hallway seems directly lifted from the mother of all haunted house movies, The Shining. Now that could be seen as a respectful homage, but where some filmmakers like J.J. Abrams can combine elements from other movies into something exciting that at least feels fresh, the makers of this jumbled mess of clichés from better movies only produced a bland concoction with a bad aftertaste.

This cannot be pinned on one faulty element in particular, as the lazy script by D.J. Caruso and Wenthworth MIller, Caruso's uninspired direction and the extremely messy editing all carry a big part of the blame for why this movie feels so disjointed and meaningless. It is no secret that big chunks of the movie were edited out (explaining a meager running time of 91 minutes), and it shows. The story sets up several plot points that are simply abandoned later in the movie: for example, there is a subplot featuring a boy, a cat and a big dog that is solely used for cheap shocks and manipulated emotion, because it plays no role in the resolution of the story whatsoever.

All that happens seems to be in service of predictable scenes that aren't tense or suspenseful, since they lack a steady hand in direction, and everything can be seen coming from miles away. It all culminates in a ridiculous dinner scene that should have been the pay-off from previously established emotions and storylines, but since so much information and character development seems missing, it fails miserably. And it is topped only by a 'finale' that is so laughably weak, abrupt and unsatisfying that it gives new meaning to the term 'anti-climax'. As if writers and director couldn't come up with a good ending, so they didn't bother to write one, and just skipped to the end credits.

Kate Beckinsale is at the center of the story, and at least she does a decent effort to keep the viewers interested, something which can't be said of Mel Raido as David, whose wooden performance almost resembles an alien trying to do an impression of a human. Lucas Till's only reason for being here seems to create unease, and he also disappears from the story before he can do something meaningful. If there is some praise, it goes to the photography and the music, which both give the movie some edge over other B-horror movies.

Really a missed opportunity for D.J. Caruso, who has shown with Taking Lives and Disturbia that he could make a suspenseful movie.

Monster Hunter (2020)

Surprisingly good, considering it's another game adaptation from P. W. Anderson

[8/10 · 10 December 2020]

Big movie versions of popular games remain a difficult genre, given that it is still impossible to interactively draw the audience into a story in ways that a game can, but it hasn't stopped Hollywood from trying. Despite a relatively consistent lack of artistic recognition, the prospect of game fans forming a large paying audience for the movie adaptation is simply to hard to resist.

I guess you could call Paul W. Anderson somewhat of an expert in the field, since he was the one to bring Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil and Alien vs Predator to the big screen. Yes, I know, AvP was more of a movie franchise crossover (but in all fairness, it was a game franchise long before it became a movie). And yes, there was and still is a lot of hate for what Anderson has done, even though some of his adaptations are about the only ones that have been financially successful (and thus must have their fair share of fans).

I'm in two minds about his work: I can enjoy Mortal Kombat as an amusing special-effect-camp B-movie, and for the same reasons, I appreciate especially some of his later Resident Evil movies (the first two remain bad in my opinion); I was okay with the forgettable Soldier, Death Race, The Three Musketeers and Pompeii. Event Horizon and AvP really got panned by critics and audiences alike at the time, even though I really liked them, but both currently enjoy a surprising amount of cult success. Nevertheless, I recognize the weaknesses in Anderson's movies: he can film some decent action scenes, but he isn't the best writer of stories or dialogues. Nor does he have a nose for acting talent: the casting and direction of his (usually cheap and mediocre) actors often provides ample targets for ridicule (yes, that's you, Kiefer Sutherland ridiculously trying to emulate Jeremy Irons in Pompeii).

So I went into Monster Hunter with the expectation of another forgettable creature feature with some amusing action sequences at best. But to my pleasant surprise, this is one of his best efforts at writing and filming, because for once he doesn't waste a lot of time with nonsensical plot developments, contrived character depth and forced laughs. In fact, he keeps the plot pleasantly basic, with a team being dragged into a parallel world full of dangers, and not much else in the form of unnecessary plot embellishments.

Some find the story seriously lacking but I wasn't bothered by it at all, since it basically unfolds automatically as Milla Jovovich (aka Mrs Anderson) takes us on an adventurous journey of exploration of this strange world, where the danger can come from both monsters and its human inhabitants. No endless clunky expository dialogue, no scenery-chewing villains who are endlessly monologuing; just show, don't tell: we get dropped into the action and have to learn the rules as we go. Sure, it's still a basic pulp novella (or game script) where stock characters are as easily introduced as they are dispatched as moster bait, most of the characters chase MacGuffins that get a minimum of explanation, and the ending has more sequel hooks than your average super hero or slasher franchise, but I wasn't bored for a second. The cinematography of the locations also looks breathtaking, making me often wonder where such places can be found on Earth.

What little plot there is forms enough scaffolding for a lot of action that looks surprisingly convincing, given the amount of CGI that was undoubtedly necessary to bring the huge monsters to life (and appropriately yucky, considering that it received the highest rating in many countries). Don't put too much faith in reviews that say that the effects look fake, and that the action scenes are blurry due to a lot of shaky cam and choppy editing. There is a lot of kinetic action, big monster brawls as well as some martial arts (no surprise with Tony Jaa in the cast), but in all of them, I had a reasonable overview of what happened. There is not a lot of dialogue, so the cast doesn't have to rely on clunky lines. Jovovich impresses with a lot of stunt work that (I assume) must have left her bruised and battered, and gives a decent performance for a change (but she is like a female Schwarzenegger for me; I'm never really bothered by her lack of acting skills).

This all results in a movie that is spectacular and even tense at times, with some well-planned action scenes and even some black humor rather than the cringeworthy comic relief from some of Anderson's previous movies. For those who like big-budget sci-fi pulp such as Stargate and John Carter, I can highly recommend watching this on the big screen. Especially with 4DX.

Unhinged (I) (2020)

Unhinged, adjective. Meaning: unbalanced. A lot like this movie

[5/10 · 20 July 2020]

There's nothing wrong a decent thriller where two people face off on the road using their wits and their heavy machinery. So this movie could have been the Duel (1971) of the 2020s (or at the very least a Joy Ride (2001)), but unfortunately, it lacks a director like Steven Spielberg or John Dahl to make it work.

After a shocking opening scene, director Derrick Borte starts off nicely with a disturbing montage that shows us the horrible consequences of explosive aggression and road rage. For a long time, his movie seems to be a passionate plea to have more patience and compassion with others in a harsh society where everyone is under constant pressure, because you never know what the other person is going through. Too bad that he gradually undermines this message with cheap shocks and sadistic violence.

It's good to see Russell Crowe again after such a long absence, because watching his heavily disturbed maniac snap and terrorize a lady that just happened to piss him off is definitely one of the scarce highlights of the film. No Oscar material, but the man is still an acting heavyweight (no pun intended... well, maybe a little), so much so that leading lady Caren Pistorius cannot hope to carry this movie in his presence. In fact, her character is so passive and uninteresting that I felt very little sympathy for her plight. I don't know if it was the intention here, but I always love movies where you cheer for the bad guy for a very long time, like Face-Off and Law Abiding Citizen; everyone loves tragic villains, and you always hope that the makers can delay that moment where you lose sympathy for them until the very last.

Unfortunately, this moment comes way too soon in the movie. In the first half we get some motivation from Crowe's and Pistorius' character for their actions, but that wears off quickly in an endless rampage that seems to be an excuse for a lot of torture porn. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that, as long as you keep developing your key players. Especially psychopaths work best when they remain completely unexplained mysteries, or when they get fleshed out properly, like the psychologic-meltdown classic Falling Down. However, Crowe and Pistorius never get beyond their minimal and one-dimensional backstories. When the bad guy gets to the point where I no longer rooted for him (again, way too soon), you hope that your allegiance changes back to the heroine. But Pistorius' character keeps making such bad decisions (up to and including a laughably set up climax) that by that time, I no longer cared about either, and could only worry about the collateral damage.

Too bad for Crowe and Jimmi Simpson, who probably have one of the best scenes together when this movie is still promising. But the pressure to marry action with psychology, and to increase the stakes with such disregard for realism really starts working against the film and characters. I don't mind violence in movies at all, but it should make me invest in characters, not get desensitized and bored.

I like a good battle of character like everyone else, but when the action and suspense start feeling stale because I'm no longer emotionally engaged, then it's just mostly a waste of time. But granted, it's not a complete disaster and it had its moments. I hear people praising this movie as super-suspenseful, so by all means, try it out. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Domino (I) (2019)

This would be laughable if it weren't so tragic!

[3/10 · 16 July 2020]

Oh my God, I knew that Brian de Palma had gradually sunk into mediocrity during the 2000s, even more so than colleague and friend Francis Ford Coppola, but this movie is rock-bottom, almost Battlefield Earth-style. I also knew that production of this movie was plagued by budget issues and technical problems, but that doesn't excuse a horribly bad screenplay and direction from the man who gave us stylish classics like Dressed to Kill and Scarface.

I can seen past setting the movie in Denmark and letting the largely Danish cast speak English. For the rest: let's grab the movie sin counter:

• Criminally underdeveloped and unmotivated main characters.
• Horribly one-dimensional baddies with stereotypical ethnicity.
• Poor exposition, causing the need to rewind several times to make sense of characters and names.
• Pedestrian cinematography and editing that wouldn't look out of place in a bad direct-to-video crime drama from the 1990s.
• Pompous and intrusive scoring that would be suitable for a church sermon or a spaghetti western.
• Blatant waste of a good cast.
• Re-using 70s style techniques hoping that they're still cool.
• Sacrificing all logic for the sake of cool action or suspense scenes that end anti-climactically anyway.
• Dialogue like "Was he in pain?" "Well, stab wounds hurt."
• Plot development for the sake of having a twist, without proper motivation or exposition.
• Detectives who stumble through their case á la Inspecter Clouseau with blind luck, not following any promising leads, not asking for outisde help, nor doing proper research.
• Laughable fight scenes that make the A-Team look cool again.
• Terrorists bringing automatic rifles through security at a highly public event post 9/11, and firing at least twice while remaining undetected.
• Female detective partner being visibly shaken but her perceptive male colleague doesn't notice.
• A 3-month pregnancy that doesn't show, is mentioned only once and plays exactly ZERO part in the rest of the story.
• Aimless subplots about history of alcohol abuse and infidelity that go nowhere and have no dramatic pay-off whatsoever.
• Bad guys able to escape in broad daylight, as if cameras are not literally EVERYWHERE or intelligence agencies wouldn't have clues about their whereabouts.
• Portraying the insidious American government agent as a fast-talking jolly guy, despite having the worst interrogation skills ever.
• Tasteless terrorist attack clips that look remarkably like a sleek 1st person shooter and not like the usual low-definition, shaky cam fare.

*Sin counter exploded*

All those 1-star votes may be a bit excessive. The cast, although wasted, makes a good effort with what little they had to work with. I'll forgive one instance of gratuitous nudity because people having sex at night is pretty normal. And de Palma does try to put his usual stamp on some scenes. Every now and then, his sense of cinematic language comes accross. Sometimes it works. But most of the time, it ends up being laughably obsolete.

And to think that de Palma once attended an early screening of Star Wars and said "Nonsense! What is this sh#t?" (granted, this was the infamously bad rough cut that was later saved by an Oscar-winning re-edit and a text crawl re-write by de Palma); I hope George Lucas had the opportunity to return the favor. This movie can be the pun of most bad-movie-discussions for years to come: if someone claims that Spielberg and Lucas really need to apologize for the Star Wars prequels and Indiana Jones 4, simply remind them: "De Palma made Domino". End of discussion. This would make even the late Roger Ebert consider re-assigning his "I Hated Hated Hated This Movie" quote to this film. The 'How Did This Get Made?' podcast hosts have their work cut out for them. And CinemaSins: this one's for free.

The Wretched (2019)

Didn't know there were Made-for-TV horror movies

[4/10 · 15 July 2020]

I recently had the choice between going to The Wretched or We Summon The Darkness, so I chose the former because the latter's trailer already seemed to summerize the entire movie, including the dark twist (great job, marketing department!). Since I had heard very little about The Wretched and never saw the trailer, the choice was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, so was the movie.

Judging by their IMDb resume, the Pierce brothers got into the trade as story board artists and production assistants. Now some studios make the mistake of immediately putting such novices on a mega-budget blockbuster (Mortal Engines comes to mind) because inexperienced directors can be easily bullied and can't demand final cut. Thankfully, The Wretched is still a small movie, so the fall-out is minimal. I haven't seen their first film, but in their second full theatrical feature, the brothers show little promise.

Apparently, we still haven't run out of stories about witches or strange entities that abduct or possess children, but we are arguably running out of talent to do such stories justice. This movie looks, feels and sounds so cheap that it almost seems to have been made directly for television (and I don't mean HBO). The script is badly constructed, full of corny dialogue and horror tropes, and teeming with plot holes. Take the opening scene as an example: it is supposed to set the stage and connect with later events, but it is not even slightly referred to in the rest of the story. Lots of events critical for a coherent story aren't shown, either because of bad plotting or poor editing choices. We are denied a heart-pounding finale because of a few mandatory surprise twists. However, if you think them through, these are mostly twists for the sake of twists: they come out of nowhere (save for some inconsequential foreshadowing), make no sense with what was previously shown, and only reveal a serious lack of internal logic, poor plotting and/or bad editing.

However, the Pierce brothers are apparently even worse directors than writers, judging by the absolute inability of this movie to get even remotely scary. The ingredients are all there: creepy monster, nighttime scenes, dark areas, but when the cooks lack talent, all you get are missed opportunities. It's so predictable that I could even see most jumpscares coming from miles away. The problem is that the directors cannot build suspense; because they immediately proceed to the scary part of the scene without any meaningful build-up, it doesn't get scary. Horror doesn't work that way.

It doesn't help that the photography is mostly mediocre and unimaginative. Some location shots looking terribly grainy while others do not. Camera angles and motions are often instrumental in building tension, but the director of photography (DP) has clearly never seen a horror movie, judging by the mundane and static shots that look like a holiday home video at best. And when there is finally some excitement near the end, we are treated with nauseating shaky-cam. The only movie sin that isn't made is underexposure, because whenever there is something scary on screen, it is at least well lit.

The only person doing a worse job than the writers/directors and the DP is the person responsible for the score. If the photography is uncreative and unable to set the right mood, the music and songs are downright terrible in setting a creepy atmosphere, especially in the first half (it did get better in the second, but I no longer cared by then). The only ones doing somewhat decent work are the actors, especially given what they have to work with. The special effects team also did a hell of a job in creating a convincingly gory monster that has a creative way of assuming identities.

This should probably have been Direct-to-VOD here, but lack of competition from big movies was probably the reason it was given a shot in European cinemas. I see this movie even racking up some decent reviews here and there. Now that is the true horror, and perhaps inspiration for a future horror movie: how a disease outbreak creates zombies so starved for entertainment that bad attempts at moviemaking become the standard. Might be a nice companion piece to Idiocracy.

Resident Evil: Code: Veronica (2000 Video Game)

A welcome change of scenery and storytelling in survival-horrorland

[8/10 · 8 July 2020]

Let me just start by saying that Resident Evil: Code Veronica is a great game that may have been released a bit ahead of its time. And in allowing me to explain that, let's go back in history to the early 2000s.

Capcom has just released RE3 for PlayStation, while another group is working on what is then considered a 'sidestory' for Sega called RE: Code Veronica. Despite that, the series producer has ambitious plans for it: he uses the development time and Dreamcast hardware to their fullest to deliver a game a year later that has some great innovations and fresh story ideas. So much so that this 'small project' is considered by many to be superior than the official threequel. It happens. The Lion King was supposed to be a little movie to keep Disney's 'team B' busy, while 'team A' would knock it out of the park with Pocahontas. However, history decided otherwise.

It's no secret that technological innovations can come in quick succession. Barely two years later, the same company and producer release a remake of the first game on the GameCube. It features nearly photorealistic graphics, genuine shocks, much improved voice acting and an amazingly creepy sound design. It was a technological leap that is almost mind-boggling. Within 6 years, the series had matured into a realistically looking interactive horror movie that made the previous four games almost look like an animé comic book by comparison.

RE:CV was released just prior to that revolution, right before I got hooked on the series with said remake which I thoroughly loved. l took it upon myself to play the rest of the series as well, and despite signs of ageing, there was enough to like in the earlier installments. Especially RE:CV made good use of a 3D-engine that allowed more camera movements instead of just static angles, and a bold new direction in story. But still, how would it have been had it debuted on the GameCube?

With a new direction comes a change in surroundings. Producer Shinji Mikami (always good for a major revolution within the series) decided to leave the familiar environment of Raccoon City, and injected the game with influences from European gothic horror. We end up in places that look like concentration camps, airfields and Antarctic research bases, which contrast pleasantly with lush palaces and private mansions in Louis XIV style. As with any good RE game, the surroundings almost become a character in their own right.

Most previous RE games weren't too heavy on narrative, with most of the story told through scattered files and the occassional cutscene. However, CV is a genuine operetta of plot, drama and scripted events, with a corporate power struggle, betrayal and a lot of family drama at the very heart of it. It features some familiar faces, old enemies, but it introduces one of RE's most notorious villains, Alfred Ashford. This maniac and his disgraced family tend to turn up at unexpected moments in the story to hunt you down, which provides the game with welcome moments of adrenalin-pumping tension whenever the traditional shocks or jump scares falter a bit. Diving into the mad history of the Ashfords fuels the entire story, where you get unexpected help from time to time, leading to a shocking third act that plays the emotions like a beautiful but tragic symphony.

The story alternates its focus between siblings Claire and Chris Redfield, which perfectly supports a nice change in gameplay. RE2 already experimented somewhat with a complementary A and B scenario, but in RE:CV, what happens in one storyline directly and indirectly affects the other. Great use is made of this in the location design: Claire may be able to access some areas and not others, but due to story progression and scripted events, the maps can be completely different in Chris' scenario, which makes the mandatory back-tracking a lot less tedious.

For the rest, not too much has changed. Zombies, Cerberus dogs and Hunters and are still the main enemy, with an occassional new creature (like those pesky yellow Bandersnatches) just begging to be put out of its misery by a blast from your shotgun. The horror game clichés are still pretty much adhered to: vital objects just "happen" to be in a corner of a room full of corpses that just "happen" to wake up when you grab it, and rooms that you've cleared are suddenly sprawling with undead life when you need to revisit them. Every now and then, there is a boss fight that forms a good challenge, but I only found the one in the back of the plane and the one in the finale to be genuinely memorable. Fortunately, the game's creepy score is top-notch, and one of the reasons why you're sometimes afraid to proceed.

As I said, this game is easily the best-looking of the first four RE games, but knowing that there was a graphical revolution just two years away, that makes CV paradoxically having aged a bit worse than the games that came before it. It is just too bad that this game couldn't also benefit from that amazing graphical overhaul that the remake got. If it had, it would have played and looked really amazing.

Although not my favorite installment in the series, I have to admit that this is one that stuck with me. I have played it at least three times to relive that descent into the Ashford family's madness, and I recently even downloaded and played it on the PS4, so I guess that makes it a memorable one, despite its limitations. And who knows? Now that RE2 and RE3 have gotten a full HD reimagination, we may expect something like that for RE: CV as well. I await it patiently...

Rundfunk: Jachterwachter (2020)

New and fresh: Dutch absurdism

[7/10 · 2 July 2020]

With a cinematic output that consists mostly of romcoms and WWII movies, I think the Netherlands should welcome any attempt to do something out of the box, and Rundfunk: Jachterwachter does just that. Traditionally, absurdism is an area best cultivated by the Belgians. Of course, we Dutchies have hyperrealistic comedies like New Kids and Flodder where people survive violent car crashes and fire fights, or where they launch gasoline-filled tanks into the Statue of Liberty. And yes, there is always Alex van Warmerdam with his surreal places and characters. But we rarely get comedies in the Netherlands that so brazenly defy the laws of physics, morals and logic as deeply as this one.

Think of some of the whackiest and politically incorrect situations that you've seen on Dutch TV, and this film will take it up a notch. Not only the characters and events are completely out of this world, so is the humor. Jokes about child abuse, animal cruelty, anorexia, pedophilia, homosexuality, bloody violence and several blatant cases of sex-shaming: it's all in there, no one is spared, and no topic is sacred enough to escape the axe of ridicule. Well, perhaps racism, because colored jokes are conspicuously missing. Sign of the times, I guess.

It is probably acquired taste, because I laughed very hard at some of the crudest jokes, but the rest of the theater (mostly millenials) was clearly less convinced about this film's comedic merits. Not that every joke works, by the way. Kids who drink and curse all the time, it's funny for a while but then it gets a little stale. Especially the Biblical jokes fall a bit flat on their face, and could have been much racier. We have a bit of a Dutch tradition when it comes to religious jokes (as a famous Dutch comedian once said: "that which assumes a form of power must be allowed to be ridiculed"), but here, it sadly amounts to little humor.

Not that the actors are to blame for this, as Yannick van de Velde, Tom van Kalmthout and the rest of the cast know exactly how to deliver their dry-witted performances that sells the absurd tomfoolery just great. Also props to director Rob Lücker and cinematographer Joris Kerbosch, for capturing all the zany stuff in beautifully stylized images, making the sun-scorched camping look like a 'polder-version' of There Will Be Blood (yes, I really made that comparison). The cinematography also contains the more subtle visual jokes, such as a TV that looks so old that you can barely believe it ever existed, or a playground that is nearly overgrown.

Most movies that are spin-offs of series usually end up being a longer and bigger budgetted episode of that series, but this one is different. Cast and crew already sharpened their teeth on the TV series Rundfunk (which I definitely want to watch now), but they were bold enough to go into new territory with this spin-off movie, taking it in a very different direction. With its balls-out humor, I throroughy enjoyed this movie, but it certainly isn't for everyone. Still I say: keep up the good work. We need more of this inspired lunacy.

Free Fire (2016)

Overlooked little gem that deserves another shot

[8/10 · 7 April 2020]

This is the kind of movie that came with a good buzz, but then entered and left cinemas in limited release and with little fanfare. So I half expected this to be released quickly via streaming or cable TV, but it still took me 4 years to catch it. Fortunately, some VOD sites have temporarily offered their content for free to offer amusement to those who are bored. And this movie is anything but boring.

Some directors don't need a lot of plot for a thoroughly enjoyable movie, and Ben Wheatley of Kill List fame is one of them. In fact, there is a theory that states that movies get more fun when you can summarize the premise in fewer words. "Weapons deal goes wrong and bullets fly back and forth": a promising start, and Free Fire hits its mark for most of its 91 minutes.

To be clear, this is not the most original movie ever; the first act is an obvious Tarantino-esque exercise in creating a verbal suspense bomb that may blow up at any time. Two groups of criminals meet up for the aforementioned weapons deal at an abandoned factory, and except for Justine (Bree Larson) who arranged the meeting, the two groups hardly know one another. That is, except for two people from opposite groups who have unfinished business together. This is great fuel for a powder keg of insincere pleasantries, awkward exchanges and tense conversations, where it is just a matter of time until tempers flare and the situation ignites.

Before we know it, both teams go at each other with everything that fires, with lots of bullets, injuries (both expected and unexpected), whacky situations and creative insults in both directions as a result. There are some unexpected turns here and there, as well as some dubious characters, but that is pretty much the setup for the rest of the movie. More isn't necessary: both groups profoundly mistrust each other, so they need to look for cover and use everything within reach (or at crawl-length away) that can give them the upper hand, or try to quell the situation.

With so much trigger-happy mayhem going around, you need a good group of actors, solid directing and skillful editing to tell everyone apart, and make sense of who is shooting who. Fortunately, Wheatley takes ample time to introduce his characters with their colorful 70's clothing and demeanors in the beginning, so that we have some recognition of who they are and on which side they are shooting. It still takes plenty of effort to stay focused and get a grip on some fast-paced situations, but luckily, the characters themselves also make a couple of mistakes there. The excellent cast helps, with a special mention for 'Luther's Michael Smiley as a grumpy gangster, Armie Hammer as his wisecracking counterpart, and Sam Riley as a big-mouthed junkie. However, Sharlto Copley, with his well-known manic energy, seems to have the most fun with the black humor of the situation, and goes over the top in the best way possible.

There are a few moments where the hour-long stand-off takes its toll on the movie. The pacing sometimes slows down a bit, some scenes get a bit grim or dragged out too long, and some situations are confusing due to the many characters, but that is largely compensated for by a couple of great jokes and dialogues, a few WTF moments and some memorable character exits. If you've missed this and wonder what you'd get if Reservoir Dogs was spliced with a 70's Eurocrime movie, give this one a chance.

A Night at the Roxbury (1998)

A Night to NOT Remember!

[3/10 · 6 March 2020]

There have been several Saturday Night Live skits that were a perfect inspiration for a great feature-length comedy, like Blues Brothers, Coneheads and Wayne's World, but this pathetic excuse for a comedy begs the question of how it ever got made.

I have sat through many Pauly Shore, Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler comedies that were enjoyable in their own cringeworthy way, because the jokes were in bad taste but at least they made me laugh. This film doesn't have a single gag in it that made me crack up, I never got beyond an uneasy smile (thank you for that, Michael Clarke Duncan). Not only is the script unbelievably bad, but the performances really made my eyes bleed.

You'd think that the premise of two deluded losers who try to talk their way into an exclusive nightclub would be a perfect set-up for some good comedy, but it's not. This part of the movie is over in 45 minutes, and the rest of the movie is a badly written attempt to extend the plot with some scattered ideas to get the film up to feature length. But a bad script doesn't have to be the death blow to a comedy as long as the jokes are good and the actors can deliver. But the only thing worse than the script or lack of jokes are the excruciating performances by Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan. Their clearly improvised exercise in hysterics really got on my nerves, and their attempts at picking up women are unbelievably creepy rather than funny. The #metoo movement could submit this film as evidence for how women were mistreated in the 1990s.

Clearly there are people who really like this movie, and that's okay. There are dozens of movies that score below 5.0 that I like. But how this ever got to a 6.3 here on IMDb is beyond me. No wonder that Chazz Palminteri remained uncredited (by choice, I hope). Even Freddy Got Fingered had more inspired jokes than this film. The only area where they put in some effort was the cool 90s soundtrack (although even Haddaway's 'Baby Don't Hurt Me' got stale after hearing it for the tenth time). I have a lot of good nostalgia for the era, but this movie is not part of it.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2019)

Most impressive: Abrams brought balance again!

[9/10 · 19 December 2019]

This being a Star Wars film, there will (of course) be extreme reactions on this review page, ranging from abysmal 1s to towering 10s. It is a sign of the times, when expectations go into unrealistic ranges. With every franchise that has such a dedicated fanbase, there will also come a sense of ownership about the direction that it will have to go in, followed by a lot of disappointment mixed with applause. But I don't own the franchise and am happy to let others take me to where they bring it.

Much has been said by how Disney handled the Star Wars franchise after buying LucasFilm, and to say that they may have bitten off more than they could chew on occassion (like releasing more than one film within a year) is fair. But I have nothing but praise for bringing in J.J. Abrams. I had my issues with the Force Awakens (or Force Recycled), but it did an excellent job in bringing back the good-old Original Trilogy feeling to the franchise, as well as introducing a fresh new group of characters to take us on their journey. I am still conflicted about Rian Johnson's nihilistic Last Jedi, which was a strange mix of bold ideas and poor decisions. A decent film, but perhaps too dark and too eager to think outside the box than we were comfortable with.

Of course, we later learned that Johnson had sort of carte blanche with his movie, and Disney's biggest mistake was that they didn't tell him to align his ideas with the other directors first, for consistency's sake. So when Colin Trevorrow left RoS, Abrams fortunately stepped back in, and he managed to do the unthinkable: finish the story on his terms, ending the trilogy and the whole saga on a high note, while incorporating most of The Last Jedi's mood swings in a logical way.

Abrams fortunately knows his stuff. As usual in his body of work, he re-uses old elements, but mixes them with enough mystery so that it at least tastes good and feels fresh. Bringing back Emperor Palpatine (not a spoiler; the movie literally opens with this) initially felt like nostalgia-recycling again, but if you think about it, he has been the Man behind the Curtain throughout episodes 1-6, so it makes sense to make him the alpha and omega villain of the entire saga. And let's face it: no one plays a better villain than Ian McDiarmid (perhaps James Earl Jones).

Abrams manages to place Palpatine's return within a greater exploration of the franchise mythology, which is something that I think all good sequels do or should strive to. I am not a connaisseur, but it feels like something coming from the rich extended universe stories that were released after Return of the Jedi, or ideas that George Lucas once had. Whatever the case, it all felt quite naturally, and bringing in the characters, both good and bad, into this exploration is the best way to pull your audience into the narrative.

RoS luckily brings back a lot of the adventurous joy and spontaneity that we've come to love in the series, and was a bit lacking from The Last Jedi, which was rigidly plotted with social commentary. As per tradition of the Star Wars threequel, we visit lots of diverse and colorful places, meet new and old characters, unearth old mysterious, and learn a few new truths, and realize that the divide between good and bad is blurred. Some years seem to have passed since Last Jedi, so our characters are older and wiser now, and more familar with one another. They are faced with an old threat that has intensified, and it is planning a decisive strike, so they must trust the Force, but more importantly, each other to survive.

It is great to see how Abrams gets this story going like a proper adventure with a race against time, while giving the previous events a proper context or closure. There is at least a minimal amount of much-needed backstory for Supreme Leader Snoke (who was little more than a plot device), although Abrams is smart enough to leave enough room for mystery, and not get bogged down in overexplanation. I hope that he finally managed to steer into his and Trevorrow's original vision for the trilogy (the latter retaining a story credit on this film), which retroactively makes more sense of what we experienced in The Last Jedi . It's still not my favorite, but I feel that its place in the middle of the trilogy is a bit more solidified. And let's not forget, the grim darkness of The Empire Strikes Back probably also made better sense in hindsight, after we saw Return of the Jedi.

Of course it is not a perfect film. The late Carrie Fisher is used in the movie in a surprisingly convincing way through archive footage, but you can sense from some dialogues and set-ups that they had to work with what they had. The pace is hurried or even rushed at times. Decisions are made, alliances are forged, and even romances bloom at a faster pace than what would feel natural. It is noticeable that Abrams had to struggle to get his own Force Awakens plot back on track, while also tying the loose ends of The Last Jedi AND create a follow up to Return of the Jedi. He comes a long way, but lets just say that the much maligned Canto Bight subplot from Last Jedi is pretty much left hanging, and I think that is more Johnson's responsibility than Abrams'. Fortunately gone as well is much of the forced goofiness. There is lots of (droid) humor, and only at occassion did it make me roll my eyes this time.

RoS just feels like a well-balanced Star Wars experience, with violent clashes and epic battles to pump our adrenalin, but also calm moments that tug our heartstrings, as it should be. The finale is a great emotional pay-off for over 40 years and 9 movies full of Star Wars moments. Sure, there are enough divisive moments. Events and character decisions that may feel left-field or poorly motivated to some, but cathartic to others. We re-visit decisive places and important people from the older movies, which may be dangerously close to fan-pleasing for some. Others will claim it is too diverse or inclusive for diversity's and inclusiveness' sake. Haters gonna hate.

All I can say is that it worked for me, in surprisisingly natural ways even. I couldn't have hoped for anything better.

Speech (2018)

You should, like, avoid this movie

[5/10 · 16 December 2019]

The flood of Dutch romcoms just doesn't dry out, and I stopped trying to keep up. Every now and then I attempt one, to see if someone actually bothered to try something new, or had a sudden inspiration to do something more in the British style, like 'Last Christmas'. But no: always the same basic plot about a single lady not realizing that Mr Right is that cute guy working/living/working out next to her, over and over again.

When I heard that 'Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding ("Language is, like, really my thing") would be adapted into a movie, I had a sparkle of hope that we would get a Dutch 'Adaptation'. Movie buffs probably know that Adaptation starring Nicolas Cage was famously based on a book called 'The Orchid Thief', which doesn't have a plot that would easily lend itself to a movie. But it was a bestseller, so Hollywood wanted an adaptation anyway. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman got the job, and got such a bad case of writer's block that he finally wrote a story about himself trying to adapt an unfilmable book. The rest is history: the movie is a great satire on Hollywood moviemaking, and a stand-out example of creative writing.

'Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding' is a book full of funny observations on contemporary use of the Dutch language, especially how we say one thing and mean the other. Or how we keep polluting the language because we use it incorrectly. So this sounds like a perfect opportunity for someone to get creative. But abandon all hope, because the screenwriters unfortunately didn't get their Charlie Kaufman moment. The only small traces of the book are in the main character Anne, a self-declared linguist who sometimes comments on how she hears others use their vocabulary. But this occurs very sparingly and briefly, is rarely funny, and amounts to very little, if anything, in the story. You should think that an adaptation of a book about modern language would be a good basis for some witty dialogues at the very least. Think again.

The plot (which isn't from the book) is a standard romcom template as described above, clearly meant as a scaffold around the meager language stuff, supplemented with tropes like the clumsy protagonist, the badboy love interest, the annoying family (including gay brother), and sex while wearing underwear (that last one keeps annoying the hell out of me, having grown up in the 80s when no Dutch film was complete without some nudity). Most of that 'original content' is uninteresting and often downright annoying. The only part that gives the story a tiny amount of dramatic weight is the subplot where Anne deals with her father who starts to suffer from dementia.

Maybe some people can identify with Anne and her search for the right man as she struggles with how other people talk. For the rest: skip this and watch Adaptation. Or Fleabag, which I hear is great.

Instinct (III) (2019)

The human mind is a battleground between reason and instinct

[8/10 · 25 October 2019]

I was fortunate enough to catch this psychological thriller in my big theater, because having international stars Carice van Houten and Marwan Kenzari making time in their undoubtedly busy schedules to appear in a small Dutch movie is certainly a sight to behold on the big screen. I left very satisfied, and at the same time, I understand the comments of people who absolutely didn't get this movie. It's because it is an insight into a human mind with no manual whatsoever. And at the same time, it tackles a subject that we as a society seem to get increasingly uncomfortable with.

This is Halina Reijn's directorial debut, and I find it a solid one. Although I hear criticism that this would be the kind of movie that only Paul Verhoeven could do true justice, I think that Reijn shows great restraint by not playing it safe, and trust her audience's intelligence. That some scene may be enigmatic and some character decisions seem to be questionable only makes it more fascinating in my experience. It certainly helps if you can enjoy character drama rather than a straightly-plotted thriller with a mandatory twist.

Far away from the big budgets and fantasy settings, van Houten and Kenzari visibly enjoy a smaller and technologically less complex project, for which they need their primary acting tools more than ever, and with success. Kenzari seems to effortlessly move between menacing and sympathetic, and van Houten displays such a repertoire of facial expressions that this may earn her a sixth Golden Calf at the Dutch Film Festival.

A psychological evaluation is the battleground of an intricate cat-and-mouse game between sex offender Idris (Kenzari) and psychiatrist Nicoline (van Houten). Idriss is charming and even sexy, but also extremely manipulative, and it is pretty clear that Nicoline is a psychologically scarred lady, something the movie hints to heavily without obligatory flashbacks or expository dialogue. I loved her struggle between the professional persona that she keeps up, and her almost animalistic side that comes out when she loses control. Her ratio and instinct are in a near-continuous battle, and while she is trying to resist Idris' attempts to destabilize her, it isn't always clear which side has the upper hand. Sometimes Reijn seems to take things a bit to far, with surrealistic scenes that miss their mark, but it is nice to see that the movie keeps up the ambiguity up to and including the end.

Seeing this movie on the big screen also reveals a lot about ourselves. The scenes of a sexual nature frequently elucidated nervous laughs from the audience, and comments of unrealistic character decisions afterwards. The movie makes a valiant attempt to dive into the complexity of female sexuality, which is something that society has always struggled with, especially now in the wake of the #metoo discussion. And I think it is something that should be debatable, unless we want to turn back the clock on 50 years of sexual liberation. After all, we are at the point where even Dutch movies resort to sex scenes where people keep their underwear on, and social media are systematically shaming people who feel too comfortable with their bodies or sexuality. We should embrace our human needs, not ignore them.

This film will divide the audience, but that also happened with most of Verhoeven's movies, some of which are considered classics now. Time will tell if Instinct has the same staying power, but for now, the cast and crew have made a very effective thriller about our dark human necessities. This should be the start of more open debate and less uneasy silence. And hopefully an impulse for Halina Reijn to make more movies.

Two Eyes Staring (2010)

All the water drained from the plot in the end

[5/10 · 23 September 2019]

Don't be fooled into thinking that this is a Dutch remake of 'Dark Water', the Japanese ghost movie that was already remade by Hollywood with the same title. A mysterious house and some dirty water is all that these films have in common. And yes, there is the 'ghost angle', but as ghost stories go, this movie has much more in common with The Sixth Sense. But due to how disappointingly that ghost element plays out in the end here, that's where the similarities end.

The beginning of the movie seems promising, yet somewhat predictable: a family moves to a huge house which was inherited from the wife's estranged mother. The young daughter quickly starts to feel that something is wrong in the house, apart from the dark water coming from the faucets. The wife is too career-minded to hear her stories, only the good-natured husband seems to listen, but he believes all the freaky stuff is just stress from the moving and the new surroundings. Without spoiling too much, the girl's ordeal leads to a lot of confusion as to the history and disposition of a strange presence in the house. A solid plot device that was one of the reasons that The Sixth Sense worked so well, and here, it goes a long way, but unfortunately not all the way until the end.

The supernatural element is played out quite well throughtout most of the film, until 20 minutes before the end, where they introduce a couple of plot twists that tear out the bottom of a carefully constructed narrative. A plot twist provides an unexpected direction to a central premise, and if done well, it changes a premise you may not even have been consciously aware off. But in this movie, they present an ill-conceived alternative explanation that comes out of nowhere, a surprise for the sake of having a surprise. If the ending raises more questions than it answers (and I don't mean the good, philosophical questions, but simply logical questions), it is clear that the screenwriter has failed to do a good job.

The film looks great and has some very good art direction and photography, but it is pretty clear from the beginning that the horror aspect of the movie is a lazy rehash from other and much better movies. In the Netherlands, we have the tendency to copy cinema trends with a delay of several years, so such a deja-vu expeirence is not uncommon. We have literally seen such scenes dozens of times before, and when you can actually anticipate jump scares, you know that the director has failed on that aspect.

So the film quickly starts to get more predictable and becomes even boring, which isn't helped by the fact that I find Hadewych Minis a limited actress who seems to have only one facial expression in her repertoire (she is mainly knwon for doing radio commercials these days). Isabelle Stokkel is doing fine as the daughter, and I also liked Barry Atsma's performance. For some reason, many people dislike his portrayals because he is way too pretty for the everyman roles he usually plays, but I will not hold that against him.

The Netherlands don't have a rich history of good horror movies, and this film isn't going to change that, not as long as we keep trying to copy trends from other countries without adding our own spin to it. I have expressed my adoration for the underrated The Pool (2014) before, one of the few Dutch horror movies that did that and worked (for me at least), and I'll do it again here. Or maybe we should resort to remaking thrillers? Loft was pretty well received, and even original ones like The Resistance Banker. I have to admit that even I am getting tired of all the Dutch romcoms now. So please, get a decent screenwriter and a decent director (preferably the same person) and let somebody fund a genuinely good Dutch genre movie.

Double Dragon (1994)

"Your incompetence sticks needles into the flesh of my honor"

[7/10 · 1 August 2019]

Having played the original Nintendo game myself, it is actually a small miracle that I managed to miss this movie for so long, and I guess it is no more than justice that I finally watched it in the year of its 25th anniversary.

Movie adaptations of games generally have a bad name for a number of reasons, like not being able to replicate the gaming experience, poor production values, or taking itself way too seriously. Although Double Dragon makes a valiant attempt to replicate the game's theme of urban decay and street gang martial arts (I was never aware that it had much of a story), it is definitely poorly made, with laugable acting and direction, ridiculous story and dialogue, and hokey fight scenes. But what saves it from my Wall of Shame is the fact that it doesn't take itself seriously for one moment.

I don't know what the cast thinks of it today, but it looks like most actors had a pretty good idea that they weren't doing Shakespeare, and tried to have as much fun on screen as possible. Some performances, like Scott Wolfe and Alyssa Milano's, are funny in a particularly cringe-inducing way, but Robert Patrick (who had already shown his sense of humor in a Wayne's World cameo) steals the show by chewing the scenery at every opportunity he gets. The dialogue is cheesy and unintentionally funny throughout ("You're weak, like your father!" "You're ugly, like your mother!"), but Patrick delivers a line so immortally preposterous that I had to make it the titel of my review (who said there was no Shakespeare?).

The art department clearly did most of the work, by putting Escape From New York, Mad Max and Big Trouble in Little China into a blender for the film's convincing post-apocalyptic punk look. That obviously left very little budget for fight choreography, so they settled for some kicks and punches in the air mixed with a lot of goofy slapstick and bad-pun jokes. What few dollars were left were spent on make-up for henchman Abobo's transformation into what looks like a hilariously bad paper-maché imitation of Sloth from the Goonies.

Many call this one of the worst game adaptations of all time, but you have to recognize cult potential when you find it. This would actually be a 4-star movie if it wasn't so enjoyably B- or even C-grade. Really, I had a big smile on my face the entire time, and couldn't help laughing at the extremely cheesy running gag where the protagonists are startled by something, stay silent for a beat, and then yell "WHAAAAAH!!" in unison before running away.

This film doesn't make the mistake that Streetfighter (both versions) or Doom made, which is thinking that anything in it actually matters or should be taken seriously, not even for a second. It is such unpretentiously bad pulp that it's fun, and I'd say that after 25 years, it is ready for a re-appraisal of its camp value.

Welcome Home (I) (2018)

Watch it for EmRata, if anything.

[5/10 · 29 July 2019]

This is a movie that raises several questions. And I don't mean the good ones, like philosophical musings or in-depth queries about its ingenious plot structure. No, these aren't even questions about the movie's content.

Firstly, why was this movie actually released in Dutch cinemas? I noticed it on the cinema roster for about a week, but judging by the trailer, I didn't think this would be necessarily worth a cinema visit. I hoped to pick it up on TV or streaming in due time, but to my surprise, I could already do that less than 6 months later when it was available on Netflix, and it was even worse than I expected. This is really the kind of poorly scripted and badly directed erotic thriller that would be released direct-to-dvd in the old days, and direct-to-video in the really old days. So in answer of the first question: it was probably the famous cast that saved it from that fate, although only briefly.

The plot? Get your checklist ready for some tropes: a couple's privacy is being invaded and they are psychologically manipulated by a stranger who starts out sympathetic, but then slowly evolves into a psychopath. Narratively, it adds almost nothing to similarly-themed movies that were actually good (Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Unlawful Entry), or their bad rip-offs (Swimfan, The Boy Next Door and just about every Poison Ivy movie).

But we've seen movies being ripped off while still very decently executed, did we (I can think of quite a few Die Hard copies, as well as Cloverfield)? No such luck here: from the moment that Federico walks into the lives of Bryan and Cassie who are on a holiday to fix their broken relationship, you can almost spell out what is going to happen next. The screenwriter obviously hasn't made an effort to watch similar movies to steer clear from all the genre clichés and pitfalls, which, combined with George Ratliffe's extremely uninspired direction, effectively kills every attempt at building tension. The casting doesn't help either: Riccardo Scamarcio (of John Wick Chapter 2 fame) just looks and acts in ways that just spell 'bad guy' from the beginning, so you know this guy is up to no good. Even worse is that they present a pretty nice twist just before the end credits; one that could have been used to great effect earlier in the movie, and which would have been a nice modern update of the genre. A squandered opportunity.

The only ones who are doing somewhat decent jobs are the actors. Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad keeps reminding me of a young punk so he is not my favorite actor, but I can tolerate him. Emily Ratajkowski is a familiar face since featuring in the hugely popular Blurred Lines video clip, and she can actually act. Nothing award-winning, but I have seen model-turned-actresses doing far worse. In fact, EmRata is the best reason to watch this movie. Since the writer and director couldn't make their film interesting, they clearly focussed on the Italian land- and cityscape in general, and EmRata's curves in particular. And it has to be said: she is listed as one of the most beautiful women in the world for a good reason, and clearly has no issues with physically expressing herself. The camera misses no opportunity to photgraph her stunning beauty, which leads to some sensual scenes that are easily the best in the movie.

Which brings me to my second question: why is this movie rated R? Because all the so-called 'risqué material' is pretty tame and only sensual at best. The violence is restricted to maybe two outbursts that occur mainly off-screen, and we only get brief glimpses of EmRata and Paul's naked bodies, all from far away, behind or from the side, nothing (full) frontal. Seriously, I remember R-rated movies from my youth that showed 5 times more blood and were 10 times more explicit with nudity than what is displayed here. No matter what you think of the genre as a whole: an R-rated erotic thriller should be unapologetically erotic, not a half-baked, harmless compromise that is afraid to offend anyone with nudity. My guess is that the makers had to tone down the content because they (or the studio) were aiming for a PG-13 rating, but the MPAA was in a bad mood and still slapped it with an R, because they think that teens should be spared from watching some standard bedroom activities.

But before I keep bashing the American rating system, I have to admit that even in the Netherlands, this film received the highest rating (only for audiences over 16 years of age). I am again reminded of how old I am getting, because in the 1980s, my generation learned what women looked like without clothes from movies, commercials and TV shows that were deemed suitable for general audiences, no restrictions. At the time, nudity wasn't considered harmful for young kids, but that was then. The new prudery has definitely set in here as well, if we needed more proof of that.

You can skip this movie if you're hoping to be thrilled and entertained, because it only rehashes what most have already seen, while failing to use its best two assets to optimal effect: the twist at the end, and Emily Ratajkowski. Although EmRata may actually be the reason that most viewers will make it to the end. More of her in the future please, in every sense of the word!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017 Video Game)

The glorious reinvention of the Legend goes back to its roots

[10/10 · 10 June 2019]

When Eiji Aonuma and Shigeru Miyamoto announced Breath of the Wild (BotW) in 2013, they stated that they were going to challenge the conventions of the Zelda game, as well as the expectations of its massive fanbase. Quite a promise after almost 20 games in nearly 30 years, but to say that they delivered on their promise is almost an understatement.

The term 'reboot', which is often abused to avoid terms like 'sequel' or 'prequel' or any other word synonymous with franchise milking, applies quite well for BotW, as the makers have freed themselves from past shackles and limitations in storytelling and gameplay. They already admitted that it became increasingly difficult to shoehorn every new Zelda game into their somewhat contrived Zelda timeline (gameplay over continuity, as it should be). And they were aware of the growing criticism towards the series' increasing reliance on linear gameplay: a heavily scripted sequence of challenges in fixed order, little opportunity for free roaming, and a potentially annoying sidekick keeping players on track.

So whether you believe that BotW is a sort of 'Hyrule history rewritten', or (more popular) takes place many generations after the other games in a unified timeline; and whether you like to find directions or prefer to just go about by yourself: this game caters to all those tastes. The past is the past, and the saga starts from scratch. In fact, the Hyrule we once knew barely exists anymore, since an abomination called Calamity Gannon laid waste to it, and not even the Chosen Hero Link and Princess Zelda could stop him. Link wakes up a hundred years later, his body restored through some sort of magic technology, but with no memory, in a ruined land largely devoid of people and reclaimed by nature. He needs to retrace his old steps to see what happened a hundred years before, and what he can do to stop Ganon this time, and prevent history from repeating.

That is essentially the basic plot. The introduction will bring you up to speed with the controls, game mechanics, a brief history lesson and some directions, but from there, you can go about doing anything, in any order you please. There are interesting sidequests that are highly recommended for a richer gaming experience, such as restoring your memory, seeking out old allies, finding the legendary Master Sword. There are shrines and Divine Beasts that take the role of the traditional dungeons, where mastering challenges, solving intricate puzzles and defeating bosses will lead to rewards in the form of weapons, powers, clothing, armor and the ability to increase your hearts or stamina; there are tons of sidemissions, and the game will keep track of all quests and missions for the completionists. But when and how you tackle them is completely up to you. You can immediately go to Hyrule Castle in your shorts while armed with a stick, but few will get far that way. And it's also completely against what this game is about: to explore, learn, discover and experience.

Hyrule used to be managably big, but here it's enormous, begging comparisons with Middle-Earth or Westeros. The secluded area that you start in is already half the size of the Hyrule from Skyward Sword or Twilight Princess. But from every blade of grass, every rock on a mountain to every cloud in the sky, it is amazingly rendered in the most luscious details, even in hand-held mode, doing justice to the power of the Switch. Zelda games were always known for their rich variations, and this one is a designer's triumph. The rugged mountains, the lush vegatation and the ruined cities looks simply staggering, without feeling repetitive. Some locations feel vaguely familiar (Zora's Domain, Eldin Volcano, Gerudo Desert, Hyrule Field and the Castle), but only ten times bigger and more daunting. There are also entirely new areas, all designed with tons of love, giving every region in Hyrule its own unique character. Taming a horse to ride on is certainly an asset, because many new locations are on the far horizon, longing to be explored. BotW is what you can call immersive gaming, where the journey matters, not the destination. You can spend days just roaming around, checking out areas for useful items or interesting characters. The game gives you amounts of freedom virtually unseen since the very first Zelda game.

This open world concept also means that there are surprisingly few bounderies. After the intro, you can basically travel anywhere on the map, with distances and local factors being the only limiting factors. Scaling an icy steep mountain? No problem, with enough stamina and warm clothing. Deserts? As long as you can stay cool and have proper transportation. Oceans? Find yourself a raft. Deep chasms? That's what makeshift bridges or a paraglider are for. Part of the challenge in conventions is that this world obeys to the laws of nature and features realistic elements like wind, gravity, rain and fire. Over the course of the game, you must learn to weather them or use them to your adventage, just like natural resources and man-made objects that you can trade with other people to get to new places. The game actually rewards creativity, which is one of its main assets.

Another change in gameplay is its focus on the survival element. A paraglider and a Sheikah Slate with some pre-programmed functions (no Zelda without bombs, of course) are technically the only items that the game grants the player; no hearts will drop, and there are no convenient treasures to help you get out of the particular predicament that you are in. Sure, there is plenty of stuff to find, like ingredients to make your own food and potions, because this world is as dangerous as it is beautiful. Enemies appear in every shape, size and strength, and an unprepared encounter with the wrong one can mean instant death. Link will need to find armor, weapons and shields for defense, which will break after continued use. That latter part was a great source of frustration in Skyward Sword, but here it feels like an integral part of the gameplay. A LOT of trial and error is necessary to find your enemies' weak spots and the best attack strategies, but perseverance and looking for hardships are rewarded in this feral world. The moment that you finally learn how to defeat that Ancient Guardian, Lynel or giant Hinox is a triumph you won't soon forget.

There are some downsides to this Zelda New Style. The Zelda community is still split on the decision to do away with most of the narrative. There is little plot with few scripted events, and most of it comes in the form of backstory. There are many characters to talk to, but most of them only set you on sidemissions, and do not contribute much to a richer main plot. Some see that as a shortcoming, but the sidemissions have always been part of the fun and added value in Zelda games. Every area in Hyrule, especially the inhabited ones, seems to have a story to tell on its own, and all those rich histories and mythologies do add to the overall backstory. The fact that game offers you the choice to pursue them or not is a great asset, and you can make the experience as deep and rich as you wish.

A special mention for the score, since my version of the game came with the soundtrack. It features some original compositions that vary from bombastic to subtle, with surprising choices of instruments, but often with something recognizable in the melody. A lack of musical themes reflects the relative absence of a pervasive narrative, but instead, the score changes to whatever your location is or what you are doing, capturing the mood and atmosphere of the moment, which perfectly enhances the sense of adventure. The music at Hyrule Castle is a perfect example.

In short, BotW does not try to break new grounds in storytelling, but instead reinvents the series by focussing on exploration of the great unknown, in which it reaches new heights in gameplay. Nintendo has taken the series in a bold new direction, and it would certainly be a shame if they did not return to this fresh new Hyrule and gameplay. But with a sequel announced at the E3 2019, we no longer need to worry about this.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

The Bourne Godzilla: how new directors should learn from the old ones

[5/10 · 6 June 2019]

In my review for Godzilla (2014), I expressed my respect for how well the movie treated the Gojira creature's mythology, but I also pointed out its overreliance on flat human characters and relative lack of monster action. There was plenty to like, but still room for improvement, which Kong: Skull Island, its sibling-in-the-same-universe, managed to deliver. So relative newcomer Michael Dougherty of Krampus fame would have been wise to follow that same direction. Unfortunately, he and co-writer Zach Shields take their inspiration from the wrong sources.

I am totally fine with a monster movie that trades some logic for good spectacular action, but Godzilla: King of the Monsters (GKotM) cuts way too much corners with too little pay-off. First that screenplay, which begins with the ultimate cliché of a family torn by tragedy, signified by the well-known trope of the mother telling her child that she knows times have been hard, but that it will get better from here on. I hoped the same for the rest of the story, but unfortunately, it feels as if the screenwriters just received some storyboarded scenes of cool monster fights, and were tasked to somehow glue these together. But even with a pretty lengthy running time of 132 minutes, they didn't succeed in crafting a well-balanced plot.

And so we're stuck with a story and characters that literally go all over the place at breakneck speed, where ridiculous plot holes and nonsensical developments keep piling up: sending in civilian scientists with armed troops to reclaim a base from eco-terrorists (you should secure it before letting civilians in, especially those you went at great length to obtain because they have essential knowledge); emphasizing how natural the presence of the Titans on Earth is, yet one of them - surprise! - turns out not to be from Earth, but it is somehow still able to commandeer the other Titans (and it has an extra cool head-regeneration feature, no less!); using an oxygen-destroying bomb (they don't even attempt to explain this one) against a creature that has been preserved in ice for millennia (a silly trope on its own) without access to, well, oxygen; a kidnapped girl that can somehow escape from a closely guarded building with a precious but unguarded MacGuffin; and perhaps the worst: a giant reptile that can survive a atomic blast next to its head. And romantically hooking up with a moth under the guise of a 'symbiotic relation'.

This would be less of an issue if the movie had a playful tongue-in-cheek tone like Rampage (2018), but alas, it takes itself way too seriously to make me forgive such bad writing (those criticizing season 8 of Game of Thrones for that reason should take notes). The dialogue is cringe-inducing at times, and some sparse moments of attempted levity and humor often feel misplaced (yes, that's you, Bradley Whitford). The story continuously attempts to create some amount of gravitas by forcing in the drama through its characters, but I actually felt sorry for such a waste of a good cast. Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe had obviously already signed on for the sequel, explaining why they're stuck in a pulpfest that can't put them to good use. Hawkins is criminally underused and then unceremoniously ditched; Watanabe is the only one who can say his hammy dialogues and still make them sound somewhat dignified. Too bad that the makers were too busy conceiving a convoluted exit for his character, which involves a dying Gojira, a serendipitous system of Atlantean underwater tunnels, and a submarine that works fine apart from a conveniently defective firing mechanism (kudos for that analogue timer on the bomb, though. Nice retro touch).

Charles Dance must have been in desperate need of a paycheck to accept the role of the worst motivated eco-terrorist ever (even the movie is unsure whether his goal is getting profit through Titan DNA, or restoring the Earth), and Milly Bobby Brown only gets something important to do near the end, before she is relegated again to something that her divorced parents can reconcile over. Kyle Chandler probably gets the biggest spotlight, while Vera Farmiga has the potentially most interesting part as a scientist who goes to some extreme lengths for a greener Earth. However, this twist comes just as left-field and unmotivated as most others, given that we never really get to know their characters. And much of the flimsy character development amounts to very little anyway, since everything gets hastily wrapped up in a frenzy of monster violence in the end.

Had that latter part been done right, then this could still have been a bad yet amusing creature feature. But I was barely able to get a clear idea of what happens during these scenes, in between all the mayhem and explosions. Time and time again, young filmmakers fall into that deathtrap where they go full Bourne: they confuse shaky camera work, extreme close-ups, fog, rain, dark lighting and messy editing for gritty realism. I say it one more time: realism is good, but when it renders a movie unwatchable, it defeats the purpose, especially in a popcorn movie such as this. I don't mind a bit of shaky cam when used sparingly, but here, the camera man seems to suffer from permanent tremor. During crowd shots on the ground, it is understandable, but what is the purpose of doing this for aerial scenes? Do they suppose we believe that there is a shaking DP holding a camera in mid-air? They should take example from James Cameron, or more contemporary, Joe and Anthony Russo, who understand the geography of action scenes, so that you always know where everyone is in the shot, and can keep track of what happened.

This is a movie from the writer/director who co-wrote X-Men 2, arguably one of the better superhero movies ever made, so how he could deliver such a confusing mess with GKotM is a question that will hopefully be answered in the coming years (I place my bet on studio interference). This film commits some of the gravest movie sins in a long time, so CinemaSins, Honest Trailers and How It Should Have Ended have their work cut out for them. I rate this 5.5, and that is being generous.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (2013 Video Game)

A nice homage to The Past that is somewhere between sequel and remake

[7/10 · 20 March 2019]

When it comes to my favorite 3D Zelda game, I am always torn between Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild. But when it comes to the 2D installments, nothing beats The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past. In my review of it here on IMDb, I already praised its cinematic quality, layered story and great gameplay, and to the day, it remains not only one of the most replayable games in the series, but also one of the first that I was able to play through on my own. The first Legend of Zelda I could only finish with a map pointing the way to the dungeons and upgrades, and I have basically given up on my wish to ever make it through Zelda II: Adventure of Link, which I found impossible even WITH a walkthrough, given that you have little more to defend yourself with than a glorified potato peeler.

With the title "A Link Between Worlds", it comes as little surprise that we find ourselves back in the Hyrule that we know so well from LttP. This time, an evil warrior called Yuga has come from a parallel world to revive Ganon, after the previous Link had taken great care to seal him away several generations ago. It is Link's task to find the descendants of the Seven Sages that originally locked Ganon away in the Sacred Realm.

Sounds familiar? No coincidence: LbW was specifically developed as a distant sequel to LttP, and to give its fans a familiar experience. They even reused the old Hyrule lay-out from LttP, and the traditional 'two worlds system' is present in the form of Hyrule's dark counterpart with the tongue-in-cheeck name 'Lorule'. It looks suspiciously like the Dark World from LttP, complete with the same type of enemies, and remastered but characteristic music. It doesn't get more nostalgic than that.

It is both the biggest strength and biggest weakness of the game. If Twilight Princess could be called 'heavily inspired' by Ocarina of Time, then LbW is a near-deja vu of LttP. Apart from the familiar surroundings, the developers have also recycled its main plot all the way through the end credits, with Link needing to find three pendants first to get the Master Sword, then fight the bad guy, and then proceed to free the descendants of the Seven Sages in the alternate world. It fits perfectly within the current trend of recycling old themes, plot elements and imagery into new works, and I don't mind extensive referencing in itself, but I feel that nostalgia should be used creatively, rather than stifle creativity. Unfortunately, the developers choose the easy route a few times too often here. I think that LbW would have been much better if they had conceived an original plot within this familiar world, instead of remaking the old game under the guise of a sequel.

Talking about easy route, the game itself also feels that way. LttP offered a healthy challenge, with maze-like dungeons that required all your skill and perseverance. I found the overall diificulty somewhat lacking in this game. Maybe it is because I am more experienced now or because controls have improved since the 90s, but I actually went through LbW very quickly, and I had very little trouble with most bosses. Even the final boss was a mere nuissance rather than a true challenge. In other Zelda games, you could extend the gameplay with some side-quests, but I found these rather limited here as well (with the exception of the search for the Maiamai creatures). Talking to NPCs often unlock a small minigame, but very few relevant subplots that could pleasantly divert your attention for a longer period.

The big innovation in the game is the so-called "wall merging" where you become a two-dimensional version of yourself that can walk accross wall surfaces. A nice feature that works quite well in a few instances, but in the end, it still feels mostly like a great gimmick rather than a true innovation in gameplay. It is limited to walking left or right, and therefore mainly used to reach hidden items and traverse areas (check Super Mario Odyssey for a example of how to do it right). I would have loved to do more in this capacity, like an elaborate boss fight, but that sadly only happens at the end, and only briefly.

It is not all bad though; if the makers were trying to make a love letter to 2D Zelda games in general and LttP in particular, then they succeeded. It is a joy to walk around a 3D version of this beloved world, especially when you use the tornado rod and Link literally jumps out of the screen. The traditional overworld, gameplay and plot may appear familiar, but the dungeons have all been re-designed as far as I am aware. Their lay-outs are creative, and challenge you to use all your inventiveness (and wall merging) to navigate. Additionally, there is now an option to rent or buy the items you need (which are coupled to an energy meter instead of an ammo counter), and this provides a nice opportunity to play the final seven dungeons in any desired order.

Lastly, the true heart of the game finally shows in the end, when the plot thickens and culminates in a very moving finale. It also features the Triforce in a different light than usual: often the game's McGuffin that merely creates closure, but here, we finally learn why it is the symbol of Hyrule's providence.

For those who are new to the 2D series, this game will be a blast; to the veterans, it may be hard to spot real innovations through the thick layer of nostalgia, but it is a fun game nonetheless that uses the 3DS capabilities quite fine. Narratively it is no Minish Cap, and as for novelty gameplay, it gets nowhere near Phantom Hourglass, but you'll still have a good time. It is not a revolution in the series, but it doesn't take ages to get to the end, so it is a nice game to play intermittently over brief periods.

Never Look Away (2018)

Art as individual expression versus ideology

[9/10 · 13 February 2019]

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck should be a satisfied man. He made a stunning debut in 2006 with The Lives of Others, which immediately earned him an Oscar. Then he fell victim to Hollywood, who offered him the chance to make a lavish star-studded spy thriller, but it ended up as The Tourist, a star vehicle that looked beautiful but showcased very little of his narrative brilliance (nor of Johnny Depp's talent). It took him eight years, but with Werk ohne Autor/Never Look Away, he is back at full strength. This is the movie that makes me hope that he has learned a valuable lesson, and make more of such signature personal films where he calls the shots instead of the stars or the big studio.

The original title, meaning "Work (of art) without author" is the overall theme of the film from the beginning, when the young protagonist Kurt and his subversive aunt learn how Nazi Germany regards art as nothing more than a vessel to propagate its ideology; individual touches or any implicit criticism are seen as mere egocentrism. Ironically enough, even the communist GDR regime that replaces the Nazis years later adheres to the same rigid dogma: art should serve the political cause and not the artist. Kurt feels extremely hampered by his inability to make the art that he wants, and even after a move to the free West, he finds that years of repression makes it difficult for him to find his own unique signature.

Parallel to Kurt's story, we follow Professor Seeband (the always reliable Sabastian Koch), a respected gynecologist who has sadly adopted the Nazi ideology of keeping bloodlines pure by removing the physically and mentally ill from society. This means ruthlessly sentencing people to forced sterilization and even death when it benefits humanity in his views. Despite having narrowly survived the war, he remains a staunch and unapologetic supporter of this conviction, even if he has to hide it. However, his sins will come back to haunt him, one way or another. As fate would have it, both Kurt and Seeband have more in common than they may ever realize, and even get to play major roles in each other's lives. The film is invisibly divided in alternating chapters where we follow these characters, sometimes separately, often at points where the course of their lives intersect.

It is nice to see how well director von Donnersmarck's script balances these two stories, and ties them together. He takes ample time to show how the these two men live with the burden of their past over thirty years in a divided Germany. Even though the intensity of the events vary, and with a running time of 188 minutes, the film doesn't bore a single minute. The WWII part is easily the most gripping and emotional sequence in the movie, where the director allows himself the grandest gestures to tell his story, which makes for some memorable scenes that are tough to watch. After Der Untergang (Downfall) and The Lives of Others, it again shows how German filmmakers do not shy back from showing the uglier parts of their history.

After the war sequences, the director moves our emotions in more subtle ways. Kurt's past memories have irrevocably shaped him, but none of them are slapped into our face. And despite Seeband's cruel disposition, there remains humanity in him. With beautiful cinematography by Passion of the Christ's Caleb Deschanel, Kurt's coming of age is shown with great humanism, drama, surprising humor, and a pivotal moment where his aunt introduces him to sexuality, and tells him to "never look away", which explains the also very apt English title. The nudity and sex are done with a playful approach and feel very natural to the story, reminding us of similar episodes in our own lives, and the times where mainstream cinema was much more comfortable with depiction of such scenes.

Apart from a character study and the subjective weight of our past, there is a fascinating central question of what produces authentic art. Is it by following established movements, or by finding one's own way and ignoring established tradition if necessary? And how do we depict 'truth'? The film gives no definitive answer to these universal questions, but Kurt's solution marks the point where both his story and Seeband's reach their emotional climax. Even here, von Donnersmarck could have easily gone big, but he shows restraint by not going for the most obvious or satisfying conclusion. Much is left to our own interpretation, like a true piece of art.

Like The Lives of Others, this film is another great example of the director's talent for tying together character and story arcs, while at the same tackling his nation's troubled past. But even as a picture book, the film works and never gets dull. The Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Movie is more than deserved, as is the Best Cinematography nod. Good luck there!