Review: the descendants

Director: Alexander Payne

Stars: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller

Genres: Comedy | Drama

Release Date: 19 January 2012

Memorable quote:
Matt King: I don't want my daughters growing up entitled and spoiled. And I agree with my father - you give your children enough money to do something but not enough to do nothing.

What?
Matt King is happily married, has two beautiful girls, enough money to raise them and a nice house to grow old in. On top of all that he is the descendant of some rich princess, which makes him even more blessed. At least this is the picture a lot of people would see from the outside. The reality is quite different, his wife struggles with Death after a boating accident; he learns that she had an affair with some “duschbag”, his daughter is a drunk with a weird boyfriend and that everything he things he has actually falls down like a deck of cards. Try living in his shoes.

Yes?
This movie is special in its way, nothing exceptional happens throughout the whole movie, but the beauty here is the passive flow that the movie projects. Nothing happens, but everything happens. You sit there in the movie theater and you ask yourself, so what happened in the last 2 hours, and the only thing you can say for sure is that you couldn’t turn your head away from the silver screen. Not because some crazy car chase, explosion or thriller, but the harsh truth that life can slap you in the face every second of every minute of your life. We all pray that this won’t happen but the slight possibility that everything good that we have and know can vanish scares us, and this truth keeps our eyes on the screen. This is what is truly amazing, the lack of happening compared to the intensity of things being thrown in our faces.

Of course we also have the usual things that make a movie good, George Clooney performed as his life depended on it, I truly believed what I saw and this made this movie good.

The environment felt real, in the middle of everything that is beautiful, the beach, the sea, the hula girls you understand that there is a family that is just trying to survive the horror of life, just great to watch.

No?
The biggest weakness of this movie is also his strength. The lack of happening in the movie transforms this movie in to something that not everyone can watch. By being so good in his own genre it becomes boring for almost everyone outside of it, half of the people in the movie theater stood up at the end and said” what a waste of time, and the other half was still sitting and thinking of the amazement that this movie left them in.

Well…
I liked this movie, it puts things in perspective, and the sad part is that nowadays we need movies to show us that. You don’t need to watch it at the movies, sitting home is by far enough, don’t understand me wrong it is good, but not good enough to poor money on it. Because of all the above I grade this…

Grade: 7.5 out of 10

Mammoth

Trailer, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire hunter!

In the last years vampires became a "hot" topic in cinema and TV. Starting with the twilight craze and continuing with things like true blood etc. What is it that excites people about this particular legend, we have many others like zombies, aliens, bigfoot, trolls and l can go on and on. And yeah I know every one of the "things" on my list got some coverage, especially zombies, but vampires attract every type not only the thrill and bloodthirsty zombie lovers. I believe this vampire phase will eventually blow over but it originally exists because of a simple fact: the similarity between human beings and vampires. They are just the bad side of humanity, and through them you can and are allowed to experience all what is taboo in western culture, meaning: lust, desire and passion for the bad. We can taste the bad without feeling bad for it.

(Of course this is in short for the why; if someone wants we can elaborate on this later)

I heard a lot about this movie before they published the trailer, it was interesting before and now it’s even more interesting. I always love when a story uses of historical facts and they build a movie around it. Abraham Lincoln, one of Americas favorite Presidents actually has a hidden agenda, hunting vampires. The trailer looks great, and I can't wait for this to come out. Enjoy!




The combination of old, slow motions, explosions, bloodshed and martial arts, look like they could all work together, I'm excited for this. Let the river of blood flow. Be prepared!

Review: Contraband

Director: Baltasar Kormákur

Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Giovanni Ribisi and Kate Beckinsale

Release Date: 19 January 2012

Genres: Action & Thriller

Memorable quote:
Chris Farraday: Takes money to make money



What?
Being a professional doesn’t mean something needs to be legal, that’s the case with Chris Farraday , he is or better said was a professional smuggler, he gave this up to build up a lovely family and a business. The problem with a bad past is that it will always haunts you in some way. When his brother in law f*cks up a deal, or couldn’t deliver the goods, Farraday needs to get back to the life he tried so desperately to leave behind. To protect his family at any cost, he gets his old crew together for one last hit. The beauty of smuggling is it brings together so many lovely but dangerous people. As you can expect things don’t always go smoothly as planned, this happens while not everybody is paid off even though they should be, everybody wants a piece of the pie!

Yes?
This movie has a lot of good qualities an action thriller demands. First of a bad guy, you have the slick, clean and smart guy, or sometimes as in this movie you have the filthy disgusting, crazy hillbilly white trailer trash bad guy, which was really convincing and scary. Once you have kids in a scene and this guy around, the whole thing becomes scary.

The second thing we need is a good guy but he needs to be a bad ass with a reason to do some bad things, nothing is better than the “family card threatening” sometimes this is just the line the evil guy shouldn’t cross, well he did cross it. Mark Wahlberg can come off as the bad ass guy and whould you believe it, he was also convincing.

The movie had some great scenes, which all led to an acceptable ending, it was sometimes a bit too complicated but we will get there later.

No?
As always here we get the bad things. The movie was a bit too slow for my taste you have moments where nothing happens, and this is a game breaker for an action thriller.

Action/Thriller movies need to be simple, the bad guy, the good guy, some action and some thrills that’s it, here we had so many different variables it just becomes difficult to determine

which genre we are talking about. I just things those things should be clear.

A problem we have nowadays is, the people whos job is to make trailers, are really good. They can make even the worst movies appear amazing, this happened here. We don’t have something besides a trailer to judge a movie, so this movie compared to the trailer, they just weren’t on the same level, I feel betrayed by the editors!

The movie didn’t bring us anything new, or amazing, the whole -back to the bad past because family needs you- idea we had in gone in 60 seconds and this was a good movie based on cars and Angelina Jolie on a Ducati. Here they took the same idea altered it around smuggling which is half so cool, what do you think could be the result?

Well…
The movie brings you the needed thrills for an action Thriller, but there was nothing too fancy about it, some tensions and cheap thrills made this thing still acceptable, there is no need to watch it at the movies, at home with the mid-size popcorn bucket would be enough. Because of all the above I grade this…

Grade: 7 out of 10

Mammoth

The Bourne Legacy, Trailer! There was never just one!

Sometimes a movie comes out when we can say: this will become a classic. The Bourne movies are one of those franchises wherein each movie became a hit. And the reason they became hits, I believe is thanks to the “realistic” action sequences. Of course there is this one man against an army crap, as we saw it lots of times in Rambo and other crazy unlimited bullets movies, wherein the enemy has no chance against the almighty hero. But Jason Bourne was just better equipped mentally and physically then all his adversaries and this made him better. The legendary hit man is better than the simple police agent simply because he had the training, both are men with limitations, but Bourne used them always to his advantage. When I first heard that Matt Damon wasn’t going to be in the next Bourne movie I was disappointed, he became the ultimate fighting machine, and everyone in his way will be destroyed, dislocated or broken, of course this doesn’t have to be in this specific order. Then when it became clear that Jeremy Renner became the replacement I was already in a better mood, he hasn’t exactly the same style as Damon, but he is more the kind of a stronger bully. So I guess we will see. Enjoy!




This definitely looks promising. I love the fact that all the other actors are back with us and that the story kind of picks up where we left of. It’s not like they forget Jason Bourne, there was never just one! As always be prepared!

Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Director: Guy Ritchie

Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law and Jared Harris

Genres: Action, Adventure , Crime , Mystery , Thriller (yeah you have all of those)

Release Date: 22 December 2011

Memorable quote:
Professor Moriaty: People have an innate desire for conflict. So what you are fighting is not me, but rather mankind. War, on an industrial scale, is inevitable. I'm just supplying the bullets and bandages.
&
Dr. John Watson: How many times are you going to kill my dog?

What?

This is one of those movies where it’s just impossible to write a good introduction. Everything you will say here will be a spoiler and you (if you haven’t watched it yet will regret reading this.) What I can say, is that we have here Sherlock Holmes and his Sidekick Watson who are fighting crime or better try to bring the evil mind Professor Moriaty to justice. I think this sums it all up.

Yes?
As always, the best reason to watch a sequence for a movie is the fact that the first one was a hit and that you just can’t wait for the second one to come out. You are excited and curious to watch what the people from the big studio have in mind here. Is this just a sequel for money, or is there actually something good here. My opinion of course is that this movie was great, I enjoyed myself watching it. The humor, the action and the curiosity for more made this movie awesome.

I’m sure a lot of movie reviewers will say:’ this movie just delivers cheap thrills and talks to the common people”, well believe it or not I am common and I never say no for cheap thrills, the only think I do expect is that they are done in a good and respectful manner, which they did.

Then we have the actors. Everyone knows, or at least should know that Robert Downey Junior and Jude law are good actors. The beauty here is that they are even better together; they just complete each other in this movie. The simple fact of Downey being the loose and crazy cannon and Watson the “boy scout” makes them a perfect duo. They give the movie this perfect sense of “Brotherly love” of course in a weird way. They have a perfect Love/Hate relationship which is just funny to watch.

Another worthy thing to mention is the evil persona; Professor Moriaty is just the perfect adversary for Holmes. He is smart as he is evil and of course this is a scary combination.

The director wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty; taking out “key” players in the movie is a virtue that not everyone has. He just has the “cohones” (translated in to balls) to pull this off.

I just bother to mention the special effects and the slow motions here because they are beautiful even though a bit too much for my taste.

No?
As I said above, even if something is good, don’t overdo it. The slow motion worked perfectly in the forest scene and maybe in a couple of other places, but don’t use it in every scene. We know that Sherlock likes to plan his moves ahead, but we don’t always need to see this upfront. Of course it has to do with the weird “checkers” theme of the movie, wherein every smart person sees and plans his moves ahead and the smarter person does this even further, but too much is too much.

Characters are something good in a movie when they have a good reason to be there, but when they are just there to connect between different scenes, this is just a sign of lack of creativity, try to make the story smoother without always adding another useless character.

Well…
I loved the movie, and I will also watch the sequence, which will come certainly. I hope it will then give me all the thrills that it gave me this time. I know action comedies are the easiest to make, but this one had so much more, and I would recommend you to watch it if you haven’t yet. Because of all the above I grade this…

Grade: 8.5 out of 10

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