Category: Movies

Sometimes, a movie can get really, really close. Unfortunately, the closer they get, the harder they fall. Today’s fall belongs to District 9.

Insert clicking noises here

The premise is good enough: a huge alien ship hovers over the city of Johannesburg (South-Africa, wonder if it’s a coincidence we got a tourist video for the country before the trailers started). Yes, that’s not New York, Los Angeles, Paris or London – Johannesburg. Aliens are extracted from the vehicle and since they can’t seem to get along with humans due to cultural reasons, they are put into a slum – the District 9.

The movie starts out as a documentary explaining the facts above and showing off the pover lifestyle of the aliens. It then cuts to MNU (Multinational United), a big firm that’s taken charge of everything revolving around those aliens. They’ve built a camp twenty kilometres from the city – a camp they plan on moving the aliens into. In order to do that, the creatures must be evicted. And in order to accomplish that, they need a gopher, who comes in the name of Wikus Van De Merwe.

A smile is cheaper than a bullet

Now, first off, I want to say that Sharlto Copley, who plays Wikus, is a first class actor. He might start off as comic relief, but soon he is dragged through a whole range of emotions – so many that you hardly notice you’re still watching the same actor at the end. The movie is worth seeing for this guy alone. All of the other cast is good as well – as are the aliens (even if they are a tad uninspired). It’s refreshing to see a big budget film made without big budget actors.

As you would expect from a movie produced by manchild Peter Jackson (whom I greatly respect, by the way), this movie is highly entertaining and looks really good. Wikus’ adventure is a chilling one, and you’ll be going along every step of it. And when shit hits the fan and the fan hits people (who then explode into a tiny million pieces ad nauseam), you’ll love watch the cartoony violence this movie holds. It’s like being a kid again.

In All…

But wait – what was that last sentence? But weren’t we watching a documentary? Exactly. Which brings my review to a close. The thing that destroys this experience is the incoherence that surrounds it. Random parts of the movie are made in documentary style (news footage, interviews, …) whereas other parts are just your normal popcorn type experience. Why is that? Why couldn’t they decide on one style and stick with it?

District 9 is a great movie. But it’s got potential to be at least twice as good. Why they couldn’t decide on one style, I don’t know, but it’s killed it all. After I left the theatre, I even felt a bit empty and slightly angry that it went that way. I loved the first thirty minutes. I loved the story. But they couldn’t make it so that I could wholeheartedly recommend this movie to anyone without a big “but” in front of it. What a shame…

I had never before seen a Lars von Trier film. I knew however that usually, they are very brutal and harsh yet strangely beautiful at he same time. I can tell you straight off the bat that Antichrist is no different.

Grief

At first, Von Triers concept seems a bit vague: the movie is called antichrist, but revolves around a couple trying to get out of depression after their toddler jumped out of a window. In order to do this, they visit the woman’s greatest fear and end up in Eden, a thick forest-with-a-cabin in the middle of nowhere. This part of the movie makes perfect sense. What comes next, however, gets stranger, creepier and uglier – with a writhingly atrocious last twenty minutes.

Since it’s hard to give a bit of in-depth appreciation for the plot without giving it away for those still wanting to see this film, I’ll put it behind spoiler tags.

[spoiler]My main gripe is – but that might just be me not understanding it – how the stories goes from “death of a child” to “my wife is a witch” in about fifteen minutes. Don’t get me wrong, I like the two parts of the story, but in my mind the link between the both of them was missing. The witch storyline was nicely executed, with symbolism that was eerie at first but shown as a saviour later on (the fox, the deer and the bird). It was extremely bizarre, yet intelligible.[/spoiler]

Summary: movie consists of two subplot which I cannot seem to connect.

Pain (Chaos Reigns)

As a movie, Antichrist is breathtaking. At first because it’s so beautiful (check the trailer for the parts where She is walking through the darkened woods, casting light on the trees), later on because it’s sickeningly horrible. Charlotte Gainsbourg (again in a tragedy-filled role, I guess that’s because she has the face of a beaten dog) and Willem Defoe (who completely ruined himself for me by his performance in Spiderman) perform magnificently: they’re credible and natural. You don’t have the feeling you’re watching two actors – these people seem to feel the pain.

And with them, we do too.

Which brings me to the next part: the pain.

Despair (Gynocide)

In the last twenty minutes – and you know this is coming as soon as you start watching, you know it is coming somehow – things completely blow up. All of a sudden, the tension relieves itself in a horrible, horrible couple of scenes that seem to go on for ages. And, because of the eighty credible minutes before that… you won’t be able to resist.

Once again, I will use spoilers for those who want to see for themselves (which I am not sure I should advise).

[spoiler]If you can watch this without flinching, you probably have no soul. Did they really have to squish testicles, squirt blood, drill through a leg and cut off a clitoris? Wasn’t one of these things enough? I know a von Trier film gets ugly – but this isn’t ugly anymore: it’s sick.[/spoiler]

Summary: ew ew ew ew.

In All…

But still: Antichrist is pretty – before the shit hits the fan and the log hits the – nevermind. That’s why I’m not sure whether I should like it or not. The symbolism is there. The acting is there. The directing and camerawork are most certainly there. So why did it have to turn out the way it did? Why so much? If I’m eating a vomit-flavoured pancake, I certainly don’t want another one and another one and then another one. I might get used to the flavour!

Which brings me to the strangest experience: the crowd. After reading some imdb reviews, it became apparent that there is a crowd for this movie – who call it art. I personally don’t know enough of art to call something art (and movies are always a bit strange on this level), so that’s not what I’m getting at. People tend to justify whatever they didn’t like about Antichrist by saying von Trier “had to do it” to attract a crowd. He had to shoot explicit penetrative sex scenes. He had to be so gruesome, or no one would come.

What a load of bull. Why would someone make a movie that is so adamant on destroying itself and the characters in it, on destruction as a concept and then put in some different scenes to attract a crowd? He put in a penis and a vagina because he thought he needed to. Jesus. He’s a director – a very good one, I have to admit – but given the nature of his movies he will shock you. Just admit the director shocked you. Stop being a pussy and blaming it on others.

It’s okay.

It shocked me too.

A little while ago, I ran into a South Korean movie called Milyang – which translates into “Secret Sunshine”. As Usually I’m a bit weary of Asian movies (they tend to go on forever), but this time I would not get stopped and was determined to check it out. And I’ve got to say that, even if it did run for 142 minutes, I did enjoy it a lot. Maybe I’m maturing? Nah, it’s probably just that this movie is really good.

The Eternal Downwards Spiral

Other than a basic theme (“coping with tragedy”), it’s near impossible to say what this movie is about, exactly. The premise is quite simple: Sin-ae, a thirtysomething mother, moves with her son Jun to Miryang, the town where her dead husband was born. After that things get a bit hairy – things happen and happen and happen, much reminiscent of that other thing people try to show us in the cinema so often: life.

That’s just about it, really. You can’t really say that this movie tells a certain story, because it doesn’t. Picture Magnolia – a handful of characters which are linked share the theme of “redemption” in their storylines which other than that have nothing to do with each other – but remove the “handful of characters” bit: all these stories just happen to this one woman (performed by the more than great Do-yeon Jeon, who does an awesome job at convincing us that it’s all real), all after another.

In All…

I like that: it’s a kind of unusual way of storytelling and we were really wondering how it would (or could) go on at certain points throughout the film. The end of the movie fitted the feeling that we were granted a small look into someone’s life – a look without a firm beginning or end. You get a picture and you can check it out, but you can’t see it all. You can only see what’s in the frame, not what’s on the edge, or the moments leading to the taking of the picture. All you can do is invent those occurances as you see fit.

One little disclaimer though before I send you off to the movies to watch this: it goes to the bone. It never goes beyond that, but it does get pretty dramatic. Oddly enough though, me nor the person with whom I watched this movie, felt really bad afterwards. We just both fell silent, and had to think about it for a while. Interesting.

Now, off you go!

Whenever a new Tarantino movie hits the silver screen, I’m a bit cautious. You see, I’m not a big fan of his work. I don’t really respond all that well to unnecessary realistic violence in movies (case in point: I tend to dislike Zac Snyder movies too). But there’s the thing: the violence featured in Inglourious Basterds is neither unnecessary nor realistic. So I found myself enjoying this movie a lot more than I thought I would.

Wolfenstein meets Little Red Riding Hood

The story consists of two different storylines: one tells the tale of the Inglourious Basterds, an allied terror unit in World War II with as a single goal killing (and scalping) Nazis. The other revolves around a Jewish French woman and the plans of having a big Nazi premiere there. Both storylines obviously come together at the end, but before that there is a lot of frolicking around in typical Tarantino fashion: with loads of dialogue, resulting in violence.

At first, the dialogues were reminiscent of Death Proof – which I disliked thoroughly. Soon, however, one could tell the big difference between Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds: the cast. This wonderful cast actually carries the insane amounts of insane dialogue, instead of getting carried away by it. Some of the more complicated lines – in four languages nonetheless – were uttered by Christoph Waltz. It was obvious he had studied them thoroughly and knew what he was doing. Stunning, stunning display.

Once upon a blabla

Inglourious Basterds tries to be a bit of a fairy tale. It never tries to be realistic, but keeps the setting correct so it’s credible enough. You know the events at the end of the movie never happened, but – in the world of Tarantino himself – they could have happened (but hell could also freeze over). Also, you don’t really relate to the characters (a thing I’ve actually never done in any Tarantino movie, come to think of it) – whether they live or die, it’s the same thing. You just hope they go out with a bang.

[spoiler]I do have to say though: the Basterds killing Hitler? The manchild in me says that’s pretty awesome. Even though the whole burning cinema fire was poorly executed, littered with continuity errors and a display of very, very bad taste in humanity.[/spoiler]

So it’s a bit of a side story. In that way, it’s a smart plan of Tarantino’s to cut the story into five smaller bits – chapters. Sure, fine and dandy, but this does not work if your first three chapters combined are the length of the fourth or the fifth respectively. The first three chapters felt like introduction, and it wasn’t until the last two that the audience could see where Tarantino was going with this. Had this been an unknown director, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it, I think.

In all…

Even though I dislike Tarantino’s movies, I would recommend you go and see this one. It’s pretty fun. The violence has been kept to a minimum, and this time around, it’s not about wildly ejaculating but all about the build-up to the orgasm. Scenes go on for ever as you can feel the tension slowly rising. It’s something I have rarely seen with Tarantino; he’s usually so gun-ho that the load has already been lost before the thing even got off the ground.

And yes, you can go Freudian on that.

Favourite Quote: Lt. Raine: Donny! Got us a German here wants to die for country. Oblige him.

I’m starting to see an emerging pattern here. You see, I liked Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a lot, but other people hated it. And, now I like Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince a lot – and yes! There is a lot of hate once more. Why the hate, people, why the hate? This movie does the thing a penultimate movie ought to do, and it’s the one movie to stay – in my opinion – closest to the book in style and substance (and if it does stray, I think it’s justified).

Lookit the pretty pictures!

Let me say this first: for me, this is without a doubt the prettiest Harry Potter movie to date. Yes, I consider it to be even prettier than the much lauded Prisoner of Azkaban. Yes, that movie was the best and it was the greatest and so on, but in all fairness it did notlook as good as this one. Obviously, this one builds rather heavily on Azkaban in art style – moreso than the two previous ones. There are some shots in here that are almost art.

Oh, but dear writer, we know you know nothing of art! Well, you’ve got me there. But when I looked at certain shots, I saw a fan of surrealism – of Magritte. Most of these shots revolved around Draco Malfoy – more on him later – or his immediate surroundings. His black suit, the houses his mother was running through on her way to a certain someone, the vanishing cabinet… they all looked nightmarish and absurd. And unbelievably pretty. It gives me hope that David Yates could actually save the last book. But then I remember a thing called “wand lore”.

And it has to be said: Nicholas Hooper did a great job composing the music for this film. It fits the mood perfectly. Some other movies had great soundtracks as well (I’m thinking Azkaban and the Goblet of Fire), but this one was a lot better than all the others. It has something magical – just like the movie has something magical, something indescribable that the other movies don’t have. The magic feels more… fresh and new – but ancient at the same time. As if it were a character on its own, symbolized into Dumbledore (this you can see clearly in the first scene, when he appears in front of “Magic” billboard).

Snogging! Snogging!

I remember watching “The Life Aquatic” a while ago and feeling like a little boy watching National Geographic again. The Half Blood Prince made me feel like I was 16 again and in the prime of my hormonal youth. For me, this movie re
ected the book perfectly – I remember feeling like that as well when reading it. Lads and lasses, you have to admit one thing: these books are littered with useless but funny little tidbits. If you’re complaining nothing’s happening, then you haven’t read this book right. It is a book about snogging. It’s one of the things Rowling used to mask the fact that the end is highly dramatic. Don’t blame the movie for staying close to the book.

That’s what this movie does: it stays very, very close but looks for artistic freedom elsewhere (design, composition…). There is – as far as I can remember – only one scene that is truly added, and it occurs near Christmas day at the Weasly’s house. I thought it was pretty. And it’s obvious they want to give the wonderful, wonderful actress Helena Bonham-Carter a bit more screentime. She is one of the only stars that is left in this series who is not either in diapers or wrinkled and old.

Speaking of stars: the indeniable acting hero in this movie is Tom Felton, playing Draco Malfoy.
It’s like the story gave him a little more leeway and he shoved everything he could into that. He plays the tormented killer role wonderfully: he’s jumpy, eager, anxious and also a frightened little boy. In the final battle, I couldn’t help feeling more pity for him than the actual victim. It sets up the final book perfectly, and I can’t wait to see Felton playing what’s still in store for his character. But by that time I’ll probably be too busy cheering Neville on.

The person I was slightly disappointed in was Snape. Alan Rickman was great – as per usual, as per usual – but he’s gotten way too little screentime. I have no problem with the added scenes, but Bonham-Carter’s additions might have been better used as Snape time. It was as if the first half of the movie was trying so hard to set him up as a vilain and the second movie the exact opposite. That just didn’t work for me. I guess they’re trying to form a bridge, some sort of an actor generation pact thing: the older actors are passing the torch on to the new ones. Quite a burden to bear – these movies have showcased some of Britain’s most gifted actors.

In All…

This movie nails it. It’s the part in the series that’s come closest to the feeling of the book. The humour makes you laugh out loud, the drama makes you fight the tears. At times, it shocks you; at times, it warms your heart. Just like the book, really. But it triomphs in one place the book fails: execution. Rowling might have designed great characters and a truly magical story, she’s simply not the best writer out there. Why should eyes always be raven black? This is where The half-blood Prince succeeds: it’s a truly stunning visual feast. And I don’t mean the special effects. Although those are obviously nice too. Hum.

It just goes to show what poor initial reviews from the test audience can do to a movie: six months more development, and there you have a well-polished piece of art. If only this were standard…

Favourite Quote:
Hermione: Hey, she’s only interested in you because she thinks you’re the Chosen One.
Harry: But I am the Chosen One!

Let me tell you this first: I loved Les Choristes. I own it on DVD and now and again I pop it into my DVD player. It’s the subtle mixture of characters and storyline with music that gets it: if the characters don’t cut to your bone right at the start of the movie, then they will do when they start singing. It’s one of the reasons I wanted music to have a dominant role in Vlaams Filmpje – and lo and behold: it worked. People like singers.

So picture my amazement when I walked past the DVD store and found this: a movie named Faubourg 36, of which I had not heard before. But with names so well-known to me that you could well say that it’s a sequel to Les Choristes, set in the past (If you haven’t seen this movie, you best forget that sentence unless you want to confuse yourself throughout).

Like cotton candy

The premise of Faubourg 36 is pretty simple: after a desastrous maffia-filled New Years Eve of 1935, three members of the variety theatre “Chansonia” try to save their second home by reopening it on their own account. Somewhere in there are three love stories (two of them in a triangle), educational themes, socialism… It’s a pretty full movie, which sometimes feels a bit all over the surface and scared to go into the deep, but manages to bring every story to a conclusive and satisfying end.

It’s not the story that sucks you in, though – it’s the world. The production team apparently recreated the entire Faubourg area in an abandoned field somewhere around Prague – and did so wonderfully: the movie world is so undeniably credible that it sucks you in from the moment the camera pans over the “CHANSONIA” letters, dismounts and follows Pigoil inside (a shot that lasted about three minutes and was a true work of art). It feels like its predecessor (an isolated world that lives next to a bigger one, with the emphasis on “next to”), but at the same time it feels like Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge – without the Luhrmannian kitch. The redness of the drapes, the whiteness of the snow… it’s a stunning looking alternate universe.

By the Sea

However, as I already pointed out in my way-too-long opening to this review, those elements are both overshadowed by one thing. For the first half hour, you like the characters – or in fact sometimes get annoyed at their attitudes. But you like them nontheless. Then, however, comes the singing, which completely catches you off-guard and makes you love them. They don’t actually all have good voices (except for Douce, who sounds stunning) and that’s exactly the closing deal: they’re natural. They sing like you and I do: under the shower, in the car, with gusto. Right from the heart. It’s great!

The thing is, I don’t know if it’s like that for everyone. I mean: it could be. Somehow, I doubt it though: there must be people who don’t get sucked in by this – even more: who puke just at the thought of hearing grown men sing on screen. But then again: is this the kind of movie for those people? Should I take those into account when writing this? I mean: if you glance even for a second at the DVD cover, you know what you’re in for. You were warned.

In all…

This is a movie I’ll be watching again and again. Sure, the plot is a bit hairy and at times it steps right beyond the line between drama and melodrama, but in the end the whole is so consistent that you cannot help but being sucked into this film’s crazy semi-parallel universe and it’s addictive music and dancing. If you don’t like music (or especially French Chansons), you should steer away from this at all costs though – you might get hurt in the progress.

Favourite Quote:
“Le môme Jojo, il ira loin…”

The Movie…

I’ve been trying to brush up on classics lately. In doing so, I found a pretty awesome Hitchcock DVD box on Amazon and ordered it immediately. So now, I’ve been watching Hitchcock movies – in chronological order. I have to say: they’re not all good, but if they’re good, they’re great!

Shadow of a Doubt follows the adventures of Charlie and Charlie – one of them being the uncle-from-the-city, the other being the small-town-niece. The uncle, a nervous wreck, decides to take a trip to his niece and her family into the country. Why exactly he wants to do so, is a mystery that slowly gets unraveled into a thick plot of epic proportions.

The movie is from 1942, but bears almost no resemblence to another Hitchcock movie made during the second World War: Saboteur. Sure, there is a good mystery plot in there, but the scope of Shadow of a Doubt is so much smaller – which makes it into a much better, much more concentrated film. Everyone can write a conspiracy plot – it’s become a genre by itself in the USA – but a small family drama… you need to get the characters just right for that, and that’s exactly where Shadow of a Doubt succeeds: Wonderful characters going through great evolutions.

The movie looks (and sounds – great use of walzes) brilliant – even back then, Hitchcock already made some shots that made my mouth water with esthetic delight. I love how Shadow of a Doubt makes the best of the framework it’s in – something I’ve rarely seen in movies from that age. Put all the pieces together and the whole starts feeling like a typical Hitchcockian nightmare. Slightly surreal but real enough to drag you in.

In all…

The bottomline is: if you want to see a Hitchcock movie and you’ve never seen one, this one is pretty good as a starter. I myself started with Vertigo (which I will review sometime), but the symbolism and freakiness got lost on me because I didn’t know enough about the creator’s signature. Shadow of a Doubt is a bit less to look at, but everything is there (and counts in small amounts).

Favourite Quote:
Joseph Newton: We’re not talking about killing people. Herb’s talking about killing me and I’m talking about killing him.

Beam me up, Buttercup

When I read that J.J. Abrams was rebooting the Star Trek franchise, the first thought to rush through my mind was “Oh God”. Now this doesn’t mean much. I know. In fact, I didn’t know myself what I meant with it. On the one hand, I was psyched to have another Abrams movie coming. On the other hand though, Star Trek brought back memories of static acting, bad backdrops and overweight people in wheelchairs pressed into insufficient amounts of spandex spouting Klingon insults (yes, I have been to a con or two in my life).

After a while, however, and after having seen the magnificent trailers, the idea grew on me, and I realized that I actually didn’t know as much about the Star Trek universe as I thought I did. Star Trek (2009) could be my way in – I could sneak in through the back door and ignore the history the house-in-renovation had. And I’m glad I did.

Kirk and the Battle of the Bar Brawlers

In typical Abrams fashion, the bottom layer of this movie (the part of the cake that then gets topped with cream and all that good stuff) are the characters. There’s Kirk, your typical wild boy bar brawler, and on the other side of the spectrum, Spock, the condensed smart-ass with a temper perfectly hidden inside of him. These two characters alone could have their own movie, but instead they are supported by a whole bunch of underused characters (sequel! sequel!): a black chick, a chinese dude, a russian guy, a scotish lad… The list goes on. And screams SEVENTIES in my ears at a deafening volume.

Just like a lot of J.J. Abrams productions, the two main characters would get along fine if it weren’t for this one little hick-up. In the case of Star Trek, we’re talking control: should you follow your gut or think things through before going for it? Obviously, the answer is somewhere in the middle – and that’s the moral of our story. No biggie.

You’re gullible, McFly!

If you go watch this, do not expect to be blown away by the depth of the story. In fact, if you expect any kind of earnest story at all, you risk being disappointed. Star Trek seems to wander the path of Back to the Future and Indiana Jones by mocking the very thing they’re trying to convince you of. Star Trek, whilst being an awesome movie, gets quite absurd at times, uses every cliche in the book, but it’s all done with such
air and a tongue-in-cheeck attitude that you let things slide. Even if they seem to make certain errors in their own mythology. It’s all in the paradoxes.

So for those expecting to have a deep experience, you’re out of luck. The space theme is kind of passé now compared to the seventies (I groaned when I first saw a space ship in this movie), so I guess this is one of the more interesting way to still tell these kind of stories. You just need to make sure the characters are fresh and interesting… and mildly funny (even if unintended).

In all…

If you’re going to reboot a franchise, you gotta do it right. You need a careful mix of things that aged well (from which you stay far, far away) and new things to replace those that haven’t aged well. Oh, and in the case of Star Trek, you apparently also need to set up an alternate universe.

Awesome little movie. Can’t wait for the sequels.

I remember the day when I saw Adaptation. It’s one of those movies that will remain fresh in my mind for ever because of the sheer absurdism of it. The premise? Two people each write one half of a movie script – the script of the very movie they are in – which makes for one crazily distorted story and two halves that when put together, make little to no sense.

It was okay for Adaptation – that was the movie’s concept. It was not okay for Watchmen, Zack Snyder’s return after 300 and Sin City. Snyder’s known for his stylistic approach and roller-coaster kind of movies where plot is not really important. This movie – even though once again he technically didn’t invent the story himself – is no different from the two others. Oh wait, technically fifty percent of it is.
Glorious Violence!

The times, they are changing

As soon as the movie starts, it becomes apparent to you that you are watching a Snyder movie. The camera is stylish (but on a better level than this movie’s older brothers) and the violence… well, it’s very gratuitous. A little spoiler of useless violence you will be seeing during this movie (not exhaustive): a bullet being shot through a leg, a man being chopped in the head repeatedly with an axe, a man who gets boiling oil tossed over him, a man whose arms get sawn off, a running guy on fire, an arm being ripped out of its socket… Even though I usually don’t quote other reviewers, the New Yorker’s Quote on Metacritic kind of says it all on the violence for me:

The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon.

Now I have nothing against a good bit of violence in a movie. I also think some of the fight scenes were really well done – the opener of the movie truly blew me off my chair – but this sort of graphism? Not really needed, kind of like gratuitous sex (which this movie had aswell, complete with a fl
amethrower as metaphor for the orgasm – even if it was ironic)… it usually pulls me out of the movie more than anything.

The Last Laugh

That is to be said, not all of the movie is popcorn-and-violence-based pictures. The first half of the film – which takes a lot of time setting up our “heroes” – is actually really, really deep. The backstory for every vilain is a tragic story of its own, a story filled with rape, prostitution, lost loves… This part of the movie was simply amazing and stunning, and I wished it would never end.

But it did. About 60 percent into the movie (a point at which it could have already ended – the thing is a whopping 160 minutes in length) the whole thing suddenly turns into a very generic… comic book hero movie. And with that, the whole magic of the movie is gone: the alternate 1985 (not the one from Back to the Future) suddenly felt shallow and shoddy, the overly dramatic dialogue suddenly became tacky and silly… It felt to me that as soon as the Silk Spectre put on her latex outfit, the whole crowd re-hit puberty.

In all..

Watchmen is a true mixed bag. For one, the first half is awesome – the best cinema experience of the year so far. Secondly, the second half is anything but awesome. Thirdly, and most importantly, though: this movie has no reason whatsoever to be 160 minutes in length. Kill your babies – it would’ve made this thing a lot stronger.
The whole back-to-spandex thing this movie pulls on you would have been far stronger had it only lasted for fifteen to twenty minutes. No chatting on Mars, no tacky sex scene, no endless Deus-ex-Machina pulling with Dr. Manhattan…

However, I still can’t think of a reason to truly tell people not to go see this. Because ultimately, you should. The setting and the first 60 percent of the movie are fresh and unique and pull unseens stunts on you. The introduction sequence showing the rise and fall of superheroes is amazing. Dr. Manhattan’s backstory, where Koyaanisqatsi music suddenly creeps up on you, is breathtaking. Rorschach’s tragic youth, fittingly told through ink blot tests, was unbelievable.

So why did they have to turn it into just another pop corn movie? Oh, right, the comic.

Favourite Quote:
Dan: What happened to us? What happened to the American Dream?
Edward: “What happened to the American Dream?” It came true! You’re lookin’ at it.

The advantage of living in a big city is that big cities have big things. Case in point: IMAX. Seeing how I’m a small town guy, I’d never ever visited an IMAX cinema before. So now that something mildly interesting was actually playing there, I figured I’d check things out. So I got treated by Monsters vs Aliens, Dreamworks’s new animation. In glorious 3D!

Let me confess to you: I’m actually not a big fan of Dreamworks animation. Sure, the technology is there, but their movies always feel soulless. This movie was not an exception to the rule: the hair looked realistic, and so did the skin… but then they put those realistic technologies into the most creepy animated human ever. Ew.

On the other hand, though, the story told in this movie is a lot better than the past few that had the Dreamworks name on them. No more endless sequels (seriously guys, the first Shrek wasn’t exactly the greatest movie of all times, so what’s with all the sequels?) or crazy movies moving at lightning speed (squirrel from Over the Hedge, my eyes are on you). I’d like an unpretentious movie, a bit of entertainment and a laugh here and there. And that’s exactly what I’ve got.

This movie is not great. It is never great. Nor – in my opinion – does it try to be. The main character has the staleness of a Dreamworks main character, there is another character for comic relief, and all of the characters – all of them – wander through the plot being underused. Except for the main character. You know, the boring one.

But hey, you’re watching Dreamworks. You don’t get to be picky. You opted for a good, two-hour laugh. And that’s what you get. Loads of movie references (Men in Black, Indepedence Day, Godzilla…), some awesome-looking characters (the cockroach-o-saurus and the egg-robot-thing, for example – just never the humans, never the humans)…

I just can’t write anything else about this movie. It’s not bad and it’s not good either. The 3D was cool. But without 3D? Not worth paying a cinema ticket for. Wait for the DVD. And then rent it. It’s like fast food: you gulp it down and forget you ever had it.