Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

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Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Birdemic: Shock and Terror has exactly that title, so you might think I don’t have to explain that this is not a good movie. But even if you know bad movies, you have no idea what you’re getting into with this one. It’s not just cheap or poorly made, it’s really the worst made movie I have ever seen. Take a video with your phone of anything right now and it probably looks better than 99% of this movie. Seriously. Anyway, it’s still a lot of fun since you simply can’t believe what you’re seeing most of the time. It consists of scenes that show completely mundane things for minutes on end (driving in a car, buying gas, walking from one place to another, people clapping). If you’d cut the actual plot parts of the movie together, you’d probably end up with a 30-minute movie. Let’s not even talk about the visual effects of the attacking birds because… let’s just not talk about it. It’s a perfect laugh-out-loud bad movie that delivers one insane scene with ridiculous dialogue, bad editing, amateur camera movements, terrible sound and inexplicable plot developments after another. Maybe you need three minutes of driving around in a car to process the absurdity of everything else.

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The Habit of Standing Up

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The Habit of Standing Up

Resulting from the long “holiday week” and a couple of sick days I came back to school today after about 1,5 weeks to my first class of the day. I put my stuff on the desk, waiting for everyone to get ready to and saw some students getting up and slowly most students were standing after a while. I saw some students tell other students to get up too, so that we could start. I couldn’t help laughing at the sight of the standing class and said: “It’s obvious I’ve been gone for too long, since you all forgot that you don’t have to stand at the beginning of my class.” Even then, after reminding them that this is something they don’t have to do, there was some confusion before everyone got back to their seats, some admitting to a certain stupidity for having forgotten this.

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Drive (2011)

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Drive (2011)

(spoilers when I say so)

Drive is a movie that really got to me. It is one of the intense and most surprising movies I’ve seen in a while and also one of the best. I had high expectations for the movie after having read so many good things, but they really paid off. It’s the first movie I gave a 10 since Looper in August. Director Nicolas Winding Refn creates an atmosphere that is as intense as anything I’ve ever experienced in a movie. This special mood is mostly created through silence, music and brilliantly framed shots (the two of them in the hallway, separated by the editing, but united in negative space is extremely brilliant). The use of unexpected and shocking violence adds to that in an unusual way. The movie captivates you so much that the violence really feels like a hit on the head. It makes the violence also more meaningful because it both has an effect on the viewer and real consequences for the characters. The acting is amazing throughout, especially Ryan Gosling carries the movie without saying much and with only the slightest facial expressions. The same goes for Carey Mulligan, but most of the actors defy character expectations with little gestures, especially Albert Brooks and Oscar Isaacs. Overall, a great movie that stays with you.

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Exceptional Circumstances (Into the Not-Normal) [or Hell-Au]

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Exceptional Circumstances (Into the Not-Normal) [or Hell-Au]

Every year in Germany (and in other parts of the world), Carnival is celebrated. In Germany it’s called either Fasching or Fastnacht or Karneval and to me this always seemed like a typical German tradition. It is a strange time of the year, as for 5-6 days people go a little crazy. I hate it. In recent years I noticed more and more that I’m not alone in this, but in general people seem to be into it and in more than one instance my dislike provoked people to ask if I don’t like “fun.” Ha. Here’s what I don’t like about Fasching.

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This 50s Movie: Gun the Man Down (1956)

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This 50s Movie: Gun the Man Down (1956)

Gun the Man Down is an obscure 50s Western, which I only watched because I became fascinated by the idea of watching the debut movie of director Andrew V. McLaglen, from whom I haven’t really seen any other movie. Somehow it intrigued me to watch this “first movie” (although it might have actually been his second) and to watch a western. I didn’t expect to like it and it certainly nothing special, but it’s also not really bad. It has some interesting ideas for your run-of-the-mill western, even if the story is short on surprises. It’s a revenge story, bank robber left behind by his accomplices, seeking revenge. I thought when writing about my first western, I could about Native American clichés, but it seems this movie couldn’t afford more actors and locations than necessary. But it still has an interesting female character to talk about.

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The Imitation Game (2014)

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The Imitation Game (2014)

(minor spoilers if you don’t know anything about the plot or Alan Turing’s life already)

The Imitation Game has all the ingredients for a great movie, but wastes that potential on most levels. It tries to tell too many stories at once and doesn't do justice to any of them. The story is compelling enough to keep the viewer invested, the acting is excellent throughout and Alexandre Desplat's score is great. But almost everything about the script is flawed: structure, focus, explanation of relevant plot details, dramatization of events, accuracy and in a few instances dialogue. It takes too many shortcuts when it should get into detail and it overdramatizes when there is no need to. After seeing the movie, I don't find it surprising that it isn't accurate. It's not a bad movie at all, but one that gets worse the more you think about it.

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Did I Like This? (Walking With a Panther)

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Did I Like This? (Walking With a Panther)

Finally, an episode of Did I Like This? that no one has been waiting for! Well, I know not many people come to my blog to read this, but I hate leaving things unfinished, so I decided to explore another past hip-hop album and plan on doing all of them eventually. Today, I pick the other end of the spectrum, far away from the gangsta rap of previous albums: LL Cool J’s third album Walking With a Panther, released in 1989 by Def Jam.

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Kriegerin (2012)

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Kriegerin (2012)

(some minor spoilers)

Kriegerin (Combat Girls, which is a stupid English title as Warrior would work perfectly) is a relentless portrait of two young women who end up in a neo-Nazi organization simply because society doesn’t offer them anything else. It is a very effective movie that doesn’t shy away from anything, making it hard to watch at times. It also doesn’t simply paint people as bad or evil, but mostly as lost, which I will get into in a second. The movie takes its subjects seriously and doesn’t really judge them, it observes, mostly. Marisa, the main and basically title character, is played by Alina Levshin in an amazingly strong performance. I’m unsure if the plot always works and if the off-screen narration at the beginning and end are really necessary (especially the last lines made me cringe a little). The in medias res opening also added a hopelessness that I’m not sure the movie really needed. But this is nit-picking, overall the film is very well directed by David Wnendt and presents a subject matter that is not talked about enough, at least not from this point of view.

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Why the State of the Union Didn't Matter in 1973 [1973]

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Why the State of the Union Didn't Matter in 1973 [1973]

As I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this week, I have no album or any comics from 1973 to talk about and since I won’t break out of my routine to do an additional movie, I thought of something special this time. Only last week I looked at Obama’s State of the Union speech and I wondered if it wouldn’t be interesting to look at the State of the Union speech from 1973 by Richard Nixon to see what has changed in the last 40 years.

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Badlands (1973) [1973 Week]

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Badlands (1973) [1973 Week]

(minor spoilers)

When I checked for 1973 movies and saw Badlands, I knew I had to take it. I had never seen it before, but how I could not use the opportunity for watching Terence Malick’s first movie? I really liked all of his movies I have seen up to now and I really had been wanting to see Badlands for a while. Anyway, it is definitely a good and fascinating movie. It worked better for me in the first half than in the last, but overall the story of those two young people drifting through the U.S. is worth watching and is not at all the way you would expect it. The images are beautiful and haunting and even if you think you’ve seen all of Malick’s insertion of nature images, I always find it powerful. Early on, he shows this holistic view of the world and you see that in Badlands as much as you see it in The Tree of Life thirty years later. The acting is great, the music is excellent (I had an epiphany when I realized that my favorite music from True Romance is no original Hans Zimmer score, but a classical track by Orff that Malick used in his spiritual predecessor to True Romance. I never knew…) and increases this strange, dream-like, melancholy atmosphere that accompanies ever killing and escape from civilization. I’m not sure about the ending of the movie because I felt similar to Sissy Spacek’s character in the end, which made it harder to engage with the movie.

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Poster of a Girl - 1973 Edition: [1973 Week]

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Poster of a Girl - 1973 Edition: [1973 Week]

It’s time for another poster post since looking at posters from 1973 is incredibly intriguing. And you’ll see some amazing posters here. Man, things were really different back then, sometimes for better, but mostly for worse. Keep in mind that many of the more outrageous posters are of movies that are obvious B-movie trash, but then again there are some posters that look silly and have some known names on them, on movies I have never heard of. As always, I scanned the IMP page for 1973 and picked a lot of posters to look at. I’ll put them in categories again, like in 1980, because I just couldn’t leave out so many of them and the themes are very recurring. There’ll be a gallery for categories with many posters so you can see for yourself, but I’ll highlight some favorites. This is not the week of short articles!

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Soylent Green (1973) [1973 Week]

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Soylent Green (1973) [1973 Week]

Soylent Green is one of those sci-fi-classics where people rarely talk about the actual movie and much more about its famous final line of dialogue. The movie is really fascinating because it is such a dark, extremely dystopian future that is relentless in its hopelessness. It tries to alarm people at the time, to avoid this future, but then again, the way people act here, you couldn’t believe that anyone is able to change or do anything good. I really liked this dark atmosphere, the special effects and some of the ideas about the future. The movie is set in 2022, so there is some of that fun of how much the movie is wrong about the future. And how much it is right. It is not a perfect movie at all, the plot doesn’t really move forward much and is obviously just there to reach the shocking conclusion. The misogyny is almost unbearable (more on that below) and Charlton Heston does not play a very appealing main character. But there is Edward G. Robinson’s amazing final performance and many fascinating little details that keep you entertained.

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You Belong on the Radio - 1973 Edition [1973 Week]

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You Belong on the Radio - 1973 Edition [1973 Week]

I noticed that looking at older songs is somewhat more interesting than current songs. The problem with current songs is that it is hard to find anything new to say, since most of them talk about the same things in the same way. Which is something I also notice when I look at songs from a particular year, like 1973, but that helps getting an idea for the feel of that time. Anyway, this time I was really struck how similar the themes found in the songs are and how well they fit into that period (and also fit to everything else I am looking at for this theme week). Let’s go!

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American Graffiti (1973) [1973 Week]

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American Graffiti (1973) [1973 Week]

(some spoilers)

American Graffiti is an odd movie, I think, not particularly bad, but also not really exciting. There  isn’t that much of a plot and, I would argue, not that much character development to go on. Which doesn’t make the movie bad, but for a coming-of-age movie I found it was lacking a bit of “coming”. Some characters are indecisive and in the end make a decision, but this one night the movie covers doesn’t completely change anyone’s life. Of course it’s George Lucas’ movie before Star Wars, but since it was a hit back in 1973, that doesn’t really matter for its importance and attitude. It really depends on your interest in its setting, more than in its message, I guess. So, let’s focus on that.

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It's Hard to Be a Saint in 1973 [1973 Week]

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It's Hard to Be a Saint in 1973 [1973 Week]

It’s 1973 week! Finally, we have a week that is set before 1980, the first one from a time before I was born. This definitely puts a spin on it, although it’s still not that far away from 1980 week as there are still a couple of decades left (I set my limit at 1930). What can we expect from 1973? It’s not the 60s anymore, so the disillusion and darkness might creep in already. I think it’s a very interesting year, especially because most upheavals had happened already. It’s a time where people got used to seeing the world with different, more critical eyes, but also with less hope than in the 60s. Anyway, I’m, as always, excited!

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3 Months of Movies (III)

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3 Months of Movies (III)

Another three months have passed already, so it’s time to take a look at all the movies I watched in that period. Which aren’t that many, unfortunately. Last time, I was frustrated that it was less movies than in the first three months and now it’s even less than that. I hope I’ll have more to look at in April. But I just don’t always have time for movies. Or I use my time for other endeavors (like a fallback to video games recently). Or the amount of movies stresses me because I want to write about all of them and don’t find time for that too. Anyway, I think there will be more movies next time. This time, I’m focusing on all the movies from 21 Jump Street to Kriegerin.

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Why the State of the Union Doesn't Matter

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Why the State of the Union Doesn't Matter

I’m not a fan of President Obama, but I’m not a fan of any American president (or any president, I guess). So when his State of the Union address hits the news, I’m somewhat baffled. Even before I have heard or read it, I know it contains nothing newsworthy. Why would it? Politicians aren’t out to accomplish anything, to see change or only occasionally. And what does it matter, if Obama says the U.S. is still great and will only be better? (which I’ll assume will be the message because it always is). None of what he says will make any difference. It will be cheered by his fans, attacked by his political enemies (but not for content but out of principle) and everyone else will have forgotten it instantly. Still, because it is considered newsworthy, I thought I could take a look at it to see what kinds of things Obama (or whoever wrote the speech) actually is saying. You can read the whole speech here or watch it here. But I’ll work with quotes, so you don’t have to.

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The Interview (2014)

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The Interview (2014)

The Interview is… annoying? It’s the only word I can think of. It’s a comedy that throws everything at the screen it can think of, any joke, no matter how high or low it aims, they just thrust it all out and see what sticks. Not much does, if you ask me, but that doesn’t really matter I guess. It’s not a secret by now that this movie is not worth all the controversy it caused. Its humor and tone is so all over the place that there is not much room for satire or any deep thought. And the movie honestly doesn’t care either, which might be in its favor. I found it, well, annoying, because it’s very long, not many jokes are funny and the direction is lazy. Seth Rogen does his Seth Rogen thing, which is somewhat entertaining for a while but not forever. James Franco… I don’t what to say. I think he is the worst part of the movie as his grimacing and overacting is simply mind-boggling. It is impossible to feel any sympathy for him, but the movie wants us to like him, which is hard if it’s tough just watching him talk.

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