This 40s Movie: Out of the Past (1947)

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This 40s Movie: Out of the Past (1947)

Out of the Past is considered to be a classic film noir, which doesn’t mean that much to me since I’m not a particular fan of this genre. It has been used for so long that it is hard to do anything new with it, but you can’t expect that from a movie from 1947 of course. You can expect the basic tropes of this genre, stereotypes and sometimes a surprise, if you’re lucky. Out of the Past doesn’t have that many surprises, but it’s a nice enough movie anyway. While the plot becomes rather convoluted in the second half, the movie is never really boring, well acted and has some nice directorial touches by Jacques Tourneur. But it’s also nothing special, really, one of those old movies that are fine to watch, but probably not too memorable in the long run.

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88 Minutes (2007)

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88 Minutes (2007)

(spoilers and some NSFW images)

88 Minutes is a terrible movie, even more terrible for using an interesting concept and not only ruining it, but not really using it at all. If a movie tries to attempt being real-time, it should at least tell the audience that and not fill the movie with scenes of car drives. I mean, screw all of that, the movie is not real-time, it’s just a very stupid, very boring and very cheap thriller that makes no sense whatsoever and baffles you in all of its (accordingly more than 88) minutes. The acting is horrible, even Al Pacino sleepwalks through it as the protagonist. The directing is as amateurish as possible, the script is laughable, so the movie fails on every level. What works is that it makes you laugh unintentionally, like when Al Pacino pays a taxi driver to give him his taxi, but lets the driver sit in the back all the time or when during a dialogue scene the poster of a local improv troupe is featured prominently. As a bad movie, it’s somewhat recommendable because it’s really a different kind of bad and it wastes its actors (poor Deborah Kara Unger, having one of the most pointless roles I have ever seen) spectacularly.

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Northwest Passage (1940) [1940 Week]

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Northwest Passage (1940) [1940 Week]

Northwest Passage is a better film than North West Mounted Police, but that doesn’t really mean that much. What makes it better is that it is filmed better, there are some spectacular scenes, the acting is better and the colors don’t blind you. When it comes to the depiction of Native Americans this might be even worse. At least it shows the extinction of Native Americans as detailed and gruesome as possible, while not taking any moral stance against it and actually justifying it most of the time. This is essentially a war movie, but instead of soldiers killing other soldiers in WWI or WWII, we have rangers taking out Native Americans. While they walk through swamps and forests, there is almost an impossible Vietnam vibe to all of it. It sort of works as a war movie adventure, in depicting the struggles the soldiers have to get through (the action scene in the river is kind of cool), the way they plan their mission and the difficulty of getting back home. In that sense it is almost enjoyable, if you ignore any ethical alarms setting of at watching the glorification of war and genocide.

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North West Mounted Police (1940) [1940 Week]

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North West Mounted Police (1940) [1940 Week]

North West Mounted Police is a bad movie in many ways. It is a Cecil B. DeMille spectacle, which is what he was determined to do, but in this case the very concept of a spectacle for this story seems misguided. Using a rebellion of a minority group against the American government as a background is not a good idea, especially if it turns the rebels into caricatures and uses it to paint the North West Mounted Police, a group of horse-riding Canadian policemen, as heroes. Add in some intercultural romance, betrayal, honor and many stereotypes about natives and women and you get an overlong piece of pseudo-propaganda with overly bright colors and strange acting. It is a movie that has very problematic ethical standards and is not well-made. This is not a movie that needs to be remembered.

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The Great Dictator (1940) [1940 Week]

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The Great Dictator (1940) [1940 Week]

The Great Dictator is a true classic in theory, a movie many people know and that seems to be relevant even today after Charlie Hebdo and The Interview and any satire that focuses on dictators. But I wonder how many people actually know the movie and like it as a movie as opposed to a concept. The movie ranks very high on the IMDb user ranking and after seeing it, I am surprised by that. It is not a bad movie at all and some scenes are really good, but overall I found it to feel forced, uneven and, worst of all, not very funny. I know, sacrilege!, but I watched the movie with the most open mind and was constantly stunned how jokes fell flat and how little payoff there often was. Often the satire is not really sharp and rather relies on slapstick, but, I think, even then slapstick that is mediocre. The editing is off in many, many scenes, hurting the movie’s pace. The acting was great throughout, though. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was disappointed. Sure, if you account the time and circumstances, maybe you can’t really expect more, but the question is if the movie should be judged simply on its intentions or on its actual quality.

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Waterloo Bridge (1940) [1940 Week]

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Waterloo Bridge (1940) [1940 Week]

(spoilers ahead, but you don't care, right, it's a 1940 movie)

Waterloo Bridge is an odd film to judge. On the surface I liked it. The acting was quite good, the dialogue is well written and the direction by Mervyn LeRoy is good. It is an entertaining movie, apart from its plot development and moral, especially concerning women. I have rarely seen such a strange mixture of serviceable filmmaking and questionable ethics. Interestingly, for a movie made in 1940, it is set mostly during World War I but also includes Britain declaring war on Germany in World War II, clearly appealing to audience’s emotions at the time. Anyway, there are worse old movies you could watch and this one at least offers the opportunity for interesting post-watching discussions.

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This 70s Movie: The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

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This 70s Movie: The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

The Incredible Melting Man is another movie where the title tells you a lot already. It combines “incredible” with “melting man” so you more or less know what you’re getting. It is in fact a really bad horror movie that looks awfully cheap, has no real plot, bad actors and many weird trash movie moments. It is the story of an astronaut who comes too close to Saturn and when he returns back to Earth, he starts melting and walking around killing people for no reason. If its gore effects hadn’t make me feel sick (I get that easily with cheap looking horror movies, something about them freaks me out easily), I would have enjoyed the badness of it all. The scene where a nurse is running from the “monster” in slow motion for about a minute, without the monster actually behind her is pretty awesome. And the dialogue scene about crackers is really unique. The ending is fascinatingly anti-climatic and odd. But this is no good movie.

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

(no spoilers)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a really interesting movie, but also a very funny one. I had wanted to see it for a long time, due to both my love for Shane Black scripted movies when I was a teenager, but also because I enjoyed Iron Man 3 so much. And I had heard only good things about this one, so I was eager to see it. Overall, my expectations weren’t quite met as the plot is such a mess. But the dialogue is as great as you would expect from a 100% Shane Black movie, Robert Downey Jr. is really good and I laughed out loud several times, which not many movies achieve these days. There are some jokes that are so well done, not just the snappy dialogue, but also some physical comedy that is just great. Michelle Monaghan really surprised me in her role, too. If the plot was more coherent, this would have been a really amazing movie.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Was bleibt (2012)

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Was bleibt (2012)

(no real spoilers)

Was bleibt (Home for the Weekend is the English title) is another good movie by Hans-Christian Schmid who, in my opinion, has not even made an average movie yet. It’s a family drama about a son coming back home to his family and his mother who announces she has decided to live without her medication, which upsets her husband and her other son. It is really fascinating how the drama unfolds, how the family constellation is shifting and how Marko, the homecoming son, tries to remain as a good a man as possible throughout. And even he is not perfect, which makes him all the more relatable. The film challenges us to work through all the family problems and does so very effectively by making all the relationships authentic and not painting anyone as particularly good or bad. The last ten minutes or so didn’t really work for me because the movie sets us up for a more satisfying conclusion we don’t get and the last line is too much on the nose. Apart from that, this is a really intriguing and well-made movie.

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Jonas (2011)

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Jonas (2011)

(no real spoilers)

Jonas is an unusual and unique movie that is hard to categorize. It is a German movie, first of all (which I have been trying to catch up with a little bit more), but it only features one real actor in a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Christian Ulmen is put into a real situation, acting as a student in a school, surrounded by real students and teachers and seeing what happens. To me, it mostly worked because of the fascination with his character and how much you can learn about school from it. Still, the problem is that the movie never really lets you know how much is orchestrated and how much is spontaneous. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but there is an uncanny feeling that remains. Still, Ulmen’s acting is really amazing, especially since he does not turn it into a caricature (apart from the silly love story which is not really working).

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