The Day the Earth stood Still (2008)

A remake of a classic sci-fi featuring the actor with the least facial expressions in Hollywood, including the actors that have been dead for decades? I'm not intrigued.

Strange intro. They actually manage to create a certain expectation in the scene where Connelly is picked up and driven to the airport. Nicely done. After this, dullness ensues and the feeling of being intrigued is forever lost.

The "suspense" is mostly tedious and unoriginal. Flashlights in the fog, trying to find something unknown, bright, blinding lights, lines like "it's close" and what not. Yawn.
Where the original was an epiphany and a science fiction pillar, this is a lot of the time like a horror movie from a forest of some kind, with the odd sci-fi element.
It's filled with stupid mistakes and logical flaws, mocking people who are actually paying attention.

Connolly is an excellent actress who has been mostly very good at choosing her parts. In this film though, she is utterly out of place and brings little to a nothing of a character (even though she cries much more often than necessary). Reeves was always horrible at chemistry, and has none here either, making all his interactions with others a bore. However, none of the characters are really anything but shells, their motivation seems a mystery and their development as well. Except for the kid. Portrayed by Jaden Smith, he is excruciating in every scene and you need to google "JarJar" in order to find an example of a more unnecessary, irritating and useless character. With dialogue taken from the very bottom of the deepest pile of dung in the zoo, there is nothing to find on a personal level. Oh, and John Cleese is a miscast so dire, one could weep.

Unfortunately, the storyline is as bad as the characters. I doubt director Derrickson had a clear thought as to what he wanted to make here. Either that or it was bullocksed later.

There is a bit of action and some sparse suspense and when they run out of script and decide to just blow shit up this flick is at its best/least horribel. But considering the creativity and originality of the original, this mess of a thriller with sci-fi connotations can only be described with one word. Blasphemy. A most worthy winner of the Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel".

2/10

Kick-Ass (2010)

OK. To start off a superhero-flick with a nerd and a voice-over is not ideal nor is it creative, but this flick is so wildly entertaining that I'm willing to let that slip for now.

Our "hero" is very nicely portrayed, with just the right amount of sarcasm, stupidity, awe, horniness and foolhardiness. So I'll forgive the director for overdoing the embarrassed-teenager scenes.
It's exceptionally rare to have a movie totally change pace... without just seeming schizophrenic And it really is an extreme change when director Waughn struts his stuff in the second half. He drops a scene here and there to prepare you, making sure reality catches up to our hero, distancing him from his dreams and fantasies. But you're still nowhere near prepared when the curtain goes up for the final act.
Somehow Waughn also manages to avoid taking the violence that tad too far to make it daft. Though it is over-the-top, it is also excruciatingly real at times.
Nicholas Cage has been mostly mediocre in mostly horrible films the last couple of decades so it is a real treat to see him ace this part. And though Aaron Johnson is more than good enough for his part, 12 year old Chloë Grace Moretz is absolutely amazing. With a mostly unknown, though still most decent supporting cast, this is a treat. They don't really get the romance going here in any significant way and his nerd-friends don't really get enough screen-time to add much more than a smirk here and there, but that's splitting hairs as Waughn doesn't spend enough time on any of it to really prevent a good flow. So is the fact that the best scenes take place before the end-game, leaving the latter almost anticlimactic (though still nowhere near bad).

Both suspense and sheer action works. Realistic in it's parodic way for the first half and just brutal in the remainder. The warehouse-scene and the PR-stunt are absolutely amazing scenes. The first for its fantastic action and cutting (with some brilliant choices in music), the second for it's bare and devastatingly authentic effect.

I fail to give an explanation as to how they manage to blend the utter nerdiness and the brutal violence in "Kick-Ass" but it works in most scenes and at a time when Hollywood sets new records for lack of creativity every week, this is a tremendous example that it's still possible to surprise and shock a viewer without simply going for more extreme versions of things already made. Waughn makes himself a perfectly thin line and balances it with great care throughout.
Kudos to all involved.

8/10

Transformers III: Dark of the Moon

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The Hunger Games (2012)

To specify: I never read the books, so this review is based solely on the film itself.

For a movie with a plot reducing 24 to 1, director Gary Ross certainly makes it hard for himself, refusing to deal with a lot of choices along the way. This makes me start with the films greatest flaw; its runtime. It clocks in at almost two and a half hours and the screenplay really doesn't have enough material for that. Thus meaning it's a bit of hit and miss at times. Intriguing for a few minutes, then tedious and intriguing again. Through the first half of the movie this really does prevent a real flow. And although I'm sure they hired every tasteless designer in Hollywood to dress up the city of Capitol, it still looks horrid and misplaced. No wait. Because they hired every tasteless designer in Hollywood, it looks horrid and misplaced.

When the games begin, however, there is plenty of suspense to keep you awake. Personally, I thought I had had more than enough of animals/shadows/people chasing people, but they create a wonderful suspense for most of it and only a couple of times do they get tempted by the Bay-side (Bay-hater analogy) of the force and refuse to cut scenes that really didn't belong. You are likely to grab onto the seat and feel your pulse increase ever so slightly. It's a good thing!

Ross also fails to make the most of a couple of scenes that set up some possible brilliance but ends in decency. Furthermore he is clearly restrained by the PG-rating, though he could still have avoided using hand-held cameras quite so much to avoid showing any gore. Hand-held cameras add little more than confusion and their use should be kept to a minimum.

The suspense is partly due to something as rare as decent casting for a teen-flick. Both Hutcherson and Lawrence are quite alright and even muster some chemistry here and there, though their characters are of limited interest. Most of the fodder-extras do OK too, though none of them will be missed later on. Love shine a light on Woody Harrelson for the first half though. Whenever he shows up, there's just that little extra amount of charisma and panache that the others lack. Unfortunately he undergoes some strange, unexplained transformation that doesn't really suit him and towards the end he's as dull as the ten thousand extras that stole from Elton Johns closet in Capitol. Another dent for the utter misuse of Donald Sutherland who is left with a nothing of a part, leaving only the subtle hint of utter villainy that he does so well. And, of course, it pisses me off beyond belief that director Ross is unable to allow the heroine a clean kill. It either has to be indirect (dropping wasps on people) or in immediate self-defense. For a contestant in a death game that masters a crossbow, that's just stupid.

This film is nowhere near deserving of its hype, but it's not at all a bad way to entertain yourself for a couple of hours. Did it set up well for a further two installments, though? No! But that's a different matter.

6/10

Transformers II - Revenge of the Fallen

In my opinion the second in a trilogy is often the best. The characters develop and there is usually darkness afoot (i.e. The Two Towers and The Empire Strikes back). The Revenge of the fallen, though is a bigger disappointment than Hellboy II and The Matrix Reloaded.

Why in the sweetest, holiest hell do they start this movie with a voice-over explaining things that inn all essence were explained with broad strokes in the first installment? Naturally, this flick has just as predictable and dull an opening as the first.

LaBeouf is still a whimpering, stressed out and unlucky idiot, same as last. He sucks in every single scene he enters, regardless if he wants to do Megan Fox, dump Bumblebee, calm his mother or not be killed.

Then there's the support cast. All scenes with the family are actually a lot worse this time. Out of place in every conceivable way, adding nothing of anything, leaving me angry or annoyed every single time. Fox is still sizzling, but Bay makes her overdo it in such a fashion that you're just waiting for a plumber to show up to "fix her sink". Horrible.
The caricatures are so obvious and overused it's almost sickening: The bureaucrat asshole hassling the Autobots and soldiers (naturally a wimp when push comes to shove), the nerdy, paranoid roommates, the arrogant professor in his class, the consistent worst of all possible timings, the "cool" dynamic duo (damn, they're annoying), hidden door found by dumb accident etcetc. You'll find more originality in a tomb filled with accountants than in this reeking turd.

The story is virtually non-existent, the characters unevolved, not to mention badly balanced (80% are overstressed and annoying whiners, just as the former movie), and even the humor is horrible. Michael Bay must be the only guy that can try to make fun of the French without making anyone laugh.

Do you remember Maximum Overdrive? It is a very, VERY bad movie. But the kitchen appliances- scene in this stinker makes me miss it.It's so stupid, poorly directed and filmed it leaves me absolutely stunned.

Oh. And Bay still spins the camera around just enough to make it impossible to really enjoy any of the fight-scenes between the robots. I would add a point for LaBeouf dying, but since Bay both uses his sun-shot by the face of Fox and LaBeouf is miraculously revived in a manner so lame that it begs belief, it is deducted with interest. Another debacle of a scene.

That there are robots, explosions and violence for all, just doesn't enter into it. I always meant that if anyone would be able to screw up something as cool as Transformer, Michael Bay was the perfect choice. He is. This movie is perhaps the dumbest pile of shit ever to be formed on the pavement. Everyone seeing it will need to re stabilize their IQ by reading a good book or perhaps just staring blankly at a white wall until the memories fade. Truly, utterly atrocious on every conceivable level.

1/10