Reviews

So Arwen is back and this time she's even with an Orc. Optically, Liv Tyler looks even more like an elf now, than ever before, with her really extremely long face. People might criticize her acting, but its hard to look good next to a Edward Norton, and personally I didn't mentioned any flaw at all in it; for me, she was totally believable.

Criticizing Edward Norton would probably be a sacrilege by now. The legitimate successor of Robert de Niro, the man who can play a tree (de Niro about de Niro), is of course again far beyond any criticism in his acting skills. I thorough enjoyed his interpretation of Hulk.

Tim Roth also does a good work as usual, even if his character was rather one dimensional. The story is not record breaking, but was definitely okay. All in all the movie was about as good or bad as Iron Man, but couldn't reach the level of the Spiderman Trilogy or the new Batman movies, due to lack of depth in the story. It definitely has a much, much, much better romance than the last of these movies, though.

What really enraged me was the fact that they cut so much of the showdown. Cant mention details to avoid spoilers, but the German version was nothing short of butchered in this respect; the German viewer really had no idea whatsoever how the villain was finally brought down.

Its really seldom that a movie is as predictable as this one. You already know the whole story of this picture if you saw its trailer. The rest is hardly more but a lot of chatting and a little fighting. And - thats it ! No sub-context, no story twists, no comedy, no irony, nothing.

And the new technology of making movies is awful. Its tolerable if human skin looks rather like marzipan. But its a huge problem when most faces are simply lifeless and unnatural. Even the main characters faces ! The only exception is Angelina Jolie, because she's the only one who kept mostly her original face.

Another thing which really nerved me was the absurd prudery of the movie. We see a man fighting naked, but somehow there is always something in the way that hides his penis. We get Angelina Jolie all naked, but she has breasts without nipples. If the creators of the movie didn't wanted to show naked people, they should have just kept their characters dressed, instead of such embarrassing trickery.

No recommendation. This picture wont make you want to poke out your eyes, but thats the best I can say about it.

I was really not expecting that much from this movie - I just expected a followup to the previous ones. Especially since the producers hid the movie from the press, a move I can really not understand now, and since the last movie of Milla Jovovich, Ultraviolet, got horrible press and never was shown in any theater near me at all.

But I have to say this movie exceeded my expectations and turned out to be really suspenseful and full of atmosphere, and overall a lot better than the previous one. Milla Jovovich is cooler than ever. The story is a lot more straightforward as well, and the action and fights could have been hardly better. Like all good action movies, it also contained humor, which, in this case, was rather black.

It was however a bit sad that you had to know the previous movies to really understand this one and to fully comprehend all story twists, and I missed a bit the link between the last movie and this one.

Its a good straightforward action movie, I can only recommend it.

Unlike the first movie, the second one is a pure action movie for the masses. Development of an atmosphere or even worse emotional development of the characters was completely not considered by the makers of the movies, on the other hand they easily sacrificed any piece of story logic for having another cool pose of their main characters. As a result, the story has holes as large as moon craters and a development like the shambling of a drunk. The movie beginning is very artificial and the movie climax very cheesy and wordy. Still, the movie has quite some nice action scenes and over long distances also suspense.

I can't really recommend it, the predecessor was a lot more spooky and original.

The fourth "Die Hard" movie is certainly OK as a pure action movie. Tons of explosions, cool stuns, etc. And its quite funny, too. And they have Kevin Smith !

The problem I had with it was that I couldn't sympathize with the people in the movie enough, as they totally lacked any deeper characterization. They have no mentionable motives, no habits, and no faults. Besides being sometimes hungry, being interested in girls if they are boy and vice versa, and being angry if you hurt people they love, etc.

In movie one there was a policeman from new york where coming to "fucking California", made fists with his toes, etc. There where a lot of details that describe the people and make them complete and real. The evil guys also had a lot of characterization, and there where a lot of psychological battles going on between them and the cop.

In movie four all these basics are missing. As a result, one never really has any relation to the people on the screen, dialogs are shallow, and many scenes simply don't work.

A final word of criticism: when will Hollywood ever make a movie about computers thats even only decently realistic ? Most people have computers now at home but Hollywood movies continue to be absurd whenever computers are mentioned.

All in all, its a nice mainstream movie, but its certainly not another classic.

I got the DVD very cheap and I'm a total Drewbie, and thats probably the only constellation where this movie could ever interest anyone.

An early Drew movie, she's looking great, and she gets a quite lot of really cute scenes of her, like a shower scene, a sexy dance scene, quite a number of sexy outfits etc. She does never show the friendly charm we know from her more recent movies.

The movie itself is pretty average or sub-average, and much more looking like being made for the TV than one for the cinema. There is no real horror or tension built up and the dialogs are often cheesy.

The most interesting part is probably the end because I honestly don't understand it. But maybe there is nothing to understand about it anyway. But at least you don't get the end you would be expecting, and it also comes much sooner than one would have expected.

Overall I think this movie is exclusively for Drewbies.

"American Sexuality" would be the better title for this movie. This is a movie about and exclusively for Americans that make every European yawn - unless of course he is as ignorant, misinformed and puritan as these strange people from overseas.

For the movie completely ignores the problems of his theme. These script authors obviously never read any studies about the psychological problems of real prostitutes and pornstars, they never talked with real people of this field, and they're very far behind with the reality of today pornography as well. For example, nobody makes much money with a single porn movie in the internet age anymore. Reading any serious article about the today reality in any political or feminist media would have told you much more than this picture about the problem.

Failing on the educational side, the movie isn't entertaining either. It simply lacks real ideas for the story itself, and most attempts to fill the full 90 minutes for a cinema movie look very artificial and don't support any general story. The Hollywood rule 'the story should fit into two sentences' is not followed at all here. I especially disliked it that this movie has not one ending, but about four or so. At multiple stages of the movie every problem was really solved and the end screen could have popped up. Maybe it had even more endings, after the fourth ending I left the cinema out of boredom.

This is not really a movie one can judge about, as its not entertainment but information and education. If you want to watch it, you really should take your time.

They say that Charlize Theron did one of the greatest acting ever in this movie, and indeed I was impressed how completely and perfectly she became a very different person. Unfortunately others here had problems to keep up with her brilliance, most noticeably her movie girlfriend, played by charismatic Christina Ricci.

I was also impressed that a movie about a 'Monster' showed not a monster, but instead a very living and understandable human being, tortured by her really horrible life before finally making some really stupid decisions. Indeed, this movie actually contains one of the greatest romantic moments I've ever seen in a movie.

I can't help but give this movie full marks and full recommendation.

Do you know a really good comic movie ? I really have problems to remember anyone. Batman was bad (especially Batman and Robin), Spawn was harmless, Hulk was not that good, X-Men is improving, but hardly has reached a decent level yet.

So Spiderman seems to be the only really good comic movie ever. And the second movie might be even better than the first one. I really have hated the first one for its bad ending, but the second one fixes it for me.

Both movies brilliantly combine small, actorcentered scenes with big effects and action. Again Ken Parker, the Spiderman, has a lot of personal troubles to handle. The movie contains a lot of nice scenes and jokes, but of course also the big hunt of another supercriminal.

This is the best comic movie known to me, and a very good piece of entertainment.

Troy is a film with very, very good dialogues and a lot of brilliant actors. I especially liked Sean Bean aka Boromir as Odysseus, but Priam, Hector, Archilles, Briseis, Agamemnon and many others where very good as well.

The effects where also very good, even if they where a little bit bombastic at times. But the actors and the story still got most of the screentime.

The original story has been modified very much, but thats not a bad thing, because this way the movie isn't just a mechanical repetition. Of course, many important scenes are now left out, and some things happen at a different time. And the movie story contains now almost no gods anymore, except that some people still believe very much in them and Archilles is told that he will die in Troy.

I've been told that this movie and 'The day after tomorrow' are in concurrence to each other, as both Peterson ('Das Boot') and Emmerich ('Independence Day') are directors from germany. But in my humble opinion, Troy is the much better one of these two.

Troy is a good entertainment movie and I think I can recommend it.

This is an extreme movie in multiple respects.

First, the general plot idea is extremely good. This could have been one of the most charming love movies ever.

Second, Drew Barrymore is extremely ideal for her character here, extremely charming, kind and funny.

And third, all this gets extremely wasted. For the script is full of tasteless jokes, and the male half of the twosome is designed to be the greatest possible a***. The only thing one really wants after a while is to see him die a very painful death.

To make that disaster even more complete, Sean 'Samwise Gamgee' Astin plays a stupid bodybuilder here, who gets kicked in the ass by everyone, including his own father.

To me, it looks as if the people making this movie tried to create something like a second 'There's something about Mary'. But in that movie one liked Ted, Mary's admirer, or Warren, Mary's brother, and the Farrelly brothers where great to walk on the slim line between good and tasteless jokes. In 50 First Dates however, one hates the admirer, the brother is a cause for sadness and the jokes make you feel sick.

Funny, I've already seen two movies of the main actress, and one of them is one of my absolute favorite ones (Strike!), but I didn't ever really noticed Monica Keena, even if she's in fact a true sight for sore eyes like Drew Barrymore, Brittany Murphy and Kate Winslet.

The move itself, well its a horror movie. The story is indeed good for such a kind of movie; neither do most people behave completely idiotic, as I've seen so often in horror movies (see my comment on Scream 3, for example), nor does the movie take itself too serious.

Compared to bloodbaths like "Kill Bill", this movie is still harmless. The fighting scenes are a little bit long, simply because the two movie monsters have a lot of problems to kill the other one (no I'm not going to tell you who wins and how).

The biggest shock here where not the slashing scenes, it where the nude ones. There is quite a lot of nudity in this picture, I couldn't believe it ! After all, its a movie from Hollywood, and they are very tolerant of violence, but not of all of sex.

So - amazingly beautiful main actress and a reasonable story, what could one ask more of a horror movie ?

This is a really charming little movie about a girl who travels with her class to Rome, and becomes a rockstar there because she looks so much like another rockstar there (who is played by the same actress). The main story is mostly harmless, but it contains a lot of funny characters. I absolutely loved it and in fact already watched it twice, and if it stays in cinema a little bit, I might even watch it another time.

So why was this movie not a big bang ? It should have been. I have no clue what was missing, it was a good story, great acting, everything. Maybe it was the title. But even that one wasn't that bad, surprising for a german movie. Nevertheless it soon left the cinema again, and nobody ever talked about it.

This is a movie about girls, and for girls. Its much more serious than other attempts for making such a movie, so no dirt jokes like, for example, in american pie 2. Instead it is about the problems and wishes of modern girls, such as love, faith, school, freedom, security and rape.

Maybe that was the reason for its failure. A movie about girls, how uncool ? I don't know, but I can highly recommend this one to anyone interested.

I had to leave, and I don't leave movies too often. But this one was too much. It was like a propaganda movie of the nazis against the jews, but instead against the catholic church. And the bitter truth is: it is NO propaganda. It is just the truth.

For example, here you see a priest taking the child from the mother. But written down, this is so harmless compared to actually watching that scene. It was purest pain to me, and I got so angry, I can't describe it, I was completely out of my mind.

At one point of the movie, I realized that I was ready to kill the pope now, so I couldn't stand it any other second anymore. I was completely aggressive and angry even hours after I fled from the cinema !

Well, the movie itself is technically well made. I can only speak of the parts I saw, of course. Good acting, camera etc.

And for me, the started another round of thinking about the concept of moral. These people believed they're examples of moral. They must have set too high ideals that they, in the end, can't reach, and instead became the opposite, still thinking they're moral while they aren't at all.

And her name is Amy Smart ! She has my absolute favorite scene here, when she attacks her boyfriend after she has found out he betrayed her. Its fantastic ! Fan-tas-tic ! I absolutely loved it ! I've to watch this movie again just for that scene !

But also the rest of the movie is really funny. Not so much "Mr Bean" Rowan Atkinson, who played a character a little bit too crazy to be really amusing. But the rest is just too good to be true. I really wasn't attracted too much by the trailer, but the movie itself is so much better !

Don't avoid this one ! Its far better that it looks from the outside !

A picture about a boy who visits his sister and falls in love to an au pair girl from poland. His sister has also some problems.

A typical little bit dull german movie, very realistic, not completely interesting, in the end neither a complete waste of time nor really necessary. It remembered me very much of 'Crazy', even if it was still far more charming than that one. For me personally, both movies are simply too far from any of my own life experiences to be really entertaining.

Watch it if you like realistic movies, or if you liked 'Crazy'.

No, this is not a blockbuster movie about heros, not a Hollywood movie about high romance, not a french movie about philosophy.

It is just a movie about everyday life, of the problems of a certain person, a female cook. There isn't even much happening. She has some problems at the job, and one of her friend dies and she has to care for their child. But somehow everyday life can be very heroic, romantic and philosophical ! And very surprising and funny, all in an unspectacular and entertaining way.

This kind of movie stands and falls with the quality of the script, the quality of the directing, and the quality of the acting, and all that is simply flawless here.

Very good movie. Absolutely not recommended for teenagers (they will be really bored), but many older people will love it.

This is a parody. That means, there are no characters as such, they are all plain stereotypes, and the movie relies completely on the quality of the jokes.

Well, there ARE quite some good jokes in this movie. Unfortunately, they are hidden in a mass of real stupid ones. If one expects all dialogues to be absurd, the fun wears off.

You see, there is American Pie 2, my all time favorite teenager movie. It contains a lot of real original characters. Maybe the jokes are tasteless, but all the people have some kind of live. For example, they feel embarrassed if something embarrassing happens. That is what makes the jokes themselves actually funny !

Not so this movie: every scene is clearly arranged as a pure parody, so there are no characters at all, therefore there is really no room for any sympathy. Too, if you know the original movies, you know whole scenes in advance. Add the fact that many jokes are not funny at all, and you have this movie.

The only thing that saved me from getting completely bored where in fact the comments from some teenagers in the cinema where I was watching the film.

Ah, and my personal highlight of the movie was the very short appearance of Melissa Joan Hart in one scene. Sigh. She is just too cool, she can't be real. Hmm, worth a whole movie ?

Sometimes I enjoy watching bad movies just because it remembers me of why the good ones are good. So I ended up in this one and I was quite 'happy' about it, for it is plain awful in every respect I can think of.

That is: lack of any message, lack of script logic, lack of intelligent dialogues, lack of characterization, lack of style and coolness, lack of suspense or romance or whatever, and last not least the camera is just plain unbelievable abysmal horribly bad.

I only wonder why Jean Reno ended up in this movie. And why Rebecca Romijn-Stamos did that, too, and decided to show her beautiful breasts here. Well, I hope they both got a fair sum of compensation for being part of this movie.

Commenting on this one is maybe a bad idea, for what new thing can I say about it ? But I finally managed to watch Drews first successful movie, so I will just drop another note about it.

I've seen quite a lot movies of Spielberg, and I'm definitely not fan of this director. Jaws was boring, Jurassic Park was simply crap, Saving Private Ryan was far too pathetic, and A.I. was boring, crap and pathetic. So I personally don't know why Spielberg is so successful. But this one here works.

Good suspense, funny, with sympathy to its figures, and with a positive message, at the same time entertaining for adults and kids. How much better can a movie be ?

Okay, it was again pathetic. But it had a lot more story than Saving Private Ryan, and it wasn't pathetic about the US.

I don't know the original, so I can't comment on the differences between the original and the directors cut.

Recommended unless you consider good entertainment with a positive message a sin.

A movie from ... Britney Spears ? Funny. She has to copy Madonna in every way, doesn't she ? And it can only be bad, can't it ? But it's funny. So I had to watch it.

Well, the basic idea for the script was NOT bad. A movie about the problems of teenager girls. That is, about friendship between girls, finding an identity, finding their own way, boyfriends, first sex, date rape, unwanted pregnancy and so on.

Unfortunately, the script author didn't managed to get a really interesting story out of it. Instead of some living characters, we only get more or less stereotypical ones. It was however very realistic, and mentioned many of the real life problems teenager girls might get into.

And who wants to see Britney in underwear (and likewise dressings), throughout the whole movie again and again and again ? That was not very original.

Another problem of the movie was music. Many scenes where only there to promote the new song of Britney, 'Not a girl', and therefore simply nerved.

The acting, however, was really not bad. I didn't expected anything from Britney, but in fact I've to state that I've seen far worser actresses than her. The script was the problem, not her acting.

But what also really sucked was Britneys idea that she could actually sing. It wasn't really a big problem as long as she was singing her own material. But at one place of the movie, she compares herself to nobody less than - Joan Jett ! By singing Jett's song "I love Rock n' Roll" before a mass of people, who pretended that her singing was actually good, while in fact she had not even enough voice to be really understandable ! It was so bad, so abysmal, so painfull !!!

The acting of the others wasn't bad either, I especially liked Taryn Manning (appeared already in Crazy/Beautiful with Kirsten Dunst).

If you want to watch a really good movie of this kind, I would recommend the fantastic masterpiece 'Strike' with Heather Matarazzo, Kirsten Dunst, Rachael Leigh Cook, Lynn Redgrave and many others, plus an excellent script. One of the seldom movies that had actually something to tell to me.

This one here only recommended for those teenage girls who are Britney fans.

The strengths of this movie are obvious.

The main actor is simply brilliant as a nervous, ambitious and genial scientist. All the rest of the cast is wonderful as well.

And the movie set and computer effects could have hardly been better. Perfect looks, I would say, at least for my own needs.

But after watching the whole picture, there is a big flaw in it. To my big surprise, it turn out that the story itself looks quite thin compared to the rest. All these money, talent and resources for this very simple and only very weakly explained end ? What a waste !

However, the movie is still very entertaining, with many jokes, I especially liked the last one, and it is quite romantic.

I was also amused that the big catastrophe to end our current culture happened in the year 2037 - one year before the signed 32 bit Unix time counter will overflow. Was that an insider joke or part of the original book ?

And it was very interesting to see what Wells thought the problems of the future might be. Of course he was very wrong !

Good entertainment, even if the story itself is a little bit slim.

Well, what is the point of this movie ?

This attempt to translate Orthello into modern times completely failed, because they didn't even tried.

Unlike in DeCaprio's 'Romeo and Julia', the texts are modern, and the whole environment is completely modern. But all the original motives and actions remained the same, which was very absurd.

For example, which modern father would get angry if his daughter gets a boyfriend ?

This made the experience of watching the movie a very strange experience free of any real surprises.