Reviews

If you've seen a couple of thousand films in your life, you know one of the worst films ever made when you see it. Here's looking at you, The Devil Inside, a complete abomination and nothing short of a poor excuse of a movie. It makes me sad to see even a minority of good reviews for it, because it seems to indicate that mediocrity is the new good. If this is not bad, sweet Moses, what is?

The concept and the plot is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. It's a found footage film - because that's original! - which begins as a mockumentary about a girl whose mother once killed three people during an exorcism, and ended up in a mental hospital in Rome. Now she wants to "understand what happened" - why bother making it more complicated than that, huh? - so she goes to see her mother who seems to be taken out of a Monty Python skit, banging her head against the walls of her institutional room as if this would be scary and not a piece of absurdist humor.

The Vatican has apparently seminars on exorcism and demons to young priests (?!) and on one of these she meets two guys moonlighting exorcisms, that is exorcisms without Church approval. Are they gonna get the demon out of her mother? Might it escape her body and possess one of the others? Will the film end, just like that? Should all the plot threads turn out to only have been the result of amateurish negligence? Should everything be unintentionally comical? Will anything work at all?

The big problem is the use of the found footage concept. I'm a big fan of this sub genre and the point of these films is that they are authentic, credible, that the audience at some level manages to be convinced that the material is genuine. As soon as we get a reason to fall outside of the film, and watch it as mere fiction, the movie is done for. Many found footage films fail because of the discipline it actually takes from the film makers to make a successful found footage film. But The Devil Inside is on a whole other level of bad.

Had the script been the basis for a standard horror movie it would have been like a worse Exorcism Of Emily Rose or any other exorcist film. It had not been good, because the movie lacks any overall quality: the plot is one hundred percent formula, the dialogs are all with no exceptions clichés that are so tired they become nonsensical and void of all believability, and the movie scandalously ignores any kinds of realism and reality. All that said, had it been a "straight" movie it still wouldn't have been such a howler as this one is.

Sure, already in The Exorcist (in 1971, mind you!) we found out that the Church practically don't perform exorcisms any longer, so the idea that the clergy in Rome are given instructions in the subject in 2012 is shockingly stupid. But in a normal movie, you could have said: Yes, but what about the cinematography? How is it directed?

One can not do such things with The Devil Inside, and that's exactly why it has been made. It seems as if the found footage-trend has given "filmmakers" the idea that you don't have to make any effort in anything to make a buck on a movie. This movie lacks any sign of ambition or talent, any meaning or logic, any motivation for even having been made. The girl in the movie wants to meet her mother. Why is that? She has a demon in her. Why? She meets two would be-exorcists? Yeah? Why is this interesting and exciting? It's not original, so where's the other twist?

Directing-wise this movie is worthless, and the acting is absolutely abysmal, taken straight from Overacting 101 for Amateurs. In the very first scene when the girl in the lead role sits and talks about her childhood, we understand that we are watching an amateur actress who pretends that she is part of a documentary. It is not directed in a way to suggest authenicism, it looks more like a cheap American TV- commercial for condoms. After those fateful first seconds - seconds! - of the film it proceeds to one meaningless cliché after another that throws up loose ends everywhere. I won't even go into the ending.

I do not know how they were thinking when they made this movie, but every little effort - like a story, motivating a plot, ending included - seems to have been too much for everyone involved. Or is it so that those who made this movie is just a bunch of drones who discovered that they can cash in by going to Rome with a DV camera and film some stuff. If so, then this movie a little black Armageddon-cloud in the sky of movies. We finally hit the absolute rock bottom in creativity.

The few positive reviews of this movie are unfortunate. Even if you can see beyond the found footage-format - which the film butchers, thereby rendering it meaningless - and perhaps see one or two qualities in one or two tired and old and unconvincing effects, I feel these reviews are still written by people who are way too content with very, very little. This movie is an essential zero star movie. It is a film no one should have to pay to see - and anyone who checks it out should only do so in interest of seeing one of the worst and most worthless things ever produced as an excuse for a film. That should not be misunderstood as a compliment, or a recommendation.

Being an optimistic fellow I wanted to enjoy The Godfather Part III the first time I saw it - this was easy, since its a competent piece of film making, generally well paced, acted, it's coherent, Al Pacino's in it, Coppola has made this film from A to Z and on its own terms the film doesn't have any inexcusable flaws. (Not even, I might add, the notorious Sofia Coppola; she's bad, but her performance is benefited by the character she's playing, which is also weak). So for a long time I was one of those guys going "Hey, Godfather part III isn't as bad as everyone says. Sure, its not as good as the first two but not many movies are!" Later in life, presumably with heightened standards and a better sense of criticism, I started to suspect that the opposite could be true - that part III was really nowhere near as good as I'd recall - and after seeing all three films pretty much back to back I have to be honest (an approach I think wouldn't hurt the more enthusiastic defenders of this film) and conclude that The Godfather Part III, despite certain qualities, simply doesn't work.

(Excluded passage due to word limit; concerning how Coppola did the film for the money, and that it actually makes the film a little easier to appreciate)

I think the film really, on a whole, is perhaps not 'bad', certainly not horrible, but definitely a failure. The plot is underdeveloped and not engaging - Michael Corleone suffers from guilt. Its not unreasonable to say he did that at the end of Part II already. Where does his search for redemption lead him? Do "they" really pull him in again? Does his character do or say anything really memorable? Once or twice. But the script really is a long filler-session. And while everybody seems to just automatically praise Pacino because, well, he's Pacino I don't think his performance in this film is particularly good either, at least not by his merits. He's a great actor, and this is as fine a performance as any other he's made, but when you consider how truly versatile Pacino can be (compare Godfather part II with Scarface, with Serpico, Devil's Advocate, you name it, he's right there in character) its a disappointment that the aged Michael Corleone has turned into... well, Al Pacino. Obviously the character is not the same man that he used to be, but I never once really believed that I was watching Michael Corleone. He looked, and acted, too much like Al Pacino.

Not to mention Andy Garcia being nothing more than Andy Garcia, Joe Pantanglio, Eli Wallach, Talia Shire in a strangely awful performance (she's not a bad actress at all, but whatever happened here?). And of course Sofia Coppola; she isn't the crucial problem, but in the end she does become responsible for a lot of misfiring. The only one still doing a prime job is Diane Keaton as Kay - truly an unsung hero in these films, and to me one of the main reasons the drama work - and the film's best scenes were the one's she shared with Pacino. Why? Because then I felt like I was even watching a Godfather movie.

Much of everything else simply doesn't work. Whereas the original films were subtle and ambiguous, part III filters the story with melodramatic punches that are un-inspired and obvious. Michael's son, played by Franc D'Ambrosio, seems taken from Days of Our Lives and so many of the questions we ask ourselves - what does he remember from his childhood? What does any of the characters feel about Michael's marriage in Sicily? Did Tom Hagen ever move to Las Vegas? etc - are left completely by the road, as if Coppola truly isn't interested in telling this story. There are instead near-insulting reminders to the audience that the other two movies still exist (like the pointless scene where Michael have kept the drawing Anthony left at his pillow when he was nine or so; "I remember this" he smiles, though I'm not sure if we are to understand this as "I also remember they shot up the bedroom that same night"; once again, it seems Coppola simply forgets his own story). There are also awkward attempts at creating dramatic highlights in line with the horse-head scene and that very shooting in the beginning of Part II, involving a shooting during a parade in Little Italy and a stupid and ugly scene involving a helicopter. Making a Godfather sequel formulaic is truly a depressing insult to the originality of the first two films. The attempts Coppola takes on the Vatican are also pretty flat when you think about how Italian cinema has been doing this for half a century.

There's no reason to watch this film have you not seen the first two. And there's really no reason to watch it if you have seen them either. When you think about it, I don't see why the film's few merits are worth talking about. Movie newbies having seen Part I and II will naturally see III too, and I think many of them will come to the same conclusion. It's not all bad, but so what. It simply doesn't work very well.

I just had to post a review now, after the itching in my fingers got the best of me. The breaking point was a recent comment stating that Scream 4 meant a "sad day for slasher evolution".

Wow. Slasher evolution. My head just exploded. I think those choice of words are so unintentionally amusing that it should have been in the... wait, it is. Only they call it "slasher innovation". That did make me giggle a little too, as I recall. Slasher innovation? Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no such thing. The height of slasher "innovation" was probably reached when they called Friday the 13th part V "A New Beginning" after calling part IV "The Final Chapter". In fact, I'd say, the very reason a lot of people who liked the original Scream didn't fall for Scream 2 or Scream 3 is due to the fact that there is no innovation to be had in this genre; and that's the point of it. Making a satirical meta-slasher works, because its fun. But the sequels, though amusing to a lot of people (me included), indeed forced the audience to feel more sympathy with the characters than I think the audience really wanted to. The whole soap opera concerning Sidney Prescott wasn't really why the original Scream became such a hit. At all. And around Scream 3 the series really did start to run on fumes.

Its truly delightful to see that Scream 4 goes back to the first movie's core concept; it lets you know instantly that it's a complete Meta Movie. From the very get-go the pacing of Scream 4 is almost at a Mel Brooks level, and the various layers of referencing are so many that you'd think Kevin Williamson wrote the script on a constant caffeine overdose. I liked it, I friggin loved it. This movie had me laughing and jumping at every corner. It even stops to let us know that the original Stab was directed by Robert Rodriguez.

That being said, it's worth mentioning that I'm totally biased towards this series. The movie is 100% nonsense but I was shamelessly enjoyed by it. If you just want to have a fun time with a slasher, I'd recommend it warmly, but if you never cared for the Scream movies to begin with - and never really liked its geeky humor (I admit, I'd even call these movies dorky) - than you are to be warned because Scream 4 takes the whole Scream concept into massive overdrive.

But there also seems to be a few Scream fans out there who are disappointed. I don't know why. Maybe some of them are younger than me and were toddlers when the original movie came out. This might seem like an arrogant line of thinking, but I'm really just thinking out loud.

See, I too grew up with the original Scream, to me it's a classic. I like Scream 2 as well, in fact seeing it for the first time happens to be a great movie memory for me. I can even say I enjoyed Scream 3, though it was flawed. The way I see it, Scream 4 has got the same edge and idea that the original Scream movie had. What was so great about the first one was the fact that it was a genuine post-modern satire. It wasn't just that the characters knew a lot of horror trivia - The point was that they almost knew they were characters in a movie themselves. I always saw the movie as big fourth wall-joke. As I said before, Scream 2 and 3 seemed to put its weight on the plot as if it took place in the real world. To me, the original Scream always took place in a half-real world where one minute you could buy the characters as "real" (Neve Campbell's presence did a lot of the work automatically) and the next you we're laughing at lines like "Behind you, Jamie, behind you!"

Basically, Scream was in on its own joke. That was what made it special. Scream 2 and 3 were pretty entertaining, and jokey, but they didn't have that same hardcore self-awareness. Thankfully, Scream 4 goes back home to Woodsboro once and for all. I think I felt the first REAL vibe of this delight when Gale early on quotes Randy by reminding Sid that "everybody is a suspect". Now, Mr Smartypants will say, how could she know that line? Why is she using it? Randy was saying it to the killers in the video store in the first movie, right?

Well, she's saying it because she kinda knows that this is Scream 4, not real life. Just like the first movie it's kinda real, kinda movie. "This isn't a movie!" Sid says to the killer but to me, Billy Loomis line "It's all a big movie, Sid" is the essential quote of the series (or at least the first one, and this one). Of course, in 1996 it was creative enough to just make a horror film that knew it was a horror film. Scream 4 naturally has got to be a horror film that knows its a horror franchise. It doubles, triples... completely "scr4ms" the fun.

Finally, Scream 4 was a nostalgic experience. I'm not referring to the movie itself. I'm referring to going to the movies, to see a horror film, and have some FUN again. After ten years of pretentious and depressing butcher house sadism (no, Saw isn't any good; not the first one either) its such a relief to see a slasher where one of the cheap shocks involves a dangling flower pot. It definitely falls under the Only-bad-if-you're-dumb-enough-to-take-it-seriously-category.

Oh, I really wanted to like this film. I wish I did. I wish it was funnier, I wish it was more exciting, interesting, entertaining. I wish it would have used its main course instead of focusing on the appetizers. I wish it had been better.

The main course, that is Jean-Claude Van Damme, playing (self-parody- version-of-) himself. In JCVD, the Belgian has got the blues; he resembles a tired dog, unable to pay his lawyer since Steven Seagal cut off his pony tail and snatched the next lead role in a direct-to-video- action film. He needs to pay this lawyer, since he's about to loose his divorce and child custody. Life's murky for poor Jean-Claude. He calls his fat, lazy American agent asking for jobs and money. He informs him absent mindedly about a film called No Limit Injury. "We did that movie six months ago!" Jean-Claude informs him. Then he walks into a small bank that just happens to be held up by some ugly low life-robbers. Soon, there's a lot of people outside the little bank. Why? Well, Jean- Claude Van Damme walks into a bank and moments later it is held up. Who do you think is holding it up?

JCVD is a film that sounds a lot better on paper than it actually is as a film. Any interesting review of the film would have to be about Van Damme himself rather than this film, because its easy to identify its flaws and shortcomings: Its simply not that engaging. The writer- director Mabrouk El Merchi has made a movie with the, by now standard, narrative framework of Tarantino about a bank robbery scenario where he puts way too much focus on the uninteresting robbers and doesn't bring the rabbit out of the box enough many times; Jean-Claude Van Damme is one of the hostages. The people on the outside think he's holding the bank up. Well, do something then! Humor me! I'm not asking for Jean- Claude to be Chevy Chase, but I don't care about these murky robbers whining and arguing until you want to just ask one of the hostages to sneak out the back door. Van Damme is the main reason anyone would want to see this film and yet this film, called JCVD, lets him share the screen time with ugly muggers that aren't realistic or engaging, and make no sense.

In scenes surrounding the bank scenes, we get amusing depictions of Jean-Claude Van Damme being down in the dumps but there's not enough of them. The defining point of the film's failure comes when Jean-Claude suddenly is lifted out of the action, from the film even, and gives a five minute monologue straight to the audience. It's awkward but its extremely sincere and it suddenly raises the bar for this film in a way even I did not suspect to begin with. "Today I pray to God" he sobs. "I truly believe it's not a movie. It's real life".

I mean, that's just amazing! Contrary to belief, Jean-Claude Van Damme isn't that big of a has-been as, say, Steven Seagal. All's relative. While his films have become all the cheaper, some more or less straight to video, they have at least been quite hard boiled and Jean-Claude has obviously tried to make honest acting attempts. Take a film like In Hell for instance, a prison movie-knock off where he's alone against the tyranny of an entire prison, wardens and inmates alike. Right, it ain't Kafka, but it's more than being a Universal Soldier or, cough cough, a "street fighter". The same goes with Wake of Death, a simple revenge film where he's to take down the people who killed his girlfriend. There's no doves in that film. But as QT would have preferred it, revenge is served very, very cold.

I guess its no surprise that I'm a shameless admirer of Jean-Claude. He is both hilarious and charming, and in some strange way sincere and er, "aware" of himself. You'd want to see a lot of it in a film called JCVD and the bits and pieces you get here and there during 90 minutes isn't enough. The five minute monologue he says "It's so stupid to kill people. They're so beautiful!" It's the film's big exception that proves the rule.

Oh my god, what a boring movie. What a lame, dull, routine blah blah blah of a horror film. It's not a remake of Wes Craven's 1984 film. It's a rerun of any given horror film. Even as franchise based, formula horror films go, this is a film that should have been called A Nightmare on Elm Street - Freddy's Hangover.

But what did I expect, right? It's a Platinum Dunes cough-up with a cast full of TV-friendly young faces and a first feature for a director, wouldn't you know, who's previous work has included music videos. But, I'm a fair person. I hated the Texas Chainsaw Massacre one and I was only dulled-out by their Friday the 13th (part 11). And the director of this film, Samuel Bayer, did make the videos to Smells Like Teen Spirit for Nirvana and Disposable Teens for Marilyn Manson. The very titles are apt for a film like this, and their MTV-flashy colourfulness should be enough to make a watchable and stylish horror fair.

But this Nightmare is really quite the opposite. Starting out in grey, solemn, Omen-like colours I quickly began to wonder where the gloom would take us. Yes, this is all supposed to be a slightly more serious ride down Elm street. Jackie Earle Haley's Freddy is pretty covered in shadows, doesn't say very much and is not in the movie as much as you might imagine (much like the Freddy of the very first film). There's quite a lot of mood music here, quite a lot of troubled teenagers (one of them wears a Joy Division T-shirt, "Closer" no less, so we understand he's extra troubled) and there's an investigative plot where we find out more about Freddy's disturbing past.

But, here we go: SO WHAT? I'm not sure if the film realises it, but this Nightmare on Elm Street raises a lot of it's own stakes just by attempting to make it more serious. Seriousness is not a matter of style. Seriousness is not a matter of special effects, or crude violence or lack of humor. Or, as this film seems to think, the mere mentioning of child molestation. No, Mr. Scary Movie Sir, if you go down this path you better deliver. It is especially in that context that this reincarnation of Freddy is a big disappointment, if one were to have any expectations. They seem to believe that just by presenting an idea of an origin, they have automatically made a more serious film. They haven't. Given how much time is spent mooding the movie down all we get are bad actors giving out bad dialog during and after they end up in painfully standard scenarios (don't go out in the middle of the night to look for your dog... I mean, please, just this once, don't do it... oh, well, off you go). This 2010 take on Freddy is more or less equal to any given slasher film, only with zero memorable scares, less visual flair and excitement and a lot more mood music, ending up nowhere.

There are details from Wes Craven's film operated into this film. You know, Johnny Depp's original sweater is worn by one of the actors, there's the bloody body bag, the hand up the bathtub, the coming-out-of- the-wall-shot, so on and so forth. Thus, they failed to listen to the oldest of film making rules: Don't make references to films way better than your own. If they think they can do it because of the vain assumption that this is a remake they are wrong. This is not a remake of a movie, it's a remake of a concept. And it's painfully boring and unexciting. "Whatever you do" the line goes, "don't fall asleep". Insert your own pun here.

The thought occurred to me right around the end credits, that I may have very well got it all wrong. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee was a film that I didn't quite get in the beginning, thought I understood after a while but then, right around the end, got confused again.

It might be my high standards or my ruthless elitism but I figured the title of the film must be kind of ironic; it is suggested that there are "private lives" within the one, dull suburban life that Pippa Lee finds herself stuck in. But it seems to me these lives aren't that private at all. Nor are they dangerous or secret. The film tells the story of how Pippa Lee - married to the book publisher Mr. Lee, 30 years older than her - recalls her youth, how she came to marry and how many possibilities really lay ahead of her. In the present, she suffers a kind of identity panic and needs to make her past worthwhile for what future she's got.

But what about the private lives? We learn that Pippa's mother was a pill addict and that she eventually ran away from home. She lived with some lesbian women with a knack for kinky photography. She was doing a lot of drugs (there's a montage) and she liked Mr. Lee for his money. He liked her for... well, who knows, he says she's special but I couldn't figure out what was so special about her. And, so, well, er, what about these private lives?

Young Pippa Lee is played by Blake Lively and middle-aged, present day Pippa by Robin Wright. Mr (Herb) Lee is played by Alan Arkin. Their adult children are played by Ryan McDonald and Zoe Kazan, two young actors I found to be great talents. There's a pretentious younger ladyfriend to the family played by Winona Ryder, there's a pretentious younger boyfriend-aspirant of Pippa's played by Keanu Reeves. Maria Bello plays Pippa's speeded-out mother Suky. Julianne Moore and Robin Weigert are in there, so are Monica Bellucci and Mike Binder. These are all if not great performances then at least greatly amusing ones to watch. Incidentally, Keanu Reeves is the only actor I know of who can say "I love you" and "fish tonight?" and make it sound equally unspectacular.

Basically, the film is an ensemble piece. These actors make the film easily watchable and the slightly soapy plot they are strung into in fact makes it a little hard to stop watching. However, as far as "reading" the film, I am at a bit of a loss still. Directed by Rebecca Miller, based on her novel which I haven't read, I can only speculate what kind of story I'm supposed to receive. As a simple, modest and self-aware telling of, quite middle class, problems it's fine and enjoyable. But I didn't really see any private lives in this film. It was all quite ordinary. Fish tonight?

Bad Liutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans is a film with basically the same premise as Abel Ferrara's scandalous Bad Liutenant from 1992 with Harvey Ketiel, yet the director, Werner Herzog, claims he's never seen it. It's a film about a investigator with a bad back, snorting cocaine and seeing imaginary iguanas all the time. He's played by Nicholas Cage. In Herzog's new, er, "crime thriller". Do I have to mention that this isn't really a good film in the proper sense? Neither is it bad. It's great. It's a turkey. It all depends what you choose. It's a film with Nicolas Cage, by Herzog, and it features a scene where the imaginary iguanas take over the screen for a good couple of minutes, just staring at the viewer for no particular reason. At one point a man gets shot and Cage yells "Shoot him again, his soul is still dancing". As the camera pans over, sure enough, there's a breakdancer jumping around over the corpse. Not until the body is shot again does the dancing soul fall to the ground too.

In other words, you have been warned. Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a fairly (note: understatement) corrupt investigator in post-Katrina New Orleans. The film starts out with him investigating a house full of executed bodies. The investigation goes on as movie investigations tend to go on, the only difference being that it is the everyday life of this Hunter S. Thompsonesque character that is the main attraction. It seems nothing he does is legitimate or within the law. His investigation methods are..... suspect. He's into both gambling and drugs, he collects favours from his partners as if they would be baseball cards. He's addicted to everything, including sex which he gets through bribery with strangers or with his part time lover. Of course, he's got a real girlfriend, Frankie (Eva Mendes), the love of his life who just happens to be a prostitute. McDonagh is so off the wall really, that halfway through he is actually suspended from his duty. Not just "movie cop suspended". No, half of the movie is him using every trick in his book (not the book of the law) to save his ass from trouble that does seem inevitable. What, you can't torture old sick ladies for information anymore?

The collaboration between Cage and Herzog is the first and last reason that this film works. Ferrara's 1992 film has very little to do with it, but as a good comparison that was certainly a parody, with occasional bursts of black humor, but it was also profoundly serious and hard to sit through. Herzog's film is a joke in comparison. But many of Herzog's films are jokey in their own ways. I have always found that absurdity has been his trade, be it his poetically ugly remake of Nosferatu or the larger than life-aspects of Fitzcarraldo, or his narrator of his popular 2007 documentary Grizzly Man. Of course, his eccentric leads have always been doing him favors. The unconventional Nicolas Cage is in a sense such an obvious choice for the director who always seems to be looking for his next Klaus Kinski, that I found myself surprised I hand't thought of them collaborating before. Kinski did Nosferatu, yeah, but Nicolas Cage did Vampire's Kiss. There's sheer collaborative joy on play here, and it's almost impossible not to like if you're into it.

I can see a lot of people walking out of this film way before it's over. Naturally it has been promoted as a standard thriller, which is like a joke in itself. It's very odd, strange, you don't get it. I read someone who believed that Herzog with this film wanted to do a deliberate "so bad it's good". It's not a bad theory. At the same time, it's difficult to get your head around. It's not a remake, apparently, it's just a film with the same title and premise as another film. It's filled with quirky musical choices, weird random lines and sequences you don't really know what to think of. In fact, it feels a lot like the film any American Indie film would want to be, or at least should. Sure, it's quirky. But it has got something that makes it reasonable and, even if it doesn't ring true, meaningful: The purest and most unquestionable form of originality.

The Cranes Are Flying is a film just as mesmerizing as the title suggests. It's stark and poetic, emotional but existential, it's about human nature, human life, human circumstance. The story is a simple and often told one, but then again, the stories of life tend to be simple and often told. The heart of the film lies in the very beginning where the two young lovers Veronika (Tatyana Samojlova) and Boris (Aleksey Batalov) stand in each other's arms and watch the cranes flying in the sky. They love each other. They don't know it yet, but they are about to be separated by war. This is the first and last moment of peace, harmony and love in their lives. The rest of their years are going to be filled with heartache, guilt, hardships, hunger, grief, death. The film ends on a hopeful and even joyous note. You have to see it to believe it.

This is the first point. Very simple. It's a wonderful film that you should see. Then there are the historical notes, and the technical qualities to marvel about. Based on a play by Viktor Rozov, who wrote the screenplay, the film was directed by Mikhail Kalatozov who was one of the first Soviet filmmakers to emerge and blossom after Stalin's death (he was his former head of production). He would make tremors with his 1964 pro-Castro documentary I Am Cuba, but The Cranes Are Flying won him the Palme D'Or in 1957. It's no wonder either, not only does the film prove amazing craftsmanship but it would also remind anyone of a more general European art film from the same time (the French New Wave easily comes into mind). At the same time, it seems to have managed to pass all of the demands from the Soviet Union. It doesn't come off as a patriotic spectacle of propaganda but, as I said, it does end hopefully, with the love for the people shining from within the people itself.

Tatyana Samojlova is the heroine of the film, and Kalatozov is occupied following her with the greatest of care. Much of the film is portrayed in silence, but it's not the kind of artistic silent quality you might expect. It's a quiet film, the absence of sound is naturalistic, as are the cranes in the sky and the feelings of Veronika as her childish romance dies out while she grows older in the war times. She loves Boris, lost in field. She marries a man she doesn't love. The film suggests feelings of guilt and shame. We're not sure, Samojlova is too human. There are breathtaking moments of film making in this film that, made in 1956, seems to predate most original methods of film making - and, I'd say, to this day it's not often you see sequences like the one where she is desperate, running along a train seemingly at the same speed, whilst the film itself seems to react at the sudden impact of speed and emotion. It's like the entire film looses control over itself, she almost outruns it herself, and you can't say what will happen the very next second or, once that second has passed, the second after that.

This is a film about human beings, the value of human life, of love and family and hope. But it's not entirely an anti-war film, as one might suppose. This is a film where the characters face their sadness and their emotional tragedies right up front and never tries to deny them or shun from them, or in any way prolong their suffering. There is a higher cause and life must be lived by the citizens of an entire country in hope, because if we loose hope the suffering will have been pointless.

In Sherlock Holmes as of 2009, under direction by Guy Ritchie, Sherlock is introduced using all his deductive skills to properly figure out how to kick a guy's ass in a matter of seconds and then proceeding to do it. For the rest of the film, Holmes is running about slightly neurotic with no sense of personal hygiene or taste. Yeah, exactly, he's played by Robert Downey Jr, you got it. Apparently there's two ways you can look at this and as far as I understand they are both valid - Robert Downey Jr is doing Sherlock Holmes more in the line of what the original Conan Doyle creation was. At the same time, Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes are two steps away from joining the X-Men or the Fantastic Four. Makes sense too, I guess. It's the "contemporary" approach.

All in all though, this cartoon version of Doyle's Sherlock is a lot of fun. Amusement is the key word, and the big reason is Robert Downey Jr who lifts the entire film up and carries it in his arms from the very beginning to the very end. No, make that to the very "to be continued" (it's "contemporary"). Not even Jude Law playing doctor Watson can do as much for the film as he does. The story - concerning the mysterious case of the gallow-dangling Lord Blackwood who apparently is coming back from the dead for a dastardly plot against the kingdom - only works because Downey Jr says it's worth following. The clues and the plot turns are only interesting because they happen to him. His fighting at the 19th century Fight Club and the 60's Batman style fight sequences only works because he's doing it and we only buy his deductive brilliance because he seems to believe in it himself. Even his love interest, the quite weak Rachel McAdams, works solely for the reason that he seems to be madly and problematically in love with her. In fact, toward the end when we are tempted with a sequel featuring Holmes' arch nemesis himself, I wanted to see the sequel just because Robert Downey Jr would do this one more time!

The only qualitative thing that Robert Downey Jr isn't responsible of, the film leaves to Jude Law and the sub-plot concerning his Watson getting married to some woman and Holmes being jealous over it. Holmes and Watson, arguably the biggest closet couple in the history of literature, are basically a real dynamic duo here, and it's interesting how the movie doesn't make any effort in denying their relationship. Nothing specific occurs and at the same time, there are no clever jokes or hints to the audience. It's just there, which is both a surprise and a bit of a progressive move. By simply assuming their relation to begin with, nothing more needs to be said and the MPAA can rate it PG-13 for some violence and "suggestive material".

It's easy to understand how old Holmes afficinados might treat this Sherlock Holmes with absinthe and a sad fiddle. But to be fair, it could have been so much worse and it's probably the most refreshing film Guy Ritchie has made in years. It's Sherlock Holmes with a bag of popcorn. All elementary, in it's own way.

Stanley Kubrick apparently once said that a film isn't a photograph of reality, but photograph of a photograph of a reality. In Michael Mann's Public Enemies, Johnny Depp is playing real life bank robber John Dillinger sitting in a movie theater watching Clark Gable play a gangster in a gangster movie. That's an actor portraying a gangster in a movie that a gangster played by another actor is watching in another movie. That's a photograph of a photograph of reality, an especially common phenomena in gangster movies. I don't think any gangster movie can avoid it's own mythology.

And then, Public Enemies is still a gangster movie that attempts to be as naturalistic as possible. Based on a book by Bryan Burrough it's a visual spectacle of authenticity. The details are there without Mann making a fuss of it. It ain't the South of Gone With the Wind, it's simply the 30's as good as it gets in any film. In this surrounding the actors can only do it as straight as possible. Together with all of the other characters, Depp's Dillinger is peeled down until he's just a human being, walking and talking and robbing banks. We are not watching a myth come to life, nor are we spending time on the psychology couch with him. When he courts the woman of his choice (that's the kind of man this is) she attempts to make him go away by pointing out that she doesn't even know him. He says, almost annoyed, just to get it out of the way: "I was raised on a farm in Moooresville, Indiana. My mama ran out on us when I was three, my daddy beat the hell out of me cause he didn't know no better way to raise me. I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey, and you... what else you need to know?"

So, John Dillinger was excellent at robbing banks and even better at jailbreaks and that's about it. If a man like him would ever need to be a movie hero he would have to be played by Johnny Depp. He's ideal and immediately makes him inexplicably likable. This is the best quality of the film, and it's also it's weakest point. He's not likable in any romantic sense, but he's not somebody you get angry with either. It's a Rise and fall-story of an American gangster, but there's no emotions involved. The great counter-example is Christian Bale playing Melvin Purvis, the Special Agent assigned by J. Edgar Hoover to track him down. He is paradoxically cold and thorough and, great as Bale is, we understand his character even less. In fact, these two characters seem disjointed from each other as if they are both inexplicably doing something pointless for no reason. It's especially a bit of a letdown when Michael Mann have been such an expert in the past dealing with the psychological problems of destructive masculinity. The biggest comparison that comes to mind is of course Heat, the gorgeous and intelligent cops and robbers-film where Robert De Niro and Al Pacino were to meet up face to face. At times, Public Enemies inevitably feels like an unofficial prequel or remake and it does fall short by comparison. There was psychological strength and emotional heaviness there that Public Enemies deliberately avoids. What it does instead is filling the screen up with great tech stuff. Any fan of film making should see this film just to witness professionalism working in sheer, eclectic delight. Well disciplined dialog scenes are intercut with hand-held DV and delicious editing make any viewer watch these characters move along with delightful ease. Right down to casting choices, the film is in many ways impeccable - Anna Sage, the woman who eventually betrayed Dillinger, is played by the wonderful Branka Katic who was unforgettable in Emir Kusturica's wonderful 1998 comedy Black Cat, White Cat. Someone certainly had to convince someone with that choice.

Public Enemies is a little tricky. It's not a bad film, but it's not entirely worthwhile either. It's a good looking film - and well dressed, with Depp and Bale in 30s suits - about a gangster who's neither Tony Montana nor a real person. We've seen it before, but on the other hand it has been done a lot worse in lesser films. At the same time: It's a good film, but Heat is better.

Crossroads delivers an old fashioned piece of classical storytelling, about even older stuff, and added to that it's also a film that in itself has aged very favorably. For one thing, the blues is as obscure, and the mythology of it as unspoiled and seductive, now as it was then. But it's also a kind of forgotten film that one therefore can see today in a kind of piece and quiet. To me it became a fairly nostalgic experience. It reminded me of how much heart the American films of the 80's had, when they were at their best. At the time, it looked like the great American cinema had died to pave the way for the soulless blockbuster and to an extent that was indeed true. But there was also a great sense of joy to the best of these films, they were designed to have a broad appeal but they still managed to be personal. They told stories about young people that were emotional, even intimate at times, but always with a sense of authenticity. They weren't deliberately clever, but they didn't shy away from the darker realities of the world. Neither did they deny positivism and traditional values. Right and wrong. Good and evil. Family. Love. Fight for your passions. These were films with big hearts.

Ralph Macchio's entire presence embodies this era, I think. Severely typecast in Crossroads, a film he starred in between the first and second of the Karate Kid movies, he does another bright, talented but inexperienced teenager, in a coming-of-age story where he is to learn the true nature of himself, his talent and the life that talent will require.

What makes Crossroads special though is that it's not a film about karate, it's a film about something as under-represented in film as blues. Macchio is a kid playing classical guitar at Julliard in New York, but in secret he's in love with the scratchy Mississippi tunes coming from Richard Johnson. He tracks down an old harmonica playing fox from these days, an 80 year old "blues man" called Willie Fox who laughs him in the face when he shows up with his guitar saying he's born and raised at Long Island. Willie's got a point though, and he knows a heluvalot more about the blues than Macchio's kid (who's name is Eugene, but quickly changes it to 'Lightning Boy'). This kid's got a good heart - as did Billy in Gremlins and Marty in Back to the Future and Macchio in The Karate Kid for that matter - but he's in love with his own illusions and has no concept of what it means to hitch hike hobo style 200 miles on Highway 61, or do some rough business to find money, or to make a deal with the devil, or to have a cutting head-duel with one of his disciples. Willy's first task is for him to arrange a great escape from the nursing home Willy's in. "What, are you trying to get me arrested". Such a city boy mentality!

After escaping the nursing home they hit the road deeper down a mythological landscape of blues, looking for "the last song" that Richard Johnson supposedly once wrote. Most of this follows a very traditional wandering-man/roadmovie storyline. They pick up a runaway girl (Jami Gertz), meet some shabby hotel men, crooked cops, they get in arguments with each other, they make up, they make out, as they get closer to the there's some unexpected and intriguingly, supernatural Faustian themes and finally a showdown ending with a kind of real, authentic Guitar Hero duel featuring real life rock hero Steve Vai.

This is a film I felt very strongly at home with. Yes it does cover familiar grounds, but it's passionately drenched in the world of the kind of music that I love and, much like Macchio's character, have been dreaming as a far away myth when I was younger. Also, directed by the good and professional Walter Hill it's the kind of well made film that you cannot take for granted these, or any, days. It's a great 80's movie, less flashy than the Spielberg-Lucas-Zemeckis productions and more culturally ambitious and serious minded. Indeed, it's even rated R. That's certainly part of it's charm. It once again reminds me of the feeling that the good films of this decade were made in a kind of honesty. The invention of PG-13 changed all that. Not immediately, but gradually it became a marketing goal rather than just a matter of causality. Crossroads was Rated R, because the kids use some four letter words and there's alcohol, some violence, real emotions, nothing upsetting but, basically, as real as the story requires to be. This is simply not a censored down depiction of reality. It's kind of a breath of fresh air to see it, despite the bittersweet notion that an R rating wouldn't be considered had it been released today. It would have been a movie about the blues without any soul.

An Education is one of those films that aren't profound, or earth shattering, or something that you'd tell people to see as if their lives depended on it, but at the same time it is significantly better, more personal and involving than many other films up the same alley. You find yourself wanting to give only a mild recommendation, but you can't really understand why. I'm not telling you to see this over another film because.... well, why would I? I wouldn't want people not to see it. It's a good film.

I think it's in the nature of films like An Education. They are mild themselves. Small and a little delicate, they tell the stories they tell without overblown pretensions nor overly thought up style. They're simple dramas, basically, about simple human life. In them you will find everything about life and living it has to offer. They are reflections of ourselves.

In An Education, the reflection is that of the early 1960's, when it was still the 50's (at least if you're thinking about these things in a very broad sense). We meet sixteen year old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) who's studying to get into Oxford. Her family go along with the English bricks in the suburban streets of Twickenham; her daddy (Alfred Molina) is about as kind and considerate as a middle class family in 1961 tend to be - he knows her daughter and acknowledges her interests and thoughts in open conversations, but it's far more obvious to him that she is supposed to keep studying relentlessly, than it is to her.

The film centers around her relationship with David, a sophisticated gentleman, some 20 years older than her (Peter Sarsgaard). He gives her a ride to her house one rainy day and from there on it is. David is a door ajar to the adult world and Jenny eagerly kicks it open. With him she gets to experience a world where everything is exciting, fun and full of wondrous knowledge. She gets to live in an elevated state of sophistication and worldliness and it never occurs to her, but it does so to the viewer, that she never gets to know very much about him at all.

But this is not really what you might think. This is still a romantic film, romantic of sorts. David is a sly character, certainly, but he's not the threatening boogey man one might imagine had this been a contemporary piece. No, he's being very polite and we're sure he's being honest, to the fullest degree possible, with his intentions. He even befriends her parents who very naively assume that since he's so charming, there can be nothing wrong with him. Watching Jennie's immediate urge to be David's equal (in a way that will please him) we understand early on that David is obviously using his superiority to gain love from her. But at the same time she is obviously doing the same with him. She is not just some random girl. She is very smart and charming and there's little doubt that whenever Jenny will actually grow to be his equal, David will find he needs her far more than she actually needs him.

The film tells a truth about relationships. Sometimes its not about love, but a special kind of necessity. Jenny is in love with the place David allows her, and all of the possibilities he is the buffer to. What David is in love with we aren't really sure about, but he does seem a little old to believe in true love at first sight. At the same time, he should know better than to play around with this girl who's feelings are far more delicate than his own. I like how uncommonly truthful the time and place of the early 60's have been constructed in this film. We do sense that this is way before the days of post-modern irony and media convergence. Jenny is clever, intelligent, witty but she is also innocent and her naiveté reveals itself in her thoughts, which she sometimes cannot properly articulate and sometimes doesn't even bother to.

Carey Mulligan is extremely good as Jenny. She embodies the character as if Jenny had moved into her head. Every twinkle, smile and articulation seems completely authentic and genuine. There is a feeling of naturalism to her - and to the other actors as well - that is extremely rare in films in general. The big strength of the film is it's utter sense of time and place, and it has a lot to do with this full house of great performances, Mulligan in particular but Alfred Molina as her dad is also a great presence. He is doing the same thing, portraying an actual human being as actual human beings tend to be, flaws and all. He says one or two quite horrible things, he has outbursts and is being mean, but you can always sense that there's a plan and a motivation there. And he cannot be predicted, as "movie characters" often can be. He says gentle things too, and he shows sides of weak self-esteem. Sometimes he's just talking. He's basically a person.

At Jenny's school there's a teacher played by Olivia Williams, and the Headminister played by Emma Thompson. These are also marvelous performances. These two women know very well what's going on, and they see through Jenny as if she's made out of glass. "You probably see me as a lost woman" Jenny says to the Hedminister who, with Thompson's awe inspiring ease, shrugs a second's laughter. "You're not a woman" she corrects her. Ouch. You felt that one. But as an adult, you also feel the Headminister's frustration as clearly as Jenny's youthful and hungry desires. The adults know that they can only help her so much, because certain educations are only the result of experience.

When The Hurt Locker won the Oscar for Best Film, Directing and Screenplay, a lot of people were surprised. Not that it wasn't a hot candidate, but certain critics and others in-the-know didn't see it coming anyway. It seemed, a critic wrote somewhere, as if the jury of the Academy suddenly voted from their hearts, giving the Oscar to a low budget (in fact, in Oscar terms, record-breakingly low budget) film instead of what the industry begged for (that is to say Avatar). The choice of The Hurt Locker seemed somewhat more honest, more daring, more true to the quality of cinema.

I'd have to object, your honor. That would have been true if they'd given it to Precious. Or, in another way, even Inglourious Basterds. The Hurt Locker surely is a meager looking winner of 6 Oscars, but there's really more than enough Academy material in it. It's a war movie. It's about an imperfect man trying to do good and facing the confusion when this doesn't properly work out. In continuation, it's about America doing the same thing in Iraq. It doesn't take sides. It asks questions in a moderately wise fashion. It's a little teary and it's a little amusing when it's not serious or Speech Time-ish. I'm not putting this down, though. Just saying.

The main character of the film is Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) who attends Delta Company in Iraq. His job is to defuse bombs, which is something he does, one must assume, better than anybody else. He is very reckless and Gung Ho, and not what you'd call immediately likable. He is so focused on disarming his bombs he doesn't seem to understand or care that there's people around him and that they are all in life threatening danger. His first day on the job earns him a punch in the face from his second sergeant. As the film progresses, we begin to understand that he is one of those self made war machines who cannot function in the real world any longer and thus comes to live for fighting in the frontier. He's not John Rambo, a character with the same problem, but I suspect he might think he is. Some of the best bits of the film involves scenes where he loses his illusions about war heroism. As one might imagine, they have a lot to do with children.

The Hurt Locker is a good film, but I must admit I'm surprised at how easily impressed the critics have been with it. The good things are easy to point out - It is professional and well made, exactly the type of proper job Kathryn Bieglow has been known for in the past, and it is well acted - Jeremy Renner does as much as can be done with this character I believe, and Anthony Mackie balances him with a counter-role as Sanborn, the other sergeant. The best scenes involve them speaking in a realistic fashion. I know nothing of warfare, but as far as I know this is how people talk in real life no matter where. I really liked just about every scene they shared that didn't have any guns in it.

The "bad" stuff isn't really bad as much as it's "not good enough". Most of the content of the film is old fashioned war clichés - the good man in the bad land, slightly psychotic commanding officers, naive well- educated peacemakers, the hero who befriends the child, the could-be- innocent could-be-evil arab who wanders up when he's told to step back, basically the Cowboys and the Indians. However, I'm pretty sure that Biegelow and screenwriter Mark Boal knows about this too. I could be wrong of course, but the point of our main hero's escapades into the civilian Iraquee crowds to somehow attempting to find the "bad guys" vigilante style, seems self-aware, rather than honest. But the film never really gets high enough, though. It has about three or four really good and memorable big moments, but in between there's not a clear focus on what this film really is about. My guess is that Boal and Biegelow didn't want to go over the line of a kind of journalistic line of objectiveness, but it wouldn't have hurt if they did. I find it a pity that a film that's obviously very intelligent won't go even further in it's own questions.

I can understand most of the criticism The Hurt Locker has received, apart from one thing and that's the pointless rants about inaccuracy. This is in general a critique I have never understood, and when it comes to war films I knew from the moment I saw The Deer Hunter and experienced the tremendous impact that film had on me, that it was a completely worthless to question if it was "accurate" or not. Accuracy has nothing to do with it. No film is accurate. It's a film. Only our feelings for them are accurate.

Textbook gender related observation: When Jack Nicholson's character acts eccentric in One Flew Over the Cuuko's Nest, nobody will believe he's crazy. When Gena Rowland's character is eccentric in this film, everyone assumes she is.

But that is only one of many realisations one makes observing A Woman Under the Influence. It is an intricate film, as was John Cassavetes a filmmaker who always filled his films with as many things as possible. Whatever his films were about, it always had to do with the truth of human nature and human life in modern society. In one example of great main leads in his films, Cassavetes' real-wife Rowlands is playing Mabel, the woman of the title, the house-wife of a Peter Falk's construction foreman Nick. Everybody knows that Mabel is more or less "crazy". Why does everybody "know" this? She is eccentric, has got funny mannerisms, at time she talks and acts randomly about things that make no sense. She is a human being with a desire to achieve, but nobody has ever given her attention or respect as an individual. I think Mabel's crisis is first and foremost that of an identity crisis. She is empty inside, Nick says. That's because nobody has bothered to look inside. Upon the demanding adult roles society demands on her, in particular the task of motherhood, the result is breakdown. She is a house-wife who spends her days wandering around the house trance-like, she cooks and cleans and sews and all the time she acts as if that somehow would be an absurdity. She tries to be nice to the guests but it all results in awkward silence and embarrassment. What should she be doing, then? Who is she?

I think any viewer judging that she is in fact "insane" is an enemy to the film's intent and soul. Rowlands portrait of this woman is a hauntingly perfect portrayal of mental illness, certainly, but her state is that of extreme confusion rather than being someone who's simply "lost it". This is a woman aimlessly struggling to get out of a sea of under-nourished self-esteem and identity loss. We don't know how or when it started, but the more into the film we get the more we understand. Her mind is like a tapestry that Cassavetes gradually unfolds. In the first scene she is running around trying to place her children in the car for a trip with their grandmother's. Cassavetes knows that the clever viewer will relate the title's "influence" to that of gender related, domestic pressure. But that's only the beginning, I think, of what this woman is suffering from. It's not until the end we realise that maybe her family wasn't all that supportive of her, her father seems genuinely uninterested in whatever any diagnosis could be and her mother is just Mabel's fourth child. And if Mabel is crazy, Falk's character of Nick is certainly just as crazy. We don't realise that until after a while either. But he acts just as random upon situations he's not familiar with, and he also has bursts of eccentric (mis)behaviour. You'll have to look more closely to discover this perhaps, he is after all a friendly looking male patriarch and your brain is less inclined to view him as crazy.

Mabel, who is still dependent on him and her domestic safety (that's the crux, I think, of her entire problem), says "I'll be anything you want" and Nick tells her to be herself. But she hasn't got a personality of her own, her emotions conflict her roles and duties but neither become clear to her. What's worse, nobody is interested in her, or has the slightest notion she might have anything worthwhile. "Be yourself", Nick says, but in fact he's not interested in who she is, and he is (without giving too much thought to it) putting demands on her, expecting her to fulfill her duties which is one of the very reasons she's all messed up. He's just not that clever. It's not just that he is a blue collar guy, he seems totally unable to communicate personally with his wife and, certainly, with his children. Basically, he hasn't got much of a personality either, but being a man that reasoning is considered as abstract and not a psychological case. In any case, Nick and Mabel surely love each other, but none of them have the capacity to cope with one another, or even comprehend their surroundings. Towards the end of the film, all Nick can tell Mabel is "Stop what you're doing". There's a childish desperation in him that is channeled through his gender but just as "crazy" as Mabel's lack of self-confidence and self-realising even.

I said that you observe this film, and I mean it. It is more than realistic, it is profoundly real. Everyone have met couples like Mabel and Nick, couples who's lack of harmony and functionality is so great, it can't stay behind the social curtain. I'm saying that as point of reference. We've all left the dinner table at some point. "Maybe it's time we'd go home". As much as any documentary, Cassavetes films moved in real time, here and now, portraying life as it is. He knew that realism doesn't mean tragedy or brutality. Life is rarely dramatic and offers no cathartic finales. Life just is what we are living, it's not easy to comprehend and it doesn't offer security. For the future, we feel great hope but we also feel great fear. This film has got horrible moments, but it's horrible moments of truth. It's also got humorous moments of truth. These judgments are in a sense arbitrary. It's real life. It's the rarely seen beauty of truth that Cassavetes conjured up in his films. Rowlands is there to capture the essence of it, the notion that we are all human beings who need and deserve to be loved, no matter if we have table manners or not.

With his Halloween II, Rob Zombie has effectively transformed himself into the Michael Bay of horror. I know people think that the mainstream 90s slashers were shallow and plastic, but at least they had some wit, and once in a while some creative thinking had gone into them. I don't think that there was one scene in this movie that didn't include at least one bafflingly old and predictable cliché. This movie is flipping mirrors, chasing red herrings, muting the soundtrack at sad moments, leaves the girls alone in the house, uses characters who repeatedly say "I'll be right back" and has got the most tedious and boring chase sequence ever, going on for something like 20 minutes - only for it to turn out to be, yep, a dream sequence! It's like a perfected cliché feast. The tiniest little coincidence in a suspense situation, or unlucky turn in the plot, is strangely convenient, when the screenplay simply isn't ignoring the lack of coherence (this is a movie where a car driving down a highway will crash into a cow as if it's a brick wall). When people are not getting killed they are talking "cliche filler chow". It could be an anecdote. Could be a joke. Doesn't really matter.

Apparently, this sequel to his superior - and still very bad - 2007 remake takes place two years after that one. That would make it 1980, but in here that's just four numbers that the movie forgets about instantly. Everything, from the clothes, to the post-ironic dialog, to the excessive costume parties to the mobile indoor phones (right!) feels more 2009 than 2009. But our kids can't use cell phones when Michael Myers shows up, now can they? Once again, convenient.

Ah yes, Michael Myers has returned. From where I don't know. With the exception of walking around talking to the ghost of his dead mother and a white horse (.....utter, baffled silence......) he's basically the same, save for some aggression problems. I always thought that it was a stupid idea to try to tell the back story of this character, in an attempt (at least seemingly) to make him more human. First of all it's sacrilegious to the point of the character, and second it doesn't do anything for how we look at Michael Myers. This time around it's even more confusing. He's taking orders from a ghost! So what's so real about him? He still awakens from the dead and can't be stopped! The only real difference from this and any other Halloween entry is the ugliness of his killing spree. By now, any horror devotee knows about the gore galore, it's as if the violence has been directed by an autistic person. Michael starts the movie out by cutting off a head. Then we get him stabbing a poor nurse for something like a minute. He's very angry! Now, you may wonder, what has this got to do with John Carpenter's original creation? How many stabs did it take for him originally, just to nail a guy to the wall? Right. One. I don't even feel comfortable calling him Michael Myers here. As a kid, he looks like one of the members of the 90's kiddie pop trio Hanson. And fifteen years later he looks like a member of Slipknot. All this makes demographic sense, of course, but this is not Michael Myers. It's Marilyn Hanson.

Marilyn Hanson is in this movie chasing Laurie Strode. No, that's not it either. He's chasing Avril Lavigne. And, well, Laurie/Avril deserves to die. No, sorry, I didn't mean to say that, she's just a troubled emo teen. It's not her fault nothing she says makes any sense, and I guess a kinder soul would feel sympathy towards her egomaniac lack of perspective to herself or the world. I wished that her psychiatrist (played, oddly enough, by Margot Kidder) would just smack her up. This is a kid who points at a Rorscharq test and wonders whatever that could be. I guess they are the target audience for this movie. That's just disturbing. Malcolm McDowell seems to be thinking the same thing in his inexplicable portrait of a Dr. Loomis gone sellout deluxe a-hole, cashing in with crap books on the famous events. He is enjoyable enough, he's doing this "Sean Connery in Highlander II" thing as I like to call it, but it is only because you realise that he also knows what a pointless piece of crap movie he's in.

As I hinted at earlier, the original Halloween was far away from Rob Zombie's idea of horror. It was built on tension, suspense and psychology. Not blood, guts and random shiny, white horses. I love horror films but I don't believe in gore as an ideal. There was a time when gore filled horror films were both needed and understandable. Some of the greatest exploitation horror movies from the 70's and 80's had both chock and schlock value, and at times they even made sense out of the violence. Rob Zombie himself even did similar tricks in The Devils Rejects and House of 1000 Corpses. But, in general, this trick is old by now, and Zombie's strange obsession with lackluster gore and excessive sadistic violence will not help a franchise that already boiled a girl alive, almost thirty years ago in another movie that is already called Halloween II.

Oh no. No, no, no. I didn't just spend time watching this movie from beginning to end, did I? I was out, I was having a good time, I stopped by for a burger on the way home, then I flipped the lights on and turned on my TV just in time to catch the credits of this movie. This didn't actually catch my attention, did it? And I watched it, what, for pride? I just had to watch it all the way through, didn't I? Oh, I feel so ashamed.

It's a common cliché to say "if I could give less than one star I would" but I look at my one star and I can't see what it's doing there. This would-be comedy of a guy who inexplicably gets together with a woman who inexplicably has an obsession to get married is an utter waste of time for any citizen of the world. Played by French Stewart and Bridgitte Wilson - neither of whom can act, I quickly discovered (and then they're still too good for this screenplay) - this couple is the kind of characters only invented as an excuse to, for some reason, tell a story that amounts to nothing. Rarely have I seen such unoriginal dead jokes and unfunny, miscalculated attempts at comedy. I guess I was baffled by the movie's complete nothingness. About the time our male main character realises he's together with an idiot and starts a kind of war of the roses with her, he doesn't seem to think about why he hooked up with her in the first place. Why did he? There's no answer! Who needs the questions! This movie just exists! It takes up space! Who can blame him, I guess, he's just a bad, hollow movie character attracted to another bad, hollow movie character.

Contrary to belief, comedy requires comedic talent. If there's no talent involved, any comedy will implode into a strange, awkward and inexplicable waste of time. It's been a while since I happened to catch a movie that so well demonstrates this. From beginning to end the movie is pointless, incomprehensible and worthless. Or, let me put it like this, and I never thought I'd ever in a million years say this: Tyra Banks is way too good for this.

Ay, these are the times we live in. When a big Hollywood blockbuster is being promoted all over the world, a clever moviegoer will not rush to see it, but rather check out the movie it is a remake of. Clash of the Titans is the perfect example. I've seen the trailer at various screenings, naturally. To me, Liam Neeson dressed up like Leonardo da Vinci in a war helmet shouting "Release the Kraken!" seemed preposterous enough, but the CGI war feast flashing in front of the poor audience gave me the sneaking suspicion that this is in fact quite a depressing, er, product. Not that I am an enemy to mainstream schlockfests, nor to CGI, on the contrary I'm probably one of the biggest defenders of it you'll find who's not George Lucas. But it just seemed charmless.

Watching Clash of the Titans from 1981 makes it even clearer. Charm is the key word. By this time in cinema history, it's not a movie that will win any new audiences, and it will certainly not impress a ten year old who's been growing up with mobile phones and Pokemon. But it pretty much your perfect Sunday morning matinée. I recommend it strongly along with some pizza and soda, around the time your aspirins are starting to kick in.

It's also fairly educative if your Greek mythology is a little rusty. The Greek Gods have rarely been this straight forward and silly. Zeus - Laurence Olivier, no less! - is wonderfully proud when talking about his beloved son Perseus, and equally cruel when sentencing poor Calibos to live his life as a hideously ugly swamp thing in a remote place resembling... well, a swampy thing. The intrigue is a little contrived, as these things tend to be, but in case you're not familiar with it, in a nutshell it's all about our handsome hero Perseus having to go through quite the ordeal in order to marry the pretty princess Andromeda, who none of the Gods seem to care very much for. She's cursed by Calibos and sentenced to death by his goddess mother Thetis, eaten by the Kraken in the most King Kong of fashions. Thus, Perseus has to go up in the air with his noble winged horse Pegasus, cut off the head of the Medusa monster, fight Calibos at least twice, challenge some cackling witches, naturally attempt to kill the Kraken, etc.

But enough of this nonsequental talk of plot. The Clash of the Titans has a storybook plot that you'll find anywhere else (preferably in a storybook) and what makes it a nice experience has to do with three important factors. First off, we have a cast of actors who are exactly the kind of old school elite that would attempt to play this silliness as seriously as possible. Burgess Meredith is very nice as Perseus' sidekick Ammon, a kind and wise old playwright who comes off as a Mickey Goldmill on tranquilizers. Laurence Olivier is, as you'd imagine, more than enough of a Zeus kind of guy, and two of the greatest and most gorgeous English actresses are battling lines as Hera and Thetis - Claire Bloom and Maggie Smith. At one point, they share the scene with a third goddess, Aphrodite, played by Ursula Andress. Why of course! She is after all the Arnold Schwarzenegger of femininity. As is suitable, she has got one line.

The other two things are Ray Harryhausen, and I can't believe I've gone this far without mentioning him. His craftsmanship in this one is simply a delight. The effects work has an eclectic quality that makes certain sequences both surreal and unforgettable. Mixing backdrops, optical illusions with rubber suits and stop-motion, plus some old fashioned tricks, the effects aren't "bad" or "dated" as much as they are basically just weird and surreal, imaginative rather than effectively realistic. And the creatures he made for Clash of the Titans are also fantastic to look at, be it the spooky night flying viper or the crawling Medusa, or Bobo the Golden Owl, a wise helpful little friend who comes off more as a flying tincan, distantly related to both R2-D2 and C-3PO (and no, let's not go there).

I'm sure I'll eventually see the 2010 version of this spectacle. But I don't think my review of that film will be half as long as this one. This Clash of the Titans has an old fashioned quality to it, it's the kind of storytelling I found in comic books and fairy tales as a kid, and dated or not these effects would have granted a great experience for me, had I seen this when I was little. I wonder, will children growing up today feel any nostalgia over the new Clash of the Titans? I have a hard time seeing how. It seems generic and anonymously spectacular. This one isn't all that original either, but it's ambitious enough to have a charm of it's own. It's really all you can expect from a movie that releases the Kraken.

The mood was elevated in the cinema house when I saw a pre-release of this movie the other night. People were at several times applauding the screen. I'm not sure, because I was heading out for the restrooms, but people might have been doing a standing ovation during the credits.

So what do I know, right? I got a similar reaction to District 9 which was a movie that people were overwhelmed with, despite the fact that it really had not one single new concept and no real impressive sign of originality to match what people had been saying. District 9 did for the sci-fi genre kind of what this movie, Kick-Ass, is trying to do with the superhero movie I think. District 9 was still a good film though. I don't think Kick-Ass is a particularly good film. And I doubt people will hail it as a masterwork of originality.

The plot of the movie: Nerdy high school guy becomes famous superhero, fights street thugs, teams up with high tech gadget doctor (sic), takes on an evil empire, in this case a drug lord, they fight, get caught, fight, get caught. Big booms. Oh, and yeah he gets a girlfriend and all of that too. The movie is stylish and flashy and consistently self- apologetic, the beginning of the movie starts out with such a distance to the superhero genre that you almost believe you are watching a spoof. A kid wants to become a superhero, calls himself Kick-Ass and gets dressed up and starts walking the streets. As it is said in the movie, he should change his name to "ass-kick" because that's all he gets. Thus he joins the likes of Blankman and the Mystery Men. Kick-Ass, though, is the first superhero pastische that people seem to like.

Or so I thought halfway into the movie, before the forty minute mark or so when it gets all carried away in itself, leaves spoof land and invisibly attempts to raise it's own stakes. Suddenly you are expected to care for these characters that have been presented as stereotypes. I mean, take it somewhat seriously. This is in particular strange; Nicholas Cage is being hysterically good as a daddy training him and his ten year old girl to become superheroes. Are they any good? Uh-huh. The kid is the movie's real showstopper. This is the first ten year old you've seen that can cut a head open whilst emptying up humanity's worst vocabulary along with the ammo of her automatic weapon. Cage is also all dressed up with. An. Adam West. Imp. Ression. That is. Quite amusing. In... Deed?

But there comes a time when the movie wants me to simply buy these characters emotionally and somewhat realistically. I buy them as jokes, as parodies, as an outrageous bloody comedy. But do I have to consider that this would be an actual kid and that this would be her actual dad? Am I suppose to believe this fairly far-fetched idea of a local superhero getting famous over the Internet? And why should I care? And if this plot is worth actually devoting your serious interest in, why does it start off like some kind of realistically laid out spoof? Kick- Ass begins with a world that makes a deal of how real it is, life's dull and normal circumstances and how a self-made superhero gets stabbed in the guts. But it all ends up with dodging bullets and flying in jet-packs anyway. I did enjoy the first part of the movie, it was basically a very amusing take on the superhero genre which is getting pretty tiring by now anyhow. But the most ironic thing about Kick-Ass is that despite the visual costume, it turns out it really is just another superhero movie. It really offers zip to the genre. It wants more than anything else to be what it is making fun of. The plot is intended to be taken seriously, until it stops and makes fun of itself, then continues, then stops for a joke. It really does resemble a little kid dressed as a superhero, making the story up as he goes along.

Now I know what you are saying, isn't this just simply a lot of fun? Oh, I'm using my brain again? This isn't a thinking man's superhero movie? I should just shut up and enjoy the violence? Well, I don't know, that is something I cannot do. It's been a long time since I was impressed solely by bright flashy things and a lot of blood and guts. I might be getting too old for this bleep.

The Unknown Soldier is really more than just a movie. It is a monument. The two wars between Finland and Soviet is so deeply rooted in the mythology of the Finnish country that it would be utterly pointless to limit yourself to the pure cinematic qualities, if you were to appreciate this film. The film really embodies a cinematic continuation of a big statue honoring the soldiers that fought and died in these battles, carved in stone to stand forever. To this day, this is still the most successful Finnish film ever made, and Finnish TV has been airing it every Independence day for over a decade. And that is only the movie, which despite all it's values is most important as an appendix to Väinö Linnä's classic novel of the same name. The 1954 novel is truly a masterpiece of realistic fiction, and the film is really just following it's trails. It is a fine war epic, but all it's virtues stem from the original novel. That is why I'm making a point of how to approach this film. This isn't just a story about the war, this is a film about a country, being important in itself, depicting a unique piece of Finnish history exclusive for Finland.

That being said, the big thing that the film brings onto the viewer is it's big heart. This is an epic in the most classic of fashions, presenting a kind of sentimental warmth and heartbreaking honesty that only cinema can create. The psychological reality of the novel is apparent in it's narrative, using no main characters but various ones, all diverse, realistic and totally present. Film is a medium that can't really enter the human mind with such piercing accuracy, thus the film takes use of some astonishing actors letting them hammer out their characters with spellbinding presence. To say that the film is character driven isn't really accurate, it's character BASED. When we meet our first batch of characters, we expect their happy smiles to be turned into war torn frowns. But the jokers of the group insist on keeping the mood as good as possible, no matter what fate may fall upon them. One of them, the cheerful Koskela (Kosti Klemälä) even ends up becoming Sergeant after a death-defying attack on a tank, but it's no big deal as long as they don't call him 'Sir'. Other characters are more serious minded, like Rokka (Reino Tolvanen), a man twice the age of most of the other soldiers, who's got wife and children at home. He is humorous and lovable, yet fearless and completely consequent in his role as a fighter, and he has only contempt for his so-called duty of discipline. He is the best soldier in the group, we learn, yet the biggest problem for the higher ranks who disapprove of his ways. Tolvanen is furious in the role, almost resembling a Finnish Toshiro Mifune, becoming the unified center of the soldier's morality.

These are just two examples of many characters that come and go during the film. I feel I have to mention the great Åke Lindman who portrays Lehto, a nihilist killing machine who seems to have leather skin and a heart of stone. As a dark version of Clint Eastwood he will never laugh, never cry, and he will defy death until the day it gets the better of him. Yet, as stereotypical as these characters may seem, you are never quite sure if they really are as happy, brave, cowardly or honest as they seem - indeed, in Linna's original version of the novel, Lehto was portrayed as a suicidal psychopath.

Running for three hours without a traditional plot narrative, The Unknown Soldier is filled with memorable sequences worthy that of a proper epic. One short scene involves three soldiers exchanging words with two Russian women, ending up with a wild Kalinka dance. In another sequence, all the soldiers get drunk and have a party when they should be on guard for enemies and, as it happens, they are lucky enough not to get ambushed by any russians. In one scene the soldiers witness an execution to warn them about the dangers of disobedience. In another, three soldiers punished with two hours of standing guard hold their stand despite bomb planes are hovering above them, attacking the camp.

These are basically war stories, anecdotes strung together and you get the feeling the film might as well keep telling them for another three hours, because the well doesn't dry up. These stories are the body of the Finnish war history, and for every soldier who fought in the war there's bound to be hundreds. These are as good as any, and it is when you consider the weight of this event that it becomes clear just what a monument the film is. The music seals the legacy - Jean Sibelius' opus for the epic, Finlandia.

Kenny Starfighter is a useless and airheaded would-be space hero, having trouble fixing his grades at the Space Hero Academy on the planet Mylta (Swedish for "cloudberry jam"). He is obsessed with becoming a space hero - alas, he does not want to become a barber, the proud occupation of all of his equally dim family members - but he hasn't got the faintest idea of what a black hole is, and when he sees a celebrity on TV he acknowledges this as a typical case of "deja vu". His only chance of becoming a space hero of the lowest degree is to catch enough speed criminals. He'll get fifty points for one ticket, and it takes 1000 to get a degree. He's already having problems doing the math, and when he attempts to catch his first Winnebago speed criminal (see Spaceballs) he can only appreciate it through his dashboard exclaiming "Really fast!" As luck has it though, he crashes through one of those pesky black holes and ends up on the planet Earth, where he gets his big chance catching a big space criminal, a big-headed, wheelchair-bound "brainiac" if you will, with the properly Swinglish name 'Rutger Oversmart'.

This may seem like a lot of exposition to give away in English for a movie that few people outside of Sweden will even see - but paradoxically, I think anyone not Swedish might appreciate this movie more, since I can only imagine it being wonderfully bizarre for anyone not familiar with cultural in-jokes or the Swedish language, which reveals some horrid acting for those that master it. Furthermore, Kenny Begins is a prequel to a popular mini series called Kenny Starfighter that aired in Sweden in 1997 and became hugely successful. It had a similar plot and it introduced Kenny Starfighter, played with utter brilliance by Johan Rheborg, a character that became enough of a phenomenon to launch quite the hype in Sweden for this first movie, with quite a budget to boot, with some of the most expensive special effects ever devoted to any Swedish film.

As for the movie, it really does fail where the series won me over. The writing is drastically thinner with a more contrived sound to much of the dialog, and the actors aren't really convincing anyone either. There are two kids in the movie, played by Bill Skarsgård and Carla Abrahamsen. There were four kids in the series and they were all goofy and charismatic, if not totally realistic. These two aren't really acting, more talking very statically as if they are obsessed with "acting". As the plot of the movie progress, it turns out we are meant to care for these characters more than we do for Kenny. Kenny becomes like both the star and comic relief, whereas these two kids become the "human element" of the story.

This is a sloppy miscalculation, but the rest of the movie isn't really that well thought up either. It all stands and falls on Rheborg's valiant Kenny Starfighter, and if you enjoyed the series you will enjoy the movie. Not as much, because it's actually a pretty bad movie in every sense, but this is a rare case where that doesn't really prevent a recommendation. There's a scene where the heroes can see mayhem flying about outside the window and one of the school teachers fly up against the glass. Kenny points and exclaims "Oh look, an old lady!" Final point: If you don't think that's funny, you don't have to see the movie.

Ay, it goes all the way back to.. er, for the sake of the argument, let's say Hamlet. Maybe death ain't all that bad. "To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come". Peter Jackson's new movie The Lovely Bones tells the story of a 14 year old girl who is murdered by a child murderer cliché (Stanley Tucci) and then lives on in a limbo between life and death until she's ready to move along. That's the premise. Now, I'm not necessarily opposed to that premise. There are many ways this movie can play out. Unfortunately, Peter Jackson takes every possible route he can find simultaneously at once. I guess you might wonder: Does the girl make contact with her parents? Well, sorta. Does she feel sad about being dead at 14? Well.... sorta... Does she help them discover her murderer? Weeell... sorta. All that is certain is that she spends a lot of time stare into a cryptic nothingness, when she's not running in slow motion. Meanwhile, her dad (Mark Wahlberg) goes insane, for a while, I think... sorta. Her mom (Rachel Weisz) gets burnt out, sorta, and leaves, kind of. A little sad, you think? Not to worry! We have a comic relief grandma, Susan Sarandon, a funny alcoholic who takes care of the kids in a wacky montage. I kid you not. This is the bipolar state of this movie.

I mean, to begin with, a 14 year old girl getting murdered by a creepy old sociopath is, well, what I'd call a touchy subject. You better know what you get yourself into when you are to tell this story (and yes, I'm ignoring the fact it's based on a book. That should never be an excuse for any movie, nor into consideration upon reviewing it). But Jackson, with his usual screenwriters Walsh/Boyens, have created the most baffling and inconsiderate screenplay I've seen in a long time. The speechy dialogue is about as believable as if Lord of the Rings would have been a modern day story, and the movie is eagerly directed as if there's really an urgency to tell this story. Little Suzie Salmon (aww) is jumping around heavenly fields and talks poetically through voice-over about the wonders of life and death. The elephant in the room is constantly the fact that this girl has been MURDERED. You know, as a human being you tend to imagine her cold, stale and dead, rotting away somewhere. It kind of goes with the conception of child molestation and murder, or maybe that's just me. Had she just died for some random reason, it wouldn't have been a problem, I guess. It would still be sappy, of course, but at least not incomprehensible. Naturally, that would be another movie so never mind.

Stanley Tucci's murderer is never given any point of origin or any significant cause. He barely even gets a story line of his own. You want him to get what's coming to him? Or maybe you manage to feel some kind of sympathy with him? In any case that's too bad, because the movie is frankly uninterested in him and his character arch is barely even finished. This is not a serial killer movie. There's a cop there, but it's not a thriller. There's high school romance, but the movie isn't about adolescence. There's the grieving parents, but the movie says really nothing about believable family problems. There's a girl on the other side, yet this is not an other-side ghost story either. The movie just goes on and on, first this happens, then that. There's sappy moments and there's some scary ones. It doesn't matter. It consists of nothing. The movie is a mess. They could have cut down on the sugar and made it realistic. They could have developed the murder into a plot and made a thriller. They could have set up some kind of direct contact with the dead girl and the parents to make a ghost story. They could have avoided the murder to make it easier to swallow. They could have done... SOMETHING... but they did it all, eagerly, and came out with a movie that I recommend nobody to see.

Also. The name of the killer is Mr. Harvey, and Stanley Tucci does the role with a fairly blatant James Stewart impression.... Huh?

I always find it amusing when people get angry with movies like 2012, saying they are an "insult to human intelligence" and so on. I guess 2012 really would be an insult to human intelligence if it had anything to do with human intelligence. It has not. To say that Roland Emmerich is the kind of director more interested in going for the direct visual impact is quite an understatement. Kind of like saying Michael Moore is a bit of a political film maker.

2012 is a good Emmerich movie, a good disaster movie and a good piece of junk food cinema. There's nothing - I mean NOTHING - here for anyone interested in character development, realism or any other kind of adequate storytelling devices. I think this is pretty much the reason it works fairly well. It all boils down to keeping it simple. The more ridiculous and huge your disaster is, the less you can risk messing around with it. The world ends, lets keep it at that. The problem with some of Emmerich's previous movies were that they fell on their own weight - The Day After Tomorrow was preposterous, yet tried to carry some kind of environmental message, and Godzilla was moronic but would probably have been more acceptable with a more charismatic monster (not named Godzilla!).

In 2012, nothing is in the way for the simplistic entertainment value. The simple beauty of it can be found, for instance, in a scene featuring Danny Glover as the US Preisdent actually presenting the news to the rest of the world's leaders, by simply saying "The world, as we know it, will soon come to an end." WHOAH! That's quite something. It's a wonder nobody gets the impression he has lost his mind.

No, it's not realistic. Yes, it's silly beyond belief. But it doesn't insult your intelligence, because I believe the movie trusts it's audience to be clever enough not to take it all that seriously. It's not like Transformers 2, which was a fantasy movie that actually was in need of some kind of consistency but just decided it wasn't important, and Emmerich is Bergman in comparison to Michael Bay anyway. In 2012 we actually get at least 30 minutes of tension building and we actually get Actors as our cardboard characters. Nothing in the movie is plausible, but it does make (it's own) sense. It's odd to me that anyone would look at the premise of 2012 - mind you, this is a story of The Mayan Apocalypse! - and not see that it's impossible to make this movie without humor and self-irony. Good character development has nothing to do with a movie like this. In fact, I dare say it would just bog it down. In a movie where the world ends at a specific date in 2012, an actor like John Cusack is certainly more than enough.

So we have a movie that works despite it's lack of any real conventional quality, since it's a campy roller coaster and that's really it. Does that mean it's a GOOD movie? Not really. Call me a snob, but under the circumstances these movies operate under I can't see how they would ever be properly good. On a star rating, I'm giving 2012 six out of ten. Giving it more would indeed be an insult to human intelligence.