Reviews

One of the best CGI "upholstered" sci-fi flicks as yet. Very 80s, guess the idea (or even the entire William-Gibson-like script) slouched about for 20 years before it was realizable without appearing ridiculously B-grade. And Bruce Willis looks like Elton John for once, or vice versa :-) So much on the obvious.

Ah yeah, IMDb etiquette makes it hard to draw stringent conclusions to real occurrences, but all i can say is that if we web-nuts would turn off our machines for good, get up and simply walk outside our very flats, this world would be very different, and probably a better one, too.

Any artificial online identity, let it be 2ndlife or WOW, comprises a substantial momentum of addiction and unresistant devotion. To what? That's where this allegory jumps in quite helpfully.

We're no artificial surrogates yet, but already part of and surrounded by a more and more zombified public, where the MP3-downloads on our mobiles may actually mean more to our well-being than the unconcerned, indifferent, fear- and/or greed-powered ambition that accounts for most of our daily uprisings.

Crown of creation? Hell we are. Anyone noticed the missing comma?

Looking back now, "The Bourne Identity" is an alluring string of pearls i can watch once a year w/o getting bored, which is no mean feat for a flick.

In 2002, i joyfully assumed that any sequel would keep the level of excellency, but "Bourne" II and III are pitiful hells of devaluing "Puke-Evoking Rapid Cuts Only Sedated Oafs May Acclaim", which abbreviates PERCOSOMA: a popular but rather quirky cinematic infestation with the potential to ruin any otherwise watchable film. The trivia of "The Bourne Supremacy" proudly states, that "The average length of a shot is 1.9 seconds.". Overdose of Percosoma. But "The Bourne Ultimatum" even tops it by the numbers.

Anyway, I seriously wonder why this new-millennium classic is not among the IMDb top 100. With "Memento" rightfully ranking 29, and the last and IMHO worst of the trilogy, "The Bourne Ultimatum" on 154 (by today's date), this chart certainly suffers from it's own peculiar sort of mental flaw.

All this must be Langley again, trying to alter the public's view on the Bourne case :)

The entire "Watchmen" thing was completely unknown to me, except for a panel gag cartoon featuring Rorschach browsing a porn mag: "Inkblots, nothing but inkblots!"

So my perception towards this cinematic rumpus was unbiased. And i must admit that i enjoyed (and cherish) this optical ghost-train-roller-coaster jumble for it's unique and plain weirdness, some really cool one-liners and the extensive care for the finest detail.

But even the "subtle" phases of the movie were either entirely spaced-out, or soaked with sorrow and foreshadowing, leaving the viewer with just another heavy impression or hunch. So, the whole spectacle became more or less lackluster over time.

You can put a comic-book aside, if there's something you must digest, but "Watchmen" just keeps on punching the uncovered parts. Maybe that's why a friend told me that this movie made him sleep. Overload.

Renting this DVD just for a watch, i was immediately and completely taken by surprise. From the opening to the credits, this one amazed me like no other sci-fi movie in the last few years. I wondered why there hasn't been something like that before - that's a characteristic trait of a classic to me, by the way.

Pity i rented it just to get over a hard days night, without former recommendation. Being a sci-fi fan, i bought the DVD of the movie AND the series, just to watch it all one day in a more bona fide way. This new-millennium classic deserves some Sunday afternoon Dolby 5.1 beamer setup and chips.

To the critics: Don't teach the starving about condiments, dudes! Expecting nothing but moving pictures, i went watching STAR WARS back in 1977, with lowest expectations on such a braggy title. I left the hall in sheer astonishment. SERENITY is quite the opposite of a braggin' name, and i don't compare it with this frontier breaking milestone, but being drip-fed on sub-mediocre stuff for almost two decades, it simply satisfied my maliciously neglected needs for proper sci-fi.

And I never spotted that much IMDb content in the "Characters" department... Ain't that a proof for loving fan care, gorram it?

First of all, the faces: Chiwetel Ejiofor depicts the blind follower of an intergalactic scam so faithfully that it gave me the creeps, Nathan Fillion is the one and only rogue space ship captain around, Summer Glau makes a perfect weapon-in-disguise, Alan Tudyk renders Checkov dreary, and hey!, who needs a Wookie when lovely Jewel Staite maintains the engine?

Second in my rating: The script plays with the genre specific stereotypes and standards in such a self-reliant, beautiful and funny way even DEMOLITION MAN can't dream of. The mere ease it juxtaposes the two inherently conflicting genres of sci-fi and wild-west is simultaneously path-breaking and breathtaking, and it reminds me somehow of the promising Han Solo theme in the first STAR WARS episode. Yet, instead of zeroing in on the better parts, Lucas turned STAR WARS into a sort of spaced-out Muppet Show - without Statler and Waldorf - just to be on the frigging safe side of the Box Office. There hasn't been a spin-off of the Millennium Falcon thang, however, so let's give SERENITY an exceedingly warm welcome.

Third big Brownie point: The heartwarming soundtrack!

SERENITY is THE contemporary sci-fi movie, with enough potential to have serious impact on things to come.

An unpretentious fun adventure movie that has it all: a stunning cast, the sea, quayside bars, yachts, treasure hunt, scuba diving, some sentiment, guns, crooks, a brunette Paris-Hilton-clone and an Ukrainian sidekick which both made me laugh until i had to rewind...

Yesss, this one made me laugh and giggle and smile several times, and that's what you can't say of most 2008 movies until now. Comedies are hard work, and that's the strong part of "Fool's Gold": the nonchalant, professional cast. When you start lifting the eyebrow because the daggers fly all too deep, one disapproving glance of Donald Sutherland and all is reconciled. Ray Winstone is another surety for twinkles of old-school class under the genre-typical layers of sixpacks, caramel tan, tight skin and funky hairdos.

I don't like to compare, but a friend reckoned it being "Sahara" and "Into the blue" rolled up into one hell of a user-friendly spliff... So if you want to relax and rest your weary eyes on the sea and - say - Alexis Dziena for a while, just try to relate to my amusement and get "Fool's Gold". It won't hurt, promise!

Elaborate essays on the blatant historical and technical inaccuracies have already been posted here, so i won't have to feast on them. A less exuberant approach to the entire veteran airplane thing would have served "Flyboys" very well, as it's "terrestrial" plots work comparably acceptable.

Trying to figure out the proper target audience by reading between all the "lines" a movie can possibly have, this one seems to be made for boy scouts of the early 70's. Thirtyfive years off the mark. That's so spectacular, it's almost charming. And without rapture-driven, pecunious 40+'s behind the production we would never ever have had the joy of watching vintage bizarreness like multiple bright-red Fokker triplanes accompanying a zeppelin over France. And a black one hiding over the clouds - i just had to laugh.

5/10, though - because i dig it for it's bold weirdness. And i was a boy scout in the early 70s.

Sir Ridley Scott kidnaps you into an idyllic world of art-nouveau furniture, baguettes, vineyards and slow 2CVs. It's a kind of dis-accelerating approach, just like the slow-food movement.

Wonderful pictures, beautiful landscapes, the Provence as the leading actress: who could ask for more in this comfy-movie? Well, Scott has several aces up the sleeves. Freddie Highmore as Young Max Skinner, Albert Finney as Uncle Henry, Russell Crowe as the adult Max, Tom Hollander as "best friend"Charlie, Rafe Spall as the adorable Bistro-Attendance and: La Provence!

If every book-to-movie conversion would be such a cinematic pleasure, we cineasts could lean back in joyful anticipation.

Still, this director - being a Knight of the British Empire - is a proved clairvoyant. He notoriously used to set trends long before they knew they were. Trends. What about this back-to-normal then? Very intriguing... Damn, oh how i love Scott's Movies.

Every once in a while the tell-tale-terror crossover genre generates one-of-a-kind highlights for others to copy, compete or tamper with, like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, Abel Ferrara's outstanding ADDICTION or this slightly underrated masterpiece here, SILENT HILL, which - in all it's shining, weird uniqueness - instantly renders any bold comparison ludicrous. It's a truly unsettling, mysterious white-knuckle ride, and Yes, there's plenty of slasher stuff here. But it goes without saying, like, "Oh my god, dude, seen that freak's blasting ribcage squirting kinda spores all over that leather-clad maiden cop? Wicked!". It much rather tightens a smoothly woven and absorbing web of sheer non-stop suspense, benefiting from it's origin - a trilogy of already superb computer games - where substantial care had been taken of a steadily rising thrill-factor.

Slick scripting and congenial craftsmanship then condensed into what happens to be one of the most gripping horror movies of the decade. The faint-of-heart may heed officer Gucci's well-meant advise: "So I want you to go home now, to your nice warm bed, and let me deal with this town and what has happened over the last thirty years. OK? End of story."

There's something magical about "Brainstorm". If it's the plot, the music, Christoper Walken, i don't know. But this one changed my digital lifestyle.

"Brainstorm" feels like a farsighted dot.com commercial to me, way before the web was won. OK, merchandised mind reading technology. Well, that was a doubtlessly stunning plot. But gee, this guy hooked a mobile (!) PC to some company's intra-net via phone line (!), just like operating a fax machine! Far out, THAT was cool and sensational! I was completely struck, and the next day i got me an acoustic coupling device, "communication software" and online i went, visiting "mailboxes" with my 1MHz IBM compatible. On 300 baud/sec. Or 0,003 MBit in contemporary terminology. The digits dropped in, one by one, and i felt sooo hip. Some months later i was the first person i knew doing online banking, and my friends considered me not hip but eccentric. However, it took me 20 years to actually purchase a mobile PC, because i needed slots slots slots *lol*...

By the time "Brainstorm" was made, being online was for nerds. The technological "atmosphere" held not the faintest haze of what we know now as the world-wide-web, turning the most remote and separate corners of the world into one global village.

The idea of sharing sensual impressions by technical means is not necessarily new, as plenty of sci-fi authors (especially of east-European origin) dealt with that before. "Brainstorm" was just too cool in depicting the consequences of such-alike machinery: elder men going nuts with looped orgasms, children haphazardly checking out tapes with psychotic episodes, deliberately tracked death experiences locked away by military, a black market of ethically questionable contents etc.

We're working on it, i guess. In fact, we're working on everything that mother nature won't supply voluntarily. Weird we are. The only question is: helmets or implants?

Gee, it took me an hour to realize that the woman behind model-monican AEon is the same as behind the scruffy felon in "Monster"! I even thought "Are there two Charlize Therons?"

Absolutely convincing in these diametrically opposed roles, she sets a new standard in fulfilling a true actor's vocation: being a vessel for visions. In a movie world more and more trading artistic skills and talent for butts and six-packs, Charlize Theron is a colorful torch in the dark, a firefly among punkies. And she's a belle, so we will surely see her again this decade.

Ah, well, AEon Flux is a sumptuous "sci-fi with a message", on par with "The Island", or the weaker bits of "Matrix", if there are any. You'll get a fair share of genre, if Charlize scampering around in tights is a not too distracting issue for you. So can anyone tell me what the point was? :)

Edit: Some months later i got used to the outfits, and found Aeon Flux a simply gorgeous flick. Communication via brain ticket. A stunner by all means. Highly recommended!

"Populärmusik från Vittula" is a lovingly made and beautifully staged movie, brimful with really exciting, amusing, disturbing, and most of all NEW and interesting faces, folks and scenes.

Well worth seeing, but i strongly recommend to read the book before watching the film, because the book's author Mikael Niemi puts major emphasis on loving observation - his unique strength - and all time-line-bound events are connected and interwoven by the narrators's humorous, skillful reflections. While the entire novel lives on this unique subjective density, the screenplay fails to regenerate this surreal yet all-too-real atmosphere, and spawns a scrumptious roundabout of kaleidoscopic, more or less detached incidents. Partially, it even felt like someone's trying to affirm or authenticate the author's contemplations. A somewhat oblique effort, fit to entertain but also irritate the unprepared beholder.

Compared to what is called mainstream these days, "Populärmusik från Vittula" is a step in the proper direction. OK, it rides the book's wave of success, but the heck, it was simply about time for a movie like that!

"kassovitzism": inflationary masses of sought-after photographic material, used up for more or less unsatisfying purpose (like surplus grands in a central bank combustor) - lexicon of isms, 2004 -

"gothika" is a beautiful, breathless, hyperventilating flick in bondage, overwhelmed and almost strangled to death by an indecisive script that literally bounces between crime story and Gothic tale, fraying out like the psychotic self it tries to depict. one should check out "the mothman prophecies" to see how CREEPY crossover works!

however, halle berry is not only the sweetest actress of the early millennium, i also have to reconsider my long-term prejudice that bond girls can't act.

This impressive piece of fantasy-fiction deserves respect. It was a very ambitious project, yet too early. Just as Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", to work properly, Herbert's "DUNE" trilogy required a lot more cinematic resources than you could get back in the early 80's. Bakshi failed, and so did DeLaurentiis. But not completely.

"DUNE" was state-of-the-art, it has it's very own, unique impact and delivers plenty of the most memorable and captivating scenes ever brought to screen. I like this movie very very much. As i mentioned already, it's impressive, captivating and just good entertainment, to say the least. My hope for DUNE: a remake in the caliber of Jackson's "Lord of the Rings". A trilogy maybe? Anyway, as long as nobody comes up with it, i watch "DUNE" every once in a while. And hey, it's a David Lynch movie!

More than 20 years after Ralph Bakshi's pitiful 1978 crossover disaster, here's the unrivaled "Lord Of The Rings"-adaption. Peter Jackson finally made it. One of my all-time favorites. i do prefer sci-fi in general, but this one shifts the boundaries with striking ease.

The reasons why earlier attempts (despite all memorable effort) just had to fail, were Bakshi's enormous budget problems and (most of all) the impossibility to bring certain phantasmagorias to convincing life on screen. Nowadays no really too big thing with vastly improved computer aid.

But the massively enhanced visual impact is not the biggest improvement here, the best thing about LOTR is: this movie works! It's immediately captivating, stunning, pleasant, weird, frantic, funny, sad, freaky, tough, foolish and wise, depicting all the chicken skin plots of Tolkien's literary artwork with humble respect, credibility, style, and industrial strength.

And it has stars: Viggo Mortensen is the only possible Strider, Liv Tyler and Kate Blanchett excel in medieval, exotic weirdness, and Elijah Wood gives one hell of a haunted Frodo. Not to mention the other actors, each one of them performing brilliant and awe-inspiring.

The only pity about it: Gandalf is not played by Donald Sutherland. But you can't have everything, i guess...

at last, a movie that handles the probability of alien visits with the appropriate depth and loving warmth. just in case we're not alone, i do believe that these visitors are just too touristíc to care for us or give that wayward bunch of anthropocentric goofs a stable proof of their existence. we wouldn't interfere in the battle rites of some agitated desert tribe either, unless we're out for messing with our travel insurance, huh?

anyway, the movie depicts the transitional cathexis of a weary mind and body by a superior entity. that happens quite unspectacular and rather unrecognized, but we're dealing with a movie here, right? so prot's hospitalization is just a trigger to the plot.

jeff bridges acts great as usual, but spacey is hilarious. the role seems tailored downright to him, convincing and lovingly "mad". eating unpeeled bananas, sitting in a tree, giving his doctor a hard time with quickness, wisdom and (most of all!) stunning quotes. they made me think and philosophize for hours already.

it's an encouraging film, to say the least, and the soundtrack by edward shearmur is simply beautiful. just go and get a copy. catch a beam of light. now.

basically, the movie just mixes up the pain and neurotic restlessness of a journalist who loses his true love in an evitable car crash, the urban myth of some tell-tale "mothman" and the factual 1967 point pleasant silver bridge disaster. boo! so what?

well, it does so well, that you need quite a time to chill out afterwards. pellington did a hell of a directing job, gere is awesome (a pity that messing dies here so early, she's quite a stunner), the whole plot convinces, and the fact that the final disaster really happened makes nothing less scary, really.

one of the best scary movies ever. don't let your children watch this.

"Raumpatrouille" was the very first sci-fi series I had the pleasure to watch. My elder brother and me sat in the living room, watching Dietmar Schönherr, Eva Pflug and all the other noble astronauts battling the "Frogs" or renegade robots on a b/w screen.

I was 9 years old, and the whole thing struck me completely. Oh, how i envied a classmate of my brother, who owned Peter Thomas's movie theme on a 12", starting with that unique metallic countdown. For a year I was painting spaceships and foreign planets. Not that i wanted to become an astronaut, but a normal family life with a normal wife, normal kids and a normal job on a normal spacestation would do just fine.

Now that most of us have taken the red pill, passing the outer rims of the known universe in cryosleep, side by side with sigourney, to the proverbial hell and back, the poetry and twinkling of the first days are almost gone.

I got me the series on video, but i can't get back that incredibly "involved" feeling. It was part of the times, i guess. This kind of future really belongs to the past. Yet, none of it's successors made me feel like "orion" again. No, wait: the first "Star Wars" episode (or Episode Four, aargh...) had a comparable impact back in 1977.

what do you get when you mix a captivating, fateful sci-fi plot, classy actors and the competent use of state-of-the-art computer fx? high end entertainment like "star wars", of course, 25 years ago. or "the time machine", more than 40 years back from now. but every generation of science fiction produces a new, unrivalled spearhead.

this time it's "matrix", that shook my perception like only "star wars" did before. far more mental and gothic than any other major sci-fi production, matrix brings back faith- and faceless paranoia to a washy, starving mainstream.

cinematic future had almost drowned in a flood of predictable "bash-the banshee" plots, filled with boring, ray-gun toting steroidtypes, ready to fight some butt-ugly, hostile "lifeform". culmination took place in paul verhoeven's "starship troopers", which artfully got subsequently characterized a parody on the genre to avoid unintended laughter.

forget about all that dullhalla, "matrix" rules the brainwaves from now on. a fat 10/10.

not only that "bladerunner" is a stunning masterpiece with lasting influence on the genre, it also carries a technological prognosis of amazing accuracy. in 1982, the extensive availability and quick spreading of PC's, voice recognition or proprietary picture processing had not even reached the minds of pathologically optimistic scientists, but in "bladerunner" Deckard quite nonchalantly instructs a user-friendly, disc-based picture printer to perform a blowup. no technological catwalk or impressive gestures, just ordinary humdrum in stylish lighting. nowadays, comparable machines even look a bit like the one Scott featured 20 years ago. if you take the ultrafast development circles of the chip biz into account, then we all should express our sincere respect to Scott's farsightedness. time confirmed more than once, that he's a clairvoyant in a movie director's disguise.

so my question is: does Scott possesses the ability to transcendent contemporary technology into provident, device-specific design issues or do the creatives in the big electronics companies watch sci-fi movies to get inspired for their equipment's design? odds are high that they do, but then again...

no matter what, "bladerunner" gets 10/10.

once upon a winter time, 1977 to be precise, i invited the most beautiful and desirable girl i knew to come and watch "star wars" with me. when you're a 18 year old boy, and the girl you adore actually has the exciting kindness to sit beside you in a dark cinema, you normally pay not too much attention on the movie. but this film delivered the exception to all rules: it was one of the very first "starwars" performances in German theatres, and we both completely unaware of the fact that we were about to watch the revolutionary "shape of things to come", just to stress this pathetic phrase one more time. to cut it short: we didn't get very much into each other that night, but very much into the movie. both and at once.

two spacey hours later we left the hall, overwhelmed and a bit dizzy, and when i drove her home in my daddy's car, i really felt like manoeuvering an x-wing at zero altitude. all she could quote was "incredible!" over and again, not commenting my severely distracted attempts to show her my devotion and empathy, but the trailblazing special effects attack of "industrial light and magic". and i just confirmed that redundant notion with somewhat mixed feelings and pathetic sighs like "wow", "geezus" or "yes".

not that i regret having been in "star wars" that night, but it could have been a slightly less impressive, less captivating and less pioneering masterpiece...

back in 1977, there was only "starwars", then there was nothing for a while, and then there was "alien", the highly contaminated answer to Lucas's clean multicultural splendor.

nowadays the average sci-fi consumer is spoiled by various sagas and serials where female superiors command all kinds of space vessels and task forces, but in the late seventies Ripley was quite a thing to digest for the patriarchal oriented crowd.

no noble heroes fighting final battles for honor and glory. A lone woman desperately struggling to get the hell out of unholy disaster.

that's already what makes "alien" stand out "inter pares". but the intriguing fact that commercial structures showed their dirty and ultimately dangerous face for the first time in a futuristic ambiance, makes it even more clairvoyant.

just another grave sociological forecast we all got quite acquainted with these days...

I am always a bit shy when it comes to laughing out loud, especially when i'm alone, but this movie has almost therapeutical qualities. In the beginning i was a bit astonished about the sheer and unexpected brutality that occurs quite sudden after a very soft entry. But pretty soon i realised the twinkling in the author's eye, and i started to laugh 'til i almost fainted. The dialogues are captivating, the characters convincingly weird and Arvid's decline follows some unforgettable kind of crude and funny "inevitabilism". This is the funniest actioncomedy i've seen for years. Refreshingly different, astoundingly perfect. A true recommendation not only for friends of the genre. I will buy it on Video or DVD, my highest private ranking.