Reviews

In Nightcrawler we follow Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), an unemployed man in his thirties (probably) which comes off as a little bit weird. The film starts with him stealing a metal fence and then bargaining a sale to a man who is in charge of a metal scrap yard. Subsequently Lou is obviously turned down after applying for a job at this same yard. Although a weido, Lou is apparently very smart and ready to do anything to succeed. Thanks to his determination, mixed with coincidence, he finds himself at the site of a horrible car accident. There he observes Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) in action, but he is a nightcrawler; monitoring a police monitor at night in order to find newsworthy material, and then selling the photos to the highest bidding news station. Lou becomes very interested in this line of work and gets himself a camera and an assistant, Rick, played by Riz Ahmed, who is extremely convincing as a thick-witted and basically homeless local resident.

The first parts of the film feel a little scripty or so to speak, a little bit boxed in a general script. We have the protagonist, who doesn't have much, he steals stuff and sells it to not-just-survive (life doesn't seem to be too hard on him). He isn't successful in his search for employment, but this only makes our man more willing. What makes this film good is how nuts Lou Bloom is. From the start, you know that it will get him into trouble, but still his journey is so unpredictable. Gyllenhaal's performance is amazing as the crazy, unpredictable nightcrawler. Furthermore, the film is also very well written and Gyllenhaal's performance elevates an already good script – he has some great monologues through-out the entire runtime. After the story has been set up in the parts act, Lou Bloom leads the audience into a thrilling second part, which includes some of the most exciting scenes in a film this year. What makes the film even more interesting character even more life and it is easier to get invested in what ishappening.

One of the main drawbacks however, was the soundtrack, there were a few times when I was drawn out of a scene where the music felt very strange, and didn't fit to what was happening at all. Furthermore I would have wanted a little more gore and filth – I wanted to feel a little bit worse while watching the film. Instead the film takes a turn into the dark comedy section, not that it's a bad thing, I just feel that it could have been more disturbing.

I don't know news stations' method of work but I highly doubt that they would accept all the footage Lou Bloom offers them and air it. That however, totally worked in this film, just as most other parts of it.

Nightcrawler is highly entertaining and thrilling but if it had direction from someone like, for example, Nicolas Winding Refn and score done by someone like, for example, Trent Reznor it could have been an exceptional film.

I certainly recommend this one to everyone – 8/10

Probably everyone has at some degree wondered how it would be if humans could use more than their normal brain capacity.

This movie provides a glimpse into what would happen if a person could unlock his mind's full potential. The story starts in a middle of interaction between Lucy and a man she has been seeing, where he is trying to convince here to deliver a mysterious briefcase to Mr. Jang. She ends up having no choice and what seems like a simply job gets Lucy involved in a horrible deal where she is turned into a drug mule for and extremely powerful drug.

Things even take a turn for the worse when she is physically abused leading to the drug-bag in her stomach to rupture and a large dose is released into her bloodstream. Only not killing her, this dosage also causes her to be able to access bigger and bigger part of her brain – with drastic consequences.

The featured cast is pretty interesting, as well as the storyline, however after a decent start the film completely loses its grip. Lucy doesn't have to go through any learning process to know how to control her new set of skills and powers – which was a bit of a let- down. Instead her journey thenceforth is a smooth sailing with minimum of emotions and excitement.

There are a number of good looking scenes, but they do not come close to make up for the blandness, hence it is very hard to get invested in the story. Additionally the ending is partly given away early on which further reduces the excitement. This action film includes a strangely large amount of stock footage which really is totally unnecessary.

Scarlett Johansson puts in a good performance; she has the extraordinary look a person for this role needs and is pretty believable as this supernatural human being. Morgan Freeman's role is a lot less interesting and is mainly used to explain what is happening to Lucy when she is not on-screen. Although Freeman has the look of a professor, he surely didn't feel like one to me on this occasion.

The first part of the film is enjoyable but after that it just goes downhill, being extremely bland and stupid in so many ways (which is kind of funny given the brainpower of the main character).

I cannot recommend Lucy – 5/10.

Paris of the north takes us to a small village in the north of Iceland. There we follow the lead character, Hugi. Hugi is a school teacher who finds himself in this tiny village to try to recover from a marriage breakup that had him spiraling down into alcoholism and melancholy in Reykjavík (the capital). The village is tiny to the degree that the frequent Alcohol Anonymous attendees are three, including Hugi. The other two are Svanur, the father of the Erna, which Hugi had been seeing for few weeks, and Richard, the former partner of Erna. Erna and Richard have this 10-year old son, Albert, who has found some sort of a father figure in Hugi, since Richard is not as much of a father as he is a pot-smoker.

Although Hugi doesn't realize it immediately, he definitely carries around a lot of extra baggage, primarily his broken marriage and his remaining feeling towards his ex, preventing him from maintaining a relationship with Erna. Hugi's father, Thorfinnur, newly arrived from Thailand where he had grown tired of running a bar, sort of intrudes Hugi's already problem-filled life. Little is said about their previous relationship but most likely it was non- existent. After some time Hugi realizes that these living- arrangements cannot last forever if he wants to keep his sanity. Either he or his father will have to leave this small and quiet Northern Paris. Upon his father's arrival the audience is set to enjoy several comedic scenes. These scenes end up being the highlight of the film along with beautiful shots of the in-closing, surrounding landscape and the great music score by Prins Polo. Björn Thors does a decent job as Hugi but Sigurdur Skulason has to receive a big praise for his role as Svanur, the AA driving force who recites 12 step programs like he wrote them all. Helgi Björnsson is also great as the intruding father and source of dysphoria.

This comedic drama has some memorable scenes and clever dialogue mixed in the melancholic small-town life. However, everything happens at a small-town pace and sometimes it transmits to the audience although the film isn't particularly long. Furthermore it lacks a more concrete storyline, it feels more like a series of scenes than a coherent story.

6/10

Being from Iceland, where big parts of the film were filmed, I was very excited too see this film, as was the audience in the theater. I was far from disappointed.

This film is not perfect, it has it flaws, and at certain points I was a bit drawn out of it and lost a little concentration. However these scenes were rare and the overall entertainment values is high.

The cast does a fine job, you cannot complain over the chemistry between Stiller and Wiig. Additionally it was nice to see some fine Icelandic actors in a big Hollywood movie, and the Icelandic language added a more real touch to it.

There are some great scenes, with fantastic landscapes and even I was surprised how beautiful the nature of Iceland can be. This element is successful due to brilliant camera work.

The most special part of this film is the message you can take from it. What I draw from this story is that you cannot let other people hold you back, especially yourself, you should be aware of your surroundings and enjoy some of the life's greatest moments without thinking too much about it.

For the right audience this film leaves something behind, which should be the aim of all films.

I highly recommend this one - 9/10

Domenic Purcell here portrays the husband of a sick wife, Jim. He is one of the people that suffered heavily from the economic crisis, but on top of that he and his wife have hefty medical bills on their hands, from her cancer treatment. Helpless Jim sinks deeper and deeper into financial (and personal) debts, while the Wall Street brokers that cheated him and others show no sign of remorse for taking their money to save themselves. When everything looks impossible, Jim takes things into his own hands to say the least.

The script offers the very basic methods to make the hard-working- financially-troubled protagonist look beaten unfairly down by the bad men before rising up. There's nothing wrong with a simple plot, but it looks like it is supposed to be very dark and serious and instead usually it looks too unrealistic. The buildup is filled with repetitions, where the viewer is told many ways how bad everything looks for Jim and his wife. Slow build-up can be intriguing and build up extra excitement for the second part of the film but for this case it looks more like stretching. All the supporting characters don't get the time they need for the viewer to care for them at all and give very little to the story. Purcell though gives an adequate performance, all he really has to do is look sad and angry and fell some tears, but he does it well. The buildup could be much more compact and still have time for more character depth. When the film finally takes off it is hard to fall back into it.

I cannot specially recommend this one, everything is mediocre at best. It would have been much more fun to see Uwe Boll give it his usual touch of schlock instead of trying too hard to be realistic and serious.

Ridley Scott is back with another science fiction/horror movie after desiring for long to explore the unaddressed story behind the ship on planet LV-426 of Alien (1979), the host of the eggs aboard and the mysterious pilot or space jockey in the control seat.

In Prometheus we follow a team of explorers that discover a clue of the origins of mankind on Earth, pursuing the answers to a far-away planet; not to different from the Earth itself. There they encounter terrifying things they did not expect to find.

Ridley Scott is known to be a great visual director, and in that aspect he does not disappoint. Every visual detail is very well though and the world it creates looks amazing.

The first half of the film is fantastic, introducing the characters, their different motives for this expedition and setting up the story. Then the plot gets very complicated, too complicated actually. There are a lot of things left open-ended or not explained and that might be very disappointing for some. Maybe they are left like this for explaining with another movie or movies? Ranking behind the visuality are the performances which are very good. Michael Fassbender steals the show portraying a human looking droid with no real feelings who has the job to take care of the crew. The rest of the cast also does a fine job. If you can complain about the cast, casting Guy Pearce as the very old man, who was the impetus behind the expedition, doesn't feel like the right decision. Making a young man appear old always looks like a man wearing a lot of make-up; why not cast someone who is really old? Additionally, the characters of Idris Elba, Janek, and his flight assistants seemed to lack screen-time for the audience to understand them better and their key actions.

You can't help but to compare Prometheus to Ridley's earlier Alien. The plot of Alien is very simple; the crew on a mining ship finds alien eggs, it impregnates people and kills the crew one by one. But in Prometheus the plot is much more complicated and leaves you with so many open ended things, which is questionably the correct recipe for a movie. Also although there are fine performances and dialogues in Prometheus, the dialogues in Alien feel so real, almost like they were all improvised.

Prometheus offers some excellent scenes in awesome-looking sets with good cast performances. But on the other hand it the plot is very complicated which increases the chance of blundering, which sometime looks to happen. A slight disappointment but nonetheless a good movie – 8/10

After reading the plot description I was always going to see this movie; the concept of it is genius. I recently had the chance to see it and it was kind of exactly what I thought it would be.

The story is a little bit predictable but fairly well told; simple and direct in a runtime of suitable 90 minutes. Although a fairly low budgeted project, it has some nice special effects. The fact that they used German actors was a nice touch; it's always better when the correct language is used, it adds credibility, although that's not this film's middle name. Anyway, what stood out were the stereotype characters(the very unpresident-like president, the Albert Einstein type scientist and so on), the USA government mockery and overall how campy the movie is. But it's hard to care what happens to the main characters or the Fürher villain, they are all so goofy and inhumanly. Due to that fact you don't connect to the film well enough although visually it's enjoyable for sure.

Some of the jokes were cheesy and didn't work for me, but overall it was entertaining and funny. I was constantly shaking my head over the constant nonsense but at the same time laughing throughout the running time. Sometimes it was like the writers were not sure if they should just go way over the top in campiness or keep a little bit of drama, and it got a little bit confusing at times. Maybe it would have been better to "camp it all the way" and wipe away all the drama-esque elements.

I would recommend this movie if you want to see a fairly well-told, fresh but simple, funny and campy story that doesn't make any sense at all.

7/10

Slither is an intentional B-movie, the sooner you realize that the better. James Gunn made this as homage to the kind of horror films he likes.

The special effects are bad, sometimes it is just silly and the acting is not too believable and logically it's dumb. All that makes it sound like a horrible movie, but still it works, as what it's intended to be.

The first part of the movie the small town where the film takes place is introduced along with its most important people; the police chief (of course), the mayor, one couple and then just some other fill- ups. The actors have some kind of chemistry which makes the film much more than just watchable. What makes this movie work is that it is not offensively stupid; it is consistently silly throughout the runtime and hilarious at time.

If you like this kind of funny, gory, zombie/alien B-movies, this film will definitely keep you entertained throughout the runtime. It is a well written and entertaining movie with good casting.

This is what comedy horror movies are supposed to be like - 7/10

Pitch black tells the story of a group of 12 people who survive a forced landing on a deserted planet. It's about survival and trying to escape a hostile environment. This plot has been used often before, and one could compare this film to The Thing or the Alien quadrilogy. What makes this film work are well written characters and great casting.

This particular group of people consists of individuals with widely varying backgrounds and mentality, which makes trust a big issue. Not only do they have to deal with the situation being stranded on a strange planet but the biggest threat could be their fellow survivors. You can really feel the anxiety building up during the movie which is augmented with a number of highly tensional scenes between characters.

As mentioned earlier the characters are what makes this a good film. Early in the movie the audience gets to know the characters enough to have feelings for them. Vin Diesel plays one of the main roles as Riddick, the physically strong, bad ass, prisoner, anti-hero, who still seems to have some leftovers of humanity. Cole Hauser plays Johns, a mercenary with a medical drug habit, who is responsible for Riddick, and the tension between those two is exciting to follow. Then we have Radha Mitchell playing the vice-captain of the ship who has to step up as a kind of a leader and keep the group together, while struggling with her own conscience. Other characters get less attention but are important, the most memorable ones are three Islamists who believe god is responsible for every happening but have to admit that god isn't always nice even if you pray; Jack, a boy with a secret and a rare items collector who is not exactly the kind of person you would pick in your survival team.

The cast fits very well into the characters; they look believable in their roles. Especially Riddick, who comes off as a bad person but still you oddly start to care for him. You get really drawn into the storyline and can easily picture yourself there with the survivals. It has a nice build up where you get to know the characters as they try to understand the planet they find themselves stuck on, followed by some faster-paced, exhilarating scenes where you don't want to look away. There are no scenes in particular that stand out, but you can find some clever dialogues.

The visual display is nice, with nice looking scenes ranging from intensive scenes happening in complete darkness to very bright POV's. The editing is very tight, including no scenes that don't matter or last way too long. Sometimes you need to do something else while watching, but this is not the case with this film

To summarize this review: This is a film that no fan of Sci-fi movies should miss, or anyone who enjoys action thrillers in general. Not the most memorable of movies but who was expecting that? A good movie with a great cast and interesting characters.

In one word: "verymuchenjoyable". - 8/10