Reviews

"This film is boring because he is crawling around and grunting for 3 hours. But the cinematography is good, tho."

Geez. Go back to your over-hyped cookie cutter Hollywood bullshit with lots of unrealistic action scenes and childish jokes. Yes, this movie is slow, and there isn't much of a story going on. Yes, the most part of Leonardo DiCaprio's acting is crawling on the ground and grunting. And yes, the cinematography is outstanding.

The point of this film is showing the struggle the protagonist has to go through to get his revenge, and I think the movie delivered this point in a brilliant way. Your lack of patience doesn't make a movie bad. But that seems to be the crowd nowadays. They want a 90 minute cliché film with a lot of action, boobs, funny lines and a "mind-blowing" plot twist at the end.

Also, saying that DiCaprio was only crawling and grunting shows that you people have no idea about acting. He didn't talk much, and that makes this character even harder to portray: with facial expressions. I'm not saying the performance was Oscar-worthy, but it was very good. And the other actors, especially Tom Hardy, did a great job, too.

This film is very much about atmosphere. And I'm not only talking about the filming locations, camera work and editing, you also need some empathy to feel what Hugh Glass must have felt. That's what makes the movie interesting and also suspenseful. Yes, I thought that movie was very suspenseful, believe it or not.

Next thing is, of course, the camera work. The amount of absolutely outstanding one shot scenes is amazing and shows the high professionalism of the cast and crew. Did you guys even notice that the whole battle scene at the beginning was ONE SINGLE SHOT? And also every other scene in the movie lasted very long. You feel like you're in the middle of it all. I know this is not new, but they do this on such a high level here, it's amazing.

I know this "review" reads more like a defense of the movie, but I couldn't keep this to me after reading all the "opinions". If you don't like slow movies, it's OK. But don't say a movie is bad or boring just because it's slow. Assuming that being slow makes a movie bad, "Dead Man" and "Only Lovers Left Alive" by Jim Jarmush are also bad movies, right?

First off, I'm a huge Helge Schneider fan and I love everything he does. Well, everything except for this movie. I tried watching it three times and never made it to the end.

It's like Helge is trying too hard to catch up on his older films like "00 Schneider - Jagd auf Nihil Baxter" or "Praxis Dr. Hasenbein", but it all just seems very forced - especially the jokes. Helge Schneider's work is built on improvisation and subtle humour, obvious jokes are only made now and then. But this film has too many of those obvious jokes, and that doesn't work at all with the concept.

The thing about Helge Schneider is that he never really changed, but it never got boring because he always made something new within this very particular "universe" he has created over the years. And that's when "Im Wendekreis der Eidechse" comes into play. It's the same old Helge aesthetic his fans know and love, but without any fresh aspects.

A huge advantage of the flick is the set decoration/film design/costume part. They bring a lot of nice vintage stuff (many of the items belong to Schneider's personal collection, as far as I know) into the film, and that improves it a lot. And of course, there are some funny scenes/moments. But this film isn't anywhere near the old classics.

I went through some "What's the creepiest film you've ever seen?" thread on IMDb, and a lot of people mentioned Session 9, so I was very curious about it. The plot seemed interesting enough and the movie poster looked creepy, so I had rather high expectations on this one. And I have to say: I don't agree with all the positive reviews at all, except for one thing: Most horror flicks nowadays only have a lot of blood and jump scares (which I also like, to be honest) and there are only few movies that scare you on a subtle, psychological level. And, according to the reviews, Session 9 should be one of those films. But it is not, in my opinion. Not at all.

There is hardly any build up of tension during the first hour of the film, only a few moments. And don't get me wrong, I AM a fan of movies with a slow build up, but this one was just boring. The characters were not very believable, although the makers tried to make them deep, but failed in my opinion. There are quite a few things going on, so you have to keep attention and get curious how everything will solve in the end. So it is kinda interesting for about half an hour. But then, the story becomes extremely predictable. It is a very cookie-cutter type of horror/thriller story and has no interesting or fresh aspects. I also didn't like the fact that the whole "action" went on in the last 10 minutes. It seemed very hesitated. Too much dialogue that could have been left out since it didn't make the characters any more credible, and too many different things going on that could also haven been left out since they didn't really tie together in the end (or at least didn't ad much to the story).

Last but not least, the film lacked of atmosphere. If I watch a horror film without the typical jump scare stuff, I expect it to have dense atmosphere that chills you to the bone, and Session 9 failed to deliver such atmosphere. The only thing I thought was creepy was the old wheel chair from the movie poster.