Reviews

Will Ferrell at his best! There are a few Ferrell movies which really shine instead of being enjoyable because they offer over the top silliness and "Everything must go" is among them. Covering some suburban double standards and even some sexual things you're neighbours have going on, Ferrell's character actually portrays in a very nuanced way the destructive power of having fallen to alcohol. The movie makes this a strong point. It's not a Belgian movie, so you can watch and enjoy it and still feel comfortable if you start thinking that might be Jeff and Martha next door. You can also enjoy it if you're Jeff or Martha next door.

That said, the movie delivers. Not Shakespeare, not Bond. Talking itself not seriously? Good for burgers and beer on a Friday? Entertaining? Yep, of course.

Much better than the first one and actually quite funny if you're into quotable one-liners. Kicking back for a beer or two and watching VHS tape quality on bluray after work? Jap, worked for me! Cheers!

Set in a still young post-war GDR, "Das Zweite Gleis" tells the story of a single father raising his only daughter and how they get by until the father's past catches up to them and sets a painstaking search for truth in motion. Far ahead of its time, the film tells how haunting the truth for most Germans must have been after WWII and that it might have been even more haunting for their children to uncover what their parents desperately tried to forget or to cover up. Story telling and craftsmanship at their highest!

"Ostkreuz" does not seem to be a well known movie, at least judging by its rating on Imdb here. It is a well told and we'll shot film surrounding the experiences a 15 year old girl makes during that time shortly after the Berlin Wall came down. It is small budget film which makes the most out of that small budget, is heart-warming and depressingly honest at times and well worth checking it out.

Great monsters and at that quite a lot of them but also unfortunately some awful below average Netflix characters.

The musical is at best mediocre. It has a very thin plot which is carried by very thin characters. Hugh Jackman's performance is quite good but almost every other character is shallow and forgettable. The musical itself offeres some good choreography but the music is absolutely awful. It is like listening to that ever-present pop cant and whining from the radio. The biggest flaw in my opinion is the attempt of trying to be a critical commentary on historical circumstances. Early American race thinking and class consciousness are touched on but somehow the director decided not to go the whole way. Consequently, the musical ends up to be a very friendly and toothless musical monotony. I do not understand why so many people wrote don't listen to the critics - is objective taste here coerced upon people who simply have a different criticism to offer?

"The Equalizer" was somehow difficult to review since the movie never clearly shows where it wants to go. Without spoiling the story for people who are still interested in watching this movie, it is a very conventional American thriller about that lonesome guy who gets tipped over the edge and starts killing people. The movie barely evolves above TV storytelling and TV characters. It tries to be cool and stylish at times and a bit Deathwish-like but it fails to establish any kind of originality. Without Denzel Washington, and he plays the loner well, this movie would probably lose every incentive to watch it.