Reviews

Midsommar is one of the best drama/ horror movies I've seen in the past years. It's originality is way beyond the average horror flick. The movie gives a look inside Pre Christian Europe on fertility rituals, combined with lots of reminiscences to the Nazi era, where blonde females were sexually heralded to produce lots of children. Obviously based on Arian views on Women, for these Nordic girls innocence is an absolute requirement. Logically the dark side of the focus on fertility is sacrifice.

The acting and art direction is top notch, which is unique for this genre.

I'm kind of shocked by the many bad reviews. I think Americans have no clue as to interpret and determine Midsommar. But for me, as a European man who has studied history, this is fantastic mix about the black pages of our history packed in great fiction.

The overwhelming visual impact can't hide Dracula's lack of suspence like so many of today's remakes of classic horror. If you like a thrilling horror sensation, stay away from this drivel, it's a far cry from the days of Hammer Horror when Christopher Lee gave you the shivers.

Dutch newspapers warned me about this mini series, saying it is boring and over the top. They were right. I only watched episode 1, which was supposed to be the best. It had it's good moment, like the nun, she was funny and very adequate. But Dracula himself comes across like as weak, nasty and vulgar. He happens to be also bisexual, or even gay, which makes his character a gross case of stereotyping.

After the many good reviews here I decided to watch Prospect. I love scifi, but I find modern day scifi increasingly shallow and cheap. Too bad that counts for this movie also. What is wrong with Prospect and many other today's scifi is the premise and the plot, that usually is a simple story about greed, power and war. These themes dont need a scifi context, because they are omnipresent in our lives already.

Actually I pity todays youth, for in my younger days we had terrific and mindblowing scifi like Logan's Run, Soylent Green, The Andromeda Strain or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These movies were visionary.

I made it untill half the movie and than I had to turn it off. The dialogues sound way too much inside crowd with lots of nonsense. The setting is mostly a forest with digital insects floating over the screen.

Alfred Hitchcock once said "I bring murder back in the living room, where it belongs". Yes, I'm 56 and I've have seen many may thrillers and horror movies in my life. Believe me when I say The Clovehitch Killer does justice to the great thrillers Hitchcock made long ago. This is not a cheap slasher but a slow burner, where we as the public, know something the killer doesn't know. This provides the movie a very tense and claustrophobic feeling from the very beginning on. This production is based on a well thought through script that works like a cat and mouse game. Some scenes have this wonderful dark violin music, very elegiac, lamenting over dark and unknown stories. Please see it, everything is just perfect in this clever made movie, its very worth while.

The Kings of Summer is a unique movie made by unique talents. It is made with lots of truly free creativity, gorgious photography, and great music. All kids have this phase about building a tree home to escape their parents tiranny, so do the 3 boys in the Kings of Summer, and with lots of flair. Their self build shack is larger than life. Just when everything is perfect, the bothership between the 3 boys is torn apart by another force of nature.

The Cry is a great mystery miniseries that echoes another Australian mystery movie A Cry In The Dark with a fantastic role by Meryl Streep. Also mentioned here is the Madeline Mccan disappearance. In all three cases the mother is not acting like a mother who's child has vanished. The myth that nothing makes a woman more happy than having a baby is roughly invalidated. Jenna Coleman in The Cry is equally calm and icy like her predecessors. The Heavy suspence and a pitch black atmosphere go very well together with the warm Australian light.

This series nearly lost my attention at around episode 5. I forced myself through the rest. I loved the acting and the settings, and the music and everything, but the story was just very boring. Also Im quite fed up with time shifting series. If overdone and just for shifting's sake, it becomes very dull.

1922 is a farm drama like I haven't seen for a long time. I grew up myself on a farm and I know, by experience, how farmers are attached to their own properties and especially their land. A farmer who gives up his land is regarded a loser first grade. 1922 goes deep and dark into the preservation of the tradition that land must go from generation to the next generation within the family. Only the devil can end this. Thomas Jane is fantastic as the tortured farmer going to extreme lengths to keep his son on track. Many scenes are horrifying, yet at the same time black comical. One scene makes me almost vomit, the next I burst out laughing. My families farm is destined to end. My brother's sons will never be farmer, not fit to and not able. My brother was offered 1 million dollar by the government to quit his farm. He turned it down. There wont be another offer. How much he will get for selling his 25 acre land within 10 years, we dont know. He is one of the last farmers, which is so strange, because when we grew up all our neighbors had a farm. Nowadays land goes back to nature again, or homes are build on ever growing cities, or it goes to a megafarm with 20.000 animals.

I have always loved science fiction with space ships and unknown planets. Two years ago I decided not to watch Mars because of the bad reviews. I was stupid. Watching it now I am impressed with the visuals, the acting and the script. Mars is glorifying beautiful and also a slow burning thriller. This series is about science and all things unexpectedly that can go wrong. A struggle on the edge of life and death. Dont believe the bad reviews, those are from people watching bluckbusters. I love it!

This movie touched me deep. Simon gets so much support when he comes out, the support I never got, not from friends, neighter from family.

The attitude towards gays has so much changed for the better since I came out in 1984, which was 4 years after high school. Back then in the 70s it was totally impossible to come out, for me at least on the countryside in the Netherlands. Gays were regarded as less then a dog, really. Words like f****t were daily common terms of abuse. I was bullied for 6 long years.

I can only be very happy society has made huge progress. Gay rights are at a level mankind has never seen before and we should be proud of that.

This movie gets a lot of negative reviews but that didnt prevent me from watching it, and Im glad I did. Annihilation is a true scifi thriller in the tradition of Solaris, Westworld and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The movie has sometimes a nostalgic 1950s look, combined with nowadays yet over the top CGI. The ultimate question of Annihilation is wheater our personality is a part of our body or trancendent and an entity of its own, like religion beliefs. If you like a journey into unknown territory this movie is for you.

The most beautiful thing about To Kill a Mockingbird is undoubtfully the cinematography. Shot in black and white, this masterpiece in film noir looks absolutely gorgious. Debt and shadows, compositions and sharpness, I watched in awe.

As for the story, in my opinion it took too long before the black man drama began, and it wasn't very good embedded in the movie. The acting is superb, by all members of the cast. I've never seen such a loving father for his children, very moving.

Yet, the subject of racial discrimination addressed in the early 1960s is something ashonishing. Robert Mulligan has been extrememly brave to put the novel into a movie. That's what makes this movie American history.

Bottom of the World is in my upinion a story about psychotic breakdowns but it's not clear who suffers this disease. Is it the boy or the girl? Both of them have different versions of their time together. Delusions of love found and lost drive the protagonist over the edge. Partners vanish or are being replaced by other persons. Nobody can help them find their way back to reality.

This movie is so beautifully shot it took my breath away. It should have been nominated for an oscar for best photography. The Story is small but deeply touched my emotions. I dont know how they did it but at a certain point the movie nailed it and became more than the parts it is build from. Matt Bomer is wonderful, and actually his looks are just as gorgious as the scenery. The young actor was very fine too.

Does anybody remember the time when the Germans were on the barricades against nuclear energy, after the Tjernobyl power plant accident? That is the starting-point of this series.

Having seen 3 episodes I can't really decide to go on or not and that's not a good sign. The time shifts are starting to annoy me. Hasn't tv bombed us with that nonsense enough? Very not original.

There is hardly a story, just massive droning music and faces with heavy expression.

The Characters come back each time to a hole in the ground, in a forest, like in a b-movie like. Some say stop comparing with Stranger Things but that series was stuffed with stupidity like that too.

This movie probably gives an accurate account of sending the first human being to Mars. It wont be spectacular. It will however be one long suicide attempt. Nobody has the right to exploit that person. Better shut the camera's down. Mankind will only be able to cope with that journey on a poetic and psychological level. The first missions will be far from actually living on Mars. So much has to be established first.

Religious delusion, mass hysterics, unlimited worshipping, messianistic expectations, pregnancy psychosis, fame syndrom, satanism, borderline horror, time shifting, eternal cycle of life and death, nightmares, hell, media madness, reality exploitation.

Mother! is a movie that deals with everything that is wrong with modern media and how we sell our soul to the devil. The movie is so in your face that you dont even have the time to recognize our lifetime madness.

Jennifer Lauwrence is a superb actress!

Atomic Blonde is Charlize's fantasy how she wants to be noticed by the public. I cannot say she fails, but neither can I say she succeeds. She is a great actress with stunning looks and brains. Her images for Dior perfume are classic and pure class. Charlize is Atomic Blonde, but the movie itself, well, the script is just plain stupid and silly. Basically, each spy is a double agent, there are lots of fight scenes and the movie skips from one encounter to another, and that's it. In other words, this movie is very empty.

This documentary will linger in my mind for the time being. It was totally mesmerizing, and a wonderful mystery. I have great respect for artists who are able to get their family in front of the camera and be open, as far as that is possible. I know how hard it is. I also loved the old 80s VHS tapes of the producer's childhood. I don't want to tell much about the story, but it's clear this is a story about a woman who did something that hardly no woman can and that goes against the very image of motherhood and is regarded inhuman. She abandons her very young children to have a career for herself, which damages her two sons beyond repair. Now I've heard quite some stories about men who are able to do this. Maybe society accepts that behavior easier from men then women. What I learned from this documentary is that you never must enable damaging people to do their way with you.

I truly am interested in UFO's but it's had to find any real evidence. I remember, when I was a child, in the seventies, me and my brothers watched some very strange lights high op in the air. They were definitely not from an airplane or helicopter. The lights had different colors and switched places quickly, but they stayed together, at one spot in the air. All together I think we saw them some 15 minutes. We did not photograph them, we were outside in the fields of our farm. My mother had a camera, but it was a cheap Kodak thing...but I never ran home to get it, guess I was too baffled.

Now on this documentary, well, it's all about a big cover up, accrediting wealthy people and the FBI and CIA and the Military way too much power. That is typical thinking for people who don't have any control over their lives but can not admit that and blame an invisible and outside power.

Unacknowledged consists mostly of hundreds of old typed phrases digitally rolling over the screen, supported by found footage that has nothing to do with it.

Marilyn Monroe was killed because she knew about the aliens, seriously?

Many times I heard the obsolete argument that the public would go in total panic and anarchy when we learn the truth. Well, I wont.

There was one very tiny alien, and it was all too clearly a wooden carved toy.

It only takes a little transparent square plate to capture and use the power that is hidden in one m2 of space, and that delivers so much power that is can boil and vaporize our oceans. But because Shell Oil wants to make money the old way this technique will never be applied. Right, evil minds rule the world and love pollution.

The man who invented the car on water was killed, of course...No, he had high blood pressure and died of acute internal vain bleeding, and he was psychotic as well. His car concept was researched many times but when he had to show his car he always cancelled his appointments.

I've been watching American Crime ever since the first season. Now I just finished season 3. For me, as a European, this is one of the best American series I've seen in a very long time. The series portrays the average American citizen struggling to get through life. Jobs, relationships, friendships, they are all far from perfect. What strikes me the most is that the people disappoint each other deeply. Men belittle women, the rich exploit the poor, family is betrayal and the youth is forlorn and empty. But then comes the point of somebody seeking justice. Some get it, but many don't and have bite the dust.

Next to the story, the acting and directing is of the highest level. Felicity Huffmann, Timothy Hutton and Lili Taylor are fantastic in their drama and lunacy.

I have always loved the Alien franchise, especially the first 3 movies, which are great, all of them. I did read the bad reviews of the latest, Covenant, but could not image it could be so bad. The best part of the movie is the first part in space, which is quite good, but once the alien comes in the movie is all over the place. The landscape of the new planet is so obviously shot on earth...a wrong decision that killed Interstellar also. Anyway, the Alien is so stupidly aggressive, so the movie has zero suspense. There is also a long part that is very boring with just 2 persons talking, like a sage conversation with assumptions nobody cares about. The legendary director Ridley Scott is killing his legacy and making a fool of himself.

I had read the impressive reviews on Master Of None, so I was very interested watching this. It was supposed to be something of a New Era where old comic laws are no longer valid. But seriously, I was actually shocked by how many jokes were based on so called "culture and race" differences on Indians versus whites. So that with Aziz (purposely?) speaking with heavy Indian accent I really didn't get the point. I found it embarrassing. Next to this the plots were really nothing special.

Colossal is a movie that I had to write something about, considered so many negative reviews here, which I think this movie doesn't deserve.

On one side of the picture there is Anne and Jason who once were childhood sweethearts, on the other side, in South Korea, a gigantic monster and a robot, tower over Seoul.

At some point during the story the synchronization between the two different entities becomes obvious, just as the fights between the opponents becomes tougher. All this time you hope they will make up in the end.

In it's core Colossal is a very sad story. Disappointment over ourselves as well as disappointed over our closest persons. Life's misfortunes made us not exactly hero's and neihter does it to the ones we love. These things happen at personal level with Anne and Jason and they are also universal, and I think that is why the story was literally over the top synchronized in Seoul.

Colossal avoids cliché's like they never avoid them in Hollywood. Some scenes have a European art house atmosphere, others scenes look like a romcom or a Hollywood blockbuster.

Anne and Jason act wonderfully, really a delight to see them here, in a daring movie that isn't a crowd pleaser.

This movie, directed by Spaniard Nacho Vigalondo, reminds me of the movies by South African director Neill Blomkamp, like District 9 and Chappie. They have something in common, mixing social issues with fantasy and science fiction.