Reviews

Rather long and borring one and i am noone who minds slow pace. But all of this is just as pointless as Hamlet and the long theater-style monologues do not help at all. I think i did read some comment about how proud someone was of his northern culture and that it finaly was shown correctly in this movie ... not sure i understand being proud with this ...

I guess someone was making "art", for i do not care for this. And by the way, the director stated this is the most entertaining of his movies - i will make a point to avoid his work i think.

I am really really surprised by the good ratings this one is receiving - I was in the cinema for this and for other Berlinale films and this one got only courtesy applause (and compared to Krugovi practically no applause). Never mind it won the golden bear - i stick with the audience on this.

The hand-held camera is awful, making you seasick very quickly, the film doesn't manage to create any mood and does not even know what it is about.

It could be about many topics - the social problems in Romania, corruption in Romania, overprotective Balkan mothers (I know a lot) and what they do to their children or maybe the struggle of such a child against its mother, the lack of responsibility in the society, even about the conditions of the roads in Romania.

Well, the film chooses none of it. It goes on and on, without getting a point, without getting a direction, without even understanding the situation in my opinion.

This one became perfectly clear to me once I saw a short interview with the director, who was talking something about Oedipus complex - the one thing which was not even partially in the movie. Yeah, by the way - he did talk about this in Romanian - i guess 15 years in Germany didn't make him learn the language.

So if you like a lot of minute longs sequences leading to nowhere, films which make no point and have no direction, can't even decide whether a driver killing a child did something bad (yeah, he feels a bit bad, but well, he is sorry, see, so it's OK to drive with 140 on Romanian roads, poor poor guy) - this is all you need.

I for my part would warn anyone - do not waste your time - there is nothing here.

this is a typical Tarantino-wents-nuts movie, overloaded with senseless violence and trying to be cool, but unfortunately completely lacking the ability to make you care about anything and anyone in it. besides, Tarantino should not go Asian - they have enough senseless action movies on their own ;) the movie also completely lacks the funny dialogs i so enjoyed in pulp fiction and also the interesting story twists - it's just linear...

while i do not have a problem with violence i request that a film makes me care at least about the main character and even better - about the story

the story here is the typical "go get revenge" story, all too familiar from loads of action flix. only that it desperately wants to be cool and becomes laughable in the process.

i have seen way better matrial arts action and the acting is disappointing too. in fact here the action is in part completely overdone and all the time wannabe-cool - it hurts.

i also would like to question the casting of uma thurman for this - hated her in this role - she should have stayed in the coffin (was this part one or 2? don't care in fact). as for carradine - well, he is used to be in cheesy movies at least.

the characters are all as flat as a postage stamp, fits to the story somehow. couldn't they just all be gunned down by rambo? we could than live happy and be spared the equally bad second part.

so for me this movie is tarantinos worst movie as for now as well as one of the worst movies in general - do not watch it.

i expected this to be a mindless action, but such a stupid story is an achievement.

reading in cloth for the names of ones next victim? bending bullet traces? jumping a hundred meter?and not to forget lots of bullets intercepting each other... this and much more idiocy you can find in this matrix wannabe, without the matrix explanation for it of course. can't understand how anyone could like anything in this movie - stupid story, dumb and not even good looking action, one can not talk of acting at all with this script ...

seriously, this could be a music video, but not a movie - lots of wasted money again

by the way - i'm really not sure how the title relates to the movie ... and maybe it should be "help wanted"?

a mediocre movie based on a mediocre book by stephen king the story of the book is loosely related to the dark tower cycle ... or better said - there are references on the dark tower in the book, but since it doesn't happen much and nothing is revealed the book lives only on kings ability to keep you interested by creating a strong mood and describing his characters well.

the movie is very similar, only it's Hopkins who keeps it all alive. the dark tower references are missing, but this is not a real problem, for king trashed the cycle with the last book anyway and it really is not important for the story here.

the movie, like the book has a strong mood, also like the book it isn't happening much and nothing is revealed, so at the end you ask yourself what you have missed ... well, nothing at all - it's just this. a little mystery, a lot of all-day life - that's all.

curiously it's still enjoyable, just not very memorable.

a profi killer kidnaps a taxi driver and wants to use him as a scapegoat for the 5 contracts he has not as bad an idea, but the way it's done ...

Tom Cruise plays a cold, perfect, comic like and quite flat killer - and quite inconsistent one: - he seems so perfect at the beginning, a real killer machine, each shot a hit, but at the end he can't hit a guy 5 meter from him in the subway ... with several shots ... while the taxi driver hits him of course ... yeah, fits very well to the disco-scenes where the killer manages to clean quite a lot of bodyguards on the way to his victim - have not counted how often Jamie Foxx tried to escape, but at some point a cold killer could have considered killing him and getting an better driver ... i mean Foxxs character was really more problem than solution all the time. but no, instead both have to visit Foxxs mother ... man, a really bad bad killer - the perfect killer has perfect killer-plans in his notebook, but once the thing is thrown away he knows nothing ... well, yeah, sounds very professional to me, yeah - the whole plan - trying to make it all look like the taxi driver did it looks a bit funny in general ... i mean the killer is seen with him several times ...

• instead of seeing this drive is the wrong one while it's time he does 1000 stupid and time-consuming things to keep him staying quite cool all the time, until he goes crazy at the end and has absolutely no control over himself ...

• Cruise can't convince me here ... he isn't right for that character at all well and the taxi driver makes the opposite transformation of course - from a frightened - and rightly so - almost real human to a mad better than the perfect killer shooting profi ...

and than this woman ... how pathetic of course our hero has to do everything to save her there are some nice scenes in the movie, yes, but it can't convince me, not the acting, not the story and certainly not that ending ...

being a low budged production i didn't really expect too much of this one, but it manages to create the discworld with many many well known characters directly before your eyes the cast is great - couldn't imagine better actors for it making it about 3 hours was a good decision, this way the story feels really like the book i liked the book (i like most of Pratchett's books) and i love the movie the only weak point are some special effects, but i really do not care about this - this is a great production, hope we will see more soon --- Susan is reading the fairy tale "Jack and the beanstalk" to children] And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy any more. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.

i like this "how would the world look like if ..." (in any direction) and we have a good example here - what if the Germans had not lost the second world war (and the description on this site is not correct - they have not won - they just have not lost in the movie)? how would the society look like, the people, the politics... yes, in the movie the Americans do not know about the extermination of the Jews, while in reality they refused to bomb the railways leading to the camps, and yes, i have a problem with this

but i think that the mood in the movie and the wonderful acting did compensate me for this mistake. i would like to know more about this world, about life in other countries in it... and a movie able to do this is a hot candidate for my favorites list

watch it if you like alternative settings and movies with well made mood

first - i loved blanchetts acting in this movie, it's great i have not watched the first movie yet, but i surely will after this one this is a historical movie with very well created mood, a nice cast and very good acting my general interest for history (but must admit i have not read much about this particular period of English history yet) has certainly added a point in favor of this movie :) i also loved the fact that this movie shows us the good ones using torture to gain their informations, which was surely historically correct too many movies try to show us perfection where there were just human beings as us ...

the constant praying and all the priest running around are right for that period of history too, for sure Robert Fisk has complained about this movie delivering a wrong/eased quote of Elizabeth when she stands before her troops, but since i didn't learn about this in history and since i really liked this movie i couldn't see his problem this movie also shows us some really good pictures and have i mentioned blanchett's acting is great? ;) the main flaw in my opinion would be the quite flat character of the Spanish king ... in my opinion they should have either showed him less or showed a bit more about him ...

anyway, absolutely worth watching, a fav ...

maybe it depends on your expectations ...

i had expected it to be cheesy and cheap ... expected to dislike it in fact, like other movies where you throw in 5-6 characters from different books and hope this will be enough to satisfy the viewers (that extraordinary gentleman thing for example) and yes, it was cheesy, cheesy enough so i couldn't take it seriously. and funny and that saves the movie it is not serious, it doesn't take anything serious, not even itself so i found it a hilarious comedy with quite a lot unexpectedly original elements and maybe even touching some fundamental questions ... (frankensteins monsters question about what makes you a monster for example) the text lines made me laugh all the time as did the (quite well acted) image of Dracula as a good husband, trying to satisfy the wishes of his brides i liked the images, yes the CGI included think this included one of the quite well done werewolves (and several good werewolf jokes :) ), liked Dracula's battle form, liked the combination of quite well done dark images with constant jokes :) there is also a lot of action i would hate in an other movie ... and it's OK here, for i don't take it serious, i find it quite funny in fact :)

a smart cyberpunk film about power and corruption, racism, a possible future, drugs (cybernetic here, but still the same) and humans greatly enjoyed Ralph Fienness anti-hero, not the smartest, not the strongest, addicted to the stuff he sells himself, addicted to his ex-girl and afraid of life. and very human but the entire cast is very good as is their acting - loved Angela Bassett performance and character too and Lewis did great as the bad and selfish bitch :) the list here is not full of course - it misses the great performance of Michael Wincott the pictures of the coming millennium - riots, violence, soldiers and armored cars on the streets were very impressive. and not too far away if we keep our direction i guess ...

the soundtrack is great for rock fans - i had it years before i watched the movie and love most of the songs - which are also played just in the right moment.

there is enough happening to keep you awake and still it's not the overdone and unwatchable action which seems to get very modern.

very recommendable

Hauer is a great antihero, the mood is dark and hopeless, the monster is quite funny, and there are enough jokes and enough tension to keep you fascinated also nice is that no one cares to exactly explain what or who that monster is, providing the movie with a bit of mystery

this movie works more like alien or seven, or maybe even blade runner - on the psychological level, do not expect it to be action loaded, but enjoy the darkness and tension inside

a great plus point for the movie is that they didn't make a sequel. i guess they had no money for it, but still great - most movies do not benefit from a second part

so as i already said - i loved it, but i can see that not everyone will still - give it a try

this is why i totally don't care what movie critics say - they trashed this movie that badly one must assume they never saw it

OK, so first - this is not mainly an action movie, so do not expect it to be it is a pretty realistic tale about injustice, hatred and violence and for a change we humans are not cleaner as the monsters we hate in fact Grendel is the real hero of this movie and i very much liked this

every character in this movie has it's own motivations, doubts, fears and faults and is way more realistic than in most fantasy movies, have no idea why some people think that once you go fantasy you don't have to stay reasonable of course the good acting helps a lot for the characters to be realistic

some great lines here also, especially when it comes to religion - very amusing

i found the visuals of the movie very well done also, although it was told to me that Denmark has no cost line that looks like this ;)

and i really liked the action sequences - for a change not the overdone stuff you always get from Hollywood

so this is a very good, realistic and poetic movie with a bit of fantasy inside, staying firm on the ground and i enjoyed it very much

forget the critics - watch this one with brain

Clarkson was very good too, but her role was more the mysteriously looking and above the world floating teacher ...

this movie blurs the borders of reality and still shows the very real problems of a little girl unable to concentrate on reality alone, unable to follow the rules all the time ... and the inability of the world around her to deal in an intelligent manner with it

but it's the magic of the movie which makes you want it to go on and on - not the reality, but the points where it is missing in a certain way it reminds me of Amelie, but i like this one better

watch it, even if you don't like the story - watch and enjoy the performance

first - the story is quite original and interesting and is also quite critical about our so great and perfect society in the west, which is a great thing for me needless to say the acting is outstanding although the movie works on quite serious subjects, like organ trade and generally the situation of the people we manage not to perceive it stays down-to-earth , without the hype and useless action one could put here to get some extra viewers ...

it may look a bit slow for many of the action junkies, but it has just the right pace, the right mood and the right dialogs to be what it is poetic very recommendable - watch it

a great movie about real people, beautifully played, very well shot the lines the characters got are great too, as are the characters them self it's interesting how the movie manages not to drag you down, how it manages to stay positive, while the main character is dying ... beautiful - watch it if you get it

i watched it by incident ... just cached it on TV and the title sounded interesting to me. now i'm very happy i stayed with this movie

--- Ann: "Now you feel like you wanna take all the drugs in the world, but all the drugs in the world aren't gonna change the feeling that your whole life's been a dream and it's only now that you're waking up."

it has exactly the right mood, fatalistic feeling, darkness, mystery, love, hate and poesy. it also managed to hit me at the right time in the right mood for sure a movie about revenge, justice and love beyond the grave, it manages to keep you under pressure all the time, even with the main character seemingly indestructible at the beginning. the characters are great and unique, featuring what i find some of the most interesting and funny bad guys. the lines they trade and the acting delivered by the actors is beautiful too, and still feels fresh after all the times i watched it.

the soundtrack even manages to improve the already well created mood, with bands like the cure, machines of loving grace and stone temple pilots - in fact i first discovered the soundtrack and loved it :) the movie manages to inspire me each time i watch it, and there surely have been 20-30 times already. i've never watched anything like it, not in terms of mood, story or mystery, but the action is beautiful too, as is every shot in it ...

yeah, i know - i'm better when ranting about one i didn't like ... this is why i waited so long before writing something about this one ... still doesn't seem right, but i will improve it with the time Eric Draven: "Victims - aren't we all..."

an other great favorite of mine, this one features what in my opinion are the best roles of Jean Reno and Natalie Portman, and maybe even of Gary Oldman a dark movie about a lonely and emotionally underdeveloped hit-man and a way too early grown up 12-years old girl, thrown together by violent circumstances and clued together by the love slowly growing between them it shows us unusual characters in a hard and merciless world, hit hard by life and still managing to protect a part of their humanity.

Gary Oldman is perfect as the mad, corrupt cop, killing with a smile, or some unrelated text line, seemingly in a trance and still way too aware of the reality around him.

it's very beautifully filmed, my favorite scene being the door opening when Leon lets Matilda in for the first time, saving her life - suddenly she stands in the light of that door, saved, as if a path to heaven has opened for her - beautifully done Mathilda: "Is life always this hard, or is it just when you're a kid?" Léon: "Always like this. "

"remember, remember the 5th of November" A great movie in every direction - great acting, wonderful pictures, beautiful dialogs and monologues :) and of course there is the political statement this movie makes - very brave and very to the point this movie came just in time, as a mirror before our faces: in the near future war tear the world apart, the USA ends in a big civil war falling to a third world country status and england manages to escape this. but at what price? a Nazi-like regime reigns there, unstoppable, corrupt, inhuman. but still there is the idea of humanity, people-rights, justice, which refuses to die. with a beautiful sense for the dramatic part a man, incorporating this idea does everything in his power to awaken the people. he is strongly stylized but still he is a human, no saint like so many comic-super-heroes, which prevents the movie from slipping in the wrong direction.

and in the end, the power is, as it always was but was not always realized, in the hands of the people.

and how far away is this from our current situation i would like to ask? this is for sure the best Wachowski-movie for now. i was afraid after the second matrix that they will not manage anything like the first one again, but i was wrong - this one is far better. one of the greatest comic based movies, one of the greatest movies build on a political statement.

V -- "But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror."

i was unsure whether to watch this or not, for its description sounded cheap and uninspired to me

i'm glad i did

the story about an farmer (with an astronaut training) who dreams about launching his own rocket and visiting space surely sounds strange but this story is told so beautifully and unpretentious ... i just had to love it

and this is just the story on the surface

in fact this movie is about dreams and about the courage to live them, about love and family, about people staying true to one selves ...

very well acted and very well written it works with realistic characters in realistic (yes, they are, even if the plot sounds strange) situations and moved me deeply

see it if you can

i had very high expectations, for i know Julie Christie is a great actress and i have watched only good movies with Sarah Polley, so i expected her to direct great movies also. so i was a bit fearfully ... great expectations are easily destroyed ... but this movie beats my expectations.

it's about the Alzheimer's disease, about loosing people we love, about being human ... and about true love - Gordon Pinsent is just hearth breaking. there are so many movies out there about love ... but this one manages to show how real love looks like. beautifully acted and shot, very well done dialogs ...

a must see Fiona: "I think all we can aspire to in this situation is a little bit of grace."

don't we all remember 1-2 classmates which just didn't fit with the rest ... 1-2 unfortunate persons, always to be targets for cheap aggressive jokes? did we do anything against it? were we part of it? or were we the targets? well, in this movie it is more than just some jokes, but still it's all about groups, which tend to define themselves by picking the ones which are not part of them, about what we all are able to do ...

and what can one do, when everyone is against you? when life is not worth much anymore? great acting and script, a very well shot movie ... i can't explain it - watch it! and no, this movie isn't like elephant - this movie has a script ...

a very great one, with so many moments burned forever in my memory... this is a movie about hope and about staying yourself, even under such circumstances it perfectly mixes the best use of a narrator voice i have watched so far with beautiful and still very honest pictures and great dialogs, telling the story of a man thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit. despite all the pain he meets there, all the hopelessness those high gray walls suggest he manages to preserve his hope and humanity, even to do something good for the people around him. i couldn't imagine a better cast for it, especially liked Clancy Brown as a nasty, sadistic Captain, but all were great. this is one of the few movies i know being better than the books they are based on - in this case it's not that difficult in fact, with the novel being rather mediocre and a bit boring somehow. and for sure this is the best movie based on a Stephen King novel. watch it and tell me it could not touch you Andy Dufresne: (in letter to Red) "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

a very great one, with so many moments burned forever in my memory...

this is a movie about hope and about staying yourself, even under such circumstances

it perfectly mixes the best use of a narrator voice i have watched so far with beautiful and still very honest pictures and great dialogs, telling the story of a man thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit. despite all the pain he meets there, all the hopelessness those high gray walls suggest he manages to preserve his hope and humanity, even to do something good for the people around him.

i couldn't imagine a better cast for it, especially liked Clancy Brown as a nasty, sadistic Captain, but all were great.

this is one of the few movies i know being better than the books they are based on - in this case it's not that difficult in fact, with the novel being rather mediocre and a bit boring somehow. and for sure this is the best movie based on a Stephen King novel.

watch it and tell me it could not touch you

Andy Dufresne: (in letter to Red) "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

man, once again aliens want to destroy the earth ... have i mentioned how i hate this stereotype? they always travel huge distances to destroy us or our planet - we must be important ;)

this time they are doing it out of some silly ethical reasons - we are destroying the earth, so they will do it first - no comment so here some logical mistakes: - they take samples of the flora and fauna of the planet - does it mean the nano bugs will destroy everything? even the flora and fauna? if so - why can't they take the samples and let the earth be? if not - why do they need the samples? how far is their genetic engineering and their planet creation/rebuilding skill? nano bugs eating pollution for example? or creating more of endangered species, so they are not endangered anymore?

• from an ethical point of view the aliens are behaving quite unintelligent too - they have no responsibility whatsoever for either us, our planed or the life on it. they could provide us with better technology so we don't destroy the earth and can live in space if they feel some responsibility ... but this wouldn't be such an "dramatic" movie, would it.

• sending an ambassador out of the ship when it is surrounded by military is not intelligent at all, especially when he is not invincible. why isn't he wearing a nano-bug-armor? they have knowledge of the human body, but just didn't care to understand how we are thinking? - the ambassador initially wants to get to the UN, so they have studied us a bit after all (never mind not understanding our concept of military). but they seemingly have no idea that the UN is quite powerless - they should have attended one of the G8 summits instead. or summoned the big industry guys ... and why is it the ambassador has always to go to the USA - there is a UN headquarter in Vienna.

• the idea of sending an ambassador vs sending their message on all TV channels and thus reaching all people without even landing and causing this panic ... what do you thing is better?

some other points:

• they have studied us for a while, decided to destroy us and suddenly change their mind because of what? i really couldn't understand why they would stop? do they believe we will change? do you? i think not without the giving us some technology.

• the alien ambassador just looks at some formulas on a black board and knows what it is and why it is wrong ... i study informatics and have a lot of math - you just can't know all the formulas and even if you do you won't always recognize them, since there are different ways to say the same.

so - bad script, the acting disappointed me too - no point in watching this one.

i'm very unhappy with this film

wolverine and gambit are in my opinion the most interesting x-men and i surely had high expectations too, but this movie just doesn't work - they throw a lot of characters together and do not explore even one - even wolverine is just a flat and forgettable one, not to mention gambit, who is there just to look mysterious twice. of course you can't talk about character development too, since there is nothing to develop. especially the bad guys were so boring ...

• the acting is painful - i guess this is a result of the cheap script too, but it hurts anyway - the script is just a merge of the generic Hollywood scripts with some way too predictable twists - good guy stops doing bad things, bad guys don't want to let him go, bad guys kill his girl and any innocent guy they can kill, good guy is mad and in for a righteous kill, girl is not dead - she betrayed the good guy, but only because the bad guys have her sister, one bad guy helps good guy against the other bad guys ... done

• i had hopes for some nice action sequences at least, but this movie feels like Disney made it - no good use of the claws, no good moves at all, maybe the only fight watchable was wolverine vs gambit and it still was not really good.

• of course it's a problem of all supers movies, but since this one sucked pretty badly i had a lot of time to notice the missing limits of the characters powers and the missing common sense - an example: wolverine gets an adamantium skeleton and suddenly all are "he is unstoppable". but they have adamantium left and even adamantium bullets ... and at the end an adamantium bullet in the head proves to be quite good in stopping him for a while. so - why can't you shoot him in the eye with a normal bullet for the same result? and after it cut his head of with an adamantium chainsaw for example ...

• but the worst thing is that i'm pretty sure this one will be absolutely overrated, just like the last batman movie