As soon as you start watching The Villainess, it immediately becomes very clear that this is a tough as nails action movie. You witness a fight which is best described as a mix between the first person view of Hardcore Henry and the famous hall fight in Old Boy. It’s tightly choreographed and extremely violent. Just like Park Chan-Wook’s classic this movie (originally called Ak-Nyeo) is also South Korean. It’s been directed by Byung-gil Jung. Continue reading
Tag Archives: 2017
Darkland (2017) – Review
The revenge film. It’s a simple concept, which can be executed in various ways. It can be raw and violent (Death Wish) or more subtle (The Invisible Guest. There is so much to choose from (including the Park Chan-wook revenge trilogy). This Danish film chooses for a simple approach, which of course can work effectively Continue reading
The Post (2017) – Review
The profession of investigative journalist is a challenging one. You have to get information that others want to keep a secret and you run a lot of risk to get it and publish it. When your research has to do with the government, who then does everything possible to make sure it isn’t published, it is a battle of interests. The government is ultimately elected by the people, but on the other hand there may be secrets that are of national importance. On the other hand there is the freedom of the press, which should be able to write about anything. We saw the collision of interests in the past few months, for example in America, where the president rejected certain news organizations because they had written about him in a way that did not fit him. That is, however, of all times, as The Post shows. Continue reading
Downsizing (2017) – Review
The environment remains a hot topic, which of course also makes its way into movies. As the world gets more crowded, temperatures rise and we still do too little to change it all you might wonder how we could solve it. In Downsizing a brilliant solution has been invented: To make people smaller (roughly the size of a finger). That way a community of small people will create only one bag of trash in four years, which would take an average family only two weeks. Small people use less energy, don’t need as much food and it seems to be the perfect way to do something about the environment issues. Director Alexander Payne (Nebraska, The Descendants, Sideways) tries to turn that idea into an interesting movie, but unfortunately doesn’t completely succeed. Continue reading
Gifted (2017) – Review
Although the director of (500) Days of Summer had a lot of success with this film, his two Spider-man movies starring Andy Garfield weren’t what a lot of people were expecting. Webb returned to his roots with this smaller film, Gifted starring Chris Evans. Continue reading
Detroit (2017) – Review
If history has taught us something, it probably is that humanity has hardly learned anything from it. One way or another we all like to think that we are different compared to the people who lived fifty or two hundred years ago. Of course we are partly different, but the basics, the emotions and needs have not changed. You still see that some people who are in a position of power abuse it and sometimes can get away with it as well. Detroit shows events which you can imagine having happened just a week ago. Continue reading
The Big Sick (2017) – Review
In general, romantic comedies have a huge issue. They are very predictable and often too “sugary”. That is also the main reason that they often don’t appeal to me. Nevertheless, The Big Sick got a lot of positive reactions last year and the title also appeared on many top 10 lists. If that happens, that is enough reason to give a film a chance. And it delivered an entertaining and surprising two hours. Continue reading
My Name is Nobody (2018) – Review
At the start of this documentary an Italian restaurant waitress shows the viewer the many pictures plastering the walls. She explains which celebrities are shown, who have all visited the place in the past. During that moment you realise that that knowledge about those people in the pictures, once she is gone, will be lost forever. The people on the pictures were famous during the height of their careers, but they also, unless they played a very important role in history, will be forgotten within decades. And with that the pictures lose their meaning as well.
Director Denise Janzée tries to do the reverse here, based on a picture. It is a world famous photo of a class showing two little boys, who will later turn out to be icons of Italian cinema: Sergio Leone (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America) and composer Ennio Morricone, who wrote a lot of iconic movie scores. Between the two little boys there is a third. There is a name written on the picture in pen, but besides that nothing is known about him. Is it possible to find out more about his life based on that name and the picture? Continue reading
The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) – Review
I have to admit that I actually do not watch too many films that were not made in America. The main reason is perhaps that I usually have the urge to see the latest (big) releases, precisely because those are most talked about. As a result, it is often you only find out about great films made in the rest of the world if they have an Oscar nomination or receive attention because of a very specific reason. Nevertheless, I sometimes try to watch movies that I haven’t heard about and that was the case at The Nile Hilton Incident. Continue reading
The Disaster Artist (2017) – Review
There are bad films and then there are films which are so bad that they almost deserve their own category. Plan 9 from Outer Space by director Ed Wood is there one. But The Room by Tommy Wiseau also belongs to the same group. Just like Tim Burton made a film that captured the essence of Ed Wood, James Franco does the same for Wiseau. More specifically about how his film The Room came about. Continue reading