Avatar (2009) by James Cameron - (4/10)

I saw in 3D in cinema and it was the first movie that I ever saw in 3D, I really liked the look and feel of it. I did enjoy it but only because of the visuals and because the experience was completely new to me. Story wise it is pretty much worthless it is a Dances with the Wolves, Princess Mononoke or Pocahontas knock-off, you name. It has an environmental but the same message has been repeated so many times again and again. It carries almost no meaning anymore and the people who preach it, don’t abide it. I am pretty sure that I do not need to hear it from someone whose ecological footprints is probably 700 times bigger than mine. You have to admire James Cameron’s ability to generate profit.

The Incredibles (2004) by Brad Bird – (4/10)

Nice little family film that pokes fun at the superhero genre, I did not find it to be entirely on par with some of Pixar’s recent work (Wall-E, Finding Nemo,…). It does actually very little with what it is given. It does deal with issues such as midlife crisis, marital dysfunction, child neglect, impotence fears, fashion faux pas and existential angst. Adults will be capable of enjoying this but somehow despite all this it still managed to feel a bit standard to me. I think that I am being just way to demanding to wards what is essentially still a movie that kids should be capable of relating to. I think that it does succeed perfectly in creating a story that kids will like but that also has moments that the adults will enjoy. Despite my hatred of dubbed movies, I did watch this one dubbed which did iritate me, I never quite got used to it. It might be that.

Tideland (2005) by Terry Gilliam - (4/10)

Tideland was a love or hate kind of movie with the majority centring around hate. There are those who deem it a masterpiece but they are a minority, it failed financially everywhere except for Japan where it strangely was a box-office hit apparently. Michael Palin, has said that it was either Terry Gilliam’s best or worst movie but he couldn’t decide.

The best way to describe Tideland is to say that it is a children’s story version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre but that sounds way cooler than this movie really is. It is dull, it is about how children see the world, what it is like in extremely bad situation such as this. It has a Terry Gilliam vibe to it. The whole idea, not only am I sick about artist going on about the virtues of a children’s mind or their childhood, this movie is too long, doesn’t seem to go anywhere and is rather unpleasant to watch.
Tideland was released together with “The Brothers Grimm” in 2005. Although the former was largely panned, I did find it better than most and unquestionably superior to Tideland. The girl (Jodelle Ferland) did play rather well as did Jeff Bridges.

Blue Velvet (1986) by David Lynch – (4/10)

I cannot say that I ever really got the appeal of Blue Velvet, I love Dennis Hopper’s, brilliant sex crazed, perverted, gas-huffing character just as much as the next guy. Otherwise I feel that the whole is too bland, unmemorable and frankly “normal”. I find very little appeal, the whole just feels like a sub par, test-drive for the brilliant Twin Peaks series. The idyllic American suburbia coupled with a seedy underbelly and madness are present here as well but in such a dull, standard way that very little of it sticks me as memorable or exiting. I much prefer the sugary, soap-opera style, inhabited by the clinically insane thing that Twin Peaks series had over this. Luckily David Lynch just kept getting better and better over time.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) by Quentin Tarantino – (4/10)

I probably should give it a 5 or something but there is a fine line between homage, imitation and theft. Tarantino has been borrowing things all over, ever since Jackie Brown and with Kill Bill: Vol. 1. The whole thing just felt more like stealing than anything else. It seemed like he had cherry picked whatever moments and scenes from other movies he thought that were cool and threw them all just together. He has an too old fashioned view of anime that just reinforces negative stereotypes and scares people away from exploring some very worthwhile movies and mainly series. That is just a personal pet peeve and it didn’t influence my perception or opinion of the movie.

Peoples opinion of Tarantino’s movies seems to grow over time, looking at the imdb score, I cannot remember people being that exited over this, when it came out except for the fanboys and girls. I get the feeling that people like to pretend that they like Tarantino just a bit more than they really do but I might be delusional. The schoolgirls were cool but that has obviously been done before elsewhere.

Izo (2004) by Takashi Miike – (4/10)

None of that made any sense whatsoever, the vast majority of Miike’s movies are weird in some way but Izo has to rank among the most insane of them all.

The movie is about an assassin called Izo who gets crucified in the 19th century, instead of dying he starts time travelling and goes to modern day Tokyo. After that it is about 2 hours of Izo killing everyone (I mean everyone) in hopes of attaining spiritual retribution. He kills samurai, yakuza, vampires, children, teachers, monks, woman carrying his child,… Takishi Kitano has a small role as the prime minister. Also there is stock footage of WW2. Random footage of the acid-folk singer Kazuki Tomakawa (check him out, he is incredible and probably the best thing about this movie). There is a final show down with mother earth.
Apparently the whole thing is philosophical and some people seem to like this movie because of that. I just say that it is pointless and mostly a guy killing other people with his sword in ridiculous ways for 2 hours (if you think that, that is cool, it gets boring surprisingly fast). It is madness but unfortunately not of the good kind.

Sirius Remembered (1959) by Stan Brakhage – (4/10)

Sirius Remembered consists out of footage taken over a period of a couple of months of how the family dog (Sirius) was rotting away after having been thrown out of the wood. Stan Brakhage’s movies centered on all aspects of life and death was no exception for him, not even in such a gruesome way. The movie last approximately 6 minutes and is black and white. Brakhage’s movies are always a bit, hit or miss with me. I didn’t care all that much for this one. Not per se for the slightly disturbing subject matter. It is just 6 minutes of very, shaky vague footage, that looks like a VHS which has been taped over too much. Sometimes you can make out the dog. Doesn’t do much for me.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) by Rachel Talalay – (4/10)

I think that it was pretty obvious by the time that they made this that the franchise already had died. This was made way before the reboot craze, when Hollywood could have just kept on repeating itself until the end of times. Hollywood have indeed invented a way to bring the dead back to life. Anyway, I am digressing.

It is not as bad of a movie as a lot of people say but by this point nothing that made the whole thing interesting in the first place had remained. Freddy Krueger was no longer scary, the whole thing plays a bit like a comedy. His ways of killing had not only been becoming bizarre with every movie but comical as well. He turns a kid into a piece of paper and cuts him apart, drags another kid into a video game,… The final showdown is ridiculous to say the least. The whole movie is based upon a plot device that makes no sense at all, Freddy Krueger had a daughter, something that everyone has failed to mention in all the previous movies. The scene that shows the original town, now completely devoid of children with them going mad over seeing children again for the first time of ages was pretty nice. Johnny Depp cameo is wonderfull.
The whole thing is not that bad because it still does work on a B-movie level, it is a potential guilty pleasures but most seem to disagree on that.

My Blueberry Nights (2007) by Wong Kar-Wai – (4/10)

Up until and including “2046” Wong Kar-Wai had been a pretty consistent and outstanding director. Then he decided to relocate to Hollywood and make his first English-spoken movie. In hindsight it makes a lot of sence that they invited him over, since people had been plagiriazing him for quite a while in Hollywood. Innitially I expected this to have no impact at all upon his work. Then “My Blueberry Nights” came out and I had no idea what happened. “My Blueberry Nights” is simply Wong Kar-Wai-light, it is someone trying to be him not Wong Kar-Wai himself. He was never too preoccupied with stories, rather visuals and moods as a filmmaker but “My Blueberry Nights” was simply too devoid of anything. It went nowhere, the ending didn’t make sence, it was utterly pointless as a roadmovie (me not being all that fond of the genre didn’t help all that much either), it wasn’t all that romantic, didn’t have enjoyable quicks,…
It was too stale, too bland, it was and remains watchable but serves a bit too much of a rminder as to how great his movies before were. Let us hope that this was just a small mistake, he will get his act together soon.

King Kong (2005) by Peter Jackson - (4/10)

Given the fact that he had just finished the acclaimed, popular and financially very successful Lord of The Rings trilogy. Anything that Peter Jackson would have made afterwards, would have guaranteed a higher than usual degree of attention. It is safe to say that he probably had gotten in Hollywood extremely rare carte blanche. He chose to use it in probably what was the weirdest way imaginable, name to remake his childhood favourite and pop culture classic movie, namely King Kong. It is not that bad of a movie to remake, most people know the story, some nostalgia would have played a role but it had become technically outdated and campy enough to remake it whiteout being labelled a necrophilia. He could have used the opportunity to do something experimental or costly or something that would have been a sure hit and use the acclaim to become the new George Lucas. I suppose that he did what he wanted to do the most.


King Kong turned out to be a not bad, popcorn movie. The story was kept largely the same, it was rather nostalgic, campy and enjoyable to watch. It did make advantage of its own nostalgia value. It was far too long for its own good. CGI might have been a bit over the top, the original King Kong was popular originally for a big part because of its technical achievements, it did justify it, he might have wanted to tone it down a bit. Overall it was an acceptable popcorn movie, save for the standard complain that it didn’t have much going on in the way of substance and it was too long for its own good.