Patch Adams (1998) by Tom Shadyac - (2/10)

I am pretty sure that, that kind of attitude in real life will get patients kill that is if you ever manage to get a medical license. Not a big fan of “woo, yeah, let us have fun and play”, oeps sorry you have leukaemia and 2 people died in ER while I was having fun here. Also the movie is moronic beyond redemption. Doctors already have a good, humanistic thing going. Robin Williams might quite possibly be the least funny “comedian” ever, if you need proof check out his stand-up acts, atrocious beyond belief.

Starship Troopers (1997) by Paul Verhoeven - (1/10)

I got the fact that it is a satire but is that the only requirement these days for a movie to be deemed worthwhile? It has such a simple message to convey but it does it in such a moronic and heavy handed way that it is almost hard to believe that someone actually put any effort into this.

Without Memory (1996) by Hirokazu Kore-Eda - (6/10)

It is a – bit hard to come by I suppose – TV documentary made by the acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-Eda about a man who has lost the ability to make new memories after the aftercare after a medical procedure has gone wrong. The movie “Memento” referenced this case, similar cases have existed.

It is a touching documentary about a man who tries to get his life back together and tried to take care of his children despite having almost no recollection of even his own children. He leads an unique life that has a nearly insurmountable obstacle present but he tries to fulfil his role. It is touching, bit hopeful but sad as well at the same time. I was really surprised that he went out and chose to help disabled people himself despite his condition.

Diabolique (1996) by Jeremiah S. Chechik – (2/10)

Utterly pointless remake – starring Sharon Stone – of a classic movie that was already perfect the first time around. I did see this one first, didn’t think much of it. Liked the original a lot more when I saw it.

The Quince Tree Sun (1992) by Victor Erice – (5/10)

The Quince Tree Sun is the third and most likely final movie by the ellusive Spannish filmmakerVictor Erice. Overtly productive he isn’t granted that he made his first short movie almost 50 years ago now and has finished 3 full length movies so far. The tiny group of people that are actually familiar with his work once placed him and some still do on the same hight as Tarkovsky.

The Quince Tree Sun is either a documentary or a movie that was made to look like a documentary, either way, it doesn’t really matter. It is about the Spanish hyperrealist painter Antonio López García, who has been attempting for some 20 years now to paint a quince tree that grows in his garden. The movie documents his struggle to put a single moment of real-life perfection on canvas and his constant failures to achieve doing so. It is a very interesting movie, the same can be said of the struggle, what it al means and the quest itself. I did find it overly long and a bit dull, should have been quite a bit shorter or something else should have happened but than again, I suppose that, that would have been against the whole point that the movie or documentary was trying to make.

Psycho (1998) by Gus Van Sant – (3/10)

Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho is one of the most puzzling movies ever made because it is a shot-for-shot remake of what is often considered to be a masterpiece by many. Why was this made is the first question that almost anyone will ask. I assume that such a project can only be explained by an extreme admiration for the original by the maker. Maybe it was a way of finding out, just how Hitchcock had made the original? The thing that is most interesting about this movie is just how boring it is. This is not just because everyone who saw this was already familiar with the original. I saw this one before I saw the original. This is interesting because it shows that what makes movies interesting or brilliant is something that cannot be quite captured, the editing, the shots, dialogue, story,.. almost everything is identical in both version and yet one version is head and shoulders above the other one.

Black Ice (1994) by Stan Brakhage – (7/10)

I am still not quite sure yet about Stan Brakhage’s “painted” movies or the majority of his oeuvre for that matter but this one is rather beautiful. It is almost 2 minutes of this gorgeous, azure, purple, blue, crystal patterns coming straight at you. Reminds me a bit of one of the space sequences from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Looks very pretty and has a certain sense of depth to it.

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.