Poltergeist, 2015 - ★★★

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Why did they remake Poltergeist???

I think I didn't like this because it's by far worse than the original. The main story is the same: A family of 5 moves into a new house. And from the start the house is a little weird. Madison (Kennedi Clements), the youngest daughter talks to someone. Griffin (Kyle Catlett), the son realises the first that there is something wrong, but no one believes him. One night when the parents go out for dinner, everything goes crazy...

I have to say this movie has some good scenes. The horror scenes are sometimes well done. For example when we see the clown dolls and we just see a little movement (just check the trailer). Scenes like that build a scary mood.

But the rest of the movie annoyed me. Mostly the dad character and the son character annoyed me. The dad in this movie is shitty. They don't have any money left and he goes to spend probably very much money on stuff they don't really need. I loved the first movie because they were a happy family with no problems. The first part of the original movie was just a happy family movie. And here nothing is happy from the start.

And I don't know if it's just me but I hate little kid characters that behave like they are the only grown ups. And in the dub I watched this boy also talked weird, like neither child nor grown ups would talk like that. Everytime I watched that I had to try not to cringe. I really hated that character.

So I had major problems with this movie that made me not like it even though it has, as I see it, pretty good scares.
That's why I still give it 3 stars, because as a standalone movie it is accaptable, as a remake of such a classic it's shit though.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, 2013 - ★★★½

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I always have a hard time reviewing comedies. But I'll give it a shot.

As a fan of magic, this movie was already interesting to me from the get go.

It's about Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carrell) and his best friend Anton Marvelston (Steve Buscemi) who are Magicians in Las Vegas. After doing the same tricks for 10 years and after a new magician, Steve Grey (Jim Carrey) has new ... tricks, they split up and get fired. Burt Wonderstone, who was rich and famous is left with no money and has to find a way to get back.

I love Steve Carrel, Steve Buscemi and Jim Carrey so much. Having all three of them in one movie is awesome. Then we add Olivia Wilde and it gets even better. And then we also have a small appearence by the director of two of the best German comedies ever made, Michael "Bully" Herbig and I'd say for me this is one of the best casts ever assembled (of course I'm exagerating). So that for me was a big plus.

Most of the jokes made me grin, I think I never had a laugh out loud moment, but I had some fun for sure. I loved the whole show of Burt and Anton, I would have gone to see that live.

It first starts off as pretty realistic but once Steve Grey joins the show it goes crazy. He does the "Chris Angel" thing where he is a real street magician and just does crazy stuff. To be honest I didn't like his character who kind of was just there to have a rival for Burt and Anton, he was just the asshole there so you have someone to hate while you grow to love Burt Wonderstone, who starts off as an asshole.

All in all it was an enjoyable movie, not the best comedy ever but also not bad or cringeworthy. If you like any of the actors or if you like magic this is a good movie for you. (Little fact on the side: Chris Angel and David Copperfield were both on set and helped with the magic tricks, because some of them were real magic tricks!)
I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars, give it a watch.

Hot Girls Wanted, 2015 - ★★★½

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A documentary about porn? I'm in!

This documentary is about the flourishing Amateur Porn genre. We see manager Riley Reynolds who has a big appartement in Miami where the newcomers live with him. We get to see 4 or 5 different girls and hear from them, but mostly we follow the journey of Tressa Silguero, whose carreer we follow.

It starts off with a montage, almost cliche with many different internetsites, clicks, scenes from TV interviews etc. All throughout the documentary we get this modern stuff like twitter subscriber counts and clicks on porn sites.

After the montage we get to see different girls, seeing the life of upstarting amateur porn actress who makes 1000 dollars in a few hours and spending them in almost the same time.
Then we see it slowly degrading until we get an ending montage what the girls are doing now (spoiler: most of them quit after a few months).

I gotta say at the beginning I had problems following everything, we just get attacked with so many girls and their names plus their porn names etc. so it was kind of hard for me to follow. After I got into it it was okay though and from that on I found this to be a very interesting documentary.
It's not so much about porn, I think only one time in the whole documentary do we see behind the scenes of a real porn shoot. We get some fotoshoot scenes and a few porn scenes (always only the beginning, the talking to the camera guy), but mostly this is about the girls. Most of the time we follow Tressa, get to meet her parents and her boyfriend and have some heartbraking scenes of the parents reactions and of the reaction of the boyfriend. Then we also get to see glimpses of the party life, of going out, having fun.

Surprisingly, there is not much nudity in this documentary. We get to see some topless girls, but mostly in the intro when they scrolling through databases of porn actresses. I think we didn't get any nudity from 3 or 4 of the 5 girls.

So the documentary was very interesting, seeing how the amateur girls are being used and not really as happy as they seemed in the beginning. But as I said before, the intro went a little too long and we always got these info texts on black screen which were kind of annoying after some time. This documentary tried to be modern and succeeded in some parts but in my opinion they played it up too much, all those twitter follower counts got boring after some time.

All in all it was a very interesting topic, handled very discret but still very effective. It had some downsides though. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars, give it a try, but best don't watch it with your parents.

PS: wow after tagging this I feel like I just uploaded a porn video myself

Dracula, 1992 - ★★★½

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Doctor Jack Seward: An autopsy? On Lucy?
Van Helsing: No, no, no. Not exactly. I just want to cut off her head and take out her heart.

118 years ago on the 26th of May, a guy named Bram Stoker published a novel that would change the world of horror literature forever.
To celebrate that day, I watched (2 days late but whatever) Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola.

It's the same story as always. Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) drives to Transilvania to sell some rich guy a house in England. That rich guy is of course Dracula (Gary Oldman), whose shadow is really weird.
Dracula then gets to England and finds the rebirth of his long lost love, Mina Murray (Winona Ryder). The only person that maybe can defeat him is Prof. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins).

Most of the acting is great, Anthony Hopkins plays a crazy and kind of funny van Helsing.
Gary Oldman is really scary and in many different masks as Dracula. My favorite verison is probably when he is reeeaaally old. He has something eerie about him.
Winona Ryder is also good, she has some drastic changes in her character that she does pretty well.
One honorable mention goes to Tom Waits, who does an awesome job as the crazy Renfield. I love seeing him in movies.
My only problem with the acting is Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker. As a main character he is so boring and bleak, except for a little at the beginning we don't get any real emotions out of him. But I'm not the only one who hates his acting in this movie. Even he himself and director Francis Ford Coppola dislike it.

Visually, this movie is really good, most of the scenes look awesome. And I read that except for flames in the beginning it's all done on set, without any special effect work afterwards, which is really stunning (the flames in the beginning were also the worst looking effect I've seen in a long time).

I haven't read the book, just parts of it, but I know it's mostly done through letters or diary entries from different characters. And throughout the movie we get different characters reading their letters or diary entries, so that's probably a throwback to the book.
There are also some scenes out of older Dracula movies. For example two of my favorite lines from the 1931 Dracula are repeated in this movie. Also we got some scenes that reminded me of the 1929 silent movie Nosferatu.

Dracula goes through many costume changes. He starts of as an old man, he doesn't look like a typical old man to me though. Don't get me wrong, I love the look, but I can't say I've ever seen something quite like this.
Then we got normal Gary (not so) Oldman. Then we get a weird batlike creature. And a wolfman. I have to say, I didn't like the wolfman costume/makeup. It just looked weird. The rest of the costumes were okay, even though they weren't great. But acceptable.

There is some blood in it and some decapitations, nothing to crazy though.

Some characters acted weird. I won't give any specifics here because I don't wanna spoil too much, but in one scene Van Helsing acts in a way that doesn't fit his character (at least the way I saw him).

What I didn't like at all was the Romance angle, that I don't wanna spoil either. But I just didn't like it. It was a little boring and in some places just felt weird. Most of all it made Dracula a little less cool.

All in all this movie was great looking with awesome acting, but it had some flaws, points I didn't like. I still prefer the older versions to be honest. I give this movie 3.5 out of 5 stars, it is clearly watchable, but I've seen better.

You're Next, 2011 - ★★★★

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I saw a trailer for this movie when it first came out and really wanted to watch it. Didn't get to see it. Now I found it on BluRay and finally watched it.

I love this little group of directors that we all know from VHS: Adam Wingart, Ti West and Joe Swanberg. Haven't seen many movies by them but all I saw I liked.

The story is pretty standard: family in a house a little outside of the city. Then intruders attack. Nothing special here.
It's all about how it's done.
We of course have a survivor girl, Erin (Sharni Vinson) but in this movie she is tougher than in any other horror movie I've seen so far. She sets up traps a la Home Alone.
And when those traps (or any other attacks) happen, it is done very good. This movie is bloody where it needs it, but never too much blood. The gore effects are mostly practical, and I love practical effects. They are done really well, too, they look real.

Most of all this movie is fun though. It is not to be taken seriously. I had a blast watching it, because next to the scary moments and the shocking moments, there are also many funny moments. Mostly not full on fun but just moments that make you smile without taking away the scary feeling. Right in the beginning, two people are killed while a CD is put in and put on repeat. And when we go back to that house, that cd is still playing the same song, "Looking for Magic" which is by the way a fitting soundtrack in my opinion.
Then we have another character who just won't die no matter what, which makes one particular scene even more disturbing and scary, but throughout the movie makes you think "woah".
Then again we have a little meta-dialogue, when Jon Swanbergs character talks to Ti Wests character, who is an underground movie make (while they both are real life movie makers) about movies.
Also, there is a phone signal jammer.

Before I come to my conclusion I wanna mention one scene towards the end, because it looked just awesome. Erin set up a camera that takes pictures the whole time while the rest of the room is pitch black. So we have a long sequence with awesome lighting every few seconds. It's a visually awesome scene.

All in all I really enjoyed this movie. While it isn't scary in particular it's just fun to watch. The right amount of gore. Self awareness. Good acting. Just all in all a fun time. I give it 4 out of 5 stars and a big like.

Blender to the head.

Christiane F., 1981 - ★★★★★

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WOW... just wow.

My mother always told me to watch this movie. It was a movie she watched when she was around my age and she loves this movie. Today I decided to watch it.

It's about Christiane, a 13 year old girl in the 70s that started doing drugs because of a boy and ends up getting addicted to heroin. She ends up giving handjobs and blowjobs to ensure she and her boyfriend Detlev can get the H.

It's all about doing drugs and how bad it is and this movie succeeded better than anything I've ever seen before. It made me feel sick, but that was of course the plan.

I never did drugs and I think it's really stupid to do those hard drugs like heroin. But this movie really succeeded in making me not ever want to try it. The line "A shocking film" at the top of the poster is so true.

We don't see anything good happen because of the drugs. Usually if you get a movie about drugs you see the effects the drugs have, maybe seeing the whole world in color or being happy. Here we see just people being disappointed in what the drugs did and them being so full of drugs that they walk around like zombies. They take the drugs because of peer pressure, because they are alone and everyone does it. And even though everyone Christiane is with sais she shouldn't take the Heroin she still does it.

This movie is also talking about many topics that are still taboo in movies to this day. Barely do we see a 15 year old boy telling us how he is giving gay guys handjobs and blowjobs for money. Here we even get to see a sex scene.

It's a german movie based on a german book based on real events, the real Christiane was even at the set as a consultant. That only makes it more shocking, because you know this really happened.

I could make this whole review a tirade about how doing drugs sucks but the movie does that pretty well so I'm now gonna talk about the technical stuff.
The music is almost entirely by David Bowie, who even makes an appearance as himself. I think the soundtrack isn't bad, and since in reality she was a fan of David Bowie this is only fitting.
It is shot really well, especially for a movie shot in Germany in the 1980s.
The acting isn't great most of the time, but some scenes (the withdrawal scene in particular is shockingly good) are really effective and acted surprisingly good.
One minor problem is that this movie is dubbed (at least it seemed like it), but it's not a big deal.

All in all I'm giving this movie 5 out of 5 stars. Everyone should watch it. I think this movie should be shown mandatory in every school year just to remind the students how bad drugs are.
But okay, I'm done with the rants now, please watch this movie. It won't make you happy, but it could change your life.

Eagle Eye, 2008 - ★★★

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I'm not sure what to say about this movie.
It was a fun action movie and had some cool scenes. Many explosions.
I don't wanna spoil too much because the idea is really good.

After his twin brother died, Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) finds lots of dangerous stuff in his room. He gets a call and a female voice (Julianne Moore, not credited) that in 30 seconds the FBI will raid his home and capture him if he doesn't flee. Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monoghan) gets a call and the same female voice tells her that her sons train will derail if she doesn't do what she is told. So they both find themselves fleeing from the FBI, not knowing where to go. We soon find out that the voice is capable of doing almost everything. Slowly we find out what the mission is all about...

The idea is really good. Soon we find out that the main characters are good guys that have to be the bad guys and no one believes them.
Most of all I like the character of the seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent female voice on the phone.

On the other hand I thought the deeper meaning of this movie was a little too on-the-nose. We get it, the antiterrorism laws aren't the best thing the United States ever did. Also, we are too reliant on technology.
The characters also aren't that good. I simply don't like Shia LaBeoufs character, even though I usually like Shia himself. Also the main FBI Agent was very unlikeable and I'm not sure if that was the plan or not.

All in all it's a fun movie to watch and then probably forget, but it's not bad. It's shot well and the action is really good. The best part is the idea though. I give this movie 3 out of 5 stars.

Dawg Fight, 2015 - ★★★★½

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I think this is my first review of a documentary, so be gentle.

This documentary was about Dhafir "Dada" Harris and his backyard fighting promotion. He lives in a neighbourhood with 65% (I think) black people, and they are not rich people. He does everything himself, it's in his yard, he sets up the ring, he is the announcer, hires the "talent" and sets up the match card. Also, he is the referee ... so the only thing he doesn't do (anymore) is fighting. He does this so that the poor people of his neighbourhood get a chance to maybe get into professional fighting.

Even though the fights are illegal and if someone died, he'd go to jail, he doesn't stop. We always get people who tell us why it's dangerous and illegal, but we also get the reasoning of Dada and his people as to why they do it: it takes the crime off the street. One quote of Dada I really liked is something about how at the evening of the events they know that no crime happens because everyone is at the fight.

We also get to know other characters and a little bit of why they are there. We also get many fights. Hard brawls in the street and the fights are very interesting, but really not the main point of the documentary. Mostly it's about the people and reasons, but also about the neighbourhood, how bad they have it. We also realise that hard work can bring you to the top, as we see Dada have his first MMA fight.

Now to the technical stuff:
The camera work was good, most of the time we had multi-camera shooting, so we always get more than one camera angles when we see something.
The music was chosen good, it fitted to the topic and neighbourhood.
I liked when they used black and white when they showed bleeding, beat up faces. In those shots they used black and white, but the blood was red. On the one hand it made the blood stand out more, but it also took back a little from the gruesome reality of how beat up they are at the end.

Maybe it is glorifying the illegal backyard fighting a little, but it always shows bad sides and lawyers talking, to have a contraposition.

All in all I really enjoyed this documentary, it showed me a world I didn't know much about and it was very interesting. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

PS: We get TWO training montages, just what every sports movie needs.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, 2013 - ★★★½

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Watched on Monday May 18, 2015.

Russell Madness, 2015 - ★★½ (contains spoilers)

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This review reportedly contains spoilers.

Well what can you say about a movie about a wrestling dog?

First of all I checked the director and when you look at his filmography you can see he is obsessed with dogs and monkeys, so I guess this movie was the height of his carreer.

Second, I am a wrestling fan so I of course had to watch it.

This movie is about Russell (voiced by Sean Giambrone), who started off as a dog that no one wanted and ended up as the biggest wrestling star of all time. How we did this, you ask? By using highly illegal techniques that would get you disqualified on the spot.

When I watched the trailer I thought the dog was able to talk but no, he isn't. The monkey Hunk (voiced by Will Sasso) is able to talk though. To the humans and to Russell, that's how they communicate. That monkey is bananas by the way ... no sorry, that was meant to be "is talking about bananas", because he barely talks about anything else.

My biggest problem with this movie is something else though. I can't decide if it's more unbelievable that a dog can be a wrestler or that anyone thinks wrestling is real ....

What I loved about this movie is that there was a great parody of Vince McMahon called Mick Vaughn (John Ratzenberger). So the director clearly knew something about wrestling, but since he thought it was real I think not too much... whatever

To be honest it's pretty fun for kids I think, I got some laughs out of it, mostly because it's so crazy though. I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars, but there is wayyyy worse out there.

The Grudge, 2004 - ★★★★

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I wonder why it took me so long to see this.
I haven't seen the original, but it's by the same director so I guess it's just a more westernized version of the Original (that's what I've heard, too).

Karen (Sarah MIchelle Gellar) lives in Tokyo with her boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr). She works at an agency to care for old people that can't take care of themselves. She is sent to a house alone for the first time and of course, ghosts happen. Scary ghosts.

This movie is filled with jumpscares, most of them at the beginning. But it also has lots of really scary moments where we don't need a jump. Also, while in most cases there is a fake jumpscare with a cat just to make people jump before we see the monster for the first time (see Alien and 1000 other movies), but in this movie the cat actually is scary.
Also the sounds the ghost woman makes is really scary. All in all this is a scary movie.

The acting isn't special, nothing to note. The story is a little confusing at first but it all makes sense.

I need to get my hands on the original so I can compare it, maybe then I'll hate it who knows.

So all in all it's a fun horror movie that is really scary at most parts. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015 - ★★★★★

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Of course I had to see this movie ASAP. So here is my review.

I love this movie. The performances are very good, Tom Hardy as Max was really a good choice, I didn't miss Mel Gibson (even though I wished for a cameo).
Charlize Theron does an awesome job, she is really one of the best actresses working right now.
Also a great job by Nicholas Hoult, I don't know why but I love him in every movie I see.
Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who you might now as Toecutter in the very first Mad Max.

Before I go more into the details I have to say this movie is very similar to the other movies. All three movies had one thing in common: They were all completely different, but still felt similar. It's hard to explain ... All the things make sense in this closed universe and still every movie is fresh and new in so many aspects.

It was shot beautifully, everything looks awesome and I also liked the 3D ... well at least it didn't annoy me.
Also the sound mixing, something I don't usually notice, was very good.

Of course the best about any Mad Max movie are the characters. And they are great in this movie too. Most of them are not as crazy as we are used to, Furiosa and the mothers were a little too normal for me, but the followers of Immortan Joe are crazier to make up for it. I'm still not 100% sure about what they believe in, but they are totally crazy. Also we have a nice throwback to Master Blaster (at least I had to think of him/them).

Now to the absolute best of this movie: the STUNTS.
Wow. This time we have one big car chase. And the stunts are the best stunts I've ever seen. A real throwback to the first three Mad Max movies, that all had exceptional stunts. We get to see so many crazy things, but I don't wanna spoil them so please, if you liked any of the first three movies or just liked the idea, watch this movie. It is a worthy addition to the trilogy.

The Little Shop of Horrors, 1960 - ★★★½

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First of all I gotta say, I have a backstory with the little shop of horrors. Before I even knew about an old man named Roger Corman and before I knew anything about any of the movies I played a little kid in our school musical version of the Little Shop of Horrors.
Then I learned about the musical movie starring Rick Moranis and I loved it. And around 7 or 8 years later I learned about this version.
Today I finally got to watch it.

It's about a small flower shop owned by Mr Mushnik (Mel Welles). He has two employees, Audrey (Jackie Joseph) and Seymour (Jonathan Haze). Seymour is a loser, he is poor and always stumbling over everything. But then he grows a new plant that is beautiful, everyone wants to see it. People are coming to the shop to see the plant called Audrey Junior. But Audrey junior and her creator Seymour have a dark secret. Audrey Junior needs blood...

This is really not a horror movie. It's not scary at all. And I wonder if it was scary in the 60s when it came out but I don't think so.
Mostly it's a comedy. And in that it is great. A really dark comedy. I had so much fun watching this movie. It has so many crazy people. For example the guy who eats flowers. Or the sadistic dentist. Or Jack Nicholson, who is crazy even without playing. In this movie he is a masochist who goes to the sadistic dentist. (In the remake that character is played by Bill Murray).

This movie is produced and directed by Roger Corman, one of the most important people in Hollywood. According to IMDB he produced 410 movies in his life.
And he directed this movie in two days. And even though it has basically no budget and was directed in 2 days (after being written in around 2 days, too) it is a cultfilm and really funny.
I enjoyed it and give it 3.5 ouf ot 5 stars.

You Can't Kill Stephen King, 2013 - ★★½

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Not the best low budget movie I've ever seen. Not the worst.

A group of teenagers drive to a small town in Maine where Stephen King is supposed to live. The towns people are kind of weird and scary. But they don't care. They just wanna party. Well, most of them. Ronnie wants to meet Stephen King, whose books he loves.
But then, one after one, they start dying.

The movie starts off as a bad comedy. Weird jokes. You can see they try to be funny, but they don't succeed all of the time. We get the characters introduced with freeze frames and text telling us their names and their defining character traits (and a guy reading those texts).
I watched the movie in a german dub, but if you ask me I'd say the acting is only mediocre, kind of what you mostly can expect of a low budget movie.
The camera movements were good, I liked the way this was shot.

What I like about this movie is it is filled with Stephen King references. As a big fan of King's work i have to say I appreciate what they did. But I wonder why they used smaller short stories instead of referencing some more well known stories.
Also referencing Stanley Kubricks Shining is a No Go when you wanna please Stephen King. He hates that movie.

I have to say the first kill is pretty funny done, the rest of the kills wheren't done that good (could be because I maybe had a cut version, I'm not sure).

Last but not least the music when the Killer appeares is a rip off of the music from Friday the 13th, I was wondering if Jason Vorhees was gonna make an appearence.

This wasn't a good film, but also not a bad one, it is at least watchable and even enjoyable if you are in the mood for a low budget horror comedy. Maybe most enjoyable as a Stephen King fan and with some alcohol to drink during it ;)
I rate the movie 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Kleines Arschloch - Der Film, 1997 - ★★

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This movie isn't really good.
Most of this movies "humor" is just sexual jokes, not innuendos, just talking about masturbating and sex all the time.
To be honest at the beginning it is pretty funny, when the main character catches his parents having sex and then explains them how sex is working. But after the 10th joke about the same stuff it gets boring.
When I was a young boy all this was crazy and so daring and there were nude comic people oh my god. So I guess this was special for us young boys and we watched it in awe.
But yeah, as a grown up this humor is a little funny at the beginning, yes, but get's annoying quick.
I thought that the german comedian Helge Schneider as the grandpa would be a good thing but he was the most perverted part of the movie.
Of course there are some jokes that work and made me grin, but all in all it was more cringey than good.
I give it 2 out of 5 stars.

The Babadook, 2014 - ★★★★★

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If it's in a word, or if it's in a look
you can't get rid of the Babadook.

This was literally the scariest movie I have ever seen. I went into this with so much hope after reading time and time again that this is one of the best horror movies in a long time. Had my hopes up. Usually if I go to a movie with that mindset I will be disappointed. This time I wasn't.

The movie is about single mother Amelia (Essie Davis) and her six year old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Her husband died in a car accident while getting her to the hospital to give birth to Samuel.
Samuel is a difficult child. He is scared off monsters in his room and is the most annoying child character I have ever seen. He is so scared of monsters that he learns magic tricks and builds weapons to defeat them. Him bringing those weapons to school ends in him quitting said school.
One night she reads him a book he found called the Babadook. And then the horror begins.

The special thing about this movie is that it is not like the usual stuff we get these days. Before I saw this movie I saw a trailer for the new Insidious Chapter 3 and it had more jump scares than the whole movie the Babadook. Mostly because the Babadook didn't have any jump scares. It's all about atmosphere. Imagine laying in bed and a shape would float over your head. You'd be scared, even if it didn't jump at you. That's what Jennifer Kent clearly knew and used effectively. This movie scared the hell out of me without jumping in my face.
The acting was awesome. I really hated that kid. And you really saw how bad Amelia felt.
Also I liked the insertion of old movies, Black Sabbath for example, also all the black and white movies. I wanna see them all now to be honest.

All in all this movie was great. Story was great. Characters were hateable but great. It was sooo scary. I give it 5 out of 5 stars and a big like.

Now I'm gonna talk about some other parts that are gonna be spoilers, so here is now a

[SPOILER WARNING]
(I hope it's alright to do it like this, I saw other reviewers do it and I wanted to give a general review for everyone instead of just writing one review for the initiated)

We are (or at least I was) never quite sure if the Babadook is real or just a figment of her imagination.
After a few nights without sleeping she first really starts seeing him. And then she really goes crazy. So she could just go crazy from being sleepless.
And even after the ending I'm still not sure.

I think this movie is about mental illness. Or grief. Or anything internally.
The son is probably the most hateable character ever in a movie. Yet, the mother loves him with all her heart. Even though she seems to blame him for the death of her husband. Internally she hates him. I would, too.
And then this, paired with her insomnia (partly caused by Samuel) made her go crazy. We see the whole movie through her perspective, never do we follow anyone else. So what if she goes crazy? She sees her son flying through the air against a wall. She would be able to pick him up and throw him though.
I got to say what now follows is not by me but I read it in a reddit comment: The Babadook was written by her. I didn't make the connection but if you think about it it makes sense. At the birthday party she sais she was an author, she wrote some articels for magazines and some childrens books. What a coincidence that there is a childrens book that she doesn't remember on her shelf?
After she ripped it to pieces and threw it away it came back. Usually if a demon brings a possessed book back it's like new. But this one is just glued together again. And after she burned it it didn't come back.
And about the few extra pages: she had this black stuff on her hand at the police station. This could be from burning the book. Could also be because she drew the extra pages with coal.
A different redditor also said that the babadook resembles the archetype of the shadow, which resembles oneself.

And that's what explains the ending too. One friend said the only bad thing about this movie was the ending. And I bet many others say this too. Because it doesn't right fit into the movie to be honest.
I think that is symbollic for her mental illness. Even though you fought it and you basically won, it's still there, in the basement, waiting to come back.

Damn now I hope there won't be a sequel to destroy this...

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, 1985 - ★★★★★

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"Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, dying time is here"

So this movie is set even further into the future, officially after World War 3. And it is completely different than the first two movies. But kind of similar too.

We start off by seeing desert, and a car drawn by camels (dromedarys?). First it makes you think it's weird, but it is the logical conclusion since in Mad Max II they where fighting about fuel, so that they are now even shorter on fuel is only logical. Then the car gets kidnapped by the Gyro Capt.... no, not him, just the same actor, Bruce Spence. He is Jedediah the Pilot and went up from Gyrocopters to real planes. And who was the owner of the car? Mad Max (Mel Gibson, for all who still don't know), who now has long hair.
Since his car got stolen he walks to Bartertown, led by Aunty (Tina Turner). This town is the crazyness of Mad Max combined with the crazyness of Mad Max II. And we find out soon it is fueled by pig shit.
Through different circumstances he ends up exiled and after, the movie takes a big turn as he meets a group of kids a la Lord of the flies, but they didn't just land there, they where there for approximately all their freaking life.

Soo, I don't wanna spoil anything, just wanted to mention those points of the story, I don't think I spoiled too much.
This movie is awesome. I really loved it. I wouldn't say it's a Mad Max movie, the name Max is only uttered once and never is he truly mad. But it's the character. Also, there are barely any functioning moving cars, but don't worry, there is a big car chase that ties back to Mad Max I and II.
Even though I said I don't think it is a Mad Max movie, I gotta say it is set in that same universe. When you really think about it this all seems like the logical way to go after what we knew of the World from the first two movies. As I said, this is explicitly set after World War III and after the apocalypse that ended life as we knew it. The characters still dress crazy, but everyone does, so I guess it's all right.

I haven't mentioned one character yet, MasterBlaster. MasterBlaster is actually two people, Master, played by Angelo Rossitto, who probably had the longest career of all the small people since he was also in 1932s "Freaks", and Blaster, played by Paul Larsson. Master is small and the brain, while Blaster is tall and full of muscles, he is the body. And I love both those characters, just the idea is awesome.
And these characters also are the last point I've written down to mention: This movie is funny, much more funny than the first two. It has many fun moments, one being when Max has to put down all his weapons and it seems like he is never going to stop, pulling out one weapon after the other.
Another fun scene is when a character is hit in the face by another one with a frying pan multiple times. It made sense and still was funny.

Also, the weird kids living in their own little world have their own language/accent/whateveryouwannacallit. They speak English and you understand it, but they have lots of grammatical errors, which, I guess, happens when you live your whole life without learning grammar. I thought the language was well worked out and seemed like it could really be a language people would end up speaking.

All in all I gotta say I loved this movie as much as the other two, but I did for totally different reasons. And when I see the trailer for Fury Road I get a feeling it will have many elements from this movie (desert setting, the buildup of the cars and the general look of the people), but hopefully it will also have stuff from the other movies.
I loved this movie and yes, I'm giving every movie of this trilogy 5 stars. I hope I will be able to give 5 stars to Fury Road, too.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, 1981 - ★★★★★

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Of course I'm gonna rate this movie 5 stars. I rated Mad Max 5 stars and went a bit crazy over it.
This time I gave myself some time before reviewing, but now I feel like I'm ready for it.
I watched this movie with an introduction by Leonard Maltin, who told me a bit about the backstory of this movie. Since Mad Max wasn't that well known in the US, they just called the second one "the Road Warrior" in America (see the poster), so people don't wonder about the first movie.
It starts off with a small lesson in history, about what happened and how this is post apocalyptic. And then we get Max's (Mel Gibson) backstory, how his wife and kid died in the first movie and all that.
Then we start with a small chase scene (not as awesome as the first chase in Mad Max but still cool). It takes about 10 minutes untill the first dialogue is spoken. According to IMDB Mel Gibson only had 16 lines in the whole movie (I didn't count but it seems true).
Then we meet the "Gyro Captain" (Bruce Spence) who owns a gyrocopter, which is probably the coolest flying machine ever used in a movie. But that only comes into use later. First, Max gets him to show him a place with lots of oil. On the way to said place we see how this movie isn't only serious but also funny, when we have a great, dog-powered killing device. In the end he meets those people who have their own fort and lots of oil, and their enemies, kind of another biker gang, lead by Humungus (Kjell Nielsson). The biker gang wants the oil, the other folks don't wanna give it and in the Middle is Mad Max.
He is nothing like the Max we got to know throughout the first movie, he is the Mad Max we met at the end of the first movie. He is cold, distant and only cares for himself. An archetype badass that we see very often nowadays.
Of course what we are in for in this movie are the car chases. And the car chases are awesome, especialle the last one that goes on for at least 10 to 15 minutes.
Of course in these car chases there was barely any dialogue, but all in all this movie had very little dialog, only where we really needed it.
In one longer scene without dialogue we see just through the acting what's going on. Max opens a can of Dog Food, you think it was for the dog maybe, but no, food is rare, he eats it himself. While eating we see the Gyro Captain taking a spoon out of his boot, hoping to get something and he looks like Max was eating the best steak ever. Then Max throws the can down for the dog and he almost puts his whole head into the can. And finally, at night we see the Gyro Captain scratching out what's left and being happy. All this happened without a single word.
At first I thought the dog was mainly with him so he had someone to talk to when he was alone, but no, he only seldom talks to the dog, only to give him orders.
The characters where, much like in the first movie, really good and crazy. This time we have completely crazy people on both sides though. This movie has many similarities with the first one, but also differences. You clearly see they had much more budget, which makes for better car chases, bigger explosions and more characters. Also this movie was, as far as I'm concerned, even more brutal and gory as the first one, which makes me wonder why the first one was banned and the Road Warrior wasn't...
All in all, I really enjoyed this movie, it was never boring, always moving forward. Now only one movie is left until I am prepared to see Mad Max: Fury Road.
I give this movie 5 out of 5 stars and a big like. If you enjoyed the first movie you will love this one, and if the first movie was a little too cheap for you, this one made all the stuff you didn't like better.

Mad Max, 1979 - ★★★★★

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This movie was banned in Germany for 36 years. Now it finally got a legal german BluRay release and I bought it of course.
And I loved it.
This movie is awesome. We get great car chases. We have good music. We have awesome characters. There is blood, there are explosions. Even a love story is in it. It really has anything a good movie needs.
The pacing is perfect, not once did I feel bored in the slightest.
Let me tell you the plot.
The movie starts off with an awesome chase scene in a not too distant future. The world is different but I can't really describe how.
The police are chasing the Nightrider, a crazy guy. He somehow manages to shake off 2 cop cars and a motorbike. Enter Max (Mel Gibson). You see him outside his car getting ready to get the job done. But only when everyone else fails, he comes it. Did I mention that this car chase is 10 minutes long? Because it is. And it ends with an explosion.
And that's how we are introduced with most of the characters. At least the good guys.
Then come the bad guys, who are freaks. Those characters are really completely crazy. They are a bikergang, lead by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne). They come to pick up the coffin of Nightrider (yes he died, sorry for that small spoiler but it happens in the first 15 minutes, so I bet it's okay).
I won't tell any more of this movie for all the poor Germans that didn't get to see it yet. by the way, if you don't wanna be spoiled, don't read the short description on IMDB, it gives away what happens in the first hour.
So this movie really has everything. It has great characters, great car chases, a romance, fun characters, but also brutal stuff and explosions. Deaths. Eyes popping out of their sockets a little.
And the acting is good too. And just thinking that this movie had an estimated budget of only around 650,000 Dollars makes this even more impressive. George Miller sure knew what he was doing.
Sorry if this review is a little weird, this movie just made me really excited and I'm gonna go now watch Mad Max 2.
As you can see I give this movie 5 out of 5 stars and a like and if you like cars or explosions or anything really, watch this.

The Omen, 1976 - ★★★★

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I wanted to see this movie for so long. Now I own it, it's in my BluRay collection. And the day it arrived I started watching it. Couldn't finish it though, so I watched the last 40 minutes today and I'm now done with the movie.
First off, I don't know if this was a problem with my version of the BluRay or if this is normal, but the sound was a little too quiet, I sometimes had problems understanding it over the background sounds and the music.
Talking about the music: WOW. That's what I call a soundtrack. All the songs were written for this movie and they fit perfectly. I think this is honestly one of my favorite original scores. My BluRay has a special feature where you can only listen to the soundtrack over the movie scenes and I wondered why you would have that, now I get it. It's just pure awesomeness. Jerry Goldsmith did an fantastic job.
But now I should talk about the story first.
US Ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) and his wife Katherine (Lee Remick) have a good life. They live in a big house and have a beautiful little five year old child called Damien (Harvey Stephens). What Katherine doesn't know is that her child died in birth and Robert Thorn accepted another kid that was born that night but whose mother died.
What both don't know is that Damien is the son of Satan. And this is not a spoiler. The movie makes it clear from the very beginning that this is not something that is just in the main characters mind or something, no, Damien is the child of Satan. We get many occasions where this is shown to us. Giraffes run away. Baboons attack. The Nanny kills herself on his 5th birthday.
So instead of making it sort of a thriller, instead of making us wonder if it's all in his head (like "the Twilight Zone" would probable do it), we KNOW he is the Antichrist.
It's all about the way Robert Thorn finds it out.
And of course, to hinder the apocalypse, the child must be killed. And that is the most horrible thought possible. Just imagine having a 5 year old son that you watched grow up, that you cared for, and then you have to kill him. Also, there are a good handful of scenes where we see Damien as the cute little boy. He seems to love his parents and they love him.
The acting was good. The death scenes were good by 1976 standards and still hold up pretty well.
Richard Donner did a good job, and the story was very well thought out. Also the scenes where Harvey Stephens was in were either really well played of that boy was an evil kid in reality.
I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars, I wanted to give it 3.5 but I had to raise it about half a point just for the music. Must see for horror fans.

Rollergator, 1996 - ★

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Watched at the Letterboxd Movie Night IV
Wow this movie is almost unwatchable. At many parts I didn't understand what they were saying because the music was too loud.
The music was the only good thing about this movie by the way. Most of the time a guy with a guitar playing cool jams.
Everything else was bad. The acting sucked, the dialogues were baaad.
...
I still enjoyed this movie. It is one of those "so bad it's fun" movies where you really can't look away. Also watching it at the letterboxd movie night was probably a bonus because making fun of it while watching of course makes it a little bit more bearable.
It's about a rollerblading girl called PJ (Sandra Shuker) that goes to the beach and finds a talking alligator. They talk and he needs her help because people wanna poke him with sticks and put him on the carnival. So she decides to help him get back to his swamp.
On the other hand there is the carnival owner (Joe Estevez) who wants the Gator for his carnival. Also, there is a ninja.
This movie is crazy.
So if you are into shitty movies, grab a beer, sit down with your friends and watch this, you will have a fun time.
I give it one star out of 5.

Return to Oz, 1985 - ★★★★

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I'm not sure if this movie is a kids film.
It starts of with Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) being sleepless and sad and wanting to go back to Oz. Her aunt brings her to a special asylum where they wanna help her via electro shock therapy. She escapes and ends up in Oz, but instead of with her dog Toto she has a chicken called Billina (Denise Bryer). She soon finds out that all her friends were turned to stone except for the Scarecrow, who was the ruler of Oz, who got kidnapped by the Nome King. Then her adventure starts again.
She meets different characters that are pretty similar to the well known Scarecrow and Tin man. She meets Jack Pumpkinhead, who, what a wonder, has a pumpkin for a head and kind of is a scarecrow. She also meets Tik Tok, probably the worst invention ever. He is out of metal and not human (which he is very happy about). But he works through three screws on his back and needs to be winded up. One screw is for his ability to think, one for his ability to talk and one for his ability to move. So everytime she needs him, they stop working.
So much about the characters, I don't wanna spoil too much.
The movie has some very scary scenes, even I thought they were scary.
But all in all I have to admit this movie was fun, I really enjoyed it. The characters were interesting and crazy, but not too crazy. The acting is quite good, it was Fairuza Balk's first movie role and she did a good job for a little girl. Everyone did a good job.
But what stole the show are the special effects. We have a talking Pumpkinhead, a talking moose, talking stones, a witch that can take off her heads and many more. And this is all awesomely done, of course they didn't have CGI in 1985 so this were all practical effects, mostly stop motion and claymation. It looked gorgeous and I really enjoyed every second.
There is one group of characters that I didn't mention yet: Wheelers.
In the original Wizard of Oz we have these flying monkeys that follow the wicked Witch of the west.
In this movie we have Wheelers, who are people with wheels for hands and feet. They look awesome. I don't know how helpful it really is to have 4 wheels instead of hands and feet, but it looks so great.
To be honest, everything looks great. Visually, this movie is superb.
I really liked it, but maybe it is a little too scary for small kids that maybe enjoyed the Wizard of Oz.
Soo all in all, I enjoyed it and give it 4 out of 5 stars.
PS: We get the origin story of the Tin Man and it is gruesome oh my god.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 2012 - ★★★★

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Wanted to see this for a long time. Yesterday it got released on Netflix so I had to watch it ASAP.
And I enjoyed it.
It's about Charlie (Logan Lerman) who starts as a freshman in high school and doesn't have any friends. And then he meets Sam (Emma Watson) and her stepbrother Patrick (Ezra Miller) and they invite him to a party, where he meets more of their friends. From then on, his life gets better.
This movie made me feel good. It's a well known movie scenario: The main guy is a loser who finds new friends and his life gets better.
But there is a twist to it in that Charlie is a little weirder than the others, his best friend killed himself not long ago and he is depressive.
This movie has it's dark moments for sure, but it also has fun moments, you really feel the actors having a great time themselves. The acting is great, Logan Lerman did one hell of a job playing this weird boy Charlie. Ezra Miller also gives a great performance as the gay friend. Emma Watson does also a great job. All in all it felt very real.
I loved to see Tom Savini as a teacher in this movie ... I wish Tom Savini was my teacher ... but whatever.
Also, Paul Rudd played a more serious role as the English teacher and sort of a friend to Charlie, who wants to be an author some day.
I gotta say though, there was one moment that made me turn off the movie for a short time because I was cringing so much at what Charlie was doing that I needed a break before I could go on. I won't spoil it, but he introduces the scene by telling that this was probably the worst way to do what he did.
Talking about introducing, we have lots of narrating by Charlie, not too much, it's just the right amount. The movie is narrated in form of letters Charlie writes to his friend who killed himself. I liked how they used that as a way to narrate that makes actually sense, since this seems like something the character really would do.
This movie was directed and written by the author of the book it is based on, which is something we don't see often (Stephen King tried it once and it turned into Maximum Overdrive).
All in all I really enjoyed this movie and can just tell everyone to watch it. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Cosmopolis, 2012

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Well, this is a movie that's hard to describe.
It's about Eric Pecker (Robert Pattinson), who is a very rich guy who wants to get a haircut. To get that he has to be driven in his limousine through New York City while the President is in town. So the streets are full of traffic jams. Oh and it's set in the future.
I don't know if I liked it or not.
Most of the time it's just Robert Pattinson in his limousine talking to random employees or him talking to his wife. And it's a special kind of talking. No one would talk like that, and I still don't know if I understood what they were really talking about.
Cronenberg did a good job shooting the scenes, all looked really good.
But even though I didn't understand it and it was kind of weird I still kind of enjoyed it. It's really weird to describe, I felt sort of like after watching a Lars von Trier movie, it looks good and you get the gist, but you know there is some deep shit going on there.
That's why I don't give it a rating, if you are okay with weird talking and feeling like you don't know what's going on, you will enjoy this movie I think.