Monday, February 29, 2016
Sightseers, 2012 - ★★★½
Watching this movie while thinking of certain Letterboxd users takes this movie to a whole other level.
Sightseers is about a murderous couple doing a sightseeing trip in a caravan in England.
This movie was actually a lot of fun. It's really dark humor, funny if you are okay with the kind of humor that involves two people going around killing people.
The actors, Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, did a great job. They had some kind of chemistry and worked well together. Especially Lowe went crazy with some of her scenes.
I heard a lot about Ben Wheatly, but this is the first movie of his that I saw. And I definitely wanna see more of his stuff and I will try to see more of him.
The use of music is great, not only was it good music, but also but at the right places, really fitting the movie while also being used in comedic ways at some points.
I really enjoyed this movie and can only tell anyone to watch it. Well, anyone who would enjoy dark comedies, otherwise you will HATE this movie.
I'm rating it 3.5 out of 5 stars and a like.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Wild Strawberries, 1957 - ★★★★★
This movie feels like a long, Swedish version of the Twilight Zone. I really enjoyed it.
We even got a kick-ass car crash.
5/5 stars.
Friday, February 26, 2016
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Duel, 1971 - ★★★★½
Usually when I go into an old movie with high expectations, they almost never meet those... This is an exception.
The first realy (tv-)movie by Steven Spielberg about asshole drivers. David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is in a hurry to his home. When he overtakes a big slow truck, that truck overtakes him back. First he thinks he wants to play a game, but then he realizes that guy is out to kill him.
What I realized first is that the movie is really well shot. It surely doesn't feel like a first time director doing this (he did some shorts but this was his first real movie).
The acting by Dennis Weaver (who is really the only character worth mentioning) is great. You really feel with him.
Spielberg really manages to build tension. The truck really feels like a bad guy and in some scenes this 18-wheeler feels like a preying animal.
My biggest fear was "how will they end this movie?" I had no idea how it was going to end. And I'm just gonna say, the ending is really satisfying.
With a running length of only around 90 minutes this movie is really great. It's a movie to just watch quickly, it won't bore you for a second. You will always just wonder what is going to happen.
I rate this movie 4.5 out of 5 stars and a big like.
Monday, February 22, 2016
All movies starring Robert Z'Dar AND Joe Estevez
To celebrate the comeback of the Soultaker VHS trailer I decided to do a list with all movies starring Joe Estevez and Robert Z'Dar (I found out there are quite a few)
For optimal reading pleasure, listen to this.
Not on Letterboxd are:
No Rest for the Wicket
The Voices from Beyond (Probably a sequel to "Voices from the Grave")
Untitled Horror Comedy (best name ever)
The Waterfront
Mob Daze
The Searcher
Point Dume
- Precious Mettle
- The Perfect Candidate
- Caesar and Otto's Deadly Xmas
- Not Another B Movie
- Lost Girls
- Voices from the Graves
- Drawing Blood
- The Rockville Slayer
- Vampire Boulevard
- Fatal Pursuit
...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
Body Rock, 1984
Watched as part of the Letterboxd Movie Night.
I just wish this featured Joe Estevez and/or Robert Z'Dar.
Coven, 2000
Watched as part of the Letterboxd Movie Night.
I heard this is like Apocalypse now...
The Making of is actually better than the movie.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Every Horror movie seen by me
All the horror movies I've seen, in almost random order.
- The Shining
- Alien
- Aliens
- It Follows
- The Cabin in the Woods
- Psycho
- The Babadook
- Jaws
- Shaun of the Dead
- The Thing from Another World
...plus 208 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
Last 10 Top 10 #06 of 2016
I'll try to do a Last 10 Top 10 every 10 movies I watch in 2016. I finished the second trilogy for 2016 by watching the last 2 movies of the Millenium Trilogy. Also this again is one of those Last 10s with no bad movies (which will change on the next one because it's movie night once again.
Number 3 of that trilogy is also my number one. It was just a perfect movie and a perfect ending to a perfect trilogy. It ties all the knots left open by the previous movies.
And we go on with The girl who played with fire, which is the second movie of the trilogy. I just really enjoyed it a lot.
The same goes for Jerry Maguire. It was a really entertaining movie, not boring for one second. It has many iconic scenes and quotes. Was just really fun.
Taxi Driver was a great movie but I couldn't rank it higher and I thought I would like it even more than I did.
I had a hard time putting Dogtooth on any place on this list. It was really a great movie. Well shot. Well acted. But also so disgusting and creepy, I don't know. I put it in the middle, after Taxi Driver but before the Others.
The Others was really a surprise. I didn't know anything about it. And it was actually scary.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was really good. It was enjoyable, interesting and well shot. But it was just a little too old to be ranked any higher.
Three Colors: Blue should be higher on this list, I know. I enjoyed it, no questions asked. And it was well shot. And the music was great. But I didn't enjoy it as much as the other movies.
I just watched the next movie because of the title and the context of it's time. It is really interesting but weirdly made.
Film Study isn't a movie I can even rank on this list. So I just put it on 10.
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Dogtooth, 2009 - ★★★★
I actually watched this in two parts because the website I watched it on somehow stopped in the middle of the first time I watched it and didn't work. Today I finally finished it.
I watched it with a German dub that gave me a weird feeling about the movie.
This movie is more than just weird. It's indescribable. It's about a family of 5, 3 around 20 year old kids and their parents. The kids never left the house and think the outside is dangerous. They are home schooled, taught wrong things to fit their world view.
This movie is disturbing. It is also so interesting. And shot very well.
I can't say too much about the acting because the German dub felt really weird and took a lot away from the expressions.
I can't say I enjoyed this movie but I liked it. I'm rating it 4 out of 5 stars.
Three Colors: Blue, 1993 - ★★★★
Watched this as Part of the Letterboxd Season Challenge, Week 6: Eastern European Week.
I went into this completely blind except for knowing it was good. And it was.
Julie's husband, a famous composer, and her daughter die in a car crash that she survives. She thinks there will be no more happiness in her life so she wants to give up everything. But the rest of the world wants to finish her husbands last composition.
I didn't fully understand this movie. I know that many things meant something that I just didn't get. But I still loved this movie. Everything was shot well, looked beautiful.
The acting was great, they all were convincing.
The music was awesome, not only the music itself but also how it was used in this movie, a movie with a centerpiece being a composition.
I liked this movie and I'm rating it 4 out of 5 stars and a like.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1923 - ★★★★
Watched as part of the Letterboxd Season Challenge Week 8: Halloween Special: Old School Horror Week.
This movie was very good, especially for a 93 year old movie. I'm not sure if this counts as a horror movie, IMDb only lists it as a drama romance, while Letterboxd lists it as drama horror. But I guess this is just a mixture.
Lon Chaney is the best. Even though he has so much make up and costuming, you can still see the emotions on his face.
The story is interesting and well known and really not that horror-like. But on the other hand, Chaney looks horrific.
Maybe it was a little long, but that was of course because of the title cards that actually take about 20 minutes of the movies time.
It was shot very well, some scenes were outstanding to me, like in one shot the two romantic leads are holding each other and in the background we see Quasimodo, Lon Chaney, walk up, see them and walk up to them.
I enjoyed this movie and it is really one of the movies worth seeing. Not all old movies are boring. I'm rating it 4 out of 5 stars.
PS: The DVD I own has a dubbed german version of this movie that I will check out. I watched the first 15 minutes and it was really good. Didn't expect it to be any good.
Friday, February 19, 2016
The Girl Who Played with Fire, 2009 - ★★★★★
The second part in the Millenium Trilogy. I watched it a long time ago with my dad and wanted to rewatch it because it was in my head ever since.
In this movie we learn more about Lisbeth's past while trying to solve another crime.
The acting was again awesome. I love Michael Nyqvist as Blomquist, he is such a fitting character. He is not an action main guy. He is not a genius. He is just a normal guy who just won't give up. Also he is not scared off anything.
And Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander is just wow. She is really good in that role.
Also Ralph Carlsson, who didn't have that hard a role to play, was very good as Gunnar Björk, the big bad guy.
The fights were well done and somehow convincing. We have a guy who just doesn't go down fight a pro boxer and it still looked like it could happen that the bad guy wins. Also the fights were shot well, not the Hollywood action shooting of fights, but the raw fights on screen.
But the best thing about these movies is the mystery. As in the first movie I loved the mystery and even though I knew some stuff I really liked slowly finding out what happened.
That's probably also the reason the 2 hours runtime flew by. I couldn't stop watching and was surprised that it was already over.
I enjoyed this very much, about as much as the first one, to me they are pretty much on a similar level. I'm rating this movie 5 out of 5 stars, too, and a big like.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
The Others, 2001 - ★★★★
For some reason I never heard of this movie before I saw it is popular on letterboxd. Then I bought it and now I finally watched it, as blind as can be, I only knew it starres Nicole Kidman, didn't even read the back of the DVD case.
It's a haunting ghost story about Nicole Kidman who lives with her light-allergic children in an old house during the 1940s. She is also waiting for her husband to come back from the war. And then spooky stuff happens.
This is not a jump scare movie. It is really about the mood. Best watched alone, in a dark room, at night. It's all about the mood.
The story is very interesting and always makes you wonder what is happening, what will happen and what has happened.
The acting is great, even the kids were awesome.
All in all I really liked this movie, it's a great watch, a great story, a great ending. I'm rating this movie 4 out of 5 stars and a like.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives, 1971
This movie is weird. It was a random Mubi-watch because the name is interesting, especially for the time it was made in.
For context, being gay was illegal in Germany up until shortly before this movie. So this was probably the first movie about this subject.
And it was interesting for sure.
The story follows a young, gay man moving to Berlin, meeting a guy there and falling in love with him. But after 4 months of being together he wants to leave, because every man is educated to just care about himself and not about anyone else, so they just can't get along.
We then learn, by following him on his sexual escapades (which means him running around and seeing many people), about the gay culture, what groups of gay people there are and why gays are "weird" or "different".
The idea is good and daring for the time for sure. But it wasn't really done that well. The whole movie is narrated. There is basically no live recorded sound (except for 2 music numbers), everything is told, either by a narrator or by people narrating in dialogue. It really threw me off at the beginning, because you hear two people talking, but you see two people talking in other intervals. It just doesn't make sense.
Also the dialogue is not good. It feels totally scripted. Especially in the end when we have a round-table discussion between 5 or 6 naked men laying on a bed, talking about what to do to change the world. Instead of talking to each other, they feel more like they are talking to an audience, telling the people in the world what to do.
It shows problems in the world, yes. It shows how homosexuals lived at the time. But it really just feels like an educational movie.
I'm not rating this movie. It is something that should be seen, or better should have been seen at the time because I feel like now it is different. And it really is something that you won't have seen before.
But it's not that well done.
Taxi Driver, 1976
I watched this as part of the Letterboxd Season Challenge, week 9 Hardboiled Wonderland Week. Also had to watch this as part of an episode of the Filmhaus Podcast. Also everyone loves it, so I had more than enough reasons to watch it.
This is about Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a Taxi Driver who is an insomniac, too. And he goes a little crazy...
The first thing I realized is the music. The last score Bernard Hermann ever did and it was a great one. The music fitted perfectly to every scene. Also great music to listen to on the side.
The acting was amazing, especially Robert De Niro, but also all the supporting characters.
All in all just a great movie.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Last 10 Top 10 #05 of 2016
I'll try to do a Last 10 Top 10 every 10 movies I watch in 2016. Again 2 rewatches and this time two visits to the cinema in one Last 10 Top 10. And Deadpool will probably be a rewatch in my next L10T10, too.
Deadpool was really so much fun, I just want to watch it agian already. I feel like this is a movie you either love or hate, and I really love it.
The original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would have been my number 1 if it wasn't for aforementioned Deadpool. It is really one of the best movies I have ever seen.
Tarantinos eight movie, The Hateful Eight, is really good, but also really long and just not as enjoyable as the other two movies were for me.
The first Harry Potter movie is great and it is probably so high for me because I watched it as a kid and still have lots of nostalgia for it. I will rewatch the other Harry Potter movies too, and maybe even do a ranking when I'm through.
I really can't say much about Silver Linings Playbook, it was a fun little movie and it's still #5 so clearly not bad, but nothing too special.
Blazing Saddles was crazy and fun, but I think because it's a little older it is a bit down, the only movie from before the year 2000 I watched this year.
Carrie was a fun remake of the original, I don't get all the hate for it. It isn't the best movie ever, but it surely isn't bad.
Sukiyaki Western Django was fun and crazy and just weird as fuck and I really enjoyed it, but it was a bit too weird to be higher than the rest of the movies.
Mitte Ende August (Sometime in August) was a good movie, but really nothing special at all.
Gacy House was ... an asylum movie, so yeah, even going in with low expectations I was pretty bored and didn't enjoy it.
So this was that, do you think I put something at the completely wrong place? How would you sort these movies? See you next 10 movies.
Sometime in August, 2009 - ★★½
This is the movie Sebastian Schipper directed before he made Victoria.
It's about Hanna (Marie Bäumer) and Thomas (Milan Peschel), a young couple that just bought their own house that they have to renovate. After Thomas decides to invite his melancholic brother Friedrich (André Hennicke), who just got fired from his job as an architect, Hanna decides to invite her goddaughter, Augustine (Anna Brüggemann). Soon things go out of hand...
This is not a feel good movie. It made me feel really uncomfortable. I could predict what was going to happen pretty early, and that only furthered me feeling distressed by everything that was going on.
The acting was good, but for me the story wasn't as good and somehow not that believable for how they basically made a 180° turn in just a few days.
All in all a solid movie from Germany, but nothing awesome. I'm rating it 2.5 out of 5 stars, so just middle of the road.
Talking about middle of the road: Don't drink and drive (which they clearly do in one scene)!!!!!!
Library movies
Movies are expensive, so I'm glad there are two libraries around me that have movies for free or 2 euro per movie per week, so since i registered there I got more than a few movies just because it's free.
This is a list with all of them ... I hope all of them.
- Jacob's Ladder
- 22 Jump Street
- Dracula
- The Seventh Seal
- Drive
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- M
- F*ck You, Goethe
- Gone Girl
- Paris, je t'aime
...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
Friday, February 12, 2016
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2009 - ★★★★★
I watched this around 6 years ago with my dad and it stuck with me. I always had it in my head, always remembered it.
Then after the Remake came out I really wanted to rewatch this one.
Finally I did.
And it is still as good as I remembered, if not better. It is shot well, the acting is awesome, and the story is just great. I wasn't this gripped by a movie in a long time, I really couldn't stop watching.
It was 2 hours and 23 minutes long, but it felt way less. I immediately wanted to rewatch it because it is so awesome. Gladly, there are 2 more movies in this trilogy and I can't wait to watch them.
5 out of 5 stars and a like.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Deadpool, 2016 - ★★★★★
I gotta start off by saying that I wasn't as hyped about a movie since Birdman.
I didn't know much about Deadpool until the first trailer came out and people on the internet started talking about it. The more I heard about this movie the more excited I got, bought a Deadpool comic, read up on him on reddit. I was sure I wouldn't enjoy this movie because I was so hyped for it, it couldn't possibly meet my expectations...
I was wrong.
Starting with the opening credits this movie was fun. Before the first person moved the people in my cinema were laughing.
They have a great structure to this movie. We are in the now, Deadpool killing lots of guys. And then, just at the right moment, we go back and Mr. Pool tells us his origin story.
And then, just when it could start to get boring, BAM, back to the action.
This movie is crazy and deserves the R-Rating. Lots of blood, lots of body parts flying around. Some of the gore is even used for jokes.
That is also the biggest part: the humor.
Maybe some people don't like the crazy meta-humor. Maybe some don't like Deadpool mentioning that he is confusing all the X-Men timelines because it is crazy. But I love this. I loved every single joke. There is a great mix of meta-humor, slapstick humor, one-liners, jokes and everything.
Ryan Reynolds was made for this role, he really loves it and he is great at it. Also everyone else in this movie is at least good, but I can't say too much about the acting because I watched a German dub, and the voice has much to do with the acting.
Talking about German dub, this is one of the few comedies that really works dubbed, which never happens. I can't wait to rewatch it, and hopefully rewatch it in English.
I'm rating this movie 5 out of 5 stars and giving it a big like and recommend. Loved it.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 2001 - ★★★★½
I really don't get the people saying this is the worst in the Harry Potter Saga, or people not liking it as much as the other movies.
Maybe it's because I saw this when I was a kid and still have some nostalgia for it, but for me, this is just a really great movie that takes me to a different world.
We are introduced to so many great characters, all wonderfully played by the elite of British actors.
I always preferred the first two over the rest of the movies because they got really dark really quickly, while this movie was more of a fun adventure.
I've probably seen this movie more times than I could count, still it never bores me. There is so much to see. The effects aren't the best ever made, but for a movie from 2001 they are great.
I just love this movie and I will rewatch the whole saga in the next few weeks, we'll see if I maybe changed my mind. But to me, this was a great movie, a fun movie, and I really enjoyed it.
Also, Richard Harris is a great Dumbledore, I don't care what everyone else thinks.
4.5 out of 5 stars and a like.
Sukiyaki Western Django, 2007 - ★★★½
Watching lots of Japanese actors speak English without it being their first language feels odd at first, but this movie is really fun.
Also, Quentin Tarantino.
Monday, February 8, 2016
Gacy House, 2010 - ★★
This is a pretty forgettable movie.
In this movie in a series of Paranormal Activity Rip-Offs, 6 people go to the house of John Wayne Gacy to make his spirit appear. And as we are used to, shit goes crazy. But not too crazy, to be honest.
I wasn't really enjoying this movie, not that it was bad, it just wasn't interesting at all. I wanted to turn it off cause I felt there was better stuff to do.
I went into it hoping for a really shitty movie like Transmorphers, which is also by Asylum. But it was just a mediocre boring movie that didn't try anything new.
Also they did something really annoying, I'm not even sure if it was on purpose or if their equip died down but at some scenes when the ghost is around somewhere near, the sound is going crazy, like if the mic is dying. It is an interesting idea at the beginning, but it gets old and annoying really quick.
So this was just a boring mediocre movie, nothing to watch, not for any reason at all.
I'm rating this movie 2 out of 5 stars.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Last 10 Top 10 #04 of 2016
I'll try to do a Last 10 Top 10 every 10 movies I watch in 2016. This time I have 2 shorts in there and my first rewatch of 2016, so maybe some of you might discredit this but I don't care.
I finally got around to watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, wanted to see this for years but somehow never did. Same for Un Chien Andalou, which I first heard about many years ago but never saw it.
From Raiders to Gravity I just loved all the movies and really enjoyed them, Brutal Relax was a fun short and for that I enjoyed it more than I did my rewatch of the revenant, which is still a great movie.
Interview with the Vampire wasn't bad and I enjoyed it, just not as much as the rest.
We watched The Rite in religion class in school over 3 sittings, it wasn't totally bad but also not great.
The only movie on this list that really sucks is The Worst Horror Movie ever made, a fitting title. I just hate when movies are bad and then try to make fun of being bad. If it wasn't for the folks at letterboxd movie night I wouldn't have gotten through it.
So again, a very strong list, can't wait for the next Last 10 Top 10 which will probably have the Millenium Trilogy from Sweden in it, as a little spoiler of what to come.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
The Revenant, 2015 - ★★★★
I had to choose between watching this one again or Ride Along 2. I think I made the right decision!
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Every Movie Mentioned in the "FILMHAUS PODCAST"
This list is about all the Movies David, Michael and me talk about in our German Filmhaus Podcast.
Diese Liste enthält alle Filme, über die David, Michael und ich im Filmhaus Podcast reden.
Die Filme sind alphabetisch sortiert, bei jedem Film findet ihr einen Link zu der jeweiligen Podcast-Episode.
Im Filmhaus Podcast reden wir ca einmal die Woche für etwa eine Stunde über Filme, die Folgen sind in 2 Segmente aufgeteilt. Zuerst reden wir über den letzten Film, den jeder von uns gesehen hat, anschließend gibt es Gespräche über das ausgewählte Thema. Meistens bereitet jeder von uns 3 Filme passend zu diesem Thema vor.
Folgt uns auf Twitter oder schreibt uns eine Email an filmhauspodcast@gmail.com.
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
- Battle Royale
- Birdman
Filmhaus Podcast #2 - High- und Lowlights 2015 - Der Jahresrückblick
- Braindead
- Bridge of Spies
Filmhaus Podcast #1 - Unsere Lieblingsfilme
Zuletzt gesehen Filme - Captain America: Civil War
- Chef
Filmhaus Podcast #2 - High- und Lowlights 2015 - Der Jahresrückblick
- Creed
Filmhaus Podcast #4 - Supercast 2016
Zuletzt gesehene Filme - Creep
Filmhaus Podcast #2 - High- und Lowlights 2015 - Der Jahresrückblick
- Dawg Fight
Filmhaus Podcast #2 - High- und Lowlights 2015 - Der Jahresrückblick
...plus 66 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Monday, February 1, 2016
The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made, 2005 - ½
Main feature of the Letterboxd Movie Night XV by russman.
I've watched Un Chien Andalou a day before this one, and I have to say The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made made even less sense than that.
The title is really program with this one.
Thanks, DEL >:-( ... but well, at least I'm now not the one who picked the worst feature.
Brutal Relax, 2010 - ★★★
Watched as part of the Letterboxd Movie Night XV by russman.
I gotta say I really liked this short, more than Fist of Jesus, which was made by the same director.
This is just a fun little short about a guy killing Sea-Zombies. I liked it.