Displaying Review 1 - 5 of 17 in total

• Cocktail — for Cocktail
  Written by Asmodai on 29.05.2009

  Cocktail is a movie about a young man named Brian (Tom Cruise), who works as a bartender in New York. First he just uses his bartending skills as a part-time job to make some money for his studies, but after a while he and his partner Doug (Bryan Brown) end up working in a high-end nightclub, where they make entire shows out of making cocktails.
  When Brian finds his girlfriend left him to the betrayal of Doug, he leaves for Jamaica to earn money to get his own bar started. When he meets Doug there, he loses another girlfriend thanks to his own foolishness, and decides to go back to New York where he begs his former girlfriend and Doug to get his life back...

  Cocktail is far from a masterpiece; it is, however, quite entertaining when you don't pay attention to the acting, or the storyline. While the acting of Tom Cruise is mediocre at best, the plot is quite clear, and Doug's part is skilfully done by Bryan Brown.
  This movie is a somewhat fun movie to watch when you just want silly entertainment, and don't care in what way; if you dislike Tom Cruise however, or don't enjoy flashy moves, quick one-liners and a plot that circles around sex and alcohol: don't be bothered, because then Doug's law comes into effect: "Anything else is always something better."

• Cheaper by the Dozen... but not cheap enough to see. — for Cheaper by the Dozen
  Written by Asmodai on 31.05.2009

  Cheaper by the Dozen is a film by director Shawn Levy, who would go on to make such equally unfunny movies as The Pink Panther, Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum 2. It stars Steve Martin as a father of 12 children, who lives in a small town where he works as a coach for the local football-team.
  When the family moves to a suburb, because the father can get his dream-job there, the children are displeased. As the oldest daughter, who moved out a while ago, comes to visit the family, the rest of the children set loose the dog on her boyfriend. When the sister and her boyfriend leave the scene, the mother is asked to leave for New York for a couple of days, leaving dad alone to take care of the children.
  The minute he is on his own, the children start to wreak havoc. The mother, however, is offered to go on a book-signing-tour, therefore being away from house for 2 more weeks. After a few days Steve figures out that he can’t handle taking care of the children, and also doing his coaching duties. Therefore he decides to combine the tasks, by bringing the football-team to home. At first this tactic seems to work, with the children helping around the house, the team winning their games and the mother having success with her book-tour. However, after a while the children start to feel neglected and start getting into trouble at school, for which they are grounded, therefore not being allowed to go to the neighbour’s kid’s birthday party. When the children do escape, and crash the birthday party, they somehow create a panic, which is made even worse when dad and the football team arrive to take the children home.
  Afterwards, when the father left the house for a football match, the children call their mother who quickly comes back home, but will let a television show tape at their house. At the same time, Steve gets given the choice by his employers: the family, or the team.
  When the film crew arrives, chaos ensues again, and the crew call their company, who decide that the show is off. With the whole family arguing, they only get back together to find one of the children, who decided to run away. The boy is found on the way back to their previous small-town home, which makes the father understand that that place is where the whole family was on their best.

  Whatever happened to the once-great Steve Martin, that he now makes the least funny “comedies” ever?
  This movie is a sequence of childish jokes, pranks and “accidents”, which all have been seen or done before tens of times. Martin just pulls out the usual act: a not-too-bright guy, who tries his best. The rest of the cast has other notorious names like Ashton Kutcher and Hillary Duff, who both are not known for their acting skills. The plot is short, the story is missing and the ending could be seen coming from the start.
  In my opinion, this movie is seriously unworthy of any attention, and I think Steve Martin should have stopped this kind of films many years ago.

• Addams Family Values — for Addams Family Values
  Written by Asmodai on 02.06.2009

  This second part of the Addams Family movie keeps most of the castmembers as the first movie, and adds to it with with Joan Cusack.
  The plot goes as follows: When Gomez and Morticia Adams get their third kid, a moustache-wearing boy called Pubert, they decide that they will need a nanny to keep the children from killing each other. When all the candidates have left the house screaming, they give up hope, but then Debbie arrives. This blonde, fashionable woman charms the Addamses into hiring her, and the minute uncle Fester lays eyes upon her, he is in love.
  When Debbie convinces Gomez and Morticia that the children desperately want to go to summer camp, she has free reign to romance Fester. After a short romance, Debbie proposes to Fester, who says yes. They get married, and go on a honeymoon to Hawaii, where Debbie tries to kill Fester for the first time.
  The children, in the mean time, are horrified by the people and cheerful attitude at the summercamp, and when they hear about Fester’s marriage they try to escape, together with a boy that grows close to Wednesday. When they are caught, they are not punished, but forced to watch cheery Disney movies, which pushes them over the edge.
  They decide to change the camp’s traditional Thanksgiving-play a bit to their hand. When the play is performed, they capture the camp’s leaders and girlie-girls, set fire to the camp, and Wednesday and Pugsley leave for home.
  Fester has at this time moved in with Debbie, who demands that he breaks all contacts with Gomez, Morticia and the rest of the family. Upon hearing about this, Gomez goes into a depression and baby Pubert becomes possessed: his hair turns blonde, he likes stories that have a good ending and he stops breathing fire.
  When Debbie tries to kill Fester again, and, upon failing once more, confesses to him that he will be the forth husband she killed for the money, Fester is saved by Thing, who drives him back to the Addams mansion, where he is forgiven by the family. But then Debbie arrives, who manages to capture the Addams family, and rigs a device to electrocute the whole family. When she pulls the switch, baby Pubert intervenes and she ends up being electrocuted herself.
  A while later on the birthday party for Pubert Fester meets the new nanny of cousin Itt, a bald, big woman with black eyes, and falls in love again; Wednesday and her new boyfriend talk about the future, with Wednesday explaining that the best way to kill a man is to scare him to death, after which the boy is grabbed by a hand coming from a grave…

  This movie, while not as funny as the first part, has some great moments. The humor is great, and even though most of the punchlines could be seen coming from miles away, they are still funny. The acting of Juliez (Gomez) is great as ever, and the part as Wednesday (together with the one in the first movie), may be amongst Ricci’s finest.
  This movie is great fun to watch, it is filled with funny moments, has good acting and does not even look very bad, a recommendation worthy!

• Terminator Salvation — for Terminator Salvation
  Written by Asmodai on 03.06.2009

  Finally it has arrived: the long awaited fourth part of the Terminator-series, this time without Arnold Schwarzenegger, but with Christian Bale, who already made the film notorious during shooting, because of the leaked tape in which he goes on a several minute rant against a cameraman.

  Plot (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

  The movie begins with a prisoner on death row being asked to sign a form, donating his body for a mysterious research program, led by a bald Helena Bonham-Carter.
  Then the real movie starts: It is the year 2018, Judgment Day happened and Skynet killed billions in its first attack. With lots of explosions a team led by Bale’s character John Connor infiltrates a Skynet research institute, where they find data about a new model terminator that’s being built: a model in which a robot inner skeleton is covered with biological material.
  After a few minutes, Skynet springs its trap, and Connor is the only survivor of the mission; he is picked up and brought to the headquarters of the resistance, which is located in a submarine, where Connor’s superiors tell him about a new weapon against the machines: a signal they can use to order all machines to stop everything they are doing.
  In another plotline a man called Marcus Wright (who is the convict seen in the intro) wakes up in a destroyed LA, where he is saved from termination by a young man named Kyle Reese and his assistant. The strange man seems to not know what has happened to the world, but does manage to fix Kyle’s radio, on which they hear a message from Connor. The trio decides to go find Connor, and join the true resistance. On the road to a resistance-base, they are spotted by Skynet, and chased by various robots. After a short chase (with more explosions) Kyle and his assistant are caught, and …? falls from a cliff. Somehow he manages to survive and meets up with a shot-down resistance-pilot. Together they resume the way to the resistance-base, but when Marcus is away to get firewood, the pilot is ambushed and almost raped by a group of surviving humans. Wright arrives just in time to save her, and he easily fights the four attackers.
  The next day, the pilot and Marcus arrive at the base, but first they have to cross a magnetic minefield, which would be harmless to humans. When Wright tries to cross, a mine attaches to his leg, explodes and he loses consiousness. When he wakes up, he is tied up and being interrogated by Connor; it appears his body is a mixture of various human- and machine parts. Connor thinks this is a trap by Skynet, and orders Marucs killed. When the sentence is about to be fulfilled, the man is saved by the grateful pilot. Connor, however, figures out their plan, and pursuits the two across the base (with of course more explosions!). When Connor in his chase is ambushed by robots, he is saved by Wright, who tells him that Kyle (of who Connor figured out that he will be sent back in time later, and actually is Connor’s father) is caught by Skynet. He offers Connor to go find him, and help free all prisoners, before Connor’s superiors use their new weapon to bomb the whole base. Connor accepts, and lets him go.
  At the Skynet facility Marcus manages to walk into the facility, sends his location to Connor, and connects with the main computer, who tells him that he was made for exactly this purpose: to infiltrate, and lure Connor into Skynet. The computer-system even spread the “weapon” to the resistance, and when resistance-command attemps to use it, a hunter-killer-robot zooms in on their location and destroys the submarine.
  In the meantime Connor breaks in into the facility, and is busy freeing all the prisoners, when he meets Kyle, who is being attacked by a T-600 terminator. Together they dispatch the machine, but then they find out a prototype of the new T-800 terminator on their way (with animated Arnold Schwarzenegger-face!). This enemy is too much for them, and they are almost defeated when Wright intervenes. After a big fight, they manage to destroy the robot, but Connor is severely wounded in his chest.
  In the aftermath, Marcus decides to give up his own life, so that Connor may have his heart and get a second chance as well. The movie ends with a monologue in which Connor explains how this one battle was won, but the war is far from over yet! (A.k.a.: Room for sequels)

  SPOILERS OVER!

  Let’s just say it out loud now: this movie is far from the genius that the first two Terminator movies had, even though it is better than the third part.
  It does manage, however, to look great and give a proper post-apocalyptic atmosphere in the shots; destroyed Los Angeles, for example, really looks like a 15 year old ruin. Even though the movie has not got a great Terminator-story, it is a pretty decent action-movie to watch separately, without thinking of the previous movies. The acting ranges from not bad, to good (even though Bale is past his prime, and has not reached his former brilliance) and Elfman’s score underlines the visually beautiful fighting (explosions!) scenes pretty good.
  This movie did not bore me for a second, and I can recommend it to fans of explosion-movies, or post-apocalypse movies, who do not care much for story or legacy.

• Barton Fink — for Barton Fink
  Written by Asmodai on 05.06.2009

  Barton Fink (played by John Turturro) is a 1941 playwright, living in New York. When his first great play is very successful and gets great reviews, he is asked to come writing film-scripts in Hollywood.
  When he accepts, and arrives in Hollywood, he checks in in an old, quiet hotel, where he meets his neighbor Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), an insurance salesman, who quickly gets along with Barton.
  At his first meeting with the boss of his film studio he gets assigned to writing a wrestling picture. Barton, however, is unable to write anything. When he explains this to the producer of the film, he gets suggested to meet with a fellow writer. In the toilet of a restaurant Barton meets famous novelist W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), with whom he schedules a meeting for Barton to get some tips
  Later on the day, when Barton arrives at Mayhew’s home, he finds the writer drunk and shouting at his secretary/lover Audrey, who reschedules the meeting. When Barton meets Mayhew and Audrey later on for lunch, Mayhew gets drunk again, slaps Audrey and walks away.
  On the night before Barton has to turn in his script, without still having written anything, he panics and calls Audrey, who offers to come over and help him write. When she arrives, Barton is shocked to learn that Audrey wrote virtually all of Mayhew’s novels for him, but starts kissing Audrey.
  The next morning Barton wakes up next to Audrey, who had her throat slit in the middle of the night. Barton panics, and wakes Charlie, who takes away the body. That afternoon Barton meets up with his boss, who is very supportive, even though Fink has nothing to show him yet, and he is given more time.
  When Barton resumes trying to write, he is visited by Charlie, who announces that he will leave to New York for a couple of days, on work-related business; he gives Barton a package to take care of. Soon afterwards, Barton is visited by police officers, who show him a picture of Charlie, and explain that he is actually known as “Madman” Mundt, a notorious serial-killer, who decapitates his victims. Barton denies having any knowledge of Charlie’s whereabouts, and when the policemen leave, he returns to his room to find his writer’s block lifted, upon which he starts writing and finishes the entire script in one night.
  The next day, Barton returns to his room to find the detectives there, who arrest him. When they hear the elevator coming up, however, they assume correctly it’s Charlie/Mundt returning, and order him to surrender. At first Mundt appears to comply, but then he grabs a shotgun, and charges the policemen, while next to him the walls appear to spontaneously burst into flames. After having killed both policemen, Mundt releases Charlie, and they talk shortly, after which Mundt enters his room, and Barton leaves the (burning) hotel holding Mundt’s package and his script.
  When Barton meets with his boss, he finds out that his script was denied, and that his career has ended before it even started, because the production company will not produce anything he writes, but he will remain under contract.

  I found Barton Fink to be a magnificent film, with every shot and every word planned, and performed to perfection. The Coen brothers really showed what they were capable of, reaching the same level of quality later shown with such movies as Fargo and No Country for Old Men.
  The movie was, in my eyes well-deserved, awarded with prizes for Best Director, Best Actor and even earning the grand prize: The Palme d’Or. The quality of acting of both Turturro and Goodman is amongst their best I have seen.
  The film is not to be put in just one genre; it has elements of genres ranging from film noir, through horror to drama. With every shot meticulously planned, it contains many references, themes and a lot symbolism.

  Barton Fink – A truly great movie, with brilliant storytelling and marvelous acting; this movie has it all!