Displaying all 4 Review

• The movie that stuck with me — for Saving Private Ryan
  Written by droplul on 10.04.2015

  Saving Private Ryan is one of the first movies that stuck with me.
  It stuck with me for several reasons.
  
  First of all the intensity of the start. I was about 14 years old when I first saw the movie. Being interested in WWII and having talked about it a lot with people who were in the war I was struck with the reality of the war. It actually happened and it was intense, it became more real to me.
  Even though a movie is not what really happened and often more heroic than in reality I got the idea that I got the idea of the emotions that came with the war.

  Secondly the movie stuck with me because the personal struggles of the soldiers all come together very well without losing their joint goal; to find Private Ryan. It is more than just a group of soldiers trying to find Private Ryan, it is a group of soldiers that is also trying to find out who they are themselves.

  At the end of the movie every mini-story has ended. Some of the stories died with soldiers earlier in the movie, others end in the, partial finding, out who soldiers are to themselves.
  The viewer is not left with any big questions about how the story continued after the war, no open end.

  There are other smaller reasons why the movie stuck with me but these are the main ones. I would recommend this movie to other people, not only because of how it's crafted but also because of the joy of watching it.

• Yes or No — for Kick-Ass
  Written by droplul on 10.04.2015

  I watched this movie several times and I still can't figure out what to think about it.

  Some parts I really like. Actually some scenes. The big fighting scene when Dave/Kick-Ass gets rescued by Mindy/Hit girl is my favorite scene. It is my favorite because all of the contradictions it holds. For example all the violence caused by a little girl.
  I also like the scenes when nobody knows who Kick-Ass is and Dave sees the world getting to like him and after that the doubts whether he will reveal his identity.

  Other parts, I think, could have been more magnified. For example the painlessness of Dave/Kick-Ass. I would have liked to see more scenes about that.
  Also the story feels a bit like a collection of scenes that was put together to form a story instead of a story that that is broken down into scenes. It makes the story feel a little slow at some points.

  Yes or no?
  It wouldn't be the first movie that I would recommend but there are enough good parts to counterbalance the movie into the section of the movies that I would recommend.

• King of Parody — for The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
  Written by droplul on 10.04.2015

  'The Naked Gun' is in my opinion the best Leslie Nielsen movie.
  It is a compilation of the best parts of the series 'Police Squad'. The series was a parody on serious police series and crime movies. It seems to be based on 'M Squad' by Lee Marvin. In the movie itself there are a lot of references to James Bond. The humor is the kind you love or hate.

  The story in the movie is simple but clear and leaves as much room as possible for puns and jokes. Without all the puns and jokes the story would still be good, a cliché story but good.

  The humor is simple but effective. you could say it's simple humor and therefore childish. But simple humor is hard to create, also when it's childish. The humor in this movie works visually and verbal at the same time, that is the real power of this humor. Image and sound together create something that is bigger than just the sum of the image and sound.
  The cinematography is used to surprise the viewer. Some jokes would be less funny if the whole of the environment would have been on screen at the start of a scene.
  The dialogues are often used to change the context of the image.

  I would strongly recommend this movie to others. Every time I watch it I discover some new, more subtle, jokes. so it can be watched several times.
  In my opinion 'The Naked gun' is the king of parodies.

• Stripped too much — for Sense and Sensibility
  Written by droplul on 11.04.2015

  This review contains a minor spoiler.

  'Sense and Sensibility' is rated a 7,7 on the IMDB. In my opinion that's too high.

  It is too high because the story is so much different from the book. Of course it's true that compromises are always necessary when a film is made based on a book.
  Not everything that is written can be translated into an image. For example the thoughts of a person. It is possible to let the viewer know what a person feels by a look on his/her face but the literal words are impossible to translate to an image. Unless a voice over is used, but let's not go into that right now.
  Long descriptions of how the environment looks like are also hard to translate to film.

  In this case I think there are too much compromises were made.
  The pass of the movie is very high compared to the book, it jumps from one big event to the other. In the book a great deal of the personal development of the characters happens in the quieter moments in between these events. Even though it is hard to translate those scenes into an image I would have liked to see more of those scenes in the movie. It would have added a lot of context to the events and also it would have given the movie more depth.
  I was very surprised to find out that Mr. Willoughby didn't return towards the end of the movie. In the book he returns and though it's brief it adds a lot excitement to the story.

  The movie was made to be as much like the book as possible. It was not based on the book in the sense of 'The Three Musketeers ' (2013) which just took a few aspects from the book and created a new story with those. If it had been like that with 'Sense and Sensebility' I wouldn't have minded at all. Since it was an attempt to create a film as close to the book as possible I think the attempt in this way was poor. With a few changes and additions to the story in the movie it would have been closer to the book and would have had a lot more depth.

  I would only recommend this movie to people who haven't read the book and don't plan to read it. If you don't know the book it is still a good costume drama to watch.