astronic Reviews

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

Underwhelming

[4/10 · 11 December 2005]

After the huge success of "The Lord of the Rings", studio money seems to flow rather easy for films of the fantasy genre. Money alone however does not make a good film, and "The Chronicles of Narnia" is a sad example for this.

In this movie, really nothing is as it should be. First, at over 40 minutes the exposition is way too long and provides little in terms of establishing characters: OK, Edmund is seemingly not that nice and Lucy willingly accompanies half-naked beings she meets in the forest to their home, but that's about it.

Secondly (and this is what hurts most): Narnia doesn't live, in fact, it looks like (and probably is) an indoor studio environment. The snow looks fake, except in very few scenes at the end there is absolutely no wind, the skin color of the characters doesn't look like it's cold and there is no icy breath to been seen. Actually, after getting bathed in a river that was frozen minutes ago, instead of shaking the characters look like they've just left a hot tub. Additionally, in the first 2/3 of the movie, we don't get to see anybody but characters with talking roles, which contributes to the feeling that there isn't a Narnia outside the main storyline we follow. All in all (and given a budget of 180 million USD) regarding atmosphere, this movie is a huge disappointment.

Thirdly, the story is much too simple (having never read the novel, I don't know if it's the screenplay's or Lewis' fault): 4 children enter a new world, which they are destined to save according to some prophecy, and there is an evil witch, who is, well, evil. That's about it. And at the end you can't even tell, what these children actually did to save Narnia and why they were needed. For reason unknown, they get crowned as kings and queens of Narnia anyway.

Furthermore, the movie does everything to prevent creating tension or being taken seriously, which comes down to three big mistakes:

1) Death is not final. Every character which gets frozen by the witch, can easily be defrosted later. Actually, getting defeated by the witch is nothing but a short cryostasis and no drama at all. And the only character that gets killed the conventional way, gets resurrected by some random magical mojo, which doesn't play a part before or after.

2) Violence is totally ungraphic. You actually wonder, if those Narnia creatures have any blood in their veins at all. The film doesn't even make the effort to switch to fast MTV style cutting to avoid showing explicit scenes (like Peter Jackson did to get the Lord of the Rings a PG-13 rating), they just refrain from showing blood, even if there would be tones of it.

3) Battle environments and choreography look like the big battle in Star Wars Episode I, and have the seriousness of an on-stage performance in Disney World. I mean, come on, the final battle takes place under a clear blue sky, surrounded by green hills, is being fought by colorful creatures, who obviously don't even hurt each other (you never see a killing or even just a defeated warrior lying dead on the ground).

There are a few positive points as well: Some of the animals are nicely animated, dialogue isn't too bad for this kind of movie, the children are not annoying for the most parts and there are a few nice landscape shots.

But after all that doesn't prevent Narnia from being a sterile, soulless movie without a story worth talking about. It might be fine for kids under 12 who can gasp at the whole "fantasy world with funny beings and kids as heroes" kind of thing, but it surely is nothing I would recommend to an adult viewer, who has seen at least one decent fantasy movie.

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Fantastic nonsense

[3/10 · 24 September 2005]

The film begins with a statement, in which the film makers thank all the experts without whom this movie wouldn't have been possible. When the first signs of bad acting, bad dialogue and bad special effects present itself (which is pretty much right after the end of the intro credits), I started to condemn the experts for helping with this film.

After the journey finally began, however, I was quite sure there actually have never been any experts involved in the making of this film. And if there were, I hope they lost their jobs and were burnt at the stake of science. How can shrinked people breeze oxygen molecules not much smaller than themselves? How can elite doctors say things like "in comparison to our size the air pressure inside is tremendous"? How can the dropping of scissors cause an in-ear earthquake lasting more than 30 seconds? Why are all characters luminescent when swimming around in what should have been pitch black in the first place? I could go on for hours.

The screenplay is equally terrible. Why don't they just abort the mission and start all over, instead of constantly risking their lifes and the life of the patient needlessly? Why does every character have to be that stereotypical and bleak? Who on earth thinks, that jokes like "This is a bad time to have no sugar" (spoken by someone who drinks his coffee with sugar) are even remotely funny? How could they have possibly forgotten that the boat (or what's left of it) will deshrink inside the patient's body, thus killing him and making the mission a failure?

I never thought I'd be saying this, but if you're interested in the "voyage into the unknown fantastic" kind of movie, avoid this one and watch "Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)" or "The Core" instead, because beside the fact that they're also basically flawed, they're a lot less painful to watch (well, maybe just a little less in the case of the former one).

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Flawed

[6/10 · 15 September 2005]

Don't get me wrong, Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorite characters, I absolutely love the Victorian era setting and it would be unfair to say, that the actors (especially Mr. Rathbone) didn't pull a good job.

However, at least by today's standards the story is just too simple and predictable. At the moment Holmes knew that Moriarty has a connection to the Brandon case and after the striking coincidence of the jewel delivery and the garden party being at the same time, Moriarty's distraction plan should slap Mr. Holmes in his face, however, the detective mastermind fails to see the obvious. Also Moriarty's plan to steal the jewels is beyond dumb: All a criminal mastermind can come up with, is to shave and pose as police officer, with the vague hope that all the people around him don't recognize his prominent face and voice?

Furthermore the screenplay takes all liberties it wants, without paying attention, if something actually makes sense.

Why does Moriarty hire somebody to actually kill Ms. Brandon? He has nothing to gain, but in fact loses, after the caught killer talks about Moriarty's involvement.

Is it really standard procedure of tower guards, to move out with 10 man (and leaving no one behind) when a carriage has a minor accident in front of the tower, so that anybody can sneak past them?

Holmes in his entertainer outfit and the shaved Moriaty are easily recognizable for the viewer, both are very prominent figures, but no character who seems them in 3D and color recognizes them.

Why does Holmes choose to pose as an entertainer? It's a big risk to blow your cover when you have to sing in front of so many people and it's not a cover you can sneak around unobserved with?

Why doesn't Mr. Holmes tell the Tower Guards what's going on instead of sneaking past them?

Why do we have to witness a needless gunfight, when this is definitely out of character for Holmes and Moriaty?

Why do Mr. and Ms. Brandon behave so stupidly when they are under an imminent threat of getting killed? I'm mean, come, running in the woods at night is really a bad idea, when basically all you have to do is just to stay in other people's company.

I could go on for hours.

Things like this really spoiled the movie for me and just mustn't happen in a detective film, where a good story and plausibility are of great importance. Because it's always a pleasure to watch Mr. Rathbone as Sherlock and because dialogs and settings are fine, I'll still give this a weak 6. However, if you're looking for a sound detective movie (and not for a 19th century Sherlock Holmes film), you better look someplace else.

The Island (2005)

Dull, unimaginative and missing far to many good opportunities

[4/10 · 10 August 2005]

OK, this one contains spoilers, but if you've seen the trailer, you know the whole movie already anyway.

Much has been said about Michael Bay's talent (and especially the absence of it), and basically "The Island" adds nothing substantially new to this discussion. If you really want to see another action flick of the nice-production-values but braindead-screenplay kind of type, or if you're 13 and have never seen any decent sci-fi film, then go ahead and watch this movie.

Otherwise be warned:

1) The movie makes no attempt to actually show us how the society inside the facility works, nor why it has been designed in such a way. You'll only get very short glimpses of everyday's life, which mostly serve to provide some cool scenes and not to bring us to a deeper understanding. "Logan's Run", a movie which certainly has its flaws, did a much better job here by just showing us examples of everyday's life and different locations. In Michael Bay's film however, the society merely exists to get the action started and is nowhere near being believable.

2) For what seemed to me like an eternity, there are action scenes, we have seen a thousand times in exactly this way. Maybe some people can't get enough of them, but seeing choreography taken from "action films 101" just bores me. Don't get me wrong, I really like action scenes if done properly like in "Wo hu cang long", "The Matrix Reloaded" or hell maybe even "Resident Evil" (bad special effects aside). But having to look at yet another car chase with yet another car explosion and yet another (or two anothers to be precise) hanging on a rope above some abyss sequence is not what I'm willing to pay any money for.

3) The screenplay is flawed, really flawed and this destroys what's left of the illusion of disbelief. Super trained seals just forget to take the gun from somebody they arrest, in the unavoidable who's-the-clone-and-who's-the-original scene they not only shoot the wrong guy needlessly (they could've just distinguished them by asking a simple question like "what kind of drink do you get from a cow?" because the clones are really clueless about the real world), no, nobody even bothers to check if the killed person has a signature on his wrist like every clone does. Oh, and you constantly wonder why characters won't use the technology they obviously have and why such a futuristic high-tech facility is designed so poorly, that people can walk around in areas they're not supposed to be without being noticed, while wearing wristlets that makes them locatable anytime and while even small delicts like coming to close to your friend are detectable. I could go on for hours...

4) It's cheesy. Cheesy like "professional killer suddenly finds his conscience and turns against his employer just 10 minutes before the movie ends".

5) As you probably know the movie is rated PG-13. I've yet to see a good PG-13 rated action film, but they could've at least tried to make it tough and sexy in a PG-13 compatible way. Unfortunately they didn't, so this is far too tame and (despite Scarlett Johansson) absolutely not sexy.

6) The camera is moving and shaking in over 99% of all shots. Using this technique in action scenes wisely may indeed help to create suspense, but shouldn't be the only means. Using it in nearly every action and non-action shot however, is inducing headaches and makes oneself wonder if the camera operators were on drugs.

7) It hurts to see so many great opportunities wasted. This story done right could really make a great movie, asking questions about the value of cloned life versus non-cloned life, showing us how the lead characters adapt to an alien society (in this film they just do out of thin air) or elaborating on how physically adult persons, who have never even heard of love and sex find out about it. Furthermore this movie is far to linear (there were opportunities for some fine plot twists which Michael Bay obviously just ignored) and it's not even a good action film. The society outside the facility is as boring as it can get in science-fiction (it's basically just like today with a few technical gadgets thrown in), and most of the action scenes could've just been taken from S.W.A.T. or some James Bond movie.

Overall you could say that his movie is just dull, so it is pretty much in line with Michael Bay's former work. Unfortunately.

The Sleeping Dictionary (2003)

A nice idea badly executed

[6/10 · 15 January 2004]

SPOILERS AHEAD:

First of all, I really liked the general concept of this film. The idea of a young Englishmen falling in love with a native girl from a British colony surely isn't that original, but it hasn't been overused either.

Furthermore I hoped to get a glimpse of the life in British colonies at that time (especially the social interacting between the British colonial rulers and the native people) and, of course, Jessica Alba.

Well, for those primarily interested in the latter one: Yes, her character has nude scenes, but no, they obviously aren't performed by Jessica Alba. Speaking of that: In my opinion the body double did not even fit Jessica's "size"; they could have done a lot better at this point.

As I stated initially, I really liked this films premise, but the execution comes close to the worst you could have made out of it.

First of all: The movie is fractioned. While this doesn't has to be necessarily bad, each fraction gets it's own little climax, whilst there's nowhere a main climax on sight. Even that could work, if those little climax' would do their job, unfortunately they don't. That's mainly because the film doesn't spend the time to develop them, instead it rushes to get a climax done in order to start another one.

For example: John's "I don't want to have sex unmarried"-dance at the very beginning (lasted maybe 5 minutes and was resolved by pure horniness), their trip to the dying jungle people ("oh look, it's because of the poison, let's tell them and go home"), the matter of John's first departure from Sarawak, his relation to his wife, the attempted murder and death trial afterwards, Henry's relation to Selima, (and so on, and so on). Everything seemed flat, rushed and undeveloped.

For no obvious they made a plot-driven film out of a people-story. That can't work out. The ending concludes this greatly, you virtually could hear the director's thoughts: "Oh, well, we've 2 minutes and some budget left. Let's bring in the bad guy with a gun".

On the pro-side the native/Englishmen relations are done quiet nicely, and not every character is stereotypical; I especially enjoyed the role of Cecil for that matter. The cinematography could've been worse but never reached the potential it doubtlessly had. I'd rank Simon Boswell's score slightly but definitely above average. Speaking of Jessica Alba's performance, well: Her role consists mainly of walking around and looking pretty, she did that without getting injured and if you've seen her in "Idle Hands", that's worth something.

At the end I saw a movie whose creators couldn't fill the (very solid) plot with life. That's particularly sad, since I'd could've been a great film.

Crazy (2000)

How I wasted 90 minutes of my life...

[2/10 · 4 March 2003]

This film is a portrait of the half-spastic teenage boy Benjamin who has to visit a boarding school because of his lousy marks in Math. He didn't make the best experiences in life before and got serious self-esteem issues. After a rough start at his new school, he starts making friends, falls in love with a girl and does some American Pieish teenage stuff.

Beside some comedy elements, the film is told in a very serious way, focussing on Benjamin and his problems.

If you already don't like this story outline, save your time and watch something else. If you do, please be aware of the following:

1) Benjamin is a total loser. Whatever he does, he does it terribly wrong and then he goes for self-pity all the time. For me he wasn't that kind of "charming loser" who you can feel sympathy for and laugh with. Instead he and his behavior really annoyed me and with my own teenage years not so far behind I could barely stand watching.

2) The film hardly tries to be realistic and the story seems to be but from my experience the characters just aren't (except for Janosch maybe). And yes, I know this film is based on an auto-biography written by a 17-year old - but having some experiences with German schools and German youth myself, I don't believe him.

3) Showing the sexual awakening really is an important thing for a film with this subject. But I doubt that teenage boys do an "Ejaculate on the cookie"-contest where everyone has to hit a cookie with his sperm during mass-masturbation in the woods and the loser has to eat the sperm-wet cookie afterwards. Although it kinda amused me in a contemptible way, it's nor funny neither underlining the serious attempts of this film.

4) There's a sub-plot about Benjamin's family and his father betraying his wife - still, I don't know why it's there and where to put it. It just bored me.

Well, I personally hated this film for having the character of Benjamin, being without a message, concept, scheme, whatever and it's failing attempts to be dramatic and serious. However, I can image that some people may find it sensible and touching. If you liked "The Other Sister" you'll probably like this one, too. I hated both.

17-year old boys shouldn't write an autobiography and if they do, it doesn't seem to be the best idea to make a film out of it.

2 out of 10.

A Walk to Remember (2002)

Ambitious but not convincing

[5/10 · 16 February 2003]

The first 2/3 of this movie reminds of "She's All That" (popular guy falls in love with a wallflower) and many scenes would be quite interchangeable.

Instead the last third deals with some really serious things (I don't want to spoil to much here) rather then giving an everybody's happy-ending like "She's all that" does. Anyway - depending on your attitude - you may find this part kitschy (and if you do, you're going to find it *really* kitschy). Other may see it as a demonstration of true love or even interpretate it religiously, however it was definitively to much kitsch for me to like it.

The characters, their development and their interaction weren't believeable to me at all (not the cast's fault, they played solid). In my opinion this film trys to be deep but goes for story development and character's action instead of focussing the characters themselves. That doesn't work out and so I saw a - without doubt ambitious - but in the end only average teen love story, most of the time lightly told and with some serious elements which just doesn't fit in.

If you liked "She's All That" then you'll probably like this one too, if you didn't, save your time and watch something else (concerning love storys "Der Krieger und die Kaiserin" would be a good counterpoint to this film).

5 out of 10.

Soul Survivors (2001)

The story-telling ruins it all...

[3/10 · 15 February 2003]

(May contain minor spoilers)

Sometimes I like movies from the IMDb's bottom 100 and can't understand why they stand there. But in the case of "Soul Survivors" at least I can imagine.

"Soul Survivors" is not a typical trash movie as some might expect. It delievers nice pictures (especially from the club), got a nice score and camera&actors are solid. Even the story isn't bad in general.

What really sucks is the story-telling. After 1/3 of the film the audience most likely believes that Cassie is halluzinating, she's not really hunted and that there's no real danger for her at all. Then these scenes of being hunted reappear multiple times on different locations which is extremely boring if you know that it's not for real and she's not in danger. That's where the audience's identification with the characters gets finally lost.

Also the characters have been developed carelessly and are not really believable. Ok, you may explain that with the "everthing's not real"-argument but - however - it doesn't help to establish a link between the audience and the characters.

So I finally sat there, watching nice pictures and listening to the nice score, not caring what happens next. After the kitschy and unsatisfactory end, I already started forgetting this movie, which should be considered as boring, not bad.

(3 out of 10)

More Ants in the Pants (2002)

Not that bad!

[6/10 · 15 November 2002]

This movie doesn't take itself serious at all and should be compared with "Not Another Teen Movie" instead of the American Pie movies.

Being aware of that, it's much better than NATM. In "Knallharte Jungs" everything imaginable goes wrong, which make this film very predictable on one hand, but on the other the whole "everything's going wrong"-thing is presented in a very strong and graphical way, so I enjoyed just viewing the visualization although I could predict what comes next.

The characters are completely out of reality, but nevertheless the actors filled them with a lot of life.

"Knallharte Jungs" surely isn't on the edge of German filmmaking, but it's worth to see if you like movies from this genre.

6 of 10

Battle Royale (2000)

An average realiziation of a good idea

[7/10 · 22 July 2002]

In general I like the idea of this film and it hasn't been too long since I was a student myself, so I had no problems identifying with the characters.

But unfortunately the full potential of the idea hasn't been realized in the movie.

1) The background of the BR Act itselfs hasn't been revealed clearly enough, for me it seems rather useless for the government to choose a class *randomly* to fight each other to death. Either it's hard to believe that the existence of the BR Act has been a surprise for the students, when (at the beginning of the film) a TV report undoubtable shows what it's all about (and I'd avoid any voluntarily class activities if I only had a clue about the BR act).

2) For a 10 square-km island with such a lot of trees, mountains and hiding places the "players" met to often by random.

3) The "I'm a virgin and want to have sex before I die"-aspect has been ignored (except for one very short scene) in the same way as the "I'm not a virgin but want to have sex before death"-aspect. In a violent environment like this I also expected some more serious raping-attempts (not that I'm a big fan of raping-scenes but I'd increase the "thrill" of this movie).

4) Some elements repeated too oftenly in nearly the same way, especially the "I have a crush on x and want to 'tell her/him'/'protect her/him'" followed by a "oh no, he/her is dead"-cry. That sometimes really bored me.

5) I'd liked to see more of 'The Teacher' (IMO one of the most interesting characters) and maybe his personel.

6) I didn't like the ending, it was just inconsequent. It's a dark film which doesn't deserve such a (relatively) happy one.

Besides (if you're not too sensitive) BR is worth to see and I really liked the very cynically presentation from the organziers (for example the introduction on the island, the 6h gamenews and the score as well). And maybe my criticism only relates to the subtitles which seems to be roughly done (maybe some Japanese native speaker can help out at this point).

6.5 out of 10 (so I voted 7).