“Always make your opponents think you know more than you really know.”
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| My comment: Awesome movie! Kiefer Sutherland and Michael Douglas bounce off each other magnificently and the plot twists and turns and you keep guessing all the time who in the world is the mole (I admit, I guessed wrong twice). The pace of the movie is great, the acting is very good and thanks to retired Secret Service agents who were hired as consultants the action sequences and moves really seem perfect. This brings me to the advice: Watch the extras! The interviews with cast, crew and consultants are priceless and offer an interesting insight into the organization that protects the president. Overall, a great movie. |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Genre: | Thriller |
| Actor(s): | Kiefer Sutherland, Michael Douglas, Eva Longoria, Kim Basinger |
| Rating (Age): | 16+ |
| Links | Amazon.de |
| Rating: max. 5 stars |   |
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| My comment: This movie isn't easy to judge, it's not even easy to summarize. It's quiet, it lacks action sequences or big shoot-outs ... it just follows Will Graham, portrayed by Clive Owen, who has for some reason turned his back on his friends and family and retreated to live in a van in the woods. Only by references we learn that he must be quite a dangerous man. When Will's younger brother, Davy, commits suicide after being raped, Will returns to learn what happened and to take revenge. What is most impressive about the movie is how minimalistic it is. There's no soundtrack to push scenes; they are just carried by the actors and all of them do a very good job. This quietness is especially impressive when we see how Will and his friends try to comprehend that Davy has been raped. The shock and incomprehension are very intense and present a believable scenario - after all, most often movies deal with women being raped. To see how a family reacts when it happens to a male is a change in perspective and for this the movie is already recommended. If you like quiet and slow movies this one is for you. If you can't live without action and deep emotion, skip this one. While it touches on the subject on male rape victims, the characters themselves stay quite shallow and you get neither a back story nor much of a future prospect. |
| Year: | 2003 |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Actor(s): | Clive Owen |
| Rating (Age): | 16+ |
| Links | Amazon.de |
| Rating: max. 5 stars | |
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| My comment: Woah! Awesome movie! Complete surprise! And let's get the bad things out of the way first so we can concentrate on the great stuff. The audio quality is ABYSMAL, at least on the DVD. It starts with the theme song "You know my name", performed by Chris Cornell (the first time a male singer gets to do the opening song, I think). The volume keeps changing throughout the entire song, making you scratch your ears first, then check your audio setup and cables, and just annoys you. Unfortunately, the poor audio quality continuous throughout the entire movie. All of the sudden the volume goes down, especially during action sequences (hey, if I want to mute it, I can do so myself, thanks!), making dialog following those sequences virtually undetectable. Worse even, sometimes you have ambient noise accompanying the scene - singing of birds in the woods or waves of the water. Well, and suddenly all that ambient noise is gone, leaving you only with the audio of the dialogues. What the heck?!? This is absolutely fu**ed up and does tarnish the whole experience. Another, less annoying, aspect is the way the scenes were edited: sometimes you expect a certain camera angle or a certain move, but scenes are intercut in a way that makes you go "Huh? Aren't there some seconds missing?" And that's probably the main reason. I can only imagine that they cut the movie for time and this process left out little scenes that ensured the smooth flow of the movie. At times, it feels like scenes were moved around arbitrarily or left out altogether. Not a very good job by the editing staff. But now, to the good part! Daniel Craig, apart from being i n c r e d i b l y sexy, really nails the performance. You can literally feel the sense of danger that surrounds him, his merciless pursuit of a target and his absolute lack of remorse or emotion when he kills. There's nothing comical about him as in the Bond character portrayed by Pierce Brosnan, who managed to infuse his incarnation with humor and give him a rather light side. The best comparison would be Sean Connery, who had this charming attitude, but at the same time could make your skin tingle when he was all business. Craig's Bond is dead serious - in the literal meaning of the word - a killing machine, barely controlled by his superiors. That doesn't mean he's not capable of feeling emotion. His ego is immense and gets him into trouble numerous times. And, as Vesper rightly notes, he regards women as tools to be used, but not as equals in a professional sense. Seeing the two of them clash and match their wits was fantastic. Finally not just a woman who said "No" to him only to fall for him a minute later ... And, I guess to his very own surprise, Bond finds himself getting emotionally attached to her, risking his assignment and life to save her - resulting in an awesome car chase scene, with Vesper, bound and gagged, suddenly lying on the street and Bond flipping his car about ten times after he just barely avoids running over her. The good part of the movie ends with a cruel torture scene - Craig is stripped naked and Le Chiffre, who needs to access the money Bond has won in their poker game, hits him in places where the pain is supposedly worst for a male. Amazingly enough, Craig was allowed to play an agent in pain - screaming and almost losing his mind (but never quitting). That was actually pretty frightening, since usually the Bond characters are above screaming in pain, but Craig pulls it off magnificently. You totally buy into it and how he loses it when the pain becomes too much. (And he still looks gorgeous ...) The rest of the movie, which holds another (expectable) surprise, feels rather much like a patchwork. All of the sudden Vesper doesn't turn a cold shoulder towards him anymore (even if you consider the developments in the last ten minutes of the movie, the sudden change doesn't feel right), Bond becomes all soft and thoughtful and quits his job. It all feels constructed and artificial, not really belonging to the story. The last scene, of course, sets it right again and we have the Bond back we know and love. All in all: a really great movie, with probably the cruelest but best Bond ever. The last twenty minutes are confusing and pieced together, but other than that it's worth your time. (BTW, for the SG1 fans among us: if I am not mistaken, that's "Baal" who's dealing the cards during the poker game  ) |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Genre: | Action |
| Actor(s): | Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench |
| Rating (Age): | 14+ |
| Links | Amazon.de |
| Rating: max. 5 stars | |
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… well, no, not really. Too bad, though. But after enduring a whole week of temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius (that’s about 90 degrees Fahrenheit) outside and inside of the office it looks like a weather change is about to happen. Finally!
While Jarsto was lucky enough to experience that some days earlier and I prematurely assumed the thunderstorms would hit us the next day, it seems that our turn has come at last! I can already hear the thunder and this time it’s not a heat induced hallucination as my colleagues confirmed that sweet sound. A wave of relief and excitement swept through the entire building … which just shows how much everyone is looking forward to a drastic drop in the temperatures. During the last days it has been increasingly difficult to work properly since the air in the office stopped moving around 11am, and only got hotter. Apart from the disgusting feeling of your arms sticking to the desk because you are sweating, heat does not really enhance thought processes, turning work into frustration because you keep staring at the screen and nothing triggers any activity in your brain.
I hope that it will rain the whole night, since the sound of rain is the best way for me to calm down and drift off to sleep. Another thing Jarsto and I have in common with our favorite Captain (citation needed, as soon as I find it it will be provided).
“You know what I miss most about home? The sound of rain, hitting the roof at night. It always helped me to fall asleep.”
Capt. Sheridan, Babylon 5, »Messages from Earth«
(thanks to Jarsto for pointing me to the correct episode)
(5 out of 5) (5 out of 5)
(4.5 out of 5)
(4 out of 5) (4 out of 5)