Movie Reviews - new films reviewed

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a crippled ex-Marine who is offered an unique chance when his twin brother dies – he is shipped to the moon Pandora where he takes over his brother’s Avatar – a genetically engineered human-Na’vi hybrid body. The Na’vi are the indigenious species of Pandora, 9 feet tall, incredibly strong and athletic – everything a paralyzed from the waist down Marine could wish for. Ex-Marines are on Pandora as the security force of a mining operation searching for the precious Unobtanium, and scientists under the command of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) are running the Avatar-program mainly to try to convince the Na’vi to make room for the miners.
Despite the use of Avatars, the primitive Na’vi who live in perfect harmony with their world dislike and distrust the sky people, and Administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) and his security chief Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) are losing their patience with the scientists’ efforts. During his first mission, Sully gets lost in the jungle, and a young female Na’vi – Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) saves his life after receiving a sign by Eywa, Pandora’s all-embracing world consciousness. Neytiri takes him to her people and Sully learns what it means to be a Na’vi … but time is running out, and Selfridge unleashes his mercenaries. A couple scientists, Sully, a young pilot (Michelle Rodriguez) and the Na’vi – armed with bows and arrows – are standing against a high-tech army.
Avatar has been named Pocahontas in Space already, but it’s more Dances with Wolves in Space – the story is neither very complex nor very original – white man goes native, falls in love with the princess, turns against his own, with first jealous then loyal brother-in-arms and all, but that’s not James Cameron’s point. It’s all about the innovative 3D-technology.
And you can see why Cameron is so obsessed with 3D. It works best in closed spaces and with smaller objects though, unfortunately not so good for the grand vistas like the flying mountains (at least it did not for me). The interior of the space-ship and the command center are just … WOW … in many scenes it’s just like you are in there with the actors, and finally we get to see real 3-dimensional holograms and virtual screens. And when insects flit by or tree-seeds float around, you just want to grab them, and you want to slap out this fire when the sparks are flying around you.
But everything comes with a price (and i’m not talking about the fancy glasses or the € 12,50) – you get amazing 3D, but you are losing some of the crystal-clear image quality and brilliant colors you are used to from modern cinema.
Have i seen the Future of Moviemaking? Yes, maybe, and probably (and hopefully) 3D will be just as common in the future as sound and color is now, but there is still a long way to go (and please, please make it work without the glasses!) before 3D becomes so natural that scenes are no longer arranged for maximum 3D-effect instead of for maximum dramaturgical impact (like in Avatar).
Last but not least kudos to the actors who manage to not get completely steamrolled by the effects, most notably Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana.

Blame it on the Mayas. Because some people think their calender ends in 2012 and believe therefore the world ends in 2012, Roland Emmerich has decided to destroy what’s left of Mother Earth after Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow. All the usual cardboard characters are assembled to live through (or die during) the disaster: The dysfunctional family (John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Liam James), the seemingly lunatic conspiracy theorist who blares out the truth via his pirate radio station (Woody Harrelson) but nobody wants to listen, the filthy rich guy who wants to buy himself out of Armageddon and his gold-digging girlfriend (Zlatko Buric and Beatrice Rosen), heroic and truthful scientists and statesmen and of course selfish politicians who keep the truth under wraps and are willing to kill thousands for their own safety.
But it’s not the characters, the acting or the dialogues (beware!) what Emmerich-fans (and most probably Emmerich himself) are interested in – it’s the special effects and the destruction of landmarks, and this is where you will not be disappointed. It’s the End of the World as we know it, after all, and Emmerich doesn’t pull his punches – Los Angeles goes down, the Yellowstone Caldera blows up, and the rest of the world doesn’t fare much better.
What disappoints are the Arks – they are not half as majestic as you would expect after waiting for a feeled eternity – and after 90 minutes of disaster the destruction orgies start to feel redundant. And after 158 minutes of 2012 your bottom will feel numb and you will wish at least half an hour of teary-cheesy dialogue would have found their way to the floor of the cutting-room (where reason and logic probably also ended up – may they rest in peace).

2012 movie trailer

James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) had been looking forward to a trip to Europe and then the Columbia University in New York after his graduation from college. But sudden financial problems of his parents means no financial support from them – so no trip to Europe, instead James has to find a job to finance his academic education. With no work experience and a comparative literature major his options are limited – the only man willing to give him a job is Bobby (Bill Hader), the manager of local amusement park Adventureland.

Adventureland is a classic coming-of-age story about real people in the real world (well, the real world of 1987), the first job, first love and a big adventure in everyday life. Brilliantly scripted, directed and acted, it’s a nostalgic peek into the life of a couple of adolescents in the 1980s, where there were no mobile phones, no internet, and you didn’t call a bunch of psychologists, the cops and the news because of each bagatelle. Adventureland is a world apart from it’s modern hip counterparts like American Pie or similar gross-out comedies, but just like Pie, it’s an instant classic.

Adventureland movie trailer

TV-Producer Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is the kind of control-freak who runs background-checks on her dates and has a check-list that any potential suitor has to match point for point. Because the viewing rates of her show are dwindling, her boss hires Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler) from local TV show The Ugly Truth. Mike is a man’s man, 100 percent macho, and dishes out in his show what he thinks men really think about and want from women, and what men really think about relationships and romance. It’s hate at first sight, but nonetheless Abby accepts Mike’s advice how to woo her new neighbour who seems to be the perfect man – on the condition that he quits should his tutelage fail.

So far, so typical rom-com – of course you expect them to eventuelly fall in love and end up together. It’s the way that counts, and at least until the final act it’s a pleasure to watch the two leads prancing around each other in a kind of twisted Cyrano de Bergerac- or My Fair Lady-way, Mike not training his apprentice Abby in romance and manners but the opposite. Thanks to it’s bluntness without falling back on fart-gags and toilet-jokes The Ugly Truth is the perfect date-movie for adults who have long waited for a rom-com not produced exclusively for the teenage-market. And did i mention Katherine Heigl looks gorgeous?

The Ugly Truth movie trailer

After a confrontation with bad cop Krotznig (Roland Düringer) Leopold ‘Lemming’ Wallisch (Fritz Karl) quits his job as police officer and works as a private eye. What begins like the usual – the observation of a suspected unfaithful husband – ends with the observed being murdered in the woods and the observer being suspect number one for Krotznig. Though cleared from the accusation quickly, Krotznig rightly suspects Wallisch knows something he didn’t tell the police and is on his tail anytime, anywhere.
Wallisch starts his own investigation of the murder and discovers the victim was a dreaded Latin teacher some 20 years ago who may have been responsible for the suicide of one of his students. Are the “Friends of Brutus”, a secret brotherhood of former students who still suffer from their 20-year-old memories, the killers? And how is the strange dog that follows Wallisch since the murder involved in the case? And does beautiful veterinary Klara (Julia Koschitz) know more than she tells Wallisch?

After the Brenner-films (based on detective stories by Wolf Haas) this is the first movie case of ‘The Lemming’, based on a story by Stefan Slupetzky. Similar to the Brenner-films, the actual case plays second fiddle to the typical viennese settings and bizarre characters. Austrian top cabaret artist Roland Düringer as dirty cop is the movies’ main asset, and fellow comedian Dolores Schmidinger is stealing each scene she is in as eccentric arts teacher (“… also strictly forbidden, of course!”). Compared to them and the attractive Julia Koschitz (and even to dog Castro), our hero Fritz Karl seems rather pale (not to mention in comparison with ‘Brenner’ Josef Hader).
Although not very cinematic, it’s a good first attempt for the ‘Lemming’ and a rewarding look at the ‘other’ Vienna, aloof from Lipizzaner, Mozart and Wiener Walzer.

Der Fall des Lemming movie trailer