TIGAER-DESIGN.COM_.v5 – Digital Art by Christian Hecker

First of all I must say that I’m obviously a big big Scifi fan and am open for pretty much everything in that field. Therefore I had some expectations for this one. Anyway… the first big question that came up for me was the following: What does it say about our species if we manage to have more effecient weaponry than an alien race, that mastered intergalactic travel and is trying to conquer our planet? It pretty much says that we’re kinda f***ed up as a species. That’s just my humble opinion. But lets talk about this movie now. Beware! Spoilers sprinkled in here and there.

When I saw the trailers for this film I was excited. It looked like something I kind of wished ‘Independence Day’ would have been back in 1996. An alien invasion seen from the eyes of people who are right in the middle of it. Following them through this mess and finding a solution to it all. This movie is that. But does it have the guts to go all the way down to show a realistic picture of an alien invasion?

Well, partly it succeeds. The first 15 minutes of the film really manage to do it all right. The build up, up until the point where the actual invasion starts, is very well done. The story stays close on the military side of things. We don’t see any civilian reaction to what’s happening. Missed a civilian point of view a bit but you can’t have everything in it if you want to stay focussed. There are a lot of ‘WTF’ faces when you see these soldiers watch on tv what’s going on on the beaches, when the invasion starts to roll. That’s suspense right there. They manage to capture a feeling that must be comparable to what you have when you know you go into combat. The only difference in that movie is that our soldiers have no idea what they’re up against. So we are with them. We also want to know what’s going on. The movie manages us to side the guys in the film and we’re ready to go out there with them.

Then we’re out there. And I don’t want to pray down the story of the movie here since it’s really pretty simple. We follow that group of marines on their tour of duty to rescue a few civilians from a abandoned police station. Their mission, of course, is to rescue these people and bring them into safety. On their way to that station they make first contacts with the aliens. The action kicks in and delivers a good job throughout the movie. A lot of bang and boom and shazaam. As well as shaky cam like there is no tomorrow. That’s a little annoying at certain points. Later on we follow our marines fighting some more heavy stuff from the aliens. In the end then our hand full marines left, bring down a command center. Hooahh!!! Well done marines! If this sounds like an JOIN THE FORCES commercial then yes, it so does.

The movie tries to bring us a little closer to all the guys in the beginning. That are like 10 minutes they invested to explain like 7 or 8 characters. The only guy we are kind of able to build a connection with it Aaron Eckharts character. Who does a fine job in this movie playing a worn out marine with quite a history. It’s not his best but he’s making the best of what he got. All the other people are only there to get wasted. You instantly know it when you see them. But you don’t know who gets shot and when. When it happens you only think, “alright, how many are left now again?”.

This movie is always compared to ‘Black Hawk Down’. And you can see the signature/similarities of that storyline written all over it. Only the insurgents are replaced by alien creatures. So the movie falls apart when it actually should get rolling. And you have still an hour and a half to go. There are quite a few things bothering me. One thing is that our marines are trained soldiers, right? How can it be that they’re constantly getting ambushed from higher ground? The aliens are always on top of them, shooting down. Of course our marines therefore have a bad tactical position and start to lose people. That happens to them more than once. Why? I mean… send some people up there to clear the damn roofs of the houses dammit! And why doesn’t that squad have a sniper? To clear the roofs for example! These guys looked so disorganized. It left a bad taste in my brain.

Another thing is that the movie is FAR too clean. I guess they wanted to make it mass compatible to get the most possible audience to see it. But you know what? Shame on you! You ruined the most significant parts a movie like this should have! Blood! Violence! Gore! Dirt! All you get to see here are a few scratches! It really takes you out of the movie. I mean… there is an invasion going on. Creatures roam the streets, making no difference, shooting everything that moves. I just saw the movie and cannot remember seeing a civilian body lying on one of the streets there. It’s ridiculous. The film loses so much credibility because of that. It needs to be dirty and violent and bloody! The whole scenario screams for that.

Lets talk about the aliens. First of all, from an artistic point of view, I liked the look of them. The CG works really good and I don’t have a single complaint about that. But CG nowadays isn’t a big problem anymore. On a large scale production like this one… CG is the last thing to worry about. What you have to worry about is if, even the most awesome CG, has no character to it. The creatures in this movie so damn don’t have anything. They’re literally just there to give targets to shoot for our marines. When the movie starts we don’t know sh*t about them. And we sure enough don’t know more about them when the credits roll. Hol-Eee-Crap. Why is it so hard to give CG stuff character these days? Just write in some scenes where they slaughter some civilians on the streets! That would make them evil! (Wait, that would mean violence, gore and blood…) We would hate them! But no! All we see them do is mindlessly blowing up stuff. Of course there is that helicopter scene… but hey… that helicopter is a military vehicle and valid target. Can’t blame them for removing that one can’t we? It’s almost as if we are making all the VFX more and more astounding but totally forget to give that stuff a reason, a character. And no I don’t blame the CG/VFX folks for this. They just do what they’re told to do. It’s just miserable writing. Missed opportunites all over the place.

Back to the things I started the review with. It’s actually not a too far fetched scenario when you’re thinking about it. And I don’t think the writers had that in mind when they wrote that story. Just the idea of an alien race who mastered traveling through space doesn’t make them the war-masters of the universe. One of my favourite books of all time, “The Forever War”, already had something similar going. So the scenario is not soooo superbly unrealistic. Nonetheless you would expect these aliens to be somewhat deadly.

My, that are a lot of bad things listed there! However, the movie is still entertaining. It surely has its moments. Even if you don’t give a lot for the characters or the aliens, you still want to know where it all leads to. The finale is totally stupid but still fun to watch. Aaron Eckhart’s character delivers a small foundation of a character and helps us to stay focussed. Even if it all scrolls down the usual military cliche moments we know from so many other war movies. I can’t say how much of a rewatchability is in this one but for a first watch it is a nice ride. But definitely nothing ground breaking too.

6.5/10

Battle: Los Angeles on IMDb

If you’re a little bit interested in movies then you know this one caused quite a buzz. So let’s see if it was justified or not.

The movie’s setting is London, in one of the not so privileged parts of the city. Generally about a Block where a small gang of kids is having some fun doing not so legal activities. Suddenly something not so predictable happens and the boys face some not so easy to handle circumstances. It’s aliens who they have to fight to protect themselves, their friends and block.

I had no big expectations for the movie. My greatest fear was that I would not be able to like the characters. Which are these questionable youngsters. And in the beginning that fear was very prominent. What happens is that these youngsters catch an alien, hunt it and ultimately kill it. Without thinking one minute about it. And I would say that’s an accurate picture of today’s youth. Especially for those who live in not so good neighborhoods. It’s not their fault that they became who they are. It’s just their environment that made them go that direction.

The kids bring the captured creature to a friend to hide it. Making plans how to get the most cash from the find. A look out of the window then reveals that a lot more creatures arrived. And these are a lot bigger and a lot more dangerous. Seeing that, our kids go back to their block to find ways to hide and defend themselves better. And there we learn a little more about the characters. That’s when we manage to build a connection to them. It took a while.

It is definitely no kids movie. It’s very bloody and violent. And I would say that it was a good choice to do the movie that way. Ultimately it’s about ghetto kids fighting aliens. It has to be violent. But it also isn’t over the top violent. It all plays in reasonable areas. A positive thing.

The movie also has a critical undertone that hints what’s wrong nowadays. There is this Nurse character who gets ask, from one of the kids, what her boyfriend does and why he is not there to protect her. She replies he’s in africa working for the red cross, saving children there. And the kid says how good that is and why never someone tries to take care of kids like him. Maybe if someone would… all the crap like drugs, criminality… you name it, that happens to these kids wouldn’t have happened. Which is quite a valid point. Not saying that helping people in africa is a bad thing. Not at all. I liked that since it really IS a valid question. Not a pleasant one.

In the end they find out what the aliens are after and forge a plan to get rid of them. What brings me to the action scenes. There are some really cool and well shot scenes. Nothing too fancy though. But good enough to keep you in the game throughout the movie. Every now and then there is some comedy sprinkled in, what makes the movie a not too serious one. Which is good. Technically the camera work and lighting in the movie work really nice. What failed a little bit was the try to give the whole block environment character. I think the movie would have worked a little better if they had worked out the whole environment a little better. So not only the aliens would be a threat but also the building. The Nakatomi building in ‘Die Hard’ is a good example for that.

So my conclusion is that the movie is indeed some good entertainment. The buzz for it was not undeserved since some unexpected things happen in the movie and it manages it to keep you interested in what happens to the characters. That gives the movie good consistency and a good portion of believability. It goes its way without thinking too much. It is what it wants to be.

7.3/10

Attack The Block on IMDb

I must honestly say that I tried to avoid this movie as long as possible. Hearing and reading no good things about it. Yes yes, better make an own opinion. I know I know. Well, now a friend got the Bluray of it and forced me to watch it! Yes!

Storywise it’s about a girl who gets delivered into a mental hospital for women of sorts. There she falls into a fantasy world. (I guess to suppress the depression of being, falsely accused, delivered into a place like this) Now in that fantasy world she AGAIN manages to find a way to fall into another sphere of fantasy world. (She does it Inception style I think) There she has to find different artefacts to get out of this prison like mental hospital place. So she and 4 other inmates fight through 4 setups, worlds… imaginary places – I don’t know… to get these artefacts. All this happens in a wonderfully shot modern fashion. Zack Snyder style.

We know that from 300, Watchmen (which I love), Legend of the Guardians. He IS very good with his photography and style. No doubt about that. I’m also a big fan of his ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ version. That’s a very down to earth movie compared to his latest CGI heavy products. I would love to see more of that to be honest. Zack Snyder however is a master in putting together CG and live action footage. Sucker Punch is a perfect example for this. So visually it is ‘something’… but!

You would think that the CG and all the fantasy that did go into the creative part of the movie would leave an impression. Especially for digital artists like me. But I must say that all the visual amazingness in this movie is so damn forgettable. Yeah, absolutely! It looks cool for the time it appears on screen. But afterwards? Does it hold up to scenes like the battle for Minas Tirith in Return Of The King? No! Does it hold up to the last 10 minutes of ‘Sunshine’? No way! Or any scene in Jurassic Park with the T-Rex! No. And I could go on forever… – but do you want to know why this CGI monster called ‘Sucker Punch’ doesn’t work? Why these, actually awesome, scenes are so forgettable? Well…

You need well built characters! Characters you actually care for! Characters in real danger! So the main reason why it all doesn’t really work is missing consistency. There is absolutely no gravity in these dream fight scenes. By gravity I mean a connection… or reason. It is as if pretty much everything after minute 15 is a totally random set of happenings. It’s a 2 hour movie. The characters have absolutely no impact. They’re just there and do something. You don’t really care for them. Because they were never really introducted. So there is almost no gravity to these characters. Just some sexy girls kicking ass. (I admit that doesn’t actually sound bad) But it’s boring after an hour. And it’s another one left to sit through. How do they always say… CG should always be used to complement the story. Now this movie feels as if the story was written for the CG. And the story falls apart quickly.

One last thing. I never saw that ‘Baby Doll’ girl dance. And it’s obviously one of the key elements of the story. That dance is supposed to be enchanting, sexy and somehow the ultimate thing and really amazing. At least from the looks of the people seeing it in the movie. BUT WE NEVER SEE IT OURSELVES. WHY?

Ultimately it is a fun movie for a first time watch. It has some cool action and the CG, for the most part, looks really well executed. If you don’t care for things to make sense… then that’s the movie for you.

6.3/10

Sucker Punch on IMDb

Of course I had to see this highly praised movie sooner or later. Now it happened much sooner than I thought. Why? Well, I had absolutely no interest in this movie. Seriously. Everything I saw from it was boring with a little funny sprinkled in. So did the movie manage to change my opinion? Lets find out.

I think we can all agree that the movie can’t (and I mean cannot!) be perfectly historical accurate. So I will not go into details there. If you’ve seen the trailer or anything about the film then you surely know it’s about King George VI/Prince Albert (played by Colin Firth) and his problem with stammering. Especially in the first half of the movie we see Prince Albert kind of broken. Without any self-esteem. Fighting with his speaking problems. We also see his loving wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) trying to help him. Bonham Carter plays this part very nicely. You can see her character suffer when her husband again and again fails to deliver a fluid speech. She desperately wants to help him. So it comes that Elizabeth reaches out to a pretty unconventional Doctor. He is specialized in helping people with stutter/stammer problems… only his methods are a little different. Prince Albert, even with all his problems, is a proud man. He knows where he’s coming from and who his family is. So the first sessions between him and Doctor Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush) are difficult. Lionel really wants to help him but Prince Albert is stubborn, has built a wall around himself. (That really reminded me of myself. I’m a lot like that… more often than I want to.) The Doctor doesn’t give up and eventually makes the Prince understand what’s happening. All that leads into progressively better free speaking from Prince Albert.

In the meanwhile a lot of family things happen with the Royals and suddenly the Prince is King George VI. Albert’s brother originally was intended to take over that position but certain circumstances made him step back. Albert decides to take that burden on himself. Not knowing how to do it when he’s not even able to deliver a fluid speech. Since all that happens in the 1930s a new invention started to spread like a virus. And that was radio! So to keep in touch with the ordinary people there had to be a loooot of speeches! Albert knows that and is really desperate.

Soon the Doctor and him have break throughs, understand a lot of things that happened in the childhood of Albert and eventually become friends. They manage to work it all that out which leads Albert to mastering his fear. Later Albert (now King George VI) has to hold the speech to prepare his people for war against germany. There is a nice scene where they introduce Hitler and show how amazing he is with working with his voice and doing great speeches. And there we have Albert who has all these problems with fluid speaking. In that moment he understands the importance of being a confident speaker and knows what to do. This pretty much rounds up the plot.

I certainly don’t regret seeing this film earlier than I intended. It is a very lovely movie with some very lovely characters and situations. All the actors deliver great performances. The film concentrates pretty much on the relationship between Patient and Doctor. How their relationship builds momentum and leads into friendship. In the end both are thankful having each other.

From a technical point of view it’s all solid work. Camera… composition… music… all fine. Of course it’s no VFX movie but the scenes where I thought quite some background VFX were needed looked fine.

Ultimately the movie, I originally thought must be boring, turned out to be very entertaining. It’s certainly no movie for me to watch over and over again. But it’ll stay in memory for sure.

8.0/10

The King’s Speech on IMDb

I didn’t follow that production and completely missed it until they released a first trailer. What I saw in that trailer was good. Not overwhelming but good. What I immedieately realized from the trailer was that the Apes are going to be full CG. And they looked amazing.

If we want to talk about this movie we have to go back to the original movie(s) (definitely not the one made by Tim Burton in 2001). The original ‘Apes’ movies were made in the 60s/70s. I always thought they were not superbly good but it’s actually the idea behind the movies that fascinated me. The original series consists of 5 movies. All of them tell you the story of how the Ape society works and how the Apes came to power.

The first two movies concentrate on showing the Ape society. Humans kind of degraded to neanderthals. Apes run the show, hunting humans for slavery and scientific experiments. Our Hero in part one is Charlton Heston. I dig him in this role. He completely fills it out to the last inch. His character is an Astronaut who accidently lands on that Planet and a timer on his Ship tells him he’s a few thousand years in the future. Soon enough he explores this world and very soon discovers the Apes and what they are. The clue of the movie was that in the end we realize that all the time we weren’t on a different Planet. We were on Earth!!! We see the Statue of Liberty and Heston curses mankind. Epic scene and one of the most dramatic in cinema history. Now the DVD of that movie completely gives away that moment by showing that scene on its cover. Ridicululous! First time watchers will now immediately know what’s going on. A shame!

In the second movie Earth blows up but three Apes managed to get on board of the stranded Spaceship and flee. That leads to movie number 3 and a not very convincing time travel plot. One of the excaped Apes is a pregnant woman. When she gives birth to that child it all leads to movie 4 where we see how the Apes start to riot and take over the Planet. Part 5 then isn’t worth to mention from my point of view.

The new movie is a different take on the fourth movie of the original series.First of all there is no time travel stuff involved. The Apes get injected with some experimental stuff that is planned to cure Alzheimer and gives them hyperintelligence. The new movie is very trimmed down to be as realistic as possible.

The movie starts with a sequence where Apes get hunted in a jungle and stuffed in boxes to be shipped to San Francisco. There is a evil pharmacy company who needs the poor creatures for testing. One thing they’re developing is a medication that shall heal Alzheimer. James Franco plays our Hero scientist and the leader of the Lab. He soon finds his first breakthrough and tests it on the Apes. Unfortunately a few things go wrong and the Alzheimer program gets nearly canceled. All the Apes get killed. Except one. Apparently one of the captured Ape ladies had a baby. Our Hero secretly takes that baby home. Soon he realizes that there is something wrong with it. It’s amazingly intelligent and gets more intelligent every day. So our Hero uses this chance to study it. Apparently the Ape mom, who got treated with the Alzheimer stuff, transferred the effects of it to her son. Caesar (the same name the Hero Ape in part 4 of the original series had) soon learns very fast and becomes aware of his surroundings and environment. We will realize that Caesar incorporates more human characteristics than most of the humans in the movie. Due to certain circumstances Caesar has to be removed into a special institution that keeps all sorts of Apes contained. Of course they treat the Apes not exactly friendly there. That’s also the first time Caesar meets his kind. He also realizes that they’re different since they were not treated with this chemical Anti-Alzheimer substance. There it’s very fascinating to see how Caesar adapts to circumstances and how he slowly forms a plan. He’s getting some of the Alzheimer stuff and makes the other Apes intelligent too. Early in the movie our scientist Hero brings Caesar into the Redwood forest and Caesar immediately falls in love with that place. It’s a giant forest with massive trees. Of course Caesar loves it. Now his plan is to take his new gang of Ape friends to that place. But they have quite a way to go.

If we want to talk about acting in this movie I can’t exactly talk about the human figures in it. These characters are kind of flat. The real stars in this movie are the Apes. First of all it’s important to say that all of the Apes were CG. Motion Capturing techniques and the great talent of an Andy Serkis (King Kong & Gollum) made Caesar work so good in this movie. It’s crazy how amazingly well integrated these Apes are into the real footage. Caesar pretty much steals the show of every single actor in that film. The amount of facial expression… all the little details that expressions are made of… are so well done! Of course there are certain scenes were it’s inevitable to see that it is CG. Nonetheless there are very many close up scenes of the faces of the Apes. And they looked so damn realistic. That’s an amazing achievement. From my point of view this movie, CG wise, ranks right along with District 9, Avatar and 2012. When it comes to the human actors then the only character worth mentioning would be John Lithgow. He plays the father of our scientist Hero and is the reason why our Hero is actually trying to find a cure for Alzheimer. James Franco falls really flat for me. What’s nice was to see Tyler Labine in this movie. He’s not playing funny here, no. He’s a serious character and he plays it very believable. Hope to see him in more productions soon.

So what’s the result here? Well, a very good and entertaining movie! Even if it falls into line with the ‘Summer Movies’ it still is probably one of the better and more intelligent ones this year. It’s no fireworks festival and the plot makes sense. Some good writing and amazing CG work. I personally hope they don’t start a series now. This movie should be left alone.

Go see it!

7.9/10

Rise of the Planet of the Apes on IMDb

This was a movie I really waited for to see. Now I finally made it into the theatre. The movie is widely understood as a throwback to the good old 80s kids, adventure movies. Much like ET, Explorers, Stand By Me and Goonies. These 80s movies have something special in them that make the watching experience timeless somehow. These movies will always work. They got lovely stories, a lot of heart, nice character development and, of course, some great kids actors. They’re just fun to watch. Perfect popcorn entertainment.

With Super 8 JJ Abrams tries to bring back the atmosphere and heart of these classics into our times and to a new generation of movie audience. And yes, the movie definitely got all the right ingredients. Does it use these ingredients right? Well… most of the time it does.

First of all We have the mandatory group of friends facing summer holidays and making plans for that summer. We have that mandatory kid who is having family problems and recently suffered a great loss. We have the freaky kid who is always trouble. We have the whiney kid. We have a girl who is a love interest for our main kid. Etc etc etc. So yeah… I could go on forever but as you can already see the ingredients are there. The script accompanies perfectly well too. The kids go through some amazing events and ultimately are the key to solving all problems.

The story is actually pretty simple. The kids want to take part in an amateur film contest and plan to do a zombie movie. They take it all really serious and they all want to do their part and their best to make it good. Now that one night they venture out to the local train station to film a part of their movie, when suddenly a train comes by. Out of nowhere a car runs onto the train tracks and the collision makes the full speed going train derail. That scene is done pretty good. VFX work nice there. Of course it’s all a little over the top with waggons flying around and so on. But hey, that’s not a complaint. It’s an intense scene and our heroes make it through. And their camera captured it all. What the camera also captures is that something made its way out of one of the waggons. The kids notice that it’s an Air Force train, grab their equipment and rush the hell away from there. Military is already coming. Of course the kids send the tape into development as soon as possible. In the meanwhile a lot of weird things start to happen in and around the town. And we follow the happenings along with the kids. Which is, of course, fun to watch.

As good as the movie celebrates the old 80s kids movies it also got a few down sides. I personally found the ending part a little flat. By that I don’t mean the actual departure scene of the creature. That was beautifully done and rememberes a lot on E.T. and Encounters (of the third kind). I, for example, don’t exactly understand why the creature captures the people. Ok it propably doesn’t want them to tell anyone where they saw it. But then it could have killed them easily. But why is it capturing them? And why exactly did the animals run away? Maybe I missed that part.

Ultimately it’s a rare movie to see these days and I think JJ Abrams succeeded in bringing back the old days feeling of such summer movies. But JJ please… reduce the lens flare craze in your recent movies. It is a little too much. Otherwise it’s a wonderful summer movie with some nice characters and a solid story. I had a fun time and quite a few laughs.

7.8/10

SUPER 8 on IMDb

Now there was quite a buzz for this movie and I had to see it sooner or later. Sooner it was then. I had no big expectations to be honest and got into it really open minded.

The story is basically about this ballet dancer lady who is working like a maniac for that one big chance that would make her the star. The movie does an amazing job in showing how obsessed this young woman is in getting somewhere with her art. She’s full of doubt though. All that inner conflict is perfectly shown by the amazing acting performance of Natalie Portman. All the hard work pays off and she’s getting her breakthrough chance. That is when the ‘swan’ thing comes into play. In order to get her job done she has to play two characters in the show. The white and the black swan. These two characters demand so much expertise and training that slowly but surely the pressure on Natalie Portmans character adds up. Her mind starts to play tricks with her and the movie shows that nicely. It all comes together in the premiere of the show.

No doubt it’s a very special movie and I cannot name any other movie that is similar. Granted I’m no specialist in ballet movies. I had a few problems though. For a long time the movie has a very sexual oriented take which I thought was a little heavy. In order to play the black swan role in the show our main character has to let herself go. And I get the reference that sexual things kind of require that too. But I thought the emphasize on that theme was a little too much on that. Natalie Portman fans would surely disagree on that I guess. To balance that out they also integrated other things and methods of letting yourself go. That surely helped the movie and made it more believable. There are other things that can be interpreted differently by every individual so I will skip that. Another small thing I didn’t really like was the transformation of our character to be able to be/to play a black swan. That happened a bit too fast for my taste.

I do myself hard describing this movie since I think everyone will see it differently than I did. So all I can do here is to recommend this movie to everyone who wants to see a good movie. And it IS a good one. It is scary, it is interesting, it got great characters… it is a good one.

And by the way… biggest respect to all the ballet dancers out there. I would easily break all my bones even trying to attempt movements/dancing like they do. Especially these things are shot very very well in the movie. The camera in general is very good. It’s very natural and grounded work.

Check this movie out. It’s worth it.

7.9/10

Black Swan on IMDb

Daybreakers delivers a nice new take on all the current vampire hype by showing us what would happen if normal human beings were replaced by a vampire society. A society that, of course, needs blood to survive. The story starts roughly ten years after an epedemic sort of turned the majority of earths population into vampire like creatures. These vampires lead a pretty normal life with the exception that it’s not at day time… it’s at night. The movie has some nice takes on that. There is, of course, a military that hunts down the last remaining humans to put them into some sort of blood factory. That concept does not work forever and the movie places its story in that time period. The blood savings run out and the vampires out of time to find a replacement.

Our main character, played by Ethan Hawke, is one of the scientists who is trying to find a replacment for the real blood the vampires need. But all the testing so far always led to disastrous results. A coincidence makes our main guy find contact to one of the last human resistance groups. Soon he’s invited to help that group. These people have found out how to revert the, once human, vampires back into their human state. They just need a scientist who can sort of reverse engineer what happened to another main character, played by Willem Dafoe. He accidently found the cure to the vampire plague but doesn’t know what exactly happened. Soon they get all the puzzle pieces together and manage to find out what exact process is needed to transform the vampires back into human beings. Once that’s done they try to bring the cure to the people… that’s where the hassle begins. Because the guy who runs the blood factory, played by Sam Neill, doesn’t want to be cured. And he doesn’t want the society to be cured. Simple bad guy plot there.

The movie plays great with the concept of showing a world much like ours… only ran by a vampire species. The first 10 minutes of the movie are nicely used to set up that world. Whenever the movie shows stuff from the cities and normal day in day out things it gets really interesting. Unfortunately there aren’t too many of these moments. There are also some inconsistencies. One thing I noticed right at the beginning of the movie was that the vampires aren’t visible in mirrors (of course not!) but then you can see them in television? Don’t cameras work with mirrors too? Sorta? A little weird.

The positive thing were the ideas they played with. There is a nice car chase sequence happening… at day. The vampire car windows are, of course, shielded and the car driven via camera. Now in that chase the bad guys shoot the windows of the hero car and the resulting light beams coming through the holes are kind of deadly to our hero. Now it’s cool to see what they’re doing with that. I find they could have done a little more with that idea in that chase sequence but what we see is a good enough execution of the scene. Another thing worth to mention is the finale where it really celebrates some gore moments. A sea of blood! I’m not sure if that’s a statement to the current state of our own society a bit or if they just wanted to have some fun with red fluids.

Ultimately the movie is a nice and different take on all the subject matter of vampires and stuff. The actors did a good enough job for that kind of film and were fun to watch. The evil Sam Neill was cool to see since he did a nice job being evil in Event Horizon too. The VFX did their job good enough. Camera work was alright but nothing too special. The Make-Up work was good… especially for that man-bat kinda creature.

6.7/10

Daybreakers on IMDb

All two seasons of Rome found their way into german television recently and I had the chance to watch it. Had it on my radar for a while but never had a chance to get my hands on it. Now I finally managed to see it and it was worth the waiting.

Now after some research I found out that the series is pretty much the historical most accurate version of the old rome and all the happenings regarding that particular time period. Pretty much all the main characters in the production really existed. So they really invested some time into the process of making it all look and feel as authentic as possible. Of course you have to bend the truth a bit to create a nice storyline. So it comes that the death of Cleopatra isn’t how she really died. But that’s fine with me. It’s still a very powerful scene when it comes to that point.

Due to the fact that the production really tried to be authentic, it was one of the most expensive tv productions at the time (2005). You can really see the production value from frame one to the very last frame of the last episode. Camera, VFX and sound work great.

One of the key elements that really kept me watching the series was the friendship between Lucious Vorenus and Titus Pullo. How that friendship came together and evolved through the episodes. Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson really played their characters well. There was never a second you could think they did not take their part serious. Especially Lucious Vorenus is a character that sort of stumbles up the ladder and becomes someone in rome. You can see his pain and anger when things start to fall apart. Then you have the Titus Pullo character who is also stumbling through life and not up the ladder. Still these two manage to make their way and deliver a nice base for the viewer. Through the eyes of these two characters we get a view from the normal people’s perspective in the rome of the past. Then there are the higher hierarchy people like Caesar and the senate. A lot of intrigues going on. Endless battles for power. That will ultimately lead to a big clash between Mark Antony and Gaius Octavian Caesar. We also see how decisions of the upper class affected the lower class people in rome. The series manages to deliver a nice picture of how connected the characters/classes are with each other. It also manages to show how important belief and religion was to the people.

So ultimately all the actors did a nice job. I still want to mention a few. James Purefoy for example, who delivers a really awesome job with his Mark Antony character. There is no second where you don’t see the passion of a strong leader and great soldier when you look into this characters face. Loved waching this character. Especially at the end of season two. Polly Walker who plays the mother of Gaius octavian Caesar. She’s really sexy there and also pretty much the word ‘intrigue’ herself. You soon learn to hate that character because of the ruthless evilness she spreads. Nonetheless it’s a character that undergoes some changes too. Especially in season two. In the last minutes of the last episode, when Octavian becomes the legit Caesar, she brings a line and suddenly I felt “yeah! beat them!”. The whole series you only have that bad image of her, and you very soon learn to hate her, but in the final minutes they managed to made me stand on her side. I found that really interesting. Kevin Mckidd and Ray Stevenson, as previously mentioned, did a fabulous job too. Rarely saw a friendship portrayed this well. Thanks to good writing there. Marcus Junius Brutus played by Tobias Menzies was also a nice character to watch. His inner struggles and how he finds strength again but is still losing his battles. Just great acting through the bench.

So yeah… what else than a straight recommendation to everyone who is interested in that historic time period.

9/10

Rome on IMDb

I just finished watching this one. I had it on my mental list for quite some time and finally had a chance to fully watch this one. Whenever i saw pictures from that film i thought to myself “well, I don’t know if that’s something for my taste”. Now I think “why the hell didn’t you watch this one earlier!?”. This movie belongs into the Sci-Fi classic league, no doubt. It’s one of these movies that were ahead of its time if you ask me. Granted… it’s not the most beautifully shot movie. It got no amazing VFX. The acting is… good but not great. Except for James Caan who really nails his character performance very good.

Storywise we’re in the future. The planet is run by several Corporations. These Corps have control about everything. And by everything I literally mean everything. They practically run your life for you by telling you what you’re allowed to do and what not. Sounds like our society? Yes, kinda. Now our hero is that athlete who plays for the city of Houston in that Rollerball league. Rollerball is a fairly brutal game where injuries are not a rare thing. Players of the game can even die on the playground. A league that spans the whole world. James Caan’s character is pretty much the super hero of that league. A Michael Jordan kind of athlete. He dominates the playground. In fact… he’s so good in his game and gained such a high popularity that the heads of the Corps start to think that he might become a threat to them. So the ‘higher ups’ decide to get rid of him. First they approach him the nice way. But our hero refuses to retire. But the Corps don’t stop approaching him. Soon enough our hero understands that something is going on. He cannot point his finger on it, but he’s willing to find out why the Corps are so desperate to get him out of the way. Since our hero isn’t willing to quit playing, the rules of the game become harder and in the end even deadly. Just because of him refusing retiring. They really want to get rid of him. No matter what. While we are following our hero on his way to understand the what’s and why’s he always finds dead ends. But he already decided that his end will only happen under his own personal conditions.

The world shown in this movie is really sad to me. The game (Rollerball) is nothing else than food for the mind and tranquilizer for the masses. To keep their minds and thoughts occupied. Don’t, under no circumstances, let it happen that the people start to think on their own. Again similarities to our society? Just look into today’s tv landscape or even cinema. (I could start a massive rant about media stupidity here and it’s hard to hold it back… but I will, for now. =D) I often enough have the impression that a lot of stuff that’s told to us in news or stupid productions like “worlds next top, probably underaged and commercially abused, model” are just there to keep our minds busy or to direct our thoughts into perspectives where they can’t see what’s really going on in the world at that time. (Oh on the verge of a rant here, careful!) So yes, the movie was ahead of its time. No doubt.

James Caan pretty much carries the movie alone. He plays his character very believable and I very soon started to root for him. Caan really plays his role as if he’s a football player. And Caan has experience in that field since he was a football player when he was younger. You get the impression that the character isn’t necessarily the smartest egg in the world… but isn’t a dumb one either. He comes to the right conclusions that soon lead him to believe that something is wrong. That the Corps are messing with his life.

The movie is shot on some nice locations. I even recognized that one scene was in front of the BMW building in Munich. They also seemed to have shot a few scenes in the Olympic park there. Which I though were excellent choices for that movie. The camera work in general wasn’t bad and in the action game scenes it all looked pretty much uptodate. Only thing I missed a little bit was the speed of the game. otherwise it got enough fast cuts and captured the action pretty good. Also, when the movie was released in 1975 there was also a buzz about how brutal and violent the game scenes were. And yes. I agree. I can see why it was an argument at the time. Compared to the violence you see in todays average action movie productions it’s really nothing worth to mention but… Rollerball needed these violent scenes to get its point accross. And it was a good choice of the creators staying on that path. Otherwise the movie would have lost its message and depth.

Ultimately I liked the way the movie portrayed its world and Jame Caan’s performance. Given the fact that the movie was made 1975 it’s remarkable how close we have come to the soviety in the movie. Maybe my interpretation is a little too heavy but hell… it’s just the truth. So many of these old Sci-Fi classics start to come together nowadays. Lots of similarities. It’s a thought provoking movie and that’s what Sci-Fi always should be.

7.5/10 from me.

Rollerball on IMDb