Movie Reviews - new films reviewed

Yes, the movie reviews are moving to a brand-new, dedicated domain!
You will find the new reviews at www.moviereviewblog.net from now on.

The proven style and layout will remain (with some changes), as will the regular updates, and all the films already reviewed will be also available at www.moviereviewblog.net!

I just felt that the movie reviews have earned their own domain meanwhile and i hope you will stay with me there!

See you at www.moviereviewblog.net!

Ainoa (Verena Buratti) is an android programmed by genius Dr. Kerensky (Anton Nouri) to control the great atomic war from the future. Dr. Kerensky realizes too late that he will be responsible for the death of five billion people and goes underground so his descendents can survive and correct his mistake. His great-grandson Yuri (Simon Licht) shall fulfill Dr. Kerensky’s “prophecy” - he is the one who shall rescue Ainoa from captivity and change history to avoid the great war and the downfall of mankind.

An epic Austrian science fiction-faerytale? Sounds like a stretch. And without doubt, Ainoa was filmed with more passion and love for the film than money, and it took five years to bring Ainoa to the screen.
Don’t let the trailer fool you into thinking Ainoa is an action-adventure a la Star Wars, even if there are some things that are redolent of the science fiction classic. The Sunfather (Florentin Groll) is more than just “inspired by” Emperor Palpatine in Return Of The Jedi, and watching the film you might feel like the great Sir Alec Guinness, who reportedly had no clue what he was doing, what was going on and what was the meaning of his lines when filming Star Wars. The director, Marco Kalantari, may have noticed his failure to convey the story to the audience, but heavy written exposition at the beginning of the film doesn’t help and you still feel left out when the characters talk about locations and events you just can’t relate to.
On the plus side, Ainoa is beautifully photographed and offers a poetic journey of an android-girl slowly discovering herself, her human side and finally love, and thoughts about destiny and eternal love through time.
While i usually think it’s best to see a movie without knowing too much about it, in this special case i recommend to carefully check out the Ainoa website before seeing the film. It offers a lot of background information to locations, events and characters and will make it a lot easier to enter the world of Ainoa.

Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and his partner Leland “Lee” Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), nicknamed “Fire and Ice” by their colleagues, are assigned to the special task force in charge for solving the murder of Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), a.k.a The Black Daliah. The starlet has been found dissected in a field, her inner organs removed and her mouth sliced open up to her ears, forming a grisly grin.
The friends, especially Lee, get more and more obsessed by the case, and Lee’s girlfriend Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson) feels more and more attracted to Bucky. He shares her tender feelings, but would never cheat on his partner. Instead he throws himself into a sexual relationship with femme fatale Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank), who knew Elizabeth Short, and gets to know her rich, but more than a bit eccentric family. How well did Madeleine who looks and dresses like the Black Dahlia really know Elizabeth?
And what is the connection between Kay Lake’s brutal ex-lover Bobby DeWitt (Richard Brake), Madeleine Linscott, her father Emmet and his shady dealings in building Hollywoodland, and a deadly shootout between Bleichert, Blanchard and some gangsters with the murder of Elizabeth Short?

Feeling confused already? The movie, based on James Ellroy’s novel (in turn loosely based on the real-life and still unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short in Hollywood in the 1940s) weaves multiple story strands into each other, not all of them relevant to the main plot. And even the main story - the murder of the Black Dahlia - is hardly more than a McGuffin. You will feel disappointed when you expect a murder mystery - it’s all about the ’40s in Hollywood, femme fatales (Hilary Swank), good girls (Scarlett Johansson - but is her character really a good girl?) and hard-boiled police detectives and how an unhealthy obsession affects and ultimately threatens to destroy their lives.
It starts with a punch (literally), but from there it goes down - the film focussing on central character and narrator Bucky (Josh Hartnett - who certainly gives his best and according to James Ellroy looks exactly like he imagined the character from his novel, but looks too young, too innocent and not tough enough to carry a film noir. A Russel Crowe in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL he ain’t), which is a problem because he doesn’t really do much.
THE BLACK DAHLIA doesn’t have as much sex and violence as you’d expect from a Brian De Palma movie, and the multi-threaded story will put off a lot of viewers, but when you are ready to just lean back and watch a stylish film noir (and the gorgeous actresses Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank and Mia Kirshner) without trying to constantly figure out what’s going on, you may well enjoy THE BLACK DAHLIA.

Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is married to gorgeous Donna (Kate Beckinsale - she’s absolutely and definitly very), has two cute kids (they are really cute, not annoyingly cute like most kids in movies) and a dog who is in love with a stuffed animal. Michael loves his family, and his family loves him - everything could be perfect. But there is Michael’s job - he is working hard for Ammer (David Hasselhoff) and hopes to get a promotion soon. Immersed in work, Michael loses patience for life’s daily nuisances - traffic jams, fights with Donna, and too many remote controls. When the strange Morty (Christopher Walken) offers him an “universal remote control”, Michael’s problems seem to be solved - he can fast-forward through traffic-jams, put people on pause or turn down the volume, skip fights with his wife or dinner with his parents, watch a female jogger’s breasts bounce in slo-mo and even fast-forward his life to the point where he finally gets his promotion. But when he realizes he’s missing out on life, another feature of the universal remote kicks in - it’s able to learn from it’s user’s behavior and Michael gets fast-forwarded further and further, losing years of his life in a blink. And Morty, who is really the Angel Of Death, won’t take back the remote which has taken over Michael’s life.

You get what you expect from an Adam Sandler-movie - CLICK ain’t shy to fall back on randy dog- or fart-gags, and the gags come fast and plenty and usually hit the mark. But it’s not an all-out laugh-fest. The cherry on the cake is the moving parable of a man who turns into a workaholic, walks through his private life on auto-pilot (quite literally) and realizes too late what’s really important in life, all of which can happen and does happen to too many people and doesn’t require an “universal remote”.
The plot is predictable and hardly original, and so is the message of the movie, but nonetheless CLICK manages to be emotionally engaging. It’s either the story to which you can easily connect, or it’s Adam Sandler himself who makes it work. The supporting actors (Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken, David Hasselhoff, Sean Astin) are cast perfectly and bring their characters to life, but CLICK rests definitly on the shoulders of Adam Sandler - and he stems it easily and with grace.
Laughter and teary eyes guaranteed, miss only if you hate Adam Sandler!

Kate Beckinsale in CLICK:

More images of Kate Beckinsale

Randy Dupree (Owen Wilson) is 36, immature, and after taking a week vacation to attend his best friend’s wedding, he is without a job, without money and without a place to live. So said best friend Carl Peterson (Matt Dillon) and his wife Molly Thompson (Kate Hudson - cute!) let him stay in their living-room “for a couple days”. But Dupree is not very eager to get a new job - his philosophy is he “doesn’t live to work, but works to live”. And while Carl gets more and more commited to his job and has to deal with the hostility of his boss and father-in-law Mr. Thompson (Michael Douglas), Randy floods the bathrooms (both of them), orders pay-TV for Carl and Molly (and himself), invites his friends into their house, changes the message on the answering machine and sets their couch on fire.
But Dupree can be a real charmer when he wants to, and he and Molly get along great while Carl works overtime for Molly’s father and has to deal with Mr. Thompson’s suggestions to change his name to Thompson (or at least to Peterson-Thompson), or getting a vasectomy, and with Mr. Thompson taking over and ruining Carl’s dream project.
And when Carl suspects Dupree to lust after Molly, he freaks out …

It’s Owen Wilson-comedy time, and there are the blocked toilet- and naked arse-gags you would expect, and Owen Wilson does his chaotic-but-likeable stuff, but there is more to You, Me and Dupree than gross humor. Unusual for this type of comedy, there is some real character development going on, and you can even read some meaning into the movie (if you really want to).
But most important is you have a bunch of actors having lots of fun and inviting the audience to do the same.
Will there be wanking gags? Yes. Will it be cheesy? Yes, sometimes. Will it be stupid? Of course! Will you be entertained? Definitly, except when you don’t like Owen Wilson - or you are out of touch with your “-ness”!