In Their Skin

The Hughes, a couple that has recently lost a child, are heading to their cottage with their young son to - presumably - find some sort of normalcy again.

The very next morning they get woken by a strange couple and their son that claim to be helpful neighbors that wanted to bring them some firewood as a welcome gift. The are so obviously loonies that everyone in their right mind would have hopped back into the car and gotten the hell away from there. The Hughes, however, ever the nice family, have them over for a very uncomfortable dinner instead.

As soon as the weirdos are asked to leave, the family dog gets shot dead, the car tires are slashed and the neighbors come back armed and very, very dangerous. The terrorize the Hughes and make it clear to them that they came to take over their life.

Mary and Mark Hughes are supposed to be almost the same age (story has it she is one year his senior) but Josh Close, writer and main protagonist is about 10 years younger than Selma Blair and had to grow a beard to at least look somewhere in the vicinity of the age he is supposed to play. Also, he is not the greatest actor in the world. The loony couple are so overplaying their respective roles (especially James D'Arcy) that they are almost comical.

The family captive story has been done over and over again and many times much better than in this film. It is nicely photographed, looking as bleak as the Hughes' situation.

4/10

Enter Nowhere

What a shame. This film could have been so much better had the acting been up to par. The story itself is quite unique.

Three strangers end up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Samantha was out in the woods looking for her husband who went for help when their car broke down. She thinks it is 1962 and they are somewhere in New Hampshire. Jodie just robbed a gas station and shot the attendant, but her boyfriend threw her out of the car after a fight. She has no idea how she ended up in the cabin. She thinks it is 1984 and they are in Wisconsin. Tom got stranded after he ran his car into a ditch. For him it is 2011 and South Dakota.

No matter which direction they are heading, they always come back to the cabin. This will come in handy when Tom has a Eureka! moment that comes in the form of  Pac Man! (You had to have been there...)

Bit by bit they start piecing little bits of information together until they come to the understanding that Samantha, whose father died in WW II during an air raid, is pregnant with Jodie. She is to die in childbirth. Jodie will become pregnant later that year (her year, that is), even though she never wanted a child. She also gets caught for shooting the gas station attendant. She is sentenced to death and executed in a South Dakota prison eight month after giving birth to Tom. Then a German soldier shows up. This is Samantha's father and the trio decides that they must save him to have their lives turn out differently.

They do (save him) and they do (turn out differently).

As I said, the acting is rather poor. Also, I am sure a young German actor would have been available to portray the German soldier. Granted, they man playing the part speaks decent enough German but there is the classic English/American accent. Fortunately, you can feast your eyes on Scott Eastwood, very obviously the son of Clint.

6/10

Dead Man Down

More often than not I agree with the user ratings on IMDB.com. Dead Man Down currently holds at 6,5/10, so I expected to be entertained but not too impressed with the film. Also, I don't much care for Colin Farrell, which further lowered my expectations.

What a pleasant surprise this was (if you can call a film about a man seeking revenge for the murder of his family "pleasant").

Victor aka Laszlo (I wonder if this is deliberate. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up "Victor Laszlo".) has been working on an elaborate plan to take out an entire crime organisation responsible for killing his wife and young daughter two years back. The film starts when one of Alphonse's henchman, Paul, is found murdered. Paul has gotten a little to close to uncovering who has been sending his boss all these photos of Alphonse with the eyes scratched out and pieces of another picture, that still has the revealing bits missing.

So Victor has to start improvising. His mission is further complicated by his neighbor Beatrice, who lives opposite his apartemen and can see inside. She witnessed Paul's murder and instead of reporting it to the police she blackmails Victor into helping her with her own revenge. Beatrice is disfigured since a car accident. She was hit by a drunk driver who got a sentence of all of three weeks. This will not do and she asks Victor to kill him for her.

The elaborate plan starts spinning out of control and all the while another guy from the organization is getting closer to learn what Paul found out. In the end, it all comes to blows at Alphonse's residence in one massive shoot-out.

I thought this was actually quite brilliant and the supporting cast alone is well worth the time. Also, Colin Farrell never looked this good. Still not much of a fan but Damn! Plucked his eyebrows and all.

8/10

Carrie

Um.

Okay, so from the beginning. Margaret White is giving birth. Apparently, she does not know what is happening to her. She thinks she may be dying of something, cancer maybe. Ridiculous! She knows how she got pregnant ("Your father took me," as she later yells at her daughter) so she would know what is going on.

The Carrie as portrayed by Chloe Grace Moretz is just a little too pretty to be a realistic outcast in the context of the high school she is in. The other kids - good or bad - are just bland. Sue is the ultimate goody-two-shoes, as is her boyfriend Tommy (he is such a lovely boy). The girl playing Chris cannot hold a candle to the one from the original.

And what about the big scene?

So the car crashing into nothing was kind of awesome, but everything else about Carrie going total mayhem on all her high school colleagues is ridiculous in so many ways. The telekinesis massacre from the original film (and, indeed, the novel) was just slightly outside of reality. Here, it goes way overboard. Not only does Carrie move her hands in weird ways whenever she moves something but...SHE FLIES!

Never mind that it was totally unnecessary to remake the near perfect 1976 version of the Stephen King story, but why did it have to feature that much slo-mo? Why did the blood have to spill down (in slo-mo, of course) four fucking times from four different angles? We've been through all the hand moving as opposed to Sissy Spacek's scary wide eyed stare of doom. And why, oh why, did there have to be a musical interlude? I am not kidding, there is a musical bit, when everyone is getting ready for prom.

And, well, yes, Chloe Grace Moretz is just no Sissy Spacek. Not even close.

3/10

A Lonely Place to Die

I didn't read up on what this film was about. So at first glance, it looked like a climbing movie (*snore*). What with the title and all, I expected an accident that would leave one climber alone stuck somewhere on a mountain range.

Luckily, this is not what happens.

A group of mountaineers (five to begin with) are out in the Scottish highlands when they stumble upon a little girl that has been kidnapped and kept inside a box underground. They take the girl with them and while a couple head off to take a precarious but short route to the nearest hamlet, the others go off with the girl. Unfortunately for all, the kidnappers are already hot on their heals and have no qualms about killing them off one by one. And this they do.

The kidnappers apparently have been in the business of abducting young children from out of state and making millions off of their parents. Here they are about to meet with a negotiator speaking for the girl's father, when their bargain chip gets snatched up, so their problems are multiple. Nevertheless, they still try to pull off the money handover (without having anything to trade in for it).

In the end, the girl is save (of course, she is), the last remaining heroine is on her way to the hospital and the one surviving kidnapper is captured himself and gets some hands-on treatment from the girl's father and his henchmen.

Quite exciting with casualties falling left and right.

6/10

47 Ronin

This is the seventh time, the (apparently) famous Japanese story of the 47 Ronin has been made into film. The tale must have quite the impact on the Japanese, as the graves of the 47 (or, there should be 46, if the retelling in this version is to be believed, shouldn't there?) are still honored and visited every year to celebrate their bravery. The films came out in 1947, 1958, 1962, 1978, 1994 and 2010 before Hollywood got its fingers on it and threw big money towards a lavish production.

The men seek revenge for their master, who has been tricked to lose his honor. But the shogun, benevolently, allowed him to day an honorable death anyway. His former samurai are forbidden to take revenge on the villain, who - for good measure - throws the number 2 guy, Ōishi, in a dungeon for a year, also the period of time he allows the master's daughter to mourn her father before having to marry the villain.

When the year comes to an end, Ōishi is freed and looks for the 'half breed' Kai, who may or may not be a demon (yes, of course he is...sort of), and who is also in love with the aforementioned daughter. Ōishi finds Kai in some Pirates of the Caribbean looking harbor (I could swear I saw Captain Jack Sparrow), where is enslaved and has to fight creatures that have been reused from the production of The Lord of the Rings, no doubt.

Together they find the other ronin, some of whom are none to happy to have Kai back. But there is a lady to save from an unhappy marriage, so they put their differences aside for the time being and go off to find weapons worthy of their cause. Luckily, a much younger Kai once fled from a magic forest, where swords grow. He leads them back their and arms the men.

The rest of the story is scheming the forbidden revenge. They suffer setbacks, mostly courtesy of the witch that the villain employs (at her worst she turns into a whirling mess of cloth and disguises herself as the evil cousin of Falkor the Luck Dragon). But they are let into the fortress of the villain on his wedding day by hiding with a theater group (Trojan horse, if ever there was one) and kick some ass, save the girl and behead the evil villain.

The shogun, ever the gentlemen, berates them for disobeying his order of non-revenge and allows them to day honorably, as well, save for Ōishi son, who is spared so that the brave man's bloodline can continue.

All this is spectacular to look at, no doubt. Who cares if the acting is wooden (it is, after all, Keanu Reeves we are looking at)? I had fun, although I cannot confirm the exact number of the ronin involved, as it seemed to fluctuate quite a bit. They officially announced themselves to be 47 at around the 1 h 23 min mark, after they had already suffered some casualties. Oh well, whatever.

A revelation this is not. The historic accuracy is highly doubtful. The acting is average at best (except for Ōishi, Ōishi is awesome). But it is beautifully shot and you can tell where the budget went.

6/10

Malik Bendjelloul, 1977-2014

Malik Bendjelloul, Oscar winner for the wonderful documentary Searching for Sugar Man, killed himself at age 36. Here is the obituary from The Guardian.