The Fault in Our Stars

The beauty of ticket contests is that sometimes you get to see widely anticipated films before their official release date. Case in point: The Fault in Our Stars - an exclusive premiere, one week before its official local starting date (and even before it premiered in the US!). Even better, not only did I win two tickets to this, but a friend also won, so there were four of us.

I've had my difficulties with the book, as I detailed in my other blog. Primarily, I didn't care much for the book version of Augustus. The character was less annoying in the film, I felt. (My friend S. found his constant grinning annoying, though.) Apart from the story with the previous, deceased girlfriend, which fell between the cracks, the book was thoroughly covered. Sure, it took its liberties here and there, but the essence of the story remained.

The translation to screen worked beautifully and the end product is much more enthralling than the book would have led me to expect. The acting was exceptional on all fronts (Willem Dafoe!) and even though there was a lot of laughing in the theater throughout the first half of the film, there was just as much sniffling and nose blowing through the second half.

We laughed. We cried.

7/10

Karlheinz Böhm, 1928-2014

Karlheinz Böhm, primarily known for staring in the Sissi-Triolgy alongside Romy Schneider, as well as international productions like Peeping Tom, has passed away.

Austrian actor and huanitarian Karlheinz Böhm dies aged 86

Julie and Jack

I don't know what to say.

Thankfully, James Nguyen - writer/director and supporting actor in this film - provides not only his own biographical info on any open source website, but also reviews for his own films (under false names).

About this he (or maybe it really was Dan Auiler as stated) said,

"The story was very interesting, suspenseful, Hichcockian. I was intrigued all the way through the film. It really is an original story. Julie and Jack is a kind of film that Mr. Hitchcock would have made. It's kind of 'Vertigo' for the 21st Century. And of course, it was also great seeing all of the Vertigo locations used in the film and seeing Tippi Hedren in her role."
Dan Auiler, Author of "Vertigo: The Making of A Hitchcock Classic"

Um. Right.

Nguyen has an obvious obsession with Hitchcock's films and especially loves The Birds. This spawned of course his later, exponentially more hilarious Birdemic films. And he inexplicably managed to get Tippi Hedren to actually appear in this one and provided her with the best line of the entire film, "Oh, listen to those birds. They're calling me again."

The possibly worst part of Julie and Jack (and there are many, many bad things to pick from) is the soundtrack. New Age synthesizer drivel at its most annoying with occasional orchestration.

Should I allow myself to give minus points to films? I am tempted....

0/10

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