Change Your Image
lars-viebrock
Reviews
The Good Liar (2019)
A good premise held back by lazy writing.
A movie with great actors, good production value, and an interesting idea, was turned into a subpar movie, that is more frustrating than entertaining.
I will not dwell on the plot, but just a few of the most infuriating bits:
- the scene where the old man murders the other guy in the subway is absolutely stupid. How did he get away with this? How was no one there to witness it?
-The scene where the old lady looks at the old house gave the plot twist, that she is originally from Berlin, and thereby they likely have a shared past.
How convenient that the building is not a refurbished private house, but a public building, so she can enter alone.
- The old man's plan is to convince a lady, with less than 1 year left to live, to have a combined foreign account, to save taxes... is that really her worries?
- Why does he even have to transfer his real money to the account? Couldn't they just have faked a transaction? I mean the financial adviser is a con man and they chose the bank, so might as well not have risked his entire savings.
- Old man leaves the house, with the goal of never coming back and stealing all the money, and the first thing he does is get drunk, but never double checks if he really has the tablet on him? How convenient.
- Old man comes back to the house to get his tablet, and there sits old lady. Like Dr No, ready to reveal his plan to 007. She just presses one button on the magical banking device and it automatically transfers 50,000 GBP to another account. Very convincing.
- What is to follow is an awful 10 minutes of exposition, all chewed for us so we don't need to think. There is an evil 15 year old boy, who is evil, and evil also. Never explained why, or why she fell in love with him, but certainly very evil.
- The boy rapes the girl out of anger, then gets kicked out by the father... The boy is just someone, and the father is a wealthy factory owner. The boy than tells on the father to the Wehrmacht, and they hang the rich factory owner? On what grounds? What did he tell them? Why did they believe a boy? Whatever.
- Old lady had 60 years for this plan, and created a fake identity, a fake family, friends, medical record, rented a town house furnished it and so on... but in the end, she just banked on the old criminal, who has just lost everything, not attacking her? Why was no one else in the house? So she can tell her story alone? Idk. Definitely a plot device and not more.
Wrong Turn (2021)
This movie took a Wrong Turn
When watching the trailer, I was pleasantly surprised to have a Wrong Turn movie not look as cheap and cheesy as parts 3 to 6 were.
The beginning of the movie was a lot more subtile and well developed than I expected (the expectations for a Wrong Turn movie are very low though).
The first trap, with the rolling tree, wasn't the worst thing ever. When however one of the guys (who looks like Christian Pulisic) gets captured, the movie turns into an utter mess.
He is being carried by two people (who conveniently don't speak English, which all the other tribe members do), and then escapes and kills one of the two tribe members.
All his friends aren't happy he escaped or anything, but just shocked how he can be such a bad person, and completely turn on him. WTF?
Later in the movie they are all being trialed by the tribe, and the tribe boss claims, they never intended to kill the guy they captured, but only to bring him to the road and help him... WTAF? How should we believe this, if they have killed everyone else they captured?
When asked why he did that, and if they had done anything to warrant a tribe member being killed, the friends just stupidly look at one another, and feel in the wrong...
Did they forget that two of their friends had just been killed? BY TRAPS OF THE TRIBE? Forgot to mention. Whoopsie!
There is a lot of other crap, but the worst other thing I want to mention, is passage of time.
Nothing feels, like a lot of time passed, besides longer fake beards. How long have they walked into the forest? How long have they been with the tribe? How long was the father in the forest? How long was the father in the village for?
This is all presented very poorly.
Also, they always talk about this being a huge mountain, where this tribe lives. But is it? It all looks like a normal forest.
Idk, this is not a good movie and really fell apart in the second half.
It is not a Wrong Turn, really. No mutants, no taking a wrong turns. The movie is falsely moralic, and in the second part gets very boring, and frustrating.
Just skip this garbage.
Shutter Island (2010)
Highly rated, yet underrated
Probably everything that can be said about this movie, has been said about it.
One thing I want to add:
Shutter island does 2 things well (and everything else, too).
It builds an incredible amount of suspense and tension, keeping viewers on the edge of the seats throughout its run time.
But what is more impressive though, is that the movie delivers on it. The ending is extremely satisfying, makes loads of sense, was hidden well enough to be surprising, yet be set up well enough to be believable.
The only other movie that I know, that has done this as well is Seven, and I'd say shutter island is even better.
Wow, absolute masterpiece. 10/10.
The Boy Next Door (2015)
Exceedingly terrible!
A movie with JLo in a leading role should have been warning enough, but I was still curious.
The movie is super cliché, the acting, screenplay, and character development is absolutely terrible.
The son and his new friend look mid twenties, to early thirties. How easily the son is swayed and manipulated is hilarious and stupid.
JLo's character acts extremely stupid throughout the film, making her extremely unlikable.
There is really nothing good about this movie, but here go a few funny scenes:
- when the father picks up his son from school and lets him drive his car, we immediately cut to a scene where they drive on a twisty mountain road. The son then confronts his father with how he left him or some bs, then proceeds to angrily drive too fast. The brakes fail and they have to drive off into water barrels to stop the car.
How did they get to this place without the brakes failing before? I mean the bad guy tempered with the car so that the brakes fail... then the dad drove all the way to the school without any issue, then the son drove to mountain road without problem and then hell broke lose all at once!
Didn't they talk before this scene or why did they start arguing just there?
Why do you hear the car shift and accelerate after each corner? Why is he still on the throttle? Even without braking the car should slow down at some point, or did everything fail at the same time?
When they crash into the barrels you can clearly see that the car has zero scratches... probably rented the car for a day and couldn't break it within budget.
- the bad guy completely mutualizes another student, who now apparently has a broken skull... the co-principal now argues and argues with the and guy and ultimately decides he is suspended.
Errrr what? How is this big not a case for the police? He almost killed another student and is apparently 19, looking 29, and is not behind bars? This is never ever mentioned or considered? Okay...
Awful movie, Skip this!
Room (2015)
Amazing movie - incredibly real
I watched the movie when it fist came out and really liked it. Now, 6 years later I rewatched it and found it even better.
The performances by everyone involved are fantastic.
However, what really makes the film is how real everything is. The mother-son-relationship is great and feels extremely deep, rich, and realistic.
The fact that life after captivity isn't necessarily as fulfilling as it always appeared, and freedom having its own challenges. That was done so extremely well, and I have not seen it done before.
Absolutely fantastic!
Second Opinion (2018)
Terrible and terribly predictable
Poorly acted, poorly written, boring and predictable. At best, this movie is highly infuriating. If our supposed MIT graduate didn't have an IQ of sub 55, all of this could have been avoided.
Google a doctor before you give hundreds of thousands to a perfect stranger.
Question anything a perfect stranger tells you.
Call the police before you go into a Mans house to threaten him (this also goes for your friend)
With a lead this stupid, it is really hard to care about her.
A few goofs:
- The scene with the friend Being run over by a car is just hilarious. The way she smiles as she starts riding and then the cut to where she is run over, which is clearly not near her house, but around a factory site, is just awesome.
- The friend only being able to utter enough words to say *he danger, be aware, away you run!* - but not something useful like *google him* is great comedy
- Our villain walks into a public hospital to poison her, when he is obviously being filmed and also doesn't even double check if someone walks in on him... okay...
- the nut allergy scene was mega predictable, and is just so stupid. Cliché AF, and she didn't call the cops on him, because she might lose her job. Well then.
- the lead has a friend who can Analyze drugs on their ingredients. They couldn't have written it, that it was clear that she is given placebos, instead of making up something so F*ING convenient, again?
- when ever anyone confronts the villain (police, lead, lead's friend, drug addict, other victims) they are always alone. Why do they never have weapons on them or have someone to help them?
Maybe not worth an Oscar, but worth several Darwin awards.
Sightless (2020)
Wasted concepts
Basically everything has been said about this movie so just really quick:
Pro: the Concept of perception being reality. The POV of the audience is not some third person view that sees everything, but it is the perception of what the blind lady imagines to be there. That is pretty nice and could have been explored more and better.
Con: the reveal at the end is bad, doesn't really appear to sensible and the relations between characters kind of fall apart. A lot of plot holes and unreasonable actions don't help it much (dude gets sprayed with acid and doesn't even try to wash out his eyes but just accepts his fate?).
Red Dot (2021)
Another boring, awful Netflix film
Netflix is hitting it out of the park recently, with the rate of awful low budget wannabe thriller movies being cranked up to 11.
After reading the title, and seeing from the poster that there was a Black Lady and a white bloke with a dog in the wilderness, the story was pretty much clear.
Racism - they are chased with a red dot visor - dog gets killed - very cold - barely Survive - not spoiling any more but it is that predictable.
The acting sucks, the dialogues are bad, the characters are unlikable and there motivations are bland and predictable. Yawn.
Skip this, it is not even worth the electricity required to play it back.
Bajo cero (2021)
Netflix hitting new lows!
Hilariously awful movie. Ultra predictable, and with horrible screen writing and acting.
It's Con Air, but much worse.
I would give it 1 star, but I couldn't watch the whole movie... so maybe it ended on gems I didn't see. Giving you the benefit of the doubt.
I had to turn it off, because it was that bad. The scene right after the breakdown is supposed to be tense, but the awful acting and screenplay makes it a good laugh. Our protagonist is being shot at out of nowhere, yet doesn't even react to the bullets hitting right next to him. Doesn't really try to run away or scream for help.
Also, he hides behind a crashed car and the bullets come from all angles, despite there only being one shooter. It continues to be on this level of unrealism, with 1 guy changing tires on an armored truck with no help or car jack. Hell yeah!
Skip this garbage.
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Amazingly detailed, but a little lost in the greater picture.
Synechdoche, New York is a Charlie Kaufman movie and also his directorial debut. This alone should tell you, that it will be a deep movie, with a lot of attention to detail, not very happy, and obviously not for everyone.
I have now watched this movie twice and read up on a lot of details. It is spectacular how much into detail Kaufman went, making every word that is spoken, every verse that is sung and every image that is shown purposeful. That makes it very interesting to revisit the movie, since there are always more details to pick up on, and there are probably several details I have yet to find.
While trying to be very attentive during both of my watches, there is a few things where I changed my interpretation between watches.
There are things that I am still very unsure about and maybe they will never be clear to me.
While the film has a lot of great details and is certainly made with love and passion, I don't like it that much as a movie. Just like Caden, I feel like Kaufman was a little too ambitious here, and didn't find a satisfying conclusion. While Kaufman's writing skills are undeniable to me, I feel like a little more direction (so a different director) would have helped the movie.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Disappointing...
... the Movie in general is Fine, but tension, suspense and emotion are sold for the sake of flat jokes and poor dialogue. Quite a letdown.
Love Actually (2003)
A light hearted comedy... that is easy to hate.
I remember watching this film several times throughout my life, usually when Christmas comes around. And I usually watched it with little attention on TV and had a good laugh here and there.
In 2020, I told my wife, that this was a good movie that I always liked. I remembered it being much better that the corny Valentines Day and Happy New Year.
How wrong I was. The word -Love- is apparently mixed up with falling in love or rather the willingness to sleep with someone. Because there isn't much real love to find in this movie.
Out of all these stories, there are 2 really good ones and 2 at all bearable ones.
The sister who sacrifices here own love life to care for her ill brother, is genuinely heartwarming. The wife that doesn't want to spoil Christmas for her children, although her husband is cheating" on her is a story of true love. Albeit love for her children.
All the other stories are between okay and terrible. The Liam Neeson one has to be the worst of the bunch. Is this really a father-son-relationship, where the mother just passed away? And their only aim is to go out and get a girl... okay then.
In addition to that, the movie is weirdly condescending to women and portrays them in a very outdated way. Most women are in lower position than the men of that respective story. Also, several women are portrayed as mindless objects, that just do whatever a man wants of them.
Lastly, the only two cases of real love, are two women who are left without a happy ending? Do I have unrealistic expectations and do I say it is not okay that not everyone gets a happy ending? No! But if you give Liam Neeson and the frat boys going to America a laughably over the top ending, then why not do the same for everyone?
Skip this!
Searching (2018)
Zero budget, yet all heart
I just watched Searching for the second time, and I am more than impressed.
Although the film is made on a shoe string budget, with not that noticeable of a cast, 90% of the run time playing on a computer screen, it conveys more heart, character, and emotion, than 99% of other movies.
The acting is very good, dialogue, music and tone is fantastic and for the first time in movie history, the internet is portrayed in a realistic way. No fake websites, no comments and people that feel out of touch, but everything feels like the real thing.
Also, the characters and motivations felt realistic. The way the father (mis-)handles the death of his wife when interacting with his daughter, him finding out he doesn't know her at all, his drive and (over-)ambition.
The final twist was a little predictable, but besides that, an absolutely outstanding movie. Great drama/crime/ thriller with loads of emotion that will have you shed a tear.
W lesie dzis nie zasnie nikt (2020)
You have Seen this movie already
I was looking for a classic-style horror movie for halloween and got this recommended on Netflix.
It certainly is a classic style Horror Movie, so if you are after that and have seen pretty much everything else, might as well watch this one, too.
The movie does a few things well, and many things poorly.
Pros:
- no religion bs, that I have seen one too many times recently. (It has very little in there, but it doesn't drive the story).
- a few fast members play their roles quite well
- the Movie is not boring and only 100 minutes long
Cons:
- it is just one horror movie stereotype after the next. I don't think there was a single thing I hadn't seen a billion times before. While the movie has moments of self-consciousness, it isn't funny and therefore just super predictable and not scary.
- most of the acting is pretty awful
- one plot hole after the next and there is no real continuity
- basically nothing happens at night, so the title is kind of misleading.
- you can watch The hills have eyes instead, that has about the same plot, yet is executed a lot better.
The Russian Bride (2018)
Another awful horror movie!
Not scary, poor story, poor acting, way too on the nose. It is so foreseeable and rushed from one scare to another. No character is one bid believable. This movie really fails at the very basics of movie making. Skip this one!
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
How do people enjoy this god awful movie?
This is one of those movies, where you are not sure, if they are kidding or not. After 2hrs of agony, I learnt they are not.
From scene one, I wasn't sure, if they everyone was speaking like a 1980s sci-fi movie robot on purpose. Apparently, that's the tone of the movie. Everyone just needs to behave as weird and unnatural as humanly possible. Dialogue, behavior, and tone of all characters is 100% not that of actual human beings.
I think Nicole Kidman is a great choice, since here face looks as natural, as her character is supposed to be. Colin Farrell on the other hand is usually a great actor. Well, not here.
Since no one behaves like a human, and the tone and scenery is extremely unfitting in basically every scene, there is no reason to feel empathy with anyone. Anyone of these humanoid robots that are very poor at behaving like real humans.
Coherence is not a thing in this movie. Sentiment and direction change in basically every scene. The dialogue feels like it is written by a person who has never been to earth, but once read a few novels from the 17th century from planet earth. Great stuff.
I don't want to spoil the fun for anyone, but just to give a highlight from this movie away: he inquires his children's teacher about who he should rather kill. That's right!
The final scene, where he dances around like a child in the living room playing some Russian roulette with his family is the movie goodness!
I really don't like giving rating like that, but I don't want people to be fooled into thinking, that this is actually a watchable movie. Skip this, PLEASE!
Brightburn (2019)
Wow, pretty awful.
The movie has a somewhat interesting premise, a talented cast and apparently a sufficient budget to work with. That's where the positives end.
There is not a single character that is developed, so there is absolutely no one we care about. He kills all these people, but who cares? I don't know any of them so their death is utterly meaningless to me.
About 15 minutes into the movie it was already clear, that the movie had written itself into a corner with nowhere to escape.
The worst part was the one-dimensional protagonist, who discovers" his inner evil after some noises appear from the hidden spaceship he came in. And from then on, he is just evil. He is a twelve year old boy and out of a sudden starts murdering people and never feels any remorse, never has any doubts, never asks any questions why this happens? Huh, well then. If you don't care about your film, I won't either.
The parents should have taken action in terms of openly talking to their child, instead of equivocating all the time.
No one in this film feels human, and the film has zero heart. All it tries is to strive off showing gore. And it lacks a lot of subtlety. Could have made this into an actually worthwhile film. That makes this movie just as awful, as most horror these days movies are. A lot of potential wasted... and almost two hours of my life. SKIP THIS ONE!
The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019)
A narrator wearing a dog-costume...
I am a big fan of Motorsports, Scuderia Ferrari, and dog movies. So I thought to myself, this has to be just the right movie for me.
I think dog movies are generally a difficult subject to handle properly. I don't know a single movie, that I'd deem watchable, where a dog talks to humans. So basically there are two routes for a dog movie to be good, either the dog is a dog, seen from a human's perspective, and we can only imagine what the dog thinks and feels (e.g. Marley and Me, Hichiko etc.). The second option is the story told from a dog's perspective, where we hear the dog thinking (e.g. A Dog's journey/ purpose). This movie has gone for the latter, and in my opinion more difficult approach.
In my opinion, these movies are difficult to handle, because the dog has to be interesting enough to be relatable, yet believable enough to be a dog.
The characteristics of a dog is what makes people love them, so there are certain expectations.
And exactly this is, where this movie fails. The dog fails to behave, think, speak, and act like a real dog. They could have just taken a narrator instead, and in many scenes, it would have hardly made a difference.
There is more problems this movie has. The emotional bonding with our characters, probably the most important part of such a movie, is somewhat skipped over.
The ending is heart warming, but doesn't make up for the pretty mediocre experience leading up to it.
I Am Mother (2019)
Potential wasted.
The movie I am mother" is an original SciFi movie with a reasonably well chosen cast of actors. The screenplay looks good and the effects are fine.
That's about as much as the movie gets right.
I don't want to dwell on the plot for too long, because there isn't really much of that.
What was striking to me, is that the movie was apparently made by someone, who doesn't really know much about the SciFi genre. The robot mother" was a 1950s idea of what a robot could be. It has to charge all night long, it sits down to wait, and it is not connected to anything inside the facility. When mother goes away, she is gone. There are no more cameras or ways she can communicate and survey her daughter or the facility as a whole. Instead of an android, they could have just used a human instead, to the same effect. It all sounds like I am just trying to nitpick, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The movie is just very careless.
The first three quarters of the movie set up an interesting ending. But they do that much worse than so many movies, that did it before:
Cloverfield Lane, Oblivion, Moon, 2001, just to name a few, have attempted similar things, and all succeeded, while I am mother" failed miserably.
The motivation of mother", or the Androids as a whole, appears jammed and unrealistic. Saving humanity from itself: never heard that one before.
The ending of the movie sees mother trusting her daughter enough to raise a child. And maybe all children from now on?
Well then, the future is bright. Besides the fact that they killed everyone and rob earth of its resources. What ever the motivation of that is, how is this not considered the worst thing anyone could ever do?
The daughter mainly seems to have a problem with her mother killing children, that are not considered worthy of further existence". Well, she has killed everyone else, so why is this in particular so evil?
It's all confusing, seems rushed, and amounts to nothing. Big upset and clearly missed the genre.
Too bad.
A Dog's Journey (2019)
A Beautiful journey
When I first learned about this movie, I was pretty wary that this was going to be another pseudo-emotional dog-flick, with corny humor and cheap laughs. Especially the fact that you can hear the dog think made this even more likely.
To my surprise, the opposite is the case.
It is a beautiful and well acted coming of age story. Josh Gad, as the Bailey and his successors, is what makes the film truly Touching. The dialogue is perfect. Believable enough to be a dog, yet never stupid or unfitting to break the emotional buildup.
What is to love about the story? Well, all dog owners will know, that Bailey just is the right dog at the right time. And that's what a dog is for. It doesn't have to possess superpowers or have special talents (although Bailey does have talents), but in the end, we love dogs because they are there for us, no matter what.
Even the love story in this is believable and charming, although predictable. Also, the partners of both CJ and Trent are very overly unlikable, which makes you question why they got together in the first place.
Besides that, A Dog's Journey is a beautiful movie, about a dog who is loyal to his owner and the promise he made, even beyond his own life. It is a clear recommendation for lovers of charming movies or dogs in general. You might also need a tissue, or two, maybe four.
Life's a Jungle: Africa's Most Wanted (2012)
Some people just don't get it...
This movie is an utter masterpiece. Like any piece of art, it decides opinions. Some hate it, some love it. The Movie portrays harsh social commentary in a smart, satirical way. The Protagonist, Pip, however often pronounced as "poo" is a muscular Jack Russel, aka. a jacked Russell. He goes from his pampered, secured life as a pullover wearing doggie, to having to survive in the wild. An epic adventure akin to Raiders of the Lost arc, but with the emotions of Pixar's Coco.
I don't want to spoiler too much, but there are Hippos in the movie that are disguised as Rhinos. This of course is to be understood as a critique of the affects of modern commercialism on our society.
I feel very sorry for everyone who doesn't understand this deeper meaning.
Or the poor souls who actually watched this piece.