imdb-319 Reviews

Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007)

Gets worse and worse

[2/10 · 8 April 2007]

While the beginning is quite OK, the movie goes down the drain soon.

It contains lengths, and lengths, and more lengths. As Bean deviates from his intended route to Cannes, so does the film. In a few scenes, it borrows heavily from Dumb & Dumber (even the music), and that's the best parts.

Half of the film consists of low-res, non-recognizable, blurry, wiggly dropouts, because it is filmed by Mr. Bean's in-film video camera.

The later music selection is awful and greasy. This movie is worse than "The Ring Thing", which was of similar filming and acting quality, but had one big advantage: it did not take itself seriously.

Especially in the second half, I laughed a lot in sheer disbelief: How could someone dare to release this crap?

If you would like to watch a similar, but way better, comedy about shooting a film with no budget, and have the same low expectations in action, special effects, production values as necessary for "Mr. Bean's Holiday", I wholeheartedly recommend "Bowfinger".

Into Great Silence (2005)

Repetitious and ridiculous

[5/10 · 18 December 2005]

This film is mostly silent: No dialogs (nearly), no musical score, no background music, no narrator. There is no plot either. There is no rhythm in the editing, many scenes are duplicates, even including duplicate text boards.

Only the visible, white-wash side of a monastery is shown. The monks deliberately depict themselves praying in their cabin (merely a medieval prison cell), kneeing, studying, not speaking a single word, for the sake of God. Only on Sundays after lunch, monks are allowed to talk while going on a walk, but again, for the camera, dialogs circle around religious themes only. This is labeled a documentation, but it is a very superficial one.

After two hours, it got so repetitious and ridiculous (monks weekly shaving their already short-haired heads, while the barbers wearing beards to ashame Gimli the dwarf), that we left the projection room laughing while the other viewers were still watching in agony.

The one lesson we learned: How to appreciate our regular people's life using all our senses including hearing, touching, the ability to talk and to freely exchange our emotions and opinions.

Elefantenherz (2002)

A little predictable, otherwise a great sad movie

[1 September 2004]

This is a very impressive movie about the life of a teenager, living with his parents and sister in poor circumstances, starting a career in professional boxing. The camera art is beautiful and compelling, especially as it makes use of nicely filmed material during sunset using gyro cams, which is then used to show very ugly industrial zones and social housings!

The main characters (amongst others Daniel Brühl, one of Germany's best young actors) play very convincingly. I liked the set and the props, which seemed very realistic.

The script also had some interesting twists. Nonetheless, the main story is a little predictable.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Waste of time

[2/10 · 1 September 2003]

This movie was awful.

• No nice, big sets

• Ugly costumes

• Bad makeup (dark eyes)

• No tension, no character development

• Forseeable story line

• Full of pirates cliches (parrot on shoulder)

(Sorry for my bad english, I'm German)

Hackers (1995)

Not bad, but so many stereotypes

[31 March 2002]

The good: I must admit: The sound track rocks. Together with the colorful computer-fly-thrus it makes for a psychedelic experience and takes up half of the film.

And there is Angelina Jolie. She is really sexy, but thats it.

The bad: Though, the film has nothing to do with hackers, since real hackers don't dress like idiots. Real hackers shine through their hacks, not their clothes (but, that would be a boring movie, either).

All characters are stereotypes and could not convince me. The "evil villain" is portrayed as a complete idiot on a skate board.

The bottom line: If you are a kid between 11 and 13, watch this movie. You may identify yourself with the script kiddie, start smoking and adore the oh-so-cool grown-up hackers.

Scary Movie (2000)

If you can laugh about yourself, you can laugh about this one

[9/10 · 4 June 2001]

Me, my wife and all my friends who have seen this movie find it one of the funniest movies. We are all 18+.

Right, this film is not a brilliant masterpiece of the intelligent comedy. No genius dialogue, no character development: Seriously, who of you guys did expect this? It is a parody on the 90's scary movies (see other comments for a complete list), so what you get is a bunch of teenagers having fun, sex, movies, drugs and so on and making a laugh of it.

Many comment writers complain being offended by the sexual references and remind their good taste. These people should not watch comedies like this one. This film is for those of you who don't take themselves too seriously. Only watch it, if you can laugh about yourself sometimes. May be it should have been rated R, not for nudity and speak, but for the self consciousness of the viewer.

23 (1998)

Excellent

[9/10 · 2 August 2000]

This is one very dragging along piece of film. It clearly reconstructs the youth of Hagbard, a young German hacker in the eighties. This film reminds me of so much of my own youth, and August Diehl's (Karl Koch) acting is perfect, that me and my wife now had to see it for the third time.

Read Clifford Stoll's book "The Cockoo's Egg. Inside the World of Computer Espionage" to see the movie from the American view. You will understand some scenes better, for example where the number salad comes from on the computer screen in the phone booth.

Stuart Little (1999)

Disappointed

[29 April 2000]

I went to see this film with my wife, because we were attracted by a cute little mouse, but we were disappointed. The film was mainly about family drama, the boy disliked his new brother Stuart, the cat disliked Stuart, Stuart didn't like his new parents and wanted back to his own parents. The plot was very poor and foreseeable (e.g. only after winning a sailboat race suddenly the family was friends.) The animation of the mouse's face was bad. It could smile only (sorry, my English is too bad for this.) We disliked or even didn't notice the all too subtle humor. We expected a mouse to bring life in a boring family. But instead, the mouse was depressive itself most of the time.

This film was a sad experience and a story about how desperate family life can be.