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Reviews
Gothika (2003)
No spoilers needed - the movie does it itself
This movie is just a mixture of all the psycho-thrillers from the last decades, and you surely have seen every scene elsewhere and better. Same old Hitchcock effects over and over, nothing innovative, absolutely predictable. The (style of the) rubbish end of Crimson Rivers is continued here by M. Kassowitz, so you are not really bored, but there is no surprise at all including the very end with the "huh, it's not over" moment. Although everything is clear halfway through the movie, there are still some questions to answer (why did 2 murderers come free, just because they cleared up another crime ? Where is the title from ?), so unless you do not need a warm and cozy place for 2 hours, save your money or go watch 'Identity' once again instead. Too stereotype for a serious psycho thriller, too serious for a parody, so 2/10 for quite good realization of genre-standards.
The Human Stain (2003)
Good actors, poor movie (Spoilers)
One of these films you first cannot decide whether you didnt understand it due to your lack of knowledge in Greek mythology and philosophy or it is just a weak movie. I saw it in occasion of a Sneak Preview and didnt read the novel so I cannot compare, but thinking about it on the way home and talking about it with friends I came to the result that it is just an awfully bad movie which is arbitrarily riddled with some high-level quotes to give it some pseudo-depth. There are different non-coherent plots in this film which first give you the feeling that they come together in a relevant way, but they dont. Same with the characters, several of them are widely-expanded but are next-to-useless to the story or could have handled much shorter (e.g. Silks affair with Steena Paullson, jsut to show she cannot marry into a colored family). The reflection of Silk's past is far to long to explain why he decided to deny his "human stain". After the main character died there is a useless 10min-ending facing two secondary characters. Various themes like the boxing theme, Faunia's past, the crow, Lester's Vietnam past, the writers fate are too expanded compared to the relevance of it for the story. Might have been a good filmlet of 10 minutes where you tell a dense story of the double meaning of "spooks" and the fact that Dean Silk, who seems to be out of any suspicion, because he is from a colored family (but happens to be white by some Mendel-Trick), ironically is the one big racist in the movie. Great actors (not only Hopkins/Kidman), who have few chances to show what makes a good actor. I ask myself why they accepted a movie like that. 3-stars, only for the actors
Wie die Karnickel (2002)
Top German comedy
This is one of the best German comedies ever up to now, you cannot stop laughing, straight-forward, nothing you miss. Simple story I admit, but well-balanced as the weak and strong points of every participating side (gays, lesbians, heteros) is revealed. Enjoy!