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Reviews
The Mummy Returns (2001)
Bad beyond believe
"The Mummy" was nice and fun to watch, with the stress on "fun" in that the movie didn't take itself seriously at all, and had tendencies of being an action parody. I expected "The Mummy" to be a dumb action flick, and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't one. Now, knowing its prequel, I expected "The Mummy Returns" to be about as entertainingly funny. Well, I couldn't have been disappointed more. "The Mummy Returns" is just dumb. I mean, really dumb. Non-original, non-funny, non-entertainingly dumb. No traces left of the "action parody" approach, no traces worth mentioning of a plot, badly written and directed, really bad and most of all noticable CGI at times (while -strangely enough- being rather good at other times). It even fails on a design level in that the ancient egyptian look is totally unrealistic and over-the-top, all in all appearing rather un-egyptian ("The Mummy" was halfway decent in this regard). "The Mummy Returns" tries to be a fully-fledged action flick, but even fails at that. The fighting sequences are lame and badly paced, the effects are silly and misplaced and barely state-of-the-art, even the sound design is awful as it often relies on known audio library effects that one knows just too well. "The Mummy" had a proper and fairly convincing feel in terms of showing 1920s people messing with ancient egyptian ghosts. Watching "The Mummy Returns" feels wrong throughout its entire length, it appears like 21st century people putting on a bad provincial stageplay or carnival show without really knowing what they're doing or how to do it. If movies are compositions, this one is incredibly badly composed. Don't waste your time or money unless you're expecting nothing, especially not a proper sequel.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
One for the Fans
"You gotta be a Trek fan to watch this movie" is what shines through in most reviews, and I couldn't agree more. I'd say most parts of the movie wouldn't make any sort of sense to someone who isn't familiar with at least TNG, if not the Trek universe itself. Also if you're not a Trekkie, you're prone to being really annoyed by all the weaknesses the plot and the script undoubtedly have to offer (and I'll leave it to other reviewers to whine about those...). Well, myself, I am a Trekkie. So did the movie make sense to me? Not in the sense that a "good movie" should, but in the sense of any TNG story, it certainly did. Seriously, throughout the movie I felt like watching a larger-than-life TNG episode. The pacing, the story, the scripting - none of that ought to have been movie material. As such, this probably was a step backwards, or a back-to-the-roots notion, depending on how you look at it. What I particularly enjoyed, though, was the acting. Aside from the usual weakly scripted roles for Marina Sirtis and Gates McFadden, I've seen a TNG cast that obviously refused to take themselves serious and absolutely enjoyed the difference between acting and playing, and they sure were playing with their characters. To rate the movie, I'd give it a good 6 out of 10. It's better than some other Star Trek movies. It's definitely much better than some of the reviews make it, probably depending on what you expect. It's still worse than I would have wanted it to be.
Das Arche Noah Prinzip (1984)
Catchy SciFi drama with good looks and a tense plot.
The year is 1997, and World Peace seems to have come, with most classic weapons of mass destruction having been abandoned. However, orbiting the Earth there is the European/American space station FLORIDA ARKLAB, capable of controlling the weather at any location on the planet underneath. A civil project by nature, it might be abused as an offensive weapon, since it could deliver devastation to any potential adversary simply by creating natural disasters such as storms and floods. No wonder the space station soon becomes the central point in rising political tensions between East and West, next stop World War 3 (as indicated by the German tagline (transl.) "The end of our future has already begun"). We're following the main protagonist Billy Hayes, an astronaut aboard the station, as he wades through a plot of secrecy and sabotage trying to tell friend from foe in the process.
This film is the first "real" movie by Roland Emmerich, and knowing his later works, it is, simply speaking, surprisingly good. First off, it was and is a visual treat by any standard, with well-crafted models and a set-design that made a point in trying to look as realistic as possible. At that, it is visually reminiscent of many other movies from that era (Star Wars or Moonraker, to name some), but doesn't fail nearly as badly as some of them do; it simply looks good. And what's more, this movie has a story that makes some sense and won't let you leave your seat until it is resolved. The acting is good, the characters are well drawn and partly are in for some surprise. The general mood is by no means optimistic, this is definitely a Cold War scenario, which nowadays of course has the tendency to make you chuckle, considering that 1997 looked totally different than portrayed in the movie.
Bottom line: if you know later Emmerich blockbusters such as ID4 and Godzilla, you definitely notice his handwriting in this one, and seeing the path he took from here on makes sense. But much unlike said later works, this movie excells not only in the audio and CGI department, but also has something like characters and storyline. People liked ID4 as a cineastic lollipop, but as a film, this one is far better than most
The Right Stuff (1983)
Nice but very wrong movie.
This movie, as such, is very well done in most respects, and certainly deserves the awards that it had won. In short, chances are very good that it will entertain you if you don't know it already. But just to make this extra clear: it is historically so wrong that the IMDB "goofs"-section might well explode if you logged all the errors. This movie does not depict history as it happened, by no means. It takes the feel of that timeframe and a couple of specific related sub-topics, and then mixes them together in a way that the result tries to leave the impression that this what it was like. This movie wants to look realistic, but it doesn't want to be realistic, let alone show reality. So don't let yourself get fooled into taking it for real, simply let yourself get entertained.