christian_e Reviews

Prometheus (I) (2012)

Our creators are surrealists. Of course they are, look at us! Especially after seeing that movie!

[1/10 · 13 June 2012]

This movie was a didactic piece of filmmaking, now we know a lot more. For example, famous directors mostly need a good staff or things can go downhill in a blink of an eye. The Star Wars prequels come to my mind. Be gone devil!

*** mild spoilers ahead *** duck and cover not necessary ***

George Lucas showed clear without ambiguity his non-talent as a director and scriptwriter. He definitely has a sense of putting all together especially listen to the right people with the right bit of quality work: Irvin Kershner, Leigh Brackett and of course Lawrence Kasdan.

And so did Ridley Scott.

Nowadays, just a few director-films exists anymore. Mostly we call them Blockbusters in respect of one-person decision-making: Scott, Lucas, Cameron, Bay (..) have freedom of doing. And doing so, one can lose himself in arrogant narcissism, forgetting the roots of previous achieved works.

And so did Ridley Scott.

One can blame the awful, non-narrative script, but experience this magnitude of omni-nonsense; it's not possible not to point at Ridley.

There is no sense of reality nowhere, not in the acting, not in the characterization, not in the figures behavior, not in the slightest situation, not behind any stone of the rocky landscape. Speaking about "sense of reality": It has nothing to do with the genre. Fiction doesn't mean to have no rules.

In contrary! It's all about the rules! New worlds, new situations, new possibilities, and the viewer in the middle of the action asking himself highly interested what he would do instead of the main characters. This is so essential, that plot holes aka inconsistent storytelling will wash you out of your imagination as fast as your interest is sinking.

How to connect to the character if stupidity is the answer to incoherent logic? Lacking any vehicle transporting yourself into the imaginary world, how to connect to the plot? To the story? To your lost 15 bucks? How to explain it to your girlfriend? "But the visuals were great, let's go to the backseats" .. i don't think so.

You can have cool characters, you can have zeitgeist-dialogs, but you must understand ambivalence. And you must do that carefully, so everybody swallows that. Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws made a wonderful job: A cynical scientist, bullish, precocious, but also polite, social intelligent. I bought that.

I don't buy PhD's with a total mindset of a soccer player. No offense against soccer here...

I don't buy PhD's which motivation is to believe in non-confirmable stuff. Well, none of my colleges do and they do a lot nonsense. But I guess petting an alien snake on first contact would take no part in their adventures.

Especially I don't buy 3 pilots on a suicide-run emotionless and obviously lobotomized.

And no, Ridley, not only me, nobody, not even Road Runner himself would run strait forward from a gigantic donut when there is plenty of space on both sides.

I really thought we were beyond this in 2012. Well, every flick has its "nooooo" moment…

The biggest mistake is the genre: Prometheus happens to be neither science nor fiction. It became splatter-horror. Alien & Aliens sets up a couple of questions: How to analyze and survive something completely out of this world in terms of thinking and interacting not related to anything we are used to understand. The superb visuals (H.R. Giger) transported us there. And here comes the important part: These questions were very related to everything happened in the plot and so we were told answers piece by piece, carefully forced to adapt our imagination to the current situation.

THATS the definition of enjoying fiction.

Prometheus asked where we came from and why our creators want to destroy us. The whole plot is not related to these never answered questions. Its purpose is only to show us one action scene after another without ever having a climax.

All that artists like Giger and previous story-writer did to build a world with extraterrestrial aliens who actually give us a sense of highly engrossed and unpredictable beings is wasted. It's all human. It was no accident, that Giger melted the space-jockey with his pilot chair: Our perspective of reality should be challenged: He installed a definite "another". Ridley obviously doesn't understand.

Now we know, our ancestors are just surrealists.

If you, dear reader, are so eager to see that movie, never forget: you subsidize future projects of that kind.

Predators (2010)

A filmmakers anticipation: If an action flick isn't dumb, the audience wont understand

[1/10 · 12 July 2010]

Just have been in the cinema. I was an IMDb victim. Yeah, because of the (in sum) good reviews. Now i know it was the 'this is different, so i have to praise it in order to get praised' reflex. The difference is to use (one) quality actors.

This movie is bad. Worser than T4. There is not one believable scene and now we come to this argument: believable.

Scifi is meant to be a genre were interesting situations appear. situations, which normally wouldn't happen, like dropping on an alien planet and survive against alien hunters. As long as people react real, it could be very entertaining how they manage to survive and what you, the audience would do. There is no deus ex device in this flick, but it wouldn't make any difference:

• 8 people staying rooted on the spot shooting with their Gatlings until out of ammo on one wolf like creature with no success - a moment later one shot does it right??

• They use rotten one liners like "i am ready to die, you too?", "doesn't matter who they are or where there come from, i kill them all"

Dumb scene - dumb dialog... ...and so on alternating until the credits.

Dumb action scenes are NOT interesting, they DO NOT make tension, they are just annoying.

Antal Nimrod took the opposite way what made predator or aliens so great.

Nimrod must think very bad of his audience. He don't want us to think while and after about this movie. Adrien Brodys mission is to talk us from one scene to the next with constant conclusions about the situation which are only knowable if his character 'royce' has the script in his pocket (besides he immediately identified a plasma weapon).

Brody, a known actor of format must have denied reading the script or is quality management not meant to be used by the actors? His role is unbelievable nonstop-nonsense, paired with the batman voice.

The rest are mega-close ups, close combat scenes and jungle.

Some days ago i saw Rambo (first blood) again. Yesterday the original Predator. Action movies with interesting character and/or story are not common these days.

Action filmmakers today get caught by the coolness trap. Just to say its cool doesn't make it cool, more the opposite. A little less polemic in an example: Dutch (Schwarzenegger) and Dillon (Weathers) are Predator original characters. They are always trying to be cynical with a smirk on their face. When things go dangerously wrong, they act like everybody else, but face the situations and don't try to be cool anymore but to survive until the air is cleared. That makes them lifelike and touchable. Royce (Brody) just try to be cool, because the script says so. He doesn't make any facial expressions, nor he makes any interesting character streaks. He is just here. Like any other character in Predators.

In this movie, they (Nimrod and Rodriguez) tell you everything: who is cool, what you have to think, why the character do what they do except of doing it the logical and less dangerous way, but they owe as an explanation why they are allowed to handle millions of dollars for this outcome.

There are some other major problems, like the use of thinkable every possible clichés (fe: Russians wear blue-white striped shirts), the use of archetypes, shaky-cam, and so on... Forget this flick. It is garbage. Or don't believe me and see for yourself but be aware that you subsidize future film projects of this 'format' and nothing will change.

Eureka Seven (2005–2006)

Eureka seven takes you on a wild emotional ride. A true masterpiece!

[10/10 · 18 January 2009]

I have now seen a lot of animes (short series, long series, movies, OVAs), Eureka 7 was next on schedule. After seeing the first few episodes, the strange world of E7 coupled with surfing mechas worried me a little bit, because i was used to this fact (FLCL, TTGL,.. got also very good after seeing some episodes), but knowed, that although getting into it is quite a work.

However, i continued watching it, until to realize, that this anime has very intelligent and matured characters and the same goes for the humor. E7 has also good battles which are different from other mecha series, because there is always a focus on beautiful and colorful locations which impressed me, because of this powerful atmosphere of the pictures combined with one of the best score i have ever heard in animes.

But then, after some episodes, i suddenly checked it: Eureka 7 is a lot, but its true nature is to be the most dramatically breath-taking, heart-touching love story i have ever experienced not only from animes, from all media in my life!

This tremendous tension, which is build up from episode to episode, embedded in a amazingly captivating story, will not end until the last second.

Do not compare it with other animes, it is not comparable. Its a masterpiece which stands, because of its originality, far away from everything else, therefore don't expect another Neon Genesis (epic story and mechas) or fullmetal alchemist. E7 is with its amazing picture language a shiny piece of art and art is the way the story is told, the characters are growing and the background music is written.

All this facts melt into the fate of Eureka and Renton, the main protagonists of this anime, which, in a now-time of superlative-language, has no fitting word left for explanation. But when you are not cold blooded and have no hamburger instead of a heart, then you tears will drop on multiple scenes of the series (and especially at episode 26).

Do you self a favor and GO WATCH THIS. One hint: E7 has such a fantastic background music, which is so important for the atmosphere. Watch it with a lot of bass or take good earphones! And do it loud!