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eddy_schneider
Reviews
Chi to hone (2004)
Not fun to watch but it's an important movie - I give it a 9/10
This great movie is not just a study of domestic violence. It's much more than that. It's a historical document of the life in Japan roughly from WWII to the 1970'. It shows the life of Korean immigrants in Japan, the constant latent hostility between the Japanese and the Koreans, the difficulty to have a reasonable life in Japan during that time, the way of life in Japan for the "simple folk", the strong hierarchy in the family and in business, and many more aspects. This movie is not entertaining as such and is certainly not fun to watch, it's brutal and often makes you sick. But you can learn more about domestic violence and about the Japanese way of life than in any other way. The script and the actors are great and everything is not just authentic but REAL. So you should not watch this movie for fun but because the subjects are so very important and because you will learn so much even if you know Japan quite well already.
Fertig lustig (2000)
100% financed by Swiss public TV
This is a perfect example of what will happen when you give money to poor TV producers and writers without any feeling of what the audience want. Here the result is a comedy without any humor. Instead it's full of dramatic and cultural reference, which is supposed to make the series "arty", but they don't. The dialogues are horrible, they lack of any life and wits. As the Swiss German language is made of dozens of quite different dialects it's not easy to make a film that sounds real and yet all the Swiss audience can understand. What the Swiss TV always makes in that situation is that they invent a new blend of Swiss German that everybody understands BUT that none would ever speak in real life. It makes the whole experience unrealistic it just sounds false. The acting is just as bad as the script is boring. I cannot understand why anybody would want to watch something like that. Luckily for the rest of the world, Swiss German TV productions are never translated and exported. With that kind of productions it is no wonder that the national Swiss TV (SF-DRS) has a shrinking audience (except for life sports) with an average age of almost 60 years.
Ghosts of Mars (2001)
Uwe Boll could do it better
John Carpenter has proved that he can be not only a good, but a great, director. But with Ghosts of Mars he has made one of his worst movies.
Despite a good cast, the acting is one dimensional (not even two dimensional). The "ghosts" do not look frightening but just plain dumb. The special effects and the sets look like the very first Star Trek TV series, everything has a very "cheap" cardboard look. The action scenes could come straight from the A-Team, as people jump around ridiculously as things are blown apart here and there. Uwe Boll's movies have a much more "professional" look. And worst of all: There is not a single innovative idea in the story, so there is no suspense as we have seen it all a thousand times in other movies. It gave me the feel of yet another video game adapted to a movie (I know it's not - but it's even worse when an "original" movie gives you this second hand feeling). Despite all that Ghosts of Mars is somewhat entertaining as it is always a pleasure to see beautiful women and a couple of cool guys kill a lot of "bad guys". Watch it ones, it will be enough for a lifetime.
Running Scared (2006)
What a waste of potential
This movie is full of really great bits, of surprising twists, good hard "real" action (not the computer game stuff), manly good acting and an above all a good story. Despite all the good ingredients and ideas put in this film, it's just not good enough or at least not as good as it should and could have been. The problem is mainly the "strange" editing. Suddenly 2 minutes of the story are cut out sometimes to bring them later in flashbacks, but sometimes they just leave the holes in the story. This should probably be artful, but it's just confusing. And it doesn't ad suspense, it only destroys the rhythm. You can't just change the rhythm 20 times and expect the viewers to follow. All the adult actors are great, I liked them all. But the two kids (Bright and especially Neuberger) where not up to the task. They were stiff like wooden boards and hardly looked alive. It's hard to understand that they did not hire better kid-actors for such important roles. Of course there are not that many talents like Haley Joel Osment or Dakota Fanning around, but there are quite a bunch that are better than Neuberber). By the end of the film I was only wondering why they would waste so many good ideas to make a confusing movie. Why the story seemed so tense and interesting at the beginning, but we come to realize that it's the same story we have seen so often, despite the many twists. So many twists to come to such a boring end? What a waste of potential.
36 quai des orfèvres (2004)
What a disappointment!
Don't get me wrong, this movie is not bad, actually it's even good. But with a great story like that, a dream cast (Auteuil and Depardieu are among the best actors the French cinema has ever had. It's no exaggeration to compare them to people like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro or Harvey Keitel) and a reasonable budget this movie could have been so much more.
I see three major problems that lower the pleasure of viewing this film.
First, the pace of the movie. There are too many lengths that cut the suspense. Probably a good editor could have arranged the given material into a real thriller, while here it's often just at the limit of boredom.
Second, the illogical and impossible facts of the story. How can a corrupt cop get away with everything even when there are at least 10 witnesses, while a really good cop is sent to jail for several years without any evidence? How can a judge and/or a jury believe a single witness that had just one second, in the dark and through 2 windows to identify a man she has never seen before? Come on! Things like that ruin the whole story that is otherwise very clever.
And thirdly, an apparently unmotivated Depardieu. This man can be great, really great on screen. But unfortunately he can also be mediocre, as he is here. When you know how good someone can be, it's an even greater disappointment to see that he's so far away from what he could achieve.
It's a shame that Olivier Marchal failed to make a great movie. He had all the right ingredients and did 95% right. But he failed on the last 5%. I can't give it more than a 6/10
BloodRayne (2005)
Entertainment as it should be!
I discovered Uwe Boll and his movies only this year and all 3 movies I saw were much better then what I expected (House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark and now BloodRayne). Most comments on Bloodrayne here are so negative that it becomes ridiculous. How can you complain about the unrealistic settings when the movie what shot in Transylvania. It does NOT get any more realistic than that. Other complained about the bad acting: "you could not sense the persons deep feelings and motivations" and things like that... This is just plain stupid! BloodRayne is not a drama. It's a mix between a horror, action and fantasy-movie, based on a video game. Does anyone really go to the movies, or buy such a DVD to study the feelings of the heroes?? No, you see this kind of movies to get 95 minutes of fun and entertainment. And that's what you get here. Not more and certainly not less. OK, Bloodrayne has some small weaknesses. The Blades do not always look that sharp, the choreographies of the fights were not all top level (some were!), and some other details did not entirely satisfy me. But the cast was great, the photography impressive and the visual effect were so good that you mostly didn't even realize that it wasn't real. So if somebody writes that it's one of the worst movies (s)he has seen so far, that person must not have seen many movies. Has this person even seen BloodRayne?? I enjoyed this movie and give it 8/10!