Reviews

Villeneuve started out by making mediocre to bad films, then he made three good ones, now he's regressed to his old quality, only the budgets are bigger.

Expositional dialogues to the max in the first hour or so (doesn't get much better later on either though), extremely unsubtle tries at emotional manipulation by the music/sound design soap opera style (sometimes adding unwanted humour to scenes which are supposed to be sad/serious/whatever), way too short shot length killing any atmosphere to build up, generic editing and filmmaking overall.

Especially sad is the lack of atmosphere part, because the set and production design in general is in parts quite interesting (I'm thinking rooms/spaces, the aircrafts/space ships).

Also the film served merely as a prologue and I'm sorry but two and a half hour of prologue only works when you have atmosphere, some compelling form of storytelling ability or when you have characters with actual depth - just not the absolute generic "archetypal" ones you have here that seem to primarily rely on the big name actors behind them. Normally everytime you see a familiar face in a movie it pulls you out of it - one of the reason why I'm not a fan of the "star system" - but since "Dune" is the absolute polar opposite of what one might call "immersive", this aspect of it doesn't really matter here I guess...

All the characters speak in a ridiculous overdramatized way - it's filmed theatre - and often times one cannot even understand what is being said because of how it is said and the weird sound mixing (half the words being unfamiliar terms specific to the Dune universe doesn't help either).

World building isn't randomly lumping together "new" concepts and terms, but actually having a cohesive vision of what you want to portray.

Even Lynch's Dune was better than this.

Describing something as "art" nowadays of course is somewhat redundant and meaningless, but this in my opinion is one of the greatest art pieces of the 21st century so far.

Everything is "in the field"-footage all around the different sets and filming locations. You'll see NBC directing actors, how long takes are being blocked and filmed etc...

For around ten Euros (probably like fifteen Dollars) it's definitely worth it (you can rent and rip).

I was surprised by how good this actually is. It feels authentic and the humour works most of the time (for me at least). I didn't watch the original webseries (?), so I can only comment on the first (real) Season though. Anyways, kudos to the filmmakers and the actors, especially the guy playing the protagonist. What I really liked was how all characters are displayed in a way that is not ridiculing them. Often times in German tv and cinema writers and actors are not capable of going beyond caricature, a mistake not made here. Not bad, not bad at all.

Contemporary Hollywood filmmakers seem to have no idea about how film works or what cinema is, and the plebian populus seems to eat it up regardless, because they are so conditioned to this nonsense and have seen so much worse trash over the years, that they think that films like "Joker" are actually good cinema.

These trash superhero/villain films of the last few years (with the exception of the first two Batman films of Nolan) are all missing the same things: rythm, atmosphere, ambivalence, meaning, just any form of cinematic understanding...

Instead of focusing on these very essential features which make films great, these films tend to be exposition dumps, with very obvious stupid "subtext(s)" in the even stupider storylines, and cuts, cuts, cuts with no purpose to them.

As much as I dislike Nolan, I at least have to admit that he is a filmmaker, he knows his craft. All these standard Hollywood directors don't get anything about what it means to make actually cinematic films - they don't understand the form.

And yes, "Joker" is better than your average film out of these Marvel/DC-Universes, but that doesn't say a whole lot now, does it?

Also: Hollywood movies that pretend to be anti-capitalist/anti-establishment are -quite obviously - by default a farce.

Although this is based on a true story it doesn't seem believable on screen. A bit more self-awareness about how ridiculous the whole thing is (a 19 year old assuming the rank of captain without being found out) would have helped the film I guess. And even though I'm not a fan of this: it would have helped putting the "based on a true story"-thing at the beginning of the movie.

The Acting: All the actors are overacting (very typical for contemporary German movies). Cinema isn't filming actors playing theatre in "cinematic" shots. It's conveying information by cinematic means, an artistry obviously not present here (but then again, a rare sight in culture industry movies anyway, so why even bother bringing it up).

The "absurd"/"surreal" scenes in the movie are just stupid, nothing else. It seems like the director wanted to make a Nazi version of "Hard to be a God". Well...it didn't work.

The last fourth is where everything takes a turn for the even worse. Pointless "stylish" depictions of decadence and ridiculous tarantino-esque splatter. The end credits sequence because of it's pointlessness drags everything down as well.

Why was this movie made? There is no good reason why this movie was made. And with these kind of movies exploiting real acts of murderous violence shouldn't there be a good reason for doing so? Don't get me wrong, I'm not coming at this from a moralistic standpoint, I'm just asking the question "Why?". Why did you make this movie Robert Schwentke? I doubt there's an honourable answer to this question.

Do people even look beyond mere production value? I only watched the first episode but that already was enough. Clicheéd characters, bad story, terrible editing - ruining the one comedic moment in the first episode which could have actually been funny (the picture mix-up).

It seems that the creators watched a couple of episodes of "Peaky Blinders" and toned it down a bit without adding anything of value.

I am getting more and more convinced that everyone working in the German movie/tv industry is a soulless ghoul. It's really amazing to me how these dilettants who don't seem to understand the first thing about their craft get into the position of being able to produce their trash.

Great cast, especially Samy, great comedic timing - kudos to the writer(s) and editor(s)!

To the Germans watching this over the ARD Mediathek: be wary, if you can find an alternative source watch it there. The idiots at the ARD dubbed a certain section ("stolen" from "25th Hour" btw) of the ninth episode into a weird mix of German/English turning the whole episode and message into pure unadulterated cringe. Seriously, which genius came up with that idea?!

Who writes this stuff? The cartoonish dialogue and the continuous use of absolutely un-cinematic songs will make anyone watching cringe - da kräuseln sich die Fußnägel!

Terrible writing. Really cringy (repetitive) exposition at points, doesn't move forward. I stopped watching after three or four episodes, can't remember. Yeah, at the end there is probably going to be some plot twist shenanigans, but I'm not enduring hours and hours of boring unimaginative filling material with no real purpose to itself, to get my mind blown in the last ten minutes. The rest of the technical stuff is alright, cinematography, acting and so on, for that I give the four points.

And to all the Germans calling this a "masterpiece" and praising it: Just because "Dark" is slightly better than the average German dreck that is released non-stop by the German (basically state) television networks for a boomer target audience, doesn't make "Dark" a good or even average series.

If you liked the first one (I rate it 7/10) for it's (unexpected) originality and humour (not to mention it's outstanding animation), maybe skip this one, it is far far inferior to its predecessor.

I was quite disappointed (and bored) for most of the time spent in the theater.

For anyone below the age of ten: You'll probably enjoy this one as well, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

The gameplay is fantastic, the graphics are beautiful and everything's guided by a well thought-out, not too complicated story. All adds up to an atmospheric and enticing game, which I have played through three times now.

Overall a wholesome, gorgeous game.

10/10