I am a sensitive person when it comes to horror movies. I try to make myself see as few as possible, but sometimes I am just too curious, and, well, curiosity killed the cat. At least I have made a deal with myself to never catch up on the list of Stephen King adaptations I haven't seen yet. Misery is only half as scary as The Shining which is a movie I swore I will never ever see again.
The movie Misery is not as brutal as the book. It is another Stephen King adaptation which the author wasn't happy with, and if you only know the book and thus expect a die-hard splatter movie with chopped off limbs then I must tell you: NO. You are not going to see that.
Bestseller author Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan) has a car accident and is rescued and taken care of by nurse Annie Wilkes (played by Kathy Bates) who turns out to be an absolutely devoted fan of his books, especially the Misery series. When she finds out that her beloved character dies in the latest volume, Annie is determined to make Paul change the ending - under any circumstances...
The horror in Misery is mostly silent (think Silence Of the Lambs rather than Saw) and yet omnipresent due to the incredible performance of Kathy Bates. (For those of you who are not sure who Kathy Bates is: the other nice rich woman besides Rose in Titanic. Hilary Swank's mother in P.S. I Love You. The hippie woman sharing the hot tub with Jack Nickolson in About Schmidt.) You gotta love that woman. One minute she has an absolutely contagious smile, and the next minute she seems to be a demon straight from hell. Few actresses can pull that off so easily, and giving Bates the Oscar was one of the most appropriate decisions Hollywood has ever made. If you want to see great acting in a horror movie which is suitable for the more sensitive movie addict (;-) ), you should give Misery a try.
RATING: 4/5
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Pina (Pina - Tanzt, tanzt, sonst sind wir verloren; 2011)
I knew who Pina Bausch was before I saw this movie. But I didn't have much of an idea of what exactly she had been famous for.
After seeing it, I realized what it was she did. And I understood why she became such a legend.
Pina Bausch (1940-2009) was a dance performer, choreographer, and dancing/ballet teacher and she was undoubtedly one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. She even influenced David Bowie. Do I need to say more? ;-)
This movie now is Wim Wender's monument to her art, a documentary showing extracts from four of her pieces. Some of her dancers tell their story of how they became part of Bausch's ensemble, the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Pina is clearly not a movie for people whose preferred movie genre is only horror, or only action. You gotta be able to sit down, relax - maybe with a glass of wine, maybe even by yourself - and allow yourself to really sink into the wonders of Pina Bausch's art and the beauty of epxressing yourself through art in ways that at least I had never even thought were possible.
Kimberly Jones of The Austin Chronicle described the movie as an "utterly transfixing, exhilarating spectacle", and she couldn't have found better words. The fantastic score underlines perfectly what Pina was aiming at: creating a medium for expressing yourself and connecting with others through dancing. Wim Wenders made a movie that is overwhelming and incredibly fragile and tender at the same time. If you thought you knew what dancing meant, watch this movie and think again.
RATING: 5/5
After seeing it, I realized what it was she did. And I understood why she became such a legend.
Pina Bausch (1940-2009) was a dance performer, choreographer, and dancing/ballet teacher and she was undoubtedly one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. She even influenced David Bowie. Do I need to say more? ;-)
This movie now is Wim Wender's monument to her art, a documentary showing extracts from four of her pieces. Some of her dancers tell their story of how they became part of Bausch's ensemble, the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Pina is clearly not a movie for people whose preferred movie genre is only horror, or only action. You gotta be able to sit down, relax - maybe with a glass of wine, maybe even by yourself - and allow yourself to really sink into the wonders of Pina Bausch's art and the beauty of epxressing yourself through art in ways that at least I had never even thought were possible.
Kimberly Jones of The Austin Chronicle described the movie as an "utterly transfixing, exhilarating spectacle", and she couldn't have found better words. The fantastic score underlines perfectly what Pina was aiming at: creating a medium for expressing yourself and connecting with others through dancing. Wim Wenders made a movie that is overwhelming and incredibly fragile and tender at the same time. If you thought you knew what dancing meant, watch this movie and think again.
RATING: 5/5
Blue Is The Warmest Colour (Blau ist eine warme Farbe; La vie d'Adèle; 2013)
This is a movie that I had huge expectations in, almost as much as in Hunger Games pt.2 (which is a great movie and even better than pt. 1, go see it if you haven't yet!). It was hard to go into the movie theater without being prejudiced before and having some ideas (and hopes) about what the film would be like because of all the stuff I had heard in advance (very graphic sex scenes, one of the best movies of the year).
I won't give away too much of the story, just so much: I am disappointed.
The whole movie is three (!) hours long. The first hour shows mostly the daily routine of 17-year-old Adèle (played by Adèle (surprise!) Exarchopoulos) at school.... *sarcasm on* yes, how very interesting! *sarcasm off* By the time she finally gets together with beautiful, mysterious Emma (played by Lea Seydoux, the female villain from Mission Impossible 4) who is a total cliché of the flamboyant art student, you are very likely to have yawned a few times or shifted in your seat wondering when the movie was finally going to develop a plot.
Coming to talk about the oh-so-graphic sex scenes. Journalists have not exaggerated when they described those scenes as hot, BUT.... author Julie Maroh - the woman who whote the comic on which the movie is based - described those scenes best when she compared them to porn, saying that "the gay and queer people laughed because it's not convincing, and found it ridiculous" while guys will probably be "feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies". EXACTLY. There is not much more to say about it. Many times I was thinking I was watching internet porn or something. It is very clear where director Abdellatif Kechiche got his "inspiration" from. I am not saying porn is bad or evil. I am saying, however, if you want to make art, you should aim higher. It's actually what you owe the lesbian audience whose love life you are trying to picture.
Apart from those three things (length, boringness and ridiculous sex scenes), the movie is better than many other lesbian movies. It avoids the typical shallowness and uptightness, and the actresses do a very good job. The (straight) people I saw the movie with liked it much better than me, so maybe the movie is more enjoyable for a straight audience.
RATING: 3/5
I won't give away too much of the story, just so much: I am disappointed.
The whole movie is three (!) hours long. The first hour shows mostly the daily routine of 17-year-old Adèle (played by Adèle (surprise!) Exarchopoulos) at school.... *sarcasm on* yes, how very interesting! *sarcasm off* By the time she finally gets together with beautiful, mysterious Emma (played by Lea Seydoux, the female villain from Mission Impossible 4) who is a total cliché of the flamboyant art student, you are very likely to have yawned a few times or shifted in your seat wondering when the movie was finally going to develop a plot.
Coming to talk about the oh-so-graphic sex scenes. Journalists have not exaggerated when they described those scenes as hot, BUT.... author Julie Maroh - the woman who whote the comic on which the movie is based - described those scenes best when she compared them to porn, saying that "the gay and queer people laughed because it's not convincing, and found it ridiculous" while guys will probably be "feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies". EXACTLY. There is not much more to say about it. Many times I was thinking I was watching internet porn or something. It is very clear where director Abdellatif Kechiche got his "inspiration" from. I am not saying porn is bad or evil. I am saying, however, if you want to make art, you should aim higher. It's actually what you owe the lesbian audience whose love life you are trying to picture.
Apart from those three things (length, boringness and ridiculous sex scenes), the movie is better than many other lesbian movies. It avoids the typical shallowness and uptightness, and the actresses do a very good job. The (straight) people I saw the movie with liked it much better than me, so maybe the movie is more enjoyable for a straight audience.
RATING: 3/5
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