Dave Jansen » Reviews

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.

This week I finished reading The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, written by Mark Haddon. I got this book as a birthday present from YoungDoo, and had never heard of it nor it’s writer up to that moment. After reading the first page, though, I instantly fell in love with his writing style and unique look on life.

The book isn’t very big nor long, which is great for someone like me who never read all that many books. It’s a great way to get started, if you will.

If you’re looking for an entertaining, intelligent and at times very touching (real) story, I highly recommend you check this book out.

Review: Unstoppable (2010)

Unstoppable is a movie I’ve been wanting to see for a while, since I’m a big fan of Denzel Washington. I wasn’t able to watch it while it was running in the cinema, but I’ve finally been able to watch it, and figured it would be a good movie choice to re-start my semi-regular movie reviews.

Unstoppable is a great movie. It does not try to be creative, story-wise it’s about as uncreative as can be. But it makes up for that in successfully creating a tense situation in which you, at times, really don’t know what to expect next. While the ending might be predictable, there were a few moments throughout the film in which I did not know what to expect.

Sadly, the movie is heavily crippled by amazingly bad cinematography. Literally from the first scene I I had to try hard not to be too bothered by the flashy, quick camera movements and zooms, even (or especially) in scenes where nothing “action-y” was happening to begin with. Why we need a slow camera pan followed by a quick-zoom-to-facial-close-up when the main characters simply stand in front of each other talking is beyond me.

After looking up the director Tony Scott‘s previous work, it’s surprising to see this coming from a man who directed the fantastic Man On Fire, the more recent TV show The Good Wife, and the more recent not-all-that-special-but-still-entertaining The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3. The latter, I take it, was more of a warm-up for Tony Scott to check out how to capture moving vehicles in the most irritating way possible.

The movie tries to mention a bit about the rather stereotypical hollywood character backgrounds (failing marriage, single parent, etc.) but fails to make you care all that much about it. But that’s ok, you’re here to watch a train go nuts, not weep about failing marriages.

Aside from this, Unstoppable was quite entertaining. It managed to make me make me sit on the tip of my chair (figuratively, I was laying in bed) through several occasions in the movie. It was fun to recognize a few characters and their awesomely type-casted roles (I’m looking at you, dude from Cloverfield who just couldn’t shut up), and Denzel is great as always. Chris Pine is an interesting choice, but it works out ok.

All in all, Unstoppable is a movie that makes me reminisce about the typical 90s action movie style. It does not try to bring you plot twists, brilliantly written dialogs or anything of the sort. It’s a no-thrills action-thriller, and delivers exactly that. Incredibly shitty camera work aside, Unstoppable is highly entertaining and great for a friday evening at home.

Review: Veronika Decides To Die (2009)

Every so often you stumble across a movie that turns out to be far better than you anticipated. Veronika Decides To Die is one of those. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar (The last time I saw her, she was stabbing long-teethed sun-haters for a living) and Jonathan Tucker and David Thewlis and a few others I didn’t really recognize. Both Sarah and Jonathan surprised me with very good acting, further emphasized by the mesmerizing filmography, similar in style to the brilliant Blindness (2008) and the belgium movie Blind (2007).

The movie starts without much introduction in Sarah’s home, her attempting suicide. For a moment it leaves you wondering why she tries, but the movie gives you an answer to that question soon enough, albeit without all too many words. Overall I must say the movie managed to answer all question that would come up at one point or another, which is very nice for a change.

I enjoyed the movie from beginning to end. The story was inspirational, the acting superb and the filmography breath-taking. There’s an underlaying message in this movie that I think everyone should be reminded of every now and then. Check out the movie, you won’t regret it.

Review: Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

Where The Wild Things Are is one of those movies where I knew nothing about it before I watched it. I saw it casually walking by, shouted ‘Hey, he looks like Forest!’, and watched the movie. And boy am I glad I did.

Where the Wild Things Are is brilliantly put together. Awesome filmography and great acting by Max made me curious about the movie right off the bat. The story starts out with a young boy, seemingly quite lonely. His mother busy with work, big sister being, well, a big sister, Max is angry. After an event at the house one evening, Max makes a run for it, finds a boat, and there the story begins.

What I enjoy about this movie is it’s unique mood. This is definitely not your run-of-the-mill fantasy movie. It’s touching, fun, crazy and gorgeously evil. It also beautifully leaves the question whether it’s really real or just a little boy’s vivid imagination right there for you to answer however you like.

The soundtrack by Karen O And The Kids fits beautifully with the movie, and I highly recommend you pick up the album after watching the movie.

All in all, a highly recommended movie. Capitalized. Italic. Emphasized. Pie.

Review: Fracture (2007)

Fracture is a typical Anthony Hopkins movie, which is most certainly not a bad thing (though makes it feel somewhat unsurprising). Fracture starts by Hopkins plain shooting his wife in the head, for she’s cheating on him. The movie takes an ‘uhm..?’ spin when he simply confesses to the murder when the cops arrive, making you wonder where this movie can go after that. The interesting stuff begins here, though, with Hopkins carefully planning out every little piece of the plan, which apparently is to commit the perfect murder.

The movie manages to keep your attention and make you wonder what will happen next. The ending (while not being too spoiler-y) felt kind of ‘meh’, but that might be just my personal opinion. It’s a somewhat fresh approach to making a thriller movie, and entertaining enough to spend an evening on the couch for. Hopkins makes you giggle quite a few times in awkward but highly entertaining situations, and almost makes you forget he is in fact a cold-blooded wife killer.

Review: Deadgirl (2008)

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So I was unfortunate enough to witness Marcel Sarmiento’ latest creation called Deadgirl. What appeared to be an interesting horror movie (yeah, I know), turned out to be an.. well, how to put this.

It’s hard not to end up in completely ripping on the movie. I guess I liked the filmography, that’s something. For the rest, the characters were anything but believable, and if I understand this movie, literally all (american) teenagers are necrophiliacs, have no common sense and are, well, retarded.

The movie starts out normal enough with your usual 26 year old actors pretending to be 17, using the F-word more often than my colleague gargles his throat (and I tell you, that’s impressive), complete with shitty-ass hairdo’s and apparent need to constantly fondle your male friends. You know, the usual. Things quickly turn for the messed up, though.

When our two main ‘teens’ discover a living dead girl in the basement of an abandoned (mental?) hospital, things get freaky. Instead of, you know, calling the cops or, hell, bringing her to the hospital themselves, one of them decides to ‘keep’ her.

F***ed up bell ring numero uno, I guess.

The other guy starts whining like a little girl, and off they go on a discussion for about 5 minutes on why it’s a bad thing to do, but alas, it inevitably ends in them both doing exactly that; keep her.

F***ed up bell ring numero dos.

I called her ‘living dead girl’ before, because she’s still alive, but apparently can’t really get killed. How do you find out? Well, the first night alone, one of the guys raped the girl, and when she wouldn’t stop struggling, beat her until her neck broke. She didn’t die, though, and to prove that, he showed it to his friend by shooting her three times.

F***ed up bell rng numero tres, quatro, cinco and seis.

Why we didn’t turn off the movie at this time, I have no idea. Anywho, soon another friend joins in with seemingly no understanding of that what he’s doing, and later on in the movie two more guys ‘drop by’.

F***ed up bell ri– you know what, forget it.

The rundown; This movie is beyond ridiculous with no apparent meaning nor link to reality. Or I so to god hope not, or these (amerian?) teenagers are freaking screwed up. It’s a pathetic attempt to be unique, I highly recommend you do not watch this. You can thank me later.

Review: Up In The Air (2009)

A week or two ago I watched Up In The Air, a new movie starring George Clooney and a few others I haven’t heard of before (I sucketh with names). I knew little about this movie but figured it would be pretty clooney-esque, so I was readying myself for an evening of kinda-good-but-not-really-memorable funtainment. Turns out I was wrong.

Up In the Air is about Ryan Bingman (Clooney) who travels all over the country (by airplane, in case you didn’t figure that out by now ;-) to fire people. Companies that need to fire a bunch of people but don’t have the, ehm, cojones, to do it themselves, so they hire Ryan to do it for them.

Ryan lives a life most of us would find repulsive. He spends most of his days in airports, airplanes or hotels and loves every bit of it. He loves the structure and repetition in his life, like how people always great him the same way when checking in. While it sounds weird and shallow, it seems to make him happy.

When at one point Ryan is called in, things change a tad, though. Anna Kendrick (Natalie Keener), has been awfully creative while he was out doing his thing, convincing his boss of a ‘revolutionary’ way to optimize the company and –what else– reduce costs drastically; Fire people using long-distance, using webcams. Ouch.

Ryan obviously thinks this new method is anything but good, and ends up taking Anna along to let her experience what the business is all about. To her surprise it’s a whole lot more personal than she originally thought.

The movie had a similar mood to it as 500 days of summer. It was somewhat slow-paced but never made me feel bored. I enjoyed Clooney in this indie-like movie, and made me appreciate him more than I did before. Overall, I highly recommend you watch this movie, it’s entertaining, touching and helps you ask the right questions about what is important in your life.

Review: Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Being a big fan of Robert Downey Jr., I had high hopes for this movie. Other than that it’s about Sherlock Holmes (hey), I knew nothing about this movie, but that’s how I like to go in one.

Having learned most of Sherlock Holmes by the weekly Donald Duck magazines I used to read, it came to a surprise that, according to this movie, Sherlock is a fantastic figher. The movie throws you right into the action, and introduces you to the amazingly quick senses Sherlock has, allowing him to plan exactly how a fight will go before it even starts. It might sound a bit awkward, but they made it look fantastic and not entirely unbelievable. He’s just a darn quick thinker, ‘s all.

Watson is a lot less fat than Disney made him look, and also a great fighter. This whole slightly more aggressive attitude of both main characters took some getting used to, but in the end worked out quite well.

The cinematography is very nice, especially in some high-paced action scenes. The slow-motion, slightly longer than usual scenes (à la 300) really work out well in this movie. They really managed to make the setting feel authentic, as there was not a single moment during the movie I felt like ‘hum’.

On the less positive side, the movie felt quite long. A few times I felt like ‘ok, wrap it up folks, we’re here now’, only to be pulled into yet another chapter of the story. While I enjoyed the movie, it would’ve probably been better if it wasn’t so long (The movie lasts for 128 minutes, but feels longer). Some of the jokes in this movie felt quite forced, something they really didn’t have to do as Robert seems quite humorous on his own.

In closing, if you’re a fan of Robert Downey Jr. or Sherlock Holmes, I recommend you go watch this movie. It’s a great movie to watch in the Cinema, with quite a few action-packed scenes. The ending not bad, just awfully open-ended. They managed to close the story (or chapter, if you will) opened in this movie though.

Life. Or something.