“Mars attacks!” (1996, USA)
Title: Mars attacks!
Director: Tim Burton
Made: 1996 in USA
Final verdict: 3.5/5
Tim Burton. You’re so great. This movie is also great. But that’s about it. Not fantastic, not perfect, it’s just great. This movie scared me a lot when I was around seven years old. The Martians just look so scary and vile. Well, they are extremely evil. This isn’t Tims best film (got to be the first Batman or Nightmare before Christmas) but it’s a good experience and you can’t keep yourself from smiling a little bit.
The United states (Why always them?) has gotten a message from outer space and it’s from some Martians who wants to land on planet earth. Of course we welcome them with open arms and let them land in the desert. The Martians say they come in peace and some stupid hippie release a dove to symbolize peace. The
Martian ambassador shots the dove down and all hell breaks loose. After a couple of second the whole welcoming party are green smoking skeletons (yes, green) laying on the ground. It unveils the Martians real intensions, they want to “destroy all humans” (hope THQ aint’ sue). After that a lot of stuff happen, yada yada yada yada. The end.
I don’t want to spoil this movie because it has a lot of funny stuff. Like brains blowing up, the white house blowing up, aliens blowing up, dogs blowing up, giant robots blowing up, casinos blowing up and thats about all the stuff that blow up in the movie. It has a lot of action and I had a hard time trying to sleep while watching it.
The movie is filled with computer generated junk and that’s the worst thing about it. The technique was to young and is used way to much. Practically everything is done the digital way. It’s still watchable but you just think “Couldn’t they just have used puppets”? Well I shouldn’t go on about this.
The movie is like I already have stated “great” but it has it’s flaws. I give it 3.5/5. The 0.5 points are for the really scary Martians and the 3 points are for the movie as a whole. The 1.5 points of is for the to much used computer generated stuff.
“Blair witch project” (1999, USA)
Title: Blair witch project
Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Made: According to the cover it’s a movie that was made 1994 by some students that disappeared and their video was found 5 years later or whatever. That’s just a bunch of bull shit. The movie was made 1999 for the mere purpose of entertainment.
Final verdict: 3/5
I’ve heard so much about this movie. All my friends have said “Oh, I’ve never been this scared” or “I was panic stricken through the whole movie”. I never dared to watch the movie until a week ago. I said “what the hey” and borrowed the dvd from a friend. It was around dusk and I put the disc in the dvd player and I was afraid about what the outcome would be. Maybe something along the lines “Seven days”. Nah, when the movie starts it’s just like a documentary with shaky camera and bad sound.
A couple of students walk around asking locals about the Blair witch myth. Later they decide to take a look for them selves if the myth really is true. So they take their stuff and walk out to the forest. There they place their tents and they have a small campsite. Later they discovers small piles of rock around the tents that perfectly resembles a triangle. That’s kinda weird and scary. They see a lot of strange stuff on the way but they don’t react like they want to get away until they see the small “dolls” that hang in the trees. I would have freaked out right after the piles of rock. When they try to get away the just walk in circles and they can’t get out of the forest. So now they’re forced to stay another night in the forest (predictable) and of
course they find a small cabin in the middle of the night (lame). Just like normal and sane people would have done they walk right in and spread out (stupid) and this just happens to be the only time I’m really scared. I don’t know why but this in particular scene just scared the shit out of me. There’s even a part where you can (if you look closely) see a face in the background. This was later proven to not be a face but a branch.
I’m not going to tell you how it ends. Because I guess you can tell by the facts I just gave you. The movie has a certain tone to it that makes it scary in a way. But in the long run it’s just so damn boring to watch. They just say the same things over and over. “That’s weird” and “Let’s get the hell out of here”. The ending is the high point of the movie and after watching the effective ending you’re going to have nightmares for the rest of your pitiful life.
i give the movie 3/5 and all of the points are to the ending. Skip the rest of the movie.
“Funny games” (1997, Germany)
Title: Funny games
Director: Michael Haneke
Made: 1997 in Germany
Final verdict: 4/5
When you hear the name Funny games you might think “Oh, this must be a really funny movie because it says so”. It’s actually the complete opposite.
A family are going to their house on the country side for the holiday. They have just settled down and filled the fridge when a neighbor (or at least he says he is) comes to the house. He asks for some eggs and they give him just that. Later he drop the eggs by “accident” and asks for some more. The family kindly give him four more eggs and tells him not to drop them and then just leave. On the way out he also “accidentally” drops the phone into the kitchen sink. The mother gets really angry and tell him to just get away before something else happens. Later on he gets attacked by the family’s dog and drops the eggs once more. Now one of his friends join him and they both go back and ask for even more eggs. The “neighbors” friend sees the golf bag standing in the corner and asks if he can take a swing in the garden. Golf club he later use as a weapon to start the “funny” games. The games themselves are just excuses to torture and humiliate the family. What these boys intentions are is never known.
The intruders have something very unusual. A “magical” remote control (yes this was before that stupid Adam Sandler movie). With it they can rewind time and pause the events ongoing. They use the remote in the end to stop the happy ending for the family. The mother actually succeeds in killing one of the intruders but the other rewinds so he can save his friend.
The intruders also breaks the fourth wall many times. It’s part of telling the one who watch a bit about the message of the movie. The movie was made to question the movie
violence in general and it does that by barely showing any violence at all. You only hear sounds of the ones getting killed. You can see the bodies afterwards but no graphical violence. The only thing they show is when the intruders friend gets shot.
The actors in the movie are brilliant. They are very believable. The director ( Michael Haneke) really gets what he want said with this disturbing movie. Everything from camera positions to light and sound is top notch. He also just spoils the whole “the good always wins” cliché. In reality the evil wins the majority of times.
I could already see the confused faces before I wrote this review. “1997 wasn’t that movie made this year and in USA?”. No! That is the half crappy remake of the movie. Micheal Haneke was disappointed that his movie never reached the American audience so he made a “remake”. This remake would be completely in English and be completely “plastic”. The light the mood, everything feels Hollywood and everybody knows todays Hollywood sucks arse. Even though this is the best I’ve seen in the Hollywood style in a long time it’s not as good as the original. As they say over at Corn Flakes, “original and the best”.
So as you just might have noticed I liked the movie. I’ve never seen anything like it. Therefore I give it 4/5. The one point of is for that crappy remake (Damn you Hollywood)!
“Conkers bad fur day” (2001, N64)
Title: Conkers bad fur day
Developers: Rare
Released: 2001
Console: N64 and Xbox (remake)
Final verdict: 5/5
When you see the cover for Conkers bad fur day you wont think of anything other than a squirrel jumping around in a Super Mario 64 type of environment (but you shouldn’t think that because he’s holding a glass of beer in his hand). You’re both right and wrong. The game was supposed to be like that from the start but Rare later decided to make the most M rated squirrel ever in a video game.
Conkers story begins on the game boy. He had his first game on the game boy color (correct me if you think I’m wrong). There he was this cute and cuddly squirrel going on a harmless adventure (so dumb). When Rare later de
cided that it’s time for that little squirrel to move to the N64 they had run out of ideas for conker. So they decided that Conker (in cute cuddly land (LoL)) where going to be yet another Super Mario 64 rip off. But then some bright mind thought “why not make him the most pissed of, drunk, greedy and miserable squirrel up to date?”. Of course the rest of the team joined the idea probably with the words “I can recognize my self in that description!”.
The game begins with a parody of “a clockwork orange” (should make a review of that movie soon) where Conker says he’s the king of the land. When you have played the game through you know how he got there. In the beginning of the game Conker just tries to get home to his girlfriend. But on the way there he’s going to meet all sort of crazy stuff. Like a “emo” pitchfork, a sadistic bucket of paint, a horny bee, a singing piece of poo, money that wants you to get them and much more.
The gameplay is very innovative and it’s the first time I could laugh at jokes in video games. The characters are memorable and cutscenes just awesome. Rare did the right thing with this game ( wish they could do the right thing now and go back to Nintendo (they made the best Donkey Kong games))
Because of all these good aspects I give it 5/5. It’s a real masterpiece.
