RoboCop (2014)

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Genre : SF/Action
Country : USA

Cast :
Joel Kinnaman : Alex Murphy
Gary Oldman : Dr. Dennett Norton
Samuel L. Jackson : Pat Novak
Michael Keaton : Raymond Sellars

Director :
José Padilha

Summary
In RoboCop, the year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Overseas, their drones have been used by the military for years - and it's meant billions for OmniCorp's bottom line. Now OmniCorp wants to bring their controversial technology to the home front, and they see a golden opportunity to do it. When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) - a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit - is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp sees their chance for a part-man, part-robot police officer. OmniCorp envisions a RoboCop in every city and even more billions for their shareholders, but they never counted on one thing: there is still a man inside the machine pursuing justice.

My opinion

“Make him more tactical. Let's go with black.”

A remake of "Robocop" and we get this whole debate again. Was this remake really necessary ? Were we really waiting for this ? Does it add any values to the original version? Does it equal the original version or is it just a pale shadow ? In my opinion this is again a needless and unnecessary discussion. Meanwhile we are already at the next "The Amazing Spiderman". "Superman" also has taken his cape out of the closet a number of times. And another "Godzilla" is ready to hit the theaters. Nobody is making a fuss about that. But oops, they are going to make a reboot of "Robocop". A 27 year old cult movie. A timeless classic that had great impact in all areas. An ultra-hard SF with explicit violent scenes, infused with inky cynical humor and satire, and a socially critical message that was unprecedented at the time. The critical spirit that haunts the 1987 version was probably quite revolutionary in those days. The TV ads that were displayed in between seemed absurd and a bit exaggerated, but are obvious at the present times. It presented a "Big Brother" society, where everything and everyone was screened and monitored and violence and intolerance were a normal thing. A society owned by the private sector and criminals. A materialistic , profligate and uncontrollable society with violent video games, retarded TV games, corruption and deceit .

The critics are very harsh about this remake. Superfluous, humorless, too serious and too little gore scenes (because of the PG-13 rating) are terms that are frequently used. In some cases perhaps true, but despite its shortcomings, it's still an enjoyable film. The next question, however, one can ask: Is this remake meant to emulate, to surpass or just to restyle Verhoeven's film? For me there's no doubt that you can't surpass or even emulate the original film. The released film at that time was a revelation and an unexpected commercial success. The combination of sharp wit, clever one-liners and explicit violence was an explosive cocktail. This is practically unfeasible to surpass because the zeitgeist in those days was totally different from the current one. Restyling is the only meaningful answer. And they succeeded brilliantly in doing that.

The beginning of the film sets the tone. Situated in Tehran drones and ED -209 's control the population and any extremist individual who constitutes a threat is singled out. This seemingly peaceful scene soon degenerates into an explosive confrontation between fanatical rebels and the robotic law enforcement. The coverage is broadcasted live in  "The Novak Element" with Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson) as a commentator with a stolid, biased attitude and truly supportive for this new law enforcement. A role that seemed to be written specially for Samuel L. Jackson . This parody of the current commentators on American TV is brought with a lot of flair and imagination by Jackson. The way he brings it, is grandiose. His enormous expressive statements and the determination with which he defends his ideas is masterful. He interrupts a debate between the designer of the drones and his political opponent just with a nonchalant wave motion. A tiny gesture showing that contradiction is not tolerated. A practically perfect rendition the whole movie except at the end . The elitist and chauvinistic patriotism which then comes up, I found a little to much. The reuse of the ED -209 's like they appeared in the first film (which also provided then some hilarious scenes, such as when an officer of OCP is shot by a prototype during a demonstration and the scene in the stairwell) was a pleasant surprise .

The rest of the story is again in Detroit that doesn't look like a decaying metropolis now, but crime rules again with the help of a corrupt police force. Omnicorp, the developer of robots, would be only too happy to put drones on the streets to combat crime in an efficient manner and also to raise their profits. However, they encounter quite some opposition from the political world, because the drones only take initiatives in a rational way and aren't able to judge with a human feeling of intuition, compassion and sense. When the police officer Alex Murphy, in his battle against a drug gang, is blown by the latter in shreds, Omnicorp sees his chance to solve this problem by developing a  robot/human who still has all those human feelings.

So much about what's in common with the original film. However, there is a little philosophical difference with the first Robocop. In the first movie, Alex was transformed into a bionic man who gradually regains his human feelings. In the remake it's the other way around. When Alex wakes up, there remains very little from his human body, but he still has his human feelings and consciousness. As this is an obstacle to its effectiveness as a killing machine, these human emotions are suppressed by lowering his dopamine level so he gradually changes into a numb robot, acting on auto-pilot . A subtle difference. The decision to change his suit in matt black and a red stripe as a visor gives it a more menacing appearance and makes it look more like "Judge Dredd". Only it's a softer version. I just didn't get the feeling of it being a hybrid version of Alex, but rather just a guy in a metal casting. The quizzical expression of "Tin Man" used by Mattox was therefore appropriate .

That there was significantly more budget for the special effects, was clearly seen. Compared with the old-fashioned looking stop-motion technique used at that time, it all looks oiled and devilishly realistic. The structure of the Robocop suit, the high-tech devices in the futuristic-looking labs and the action scenes (which to my taste were to seldom) looked sometimes like excerpts from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare". It all looks brushed, impressive and convincing. The acting itself varies from excellent (Gary Oldman as Dr. Norton) to fairly lousy (Abbie Cornish as Clare Murphy). Michael Keaton fitted perfectly into the role as the conniving and scheming Sellars.

Oh well , Verhoeven thinks it's a sign of creative poverty in Hollywood and Padilha complains about the terrible interference from MGM so he couldn't fully use his creativity. As a good friend of Padilha worded : “I talked to José Padilha for a week by phone. He will begin filming Robocop. He is saying that it is the worst experience. For every 10 ideas he has, 9 are cut. Whatever he wants, he has to fight. ‘This is hell here,’ he told me. ‘The film will be good, but I never suffered so much and do not want to do it again.’ He is bitter, but it’s a fighter.” In my opinion , this film is too much compared with the original, which really shouldn't be the intention. This is just a remake, with the foundation of Verhoeven 's film and a groovy new shell. The matches are there, but because of subtle reinterpretations it's not a straightforward remake . The content has stood the test of time well and leans even closer to the current reality than in the original film. It's actually scary how prescient Verhoeven was at that time. Many will not really appreciate this film and this will have more to do with nostalgia than the film per se. For me it was a more than creditable remake and definitely worth watching. "The remake is smarter than you would expect " concludes Variety. You only need to see it .....

My rating 7/10
Links : IMDB

Pompeii (2014)

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Genre : Action/Adventure/Drama
Country : Canada/Germany

Cast :
Emily Browning : Cassia
Kit Harington : Milo
Carrie-Anne Moss : Aurelia

Director :
Paul W.S. Anderson

Summary
Set in 79 A.D., POMPEII tells the epic story of Milo, a slave turned invincible gladiator who finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.

My opinion

"Only death is freedom for a gladiator.”

The movie "Pompeii" isn't really a disaster. Of course, it is not in favor of this film that the unraveling is already known in advance. So it's not so that you are going to look up surprised as the end credits are scrolling over the screen and you look stunned at the screen, stammering and muttering in yourself  "Damn, I really didn't see this coming !". If you are going to enumerate the disaster movies, you get a long list . Of course, the content of such films is already known in advance. In "The Poseidon Adventure" and "Titanic" the ships in the respective films run into some trouble. In "Twister", the twisters made a mess. "2012" was about the year 2012 when the world is experiencing a major flood. "Earthquake" was, you'll never believe it, about a huge earthquake and the aftermath. And recently, "The Impossible" shows a realistic picture of the 2004 tsunami that flooded Thailand. There is in other words not a disaster in the world where there is no film about .

I suppose that anybody who reads the title and looks at the movie poster immediately realizes that the main subject of this film is the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79. An eruption that caused the city of Pompeii, a prosperous town with all the utilities , infrastructures and wealth, was covered with a meter thick layer of ash. This fact alone is not much to fill a 100-minute film. The success of this film depends on the ancillary stories that are spun around it. But in the end the perception of a disaster movie such as "Pompeii" is like a porn movie.  Nobody cares about a decent storyline in such a movie. Usually, it absolutely makes no sense at all. About performances we won't make much fuss. The important thing is that it has an attractive and appetizing appearance. It's then just waiting for the action to start and we witness a discharge in ecstasy where each slit,cavern and hole is filled with a hot substance. This movie is "almost" similar.

The side story is twofold. The story of the surviving Celtic Milo (Kit Harington) who lives as a slave in London, where he fights in kind of arena battles in the slums and finally ends up in Pompeii to deliver a heroic battle against the giant gladiator, Atticus. The second part comprises a romantic theme. Cassia (Emily Browning), the daughter of a wealthy developer in Pompeii, falls in love with this muscled barbarian. She finds herself also in a difficult situation because she might be forced into a marriage with the cruel, corrupt senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland) who arrived with a regiment in Pompeii to inspect the building plans.

Eventually, it wasn't the storyline I disliked. It's not that bad. Even the corny love story. It's an impossible love since the gap between their origin is so unbridgeable. The gladiator part and the eruption of the Vesuvius guarantees this being an action packed film and was quite enjoyable to watch.
What really bothered me were sometimes the terribly exaggerated situations that arose.
Pompeii wasn't founded at the foot of Vesuvius. It was miles away from it. That's also the reason why it was excavated in such good condition. There were no lava floods and there weren't rocks catapulted on it. Pompeii was covered by a layer of ash caused by a pyroclastic cloud. But then again, it looked damn spectacular in this way.

I suppose Milo also has well-developed calf muscles, because the distance between the arena and the villa where Cassia was imprisoned was huge.
The tsunami that followed the eruption, was abruptly stopped after a boat was crammed into the gate of the city wall. So ridiculous.
And it's totally stupid to assume that you can escape a pyroclastic cloud riding a horse.

"Pompeii" still was action-packed and a sparkling sandals movie where the graphics of the catastrophe were sometimes excellent but not realistic visualized. A mix of "Gladiator" and any known love story about an impossible love, finished with a bit of "The horse whisperer" and "Dante's Peak". The love story didn't quite appeal to me. The gladiator/action/disaster part did. From the opening scene of the massacre of a tribe of Celts by the Romans and the fights between gladiators in the arena, to the devastating eruption of Vesuvius with a mass hysteria as a result. The feeling that I had however, was as going to look at a grand fireworks : it ends with a huge, impressive blast that resonates for a long time in your ears, and the next day you already forgot what color and shape it was. A storm in a teacup. BOOM!

My rating 6/10
Links : IMDB

Killing Season (2013)

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Genre : Action/Drama
Country : USA/Belgium

Cast :
Robert De Niro : Benjamin Ford
John Travolta : Emil Kovac
Milo Ventimiglia : Chris Ford

Director :
Mark Steven Johnson

Summary
Two veterans of the Bosnian War, one American, one Serbian, clash in the Appalachian Mountain wilderness. Ford is a former American soldier who fought on the front lines in Bosnia. He has retreated to a remote cabin in the woods, trying to escape painful memories of war. Kovac, a former Serbian soldier, seeks Ford out, hoping to settle an old score. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game in which Ford and Kovac fight their own personal war.

My opinion

“Hunting. I am going hunting”

"Killing Season" is like going to watch a charity match between John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg, two well-known stars who have a lot of achievements on their palmares and normally guarantee an exciting confrontation. Only you notice after some time that it's no longer the same as in their heydays. There's no punch in them anymore and they do their best but it's with a certain degree of unwillingness. It starts to look like a relay event and not a tough competitive match. The advantage tilts from one party to the other just to keep the tension high and eventually end the game in a draw to make it sporty and to satisfy everyone: the public, the sponsors and their own physical shape. It was something everybody was enthusiast and excited about, ultimately it results in an average event.

Travolta and De Niro were summoned to play in this "Tom and Jerry" film. The first time they appear together on the big screen . Travolta is a former Serbian soldier Emil Kovac with a huge beard, who was a member of the Scorpions, a paramilitary unit that was active during the Yugoslavian war and later stood trial for crimes committed in this war. He wants to take revenge on Benjamin Ford, who left him for dead at that time during an execution. De Niro plays Benjamin Ford, an ex-soldier who turned his back on the army after the dirty war in Bosnia and withdrew in the Appalachia mountains, far away from his family he's trying to avoid. He leads a life as a woodsman and spends his time with hiking, chopping wood and making pictures of the wildlife there. One day they meet and Kovac gives him a helping hand to get his jeep back on course. They end up together at the table in the cabin of Ford and enjoy a meal and a bottle of Jägermeister while they tell war stories . The invitation to go hunting together is on the table, and when Ford decides the next morning to go hunting for a deer and take it back home as a trophy. Eventually the situation evolves into a hunt after each other . As Kovac said in the beginning of the film with a heavy Slavic accent "I'm going hunting .... "

It's not the sometimes over exaggerated and weird accent from Travolta that nerved me. Frankly, I didn't think it sounded so wrong or misplaced. But what began to bother me is the ping-pong game between the two rivals. Every time we had to wait once again till one of the two would save himself out of a hopeless situation and holds the counter-party in a grip. It's obvious they are both hardened by their military past. An arrow right through your fibula and then subsequently hung up on it, is absolutely no impediment to start running through the woods afterwards. And being impaled on a door when an arrow got shot right through your two cheeks and then still start a monologue without losing your accent is also obvious. It was a bit overdone and predictable.

The applied tortures (painful to see, but not disgustingly filmed) I found appropriate, but ultimately I think it's used to make it a bit weightier and shocking. There were enough opportunities to deprive the opponent's life. Eventually I had the feeling that this was not the main goal anyway. It was just waiting for the finale to see what the outcome would ultimately be. Playing the hunter and hunted was done in a beautiful natural environment. And the cozy log cabin with a cozy fireplace and a nicely finished interior was also wonderful to watch. That was surely a positive thing here.

You can't call it a blockbuster , but then again it wasn't that terribly bad. Certainly there won't be any prizes awarded for this typical story. But if you look at what movies they played recently, Travolta in "Wild Hogs", "Hairspray" and "Old Dogs" and De Niro in "The Big Wedding", "The Family" and "American Hustle", then it is quite a relief to see these two legendary actors play such roles again. I'm sure this macho film, in which the transition from revenge to peace neatly expires, will appear on the summary of these two Hollywood stars in small print and it will end up in oblivion as a fait divers.

My rating 6/10
Links : IMDB

Buck Wild (2013)

Summary  
An idyllic hunting trip organized by Craig Thompson and his three friends is disrupted when he finds out that his fiancee and witness fool around with each other behind his back. To make things worse, his cousin seems to change into a killing machine, while a Chupacabra virus spreads rapidly and locals transforms into zombies.

Genre : Horror/Comedy
Country : USA

Cast :
Matthew Albrecht : Craig
Isaac Harrison : Lance
Dru Lockwood : Tom
Jarrod Pistilli : Jerry

Director :
Tyler Glodt

My opinion
 
"Buckwild" is a very typical B-movie in the zombie genre. Occasionally I enjoy a B-movie but in "Buck Wild" everything is really missing to make it an enjoyable film. It's trying hard to be funny, but nowhere I encountered a comic section. Additionally, it wants to be a horror, but tension and gore scenes fail. That doesn't lead to the desired result also. Eventually I was watching this movie fairly uninterested and kept watching just out of curiosity to see how this meaningless movie would end.

Four friends go on a weekend somewhere in a godforsaken rear corner of America to hunt deer. Craig (Matthew Albrecht) is the naive dorky idiot who is organizing the weekend. As gullible as he is, he did not even know his girlfriend is at home going from one party to another and also has an affair with Lance (Isaac Harrison), who is also part of the group. Lance is an incredible narcissist and an inveterate womanizer. Tom (Dru Lockwood) is the petty whiner of the company. A real coward and hygiene freak. He's such a wimp that sleeps in the evening with eye patches on and in the morning uses a face mask and cucumbers on his eyes. Jerry (Jarrod Pistilli) is the tough macho who goes outside in the morning and does his Oriental exercises completely naked. You immediately understand that these four individuals should ensure funny situations because of the chemistry between them. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Its a complete failure on this part and the humor feels utterly forced and unnatural. It looked like a " Porky's " episode .

 

In the Redneck town they run into Billy Ray (Mark Leslie Ford), the "Badass" of the village as he calls himself. A real fag who speaks with a posh English accent while a boa is draped around his neck. How do they come up with such an idea ? He's also surrounded by a gang of morons. If you would sum those clodhoppers their IQ, you won't get to the level of a typical toddler. Eventually, they got rid of this gang of idlers by the local sheriff who looks like someone from "The Dukes of Hazzard". Arriving at the weekend house, they meet the owner Clyde , a fairly ugly peasant and irascible, and his daughter Candy, a lascivious well-formed country girl who likes to please the male part of the population a lot. What they don't know is that Clyde was recently bitten by a chupacabra . What this ultimately is and where it comes from, you'll never know . Suddenly it was there . And suddenly it's gone. No sensible explanation about that at all.

You can already guess what the immediate consequences will be. Before you know it, the whole population of the town is affected by this strange, unknown disease, and the four friends are suddenly on a bizarre survival weekend. Jerry suddenly shows that he's master in survival techniques and an expert in the field of zombies. There are several zombie comedies made ​​in the past and this one really brings nothing new. The only funny moment was the alternative use of a frozen fish and the influence a space cake has on a zombie. For the rest there is just a bit of splashing with blood ,which is implemented in an amateurish way, and a horde of zombies who stumble across the screen. At times they even used a sophisticated way to bring that into view: they just filmed it a bit faster.

Towards the end, it really didn't matter to me who would survive this chaos. They started to get on my nerves in such a way that they didn't deserve to survive this tidal wave of zombies. "Buck Wild" is really a low-budget film and I have to hand it to them however, they didn't even tried to hide it. Ultimately, it is only a "not to be taken seriously" zombie movie where the main objective is to mix atrocities with airy black humor. Unfortunately, the two categories were not sufficiently developed: a shortage of bloody situations and a total lack of humor.

My rating 2/10
Links : IMDB

The Monuments Men (2014)

Genre : War/Drama
Country : USA/Germany

Cast :
George Clooney : Frank Stokes
Matt Damon : James Granger
Cate Blanchett : Claire Simone

Director :
George Clooney

Summary
The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys - seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 - possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind's greatest achievements.

Mijn mening

"If you destroy their history, you destroy their achievements and it's as if they never existed.”

"The Monuments men" is a terribly boring movie. Thank God there were people during the 2nd World War who were concerned about the cultural heritage and with a selfless commitment went to the battlefields of Nazi Germany to recover the looted artworks. It's a story based on true events, but I still doubt if it was necessary to make a film about those events. In "The Guns of Navarone" they gathered ​​a commando to destroy those damn huge cannons. In "Saving Private Ryan" a group of soldiers got orders to look for a certain Ryan (of course) whose brothers been killed on the battlefield. In "The Monuments Men" some old aged connoisseurs of art, sacrifice themselves to find stolen artworks. They also could have called it "Saving a Private Collection". But this one isn't that heroic and exciting. You would expect this to be a masterpiece with such a cast and such an original story about the 2nd World War. Ultimately, it isn't a movie of the same valuable level as those pieces of art they tried to save.

George Clooney co-wrote this film, has directed it and also plays the lead role as Frank Stokes, an art expert at age who puts together a group of eight other art historians, architects and professors to go to distant Europe and find some lost art. It's also a race against the clock since the Russians are also keen to get those artworks in their possession. For the Russians, it's a kind of payment for the losses they suffered during the war, while "The Monuments Men" have the noble aim to deliver it back to the original owners. The other members of the group consists of the three American greybeards Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), Walter Garfield (John Goodman) and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), the Englishman Donald Jeffries ( Hugh Bonneville ) who apparently has to make up for something, the Frenchman in exile Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin) and James Granger (Matt Damon) and Sam Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas).

Again Clooney looks like the perfect son in law and behaves as usual as a charming Hollywoodstar. I'm constantly amazed about the fact that no matter what Mr.Clooney does, his hair always looks immaculate and well groomed. It seemed as if there is still a renowned stylist on every corner in this recreated-to-rubble Germany who has the time to fix his hair again. For the rest, it seems like an "Ocean's Eleven" in uniform. Even the conversations with Damon look like a duplicate of "Ocean's Eleven" : such a jovial, toneless and dry informal conversation between two close friends. Same routine.

Matt Damon plays again the smiling charmer who tries to help himself using his pitifully poor French (To be honest, I couldn't understand anything he said) on his way to Paris, where he will meet a woman called Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett). Claire is the curator of the Jeu de Paume, a former art museum that became a depot of stolen art. She could possibly point out the locations where the Nazis have hidden their loot. However, she is an old-fashioned young woman who stubbornly refuses to help him, out of fear that it would disappear in the hands of the U.S. The fact that this frigid aunt suddenly felt her hormones working and encouraged Damon to clean up the produced cobwebs during the war, after she was so kind to ask if he was a "good husband", I found a useless and meaningless filler which had nothing to do with the rest of the story.

The most enjoyable performances were done by the comic trio of the whole gang: Murray, Goodman and Balaban. Although their efforts unfortunately couldn't save the movie. Murray walked around again as if he could care less. The famous dry humor was briefly interrupted by one of the most moving moments: playing a vinyl record he received with a Christmas message of his daughter and grandchildren. An intimate moment between all the misery of war. Goodman was again the lame softy you expect anytime to emit a thunderous roar of laughter, but also has its sad moment when he and Clermont ends up in a crossfire between the two armed forces. Balaban is an irascible rascal who has one great desire when they arrive in Europe : the opportunity to kill somebody over there.

Don't expect action packed war scenes because the art rescuers follow the advancing forces during the whole movie and arrive in every historically known location after the Germans and allied forces have left. There are countless films about the horrors of the 2nd World War, but this story was still unknown to me. That made it more interesting to watch. The fact that there are two Belgian cities in the movie where valuable works of art were stolen , is also something that aroused my curiosity. The sometimes amusing dialogues and funny moments are interspersed with touching moments and a few moralizing and corny moments . But overall it was just a weak movie. In content it's not really an epic story : a group of elderly men running back and forth through Germany looking for paintings and sculptures . That they made a 2 hour movie about that, is in itself an achievement .

My rating 4/10
Links : IMDB