Death Do Us Part (2014)

Genre : Horror/Thriller
Country : Canada

Cast :
Julia Benson  : Kennedy
Peter Benson : Ryan
Emilie Ullerup : Emily

Director :
Nicholas Humphries

Summary
Kennedy Jamieson, a wealthy socialite, has waited her whole life to have the perfect wedding. Engaged to the charming Ryan Harris, the young couple is just a week away from the big day but hasn't had a chance to celebrate their respective bachelor/bachelorette parties. Ryan's best man Chet books a remote cabin in the woods to throw them a 'Jack and Jill' stag that they'll never forget. Out in the middle of nowhere, things take a horrifying turn as members of the group are brutally picked off one by one. What started out as a celebration quickly descends into a bloody nightmare. Friendships are ripped apart and accusations fly in this blood filled psychological horror with a whodunit twist.

My opinion
Sometimes one wonders why he has made the effort to start watching a particular film and how he could think it would be a pleasant time waster. "Death do us part " contains elements of a slasher film and a common mystery movie. But it contains all the worst elements. A group of young people going on stag weekend in a godforsaken place far from civilization . Of course you do that if you want to keep such a party and don`t want anyone to witness the riotous festivities that will erupt there , I suppose. The cheerful couple who are going to give their consent the following week is Kennedy and Ryan. She is apparently the daughter of a wealthy family (with also a mental illness apparently), and he`s some loser who has more to answer for than you may suspect . They are accompanied by the sister Hannah, a good friend Emily , Ryan`s best man Chet and his cousin Derek who also has a rather dark past .

The welcome committee alone would already make me turn around and return to the civilization ASAP. Bo, the owner of the bungalow, is not exactly a paragon of kindness and is quite frightening and threatening. The dead starlings on the porch , he cleans up reluctantly with a spade after he concludes in an intelligent way that they are indeed dead .  A terrible way to bring humor in this film , and it gave a good idea what was to follow . What ultimately was the purpose of these dead birds , I couldn´t figure out . An attempt to make it lugubrious and mysterious perhaps? We can´t really talk about performances. It´s more like a failure in performing. The three main female characters were probably selected based on the weight of their breasts. The higher the weight, the more important the role. After a while I was even convinced that their cup-size effortlessly defeated their IQ in numbers. Totally unconvincing , and they looked like members of a youth movement running around in the threatening woods anxious and panicky.

The three male protagonists tried to be tough, except Chet who behaved throughout the film as a drunken fooler. Eventually they behaved like a bunch of sissies who are running back and forth through the woods and at every suspicious noise they react like real cowards. The moment they try to flee by car and they want to check the engine was hilarious. Eventually it becomes a "who-is-now-the-main suspect" game, where you´ll be put on the wrong foot a huge amount of times. Bo is of course suspicious. The guy looks a bit like Lurch from "The Addams Family", and appears every time where you least expect it and saunters around with a dangerous looking ax. Eventually, you may expect a surprising plot and a not so surprising ending. Don´t expect a real massacre. That was really a major disappointment.

Conclusion: A terribly bad B-movie that doesnt look like a slasher movie at all. No suspense, no gory murder scenes and a total lack of scares.

My rating 1/10
Links : IMDB , Moviemeter

The Philosophers (2013)

Genre : Drama/SF
Country : USA/Indonesia

Cast :
James D'Arcy : Mr. Zimit
Sophie Lowe : Petra
Rhys Wakefield : James

Director :
John Huddles

Summary
At an international school in Jakarta, a philosophy teacher challenges his class of twenty graduating seniors to choose which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.

My opinion

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

I like a bit of philosophy once and a while, even though I haven't encountered it during my student years. Although it's sometimes difficult to make the distinguish between a philosopher and a sophist. The philosophy teacher here had sometimes the tendency to degenerate into a fairly dictatorial sophist with his puns and fallacious reasoning. But he was undeniably an intelligent man. Just as the graduating senior students in this class located in Jakarta. The introduction of the participants in this philosophical jousting, the structure of the story, the sometimes philosophical dialogue and the ultimate test that this Mr.Zimit had prepped, caused a tingling start. That, however, slowly slides into a meaningless, absurd and trivial conclusion, no philosopher could have made up.

First we meet the two protagonists Petra (Sophie Lowe) and James (Rhys Wakefield) who since indefinitely form a couple and actually are mutually antagonistic. Petra is the primus of the class and very smart, while James dangles at the end as we will learn later. The fact that Petra leaves for school that morning, and warns him not to fall asleep, wasn't very smart. Rhys Wakefield is suitable for this role as a soft looking hunk who girls like Petra , an angelic appearance with a fragile appearance and a vulnerable personality, constantly fall in love with. Rhys was showcased in "The Purge " as the crazy leader of the student group and " +1 " as the dimwit that searches a whole movie for his girlfriend. Both films I didn't rate that high, so I actually had something like "Jesus, again a movie as stupid as an ox". It wasn't that bad after all. Sophie Lowe has such an angelic appearance who everyone will love. Only she has the facial expression of a cow and her involvement in the conversations demonstrate either total disinterest or being stoned .

After that we get a representation of the other students and you can enjoy some witty and clever conversations. And then it's time for the last test that Mr.Zimit invented. An imaginary situation in which 21 students reside while an apocalyptic nuclear war breaks out. However, there is a bunker nearby where only 10 people ultimately can survive (something regarding rationing and the oxygen equipment). Eventually, everyone gets a paper with his profession or talent printed on. They must now determine by logical reasoning who eventually is allowed to enter the bunker and to leave it again after a year to rebuild the at that time devastated earth and populate it again. An insightful statement that guarantees an entertaining movie that makes you feel involved as a spectator. You obviously don't need a university degree to know that a carpenter or engineer has more value in building a society then a poet of course . And that was also the most hilarious moment of the movie. The student who got this talent, didn't even get a chance to explain himself and was shot instantly by Mr.Zimit. The latter also has a "wild card" and possessed a certain knowledge that could be useful to the group. Ultimately they failed the first test, that ends with a collective suicide .

The sequel is a brilliant way to get the spectator even more involved in the experiment by starting over a second time but with some additional rules. Rules composed in such a way that individuals who first seemed  very strong and important, now don't look very promising and turn out to be doubtful cases. The poet although gets shot again. Further elaboration on the continuation of this film might reveal too much. Eventually the mood of this film capsizes completely. What began as an exciting test for a gang of high intellectual bright heads to push the limits of their ability to reason and develop an ingenious logically way of thinking, ends up as an infantile game of manipulation and jealousy caused by the most primitive human emotions. You would expect that these individuals who look at every nonsensical issue from every angle and perspective in a rationally and clearly way, would place themselves above these problems and handle their feelings. I thought that it was just an attempt to discredit someone and that it's a bit meager to finish. A dull result.

The concept was original and promising, but they should have philosophized a bit longer about the end....

My rating 4/10
Links : IMDB

Grand Piano (2013)

Nederlands hier ...

Genre : Mystery/Thriller
Country : Spain

Cast :
Elijah Wood : Tom Selznick
John Cusack : Clem
Tamsin Egerton : Ashley

Director :
Eugenio Mira

Summary
The pianist Tom Selznick is forced to stop with performing because of a crippling stage fright. Just before his comeback, he discovers a note being written on his sheet. His return appears to contain a deadly side, when he's forced to play for his life.

 
My opinion 

Got your attention, don’t disappoint me Tom.

"Grand Piano" is not so grand after all. Are you a admirer of Elijah Wood, you hate the presence of John Cusack in a movie, you're a lover of classical music, it shouldn't be to exciting and certainly not to many victims with gallons of blood, then you should watch this movie. I was extremely bored anyway.

So if you are a big fan of Elijah Wood, then you'll definitely enjoy this movie. He's almost full time on screen. His famous frightened look with these wide open eyes is constantly in the picture. You can truly smell his cold sweat as the story progresses. The most amusing description that I have encountered so far is "Phone Boot with Frodo playing the piano." I expected that he would put on his Hobbit costume and head back to Bag End with his knapsack, cursing at everyone that he's sick of strumming on that rotten grand piano. It's a pitty, but that label from LOTR will always stick to him. It's not 100 % fair to use that argument again because I have to admit that he's actually playing his part in an excellent way. His greatest achievement in "Grand Piano" is that I was really convinced at one time that he could have played this concerto completely on his own. After some searching on the worldwide web, I read that he did play the piano once, but that this level was really to high for him. As he said in an interview : "I had taken lessons as a child and had a basic understanding of the instrument, but I certainly could not play like that . And I wanted it to look as accurate as possible . But at a certain point , once we kind of broke the barrier , so to speak , or the first couple of bits or playing the piano onscreen , I felt like I'd got myself into a routine or how to make it work and got comfortable with the instrument and comfortable with the process." But beyond the excellent "pretending to be a masterful pianist", there is very little to see. Looking anxiously around, conversing while playing a terribly difficult piece of music and even typing a text message through his score, are some wonderful performances. Wonderfully but at the same time slightly impracticable.
 

About John Cusack, we can be as brief as his contribution to this would-be suspense thriller. The entire film we can hear only his conspiratorial and fairly pedantic voice. Actually I forgot he starred in here after a while and had a reaction like "Oh yes, he was also in this movie" when he finally showed up. Very little to judge about. One positive thing for Cusack is the fact that the critics have very little to complain about .

The biggest stumbling block for me was the music. Ultimately, it seems like you 're watching a full broadcast of some classical concert or competition instead of a so-called thriller. Not that I want to be detrimental to this kind of "serious" music, but I never managed to like this kind of music, even though I am a big music lover and I am open to multiple genres. It started to work on my nerves in such a way that I was looking more and more forward to the end and waited impatiently for the first victim.
 

And that's the next point. It may be that it tries to reach a suspense level equivalent to that of a Hichcock movie. But you have to admit that two spectators being killed during an entire movie, without a speck of blood or any image of the murders themselves, won't make it a thriller. I found even on Google+ a list of 10 "Horror" movies that you absolutely should see in 2014. When was this film even close to being a horror? Yes the classical music was a horror element for me. But that's a personal issue. The rest was just a sort of Edgar Allen Poe story in a modern "Speed" version. I was expecting some kind of sinister turn, but unfortunately this failed to happen. The key moment (hehehe!) was so ridiculous and far-fetched that I was even surprised about the fact that the end credits already started (By the way, the beginning and end credits take about 15 minutes ...)
 

A total disappointment for me. The most positive portrayal was from Tamsin Egerton and Allen Leech as Ashley and Wayne, the friendly couple of the Selznick's. A couple so stupid and so ignorant of classical music that they stood out from the crowd of stiff connoisseurs. The only thing Ashley is wondering about was the fact that she couldn't sit with her ​​best friend Emma although there was still plenty of room on the balcony after she had studied the plan of the concert-hall. Hilarious. I wished the sniper shot Selznick's wife Emma immediately. What an arrogant and obnoxious person she was!

Next time someone has a heart attack during the Queen Elizabeth contest here in Belgium, there will be more tension in the live broadcast than there was to be found in this film. And now "Allegro assai" and certainly "Prestissimo" on to the next movie ....
 

My rating 2/10
Links : IMDB

Bad Asses (2014)

Genre : Action/Drama
Country : USA

Cast :
Danny Trejo : Frank Vega
Danny Glover : Bernie Pope
Andrew Divoff ; Leandro Herrera

Director :
Craig Moss

Summary
Frank his dream came true by opening a Community center in East Los Angeles where he coaches young boxers, both in the ring and outside. When his prized pupil Manny gets into trouble with a gang of drugdealers,he gets killed. Frank decides, together with his friend Bernie, to take revenge with the only weapons they have : their minds and their fists.

My opinion

I’d rather you stick a needle in my eye than insult me

My God,  this was a terribly bad movie. Regardless of whether you are to assume that this is really nothing more than a bad B-action movie and you definitely shouldn't take this too seriously, I think it is a monstrosity of a movie. Terrible acting (even Danny Glover's acting was dreadful), bad fight scenes , incredibly old SE's and such mindless humor that even a laugh track wouldn't work . However, what can be expected from someone who has films directed with titles such as "Saving Ryan's Privates", "The 41 -Year- Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It" and "30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". I have a feeling that Craig Moss used more energy and creativity on devising this film titles than in creating it. The involvement of Danny Trejo in here is also an indication that this won't be a exalted movie. When you look at his filmography, however, you can only have respect for the man. Is there actually a movie he hasn't played in? There are 18 movies in post -production with him at this time. Amazing !

I haven't seen "Bad Ass" myself (and I probably won't anyway). The only reason I wanted to watch this one is the fact that Danny Glover starred in it. It seemed like an attempt to make a follow up of "Lethal Weapon". The things that made "Lethal Weapon" so unique and entertaining, was missing here . . No flashy action, no humor and no infectious interaction between the two protagonists. I suppose that the beginning was an excerpt from "Bad Ass" where we witness how Frank Vega (Danny Trejo) teaches a duo of skinheads a lesson. Apparently this is enough to make him a local hero and even a honorary member of the police. Vega has a gym and the emerging star Manny has a not so healthy job on the side, namely trading drugs. One evening he's killed by the head of the drug gang. Vega is determined with the help of Bernie (Danny Glover), after Manny's mother begging, to take revenge on this gang for the death of his pupil who he treated as his own son .

The script is as predictable as it can get. You know where it's going and how it will end. If they have deliberately created this film as a humorous pulp action movie then I would understand. But I fear that it was meant to be a serious movie. The commitment of a veteran to give a group of problem children a future and a vision. But unfortunately it became an unlikely story. The most funny thing in this film were the farts of Glover.

Now some things that really annoyed me. Danny Glover , an old man who shambles around all day with a phobia so he's afraid to leave his shop and who also has liver disease, suddenly jumps to the rescue and swings around with a hockey stick as if he's a reborn Bruce Lee. I am convinced that if you get an ice pick shoved in your eye, you won't be walking around moments later in a good mood with just an eye patch. The chance that you can throw a hand grenade from a speeding jeep in a flying helicopter after which the latter blows up( with an incredibly ugly looking explosion) is minuscule. And as always, the gang members armed with automatic rifles still stand there frightfully waving those guns around while the police drive up with the sirens blaring. They stand there with such an air like "Ok, I see that they are coming, but I persist on being tough". And the incredibly delicious looking mother of Manny,falls for Vega . Incomprehensible !

I had a vision of 70's television serials like "The A-Team" when watching this movie. So terribly old-fashioned. Just that this 70's-80's serials looked far better than this movie.

My rating 2/10
Links : IMDB

Broken (2012)

Genre : Drama
Country : UK

Cast :
Eloise Laurence : Skunk
Tim Roth: Archie
Robert Emms  : Rick Buckley

Director :
Rufus Norris

Summary
Skunk has diabetes and is a pretty cool teenager. The summer has just begun, and her days are filled with hope. Her life does change dramatically after she witnesses a violent attack on the neighbor Rick who's unlawfully accused of rape.

My opinion

Don't be scared. I just want your goodness.

"Broken". I'm not sure yet what covers this title. Is it the broken relationships and mutual relations between the families living in this cul-de-sac. Is it about the fragile health of Skunk or the fragile state of mind of Rick. Or is it about the few broken noses that the hotheaded neighbor Bob hands out. From the first minute in this sad story, I was taken on a trip through several petty depressive states. Yes, you won't have "happy" feelings after watching this movie. However, the end is a godsend and a gorgeous display of hope.

Every household has his cross to bear. In this dead end street they had end-of-season sales of heavy crosses. Let us hope that this is not a matter of course in most districts. First there's Skunk, whose mother left for some accountant, and her family. She lives with her ​​father Archie (Superb acting by Tim Roth),her brother and their housekeeper under one roof . The housekeeper has an on-off relationship with a teacher who is full of doubts about the future of their relationship. Skunk also has diabetes that she follows meticulously. Opposite lives the Buckley family. An older couple with the mentally disabled son Rick. A friendly guy who, as you'll notice later, has a dark incalculable side. And then there is the aggressive and violent Mr. Oswald and his three teenage daughters. Bob Oswald's wife is deceased and the education of his three daughters is his greatest concern . However the morbid concern about the welfare of his daughters is the cause of the improper conduct of the 3 annoying buggers.

Essentially, these three families have nothing in common and they show no affinity for each other (except Skunk vs. Rick), and yet their life paths will be intertwined in a drastic way which will lead to the resulting conflicts. The whole situation escalates because of one simple lie. A lie to cover up the truth and to prevent facing some measures. A lie that has disastrous consequences and brings the relationships even more to falter. Skunk her cheerful and carefree life collapses after witnessing an aggressive assault on the introvert and unworldly Rick. It's the beginning of a spiral of sequential disturbing events.

"Broken" is a gripping social drama and a depressing situation report. This shows once again that British dramas can be of a high level. The debut of Eloise Laurence as the vulnerable Skunk doesn't go unnoticed. A beautiful rendition that testifies a youthful spontaneity and empathy. The range of emotions that she has to show is not obvious, and yet she knows how to interpret it. I 'm not easily impressed by certain actors , but this was a brilliant performance .
Tim Roth is a respected actor and known from the TV series "Lie to Me". However, I'm not a avid fan of TV shows . But his appearances in "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs" are well known to me. Roth has a kind of soothing, calm charisma. Sometimes he reminds me of a light version of James Bond with identical expressions like Steve Carell. That confident look and cool probing observation. An icy dispassionate attitude until that moment at the hospital sitting next to Skunk's bed and telling his dream again in an emotional way. Masterfully portrayed.

I couldn't really find any faults when it's about the rest of the cast. Beautiful renditions piece by piece. The three pubescent teenage girls were playing in such a convincing way that you would consider to step up to those three brutal little twerps and put them in their place. Robert Emms should also be mentioned for his irresistible and not obvious rendition of Rick, the mentally handicapped neighbor. The impressive pity arousing beginning, the tormented and helpless attitude during his psychiatric confinement and the destructive frenzy at the end. All these aspects are brilliantly handled by him.

Filmic it also looks worked out nicely by Rufus Norris. The sometimes straightforward images with that typical British tone and style that you can find in acclaimed British series like "EastEnders". The recurring flashbacks and dreamlike visions of the future are mixed with the daily harsh reality. Ultimately, the core of the film is scarier than any slasher or horror film. An impressive social story with a theatrical and, thank goodness, a positive ending.

My rating 8/10
Links : IMDB