man_with_a_van Reviews

Take Care of Maya (2023)

The lawsuit hasn't even ended yet

[5/10 · 2 September 2023]

I'm not sure what to think about movies like this. This one is well maden and entertaining and all but there is an issue I can't get out if my head: Why is it released before the lawsuit has come to an end? Why would anybody want to publish a true events movie with an open ending? If you think about it there is just one solution: You want to influence the public opinion. I don't know if the shown events are presented in a one-sided way. Maybe not but if a director wants a movie to be a neutral document he waits untill the case is closed. There is no need to release the thing as fast as possible. I can't avoid the feeling that there are more and more documentaries that are just image movies produced by lawyers to push the public opinion in the right direction to win the case. That doesn't mean that all those cases are not true but I think we shouldn't fall for a new influencing-movement that could lead to the result that only the one with the better "movie" wins his case.

Monster (2022–2024)

Solid but weak last episodes

[7/10 · 26 September 2022]

This is a solid true crime show with brilliant acting. Especially Evan Peters does an awesome job. It's exciting to see the horrible story of JD staged so carefully. Would have been an 8 but the last two episodes focus too much on JDs neighbour Glenda Cleveland. She surely suffered a lot when JDs crimes were discovered but 15 people had been killed whose friends and families certainly suffered a lot more. I think those people deserve more attention than a lady that indeed did a good job but was not involved in the matter so much. That's why the last episodes are a little bit slow moving. All in all worth a watch.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

One very important thing!

[7/10 · 6 August 2021]

Yes yes yes yes, the movie was good, no question but there is one thing I have to demand: BRING A WEASEL SPIN-OFF. Thank you for your attention.

The Cabbage Soup (1981)

An all time classic

[10/10 · 18 February 2021]

When I was a child I saw this movie on TV. Right from the start I was fascinatedand and had to laugh, sometimes hysterically. There was Louis de Funes which I adored at that time. He looked older and you could see that he had health issues. Nevertheless his performance was as good as always. His hyper nervous fast-talking acting style was more nervous and faster-talking than ever. The story is quite simple: Two dirty old men (Claude and Francis, latter called the "hunchback") that are neighbors get drunk every night while they eat cabbage soup, talk about past days and perform fart contests. One evening after farting louder and longer than ever a thunderstorm starts quite abprupt. The old crocks think that God advises them to stop farting immediately and they flee in their houses but the thunderstorm was not from god. The following night an alien (a simple guy in a ridiculous space-suit) lands with his flying saucer and tells (in his own very special language) that he took the farts as a try to establish communication. Claude offers the visitor a bowl of his homemade cabbage soup and gives him some to take back to his planet. Because the soup is very well received there the alien regularly comes back to collect more soup. That means a lot of trouble for the two friends. Of course the movie is from the early 80s what you recognize immediately. The score is made by synthesizer and sounds quite cheesy sometimes. Nevertheless it is made by French composer and movie-score-legend Raymond Lefevre. I'm convinced that the music if played by orchestra would have been epic. The story is quite vulgar and simple but the style in which it is realised is so heartwarming and loving that you don't care. The fart scenes are the most exaggerated I've ever seen (and heard). This movie is THE one and only farting movie for me. Doesn't matter if you like that kind of humour. This scenes wrest even from the most serious person a grin. But there are some emotional scenes too some of them so well done that you feel your eyes get wet. Besides all the fart-jokes it's about getting old and coping with modern society. Even if this is not the best flick of Louis de Funes it is a good one and the one that burns into your mind forever. It's the most heartwarming one too. There's no chance of making a mistake watching it.

Unsolved Mysteries: Berkshires UFO (2020) Season 1, Episode 5

Why?

[1/10 · 9 July 2020]

An UFO? Really? There have been really shocking stories about unsolved murders and suddenly some rednecks talk about getting abducted by an UFO. I really had to look at the Netflix menu to check if I switched accidently to another show. This is an insult to western culture. Get your sh**t togehter Netflix!

Dark (2017–2020)

Entertaining show with patchy acting

[7/10 · 5 August 2019]

As a German I had given up hope that there can be any good German movie or tv-production out there. Too often there have been shows or movies that were praised and recommended to me just to disappoint me one more time. There are a few reasons why this happens again and again. First of all there is a gridlocked industry that is dominated by a hand full of uninspired morons that show a terrible lack of judgement about what makes a good show. They always hire the same old untalented actors and writers and even don't realize that they do. At the end they look at a steaming pile of sh... and think they created pure gold just to wonder subesquently why (internationally) nobody cares for their concoction. Germany has a lot of unemployed brilliant actors but all we see are always the same arrogant and untalented muppets. Good writers haven't been invented here yet. Another problem is the lack of quality awareness in the audience too. Sometimes there are some productions that are a little better than the usual stuff. The Germans can't stop applaude to that shows even if the quality of those productions is no more than mediocore on an international level. People say Germany produces some of the best goods in the world and are very picky about quality. When it comes to movies and shows they are on a level with amoebas. So far so bad. When I first took a look at DARK my expectations seemed to be answered. Although there have been some refreshing new faces the acting had been quite bad and the story and dialogue seemed artifical and boring. But after Episode 4 the story started to get interesting and even a feeling of entertainment appeared. After I watched the whole series so far I have to admit, that the story is a really interesting one. I accredit this fact to the circumstance that Netflix is a new player in the German market that breaks the cirlce of the gridlocked industry by bringing some foreign know-how in the game. Certainly a professional foreign quality management keep track of the writing and avoids the worst of the German habits. Some really good new actors have been casted but unfortunately some of the really bad ones creeped themselves in. For example Tatjana Seibt as Jana Nielsen is so wooden that she can be easily mistaken with a tree in the German forrest. Her performance is one of the worst I've ever seen. Chrsitian Pätzold as the old Egon Tiedemann puts cleanly and tidily to sleep and has no credibility at all. Oliver Masucci as Ulrich Nielsen is sometimes quite good, sometimes abysmal. For example ther is one scene where Ulrich is standing at the gate of the nuclear plant and requests admittance by screaming at the director of the plant. This is so badly overacted that you could cry. Masucci is not the worst actor but it is the job of the director to give directions to get the best peformance. Here the director and the actor patheticly failed. The director seems to think in addition to it that people who are arroused start to breathe heavily. Once you notice the amount of heavy breathing persons in this show you really get annoyed. Tom Jahn as Jürgen Obendorf or Hermann Beyer as old Helge Doppler are too bad to call them "actors". The rest of the actors do a good job but there are by far to much bad actors to ignore it. Althoug the story is quite exciting sometimes the German propensity to unrealistic dialogue comes through but thats something bearable. All in all the story and the good actors make a suprisingly good show. From a technical point of view German productions look the same as every professional one. There is no point of criticism. Despite all those errors I would say this has the potential to be the best German show since long time. Well done. Could be better.

Stranger Things (2016–2025)

Season 3

[8/10 · 20 July 2019]

I have to say that I didn't hate season 3 but it wasn't as good as season 1&2.

It seems like the once really anxious writers lost interest in the series and half-assed the job.

The first thing you notice is the massive change in the behavior of Jim. He was an introverted, slightly depressed but warm character in the first seasons. Now he is a clumsy,hoggish, irascible macho that shows no sign of tactfulness. He threatens Mike for being Elles boyfriend, constantly argues with Joyce (who he is in love with) and is constantly violent to people and even kills a lot of Russians with a machine gun without caring at all. Luckily the kids didn't change too much and the character of Murray develops to a real jewel.

Speaking of russians. Yes, there are russians. A lot of russians. I guess the producers wanted to consequently install more typical clichés of 80s movies but imo they overshot the mark. All the time you see some russians who just kill and punch everybody, americans and their own people, who take the smallest peep at them. And they do without getting into trouble with the police or other authorities at all. And they are all dumb as f... Are they? Okay, they managed to build a huge research center disguised as a mall right in the middle of the USA but kill their most important scientist when an experiment is just half successful just to tell his replacement that he is next if he fails too (and they do). That really doesn't seem quite effective or smart. How the hell did they get the mall finished? And why do they want to open the gate again?

But the most unnecessary thing is a Schwarzenegger-doppelganger on the russian side who moves, looks and talks like Arnold in the Terminator movies. This is not an 80s reference. This is dumb copying. Even one of the characters says in one episode as a joke that the guy is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not very subtle.

But I don't want to smash season 3 here. There have been some funny and exciting moments and alltogether I was entertained well. However I hope that the next season gets better again. If the writers proceed like this the show will go down the drain in no time.

The Medusa Touch (1978)

Mostly underrated!

[10/10 · 17 June 2019]

I saw this movie when I was a child. It gave me nightmares for a very long time. Especially the scene where the parents of the main character get killed haunted me for weeks. For a long time I didn't see the movie again and I forgot it. Then I met an old friend who told me about her nightmares she had as a child because she watched a certain movie. It has been the same film. So I searched for it and watched it again more than 30 years later. I have to say that I was stunned. This flick did really age very well. The music is outstanding. Burton's and Ventura's performances are brilliant. But even the whole make is fantastic for it's time. The flashbacks this movie is composed of are done terrifically and are masterly assembled. The narrative style is inventive and never gets boring. I think this movie has been ahead for it's time. For me a real classic!

Chernobyl (2019)

Overwhelming Depiction of the Ur-Catastrophe of my Generation

[10/10 · 31 May 2019]

I was still a child but can remember vividly the day when I was sitting in the garden of our family in a small German town with some other kids as my mother ran up to me, grabbed me and carried me inside of the house. She shouted at the other kids that they should all go home. She slammed the door to the garden and told me that I wasn't allowed to be in the garden and could not eat the fruits and vegetables from it anymore. I asked her why. She told me that in Russia a nuclear plant exploded and that the whole garden was contaminated. I dind't really understand the meaning of that speech but I looked through the window in the garden and imagined that all the fruits and berries were poisened now. As far as I can remember I never saw my parents as upset as on that day again. The explosion of the nuclear plant Chernobyl was the ur-catastrophe of my generation. 9/11 was yet to come in a far future. The information flow at that time was really poor. The iron curtain was still intact and the fact that an explosion happened was admitted by the Russians just because a swedish nuclear plant metered increased radiation outside of their own plant and asked the Russians about what was going on.

When I was older I read a lot about the events that went on at that time. It's really stunning in a sick way to see those events happen again on TV and to be in attendence. The special effects show the catastrophe in all its scaring beautifullness and force. The music is dark and frightening. The facts are researched very well. I couldn't see any major divergence to the real historic notations. Once more you realize that the Soviet Union has been a system that lead to fatal negligence in nearly every sphere. Under-qualified party barons were in charge and made terrible decisions. At a certain point the population gave up and lived their life without any motivation or ambition at all. That's how the state produced the substrate for this horrible accident. Bad and dangerous orders were given and the people obeyed just to prevent any trouble and when they did mistakes the first thing to do was to erase all the trades. In a sensible field like nuclear research this are the worst conditions you can find. It's no wonder that the Soviet Union produced some of the worst nuclear accidents in history. There is Lake Karachay that is the most nuclear contaminated place in the world and there was the Kyshtym disaster. This show should remind us all that a devided world has brought us all to the edge of destruction. It is not a thing to wish back.

Who Is America? (2018)

Funniest thing I've recently seen

[10/10 · 2 May 2019]

I always liked S.B. Cohen. I am convinced that this is his best work ever. I can't believe that this is announced as not scriptet. People seem to lose every kind of doubt when a camera is officially rolling. I'm sure the hardest part has been the preparations to appear as a "serious" tv-team. If you convince someone to be "on his side" he seems to do everything you demand from him. Cohen really makes it happen that die hard conservatives attack him with their naked butt shouting "USA. You will become gay! Drop your weapon!" Hillarious!

Game of Thrones: The Long Night (2019) Season 8, Episode 3

Bad lighting, just for high class tvs

[7/10 · 29 April 2019]

I just finished watching the episode and I'm not sure what to think about it. But first there is one big problem: The lighting. I confess to have a tv that is not the best you can get. When the episode started I thought "Ugh, quite dark scene. My tv is going nuts." It didn't stop so I thought "Maybe I did something wrong with the settings" and really did some changes in the settings menu. Didn't help. The episode is most of the time very very dark. Too dark in my opinion. If you own a TV that has some issues with dark images you're f...d. But I guess I'm not the only one who recognized that. There are several scenes where you even don't "get" what is happening because half of the scenes are blurring in the darkness. And the snowstorm comes on top of that. You need to have good eyes! That for sure.

The Golden Glove (2019)

Ugly in a good way

[9/10 · 25 March 2019]

I went to see this movie without any expectations. All I knew was that it's about the true case of a murderer who killed several women in the 70s in the town of Hamburg. He often found his victims in a pub called "Der Goldene Handschuh" (The Golden Glove) that still exists. I heard rumors that it's not the most beautiful movie ever made and indeed: The movie is ugly but it is meant to look like that.

We see the life of a small man that was already born without a future. His Bio reads as follows: His father was sent to a concentration camp by the nazis. He died shortly after the war of heavy alcohol abuse and as a result of his imprisonment. His mother had 10 children and couldn't cope with her life. Fritz was sent to several orphan asylums till he was a grownup. He drank heavily, was involved in several fistfights and a severe car accident in consequence of which he was left heavily defaced. Together with a speech defect he had an repellent effect on women although he had been married for three years. The marriage broke because Fritz was violent and aggressive.

Since then he lived in a small and dirty apartement under the roof of an apartment house. He paved the flat with pornpics he cut out of cheap magazines. In this time frame the movie takes place. Fatih Akin recreates the world of the heavy drinker scene in Hamburg in the early 70s-Germany breathtakenly realistic. It is an ugly, bleak world full of smoky, rundown pubs and people at the "Reeperbahn", the redlight district of Hamburg. Here you find them all: The failures. Depressive, lonesome, elderly women who are willing to do everything for booze or just a little bit of affection. Psychotic war veterans, aged party animals and hookers and so on. All together they're alcohol addicted and live their lifes void of hope in the rough and vulgar trance of alcohol intoxication. If Fritz Honka is in the mood for sex he spends some drinks to some of the older ladies of which he thinks are subordinate to even him and takes them home for more. Often he is so wasted that he looses control of his violent urges. Especially if some of the women dare not to bow down to his violent behavior or make fun of his sexual perfomance. The murders are commited in chaotic ways, situation-related and in a state of nearly fatal alcohol delirium. He dismembers the bodies and dumps some of the parts at a scrapyard but because a certain lack of strength (or just motivation) he puts some of the parts in crawl spaces directly in his apartment. They start to rot and stink but nobody really cares in the cheap apartment house. If guests complain about the unbearable smell he blames it on the greek family living underneath his apartment. Just by coincidence he is uncovered.

The movie at some times nearly lets you puke. Everything is old ugly and disgusting: The pubs, the apartment, the people even the outside of the bars. You may think the movie overdoes the facts but that's not the case. The story happened as presented and the photographs from the police file that are shown at the end credits bring out, that the whole set is astonishingly authentic. It is a shocking time travel in an ignored and supressed subculture where life is an endless struggle against the own deamons.

Not a feelgood movie but a movie to expand ones horizon.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Not for the weak and stupid

[10/10 · 25 March 2019]

I saw this movie after a long time again and was again completely destoyed by it. I'm sure there are just a few movies in the world in that music, acting, narrating and photographing is so well composed and coordinated that all together is just one big intense masterpiece. It's hard to watch when things escalate in the end of the film but you don't even want to blink your eyes because you're so enamored and not able to escape the pure horror when the lives of the four protagonists go with increasing spead down the drain. The music gets faster, the narrating gets faster, the cuts get faster, the reality and sound blur faster but never too much to let zhe viewer get lost in the story. The downfall can't be stopped anymore. In the end the protagonists are just helpless and so is the audience. It's a knightmare that became a movie and has the same effect too. You're shocked and scared. That's what I call an intense movie! This is nothing you forget hours after watching. From a certain level of inteligence on you will be moved by this picture. So much for sure.

Master of None (2015–2021)

Nice little show but...

[7/10 · 23 March 2019]

Maybe it's a nice move to involve your friends and relatives in your show but you have to check first if they can act. And that is the problem here: A lot of the actors in this show are really terrible. The parents of Mr. Ansari seem to be a really nice old couple but their acting ist just awful. The mother is so wooden, she seems like a robot. The show had a lot more quality if the actors knew their craft.

Confessions of a Serial Killer with Piers Morgan (2017– )

Really bad journalist

[1/10 · 6 March 2019]

This show has so much potential but it fails in every way. To blame is its host Piers Morgan alone. He has no strategy to talk to the killers at all. Every single word he says implies that he thinks that the interviewed person was guilty. Even if he believes that it would not be very smart to reveal it in front of men who insist on being innocent. If you want some information of the killers about them or their thoughts this would be the worst behaviour you can show. This guy doesn't care. All he does is confronting the convicts with pictures of their victims and telling them, that they are guilty and that their arguments are not plausible. The result is always the same. They stand up and leave the room. It makes me sad that this guy gets the chance to talk to criminals who didn't do interviews for decades just to treat them unfairly and unprofessionally. What insights he forfeits!

Happy! (2017–2019)

Nice little show

[7/10 · 31 July 2018]

+ quite gory good main actor good supporting villains (Smoothie, the santa clause guy) the cgi unicorn is really cute some funny moments

- bad main villains (Blue is a bad Walter White copy and the Bug is just rediculous) sometimes the story is a bit over the top wants to be a x-mas show. why? the main character is a heavy using, stinking bum with heart issues but kills tons of young trained hitmen sometimes to sentimental

The Walking Dead (2010–2022)

Season 8 What happened?

[7/10 · 14 May 2018]

I never was the biggest fan of zombie-stuff. I always thougt it was boring and tiring. Then I watched TWD and was amazed. The show was deep,exciting and the action was top-hole as well. The villains were well written and quite hateable extravagant characters you really loved to see die. But slowly the show lost all of its spell. The latest season 8 is a pure catastrophe. You see the exhausted main characters walk around like the zombies themselves. They enter into endless incredibly slow and boring dialogues about their "inner lifes", their bitterness and their traumas. You could think you're watching a support group that ocassionally kills some zombies at the breaks. Some of the dialogues make no sense at all. Maybe the writers wanted to make the characters more "mysterious". I dont know. The few action and fighting scenes are uninspired and often end disappointing. The current villain , Neagan, was a brilliant character performed by a awesome charismatic actor. Now he seems like his own caricature and never does some of the sick stuff that made him so badass. He just wags his baseball bat around, says some vulgar things and scares his own people. They even managed to make him kind of a wimp by showing him in "deeply in love" with his beloved bat that is a replacement for his dead wife. Really guys?!

The Punisher (2017–2019)

Disappointing

[5/10 · 8 December 2017]

I watched Jessica Jones and liked the character of The Punisher at once. I was really happy when I heard he gets his own show. When it was available I watched the first episode and was excited. The "hammer"- story was gorgeous. "If it stays like that it will be a hellride of a show" I thought. But I was disappointed. The first episode was just a short introduction for the "real" story. And boy, the story is lame. Big conspiracy at the CIA, seriously? Sometimes there's solid action but most of the time just blablabla in police offices and complaining about the mean mean US, the mental scars you get in war and the corrupt agents everywhere mixed with a dash of "I-miss-my-family"-bull. Usually I'm a fan of shows that have a red line throughout the season but I think this show would be great if every episode had its own closed story. Would be cool if the punisher meets every episode another person who is in serious trouble with some douches that get finished at the end by the punisher. Just like it happened in the first episode. I give 5 stars because of the first episode and some occasional good scenes. The shows has got much more potential but at the moment its just driving in second gear.

Mein Kampf (2009)

The only thing that is accurate is the name "Hitler".

[3/10 · 1 December 2017]

What is this movie about? The protagonist is a young man called Adolf Hitler. You'd almost think it is about the historic person with the same name. It is not! Nevertheless they mix the biography of the real Hitler with this bizarre character. But the essential facts are completely fictional. For example:

Hitler gets rejected by the art college. He is living at that time in the movie in an homeless shelter. When the real Hitler got rejected he was living together with a friend in a rented room. The homeless shelter came years later.

All the time he utters exact quotes from Adolf Hitlers book "Mein Kampf" but it was written years later than the period of time the movie extends over.

He is disgusted meat dishes that he even sometimes has to vomit just from the look at meat but the real Adolf Hitler liked meat at that time. He just became later vegetarian because he thought that meat would cause his severe stomach problems. Hitler even ate soup with marrow dumplings up to the last.

In the movie he joins a group of men who terrorize jews and hobos. That never happened. Hitler first got radicalized at WW1.

He talks all the time with a strong Austrian Viennese accent. Hitler however was born in Braunau am Inn directly on the Bavarian border and then moved with his family to several places in Bavaria where he was raised. Therefore in reality he was talking in a very thick Bavarian accent. He even often said how much he hated the Viennese accent.

In the movie he is constantly surrounded by a Jewish hobo called Schlomo Herzl who invented Hitlers typical look and even wrote the book "Mein Kampf" that is later stolen by Hitler. This guy never existed. I've got the feeling he is kind of the second protagonist just because he was played by Götz George, a mediocre actor that was for whatever reason very popular in Germany till he died.

In one scene Hitler talks about the "Völkischer Beobachter" a Nazi- newspaper that first was named like this in 1920 and just existed because Hitler came to power in the early nazi-party.

I could go on and on. I know this kind of movies. They just want to tell a moderate story and try to get attention by installing Hitler somewhere in the story. Then a lot of loose references are thrown in to save appearances. This is just a cheap trick. The poor quality of the movie speaks for itself. A total waste of time. I gave three stars just because the actors are not as bad.