cthelder Reviews

Spitfire Over Berlin (2022)

Low budget, good effort.

[8/10 · 17 June 2022]

Watched it by myself. If my wife had been with me it would've been turned off within 5 minutes.

I play a lot of combat flight simulator games like Il2 and DCS. The CGI in the movie looked a lot similar to the graphics in those games. Because of that the low quality cgi in the flying scenes didn't bother me too much. I liked the flashbacks in black and white. Looked better. The cockpit mock-up should've been a bit more expansive. Looking back while the aircraft is on the ground I should've seen parts of the empennage and the quarter front shots should've shown parts of the wing.

It was crystal clear they shot a cockpit module without anything else attached.

So, we've established it's low budget on the flying scenes. In the movie Devyatayev they used War Thunder for the CGI flying and combat scenes and that looked a lot more realistic and seamless.

The writing could've been done better also. Fighter pilots don't have discussions about strategy in the cockpit. That's for on the ground. Pilots going on a photo recon flight don't hang out with straggler B17's and tell them where they're going, over enemy territory. They're at 40,000ft trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

The mixing of the two time periods was nicely done. Photo recon flight are by design very boring. Fly from A to B, take pictures and return to A. Personally I would've just paid more attention to the practical task of navigating to the target and back. Photo recon is a very under-lighted part of ww2 aviation and this would've been a nice opportunity to go a bit deeper on the peculiarities of taking photographs over enemy territory.

All in all I look at it as if a bunch of hobbyists and ww2 aviation enthousiasts put something together on a shoestring budget. A work of love, not something to make money with. As a pilot, flight simmer and WW2 aviation enthousiast I have to applaud the effort.

If you like the subject of ww2 aviation and flightsim enthousiast and can overlook some of the flaws you'll enjoy the movie on tv. Just don't go in expecting Top Gun. I gave it 8/10 for effort.

Army of One (2020)

Very bad recruiting ad forvthe Army Rangers

[1/10 · 19 September 2021]

You drive around a rural area. The first restaurant you stop at you're being told they don't like strangers.

You proceed to go camping in the wild. It starts raining and you walk into the first house you see.

You proceed to have sex on the couch in a strangers house you don't have a clue when the owners come back.

You suspect there's a hidden hiding place, you open it up and find C4, machine guns and bags of weed.

You deserve everything that happens to you during the rest of the movie.

The Army Ranger lady proceeds to get her husband killed by Butch, the Uber hick.

After been left in a ditch for dead she goes back to the house where they killed her husband and kills hick # 1.

She doesn't get his weapon but goes back to the campsite and gets an ax. Proceeds to a still and kills hick # 2 Still no not weapons taken of killed foes.

She catches another hick at the moonshine still, strings him up but let's him escape, on purpose. Up to this point nobody knew she was still alive and she could've killed them all, one by one. Hick # 3 gets picked up by Butch and taken home to Mama.

There's a shindig to eulogize hicks # 1 & 2. They're all passed out and this would've been a great opportunity to slit a bunch of throats. There's a lot more hicks getting killed. Including Butch. I figured he'd go last. When they run out of hicks to kill, there's an Asian guy, a black dude and an Australian who start hunting the Ranger lady down. As I'm watching this I feel there's an unending source of bad guys coming out of the wood work. A few minutes later the Ranger lady comes to the same conclusion when she says something like: You people are like roaches, every time I kill one, two more show up!

We're about half way down the movie. I've finished it but so much more nonsense went down, I can't remember the order and how or why of it.

The acting was mediocre. The script was downright dumb. Seriously, the dumbest screenplay. The cinematography was not bad. Pretty footage of bad fight scenes. My wife didn't fall asleep, that was the only plus of this movie.

High Flyers (2020)

Top Gun it's not but still enjoyable.

[8/10 · 3 March 2020]

I'm Dutch, have flown professionally for over thirty years myself. I heard about this show from one the Dutch Air-force pilots that works in Arizona where parts were filmed. Thought it was a show about a group of student pilots getting their training. Had hoped it would show more about the actual flight training. I was wrong. It's basically a soap opera. It takes about two years to train an F16 pilot and there's no room for the shenanigans, hotdogging and busting regulations that they do in the show. Taking an aircraft without it being signed out by a crew chief or without orders would never happen. If it did, you'd be fired faster than you can say "pull up". The first episode disappointed me a bit because of the lack of flying and unrealistic military depiction. The producers took some creative liberties here. Once I accepted the fact that I was looking at a soap opera instead of a documentary I suspended all expectation of reality. That helped making the show enjoyable. It watches like reading an old time adventure book for kids. Everything is very predictable with a mostly happy ending. Watch it with an open mind. If you enjoy aviation and can accept the glaring mis representation of military life, discipline and procedures, you'll enjoy the show. The air to air footage is beautifully filmed. My acquaintance has a few extra parts and there was a closeup of his F16 a few times. He enjoyed working as an advisor and flew with the actors in the F16 for close cockpit shots. It's not Top Gun but in the end I was pleasantly surprised.

Breakthrough (2019)

Where is your faith?

[8/10 · 31 January 2020]

I don't believe in God but enjoyed this movie. Good human interest story. From the pastors relation with Johns mother and John's fathers lack of faith out of fear of getting his hopes up. People have been underwater in undercooled conditions for a long time and survived without brain damage before, that's how I believe he survived. Faith is a funny thing, you either have it or you don't. I don't have, but John's mom has faith for all of us and them some. I believe they would've pulled the plug if it wasn't for her stubborn pig headedness. Seeing a community come together spiritually behind a person in need was touching. Feel good movie.

Sobibor (2018)

Dark unhistoric sloppely researched Russian melodrama.

[1/10 · 12 July 2019]

The setting of the camp is incorrect. Sobibor was a temporary settlement built in the countryside, mostly built out of wood. This movie was shot on a permanent industrial location and has too many brick buildings. Parts looks like a fortress that's been there a long time.(were they going for an Auschwitz look?)

The 1987 movie about this subject was a lot more historical underbuilt. The story itself is dramatic enough, no need for melodrama. Watch the 1987 film if you're interested in the Sobibor Escape.

This movie felt like I was watching a schoolplay improvisation that used the backstory of Sobibor. No character developement whatsoever.

The Christopher Lambert character was a joke like most of the other nazi's. Caricatures. The drunken guards having sadistic fun with the prisoners in Sobibor is more artistic freedom I take issue with. The camp was run very disciplined, like clockwork.

The purpose of the camp was extermination. They needed the inmates to do the dirty work and left them alone as long as the work was being done. I get it, the Nazis were bad. No need to turn it into an orgie of sadistic violence.

If you take this much artistic freedom with the historic source material why not make a fantasy movie? That way you can do whatever you want without people getting disturbed by the inacuracies.

Exploitation movie and a waste of effort.

Cloverfield (2008)

Could've been better with conventional camera technique.

[2/10 · 23 April 2019]

Just saw this now with my wife at home on a 50 inch tv. Wife got sick and dizzy after about 10 minutes and I stopped the movie. Watched something else and finished the movie by myself sometime later. I understand what they were trying to do here but really? This could've been a great horror/action flick but the handheld camera action made it almost unwatchable. If this happened for real and your life was in danger, would you film it constantly? Nope you'd fight for your life. There's a movie in there, somewhere but they forgot to properly put it on film. Two stars for the effort and blowing 40 million on a shaky mess.

Gravity (2013)

Watched it on a 50 inch screen, meh. Watched it with an oculus Rift in 3D, woah!

[10/10 · 1 April 2019]

Watched this a few years ago at home on tv. Wondered what all the hoopla was about. Then I watched it a few days ago with my Oculus Rift in 3D. Holy Messiah, what a revelation! I was there in space with them all the time. Totally different experience. Get a decent VR HMD and watch it in 3D. Your mind will be blown.