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peterjkh
Reviews
Bloodbath and Beyond: The Windmill Massacre (2016) (2016)
Utterly unbelievable
Watched this movie yesterday, and it does not make sense.
I am Dutch. So I have to believe that 40 year old coaches are used for sightseeing tours, that cellphones can not be used 20 km from Amsterdam, and that there actually are dirt roads in that area (one of the most densely populated regions of Europa) where coaches can get stuck? And that a coach that is in the middle of the road when it gets stuck, suddenly can slide into a river?
That you really can get stuck in the middle of nowhere 20 km from Amsterdam, where you even can not travel 10 miles without seeing houses, a highway, a village or a larger town?
And than, one of the people climbs on the coach in order to get out the fuel, and she than freely turn the wheels, while they should have been stuck (those coaches are normally rear wheel drive, so in order to spin those rear wheels, you would need a lot of force)...
No, too unbelievable to my taste.
Maigret: Maigret Sets a Trap (2016)
Decent entertainment, but no Maigret
I watched this on BBC First last night. I love the books of Simenon, not only his Maigret stories, but also his psychological novels. Simenon is a master in setting the scene, creating an atmosphere, and Maigret very often solves crimes by submerging himself in the world of the perpetrator. He makes endless walks in the neighborhood where the villain resides, talking to concierges, barkeepers, cleaning ladies, anyone who could give some more insight in what is going on, in the life of the persons he targets.
That is one of the things I missed here. Maigret was painted as a person who sets the wheels in motion from behind his desk. You don't see him go out to Montmartre, alone, to walk around, have drinks in the cafes, talk to the people in the streets.
A lot of effort was made to depict Paris in the fifties, but somehow it never felt convincing. Maybe because the only things really shown were dim-lit alleyways and an occasional glimpse of a sidewalk. I missed the feeling of a buzzing metropolis.
Rowan Atkinson certainly tried his best, but he did not convince me as Maigret. Lucy Cohu as Madame Maigret was totally miscast. A busty pin-up like type that somehow did not seem to have any real sympathy for or chemistry with her husband. The rest of the cast did a decent job, but who in fact did steal the show were the perpetrator (David Dawson) and his insane mother (Fiona Shaw).
But the biggest miss for me: here we are, in fifties Paris, and guess what? Everyone is speaking English. Really? Somehow that does not compute and it keeps bugging me. That is why I prefer the Bruno Cremer adaptations: they are masterpieces in setting the right atmosphere, Bruno Cremer is perfect as Maigret, and the French language adds to the authenticity of the experience. Maigret in English, in a English speaking Paris, is just as odd to me as to make St. Mary Mead and Miss Marple speak German.
Did I enjoy it in spite of this all? Yes, to a certain extend. It was decent entertainment. But far from fantastic, and absolutely no real Maigret.
Crimson Peak (2015)
Beautiful failure
I like Gothic movies. I like horror stories. But they should be believable. This one was not.
It had a lot going for it. The premise was good, the visuals and costumes stunning, and Chastain was marvelous as the evil and insane Lucille Sharpe.
But the story made no sense whatsoever. I mean, Edith seems to be a pretty sensible young woman in the beginning of the film. She is well educated, and seems to have inherited a lot of the traits of her father, a self-made millionaire, a no-nonsense man with a lot of common sense.
Nevertheless she decided to marry a man she knows practically nothing about and whom her father has warned her for. But OK, let's say that love defies logic. Except, I did not see much love, not much chemistry between the two of them. So why on earth would she marry him? Then he whisks her away to his family mansion – which turns out to be a decrepit crumbling ruin in barren surroundings, with a mining plant right in front of it. Which sensible, rich woman would have stayed there? I would have turned around upon arrival, no way would I have staid to live in such a house.
The loving husband seems always absent, he does not even share a bedroom with his beloved bride. Really? How believable is that? And well, the whole thing that was going on between Thomas and Lucille – let's say, that was obvious from the beginning.
And although the walls are crumbling, the roof is caved in, the floors are sinking and there is a constant stream of debris falling into the house and the whole interior is constantly exposed to the weather – the house looks immaculate. The room are tidy, clean and neat, the furniture does not seem to be affected by damp or dirt, there is a well-maintained fire in every chimney, and yet there are no servants in the house. So how is this possible? The twisted sister surely did not seem to be running around with mops and dusters, nor did Edith or Thomas. So who did all the housework? The ghosts? Well, if so, they are welcome to come and live with me! Which brings me to the ghosts. Why were they there? They didn't add anything to the story. They were not creepy. They did not do anything. They were completely unnecessary.
Well, and the ending... a bit of a mess. Twisted sister seems super human, because after having been stabbed right in the heart, she manages to kill her brother, run outside and start a fight with Edith. Sure. But Edith whacks her with a shovel and that's it. The End.
So it all looked fabulous, the costumes were great, the period details (especially in the first half of the film, were beautiful, but there was nothing behind that veneer.
Love Is Strange (2014)
Acting is good, but story makes no sense
OK. We have Ben & George, two gay men in their late 60s/early 70s,who have been together for almost 40 years. So far, so good. Finally they get married and as a result, George is fired and they find themselves having financial trouble, which forces them to sell their apartment and to move in with some friends (George) and some relatives (Ben).
The acting was OK, Ben and George really came across as a devoted couple, genuinely loving each other, and devoted to each other.
The rest was a bunch of nonsense.
Ben and George have been living together for almost 40 years. They do not seem to live the high life, or to be extremely extravagant. They have a nice apartment, comfortable, but not overly luxurious. Even their own wedding party is fairly simple: they did not even order a cab to the ceremony, but tried to find one on the streets. They did not throw a big party, or even have dinner with their friend and family in a restaurant, they just had some drinks at their own home. OK, they went on an expensive honeymoon, but if that is the only extravaganza they allowed themselves over all the years they were together, it is not over the top.
So all in all, they come across like people who have a simple lifestyle, do not overspend and are content with simple things.
Yet, when George is fired, they do not have a penny in the bank. Really? No savings, no insurances, nothing? That seems totally out of character.
But pennyless, they have to resort to moving in with friends/relatives. They do not seem to do any effort to stay together, if even in a single room. Just like that, after 40 years together, they decide to separate. George moves in with some neighbors (young gays), Ben goes to live with relatives (a young couple with a teenage son), where he has to share the room with this boy. Really?
Where did they leave all their stuff, their furniture, the paintings, the books? Did they just sell it all, or what?
Ben lives with those relatives, who seem wealthy enough (he is a businessman, she is a novelist), they have a maid, but they are still living in an apartment the size of a shoebox. Somehow, the only son has bunk beds in his room (why?), where Ben has to sleep. This son also has a friend, Vlad, with whom he spends hours and hours in his room. Why? Nobody knows.
Somehow, Ben, who is a painter, decides to make a picture of this Vlad on the roof top of the building. Why? He does not know this boy, he hardly has spoken to this boy, but somehow this boy Vlad agrees to pose for him. Does this make sense? No. Wouldn't it have made more sense for Ben to paint a picture of his nephew Joey on that roof top, which he than could have presented to the parents as a small "thank you" for taking him in?
In the mean time, George is living with this young gay couple, who are partying all the time, and meets a young guy. They get along very well, and somehow they end up having dinner together and looking at his apartment, which is for rent, as he is leaving for Mexico. Although they seem to have some sort of connection, no sexual attempts are made (really?) while they are alone in that apartment. It is mentioned that the rent is 1400 dollars a month, and somehow George suddenly has the means to pay that amount of money (earlier in the movie, George and Ben where house hunting and could not even afford 600 dollars...).
Than there is that whole issue about Joey and Vlad having stolen French literature books from the library. Really? Teen boys stealing Cyrano de Bergerac and other books like that? It is never explained why or how that ends, so what is the meaning of that?
And there are more issues that made this movie in itself a strange thing, the love between the two main characters was the most logic thing in the whole movie... SO no "Love is strange" here. But the rest was strange as hell.
Interstellar (2014)
Boring - if this is mankind, why save it?
When I watch a movie, I want to be drawn in, care about the people and their problems, feel the urgency of the situation, experience the awe when exploring new worlds. This movie did not do the for me.
I really could not relate to the characters. I did not care what happened to them, how they felt, what they had to go through. None of them seemed very likable either. The father (a redneck with a southern drawl – that strangely disappeared during the movie) did not seem to care a lot about his children. The son grew up to be an asshole who did not seem to care about his wife (a submissive domestic drudge who seemed to be afraid of her husband) and child. And the daughter, Murph, never got over the fact that her father left her to save the world (no less!) and was totally messed up. One moment you see the son and daughter as children, the next time you see them they are grown-ups, at least 25 years older and you do not have a clue what happened to them in between. And quite frankly, you do not give a damn either.
The situation: planet Earth is dying and the few people left, are farmers now. Do we see anything of our dying planet? No. Just a farmhouse in a dusty cornfield in the middle of Mid-West Nowhere. Does it look ominous? Not in the least. Does it look like a disaster waiting around the corner? No. All the rednecks still seem to be driving their enormous gas-guzzlers (where do they get the fuel from?) and they do not seem to bother about the world, let alone doing noticeable effort to find a solution. So does it look like a problem that urgently need to be solved. Not really.
But wait, dad has dashed off in a space ship to find another world, so probably they spent decades of their time watching the sky for him to return with the good news, rather than assuming that he maybe never will come back and that it maybe would be a good idea to see if they in the mean time could find some solution. But no. They all wait for our hero to come back through the black hole to tell them that there is a paradise waiting at the other side of the hole.
Daddy in the mean time, spends his days with two colleagues that he does not really like, exploring outer space. And guess what, after a refreshing 2-year nap, they go through the hole and what do they find? Water World and Ice Age. Really? This is the best they could come up with? Is it stunning? No, I have seen water and ice before.
Well, to cut a (very) long story short, after exploring those worlds daddy jumps in the black hole and guess what? He tumbles right into his old house in the cornfields and lands behind the bookshelves in his daughter's bedroom. It all looks like a bad LSD-trip. But somehow he manages to manipulate the hands of a watch, and his daughter immediately understands that that is a message from her father and saves the world.
The whole story is wrapped up with some sentiment and our hero flies off to the woman he never liked, but who now suddenly seem to be the love of his life. The end.
This all is laced with pseudo-scientific gibberish and endless, endless, endless scenes about people in a spaceship arguing and people in the farmhouse in the dusty cornfield arguing.
If a gigantic meteor would have fallen out of the sky and would have destroyed that farmhouse and that darn dusty cornfield to begin with, I could have spent the remaining 3 hours to something more useful. And I couldn't have cared less.
The Judge (2014)
Good cast, unbelievable story.
I was looking forward to seeing this movie. Some great actors, a promising story, so I was in for a treat.
Well, to be honest, the acting was good (mostly) but the story itself was so wrong and unbelievable on so many levels, that it was ridiculous and pathetic at the same time.
*** This review may contain spoilers *** First of all: OK, this son my not have liked his father (as it turned out, because of some punishment his father had given him when he was a teenager). Possible. And he never ever grew over it, despite the fact that he, as a child, in fact had been very close to his father. So he leaves home at the age of 20 and never ever comes back. But he obviously did love his mother, and liked his brothers. So why did he break up with them? Then, he gets a call (on his cell phone!) that his mother has died. It was his brother calling him. But if he had broken off all contact with his family, how did they know the number of his cell phone? Anyway, he heads home for the funeral. Despite the fact that he very much loves his mother, he does not shed a single tear when seeing her in her coffin. He looks at her dead body as if she is some "thing" and goes to the court house, where his father, the judge, is presiding a hearing. Really? Why would his father be working while his beloved wife, who just died, is laid out in a coffin at home, and people obviously can come in to bid her a last farewell (as all doors to the house seemed to be unlocked)? Then, those three brothers. Really? They are brothers? The oldest brother looked like 50 at least, Palmer looked like 40, and the youngest one looked like 25. In fact, at first I thought that the oldest brother was an uncle who was visiting with his slightly autistic son (the younger brother). They did not look like brothers, did not behave like brothers and were simply not believable as brothers.
But we are still not there. The brothers decide to go out for the night and end up drinking in a bar. Palmer hits on the (very young) barmaid and ends up having sex with her, in a corner of the bar, for everyone to see. Are you kidding? And his two brothers are watching, drinking more beer and do not seem to care that their married brother is having sex with the waitress in plain sight? And all this just one day before the funeral of their mother? This waitress turns out to be the daughter of the older brother. This brother must have known (or at least suspected) that she was his daughter. Come on, small town Indiana, how many secrets can there be kept in a community where everyone knows everyone? So he in fact sees his brother having sex with his own daughter. But he does not seem to care a bit.
And when Palmer later on learns that he in fact had sex with his niece – he does not seem to care either. He is more upset by the fact that his former girlfriend slept with his brother (after he himself had left town!) than by the fact that he has been intimate with his own niece. Really? The whole story about the father (the judge) being administered chemotherapy in some lodge is highly improbable too. Come on! I myself have had chemotherapy (the last one just 6 months ago), and this has to be done in a hospital. Not only because of hygiene requirements, but also: something can go wrong or your body can react in an unexpected way, and in that case, direct medical attention is required. So no, you can not just hook up a bottle of chemodrugs to your body in some remote fishing cabin in the middle of nowhere.
I could go on, there is much more, but I think you get the drift.
The story did have potential. If they would have focused on the relation between the father and son and the court case, it could and would have been a better movie – IMHO.
Marple: By the Pricking of My Thumbs (2006)
Shocked
WARNING. MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS.
I recently watched By the pricking of my thumbs and I was shocked. Why ruin this great Agatha Christie novel? Where does Miss Marple come from?She does not belong in this story. And why is Miss Marple portrayed so badly? She does not look real at all. What happened to the elderly Victorian spinster we all got to know as Miss Marple? Why does Mrs. McEwan look like somebody who has just bought some old-fashioned clothes in a charity shop for a good laugh? Why do we see a Miss Marple that is drinking beer and whiskey in pubs and who visits a cocktail party at the manor house without even changing into something suitable for the occasion (as the real Miss Marple certainly would have done). And again: what is she doing in this story? And what happened to Tommy and Tuppence, who we all know as a devoted couple, as two people who are fond of each other. We see a failing marriage, a bored Tuppence who is estranged from her husband and drinking like a fish. Come on! Tuppence, the sparkling person we all now from the books, is portrayed as a bored alcoholic and we should take that serious? I could go on, but I will not. The review would become far too long.
But just one piece of advice: don't rewrite books. If the story as it is does not suit you, write a completely new one. It actually is possible to make a high quality product and to stay true to the story at the same time. The Joan Hickson adaptations are the proof of that. But if you are not able to do so: do not mess with good novels and stay away from the project and go do something that is not beyond your capabilities. Agatha Christie would have turned in her grave, had she seen this film.