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In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)
Pretty bad on almost every level
I am basing this review on the theatrical cut of In the Name of the King, not the Director's Cut which i have not seen. As a reference I am using Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy as firstly, I believe all three films to be fantastic and secondly as Boll is clearly trying to copy Jackson's success and fails miserably.
So let's begin:
Acting/Casting: The casting of his films is probably the one thing Uwe Boll can be praised for as he often has very well known and talented actors on screen. This is also the case here, however most of the cast (Ron Perlman, Jason Stratham, John Rys-Davis) are clearly not very interested in their roles. To be fair, there are good performances: Claire Forlani is the sole highlight of the film (the scene in which she learns her son has died is actually very well done) and does well despite her character being pretty one-dimensional. Ray Liotta and Matthew Lillard are both so ridiculously over-the-top its impossible not to smile when they're on screen. Yes these characters are stupid, underdeveloped and uninteresting but this is not the actors fault and they do their best with the awful screenplay. In their scenes it is almost as if Boll is making a parody of fantasy films yet in the next scene we realize we are meant to be taking this seriously.
Effects/Costume: In the fantasy genre it is important to create a world for the audience to be immersed in, e.g. Middle Earth in LotR. In Jackson's trilogy we had a sense of the different cultures and their environments and here we get a generic world called Eb and generic monsters (Krug). The effects are standard yet clearly not as well developed as in LotR. For example we never see the Kurg up close for longer than a second and the structures (the castles of the king and of the villain) are shown briefly and again always at a distance, resulting in the audience feeling underwhelmed. I'm aware that Boll was working on a smaller budget, however it was still pretty high (60 million dollars) and i feel more could have been done here.
Editing: This is one of the bigger flaws of the film and can be seen best in the opening 15 minutes. There are many scenes here: Farmer working at his farm and feeling uneasy about an approaching danger. His wife Solana at the market. Farmer fighting at his farm and then with Norrick. Solana at her brother's house.
These scenes are all inter cut and Boll cannot stay with one scene for more than a few seconds and in doing so cannot build any tension. This is made worse by the fact that we have a fight scene (Farmer and Norrick) followed by a scene in which the dialog is essentially exposition. Granted, Jackson also does this (e.g. cutting from the battle of Helms Deep to Merry and Pippen in Fangorn Forest), however the characters there had already been established and in the scenes with Merry and Pippen there is more happening than just exposition.
Action: In a film with a fairly large budget but a horrible script, at least the action scenes should be engaging. Sadly, this is not the case. Either the battles are shot like a modern day action movie (imagine Transporter with swords and shields) which seems out of place or are on a grander scope yet still nothing to write home about and remain less involving than the smallest battle in LotR. There is also the fundamental problem that the battles have no "structure" so to speak. For example: The battle of Helms Depp in TT had a beginning, a moment where all seemed lost and finally victory for the heroes. Here all we get is 10 minutes of fighting ending with victory. There is never any build up so there is no tension, there seems to be nothing at stake so we don't really care.
Screenplay: It's horrible. Simply horrible. Even without some unintentionally funny lines it would still be bad. Apart from the shallow characters and plot holes, it just tries too hard to be poetic and meaningful yet ends up sounding like someone trying desperately to sound eloquent. And the ending pretty much sums it up: After Gillian's death the movie stops about 30 seconds later. What is the point? I know a lot people complained about the ending of RotK yet there was a purpose to it. Here it is so abrupt it's as if the filmmakers just stopped caring and wanted to end it as fast as possible. Another example: At one point one of the heroes loses a person very close to her and her reaction is to look blankly at his body before turning around leaving him lying on the ground. WHY? Why should we invest anything in a character who so obviously doesn't care about the people most dear to her?
Originality: Now here is why i wanted to use LotR as a reference. Let's go through the story and find the similarities:
Both start in the countryside with fields/crops and the music is also similar. Krug are obviously cheap Orcs. A wise wizard helping the hero on his quest. A villain in a tower/castle with the ability to see over the land (Sauron with his eye, Gillian with magic) The villain producing Krugs/Orcs in an underground "factory" (these scenes are so clearly ripping of LotR's Saruman it's almost pitiful) A race of creatures with a connection to nature. A small force entering the villains lair as a large army would fail. A hero starts as a loner and becomes king.
Need i say more?
So to finish: 2/10 for the average performance by Forlani and the entertaining performances by Liotta and Lillard.
Quantum of Solace (2008)
I really wanted to love this...
I was one of the many people who didn't really believe in Craig before Casino Royal but I was also one of the many people who loved Craig and CR. So of course when I was hugely excited about this Bond film. I found the title quite interesting and I found it certainly fit the mood of the end of CR and I was hoping that the Bond/Vesper story would be the main plot here.
It started out really well. I don't really have a problem with the Bourne editing and although some people have said it is not a typical Bond movie any more, well neither was CR and I loved that so it was OK. So the car chase was great and the chase over the rooftops were also good even though I was distracted by the fact that some shots (Bond jumping over the street onto a balcony) were directly from Bourne Ultimatum, which wouldn't have been a bad thing if the didn't already seem very much like Bourne.
More by chance than anything else does Bond get dragged into the whole "bad guy wants to take over the world/country" story and this was for me the main letdown. The villain just wasn't evil or scary or anything. He was basically a businessman who at end was still somehow able to match Bond in hand to hand combat. This was a bit confusing as Bond had been shown that he was almost inhumanly strong (ripping of the door handle). I loved Le Chiffre in CR because although he was also a bit of a weakling he was still evil. And BOnd sudden realization what is going on as they are leaving the cave is just laughable. Having Bond chasing White and revenging Vesper for a whole film would have been a bit thin but it would have been better than this.
Now the action: There are some great scenes (car chase), there are some scenes that are OK (climax in the desert) and there are awful scenes (plane chase). CR was spectacular but pretty down to the ground. This just tried to hard to be amazing. I remember sitting in the cinema and seeing the trailer and I thought "Ok, this all looks great but hopefully they didn't overdo it". Bad luck.
But the action didn't make CR great, it was the reinvention of the characters so maybe that will save this film? Well kind of. The best scenes in this film were not the huge action scenes but the little shots that showed Bond as a human. The sot in the cave, where Bond and Camille are talking about their losses is the best scene in the film because here Forster knew exactly what he was doing. Unfortunately there were only three such scenes in the movie. The others being the final one and Mathis's death. This was really the turning point for me because it showed Bond's very dark and merciless side and that now he was only concentrating on the job at hand.So Craig did a great job again but he was not given enough time. He spent most of the film either jumping, running or shooting so he didn't really get a chance to play the human Bond that much. M had a much larger in this film and Dench probably had more screen time than in all her other Bonds to date put together and she did it really well. The other Bond girl Fields was the one that annoyed me. It was basically the same problem that HMSS had. Bond was still in love with someone yet the seduces another woman and apart from that Fields has no real scene in the film. The Goldfinger reference was neat and Bond's and M's reaction to it again showed more human Bond but I think the whole character could have been cut out.
Right, so to sum it up: The action is bigger but not better than CR, the characters are not as good as CR and the plot is not as good as CR.
7/10
WALL·E (2008)
First indescribable, then only amazing
The first 30 minutes of WALL-E were totally mind blowing and it was already clear that this was going to be a great film.
Unfortunately Pixar wasn't able to hold this quality all the way through. Of course this would have been almost impossible but after the ship takes off it is weaker than before.
Also the other "good" robots were kind of thrown in and it didn't seem like they really fitted in.
But apart from that: WOW!!! The animation was pretty much as we can expect from Pixar but that wasn't the main reason why I liked it. It was because I had the same feeling I had when watching Finding Nemo. The characters (WALL-E, EVE especially) were just great and memorable. I remember wondering how they were going to have a robot that doesn't really have a voice show emotions and bond with the audience but there were several very sad or happy moments. The cinema I was at was almost sold out and you could see that everyone was moved by certain scenes.
This is without a doubt one of the best animation films ever made (although I found Finding Nemo a bit better but that's only me) and will obviously win the Best Animation Oscar in Febuary. I don't think it will win Best Picture but a nomination would be nice and deserved.
The Simpsons (1989)
Best series ever
I remember when I started watching Simpsons in England when I was about 8. Even though I had lived in America for the 8 years before that I had never actually seen a single episode. At the beginning I enjoyed it and thought it was kinda cool but then when I was about 13 I started to really watch it week for week and I realized just how great this series is. All of a sudden I was getting the clever references to films or politics that I didn't understand before. And now (with 17) I still enjoy it more than any other series.
A lot of people say the the quality declined after season 9. Well I have 4-10 on DVD and think that 10 is still amazing and I haven't seen that many of the newer episodes to comment on them as a whole. The ones I have seen however are without a doubt a lot worse.
Maybe South Park and Family Guy are funnier nowadays but I will always see them as Simpson wannabes because the mid-90 episodes will never be beat.
The Simpsons: Another Simpsons Clip Show (1994)
not THAT bad
I really can't understand why this episode has such a low rating. Sure it's not one of the best episodes but compared to other Simpson clip shows (All Singing, All Dancing) this one is very good.
The plot is basically that Marge and Homer want to teach Bart and Lisa about love and then all four tell about their own failed relationships, e.g Homer and Mindy.
Most of the episode, as the title suggests, is told in clips of former episodes, all of which far superior to this one, but what I liked about it, was that it had a real message, which All Singing, All Dancing didn't.
So to sum it up: Not great but still worth watching.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Different but not better
OHMSS is probably the Bond film that has discussed the most. Basically you either hate it for being different or you love it for being different. I personally have got nothing against a James Bond film that a more romance than normal (Casino Royal was great) but here I think the makers often couldn't decide which way to go.
For example: Most Bond films start with a huge action sequence. Here there is an action sequence. But it is not a huge stunning scene. It's Bond saving a woman he has never seen before from an apparent drowning and than getting attacked by two mugs he has never met either. He beats them up. Cut. Maybe it is explained in the book but I felt there was no tension or suspense in the scene.
Than follows a very long passage about Bond and the woman (Tracy) falling in love. Again, not a bad thing but some pieces of dialog were just not very good, which would have been fine for a normal Bond movie but I felt they were trying to get an emotional love story across but didn't have the script quality to do it.
When the actual plot begins to continue it gets slightly better but I found the dinner scene really funny, for the wrong reasons. Bonds outfit wasn't so much the problem. He was there undercover so what do you expect? The women were doing their very best to seduce him and Lazemby didn't really look quite the part. For me he clearly didn't have the charisma to pull the scene off. What happens next is in my opinion even worse. Bond decides to have sex with two of the women, obviously forgetting he has spent the majority of the movie falling in love with Tracy.
When he does reunite with her he shows no regret at all that he has cheated on her which would have been more realistic. The action scenes in this part (skiing, avalanche) on the other hand are amazing and really made up for the lack of action in the first 1 1/2 hours.
After that I don't have any more negative points except for the last scene. The scene itself is great and LAzamby does a really good job and it is emotional but that music ruins it. The James Bond theme, in my opinion, just doesn't fit the scene.
But it has to be said, I admire the producers and director for going in a very different direction with this Bond. Sadly it didn't really work out.