.. Blog Vacation ..

... or more exactly an interruption caused by the traveling that I have scheduled in the following period :) I unfortunately I didn't manage to find out yet how to dilate the time (it's on the list, don't worry :P ); but I promise that I'll return with something that deserves watching ;) unfortunately I don't have time to write about it at this hour, but as usually, after 29 July, "I'll be back" :D ( & I'll try my best to make the waiting worth ;) .. well .. in case there will be somebody "waiting" :)) )

The Grey (2011)

I'm caught again by the end of the week without many options for the blog, so I must deal with it by writing about something that's not actually very good. However, since the IMDb rating for "The Grey" seems decent (actually above what I would give) I said that maybe it fits as an option for today ...

The movie is somewhere in the survival adventure/thriller genre on a close subject line with "Jaws", "Anaconda", etc. This, if you read the synopsis. After you see it from start to finish though, it's hard to put it near the mentioned. The reasons are many and diverse ... But, let's start with the story: we have a plane transporting several workers from an oil platform in Alaska to the inner part of the continent in the middle of the winter. The plane crashes and the the result is seven survivors struggling to find somebody in order not to get frozen to death. The problem of the cold though, gets quickly secondary, after the men find themselves aggressively harassed by a wolf pack. As usual, I won't get further than the context, but anyway ... there is not much left to be told.

I didn't check but I assume that "The Grey" is rated R. Besides the fact that the movie is quite hard to watch, I guess that "restricted" fits here also more particularly to other situations in which watching the movie won't probably be a very pleasant experience: from being an animal lover (especially of dogs) up to having a flight scheduled nearly + others. Anyway, leaving this aside, I could say that the hard part of the movie is also the good part. And the one making the difference as least commercially than others - "Anaconda" again as a negative example here. And this happens due to the cinematography and especially editing that contributes to the atmosphere a lot. Unlike other titles, the movie does not follow the idea of making a score at the box-office from the abundance of bloody scenes (although the present ones get quite rough). After all this is probably the reason why it cannot be regarded as a horror (although it's not very far). But if the cinematography and editing are the good parts .. and I think I started in other direction, maybe it would be the case to come back to the original idea ...

Maybe it's me, but lately it seems I very often have the same problem .. again I think we have something that takes itself too seriously ... Leaving apart the fact that the wolf pack behavior seems a bit unrealistic, although I'm not an expert in wildlife, my major problem is with the script. After the first ten minutes you already know that what you have in front is not the usual "Piranha 3D" stuff. But after this the situation slowly changes .. You get more & more melodramatic background stories of the characters, classic crisis speeches, the usual "one by one .. who dies next" horror theme. To conclude, it slowly gets too Hollywoodish, and the bad part is that it tries to hide that .. = in the end I was left with the editing as the "something else" factor. Even the soundtrack that was nice, and a bit known, I confirmed myself after that is partially reused from "Ink". Therefore ...

Rating: 3 out of 5

Iron Sky (2012)

Sorry for the delay, but I wasn't able to post my entry last week, although I had it in my head. So I'll be back with the following too soon. For the moment "Iron Sky" or adapted freely "How to launch an extraterrestrial invasion with a smartphone" is a sci-fi satire/parody, with a budget a bit bigger than the usual indie. Partially supported through crowd funding, the movie is a German-Finnish-Australian production. The subject: The return of the nazi .. from outer space .. or more exactly from the dark side of the Moon :)

I guess I've already summarized the story above, and since I'm delayed already I won't get any longer. The movie is .. to compare to something having an element in common, as credible as "Inglorious Basterds" (keeping the proportions). There are holes in the script, and other issues. But ... again, unlike for instance "Prometheus" from last week, in this case we have something not taking itself much into serious. On the good side, we have also some other stuff like the score that varies from blues pieces to an arrangement foe Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", starting with a arrangementcazul de fata avem ceva ce nu se ia prea in serios. In plus, avem cateva puncte de remarcat incepand cu partea de coloana sonora care merge de la cateva blues-uri pana la un aranjament pentru Ride of the Valkyries de Wagner, excellent synced with the movie scenes. The FX have a couple of glitches but overall are to be appreciated given the movie budget (altogether with the production design and the other related stuff). The actors, although I didn't know anybody besides Udo Kier, surprised me in a very pleasant way. And finally .. the parody scenes .. which might have been more, but what's striking is the well-known Hitler scene from "Untergang" (the clip heavily used with alternate subtitles on YouTube).

In the end I have to admit that the movie looks more like a B series one, but it's on top on its category :) It might not be much, but deserves the time, it's fun, witty, and ... subjectively speaking I've placed Julia Dietze on the list to watch for in the future ;)

Rating: 3 out of 5

Prometheus (2012)

There are already more than two weeks I think since I've seen the movie = immediately after I mentioned it in the summer preview entry .. as head of the list. The reason Why last week I picked another title is that I had a pretty long break since my last rated movie, and I wanted to have something deserving to be watched on my blog. The reason why I returned to "Prometheus" now is because I feel I owe getting it down from the top of the previews list (even if the list was just chronological according to the release date).

Because I might have started a bit too harsh (and I intend to end even more), "Prometheus" is not exactly a movie to be avoided. Unlike, for instance, the last blueish production signed by master Cameron here you have a script, some story, a bit of acting .. but no Sigourney Weaver (who's present in "the blue world" if the irony wasn't clear enough). It doesn't worth to get started with the subject for many reasons, from the spoilers (I'll have plety of those below) to the simple fact that I'm not in the mood. In case there is still somebody completely lost from the subject, what we have here is a prequel to the "Alien" series, and I will say that it seems to have the role of creating a spin-off. That's enough. The subject is after all one of the good points of the movie. The handling of it though ... Suficient atat.

I didn't see every Ridley Scott movie but I don't remember which one was the last that disappointed me like this one. I have to admit for instance that "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Robin Hood" were not exactly masterpieces but they were a bit above average, level that in my head was the guaranteed minimum for Scott (he's still the first in my top of directors by the way .. but I'll argue my option when I'll have something supporting this, if it doesn't change before). Again "Prometheus" is not bad. It's just .. medium quality. I don't know from where to start and where to and .. for me is somewhere at the same level with Jeunet's experiment in Alien 4 - which even if it was crazy at least it had some originality and sufficient action to be fun. I think this is the point where "Prometheus" lost - it wanted to get more philosophical than the script can handle (although the idea and the story have potential). And like this it lost the action in Alien 4, and it didn't reach to the deepness of Fincher's Alien 3 either (very underrated movie). It doesn't even worth comparing with the first two in the series. But if this would have been all, we would still have a movie "a bit above average". But no ... we have more ..

We have a ship that enters the atmosphere of an unknown planet and lands more precisely than a trained paratrooper exactly near the alien structure (yes, I know .. spoiler: there are many of those, come on, that's the justification ? .. one in every valley, huh ?).
We have a Guy Pearce with a makeup almost as horrible as J. Edgar's buddy in the last Eastwood movie .. was it really a problem to set the guy's age at 60 instead trying to make him look like 100 ? (you have to see the movie to answer this, but I'm sure that I can fight back any argument with an alternative challenge me ;) if you dare).
We have madame Shaw instead of Ripley who apparently wants to look more badass (spoiler again) by cutting and sewing back her own belly and after that doing olympics training in 100 meter hurdles races ... And no, there's no excuse in portraying her as in pain from time to time, neither that medicine in 100 years will be more advanced, and neither that the movie is a movie as long as it takes itself as seriously as it does. And still, maybe it would have been credible, but to end this, sorry, but Noomi Rapace is no Sigourney Weaver ;).

Rating: 3 out of 5

Get the Gringo (2012)

... or how it's written on the poster "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" as an alternate title, is the last production starring Mel Gibson in a lead role. Some time ago I was thinking that this guy, considering the bunch of problems he managed to get into, pretty much finished his career. I'm not totally sure that I wasn't right, but what can I say is that the situation seems to play well for the quality of his last movies. Unfortunately not financially speaking I'm afraid. I think that the release for the current one was delayed with something close to one year and it's also limited if I'm right = in some places didn't manage to get into cinemas and went straight to pay-per-view. But, getting back to the actual movie ...

In brief, we have something that seems to be like a sort of "Payback 2" with a scent of "Lucky Number Slevin" and mixed with some others of the genre that I can't remember now - but more gruesome and more crazy. To summarize it, the guy on the poster is a thief who manages to steal quite an amount of cash from .. let's say "somebody" so I won't spoil anything .. from San Diego, California. For the general knowledge, in case it wasn't known already, San Diego is quite close to Mexico. Where the unlucky fellow, without having too many options, and chased by the local corrupt police, decides to plunge through the frontier border. After this, he's picked up by the neighbor local police, relieved of his stolen money and thrown without many questions in a sort of ad-hoc prison. To define ad-hoc prison: a surrounded guarded perimeter, without cells but with a local economy = from sleeping places rented by the perimeter mafia up to kiosks with cigarettes and cola, and others. In this context every resident has to earn his daily living somehow. What happens further ... well .. we have action, romance, some twists .. everything wrapped up by a story that's more original than lots of productions with a quintuple budget.

I won't say more of the story. In the end, the movie is quite far fetched, but it somehow manages not to surpass the limit = in the sense that pretty much every scene like: "come on (eyeroll), why ?" (= why the heck did it happened what I just saw in the previous second) can have a quick explanation. So there is a minimum degree of credibility in there. What I found a bit bothering, and I can't explain myself why, because I consider myself as having a pretty high level of tolerance, is the fact that is rated R and the scenes in this rating are plenty. Probably I just wasn't in the mood for something in this range, but getting over it the movie really deserves watching. Gibson makes a very good role, and it makes me feel sorry again that he's not really loved by the producers after the scandals he got into (apparently the Hollywood has a very big problem with dissociating between a guy's private life and what he does on screen). To get to a conclusion, the movie could have been better, but for one hour and thirty, although I start to repeat myself, the subject is sufficiently dense not to give you time to check your watch. Even if maybe the trailer doesn't suggest that ( but only the funny part ;) ).

Rating: 4 out of 5 ( a bit at the limit though .. :) )