Everything about this film looks considerably older than its actual age. I was under the impression that “Deathlands” came from the time of “Mad Max“, but the first “Mad Max” is 24 years older!
As you may now expect, “Deathlands” is a gloomy, apocalyptic film playing in a bleak future. After a massive war, nothing much is left of the world and we follow a group consisting of men, a mutant and a half-mutant (it is not really explained to what the mutants mutated) on ‘adventure’.
The first half of the film has a very good atmosphere, but in the second half the very thin story begins to show a bit too clearly and this is certainly the weaker half. There is quite some blood and brutality and action, but do not expect a whole lot of script.
“Deathlands” is enjoyable, but not much more than that.
I do not know if it is because of watching the Mad Max trilogy, but I had images in my head of this weird old scifi with Schwarzenegger. For a moment I thought that the title was “Marathon Man”, but I quickly found the correct title. “The Running Man” from the title is a television show, in fact, the most popular television show in 2017. Convicts are sent into an arena where they have to try and surive their hunters. When they do survive, they have “paid their debth to society”. Nobody ever does though to the great delight of the audience that bets on the show and wins toys.
Up until when we are thrown into the middle of The Running Man show, the film is an acurate and still actual critique on television. Information is manipulated to control the opinion of the masses and what they get in return is downright flat entertainment. They even find joy in death and destruction.
The main character in the film is Ben Richards who is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger who, however 40 years old at the time, looks both young when he smiles and furious when he grins. The perfect face for the part! Richards was a police officer until he was framed for the slaughter of innocent civilians, but during The Running Man he gets his change to set things right and to show the common man that they are manipulated by the media.
“The Running Man” is a good and entertaining film. For the time, and especially for the audience it reached, it is quite brutal at times. I found the film remarkably topical, both in message and in way of filming. A classic that you should watch (again some time).
As the title suggests this film is based on the epic poem “Beowulf”. If I am correct this is the oldest known text in the English language. It is said to be from the 6th century. So, in the 6th century they already wrote sci-fi?! I don’t know “Beowulf” myself (but I know the personage with the same name from “Tristan and Isolde”, a German saga), but I suppose this is a very loose interpretation or everything that isn’t described in the text is filled in by the makers of the film. The film “Beowulf” became one of these sci-fi’s playing in an imaginative past (?), like “Mad Max” or “Highlander”. Christopher Lambert is the mysterious stranger Beowulf who travels to a castle to fight the beast Grendel who kills all the inhabitents. The superhuman Beowulf falls in love with wonderbra Kyra and of course kills the supernatural beast and all ends happily. Alright.
“Oppenheimer” being directed by Christopher “Inception“, “Tenet“, “Interstellar“, etc. Nolan and all the talk about it being filmed on specially made Imax cameras, I wondered how Nolan would make the story about the development of the atomic bomb into a visual spectacle. I guessed I would better see it in Imax as it was apparently supposed to.
Well, the film is not that visually spectacular. Sure, there are some ‘visions’ and of course a big explosion, but basically “Oppenheimer” is a historical drama that, in my opinion, does not necessarily have to be watched on the big screen. Is it a good film regardless? Certainly!
Nolan gathered a star cast. Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey jr., Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, Gary Oldman and of course Cilian Murphy in the main part in which he can show that he is much more than a Peaky Blinder.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was an American scientist of Jewish descent. As a brilliant young man he continued where Einstein had stopped and he stood at the cradle of quantum physics. His mind went where few had gone before and his fame soon rose to the stars. He not only reasoned the existence of black holes, but also pondered the possibility of splitting atoms. When during WWII word was that the Nazis were also working on splitting atoms, but then with the reason to create a massive bomb, Oppenheimer used his influence to build a secret research facility in the middle of the American desert to try to outwit the Nazis and see to it that America would have the first nuclear bomb. In his mind, it would only have to be used once. After that, all wars would cease.
Oppenheimer was a colourful person. Just before the communist craze, he showed in interest in communist theories. Even though this was obviously not appreciated, he did not hide his ideas. Brilliant on many fields, many people forgave him for his ‘indiscretions’, but eventually these (old) allegiances would be used to try to silence the man.
We follow a man, timid, but persuasive; modest, but also a womanizer. Oppenheimer did not lack an ego either. Many people around him were both taken aback, yet fascinated and so he became the most important man in the USA. Even in the world perhaps.
The story is told in post war interviews and flashbacks, working up the test and what came after. Oppenheimer started to realise that his bomb would not end all wars, but would rather be the start of a whole new kind of warfare and he balanced between what would be right or wrong under the circumstances.
All in all “Oppenheimer” is a very good film, telling the tragic story of how mankind played the part of Prometheus giving an idea of how we came to the current situation. Of course, Oppenheimer’s role cannot be underestimated, both for the development of the bomb as the for call for a worldwide agreement to not use them.
A young girl is haunted by a demon and to find a sollution, her boyfriend buys a camera to register what happens. He starts to film themselves day and night.
“Paranormal Activity” has more than one thing incommon with “The Blair Witch Project“. Both films are very low budget, but made big bucks after hitting the cinemas (I even read it was released in Europe earlier than planned because of the success in the US, so why is it of 2007?). Both films are formed by the video footage that the subjects recorded themselves. Both films are creepy thriller / horror films in which nothing much is to be seen, but the suggestion and the fact that it looks authentic does the trick. Both films have a lot of out-of-hand filming that makes my stomach ache. “The Blair Witch Project” was hyped more, with fake newsflashes on the internet about lost students and the idea that the film was merely what was on the videotape of the recorder that was found. “Paranormal Activity” has obviously been edited more, but in several cases this really adds to the atmosphere. Most (of course) happens at night, but the periods that nothing happens are shown in fast-foward. There are also two fast-foward scenes in which something does happen, greatly enlarging the ‘creepyness’ of those scenes. Just as in “The Blair Witch Project” it takes a while before things start roling, but after that the film quickly runs to a climax. I personally did not find the film all that scary, not as much as “The Blair Witch Project” for sure. Maybe that is because the novelty is gone. The film still has a magnificent atmosphere though. Taking the reactions from the audience, many people did get the creeps though (such as the three girls next to us discussing if they still dared to leave the room 🙂 ). I have seldom seen a film with so many outloud reactions from the viewers, screams and yells, “oh my god”s, they were all there. There is nothing much to say about the story of the film, other than that what I started with. Be sure that it is the more frightening kind of film like the one I mentioned several times before. If you liked “The Blair Witch Project”, you want to see “Paranormal Activity”. On the big screen of course.
I have seen this film when it still played in the cinemas a couple of years ago. Since it is one of my favourite films and after quite some searching I finally have it on video, I thought it would be a good idea to review it afterall.
“Pi” is about a young man called Maximilian Cohen (Sean Gullette) who has had severe headache attacks since he looked into the sun too long at the age of 6. Whether or not this also played part in him turning out to be a mathematic genius, is an unanswered question. As he calls it himself, Max is a “number theorist” and he was taught by his teacher Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis). Sol had a stroke after working too hard on finding a pattern in the digits of Pi and turned out in a cynical philosopher who Max still turns to once in a while.
Max lives by three assumptions which are restated a few times in the film:
1- Mathematics is the language of nature;
2- Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers;
3- If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge.
Therefor there are numbers anywhere in nature.
Doesn’t this remind you of Pythagoras? Well, this greek “mathematician and cult-leader” is shortly mentioned.
Max sees evidence for his assumptions in the “cyclic disease epidemics”, “the wax and way of the karibu populations”, “sunspot cycles”, “the rise and fall of the nile”.
This lead Max to believe to be a pattern in the stockmarket, the finding of which is his goal. Therefor he built a gigantic computer in his appartment (which he called “Euclide”). His efforts draw the attention of two kinds of people. First people interested in this very pattern in the stockmarket. Second, a group of Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) searching for the secret name of God.
Sol speaks about a 216 digit number that his computer spat out when it crashed. Lenny Meyers (the Jew that tries to interest Max) says they are looking for a 216 digit number as the pattern in the Torah. Being written in Hebrew, the Torah is both text and numbers, since in Hebrew every letter is also a number.
Max decides to help the Jews, finds the digits again (he had them when his own computer crashed), but doesn’t want to give it away to either of the selfish groups asking for his help.
The film is shot in black and white and with magnificent progressive camera-work. The soundtrack has great drum and bass sounds by quite well-known artists (Aphex Twin for example). There are wonderful vague scenes in which Max has visions during his attacks and with only a handful of actors or places where the shooting took place, Aronofsky made a brilliant debut. Definitely a
Everything about this film looks considerably older than its actual age. I was under the impression that “Deathlands” came from the time of “Mad Max“, but the first “Mad Max” is 24 years older! 
