Wild Target!

As I said before, I'm a big fan of Rupert Grint. So I was really eager to see this one!
Oh, almost forgot..

Year: 2010
Genre: Action, comedy, drama
Plotline: A hitman tries to retire but a beautiful thief may change his plans.

See how excited I am!? I watched this movie only yesterday, but I'm still thrilled!
Let's start with the cast, which includes Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, my lovely Rupert, Martin Freeman, Rupert Everett and Eileen Atkins. Lovely, right?
I am usually a big fan of brittish comedy, their humour often being more cynic, darkish and at the same time more upbeat, than ours (dutch, that is). And I can tell you, I wasn't disapointed with this one!
This movie is a remake of a movie created in 1993, called Cible Emovante (sorry about the spelling, but it's french, so hear it in your head or something).
I haven't seen the original movie (yet!), but from what I hear it's a pretty awesome remake. It will probably be hard to get my greedy hands on the original, but I'm in no hurry. (The original doesn't have Rupert,eh?)
Alright, let's talk about the storyline. I won't give away too much though!
An assasin is hired to 'put a garden' on Rose's 'tummy' (yeah, I threw in a dutch saying, ain't that cool?). Unfortunately,or, fortunately for the story, he falls in love with her, saves her life and is paid by her to protect her from other assasins.
While saving her life, Tony (Rupert) is accidentally pulled in in all this madness, which gives us lots of moments to actually Laugh Out Loud, or Roll Over From Laughing, that ofcourse depends on how easily tickled you are.
This movie involves excessive drinking, a pink cat, a lot of guns, a nutty mom, footmassages, basically, it's all brilliant.
Perfect comic timing by, well, all of the actors really, brilliantly directed and full of action and laughs. The ending is brilliant too!
Eventhough Rupert is yet again the 'goody-two-shoes', he did an amazing job acting as Tony. Heartwarming, to be honest.
So, what did I think of this movie, in short? Pure awesomeness. And I bet my new boots on it that even my loving boyfriend will like this one!


PS. I totally forgot! Rose's shooooeeees <3 lush high heels all over the place, I was impressed! Love, Renate

Burn After Reading

Year: 2008
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Crime
Plotline:
A disk containing the memoirs of a CIA agent ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it.

Yeah, this is new! I decided to do this, so I won't have to explain as much, and it makes it less confusing for myself.

Which brings me to today's subject: Burn After Reading! I'm not even sure how to write about a movie like this, since to me it was a blur of chaotic nothingness. (I think I just invented a new word! Good for me! )
I watched this movie with one of my roommates, because..well, we were bored. She bought some new movies, and Burn After Reading was one of them.
We popped it in the dvd player and started watching. When time went by, the 'WTF!' level went up through the roof!
Eventhough we were BOTH very confused, we also thought it was highly entertaining and funny, in a weird, twisted way. The absolute suddenness of drama, comedy, action, deaths and more dark comedy is confusing, but takes you on a wild ride through the lives of these characters, who are probably just as much confused as we were. (It creates a bond..or..something)
This movie probably requires a dark sense of humor, and fortunately, me and my friend both have.
Basically, it's about a bunch of morons, getting it to a lot of trouble, accompanied by deaths, dildo chairs, and Russians. Confusing, eh? Right!
The viewer soon knows it's all a big misunderstanding, and if these idiots would just calm down for a second and have a nice conversation with eachother, everything would be alright. But ofcourse, they don't.

It was very refreshing to see Brad Pitt play the biggest moron in this movie. I'm talking about IQ below 70 here, so go figure. Absolutely brilliant! Made me laugh several times, something I don't do a lot while watching him in a movie. But that's personal ofcourse.
Great cast in general, they made this movie what it is. And this movie, although highly confusing, is a brilliant comedy. Not everyone is going to like this one, but I know I did.

I know this was a somewhat short blog and I know that's because of me, not really sure what to write about it. I don't want to give anything away, because this is a movie you should see for yourself.
So, I'm going to tell you what else I'll be writing about this week!
Friends reading this, will probably know I'm a big fan of Rupert Grint, and this year he's starred in a few great movies. I'm not talking about Harry Potter here, since I have to eagerly wait to HP hitting cinemas aswell. I'm talking about Cherrybomb and Wild Target! I've watched Cherrybomb a while ago, several times, and will watch it again this week for referance, and I'll be watching Wild Target tonight! Oh joy ^^
So, check my blog this week if you want to know a bit more about these awesome movies!

Love, Renate

The Box

Today I watched the Box. I only read the plot line on IMDB and decided to watch it, because it sounded cool. (A small wooden box arrives on the doorstep of a married couple, who know that opening it will grant them a million dollars and kill someone they don't know.)
While watching it, I got more and more confused. There are a lot of loose ends in this movie, annoying the heck out of me.
It might have been a really good movie, if only at least half of the loose ends were tied. The story in general is really good, it makes you think about the human race, of how greedy and, well, stupid we really are. But I don't really see what Martians have got to do with that. Suggesting they are worried about what we are doing to eachother, why do THEY have the right to make us kill eachother a bit more? It just doesn't make sense.
Now, I've done some background searching and found the original story 'Button, Button', by Richard Matheson. I have to explain a little bit to you first, or else you won't know what I'm talking about. There's this box. With a button in it. If you push it, you get a million bucks (less, in the original story). Also, someone you don't know dies. In the movie, people who don't know eachother, are people the button-pusher has never met before. Pushing the button concludes in someone dying and the start of a series of tests, resulting in the death of the button-pusher, at the moment another button-pusher pushes the button (how many wood would a woodchuck chuck...), creating a cycle of deaths, caused by people themselves. In the original story though, the husband dies, cleverly ending the story by having the button-giver asking the wife 'did you really think you knew your husband?'.
I really don't see the point in completely altering an amazing 10-page story, to make a two hour movie. They used this story before in The Twilight zone, also altered. This resulted in a 30 minute episode, which was obviously enough. So now, we begin the movie with an hour of the extended version of the Twilight Zone episode, followed by another hour of vague scenes, sci-fi stuff, confusing conversations and an open ending, not at all making you 'think', it just annoys you. Especially the fact that the husband, who just killed his wife to save his sons hearing and vision, now has to leave his son behind. It just doesn't make sense!
This movie could have been so much better, sticking to the original story, leaving all the sci-fi stuff out. The concept is actually really good, quite clever too. They just didn't make it work. Just like Cameron's southern accent.

Love,
Renate

Inception

I've heard a lot of people talk about Inception before I finally went to see it. Some call it the movie of the year, some say it wasn't worth going to the cinema for. I find myself caught in the middle.
The storyline itself is pretty simple. With future-fiction technology people are able to enter a person's dream, to either steal an idea, or put one in.
Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is one of those people who does that, together with his team. To be able to steal/plant an idea, first you have to design a landscape, for which you need an architect, Ariadne (played by Ellen Page). The dreamer then fills it with projections from it's mind, who, unfortunately attack the foreigners when they attract to much attention. Here's where it all becomes pretty dangerous, since the people they want to enter had a training to prevent exactly that.
Now, I don't want to give the whole story away, but basically it becomes a chaos of a dream in a dream in a dream (am I counting right?), with lots of shooting, pretty landscapes and a big amount of panic. And let's not forget Mal, Cobb's wife, who pretty much likes to screw things up for the team, in order to make Cobb stay with her, and the fact that Cobb can't go back to his children because the government thinks he killed his wife.
All in all a pretty great movie, but still, I was a bit disappointed, which is odd, because I already knew it wasn't going to be THE movie of the year.
There was just too much hubbub around this movie, creating expectations in the viewer this movie just can't live up to. I really wish noone would have told me about it, I wish I didn't see any trailers in advance, pretty much I wish I would have gone in to that cinema not knowing what it was all about. Then, I think I would have loved this movie.
I'm not saying it isn't a cool movie, really, it is. The idea of multiple dream levels with different time-speeds, is really clever, and it looked pretty cool too.
Pretty pretty men (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy), some impressive animated scenes and a good cast. Just not the movie of the year is all.
I enjoyed it, it was a fun night out with a friend, and maybe that's even more important.

Love,
Renate

Case 39

So today, I watched Case 39. I already had it lying around for about a week, but I didn't have time to watch it yet, because I'm reading a very funny book.
So, you're probably all familiar with the story of an evil child, seemingly innocent, until they show their true color and everyone dies. It's story that works everytime, and unless you're looking for something amazingly original, it's a nice simple scary story for a night on the couch (or, an afternoon behind your computer).
That said, I wasn't expecting much of Case 39.
The story is about a social worker, Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger) who is having a hard time working on all the 38 cases she's assigned to do. But, the movie wouldn't be called case 39, if there wasn't one, right? Right!
This social worker is so kind-hearted, she takes on another case (39!), a girl who'se parents are trying to kill her. So ofcourse, Emily takes little Lilith (cute name) in to care for her, until the system finds her another home. Emily's not-yet-but-certainly-almost boyfriend Doug (Bradley Cooper) is a psychologist who gives the children therapy to overcome their trauma's and open up. What they don't know, is that our little Lilith, is a demon, who can kill you just by calling you up. Later on this changes to whispering in someone's ear (what happened to that other little girl?) , and later-later on this changes to 'she just does whatever the f*ck she wants'. It all ends with the conclusion that she can't really hurt you (or, well, she can, but...what?) if you're not afraid of her. So Emily plunges the car with her and Lilith in the water, Emily comes out alive and all's well.
Ofcourse, the movie is filled with scary moments, people dying, Emily finding out what the hell is going on (which always comes after the part in which a lot of people died already) and the battle against evil.
A lot of people thought Renee didn't do very well in this movie, said she isn't suited for a thriller/horror, but I actually thought she did a pretty decent job. Having Bridget Jones in the back of my mind, a kind-hearted social worker is a perfect part for her, in my humble opinion.
The scary parts weren't actually really scary, making it more like a thriller, but that's fine with me. I don't think a lot of gore would improve this movie a lot. Jodelle Ferland did a good job on being creepy, eventhough in my opinion she killed Detective Mike a bit too soon, making that scene seem a bit random. If she kept him alive, maybe they could have put a little more action in it. What Lilith does is find out what you're most scared of, and uses that to kill you. That's pretty clever, but they could have deepened that a little more.
So, it isn't the best movie ever, not even remotely, but it isn't bad either. Nice movie, if you don't expect too much. If you're ever out of movie ideas for the evening, give Case 39 a try.

Love,
Renate

Introduction

Hi everyone!

Before I start blogging about the movies that I watch,, I thought I'd start off with introducing myself. The reason I am doing this in english, is that I'd like my overseas friends to be able to read all this (if they want to), and because I don't like to write everything twice.
I'm a 21 year old dutch girl, studying applied psychology in Amsterdam, and besides spending my time on studying *cough* and hanging out with friends, I spend a lot of time watching movies. I also read a lot, but I find movies a lot easier to talk about with people, since I'm pretty sure none of them reads all the same books as I do.
On average, I watch about three movies a week, less during school weeks, more during holidays. Movies on the telly, movies on dvd, movies on my computer. I basically watch a lot of movies. Some good, some meh, some 'oh my good are they kidding me' bad, but I watch them anyway!
So basically, I'll be writing my blogs giving my opinion about the movies I watch, regardless of them being blockbusters or not.
I hope some of you might be interested in what I have to say and enjoy it, maybe have some tips about good (or bad) movies, the usual stuff that goes on at blogs, etc.

Love,
Renate