Verklagekasper Reviews

The Long Good Friday (1980)

Gave up after 15 minutes

[2/10 · 20 May 2023]

I gave up after 15 minutes. There was no recognizable plot, no exposition, nor anything telling what was going on. It felt like you came in late and missed the first hour.

The cast is top notch, and the title music is nice. 2 stars for that instead of 1, yay. The movie has a high rating, which suggests it's getting better after the 15 minutes mark. But who would watch this mess in its entirety? I will not. I have had enough. Oh yeah, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan. A very young Pierce Brosnan even. I'd give 3 stars if I was a woman. But I'm not so 2 stars is enough for this mess. Don't believe the ratings, it's a waste of time.

Confessions (2010)

Trash with an artsy icing

[1/10 · 15 January 2014]

"Confessions" by director Tetsuya Nakashima is an effective socio thriller that won't leave any viewer unaffected. I give it that. But it is also a stone-cold, calculated movie without a heart. Its primitive morality is covered by an artsy fartsy coating which, sadly, makes critics believe that the movie had something profound to tell.

The movie starts with a bang of an opening scene. A teacher tells her class of 7th graders about the value of life. Keeping the same calm tone throughout, she then tells them that her little daughter died; that she got in fact murdered by two students currently attending the class. She elaborates on how the two students will get away with their heinous deed because they are below the age of criminal responsibility. Before leaving, though, she reveals a nasty surprise for them: She has just infected the killers with the HIV virus. The film proceeds with showing from different perspectives what is going on in the kids minds and how the teacher's twisted revenge plan unfolds.

It does so with demonstrative artistic style. Whereas the cold color scheme and the frequent shots of dark clouds may be reasonable gimmicks to create a dark atmosphere, there are also countless slow motion shots that seem to have no purpose other than make the film look artsy. The same goes for the odd choice of music and some scenes that are deliberately out of place, like one where the students almost perform a musical act.

With its artsy style, "Confessions" apparently tries to mimic Chan-Wook Park's revenge trilogy, "Oldboy", "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance", and "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance". One could argue that those movies are also somewhat pretentious. But below the surface, their morality is complex. Park's revenge trilogy is about people who are basically good but who heap guilt upon themselves, and the revenge doesn't lead to redemption.

Contrary to that, Nakashima's world is simplistic and strictly divided into good and evil. All the kids in "Confessions" are monsters devoid of empathy. Not just the killers but even their peers, who are obnoxious brats trying to give their teacher as hard as a time as possible. Even when the teacher tells them about the death of her little daughter they don't care. Only the fact that the killers are among them raises their interest, as that seems a welcome opportunity for bullying.

So there is the message of "Confessions". All the kids are monsters, and the most psychopathic of them deserve to die. And then, I guess, the viewer is supposed to leave the theater with a feeling of satisfaction because the revenge unfolded so well. This ugly little package is all that "Confessions" has to offer below its aesthetic surface. I have to admit that the movie impressed me at first. But then I realized just how corrupt it is. I would take revenge movies of the "Death Wish" kind over "Confessions". Because at least those movies weren't as pretentious as this film that blinds the viewer with a shiny artistic surface to make them believe it was art.

By the way: Hey, directors, leave them kids alone! They are alright. This should be obvious, but I've seen comments from people who now believe that Japanese kids really were like this. Quite stupid of those viewers, but also quite a questionable achievement of a movie.

Kuroyuri danchi (2013)

Solid horror from Ringu creator Hideo Nakata

[6/10 · 17 December 2013]

There are good twists and bad twists. Good twists are the ones which enrich the story with surprise without demolishing it. Bad twists are of the "It was just a dream" sort and just annihilate everything that happened so far. "The Complex" by director Hideo Nakata, maker of the famous Ringu movies, appears to have both kinds of twists. Any way, it has too many.

Which is unfortunate because "The Complex" has a lot things going for it. Like the talented Atsuko Maeda, who plays Asuka, a girl who just freshly moved with her family into an apartment complex. Much to Asuka's distress, she's disturbed at night by strange noises coming from the apartment next door. Not much to our surprise, things are getting worse.

I liked the camera work and editing. Like, at the beginning, a few effective camera moves and cuts introduce us to the main characters and give us a good sense of location, how the apartments are placed and what the environment of the building is like. Acting is well throughout, too. As for the pace, it is a bit slow at the beginning, but that's fine since it allows us to become familiar with the characters. And the characters are ones that I could care for.

Everything was going fine, so I don't understand why Nakata had to add twists, which at times felt forced and disrupted the mood. In the Ringu movies, Nakata established ambiguous characters without sudden changes. Maybe he thought "The Complex" would otherwise have been not exciting enough? Actually, I liked its calm parts.

World War Z (2013)

Finally, a zombie movie showing the outbreak, not just the aftermath

[7/10 · 2 December 2013]

For many years I've been waiting for a zombie movie showing the outbreak on a global scale. This is what "World War Z" does, and it deserves more appreciation for that. Instead, critics moan that it was like "28 Days Later" with more budget, missing the obvious difference between those movies even though the titles say it all. For once, here is a zombie movie which gives an idea of the world wide consequences of the disease and which does not play in a post-apocalyptic setting but shows the outbreak right from the beginning. I also could not care less whether the movie was true to the novel. Nor did I miss gore. There is plenty of gory schlock out there, watch that if you need gore so much. What I didn't like though was the science. This movie had the potential to give you the feeling that this could actually happen, but the science was just too awkward for that. Still, I found the movie very entertaining, and it has a couple of very memorable scenes.

Pacific Rim (2013)

Not as bad as the Transformers sequels or Battleship, but still no good

[4/10 · 29 November 2013]

I've been just told this movie had a plot and characters. Well, yes. A stupid plot making no sense on any level, including giant monsters which are nearly invulnerable to projectiles and rockets but vulnerable to giant robots, which come in increasingly stronger versions instead of coming in the strongest version right away, and which are pregnant despite of being reproduced by cloning. And cliché characters including dyed blonde hair Russians like Ivan Drago from Rocky III and a Marshal reproducing the motivational speech from Independence Day. It's nice to look at, I give it that. And it is not as annoying as the Transfomers sequels or Battleship. But the difference isn't too big. This movie is seriously overrated.

Wishing Stairs (2003)

Worthy entry in the series despite some flaws

[7/10 · 22 November 2013]

Yun Jae-yeon, the first woman to direct a movie of the Yeogo Goedam series, faced a big challenge when making Wishing Stairs. It was Yun's debut, and the two leading actresses, Song Ji-hyo and Park Han-byeol, were newcomers at that time as well. Also, Yun had to meet high expectations because Wishing Stair's predecessors, Whispering Corridors and Memento Mori, had been very successful.

Just like all of the Yeogo Goedam movies, Wishing Stairs has a closed story of its own but plays with the same themes. Again, it takes place at a girls' school, this time a school of arts. There, the main characters, Yun Jin-seong (Song) and Kim Sohee (Park), are studying ballet. They are close friends, but their friendship gets challenged when they both enter a contest for a place to study at a Russian ballet faculty. Yun Jin-seong envies her more talented friend. She works hard but just gets scolded by the teacher, whereas Kim Sohee impresses everybody with her effortless skill; she looks like the sure winner of the contest. Yun's jealousy grows till the point that she even seeks supernatural help: Campus legend has it that there is a stair case on the campus which grants a wish when you reach its last step. But as Yun climbs the stairs, the viewer already knows that this is a bad idea. For folklore tells that wishes granted by a supernatural force often come with undesirable side effects, and Wishing Stairs confirms this.

Like the previous Yeogo Goedam films, Wishing Stairs isn't a real horror movie. The supernatural serves as a vehicle to accelerate a worldly tragedy. So the movie is less about horror and more about people feeling trapped because they are unable to become the persons they want to be. This idea is stressed by the third main character, Eom. Eom is an overweight outsider, and if the other students notice her at all, it's usually just to make fun of her. She tries to escape her misery by idolizing Kim Sohee, dreaming of being her friend or perhaps even being her.

However, it is also Eom (Jo An) where direction wasn't flawless. Unlike her character, Jo happens to be pretty and slim, so she was put in a fat-suit. The problem with that approach is that viewers always notice fat-suits, no matter how well they are made. This might not be a problem in comedies, but in this drama it is a distraction. Also, Jo's performance is sometimes at the border of slapstick, which doesn't do her tragic character justice.

Another distraction was the use of an incoherent flashback. It seems an obligation for Yeogo Goedam movies to employ flashbacks to reveal dark secrets of the past, so Wishing Stairs has one flashback as well. Without spoiling too much, it's about an act of sabotage. However, that small part of the plot doesn't roll out plausibly. It causes more confusion than insight and should have been deleted entirely.

But the strengths of Wishing Stairs outweigh its flaws. The acting of Song and Park is great. The movie has a high production value. And like its predecessors, it has a certain charm and unique mix of drama and horror to it. It is a tragedy of universal nature, so viewers can relate to it even if they don't happen to be Korean teenage girls (as is the case with this old bloke). Wishing Stairs is a worthy entry in the series, which makes director Yun's debut a real accomplishment.

Mother (2009)

Another great Korean movie that likely will be remade by Hollywood

[9/10 · 22 November 2013]

Joon-ho Bong's "Mother" is a calm and down to earth murder mystery as well as a surprising and dark drama. It offers clever writing, beautiful cinematography, and great acting. At that, it plays in the same league with other Korean hits like "Oldboy" or "Lady Vengeance", so it's no bold guess that it will be remade by Hollywood just like those. Which is a shame since the remakes steal attention from their originals. But that is another subject.

Another thing that all these movies have in common is that, at their core, they are about family bonds. The same goes even for Bong's monster movie "The Host". So far, "Mother" is the most consequential movie in this regard. It think this is the reason why it is so easy to relate to it. It doesn't just show off the skills of the director, the camera man, the writers, the actors. It has a heart. A heart that is light at times but which can also be pretty dark.

Rashomon (1950)

Rashomon: The Trickster Film

[10/10 · 12 November 2013]

If you like Asian movies, Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon is a definite must-see because it is not only an overall great film but also the first Japanese film that became an international success, a classic that started it all. Plus, Rashomon is now in the public domain, so you can watch it for free legally on the Internet. Which you should. I watched it for the first time when I was very young, but it wasn't until later years that I could fully appreciate it. It's a movie for adults in the best sense of the word.

Strangely, while Rashomon was celebrated by international critics, Japanese critics didn't like it and suggested that it appealed to Westeners only because it was exotic, as Kurosawa bitterly noticed. Well, a prophet has no honor in his own country.

Although it cannot be denied that the exoticism of Rashomon adds to its appeal, that alone cannot explain the out-of-nowhere international success of this movie. There has to be something about Rashomon that strikes a chord in viewers independent of their cultural background. I think it has something to do with the fact that - intentionally or not - Rashomon plays with an archetypal constellation, a pattern more or less subconsciously known, and thus understood, in all cultures (and often expressed by mythological figures): The Trickster. A trickster constellation is a pattern where several or all of the following occur simultaneously: deception, disruption, reduced sexual inhibition, blurring of boundaries, and magical practices. Rashomon is about all of that. The tragedy begins with an act of deception by the bandit Tajomaru, and the deception doesn't end there. The events are disruptive - especially, of course, to the murdered Samurai and his wife. Obviously, uncontrolled sexuality plays a role as well, as does the blurring of boundaries. Ultimatily, Rashomon blurs the boundaries between truth and fiction. Even the supernatural aspect is there: A dead man speaking from his grave through a medium, once again blurring a boundary, namely that between the living and the dead. The feelings of dread expressed by the monk near the end are also in line with trickster phenomena. At least that's what Jungian psychology says. Looking at the creation of Rashomon and at its international reception, I have come to believe that there's more to archetypal psychology than I once thought.

Now, I think there is a reason why foreign critics liked the movie better than Japanese critics. It is simple but paradoxical: It is easier for foreigners to detect the psychological content of the movie. For a foreigner, much of the movie is exotic. Yet the more exotic a movie is for a viewer, the easier it is for him to spot the aspects of it which are familiar, which are fundamentally human and independent of culture. Hence, foreigners are in advantage when it comes to noticing the psychology of the movie. This paradox, again, fits nicely with the trickster character of Rashomon.

13 Assassins (2010)

Bigger budgets don't make better movies

[5/10 · 12 November 2013]

Takashi Miike, the director of 13 Assassins, once said in an interview that he sometimes watches big budget movies thinking "With that budget, why didn't they make more crazy things?". He also said that he likes working on low budget movies because they allow for more creative freedom. It turns out that 13 Assassins fulfills his concerns. Compared with many of his lower budget movies, it is a very conventional if not mediocre film. The only thing miikesque about 13 Assassins is the depiction of the sadistic Lord Matsudaira's cruelties, which isn't a redeeming factor.

As for the story, said Lord cannot be stopped by political means, hence a group of Samurai is tasked with his assassination. Which isn't an easy job since he is protected by an army that outnumbers the assassins by far. So the plot deals with a situation which became classic since Kurosawa's 7 Samurai, but contrary to embarrassing claims of some commentators, 13 Assassins is not "a copy of 7 Samurai" but in fact a remake of a movie named - guess how - "13 Assassins", from 1963.

The fact that the movie is a remake begs the question why it was even made. It is not original, there are no twists, let alone is there any of the goofiness that characterizes much of Miike's work. Perhaps Miike wanted to show that he can do big battle scenes. Well yes, he obviously can. But while the battle scenes are the most outstanding feature of 13 Assassins, the fighting left me strangely unaffected. The key question was how the small group will defeat the army, but the way the battle is unrolled isn't clever or elegant, it relies too much on technically improbable traps and incompetent opponents. Now there's a point where a lower budget could have helped: With a lower budget, the movie might have concentrated less on sets and spectacle and more on how the Samurai outsmart the army.

I don't understand why 13 Assassins gets so many enthusiastic reviews. But I hope it grossed a lot of money that gets invested into more original movies.

Whispering Corridors (1998)

Korean Horror-Drama Gem

[8/10 · 5 November 2013]

Whispering Corridors spawned no less than four sequels. It seems fairly unknown outside Asia, though, which is a shame on the one hand but on the other hand good for those of us who enjoy searching for gems among movies not so known in the West. Although the stories of the Whispering Corridor movies are independent of another, they all take place in girl schools where the students suffer from high pressure, competition - and from hauntings. It's not all horror, though. In fact, the drama aspect is very strong.

Perhaps Whispering Corridors could be scarier. But it has a heart. It makes you care about the characters and the tragedies they're involved in. I've been impressed by the young actresses' performances and the cinematography. Even though the whole movie takes place at a school, it never gets dull to look at. All this makes watching it an experience so much more rewarding than watching an ordinary teen slasher film.

Gozu (2003)

Miike opens a big can of WTF

[9/10 · 5 November 2013]

I watched Audition and Dead or Alive before watching Gozu, so I was familiar with Takashi Miike's weird visions. Or so I thought, because Gozu is so extra strange that I couldn't really figure out what was going on. But then again, maybe that's the whole point of it? Eventually, I just leaned back and enjoyed the show. Which is gross at times but also hilarious.

To find out if this movie is for you, just watch the first few minutes. If you feel appalled, you might want to skip this movie (as well as other Miike movies). If the opening makes you chuckle a bit, give the movie a try. It's a strange but highly entertaining ride.

Audition (1999)

Masterpiece of Archetypal Horror

[10/10 · 25 October 2013]

When I watched Audition for the first time, it left me thinking "What the hell did I just watch?". There are many movies leaving me thinking like that, but Audition kept me thinking for days.

In my humble opinion, most reviews and interpretations of it are totally off the mark. Audition is not a lecture on feminism, or moral, or the condition of Japanese society. One can only interpret it so by deliberately ignoring its irrationality. Audition touches the realm of Jungian archetypes. At that, it's similar to Lars von Trier's Antichrist. Except that Trier's Antichrist was made 10 years after Miike's Audition and that Antichrist lacks Audition's subtlety (sic). Antichrist is strange right from the beginning, whereas Audition builds up more slowly, making its turn more shocking. Antichrist is explicit on the supernatural, whereas Audition is more subtle about it.

Despite its graphic content, there is subtlety and depth to Audition. It has to tell something profound about human condition that evades petty rationalist interpretation. That's why so many people love it yet can't quite explain why.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Satire? No, just a generic bad movie.

[4/10 · 14 June 2013]

This movie reminds me of the old saying: If it looks, sounds, and feels like a bad movie, it most likely is a bad movie, even when the director claims it was satire. The Cabin in the Woods is neither scary nor funny. It is even annoying at times when the plot switches to a technical control center stuffed with heartless morons whose obnoxious behavior just doesn't make sense even if you label it satire. I don't believe this movie was even made with a satire in mind but that it was just labeled so when it became apparent that it doesn't work. If you're watching this on DVD and you consider switching it off - you probably will want to do so - I'd rather recommend to skip to the last quarter of the movie, which is actually quite fun to watch and gets this mess 4 stars.

Super 8 (2011)

No sense of awe and wonder

[4/10 · 12 March 2012]

Super 8 cites a lot of movies, mainly every Spielberg movie from the late 70s and 80s, and the Goonies. But unlike in those movies, the kids in Super 8 seem strangely nonchalant about events around them that are supposed to be marvelous and exciting.

Remember the kids in E.T.? They were concerned about the alien every single second. The guy in Close Encounters? He got so obsessed that he formed plateaus from mashed potatoes. His normal daily life ceased to exist. All those characters got so involved with the events around them that their everyday lives didn't matter anymore.

But the kids in Super 8? They survived a train disaster which had things exploding and wagons flying for minutes, they got told that they would likely get killed for having seen something that they shouldn't, their town got occupied by military while people and dogs keep disappearing. Yet, none of that seems to impress them. They are too busy making an amateur horror movie, falling in love with another, and having trouble with dad. There is a scene where the kids watch a strange cube they found at the train wreck developing a life of its own and punching a hole in the house wall. In another scene, a kid sees disturbing things at a cemetery. Do they care? Not enough to even mention these events in the scenes following. And even the main idea of the plot, that the kids accidentally filmed something secret, goes nowhere. The film's content is revealed so late that it doesn't matter anymore.

How is the viewer supposed to grow a sense of awe and wonder about the miraculous events if even the characters are more concerned with their amateur movie or their troubles with dad or with any other randomly tossed-in subplot? Super 8 completely lacks the sense of awe and wonder of the movies it attempts to be a homage of.

It took Elliot the length of an entire movie to grow a relationship with ET. Super 8 goes the express way, thanks to instant empathy. Near the end, the alien just touches the boy, they totally understand another within a second, the boy tells the alien something along the lines of "time heals all wounds", the alien flies off, and everything is sweet and happy. So sweet that everyone has forgotten the alien's killing spree of some minutes ago as well as its habit of storing people and eating them alive (though the movie is vague about this). Bad things happen, and time heals all wounds, after all... The boy seems so eager to forget the "bad things" that he pretentiously lets the medallion of his dead mother go and become part of the spaceship. Basically, we're told that remembering your dead mum is a bad habit that you better get rid of so you can dedicate yourself to fun things.

I think the movie would have been ten times better if it skipped all those random, pretentious, fake emotional subplots about mums and dads and falling in love and concentrated more on its entertaining bits: the effects and the funny amateur horror movie subplot.

Wanted (2008)

Dumb but watchable

[5/10 · 8 September 2008]

I don't think the movie is all that bad. It has some nice action scenes and effects, it has Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, and there's some humor.

On the minus side, the movie seems a lesser adaption of Matrix, and it's quite stupid at that. The narrator, who is a loser, is the one the viewers are supposed to identify with. We know so because he permanently rubs into our faces that we were losers like him. He is then adopted by a gang of assassins whose supernatural capabilities are unexplained and whose motives are explained but more than questionable. After he joined, it turns out that their idea of employment is basically to beat the **** out of him. Now that's a training that would have made "The Karate Kid" a much more fun movie, but here it's one of the things that made me wonder why lil' Wannabe-Neo so desperately wants to become one of them. After all, they are quite a fascist bunch.

Luckily, the movie was too stupid to actually get me irritated by such nasty details, so I could at least enjoy the mindless action, though there's not as much of it as could be desired.

Wolf Creek (2005)

Torture porn

[1/10 · 19 August 2008]

Films about people getting tantalized and killed require a certain level of trashiness to be bearable, let alone enjoyable. And if they're not trashy, they should have some other redeeming quality.

But there is nothing redeeming about "Wolf Creek". It seems that its only purpose is to depress the viewer and to show off its creator's skill in doing that. Which is a cynical misuse of talent that I have no praise for.

One critic claimed that this film "will have Wes Craven bow his head in shame". He could not be more mistaken. Wes Craven and other masters of horror know the border that separates entertaining horror from snuff. If a director crosses that border, then that's not an achievement but a sign of ignorance.

The Fog (2005)

Wrong, so wrong

[3/10 · 14 July 2008]

You don't want to waste money on this stinker. However, you may get a glimpse of entertainment out of it by counting the ways in which it is wrong. Hence the three stars. Anyway, there's so much wrong that you don't have a chance of getting scared. Out of my mind:

• The CGI fog looks awful.

• The attack on the Seagrass is utterly lame. You don't see what killed the girls. They're just thrown through the window, dead. Watch the few tiny scratches on their faces carefully, because this will be the only blood in the whole movie!

• Why did that dude on the Seagrass survive? Are the ghosts scared of fridges or something? What does his survival add to the story anyway?

• What's the point of the video tape showing that the dude is innocent of the murders? Just to let it accidentally be dropped into water by the stupid blonde girl? And when she's visiting him in hospital, with police around, why the heck doesn't she at least tell them that she has seen on tape that he's innocent? Gosh!

• When the ghosts encounter the girl at home, why do they suddenly leave? There's no clock bell or anything indicating that the ghost hour or whatever is over.

• Why does that girl have those flash backs? Let alone, why's she leaving with Blake? Oh, probably because of some reincarnation mumbojumbo which is unfortunately never explained.

• With all the effort spent on those flash backs, why isn't it even explained where Blake and his people were coming from and what disease they were suffering from?

• Why do the ghosts kill a dog? They don't have a reason for that. And why is the dog owner rotting? Oh, maybe that's the leprosy that is never mentioned?

• Why does Father Malone know all along what's going on? Because of some silly graffiti!? So those stone old ghosts make graffities?

• Did I mention that there's no blood? There's not even blood when Father Malone is stabbed right through his chest by some - whoo, scary - flying glass.

• Where are the hacking and slaying zombie seamen, anyway? I want my zombie seamen back! Not those boring invisible somethings with their stupid telekinetic tricks.

• And where are the hooks and sabres? I want my hooks and sabres back, too! Blake should be knocking at doors with a scary hook, not with a dull staff.

• What's the point of those loud knocking sounds coming out of nowhere all the time?

• What's the point of bringing the metal detector guy into the story? Oh, to raise the body count and let him die in a boring and senseless way, like the girls. My bad.

• Where are those many ghosts at the end coming from? There weren't that many people on Blake's ship.

• Why did Selma Blair choose to participate in this mess?

Oh well. At least the movie makes you appreciate John Carpenter's original as the gem that it is.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

For X-men Haters

[3/10 · 13 June 2008]

I wish there was a mutant with the power of making a movie undone, and that he took care of this one. Then I would still be able to look at the X-Men movies with the same feeling of awe and joy that I used to have. Alas, X-Men3 happened.

It's a movie that may well have been made by an X-Men hater.

"Hahaha!", the X-Men hater would say, "This is how to ruin the third and final X-Men movie: Let a major part of the characters be killed or robbed of their powers. Preferably those who the audience grew a custom to by careful character development in the first two movies. First, demolish the Jean character by turning her, for no valid reason, into some sort of obnoxious psycho demon. Then let the victims die senselessly, and don't even give them adequate dramatic death scenes. Like, let Cyclops be in the movie for the sole purpose of being wimpy and getting instantly killed - by the hand of his love, and for absolutely no reason but that she's become a psycho demon. Don't even show his death, just let him disappear, leaving the audience wondering till the end if he really died. And Xavier, just let her kill him senselessly as well. And after she killed'em all, let her be killed. Die, X-Men, die, die, die! About Magneto and Mystique, they're far too cool characters. So let's downsize them by robbing their powers."

I wonder why authors keep killing main characters in sequels. It made the Alien franchise suck, it ruined the Matrix franchise, and in the sloppy way it was done for X-Men it was pretty well sure that it would wreck that franchise, too.