Category Archives: Films / theatre

I watched Christopher Nolan’s movie called The Dark Knight. Well actually, I’ve seen it for seven times during the past three years. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest action films ever made and not only because of the handsome Mr. Batman.

The Dark Knight is the second movie of the Batman trilogy in which the Gotham’s hero gets to know his soon-to-be arch enemy, Joker. The whole plot simplified could be summarized in a few sentences: Joker, who presumably suffers from mental health issues, creates some anarchy and chaos only to entertain himself. He terrorizes Gotham and its citizens to stamp down order and piece. All he wants is to watch the world burn. The beloved savior, Batman, fights against Joker’s calling to create mayhem, but soon realizes that his foe isn’t one of the criminals who run after money and who could be defeated with force or weaponry. The tricky clown only wants to play cat and mouse with his opponent and is going to do that everlastingly without killing Batman.

Characters living in Gotham are originally known from comics and Tim Burton’s movie trilogy before Nolan’s version of them. In my opinion is the latest Joker played by Heath Ledger absolutely the best and he leaves Jack Nicholson’s version of Joker in the shade. Ledger acts out the notorious anarchist perfectly and causes chills to every viewer. It is rumoured, that this particular role caused him anxiety and eventually his sudden death in 2008 just before the movie’s premiere. The truth is that he spent six weeks in a dark hotel room all by himself trying to bring out his inner Joker right before the filming started. He really found the madness inside of him and succeeded in bringing the psychopath killer to the big screen. I wasn’t the only one to praise Ledger’s performance for he was granted an Oscar after his sudden death caused by overdose of sleeping pills.

Casting in The Dark Knight is flawless, Christian Bale as Batman was brilliant choice and other actors playing the lead roles succeeded also. But the real honor of the film’s huge success goes to Ledger’s Joker. The character himself is very compelling and his hatred towards other criminals who kill for money is an unusual and interesting feature. ”It’s not about money, it’s about sending a message…Everything burns”, said by Joker while setting an enormous amount of money on fire, is one indication of his urge to give Gotham good criminals who don’t fancy wealth. Joker’s utterances in the film are legendary and it’s kind of his thing to be one sharp-tongued and sassy thorn in Batman’s flesh. ”I believe, whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you… Stranger.” ”You see madness, as you know, is just like gravity… All it takes is a little push.” ”Why so serious?” There are many undying lines that Heath Ledger as Joker has brought to global renown. Spectators love villains like Joker who are absolutely insane but somehow very irresistible. Maybe it’s his look, all that smudged makeup, outrageously colourful clothes or his green greasy hair that gets us interested in him. Besides that, he has one of the most amusing yet creepy laughters in the film history. There is only one thing that bothers me in casting. In the first film, Batman begins, there was another actress playing Bruce Wayne’s alias Batman’s sweetheart than in the second film.

The soundtrack of The Dark Knight is one of its best sides. It’s made by Hans Zimmer, who has also composed the soundtrack of The Lion King and Pirates of the Caribbean as well as Sherlock Holmes and he has won eight Oscars. Music in The Dark Knight is truly oppressive, devastating but in all its gloominess very beautiful. It includes lots of powerful string instruments. Especially Joker’s theme is really creepy and every time in the film when Joker starts telling the story behind his scars, there starts playing a growing voice made by violin in the background. When he reaches the end of his story all orchestra plays a very low and sudden voice which really gives me chills. So in my view is the soundtrack wonderfully done and it really fits with the film’s atmosphere. Come to think of it, the whole movie is worth praising. It is one of my all time favourite action films and will always be. No one can ever act with such passion like Heath Ledger did back in 2008 or make a better trilogy than Christopher Nolan did. There is to come a new Batman movie with new actors in it in a few years and I’m a bit prejudiced. Is a new version of the beloved story really necessary? We’ll see.

Paranormal activity is a horror movie published in 2007 and directed by Oren Peli.

The plot of the movie is all about young couple Katie and Micah moving in together. Soon after moving into their new house Katie and Micah starts to witness unnatural events in their apartment, doors are closed all by themselves, furniture is missing and pictures are ruined etc. Katie claims that some supernatural being is haunting her so Micah sets up camera in their bedroom to record everything that happens in their room at nights. Katie also contacts a psychic and asks him about this evil presence and he tells that it’s a demon who is feeding off of katies negative energy.

At this point there was a poignant juxtaposition between the reaction of Katie and his husband who wasn’t worried at all. First at nights almost nothing happens but as the movie goes on more serious things are starting to occur. Katie is getting desperate and calls a demonologist but when he arrives he is just saying that he is only making things worse and making the demon more angry. After this at 20th night Katie is ripped off of her bed to downstairs by some invisible being and after Micah saves her he notices that Katie has bite marks. Next night Katie is turning into something inhuman, demonic, and she kills Micah.

This whole movie is filmed from Katies or Micahs point of view or from the camera which is in their bedroom. This makes the film even more terrifying because it feels like you are inside the movie. Because Paranormal activity was pretty much filmed with one camera it was possible to film it without greater costs and really fast. It is said that the whole footage of the movie were filmed in one week but yet many critic says that it’s perhaps the scariest movie they have ever seen. Paranormal activitys budget was only 15 000 $ and the profit was astounding 193 355 800 $.

I really enjoyed watching this movie, the plot was simple but interesting unlike in sequels where the plot goes little bit too complicated which makes them less interesting and scary.

The Dark Knight (2008) is an American action movie directed by Christopher Nolan. Nolan also directed the previous part Batman Begins (2005). These movies are based on comic character Batman which is created by Bob Kane. The Dark Knight was a huge success and it broke box-office Records.

Christian Bale plays the leading role as Batman. When he is not saving the world he is a millionaire Bruce Wayne. Bale is a British actor, born in 1974. In the other leading role there is Heath Ledger as Joker. Joker is Batman’s biggest enemy. Heath Ledger died before the film was released. His performance in this movie was praised everywhere and he won many prizes for example Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In other key roles there are Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Michael Caine (Alfred Pennyworth) and Gary Oldman (James Gordon).

In the movie Joker associates with local criminals and threats to kill somebody every day if Batman doesn’t reveal who he really is. Joker starts to kill people and Batman is about to tell the truth about himself. Joker gets caught but at the same time Rachel and Harvey are getting kidnapped. Joker tells where Rachel and Harvey are kept. They are in different places and Batman has only time to save one of them. He chooses to save Rachel but when Batman gets there he founds Harvey. Joker had told the wrong address. Harvey starts killing people who he thinks are guilty of Rachel’s death. In the end Harvey dies and Batman decides to retreat from his duties for a while.

There were many special effects in the movie. They were amazing, well done and felt real. Music was composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard and it fits like a glow for the film. The movie was really good and the actors managed well. I recommend it for everyone who likes action movies.

lähde: Wikipedia

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the third installment of the multibillion trilogy based on The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again written by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is also the sixth movie based on Tolkien’s works and directed by Peter Jackson. The screenplay was written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro.

The Battle of The Five Armies (originally titled There and Back Again) is the Hobbit trilogy’s third movie, based on The Hobbit as well as short sections of other pieces of Tolkien’s works. In a nutshell, the movie follows the journey of Bilbo Baggins, who faces the harsh reality of war after following the thirteen dwarves to the Lonely Mountain, also known as Erebor. Needless to say, the mountain is more or less full of gold, and is therefore not only of interest to the dwarves but to the elves and the people of Lake Town as well as an army of orcs. The movie also brings to screen the struggles of Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans), a man facing the aftermath of the utter obliteration of his hometown and the upcoming threat of war.

Martin Freeman gives an excellent performance as the movie’s title character Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit. I found myself following Bilbo’s struggles even more intently than in the two previous movies, which only shows Freeman’s impressive acting abilities. Other talented actors in the movie include Richard Armitage who does a wonderful job in bringing to life the madness that takes over the king of Erebor, Thorin Oakenshield. Indeed the movie includes almost award-worthy performances by many known actors for example Benedict Cumberbatch as both the dragon Smaug and the evil Lord Sauron and Lee Pace as the ’Elvenking’ Thranduil. But what blew my mind away was (once again) the performance of the 75-year-old Sir Ian McKellen. His performance as Gandalf is extraordinary, especially when one takes in to consideration his age and the amount of action scenes that Gandalf has. And of course I should also mention Sir Christopher Lee (Saruman the White) who gets his fair share of action despite his considerable age of 92.

The Hobbit trilogy was the first to introduce the so called HFR to the wide public. HFR (which stands for ’high frame rate’) basically means that instead of showing 24 frames per second, a higher number – 48 in the Hobbit – is shown. The HFR combined with the 3D features and the movie’s enormous budget guarantee that there is never a shortage of things to marvel at. Despite the movie’s scenery (such as the halls and front of the mountain Erebor, Lake Town and later the city of Dale) being mostly made with computers the attention to detail is incredible. It’s almost too real. From time to time the 3D and the incredibly sharp picture were a little too much. Somehow I found it hard to look at certain things because my eyes were distracted by too many aspects. This happened whenever the Arkenstone, the legendary jewel the dwarves and their king Thorin in particular coveted, was shown. It was like an explosion of tiny particles which made it a little annoying to look at. But with Peter Jackson as the director you can’t really be sure if that was done on purpose.

The movie’s soundtrack was composed by Howard Shore who had previously worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Peter Jackson. His music brings a feeling on continuity to the screen as film after film, one’s able to recognize the familiar tunes. Considering how Howard Shore won not only one but three Oscars for his music in the Lord of the Rings, I’m very surprised his works in The Hobbit have not won him any awards. Shore’s music in The Battle of the Five Armies was amazing and I especially enjoyed how every theme had it’s own music. The dwarves had their own tunes and the elves their own and when both were shown on screen the audience heard a genius mixture of the two.

All in all I enjoyed the film very much. Whether that was because I had read the book or because I’m somewhat unable to ever find flaws in works based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings, I do not know. I found the film’s title The Battle of The Five Armies very suiting as it did have very, very big battles. In fact the only small flaw in the movie was the fact that almost two hours of its 2h22min running time was fighting. But when you stretch one book of around 300 pages in to three movies you can’t expect them all to have two hours worth of incredibly well-designed emotional scenes. I am, however, a little sad. The ending of The Battle of the Five Armies marked, at least for me, an end to Tolkien on screen. Years ago, only the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were sold. That means that Tolkien’s other, brilliant works might never see the inside of a movie theatre. As the rights to Silmarillion were never sold – and it seems that Tolkien’s estate isn’t going to sell them any time soon – it might well be that this was the kiss goodbye (or perhaps more suitably The Last Goodbye as sung by Billy Boyd during the credits) to Middle Earth. But then again, isn’t that what they said when the closing credits of the Lord of the Rings ended?

The main character of the movie was Malcolm Crowe, the child psychologist. He had worked as psychologist long time and he had had many patients. With his long experience he had become very appreciated and deserving in his job. In the movie was given conception of Malcolm that he works very passionately, even so that the job of the psychologist would be his mission in life.

The Hobbit-an unexpected journey(2012) is the first part of the Peter Jackson’s directed film trilogy. The trilogy is based on J.R.R Tolkien’s fantasy novel. This movie trilogy is about the time before The lord of the rings movies. The next parts of the trilogy are The desolation of Smaug and The battle of the five armies.

The movie starts when Gandalf (Ian McKellen) asks a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins(Martin Freeman) to join him on his adventure with 13 dwarfs. Their plan is to go through the Middle Earth to take back the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug. The leader of their group is Thorin Oakenshield(Richard Armitage) whose grandfather Thorir used to be the dwarf king in the Lonely Mountain before the Smaug came so now Thorin wants to take back his legacy. In the beginning when Gandalf is trying to get Bilbo on the adventure he is throwing a party inviting all the 13 dwarfs to Bilbo’s home and Bilbo ins’t very exited about it but however changes his mind and decides to go on an adventure. In the beginning of their journey they had to fight against three trolls and found some swords from the troll’s cave. After that they met a wizard Radgast the Brown in the woods and the orcs attackted them with wargs. Radgast helped the group to escape from the orcs to Rivendell where the elf Lord Elrond helped them to read a map of the Lonely Mountain. Next the group continued their journey to Misty Mountains without Gandalf and got caught by goblins. The goblins took them to their leader the Great Goblin and Thorin founds out that an orc war-chief Azog who had killed his grandfather Thorir is alive even Thorin cut his other forearm in that battle outside of the dwarfs kindom of Moria and now his after their group. As the group got caught by the goblins Bilbo got separated from them and met Gollum. Gollum accidentally dropped his golden ring and Bilbo took it without Gollum noticing it. Later Gandalf came to rescue the group from the goblins and Bilbo rejoined the group. As they continued the journey they got ambushed by Azog and his orc army, Thorin attakced Azog and got knocked out. Bilbo rescued Thorin from Azog and the entire group was saved by the eagles.

From my opinion as a fantasy movie liker the movie was good and as good as The lord of the rings movies which I have seen many times before. But if you don’t like fantasy movies or The lord of the rings movies you probably would not like this movie and you may consider it boring because of it’s length. Only negative thing that I have to say about the movie is it’s simple plot but because its a trilogy I think it is okay cause the whole story actually ends in the final movie. So I would give the movie a school grade eight.

Meet Joe Black tells the story of death, the actual life ending death, falling in love with a mortal woman. Death (played by Brad Pitt) pretends to be an average Joe, more precisely Joe Black. Death wants to explore the human world before taking the life of a millionaire named Bill Parrish (played by Anthony Hopkins). However everything starts to get complicated when Black falls in love with the millionaires daughter, Susan (Claire Forlani).
The story was fluent and I wasn’t left confused at any point of the movie. It had a clear plot and it knew how to follow it without neither being boring nor having too much stuff going on all the time. Character development was made really well too, you could see Black slowly starting to understand things about the human world and old Parrish coming to terms with his death.
This of course is just my personal opinion but I absolutely love the casting of this movie. I had my doubts when I noticed Pitt playing death, as it might be a tricky character to get into, however he pulled it off wonderfully making death seem just like an innocent and curious human like creature. His co-star, Forlani, I had never seen before, that might make me uncultured or just plain ignorant, but I’ll have to accept my faith. Forlani however did her job really well and I’ll be definitely watching more movies from her. Hopkins was just as great as he always is, really great. Just seeing his name appear on the screen got my hopes up and I didn’t get disappointed. The side roles were cast well too, I can’t remember even once having to think ”They aren’t quite fit for the role”.
I consider every movie that lasts over three hours a long movie, this was one of them. However they might have had to cut important parts out in the attempt to make it shorter, and I appreciate how they didn’t do that. I don’t know much about directing a movie, so I don’t really know what to say about that. Again, that might make me even more uncultured and ignorant, but I cannot judge something I don’t know anything about. The same goes for many aspects of the movie.
Even though I might not be able to provide a perfectly insightful review on the directing, dressing, producing or things like that, I can recommend it to anyone who likes romantic movies. However if you want to see death as a hardcore emotionless killer, this is not the movie for you.

Remember me (2010) is a drama film directed by Allen Coulter. It tells about two young persons, Tyler Hawkins (Robert Pattinson) and Ally Craig (Emilie de Ravin) and their rough past and present.

The movie starts when young Ally is on the subway station and suddenly she is forced to witness her mother being murdered. Ten years later there is Tyler who is a ragged and rebellious 21-year-old man who has a complicated relationship with his father. One night he and his friend get in trouble and the police arrests him. Lately when Tyler has got out of jail he meets Ally, the daughter of the police who had arrested him earlier. Tyler’s friend wants to avenge to the police and persuades Tyler to meet Ally and then dump her. Tyler agrees but after spending time together they get to know each other and begin to fall in love.

I think that Robert Pattinson fit in the role very well and the character was believable. Tyler was gloomy and maybe little ironic but also very protective and loving big brother. But in my opinion especially Ruby Jerins’ role as Tyler’s sister Caroline was really good and surprised me in a positive way. Caroline was a young artist who is bullied at school. She was authentic and sincere and the role totally impressed me.

The end of the movie was really surprising and schoking. It turned everything upside down and gave the whole new point of view to the film and the name of it. It got to realize that everyone of us matter and we leave behind to our loved ones.

I’m not sure wheter I liked the movie or not. It is described as a romantic movie but I find it wasn’t so romantic that I thought it would have been. That side of the movie was kinda cliche. Boy meets a girl who acts elusive and first they don’t like each other but then fall in love and so on. But as a drama movie it was good and all in all worth watching.

Inside man is a realistic action movie, but however it manages to stun by it’s brilliant way to handle hard situations in the film.

This is a movie from a criminals point of view. It will manage to get the audience to take the criminals side, without making the police officers look bad. That is one of the things I admire in this movie. Movie tells a story about a man who plans a perfect bank robbery and on the side he reveals many bigger things about local politicians and big shots. For the whole time the movie is interesting and it wont leave cold anyone who is a friend of a good heist movie.

The fascinating thing I really love in this movie are the characters. Robbers call themselfs with a different variation of a name ”steve” like a steve-o or stevie. The good guys have many interesting characters, but one of them clearly makes it as a main character, he is a detective Keith Frazier. Detective is a slightly distracted, because at the time of the assingment he is facing corruption charges, so he doesn’t really have a change to fail.

The one thing that actually makes this movie above the average compared to other heist movies, is the plot. Viewer will be suprised as the movie goes on. I would definitely watch this movie all over again. Inside man won’t brag with insane violence instead it is a more of a thriller kind of mind game, which is played by traditional cops vs robbers positioning. In my opinion the best scene in this movie is placed inside a surrounded bank (spoiler alert). When the police launches assault the criminal mastermind hides inside the bank and leaves weeks later, when the situation has calmed down. I personally loved that scene, just the way how to deal with the situations without anykind of overkills with violence, it impresses me.

This is my rewiew about a movie ”Inside man” if i would give a traditional five star rewiew, I would say 4/5.