Run Lola Run (1998)

Please Leave A Comment

Tell Me What You Feel

Run Lola Run (1998)

7/10

Starring

Franka Potente
Moritz Bleibtreu

Directed by Tom Tykwer

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classic

Way back in 1998, I remember watching a German program on the local TV station, it was there I saw the making and I heard the director and film critics comments about the film. I was also opportune to see clips of the movie Run Lola Run, and a music video featuring the star.

Well I never forgot about the movie, but I never thought I could one day find German movies. Well thanks to the global world becoming more unified I did and it was a good price to pay to see Run Lola Run finally after 14 years.

Mind you it is a German movie subtitled in English.

The movie stars Franka Potente, who you can remember as Jason Bourne's love interest in the Bourne film series and as Eva Heissan in the British American show on BBC America Copper.

Run Lola Run shows the place of determination in human life.

The thing that I like most about this flick is the use of chaos theory's butterfly effect, which tells us how small inputs in the initial condition of the lives of the people in the movie, like running into someone, or distracting them resulted in a drastic change in that individual’s life in a large scale in the near future.

To show these butterfly effect flash-forward sequences of still images showing the future effect in the future lives of those Lola come across.

The Runs in the movie had different implications in the future of each person Lola’s path crosses; some were devastating while others were beautiful.

The movie plot is straight forward simple; Lola (Franka Potente) and her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) have a problem.

Manni lost 100,000 German Marks (which is about 50,000 Euros) belonging to his crime boss by accidentally leaving it on a train. Lola was supposed to pick him up but she failed because she got sidetracked.

Now Manni has to deliver the money in the next 20 mins and he knows if he shows up without it he is dead.

Telling Lola all this on the phone caused her to worry and she promised to meet Manni up with the money in 20 mins.

So the “Runs” begin and Lola is seen running to her father hoping to get the money.

The film features 3 runs with each different from the first and each presenting a different outcome based on how she reacted to things around her.

The movie is directed masterfully by Tom Tykwer who will be working with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry in the 2012 movie Cloud Atlas.

If you like a movie that leaves you to pick how it ends then this is for you, like wise if you like an exciting movie just join the band wagon. Mind you again it is German so make sure the one you are watching has subtitles.

Here Comes The Boom (2012)

Please Leave A Comment

Tell Me What You Feel

Here Comes The Boom (2012)

4/10

Starring

Kevin James

Salma Hayek

Henry Winkler

Directed by Frank Coraci

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

The movie is a good idea, bad idea mix up for Kevin James.

Good idea, make a movie about inspiring young people to go for what they want in life no matter the course.

Bad idea, write it yourself.

I think James should allow others to do the writing when it comes to movies.

This sports comedy film is directed by Frank Coraci who directed three of Adam Sandler hit movies from The Wedding Singer in 1995, The Waterboy in 1998 to Click in 2006.

Frank Coraci movie after Click was Zookeeper, which also starred Kevin James and although it was a box office success it was panned by critics and had an approval rating of 14% from Rotten Tomatoes, and it was also nominated for a Razzie Award.

This new movie that the duo is involved in is better than Zookeeper that I can assure, but it is still shy away from being a hit.

The movie plot is about a Former collegiate wrestler Scott Voss (Kevin James) who now works as a biology teacher and doesn’t take his work serious, due to boredom.

The school he is in is failing badly and there was a need to cut cost, so the music class and the teacher had to be cut.

Scott then jumps up to try and raise money to save the music teacher’s (Henry Winkler) job.

This endeavor made him take on another job as an instructor for a citizenship class. The job wasn’t paying enough though but there he met Niko (Bas Rutten), who asked him for some more tutoring.

He goes to Niko's apartment to tutor him when he found out that Niko was a former mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter.

He also leant that if he can make it into the UFC he can make $ 10,000 for losing so he started training for the part.

The movie features the 2002 song BOOM by P.O.D, as well as numerous songs from the likes of Neil Diamond.

Boasting of wonderful cinematography as the fights go on, the cinematographer in this movie is Phil Meheux. Meheux is the cinematographer behind one of the best James Bond movies out there GoldenEye 1995.

Kevin James was a star as usual in this movie, somehow you just get to love him, but everyone else just strolls by, except Henry Winkler (Fonzie as he is popular known that is if you are familiar with the 1970s American sitcom Happy Days.) Winkler I actually enjoyed.

Salma Hayek again has settled for a movie that is beneath her standard.

I won’t dash off to the theaters to see this movie.

Rear Window (1954)

Please Leave A Comment

Tell Me What You Feel

Rear Window (1954)

6/10

Starring

James Stewart

Grace Kelly

Wendell Corey

Thelma Ritter

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Always close your windows and drains; there could be a peeping tom about.

Rear window coins the phrase, “an idle hand is the devils workshop”, as our character "Jeff" Jeffries played by James Stewart, who spent most of his days peeping into the houses of his neighbors, due to a broken leg that has him confined to a wheel chair.

Rear window was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and is based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder".

The movie stars James Stewart and the beautiful Princess Grace Kelly. It was nominated for four Academy Awards and has remained in the top 50 of AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies list and on their 10th-anniversary edition.

This movie is my third best James Stewart movie so far (I hope to see more) after It's A Wonderful Life (1946) and Mr Smith Goes To Washington (1939).

The movie is considered to be one of Hitchcock's finest films. On the website Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of a 100%, so definitely it is a movie to watch.

The movie plot is about a Professional photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries who breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race.

Now he is on a wheel chair with a cast on his leg and he can’t leave his New York apartment. To pass time he peeps out his rear window observing the neighbors, memorising their patterns and trying not to miss a thing happening in their lives.

Things starts getting thrilling when he begins to suspect that a man across the courtyard may have murdered his wife.

There are movies whose themes can be said to have been based on Rear Window like Michael Davis's Eight Days a Week in 1999, Robert Zemeckis's What Lies Beneath in 2000 and Disturbia in 2007 which kinda reminds you of Rear Window itself except the protagonist (Shia LaBeouf) is under house arrest instead of on a wheel chair with a broken leg, and his neighbor is a serial killer other than having committed a single murder.

Many TV shows too have used this Rear Window idea like The Simpsons, White Collar and more. But the TV movie that was done 1998 which was a remake of the 1954 classic is my best, I actually saw the TV movie first before seeing the original it stared Christopher Reeve, who himself was paralyzed as the result of a 1995 horse-riding accident, so he fitted the role perfectly.

Well enough has been said about Rear Window, it is a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller that I can say if you are watching all Alfred Hitchcock classic then you must see this one.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park II (1997)

Please Leave A Comment

Tell Me What You Feel

The Lost World: Jurassic Park II (1997)

6/10

Starring

Jeff Goldblum

Julianne Moore

Pete Postlethwaite

Vince Vaughn

Richard Schiff

Peter Stormare

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Distributed by Universal Pictures

The Lost World: Jurassic Park II is a sequel to Jurassic Park which is based on a Michael Crichton book of the same name (The Lost World: Jurassic Park II).

This sequel is not as good as the first and also not as exciting, the whole dinosaur in the city (Godzilla kind), saving your love from an expedition that could be her last was kind of a bore but like the first the sequel doesn’t fail to fill you up with new knowledge about speculated behaviors dinosaur.

This science fiction adventure film was directed by Steven Spielberg and prompted the first time Crichton will write a sequel to a book. The movie was made darker than that of the first and it was also a box office success, grossing $618 million worldwide, although the movie itself was not of critical acclaim on the bases mostly because fans had to wait 4 years to see this, and though it did have an excellent CGI, the story was not as thrilling as the first, and the cast was not as engaging.

The movie plot didn’t have Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) in it at all, even the park genius John Hammond and his grandchildren Lex and Tim, just appeared briefly in the beginning of the movie.

The movie focuses on Jeff Goldblum who played Dr. Ian Malcolm the Chaos theorist.

The film picks up four years after the events of Jurassic Park, and Dr. Ian has gone everywhere telling everybody who cares to know about what he faced in Jurassic Park. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) who had lost control of InGen to his nephew, Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), invited Malcolm to his home to ask him to escort a team to a place called Site B.

John explained to Malcolm that the island of Isla Sorna, also known as "Site B", is the island where the dinosaurs were initially engineered and nurtured for a few months, before being moved to the location of the park.

He further explained that after the Jurassic Park incident, a hurricane destroyed the containment facilities on Isla Sorna, and the dinosaurs have been living free in the wild ever since, and they have found a way to survive.

Malcolm initially refuses thinking back on the events and his near survival from the park four years ago, but agrees after learning that his girlfriend, paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), is part of the team and is already there at the island.

So we are back with the dinosaurs again with only Malcolm having an idea of what they are capable of.

There were scenes in the movie where the camera angles were well positioned, but the movie screenplay lapsed in thrills.

Other than the movie not being so a good sequel, many elements from the original Jurassic Park novel that was not in the first film were used here.