http://davejansen.com Life. Or something. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:08:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://davejansen.com/articles/review-unstoppable-2010/ http://davejansen.com/articles/review-unstoppable-2010/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:37:36 +0000 Dave http://davejansen.com/?p=3746
Unstoppable is a movie I've been wanting to see for a while, since I'm a big fan of Denzel Washington. I wasn't able to watch it while it was running in the cinema, but I've finally been able to watch it, and figured it would be a good movie choice to re-start my semi-regular movie [...]]]>
Unstoppable is a movie I've been wanting to see for a while, since I'm a big fan of Denzel Washington. I wasn't able to watch it while it was running in the cinema, but I've finally been able to watch it, and figured it would be a good movie choice to re-start my semi-regular movie reviews. Unstoppable is a great movie. It does not try to be creative, story-wise it's about as uncreative as can be. But it makes up for that in successfully creating a tense situation in which you, at times, really don't know what to expect next. While the ending might be predictable, there were a few moments throughout the film in which I did not know what to expect. Sadly, the movie is heavily crippled by amazingly bad cinematography. Literally from the first scene I I had to try hard not to be too bothered by the flashy, quick camera movements and zooms, even (or especially) in scenes where nothing "action-y" was happening to begin with. Why we need a slow camera pan followed by a quick-zoom-to-facial-close-up when the main characters simply stand in front of each other talking is beyond me. After looking up the director Tony Scott's previous work, it's surprising to see this coming from a man who directed the fantastic Man On Fire, the more recent TV show The Good Wife, and the more recent not-all-that-special-but-still-entertaining The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3. The latter, I take it, was more of a warm-up for Tony Scott to check out how to capture moving vehicles in the most irritating way possible. The movie tries to mention a bit about the rather stereotypical hollywood character backgrounds (failing marriage, single parent, etc.) but fails to make you care all that much about it. But that's ok, you're here to watch a train go nuts, not weep about failing marriages. Aside from this, Unstoppable was quite entertaining. It managed to make me make me sit on the tip of my chair (figuratively, I was laying in bed) through several occasions in the movie. It was fun to recognize a few characters and their awesomely type-casted roles (I'm looking at you, dude from Cloverfield who just couldn't shut up), and Denzel is great as always. Chris Pine is an interesting choice, but it works out ok. All in all, Unstoppable is a movie that makes me reminisce about the typical 90s action movie style. It does not try to bring you plot twists, brilliantly written dialogs or anything of the sort. It's a no-thrills action-thriller, and delivers exactly that. Incredibly shitty camera work aside, Unstoppable is highly entertaining and great for a friday evening at home.]]> http://davejansen.com/articles/review-unstoppable-2010/feed/ 0 http://davejansen.com/articles/review-sherlock-holmes-2009/ http://davejansen.com/articles/review-sherlock-holmes-2009/#comments Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:48:39 +0000 Dave http://davejansen.com/?p=40
Being a big fan of Robert Downey Jr., I had high hopes for this movie. Other than that it's about Sherlock Holmes (hey), I knew nothing about this movie, but that's how I like to go in one. Having learned most of Sherlock Holmes by the weekly Donald Duck magazines I used to read, it [...]]]>
Being a big fan of Robert Downey Jr., I had high hopes for this movie. Other than that it's about Sherlock Holmes (hey), I knew nothing about this movie, but that's how I like to go in one. Having learned most of Sherlock Holmes by the weekly Donald Duck magazines I used to read, it came to a surprise that, according to this movie, Sherlock is a fantastic figher. The movie throws you right into the action, and introduces you to the amazingly quick senses Sherlock has, allowing him to plan exactly how a fight will go before it even starts. It might sound a bit awkward, but they made it look fantastic and not entirely unbelievable. He's just a darn quick thinker, 's all. Watson is a lot less fat than Disney made him look, and also a great fighter. This whole slightly more aggressive attitude of both main characters took some getting used to, but in the end worked out quite well. The cinematography is very nice, especially in some high-paced action scenes. The slow-motion, slightly longer than usual scenes (à la 300) really work out well in this movie. They really managed to make the setting feel authentic, as there was not a single moment during the movie I felt like 'hum'. On the less positive side, the movie felt quite long. A few times I felt like 'ok, wrap it up folks, we're here now', only to be pulled into yet another chapter of the story. While I enjoyed the movie, it would've probably been better if it wasn't so long (The movie lasts for 128 minutes, but feels longer). Some of the jokes in this movie felt quite forced, something they really didn't have to do as Robert seems quite humorous on his own. In closing, if you're a fan of Robert Downey Jr. or Sherlock Holmes, I recommend you go watch this movie. It's a great movie to watch in the Cinema, with quite a few action-packed scenes. The ending not bad, just awfully open-ended. They managed to close the story (or chapter, if you will) opened in this movie though.]]> http://davejansen.com/articles/review-sherlock-holmes-2009/feed/ 0