Posts tonen met het label The Monuments Men. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label The Monuments Men. Alle posts tonen

donderdag 16 juli 2020

Movies You Expected to Love, but Hated

I recently made a list of movies I expected to hate, but then I loved them (check it out HERE). We can spin that around too. There have been movies that we all thought would be great, movies we would most definitely love and we were super excited about. And then it turns out they are not that good end we end up hating them. Here is a list of films that I expected to love, but hated.

Ma (2019)
I was so intrigued by the trailer and couldn’t wait to see “Ma”. I love Octavia Spencer and she was the only good part of this film. The characters make the dumbest decisions, I don’t understand why someone like Allison Janney is in it (since the only thing she does it telling Spencer’s character to do her job, literally) and this film was never scary or tense.

Suicide Squad (2016)
The biggest disappointment of the past ten years, for sure. The whole world was excited to see it. And we were all let down. Thank goodness for Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Harley Quinn, she was the only redeeming factor in the entire film. I don’t even know what’s up with Jared Leto’s version of Joker. I know everyone has a different interpretation of this character, but Joker looked like a pimp! No, very disappointing.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Indiana Jones is one of my favorite movie characters of all-time and him coming back after so many years was just the best news. It even brought back Karen Allen and director Steven Spielberg. Well, that wasn’t a guarantee for a good movie. Because “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is definitely not a good movie. I liked the comradery between Indy and Mutt, but the CGI is terrible and I simply wasn’t as invested in the story as I was in the previous three.

Movie 43 (2013)
Based on the cast alone, I thought this couldn’t go wrong. Think about, actors like Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts and Halle Berry are in this, among many many others. It’s a film with interconnected short stories, with several insane and ridiculous stories. For example ( and I’m not making this up), here are some of the stories in this film. A single woman going on a date with the most eligible bachelor, who just happens to have a pair of testicles dangling under his chin. A couple that tries to spies up their relationship, when one of them asks the other to poop on them. And a truth or dare game that goes as far as undergoing extreme plastic surgery. Yeah, it turned out to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

The Monuments Men (2014)
Directed by George Clooney, starring him together with Matt Damon, Bill Murray and John Goodman. Can’t go wrong, right? Well, it did. And this is by no means a bad movie, it’s just very boring and misses humor and adventure. So sad, because I really wanted it to be great.

Aloha (2015)
A recent disappointment. I saw the cast. It had three of my favorites in it: Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams and Bill Murray. And I love Jon Krasinski. It lacks logic and meaning and it drags. You can’t blame the cast, it’s just a really bad script.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Spider-Man is one of the most beloved superheroes of all-time, he really deserved better. The first film and especially the second film in this trilogy did really well and lived up to our expectations. “Spider-Man 3” simply didn’t and it’s really bad. Don’t even get me started on emo Peter Parker and his cringeworthy dance moves.

The Greatest Showman (2017)
Before you get your panties in a twist, I don’t think “The Greatest Showman” is a bad movie. Not at all, I actually like it to some point. And I love the music. But them together just didn’t work for me. The time period and the modern music just didn’t work together and I was very disappointed after seeing it for the first time. I gave it a second watch, but felt the same. It just didn’t feel right.

zaterdag 17 januari 2015

100 Movie Challenge 2015 - # 11: The Monuments Men

Director: George Clooney
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 118 minutes
Year: 2014
Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Bob Balaban

Description: An unlikely World War II platoon is tasked to rescue art masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their owners.

Review: The most horrible stories about World War II have been told, but the loss of artwork during this period is an underexposed theme. For George Clooney enough reason to make a movie about it. “The Monuments Men” will be his fifth directed movie. We know Clooney best as an actor and he also takes on one of the lead roles. With him, big names like Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray and John Goodman form a dream cast.
When President Roosevelt tells curator Frank Stokes that, besides many lives, lots of famous art work were lost in the war due to the Nazis. With strong arguments Stokes manages to get permission to assemble a team of art historians, museum directors and curators to find those lost treasures. The team of seven men don’t all have experience in the army.
‘True Story’ is a wide term in Hollywood. In real life hundreds of men and women were responsible for finding the cultural heritage. This isn’t the biggest problem of “The Monuments Men”. It’s a mediocre script and that gives is us a lot of dull moments and it doesn’t have a central storyline.
The soundtrack is good, but not for this movie. It’s sounds like a comedy. It does have some comedic moments here and there though. The big amount of talent is underused. George Clooney and Matt Damon are doing a routine job and Cate Blanchett can’t really shine. Hugh Bonneville can easily keep up with his colleagues and Bill Murray’s dry humor is as always a pleasure to watch.
The cynicism works, but the rest is just mediocre. I really wanted to love this movie, for its theme and the wonderful cast, despite of all the negative reviews. But a dream cast is no guarantee for success. We still have to wait for the master piece by director George Clooney.

Rating: 2,5/ 5

zondag 18 augustus 2013

Movie Trailer Sunday (101)

Here are this weeks trailers.

Fading Gigolo
Description: Fioravante (John Turturro) decides to become a professional Don Juan as a way of making money to help his cash-strapped friend, Murray (Woody Allen). With Murray acting as his "manager", the duo quickly finds themselves caught up in the crosscurrents of love and money.
Director: John Turturro
Starring: John Turturro, Woody Allen, Liev Schreiber, Sofia Vergara, Sharon Stone, Vanessa Paradis, Max Casella, Bob Balaban, Aida Turturro, Jill Scott
Trailer: Trailer "Fading Gigolo"
Comment: Woody Allen in a movie and not directing. Interesting. John Turturro is very cool, finally a leading role.

A.C.O.D.
Description: A grown man, Carter (Adam Scott), is still caught in the crossfire of his parents' 15-year-old divorce. He discovers he was unknowingly part of a study on divorced children. He's enlisted in a follow-up years later that wreaks new havoc on his family.
Director: Stu Zicherman
Starring: Adam Scott, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Catherine O'Hara, Jane Lynch, Richard Jenkins, Clark Duke, Amy Poehler
Trailer: Trailer "A.C.O.D."
Comment: Looks like a lot of fun. I kinda like Adam Scott...

The Monuments Men
Description: An unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys, seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1, possibly hope to succeed?But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind's greatest achievements.
Director: George Clooney
Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murrat, Jean Dujardin
Trailer: Trailer "The Monuments Men"
Comment: George Clooney is a fantastic director, looking forward to seeing this.

Philomena
Description: When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) was sent to the convent at Roscrea in Co. Tipperary to be looked after as a fallen woman. She cared for her baby for three years until the Church took him from her and sold him, like countless others, to America for adoption. Coerced into signing a document promising never to attempt to see her child again, she nonetheless spent the next fifty years secretly searching for him, unaware that he was searching for her from across the Atlantic. Philomena's son, renamed Michael Hess, grew up to be a top Washington lawyer and a leading Republican official in the Reagan and Bush administrations. But he was a gay man in a homophobic party where he had to conceal not only his sexuality but, eventually, the fact that he had AIDs. With little time left, he returned to Ireland and the convent where he was born: his desperate quest to find his mother before he died left a legacy that was to unfold with unexpected consequences for all involved.
Director: Stephen Frears
Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan
Trailer: Trailer "Philomena"
Comment: I'll probably get this on DVD.

Vampire Academy
Description: Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) is a Dhampir: half human/vampire, guardians of the Moroi, peaceful, mortal vampires living discretely within our world. Her legacy is to protect the Moroi from bloodthirsty, immortal Vampires, the Strigoi. This is her story.
Director: Mark Waters
Starring: Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, Danila Kozlovsky, Gabriel Byrne, Sarah Hyland, Joely Richardson, Cameron Monaghan, Sami Gayle, Claire Foy, Ashley Charles
Trailer: Trailer "Vampire Academy"
Comment: Never read the books.