10s Movie Review - Too Big To Fail

Director: Curtis Hanson
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 99 minutes
Year: 2011
Starring: William Hurt, Billy Crudup, James Woods, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, Topher Grace, Cynthia Nixon, John Heard, Edward Asner, Kathy Baker, Paul Giamatti

Description: Chronicles of the financial meltdown of 2008 and centers on Treasure Secretary Henry Paulson (William Hurt).

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2025 MOVIE CHALLENGE.
WEEK 3: A FILM WITH WILLIAM HURT
 
Review: A fantastic cast who are all perfect for their roles. But the subject matter is the big draw. I’m not very good with financial topics, don’t know much about it nor does it interest me.

Because the dialogues are sharp and the acting is so strong, it did engage me for most of the runtime. But most of it went over my head, because the financial world is just not something that holds my interest for very long.

I would recommend this movie for anyone who wants to know more about this subject or for people who are interested and fascinated by the financial world.

Rating: 3/ 5

00s Movie Review - Mona Lisa Smile

Director: Mike Newell
Genre: Drama/ Romance
Runtime: 117 minutes
Year: 2003
Starring: Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Stiles, Dominic West, Ginnifer Goodwin, Marcia Gay Harden, John Slattery, Topher Grace

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2023 MOVIE CHALLENGE
WEEK 46: A MOVIE ABOUT A CLUB
 
Description: A free-thinking art professor (Julia Roberts) teaches conservative 1950s Wellesly girls to question their traditional social roles.

Review: A progressive teacher encourages female students to get more out of life than just getting married. Set in the 1950s, where at the very conservative Wellesley college for women, art teacher Katherine Ann Watson starts her job. Katherine deviates from all the strict rules.

“Mona Lisa Smile” has a lot to it. Besides the attempts you see Katherine making to make her students think, you see their lives of these students, as well as Katherine’s.

The central issue of choosing a career is not presented in a one-sided wat. Although Katherine’s opinion prevails positively throughout the film, “Mona Lisa Smile” also gives space to other ideas on relationships, work and ambitions as a woman.

The cast is great. Julia Roberts, as Katherine, is really good. Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ginnifer Goodwin are among the students and all these women have a different idea about life, love and ambition. This movie is carried by women.

“Mona Lisa Smile” is a beautiful film about that was a women’s life goal and what was expected of women in the 1950s. A film about thinking differently, about life choices and about love.

Rating: 5/ 5

10s Movie Review - Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Drama/ Science Fiction/ Adventure
Runtime: 169 minutes
Year: 2014
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy, Wes Bentley, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, Ellen Burstyn, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, David Oyelowo

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2020 MOVIE CHALLENGE.
WEEK 26: A MOVIE MADE BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Description: A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity’s survival.

Review: Spaceman Cooper leaves his two children, when he decides to take part in a space mission to find an alternative planet for the decaying Earth. Time is relative, according to Einstein, so a trip to the first planet they visit takes Cooper an hour or three, but in our perception of time more than twenty-three years. Back at the base station, Cooper sees a video of his family. In a few minutes he sees that his family has dramatically changed. Daughter Murp, is as old as him now and son Tom is a father himself. “Interstellar” leans heavily on family ties, which gives it a huge emotional load.
The story is very complex and it is best to just let it take you away. Cooper became a farmer, after a traumatic crash, since Earth is in dire need of food. Another planet offers the only solution, but mankind has stopped space travel. At school they even learn that the mission to the moon was only a clever propaganda move. Cooper’s clever daughter Murphy think’s she is getting signals from her bookcase. What and who is unclear. Martians? Gravity? But Murphy thinks it’s a ghost. However, this silent force and a dust storm lead Cooper and his daughter to a remote space lab.
Christopher Nolan and his writer brother Jonathan are both men with great ideas and an unparalleled ability to transform their vision into images. And you can see that in “Interstellar”. You have to really pay attention or know a bit about physics to fully understand the complicated concept of black holes, wormholes, fourth and fifth dimension and the theory of relativity. Each time you are reassured with the realization that in the end, it is the dramatic aspect that the Nolan brothers want to focus on. Only Christopher Nolan knows how to combine all these difficult angles with compelling drama and spectacular space trips. Surprisingly, they are often very simple principles such as love and loss. “Interstellar” is overall a very ambitious movie. It’s clear that movies like “2001: A Space Odyssey” or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” were major inspirations for Nolan.
“Interstellar” is anything but a simple space adventure, a film you really have to focus on and let yourself be overwhelmed by. And the soundtrack is one of the best in years. A fantastic film, that doesn’t feel like it’s almost three hours long.

Rating: 4,5/ 5

10s Movie Review - BlacKkKlansman

Director: Spike Lee
Genre: Comedy/ Drama
Runtime: 135 minutes
Year: 2018
Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Alec Baldwin, Laura Harrier, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Robert John Burke, Brian Tarantina, Arthur J. Nascarella, Ken Garito, Frederick Weller, Michael Buscemi, Damaris Lewis, Ato Blankson-Wood, Corey Hawkins, Dared Wright, Faron Salisbury, Ryan Eggold, Jasper Pääkkönen

Description: Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an African American police officer from Colorado Springs, CO, successfully manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan branch with the help of a Jewish surrogate (Adam Driver) who eventually becomes its leader. Based on actual events.

Review: Director Spike Lee starts with a raging Alec Baldwin, trying to film a promo video for the Ku Klux Klan. We also see clips from “Gone with the Wind”, a classic with a doubting reputation because it romanticized the slave period. The opening scene is funny, but also has a worrying undertone. And that’s also the tone for “BlacKkKlansman”. Lee tells the bizarre yet true story about racism in the 70s, which shows the painful and entertaining political and social situation and brings it back to modern day America.
“BlacKkKlansman” is a typical Spike Lee movie: angry, funny, colorful, painful and topical. It’s funny to see Alec Baldwin being cast as a KKK member, he is known for his Trump imitation. And lines like ‘America First’, ‘take back our country’ and ‘to achieve its greatness again’ are used very often in this film.
This starting point is perfect for a director like Spike Lee. At the end of the 70s, tha black cop Ron Stallworth manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan branch in Colorado Springs. he pretented to support the KKK and was in close contact over the phone with the klan, even with the ‘Imperial Wizard’ David Duke himself. When he has to meet th members, he sends his white, Jewish colleague Flip Zimmerman.
The movie is based on Stallworth’s book, that he wrote many years after the fact because of secrecy.
The most impressive scene is also the one with the least nuance. Lee jumps masterfully between two meetings that happen at the same time: a ceremony where members of the KKK are cheering during the showing of the classic film “Birth of a Nation” and a meeting of a black student group where an elderly man tells about how his childhood friend was killed by the KKK.
“BlacKkKlansman” is a fantastic film, with a parallel between the past and present. It’s powerful and very wonderfully done, how Lee manages to wrap the heavy message into an entertaining cover. John David Washington is really the man to watch and Adam Driver is amazing as Flip Zimmerman.

Rating: 5/ 5

Movie Reviews - Under the Silver Lake

Director: David Robert Mitchell
Genre: Drama/ Comedy/ Crime
Runtime: 139 minutes
Year: 2018
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace, Jimmi Simpson,Zosie mamet, Callie Hernandez, Riki Linhome, Summer Bishil, Grace van Patten, Patricj Fishler, Luke Baines, Laura-Leigh Claire

Description: Sam (Andrew Garfield), intelligent but without purpose, finds a mysterious woman swimming in his apartment's pool one night. The next morning, she disappears. Sam sets off across LA to find her, and along the way he uncovers a conspiracy far more bizarre.

Review: After the atmospheric horror film “It Follows”, director David Robert Mitchell does something unexpected with “Under the Silver Lake”. He creates an ambitious art house film with a hint of neo-noir. It’s a sensational and hypnotizing ride, but only if you like cryptical and creative adventures that lead to nothing. It’s absurd, weird and artistic. Not for everyone.
Sam is a nobody. He smokes weed in a grim apartment in Los Angeles, filled with vinyl records and Hitchcock posters. Watching his gorgeous neighbor, entertained by his fuckbuddy and weird encounters with dead animals. The film has a strange tone from the start, it’s all over the place. You have no clue what Sam is up to, but his neurotic tics and strange happenings are enough to keep you interested.
After the introduction, Sam goes on a neo-noir adventure when his pretty neighbor goes missing. His paranoid brain looks for patterns and conspiracies. Secret codes, hobos, fallen movie stars, hidden messages in music, corrupt elites and dog killers. When you read this random list of words, you know it’s a strange film. But it’s the good kind of strange.
It’s understandable that “Under the Silver Lake” got mixed response during the Cannes film festival. This is one of those typical films that has a small, specific audience. And I think only a few people will appreciate it. I am one of those people.
I really loved seeing Andrew Garfield as Sam. A different film and role for him, but he did a great job. “Under the Silver Lake” felt like a mix of “Mulholland Drive” and “The Big Lebowski”. If you like both movies, you will like this one too. If you don’t like one or both film, you won’t like this either.
“Under the Silver Lake” is definitely not a film for everyone. And many people won’t see the brilliance of this film.

Rating: 4,5/ 5

10s Movie Review - Predators

Director: Nimród Antal
Genre: Action/ Thriller/ Adventure/ Science Fictions
Runtime: 107 minutes
Year: 2010
Starring: Adrien Brody, Danny Trejo, Topher Grace, Laurence Fishburne, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Mahershala Ali

Description: A group of elite warriors parachute into an unfamiliar jungle and are hunted by members of a merciless alien race

Review: In 1987 director John McTiernan made the manly action thriller “Predator”. Here a team of American military men, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger, were dropped in a jungle for a mission and ended up being hunted by a killing machine from outer space. There was a less successful sequel, starring Danny Glover. “Predators” is the second sequel, forgetting all the “Alien Vs. Predator” movies. “Predators” never reaches the level of its original, but much better than the second film.
In 1994 Robert Rodriguez was asked to write a sequel, but that script was set aside for fifteen years. In 2009 two new writers turned it into the script for “Predators and Rodriguez became a producer. Nimrod Antal directs, but if Rodriguez had done it himself, it would probably be even better.
Like the first film, it takes a while before we see the hunting creature. Which is a good choice, it holds the tension. They also choose a non-typical action star lead in Adrien Brody. It’s hard to follow Schwarzenegger. So by picking a star that’s not your typical action hero, makes it fresh and original. And Brody does a fine job.
The action is okay, but never special or original. And some characters are plain annoying or unnecessary. But overall, “Predators” is a good sequel and an entertaining action thriller.

Rating: 3/ 5

100 Movie Challenge 2016 - # 18: Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan

Genre: Adventure/ Science Fiction/ Drama

Runtime: 169 minutes

Year: 2014

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, David Oyelowo, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Matt Damon

Description: A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival.

Review: Christopher Nolan’s movies can be called cold, but certainly have emotion. The (anti) heroes in movies like “Memento”, “The Prestige” and “Inception” are all driven by human emotion like heart ache or jealousy. In “Interstellar” we also meet those characters. That’s not a bad thing though, when they are portrayed by great actors like Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine.

McConaughey plays the disillusioned widow Cooper, former test pilot for NASA and now a farmer. The film is set in the near future, where the earth is exhausted and producing food is the main priority instead of science. What people don’t know is that secretly NASA is planning a mission to save mankind and move them to another planet, that can be reached through a wormhole. Cooper is asked to investigate the planet, together with a group of fellow astronauts. This means Cooper has to leave his two children and he can’t tell them when or if he will return.

The emotional scenes between Cooper and his daughter Murph are a highlight for me. They are so sincere and you feel it yourself. And although the drama is the heart of the film, Nolan focusses more on the scientific aspect of the story. Nolan likes old school effects, doesn’t use CGI if not necessary. The spaceship décor was build, very detailed and the robots CASE and TARS were all controlled manually.

The first half of the film is much better than the second and after two hours, you start to feel the length of the film. The happenings are randomly piling up and the characters can’t carry the drama anymore. And that ending, I don’t know.

Many say it’s Christopher Nolan’s best, I do not agree. Not even remotely. I think “Interstellar” is slightly overrated, although I can see and understand what Nolan wanted with this film.

Rating: 3/ 5

100 Movie Challenge 2015 - # 117: American Ultra

Director: Nima Nourizadeh

Genre: Action/ Comedy

Runtime: 99 minutes

Year: 2015

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace, Connie Britton, Walton Goggins, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman

Description: A stoner (Jesse Eisenberg) - who is in fact a government agent - is marked as a liability and targeted for extermination. But he's too well-trained and too high for them to handle.

Review: Films, where the leads are stoners, can nowadays be put into its own genre. Think of movies like “Pineapple Express” and “Dude, Where’s My Car?”. “American Ultra” is also one of those films.

Mike is a nobody, who spends his days smoking weed and hang out with his girlfriend Phoebe, while working at the local supermarket. His anxiety to leave town doesn’t really help him any further either. A woman visits him at work and starts talking to him in words he doesn’t understand. Mike sends her away and not long after that two armed men try to kill him. Surprising himself, he overpowers them. How is it possible that he can do that?

The movie is meant to be a comedic action movie, but you’re never sure if this is supposed to be taken seriously or that it’s a parody on the genre of spy thrillers. The cast is good though. Jesse Eisenberg was made for a role like this and has great chemistry with Kristen Stewart. Topher Grace was funny and Connie Britton did a good job too.

Besides a few cool action scenes, the story develops slowly and the ending isn’t surprising at all. The movie is not as spectacular as the trailer let us believe.

The movie is somewhat entertaining, but I had higher expectations. The concept is great, the execution sadly isn’t.

Rating: 2,5/ 5

100 Movie Challenge 2014 - # 19: The Big Wedding

Director: Justin Zackham
Genre: Comedy/ Romance
Runtime: 89 minutes
Year: 2013
Starring: Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Topher Grace, Amanda Seyfried, Robin Williams, Ben Barnes

Description: Don (Robert De Niro) and Ellie (Diane Keaton) were once married and have three children: Lyla (Katherine Heigl), Jared (Topher Grace) and adoptive son Alejandro (Ben Barnes). Eventually they divorce, Ellie moves away and Don hooks up with Bebe (Susan Sarandon), Ellie's best friend. When Alejandro is about to get married, he informs Don And Ellie that he never told his natural mother, who is so traditional,that they got divorced. And she is coming for the wedding so he asks them if they can pretend to still be married.

Review: You know that a first meeting starting with a lie never works out. That’s exactly what happens when Alejandro wants his divorced parents to pretend they are still together for his very religious biological mother.
It’s a cast with a lot of big names, but that doesn’t necessarily mean success. And “The Big Wedding” isn’t. Basically because of the chaotic script, which can’t seem to find a balance between sentimental clichés and corny jokes. It’s very predictable, some twists I could see from a mile away.
Acting veterans De Niro, Keaton, Williams and Sarandon never seem to carry this film to a higher level. Katherine Heigl seems like she was forced to do this movie, she has lost the charm she had when she was still on “Grey’s Anatomy”. And the storyline that Topher Grace has, is simply ridiculous. The wedding, which should be the highlight of the film, is also disappointing. Off course someone falls into the water and some punches are given. All you can do as a viewer is sigh of boredom.
“The Big Wedding” is an uninspired comedy that couldn’t be saved by the big actors. The movie feels forced and is very disappointing.

Rating: 1,5/ 5