100 Movie Challenge 2016 - # 121: The Phantom Carriage

Director: Victor Sjöström
Genre: Horror/ Drama/ Fantasy
Runtime: 93 minutes
Year: 1921
Starring: Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg

Description: It's New Year's Eve. Three drunkards evoke a legend. The legend tells that the last person to die in a year, if he is a great sinner, will have to drive during the whole year the Phantom Chariot, the one that picks up the souls of the dead... David Holm, one of the three drunkards, dies at the last stroke of midnight...

Review: Special effects in 1921? Well, “The Phantom Carriage” proofs that it’s possible. In the adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s book, three drunk men on New Year’s eve talk about an old legend. This legend tells the tale of the last dead person of the year, that has to ride the Phantom Carriage. The carriage that collects all the souls of the dead. David Holm, one of the three men, dies right before midnight.
I like horror movies and I decided to try a completely different one: a silent horror movie. I appears this is not something for me. The movie has no spoken dialogue, at least not in sound. What they say, appears written on the screen, as it is with all silent movies. Through the movie there is constant music, creepy music that raises the atmosphere. But I found it very annoying music as well. It had no diversity at all.
The story itself is original and I was actually amazed how they executed the phantom carriage. This is where the special effects come in. It looks really good for the early 20s.
Overall, “The Phantom Carriage” is probably a movie that a lot of movie fans love, especially fans of the classics. For me it just didn’t work. I found it boring and the music eventually bothered me.

Rating: 2/ 5

Movie Trailer Sunday (258)

Here are this week's trailers.

Certain Women
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Description: The lives of three women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.
Starring: Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Jared Harris
Trailer: Trailer "Certain Women"
Comment: A film filled with strong actresses.

Colatteral Beauty
Director: David Frankel
Description: A tragic event sends a New York ad man on a downward spiral.
Starring: Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Naomie Harris, Michael Peña
Trailer: Trailer "Collateral Beauty"
Comment: Looks beautiful.

Live by Night
Director: Ben Affleck
Description: A story set in the Prohibition Era and centered around a group of individuals and their dealings in the world of organized crime.
Starring: Ben Affleck, Scott Eastwood, Zoe Saldana, Sienna Miller, Chris Cooper, Elle Fanning, Chris Mesina, Anthony Michael Hall, Titus Welliver
Trailer: Trailer "Live by Night"
Comment: I'm not a fan of actor Ben Affleck, but director Ben Affleck is strong. This can go either way.

Gold
Director: Stephen Caghan
Description: An unlikely pair venture to the Indonesian jungle in search of gold.
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Bryce Dallas Howard, Toby Kebbell, Edgar Ramirez, Rachael Taylor, Corey Stoll, Bruce Greenwood, Stacy Keach, Bill Camp
Trailer: Trailer "Gold"
Comment: I probably won't like these characters.

Free Fire
Director: Ben Wheatley
Description: Set in Boston in 1978, a meeting in a deserted warehouse between two gangs turns into a shootout and a game of survival.
Starring: Sharlto Copely, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer
Trailer: Trailer "Free Fire"
Comment: This looks like so much fun!

100 Movie Challenge 2016 - # 120: Brigadoon

Director: Vincente Minnelli
Genre: Musical/ Drama/ Romance/ Fantasy
Runtime: 108 minutes
Year: 1954
Starring: Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse, Elaine Stewart

Description: Two Americans (Gene Kelly, Van Johnson) on a hunting trip in Scotland become lost. They encounter a small village, not on the map, called Brigadoon, in which people harbor a mysterious secret, and behave as if they were still living two hundred years in the past.

Review: A romance in Scotland. I’m a big Gene Kelly fan and I was looking forward to finally seeing “Brigadoon”. I was a bit disappointed. Tommy and Jeff are two Americans on a hunting trip in Scotland. They get lost and stumble upon a little town called Brigadoon. The town isn’t on the map and the people there live like they are still living two hundred years in the past.
The décor in “Brigadoon” would work perfect on stage, but in this movie it looks too make-believe. The songs stop the story and not one has stuck with me.
Gene Kelly doesn’t disappoint, because he is was a talented singer, dancer, actor and choreographer. He makes “Brigadoon” watchable and lifts it to a higher level.
Overall, “Brigadoon” is a perfect stage musical, but it just doesn’t work as a movie. I wasn’t taken by this film, sadly, because I really wanted to love it.

Rating: 2,5/ 5

Top 5 Thursday: 2016 Fall/ Winter Movies to Look Forward to

Summer was okay, not very spectacular when it comes to movies. But fall (my favorite season) and winter has a lot in store for us. Here are the movies I’m most looking forward to.

5. Arrival
I’ve seen two trailers now and it looks fantastic. It’s directed by Denis Villeneuve, who also directed “Prisoners”, “Enemy” and “Sicario”, all movies I LOVED! The film follows a linguist, played by Amy Adams, who is recruited by the military to assist in transliting alien communications.

4. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
All set in the Harry Potter universe, so for me that’s reason enough to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”. The movie is about Newt Scamander, a writer who delves into the world of witches and wizards seventy years before Harry Potter reads his books in school.

3. Passengers
The movie doesn’t have a trailer yet, just a couple of movie stills. But Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt got me excited enough. A spacecraft traveltng to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two of the passengers are awakened 60 years early.

2. La La Land
This trailer got me jumping for joy! It looks so beautiful. The cast is stunning, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. And its director, Damein Chazelle, already showed us he is amazing with “Whiplash”. The film follows a jazz pianist who falls in love with a aspiring actress. And…. It’s also a musical!

1. The Girl on the Train
I read the book and it was one of those stories I couldn’t put away. And the trailer looks so amazing, I just can’t wait to see it. Emily Blunt plays the lead and there are also roles for Justine Theroux, Luke Evans, Haley Bennett, Allison Janney, Lisa Kudrow and Rebecca Ferguson. The story is about Rachel Watson’s post-divorce life. Every day, she takes the train to work in New York, and evert day the train passes by her old house. The house she lived in with her husband, who still lives there, with his new wife and child. As she attempts to not focus on her pain, she starts watching a couple who live a few houses down, Megan and Scott Hipwell. She creates a wonderful dream life for them in her head, about how they are the perfect happy family. And then one day, as the train passes, she sees something shocking. The next day, she wakes up with a horrible hangover, various wounds and bruises and no memory of the night before. She has only a feeling: something bad happened. Then come the TV reports: Megan Hipwell is missing. Rachel becomes invested in the case and trying to find out what happened to Megan.

They Almost Made the Top 5: Sully, The Magnificent Seven, A Monster Calls, Doctor Strange, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Inferno, Sing, The Light Between Oceans

100 Movie Challenge 2016 - # 119: The Apartment

Director: Billy Wilder
Genre: Drama/ Comedy/ Romance
Runtime: 125 minutes
Year: 1960
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Jack Kruschen, Edie Adams, Ray Walston, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Johnny Seven

Description: C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

Review: Movies by director Billy Wilder stand the test of time. Wilder is a master in portaying people in the most comical, tragic, honest and human way. These ingredients are all present in “The Apartment”.
Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a lonely office worker. He can’t even go to his own apartment, because he lets his co-worker with higher positions use it to have affaires. Baxter plays along, probably to be liked and also to get a promotion. Baxter also has a thing for Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), one of the elevator girls in the office he works in. he is hurt when he finds out Fran is having a relationship with his married boss Sheldrake. And the two also used Baxter’s apartment. When Sheldrake tells Fran he won’t divorce his wife, Fran tries to commit suicide. In Baxter’s apartment.
The power of “The Apartment” lies in the honest and human characters. For both MacLaine and Lemmon this was a new beginning in their career. Jack Lemmon was mostly known as a comedy actor and he showed in “The Apartment” that he can easily switch from comedy to drama to everyday situations. Shirley MacLaine had been in lighter comedies, but “The Apartment” made her a more believable and serious actress.
“The Apartment” has some daring themes for the 1960s: suicide, adultery. But the film was a huge success and to date is still a favorite to many. I simply loved this comedy, over two hours long but I didn’t feel it at all.
For every comedy fan, “The Apartment” is a must see.

Rating: 5/ 5

Movie Trailer Sunday (257)

Here are this week's trailers.

Rings
Director: F. Javier Gutiérrez
Description: A young woman finds herself on the receiving end of a terrifying curse that threatens to take her life in seven days.
Starring: Bonnie Morgan, Aimee Teegarden, Laura Wiggins
Trailer: Trailer "Rings"
Comment: The other movies creeped me out, so I probably skip this.

Shut In
Director: Farren Blackburn
Description: A heart-pounding thriller about a widowed child psychologist (Naomi Watts) who lives in an isolated existence in rural New England. Caught in a deadly winter storm, she must find a way to rescue a young boy before he disappears forever.
Starring: Naomi Watts, Charlie Heaton, Jacob Tremblay, Oliver Platt
Trailer: Trailer "Shut In"
Comment: Thrilling....

Max Steel
Director: Stewart Hendler
Description: The adventures of teenager Max McGrath (Ben WInchell) and alien companion Steel, who must harness and combine their tremendous new powers to evolve into the turbo-charged superhero Max Steel.
Starring: Ben Winchell, Josh Brener, Maria Bello, Andy Garcia
Trailer: Trailer "Max Steel"
Comment: Meh...

Morgan
Director: Luke Scott
Description: A corporate risk-management consultant must decide whether or not to terminate an artificially created humanoid being.
Starring: Kate Mara, Ann-Taylor Joy, Rose Leslie, Boyd Holbrook, Toby Jones, Brian Cox, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti, Chris Sullivan
Trailer: Trailer "Morgan"
Comment: Second trailer, still not completely sure what it's about.

My Blind Brother
Director: Sophie Goodhart
Description: The rivalry between two brothers reaches a fever pitch during a charity swim competition.
Starring: Adam Scott, Jenny Slate, Nick Kroll, Zoe Kazan
Trailer: Trailer "My Blind Brother"
Comment:

Movies I Watched for My Challenge (August 2016)

A saw a bunch of new one, a few I rated very high. Ntot a lot of classics, that I will save for the month of September. Here are my favorite film for the month of August, that I watched for my challenge.

5. The Gift
A very exciting and surprising thriller, that sadly not a lot of people have seen. Good directorial debut by Joel Edgerton.

4. X-Men: Apocalypse
A very good superhero film, a good continuation of the prequel series. I really liked to see Sansa Stark in this ;)

3. Green Room
A disturbing and violent thriller, not for people with a weak stomach.

2. Little Shop of Horrors
Such a fun musical, with catchy songs and a lot of humor.

1. We Bought a Zoo
I LOVED this film. Matt Damon was really good in “We Bought a Zoo” and I liked him together with Scarlett Johansson. Okay it’s super sweet, but I enjoyed it sooooo much.

They Almost Made the Top 5: The Shallows, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Suicide Squad