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From ZERO to 6 ♥s. 100% ad-free. Run on pure love for movies, documentaries and TV-series. June 2025: Countdown to: Top 10: Best horror comedy movies - Upcoming review: There's Still Tomorrow (2023)
+3rd Worst Movie of the Year + Most Sleep-inducing Movie of the Year
One sparse, elegant poster for Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse
Turin Horse is Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr's (Satantango/Sátántangó (1994)) final film, co-directed with editor Ágnes Hranitzky (Werckmeister Harmonies/Werckmeister Harmóniák (2000)), co-written by Tarr and László Krasznahorkai (Damnation/Kárhozat (1988))
The final week in the life of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, upon his witnessing the flogging of a horse in Turin, Italy.
This makes for a mystifying, boring affair, instructive in Tarr's own theme of life's stoic harshness and a message which eludes the patient viewer until even after the last frame has left the screen. (The film is 146 relentlessly long minutes long.) Without plot or development, the film drags its way on through its just 30 different shots, occasionally exciting compositions (by cinematographer Fred Kelemen (Frost (1997)) of the windblown landscape with beautiful music by Mihály Vig (The Man from London/A Londoni Férfi (2007)). Father and daughter pull water from the well and eat potatoes, until they die, in Tarr's sleep-inducing Turin Horse.
Cost: Unknown Box office: 163k $ = Uncertainty [But most likely a huge flop. The film was made with funds from Eurimages (240k €), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (100k €) as well as Hungarian, French, German, Swiss and American companies. The total budget was most likely around 1-3 mil. $. Shooting began in 2008 and went on for very long. The premiere was delayed until the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear. The film is held in high esteem by many critics, who mistake pretentious tediousness with High Art.] What do you think of The Turin Horse? And Tarr's other films, if you have seen any?
Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis look comfortable and expectant on this poster for Bobby and Peter Farrelly's Hall Pass
Two sex-obsessed suburban chums get a week's 'hall pass' from their marriages to sow their wild oats. But SPOILER no one gets any sex out of it; just troubles, and the lesson that nothing beats the status quo.
Hall Pass packs a few scenes that are a little fun; the guys in Appleby's to score; the guys high on hash cakes on the golf course. - But apart from these scenes, there's precious little to laugh at in the Farrelly brothers' (Kingpin (1996)) Hall Pass, perhaps their worst film yet. Hall Pass is mostly quite depressing, until its last act in which it also grows nauseating. Peter and Bobby Farrelly devised the script with Pete Jones (Outing Riley (2004)) and Kevin Barnett (The Heartbreak Kid (2007)). The comedy-loving Bobby Farrelly is working on a new movie at the moment, the romcom One Night Stan (2016), apparently without his brother!
Do these actors look about 20 years too old to star in a film like Bobby & Peter Farrelly's Hall Pass? That's because they are
Watch the red band trailer for the film here
Cost: 36 mil. $ Box office: 83.2 mil. $ = Minor flop [Hall Pass opened to a slack # 1 title in the US with a 13.5 mil. $ opening weekend. It grossed 45 mil. $ in North America (54 % of the total gross) and received lots of horrible reviews.] What do you think of Hall Pass? Is this the worst Farrelly brothers film to date?
+ 2nd Worst of the Year +Most Unredeemable Trash of the Year
A truly distressing poster for Tom Six's The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) starring Laurence R. Harvey
The sequel to the resourceful first film is a meta-story about a deeply deranged parking guard, Martin (Laurence R. Harvey (The ABCs of Death 2 (2014))), who worships the first film, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009) to very troubling degree and seeks to develop the experiment from the film. - But since he's no doctor, to say the least, it will be 100 % medically inaccurate! This, which was also one of the film's tag-lines ('100 % medically inaccurate') both refers back to the tag-line of the original film (100 % medically accurate) and the fact that the screwball in the film, Martin, is, to put it mildly, no surgeon as the villain of the first film. Dutch filmmaker Tom Six (Gay in Amsterdam/Gay (2004)) lives up to his own promises, if nothing more, namely that the second film would make the first one look like My Little Pony in comparison. He is consistent and extreme as (fortunately) very few, and his choice to convert Full Sequence to B/W is generous at least, (although he does let a little brown color seep into the film at one point (...), and and it is rumored that he only left out the colors to make the film pass censors.) David Meadows' (Strippers vs Werewolves (2012)) photography is decent. - The film isn't good. And why a group of people, any group of people, would chose to work for a filmmaker who wants to film something as twisted as this is beyond me. A man with a camera (and a script and a few credits to his name) is a powerful man, obviously. Six wrote it himself, as he has done with his other films as well, and this is a flat, gross, - extremely gross, - but not really scary experience. Just a revolting one that will make you feel really bad for some time after. The plot is unbelievable and the ending mysterious. I wouldn't recommend anyone to see The Human Centipede 2. It is an inhumane, disgusting film.
Cost: Unknown Box office: 141k $ = Mega-flop [Full Sequence must have cost somewhere between 1-3 mil. $, so its theatrical performance, about half of the original's, is a disaster, although entirely predictable in light of its content. It has only been released direct-to-DVD in the UK and Australia after cuts. It is still banned in New Zealand. It has won one award: Fangoria's Worst Film Chainsaw Award, (and that's from a horror awards show, so you know it's bad.) Nonetheless, Six is releasing The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) this year, in which he plays himself, and both Dieter Laser, the doctor of the first film, Harvey, Eric Roberts and porn star Bree Olsen star in a plot about a 500+ people centipede in a prison, the most expensive film of his yet. - Who gives him money to shoot this ?¤#!!] What do you think of The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)?
+ Best Political Movie of the Year + Best Mauretanian Movie of the Year
A striking poster for Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu
Timbuktu is the 6th feature from Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness/Heremakono (2002)), which he has co-written with Kessen Tall.
In and around the small Malian town of Timbuktu, the inhabitants are affected by the interference of Islamic fanatics, who take over power and subdue them to grotesque rules and strict sharia law.
We follow a few people on both sides of the dividing lines in Timbuktu: A man and his wife and daughter, who live in the desert. The town loon, a woman who is allowed more freedoms than others. A mother whose young daughter gets taken for marriage with a stranger. And an Islamist, who drives around the area and spreads terror, part of the fear-spreading rule. Abel Jafri (The Passion of the Christ (2004)) portrays him and does so very persuasively. The Islamist thugs are not demonized here but shown as men that may or may not believe in the ideology they force upon others, but who all obviously relish the power that their tyranny provides them. They are scary and very real, as is the whole scenario of Timbuktu, which is based on the real life short occupation of the town by Islamist terrorist group Ansar Dine.
Timbuktu is made with a strong aesthetic sense (photography by Sofian El Fani (Blue Is the Warmest Colour/La Vie d'Adèle (2013))): The camera at times probes the characters, who appear beautiful, even if they are not by conventional standards; but they project their inner beings so as to appear beautiful, because they are themselves without facades. At other times it keeps its distance, making for poignant, strong moments. Some of my favorite moments of the appropriately dispiriting Timbuktu were heightened by a subtle humor, a keen eye Sissako possesses that sees the absurd humor that is inherent in the grotesqueries of the Islamic fanaticism, whenever the tragedies don't have the front stage: SPOILER The young man who just can't perform convincingly for his fanatical video. The donkey that walks past the foolishness of the humans without a care in the world. Best of all was the scene of the boys playing invisible football due to a Islamic decree against footballs. This was one of the very few scenes enhanced with music, beautifully composed by Amin Bouhafa (Being Here/Vivre Ici (2009)). As a Western, non-African or French-speaking audience member, the odds are against this somewhat parochial issue film that has complexities that goes over most Westerners' heads, but Timbuktu overcomes these hindrances with its universal humanism. I would have loved for it to show some answers to the challenge that Islamic fanaticism poses in so many countries today, but, regrettably, I found none. I also feel that Sissako gives too much room SPOILER for the father who murders the fisherman to cast his verbal beautifications to his audiences in the film (and to us) about the desolate fates that now await his wife and daughter. (I had little patience for this, since I felt he should have just followed his wife's advice and left the gun at home.)
Cost: 2.8 mil. $ Box office: 10 mil. $ and counting = Big hit [Timbuktu is a sensational success story: It competed in Cannes last year and won two prizes, (not the main one). It was also Oscar-nominated as Best Foreign Film, losing to Ida (2013). It has made 1 mil. $ (10 % of the total gross) in the US. Its biggest market seems to have been France (the film is a Mauritanian/French co-production), where 1.1 mil. people paid admission. It also won 7 out of 8 nominations at the Cesar Awards (French Oscar), setting a new record for an African film there.] What do you think of Timbuktu? If you've seen other films by Sissako, do please tell about them
1 Time Film Excess Nominee: Best Score: Adam Burke, Darius Holbert, Russ Howard III (lost to Cliff Martinez for Drive)
+ Best Canadian Movie of the Year + Best Gore Movie of the Year + Best Lines in a Movie of the Year
One of the many cool, funny throw-back style posters for Jason Eisener's Hobo with a Shotgun
Based on a trailer that won a competition to be shown in some venues along with Robert Rodriguez' (2007) and Quentin Tarantino's grindhouse-revival movies (Planet Terror and Death Proof (both 2007), is a fast-paced, Canadian homage to 80's grindhouse flicks like The Toxic Avenger (1984), directed by Jason Eisener (The ABC's of Death (2012), segment).
An avenging homeless man in the guise of a glass-chewing, rattling Rutger Hauer (Soldier of Orange/Soldaat van Oranje (1977)) goes all-in to defeat local mob Drake (played with even more crazed glee by Brian Downey (Snow Angels (2007)) and his demented sons. The film is obviously made for very little money, but the blood bath impresses all the more in its radicalism and ingenuity. Hobo with a Shotgun goes over the top within minutes, proceeds overboard and takes outrageous violence to deranged new heights. The music is spot-on, by Adam Burke (Game (2013) short), Darius Holbert (Assassins Tale (2013)) and Russ Howard III (Her Infidelity (2015)), the enormously heavy tint-like color grading gets pushed to extremes, and the performances are equally over-the-top. Hauer is delightfully brisk and clench-teethed in the title role. John Davies (V/H/S/2 (2013), segment) wrote the screenplay and came up with some hilarious lines in it, like: "Mother Teresa was a god-damned saint!" "Live, you fucking whore!" And "You can't solve all the world's problems with a shotgun!" - They are all very hard not to enjoy, spoken with the enthused gusto in this fun and wild hyper-violent movie.
Here's the competition-winning original ('fake') trailer
And here's the trailer for the actual movie, Hobo with a Shotgun
Cost: 3 mil. $ Box office: 748k $ = Huge flop [Hobo premiered at Sundance and later on very few screens (peaking in the US on just 15) in Canada and USA as well as on VoD. It has also played the Sydney Film Festival, but has far from recouped its costs theatrically. It made 703k $ (94 % of the total gross) in the US.] What do you think of Hobo with a Shotgun?
One of the persuasive posters that lured audiences by the thousands to Todd Phillips' The Hangover Part II
This time around, 'the wolf pack' are in Thailand, and at least I respect that the film does absolutely nothing to romanticize Bangkok.
Todd Phillips' (Starsky & Hutch (2004)) inevitable follow-up to his run-away comedy hit The Hangover (2009) is a schematic, thin rehash just barely worth the generous three stars it gets here. Zach Galifianakis (Due Date (2010)) is the funniest character, and in good company the movie is just feasible, but ... there's many buts in the case of Hangover 2: - Where was the much publicized Liam Neeson (Schindler's List (1993)) cameo? (The answer: On the cutting room floor, replaced by Nick Cassavetes (Face/Off (1997)) in a reshot version of the scene.) - Why weren't there more funny comedians to lift the comedic level? - Why did literally nothing new happen? The action elements of Part II, which the first film didn't really have, only contribute in making the plot even more implausible. Add to this that Ken Jeong's (The DUFF (2015)) character Mr. Chow isn't fun anymore, and an offensive scene with violent monks, (other people will undoubtedly find other scenes from the film offensive.) - The Hangover Part II opened on Memorial Day, but that doesn't make it a memorable film by any standards. It is co-written by Phillips, Craig Mazin (Scary Movie 3 (2003)) and Scot Armstrong (Semi-Pro (2008)), based on the characters created by Jon Lucas (21 & Over (2013)) and Scott Moore (Flypaper (2011)). Phillips followed the film up with The Hangover Part III (2013), which finished the Hangover trilogy, and he is now working on a war-themed comedy titled Arms and the Dudes (2016).
Ken Jeong looks funny here, but he isn't very funny in Todd Phillips' The Hangover Part II
Watch the trailer for the film here
Cost: 80 mil. $ Box office: 586.8 mil. $ = Huge hit [The movie, which started development two months before the first film was even released, opened to a whopping 86 mil. $ first weekend in North America and similarly red-hot reception globally. Audiences worldwide braved bad reviews and made the film the highest-grossing R-rated movie made to date: It made 254.4 mil. $ in North America (43 % of the total gross).] What do you think of The Hangover Part II? And the other two films in the trilogy? And Phillips' other films?
Don Cheadle looks apprehensively over at Brendan Gleeson on this poster for John Michael McDonagh's The Guard
A major cocaine deal goes down in remote West of Ireland, where a local cop deals with things in his very own fashion.
The FBI-agent (Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda (2004)) who arrives as the outsider represents the rectilinear present, while Brendan Gleeson (Calvary (2014)) makes a grand impression in the titular role as Sergeant Gerry Boyle, who represents the immovable, eccentric Irishman. The Guard is written and directed by Irish John Michael McDonagh (Calvary), whose auspicious debut this is. He is the brother of Martin McDonagh (In Bruges (2008)), and he is busy with his next film, another dark comedy, War on Everyone (2015).
Cost: 6 mil. $ Box office: 19.5 mil. $ = Big hit [The Guard is the biggest Irish movie success in Ireland, overtaking the title from The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). It received great reviews and a Globe-nomination for Gleeson (Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy).] What do you think of The Guard?
1 Time Film Excess Nominee: Best Practical Effects (lost to Haywire)
+ Best Car Chase of the Year (Bank vault through Rio car chase)
Jesus of Rio lurches in the background of this poster for Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 5
QUICK REVIEW:
After a 'simple' job goes wrong, our heroic racer clover wind up with a chip that belongs to Rio's most powerful man. While they get hunted by an enormous government agent (Dwayne Johnson (Faster (2010))), they gather a team and plan to rob the Brazilian gangster, Reyes.
Johnson, with his huge corpus, intense stare and sweaty arms, is the best character addition to this the 5th film in the Fast and Furious franchise. Besides him, the film's script (by Chris Morgan (47 Ronin (2013)), based on the characters created by Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast and the Furious (2001))), ruminates in seriously lame sentimental scenes of Vin Diesel (The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)) and Paul Walker (Flags of Our Fathers (2006)) talking about fatherhood, and a foolish subplot about a third 'brother', who is unpopular, then popular, and then dying... Tyrese Gibson (Flight of the Phoenix (2004)) and Ludacris (Max Payne (2008)), however, top the idiocy in their buddy scenes, wherein the humor culminates with the explosion of a row of toilets. Although the action scenes are outrageously improbable physically, they work for this franchise; especially the sound design and the fight between Diesel and Johnson kicks ass. The task in making Fast Five was to give the franchise a new direction, taking it away from the relatively small world of racing and car culture and into the heist-action genre. Taiwanese director Justin Lin (Fast & Furious 6 (2013)) did this with tremendous success and is therefore set to helm countless coming, huge prestige projects: a Shaolin Temple remake, the third Star Trek film (2016) and another Bourne sequel (2016). He has also directed two episodes of the coming second season of True Detective. Trivia: More than 200 vehicles were destroyed during the making of the 'vault through Rio' action scene.
Vin Diesel and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson get down and dirty in Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 5
Watch the trailer for the film here
Cost: 125 mil. $ Box office: 626.1 mil. $ = Huge hit [Fast Five, shot mostly on location in Brazil and Puerto Rico, beat the box office performance of the four preceding movies and broke the record for biggest April opening weekend. It became the 7th highest-grossing film of 2011 overall. It made 209.8 mil. $ in North America (34 % of the total gross) after a great 86.1 mil. $ US opening weekend.] What do you think of Fast & Furious 5? List the films in the franchise and make your appraisals
♥♥♥♥♥ + Best Australian Movie of the Year + Best Comeback of the Year: George Miller
Charlize Theron loudly set on prevailing on this poster for George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road
Australian filmmaker George Miller's debut feature Mad Max (1979), which he followed with sequels in 1981 and 1985, now gets a reboot, by Miller himself, now a 70 year-old man.
In a desolate future, two fierce outcasts join forces to reach a green nirvana with the five wives of the tyrant Immortan Joe, whose small army are on their trail.
Miller has tried to get Fury Road off the ground since he got the idea for it in 1998! The film has been scrapped and pushed back due to several factors: 9/11, the second American Iraq war, Mel Gibson's personal travails, Heath Ledger's 2008 death etc. etc. Now that it's here, it's a glorious, gasoline-pumped beast of a movie; a car chase-action-adventure with some of the most hair-raising action scenes of later years. The film, which was shot on location in the desert of Namibia, Africa, is almost 'just' one long chase, so the action had better work, and it sure does. From the outset, when Max SPOILER eats a two-headed lizard, to the end a couple of hours later, we're strapped onto a hell of a roller coaster ride here. The film is shot by John Seale (The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)) in ways that make you grab the handles of your seat time and time again, and scored by Junkie XL (300: Rise of an Empire (2014)) to enhance the experience. The stunt work is eye-popping, and the dystopia so grim that it's hard to watch the film and not think about its implicit portrayal of human nature as destructive, exploitative and brutal. - The punchline to all of this is, of course, that Miller is also the man behind such rosy family movies as Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and Happy Feet (2006) and Happy Feet 2 (2011).
Many have called Fury Road feminist, which is a strange thing to call it, I think, just because it has a strong female and several good female performances in it. One of the film's many delights is towards its end SPOILER to follow our heroes, who have now banded up with a few old ladies, attack and make their way despite being warred against by a legion of strong males. This may strike some as feminist; I relished it more because it was something I hadn't seen before, and the many people behind the scenario made it seem believable. Tom Hardy (Bronson (2008)) plays Max, and Charlize Theron (Monster (2003)) is Furiosa, who is actually a much more particular and engaging character. This is a problem for a film that is still called Mad Max: Fury Road. Hardy doesn't have Gibson's natural likability and charm (of the previous three movies), and Max's back-story here only gets presented in some frightening but not very informative flash-backs. Miller has chosen in his script, which he has co-written with Brendan McCarthy (ReBoot (1995-96)) and Nick Lathouris, that Max shouldn't say almost anything, and so Hardy has his work cut out for him trying to form a strong hero here. The film's ending is also a little rushed, but all of Fury Road is actually somewhat rushed, so this may be appropriate. These things aside, Theron and British Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man (2009)), who plays a drug-crazed but basically good kid, are great in Fury Road, and Hugh Keays-Burne (Kangaroo (1987)) is incredible as the despicable villain, sure to become iconic, because he is so hard to forget. - Great designs also adorn this surprising summer smash.
Hugh Keays-Burne as Immortan Joe (the villain if you were wondering ...) in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road
Watch the trailer for the film here
Cost: 150 mil. $ Box office: 109.4 mil. $ and counting = Still unsure [But as Fury Road has only been out for three days, it seems certain that it is set to become a big hit: Although it only opened #2 in the US, behind Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), it still made 44.4 mil. $ in its opening weekend there and opened #1 in 40 other countries with critics and audiences welcoming it with the highest level of enthusiasm.] What do you think of Mad Max: Fury Road? And Miller's other films? Do you think he is the mastermind that the trailers crown him?
