12 posts tagged movie review

Imagine if you will a version of Die Hard in which an Indonesian John McClane would enter a tower full of drug dealers armed with machetes. That’s The Raid:Redemption in a nutshell.

The movie has been acclaimed as an action masterpiece by many critics, which automatically caught my attention. In fact, they were talking about a remake even before the movie screened to american audiences. But as the famous philosophers Chuck D and Flavor Flav once said, “don’t believe the hype”. The Raid is nothing you haven’t seen before.

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We’re so used to big explosions and disasters when it comes to “end of the world” scenarios. We somehow prefer looking at the physical destruction of landmarks rather than acknowledging the real human tragedy behind it all. Maybe it’s because humans by nature are afraid of the inevitability of their own demise. Destruction is ok, but death is taboo. Go figure!

In Don McKellar‘s movie, we totally ignore what causes the end of the world. Humans are about to be wiped off the planet and there seem to be no hope of survival. People have been aware for months and now they only have a few hours left. Last Night is a movie about how humans cope with fear. The fear of dying alone, of still having unaccomplished dreams, of never seeing tomorrow. Continue Reading

For years, director/producer J. J. Abrams (Star Trek, Mission Impossible 3, Lost) has been fuelled with the desire to become the next Steven Spielberg. Even back in 2001, with Joy Ride, Abrams was already taking cues from his idol’s career. With Super 8, the master and the disiple finally meet for the ultimate pastiche, a tribute to early Amblin movies. Curiously, it just might be Abrams‘ most accomplished work, but also one of his most contrived. [more after the jump]

There have been no more new articles on Cinematical.com, which means that as I predicted 7 months ago, the website officially died.

Sadly, Cinematical got bought by AOL, or more specifically by Moviefone, so it became obvious for the movie buffs out there that this marriage wouldn’t last for long, because Moviefone aims for the casual readers, not the movie geeks (which is fine).

Scott Weinberg quit Cinematical a few weeks ago, in the midst of a journalistic/corporate ethics dispute between TechCrunch and Moviefone. “[…] I didn’t like what I was hearing about the Huffington Post / AOL partnership in relation to the people who actually SIT DOWN AND CREATE THE CONTENT”, he said.

“The reality of our situation is that, as a movies site, we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them. Staying on good terms with studios means that we will relay information if asked.”-Patricia Chui (Moviefone)

Cinematical was one of the only media outlet for real movie criticism. They weren’t there to gossip about Justin Bieber, or post funny gifs. It was all about content! They offered quality news and always went further than a simple copy and paste of the press releases.

The website inspired me quite a lot recently, and maybe this news is a wake up call for me as well. I feel as if I offer too much meaningless content over here. As of now, I’ll no longer post gifs on this blog unless it’s part of an article and you can expect much more stuff like “The Wrong Step” or “20 Years Later”. Cinematical is and will forever remain an inspiration for a lot of movie bloggers out there, so I tip my hat to all the journalists who worked there and especially to Scott Weinberg (now at twitch).

RIP Cinematical, you’ll be missed.

If ‘Deck the Halls’ was someone at an office holiday party, it would be that drunken guy who sweats a lot and screams nonesense before falling asleep near the punch bowl. Nobody really wants him around, but he’s innevitable.

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What happens when a washed out celebrity travels to South Africa to mock the adoption craze in Hollywood?

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