Watched in the cinema (149th visit in 2024)
It seems as if the success of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" in 2018 has encouraged the big Hollywood animation studios to leave the perfect recreation of reality to one side for a while and instead go all out artistically again. The makers behind "The Wild Robot" are also following this trend in their adaptation of Peter Brown's three-part children's book series, with the backgrounds in particular being inspired by Impressionism. As the…
Watched on Amazon Prime Video
Following his great critical and commercial success with "Forrest Gump" in 1994, US director Robert Zemeckis made another foray into the science fiction genre just three years later with "Contact" after the "Back to the Future" series. The success of the previous works is clearly evident in the film, especially in areas such as effects and the top-class cast. Despite the sometimes very sentimental narrative, which identifies "Contact" as a typical Hollywood film in these…
Watched on Blu-Ray
2015 was Pixar's last big year, with "Inside Out" proving to be the biggest and best film in Pixar history alongside "Toy Story 3", "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille". Nothing that came afterwards hit me as much.
Technically, the studio, which was bought by Walt Disney for 7.4 billion US dollars in 2006, proved about 9 years ago that they were among the best at the time. The technical perfection of the animation, the handling of shapes and…
Watched on Blu-Ray
Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks led the way and the rest enthusiastically followed suit: Computer-generated animated films with great family appeal are not only good for box office takings in the triple-digit millions, those who incorporate cuddly characters can also look forward to a veritable shower of merchandising money. It was no wonder that Universal Pictures wanted to get in on the action at some point - the pie was too big for them to stand idly by.…
Watched on Blu-Ray
For a long time, it looked as if the Americans would decide among themselves who would take the crown of CGI animated films. Disney and Pixar were the most promising contenders, but DreamWorks and the then still-existing Blue Sky Studios also raked in millions for their respective studios. However, nobody expected that a French animation studio would suddenly be at the top with "Despicable Me". Firstly because traditional animation was still very popular in the Grande Nation,…
Watched on Netflix
Despite its overly conciliatory attitude towards the extreme fan, "Galaxy Quest" has become a really excellent parody of series like "Star Trek" and its fan cult. Perhaps the subject matter could have been handled a little more mercilessly, but on a family-friendly basis the result is surprisingly successful and also keeps the necessary respect for its "victims" in mind (which applies not only to series but also to their actors).
In terms of acting, there is a…
Watched on Disney +
As is well known, Tim Burton has always had a preference for outsiders. Whether it was "Edward Scissorhands" or "Ed Wood", the director made a name for himself in the early phase of his career precisely by giving a stage to the outcasts, freaks and misunderstood. Letting them triumph over a world in which norms are idolized and nothing is allowed to be any different. In that respect, it was certainly obvious for "Miss Peregrine's Home…
Watched on Blu-Ray
More than ten years after her first cinematic steps with "The Loveless" and long before she finally arrived on the Hollywood Olympus with "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty", the talented director Kathryn Bigelow created a haunting parable on the steadily advancing decay of modern society with "Strange Days". Despite a box-office takings of just 8 million dollars - a gigantic flop at the time with a budget of just under 42 million dollars - the…
Watched on Disney +
James Cameron is an avid fan of oceanography. He can even count himself among the few people who have dived down into the West Pacific Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench - the deepest point of the world's oceans, the last unexplored territory of our planet. It seems only logical, given this circumstance, that Cameron also has a distinct fascination with shipwrecks and their salvage: everything that the sea has swallowed up in its intimidating grace…
Watched on Blu-Ray
With his debut "Pi", Darren Aronofsky quickly established himself among the ranks of independent filmmakers and followed up two years later with "Requiem For A Dream". This time in colour, but in his idiosyncratic way of creating images, hardly changed and even more extreme. His trademark hip-hop montage (click-whoosh-pfmp-gulp - simply unique) or the use of Snorricam sometimes make the film seem like a composition of hypnotic and mind-bending images, constantly growing in unison with a sprawling…
Watched on Blu-Ray
The world is going to the dogs. Slowly. Creeping. Yet unmistakable to everyone. Although civilisation in 2027 is already in a state of emergency, wars, catastrophes and misery have (apparently) devastated many parts of the planet, there will be no immediate, tangible or possibly still avoidable threat that will seal the fate of humanity. Instead of the tendency towards collapse due to overpopulation, the wheel in "Children of Men" turns the other way round or has come…
Watched on Disney +
"Yet another new Marvel character, seriously?", you might have thought in 2016 due to the then upcoming class reunion, which was called "Avengers: Infinity War". The character count was already large enough thanks to Avengers and Guardians. But Marvel made good use of their catalog, bringing the seventh origin story to the big screen with their 14th film. One should not be blinded by the newly animated Marvel studio logo at the beginning: "Doctor Strange" also…