MOVIE REVIEWS -
TITLES STARTING WITH A NUMBER

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Summary: No, No, No, No, No!

After 'Tomorrow Never Dies', I'd have said Spottiswoode to be a pretty good choice for an action film. Thus it is even more unexplainable to me how he could possibly have done something like 'The 6th Day', a movie which from the beginning to the very end - and with very few exceptions and interesting ideas like Re-Pet for instance - is plainly awful, derivative and stupid.

Cloning and genetic manipulation may seem like an interesting subject, but that's better left to more philosophical movies like 'Gattaca' or issue-oriented TV shows like Star Trek and The Outer Limits. The approach to it in the film at hand is that of a stupid kid destroying what he doesn't understand, it is an approach of ignorance and stupidity - and it shouldn't be taken seriously, not at all.

Schwarzenegger may be very sympathetic, but he cannot act. That's no problem in comedy, it was surprisingly no problem in action films like 'Eraser', but here it is extremely annoying. Clumsiness doesn't fit the topic, neither does the way he smiles when he gets to kill somebody. The effects are ok, nothing great, but the scene in which he jumps into the river is just shot unbelievably primitively, you can almost see the rope. This is bad, really bad, and that's the feeling I get with this film - a really bad movie, were it not for Robert Duvall and some nice moments. What a disappointment.

January 22nd 2001

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Summary: Flippant

I'm not so sure about this one. Granted, it's fun, the songs are great, the acting terrific. But the plot is largely predictable, the mystery almost a no-brainer, and I'm quite unsure about the image of women presented here, which seems pretty much to fall into the typical stereotype - all are somehow in need of money from the man, all are rather found in the private sphere, are somewhat flippant and prone to being hysterical. Judged by the film, you could say, leave eight women alone in a closed surrounding, and you'll have them pulling their hair, or making out. I know, this may be over-analyzing, and it's just supposed to be fun, but really, why do we need this stereotype? 'Cause it's "real"? Come on.

August 6th/26th, 2002

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Summary: Dark, edgy and intelligent

'8mm' is quite a dark and depressing voyage into the darkness of the human soul and psyche, leading us to dark places we usually do not see, confronting us with dark and disturbing pictures, darker than we would probably have suspected. But it much more gives us a notion, an idea of what is happening than portraying it in greatest depth; thereby, while making sure the viewer gets the message, not necessarily being as graphic as it could be. There still is a great level of violence shown, but the real horror created by this movie is much more subtler, much more thus frightening.

"You do not change the devil - the devil changes you"

As with the X-Files episode 'Grotesque' (see also: Dark Matters, pt. 4), the darkness from without is turning within - influencing private investigator Welles (Nicholas Cage) and trying to get hold of him, thereby giving the story another turn of the screw, drawing him deeper into the labyrinth of evil, not allowing him to leave so soon.

The visual aspect of the movie is sometimes manifesting as truly extraordinary, but sometimes as quite cliché-like, making use of a lot of rain and darkness. These much too obvious elements make it lose something in the general score. But it is way better than 'Se7en', with which it has been compared awfully often. But in contrast to that other movie, '8mm' has a message to come with the pictures, it also is more frightening by showing less. And it also is portraying the ordinary evil, which doesn't come with any psychological traumas or anything like that. "I do the things I do because I want to do them" - no wonder Welles gets lost, no wonder this is a very depressing piece of fiction.

'8mm' leads the viewer into a strange world, a strange world which exists on this planet, in this our world, or perhaps better below it. It is a hidden world, hidden because it wants to hide itself and hidden because we'd usually choose to ignore it, to ignore it because we have no answers to the questions it is asking. We like to hide those things, those questionable things, which reveal truths about the human nature which are not just hard but even for most of us impossible to accept.

What we perceive is what we believe - is what influences us, is what determines our nature (see also The Fabric of Reality Revisited, pt. 1). We cannot so easily lose the pictures which enter our mind because, most of all, thes pictures already are in our mind. The evil surrounding us is no strange matter, no foreign force - it is within us, and we have to fight it, fight it with our morality. But sometimes, we might lose that fight.

April 8th 1998

The 13th Warrior (1999)

Directed by John McTiernan  ·  Rating: 10 of 10

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Summary: Visually stunning anti-war horror

The trailer for this movie was somehow dull, not really promising; the critics I read didn't give much praise, and I myself came to the conclusion this would be a boring thing to watch, but as it had Antonio Banderas in it, I needed to check it out. And the day I went to the theater to see it, I passed by a music store only to discover its soundtrack - written by Jerry Goldsmith! Suddenly, my anticipation was on the rise, and the more even after listening to the first two pieces of it in the car. When you have that great a music, you already have half the movie. So I relaxed. Big mistake.

This movie is not a relaxing one, and it surprised me in each and every part. I did not suspect something decent but then got that kind of a movie! The story itself might seem simple, reminiscent of 'The Magnificent Seven' or 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom', but it is much more than that. It is even a better war movie than the by far over-praised 'Saving Private Ryan', and it shows clearly the brutality of war, as well as the justification of the fight versus the devil. Sometimes there is an adversary you cannot fight in any other way, sometimes the atrocities and the killing are of such a dimension you barely recognize the human being behind them. Such was the case with the Nazis, such is the case in the atrocities committed today by various oppressors, such is the case in this movie.

This is a war movie presenting the deepest levels of horror, based on Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead. The fear and horror are best portrayed in a simplified scheme, thus the Medieval setting works perfectly. By the way, the common argument the Middle Ages would have been a dark and cruel period of barbary could rather be applied to the much bloodier periods following, the so-called Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. And even these periods come short in horror compared to certain instances of the twentieth century (see also Diary Entry # 58). This movie is also about fear and overcoming fear.

One of the intriguing aspects of this modern American movie is that it, firstly, is a Viking movie set in the Middle Ages, secondly, that its protagonist is a so-called Hispanic American, thirdly, that this protagonist portrays an Arab from Baghdhad, and fourthly, the message of the "civilized" world thus being "There is just one God, and Muhammed is His prophet". So much for the alleged one-sidedness of Hollywood movies. The Vikings or Normans are not seen as the bloodsucking furies they are in most tales (which is a horrendous mistake anyway, much more fiction than reality) - they are rather an honorable people of traders, farmers and warriors, which comes much closer to reality. And finally, most fascinating for me, is that Latin is used as the universal language between Arabs and Vikings. That's a nice piece of consistency.

Consider carefully whom you will show this movie as the violence is very graphic and extensive, comparable to 'Braveheart' even. This is not a movie for the faint-hearted, but that needs to belong to the experience. How do you communicate the horror of war without making it explicit? You need to see the face of evil, otherwise understanding would be just a pretention rather than genuine. Violence in movies and television doesn't mean that it is being condoned - in most of the cases it is clearly shown as being a bad thing. But be prepared, this movie is probably different from what you might expect.

September 14th 1999