An unemployed father gets hired as night watchman by an almost bankrupt museum and doesn’t notice that he’s gone the way of his predecessors: nuts.
Night at the Museum is like Jumanji minus the ‘wow’, in other words it’s Jumanji Light filled with clichés and missed opportunities as numerous as plastic dwarfs under your shoes.
Synopsis
In a corporate future in which a violent game called “Rollerball” eases the masses, one man fights against the ones who want him out of the game.
Key Data
1975: Year
Norman Jewison: Director
James Caan: Actor
$30M: Box Office
Madmind Synopsis
An uber-old roller gladiator gets fully delusional by believing he can fight the system.
Panem et circenses. Bread and games. Oh boy, nothing beats the Romans with putting out charming philosophies which worked liked a charm, until…well.
Rollerball is is the sci-fi-e revival of this motto but while the Rollerball audience had its share of fun I frantically tried to find the “games” part i.e. “fun” i.e. “thrilling” i.e. “moving”. Somehow the director seems to have forgotten that.
Synopsis
An US ambassador assistant gets hooked up with a special agent to hunt down a terrorist group in Paris.
Key Data
2009: Year
Pierre Morel: Director
John Travolta: Actor
$24M: Box Office
Madmind Synopsis
Bang! Boom! Pow! Shlamo! Kaboom!
Wouldn’t you also agree that sometimes all you need to be happy is a big fat cheeseburger in a run down restaurant? It doesn’t always have to be a fine dinner – at least to me.
In terms of movies this means that sometimes all I need is a big fat action movie without a complex plot but badass characters showing their badassery in each and every second. Cool stunts, cool one-liners and cool moments. That’s about it.
But I seem to be one of the few, at least when you somehow count me to the folks who professionally review movies, a movie critic…*lolz, rofl etc.*
But you know? There are moments when I totally and truly and simply don’t understand some of the movie critics out there. At least those who seem to be the kind of people who think that movies should always be deep, have rich characters or plots and so on. In other words those movie critics who seemingly only eat in high class restaurants while listening to some fine tunes of Bach.
From Paris with Love is in my eyes one of those moves that unmasks this kind of movie reviewers.
Synopsis
In a post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo a member of a biker gang is turned into a psychokinetic that runs amok in the search of ‘Akira’.
Key Data
1988: Year
Katsuhiro Otomo: Director
Katsuhiro Otomo: Writer
$60M: Box Office
Madmind Synopsis
Some idiots forget the off-switch while turning an even bigger idiot into a walking weapon.
Akira is the anti-thesis to Disney in any way you can think of.
In other words: you can take almost anything except animation and the negative version is Akira. Where Disney is easy to understand, Akira is hard to understand. Where Disney is fluffy, Akira is hard as a brick. Where Disney animates people as if they are bad over-acting actors, Akira is about realistic animation. Where Disney is “for children”, Akira is for adults etc etc pp ad nauseam, I think you get the picture.
I really can understand that Akira, at the time of its release in 1988, blew the mind of western audiences.
Basically this is also the reason you have to watch Akira, even if you don’t like anime or animation. Even with all its flaws Akira is not called a landmark animation, even a classic, for no reason.
I really have to thank Mr. Deeds, I mean, Mr. Sandler for this movie. Thanks to him I found a new form of reviewing. I call it the Endureview which is a combination of “endure” and “review”. Basically this means I will review a movie up to the point my brain exploded from stupidity and I turned off. So, let’s get started…
When Adam Sandler starts singing Bowie’s Space Oddity in the helicopter. (~15 min. mark)
Right. At. That. Moment.
Oh boy. This movie is not hard to swallow. It’s impossible to swallow. After 15 minutes I couldn’t continue to watch this shit and ruin my life by wasting my time on it.
One of the most amazing aspects of this finding is, by the way, the fact I once completely watched Mr. Deeds – and didn’t hate it. WTF? Either I was completely wasted at that time or my mind didn’t really mind it. Perhaps I wanted to watch this shit. Oh well…
So what can I possibly write about Mr. Deeds after only 15 minutes. It’s easy because using the sensitive elegance of a sledgehammer the director slams one single – if not the single – cliché into our skullcap: small towns are “yay” while cities are “ugh” filled with morons. The first part of Mr. Deeds starring our much beloved Adam Sandler basically is about nothing else…
