Reviews

• This is a film about how important it is to be told fairy tales as a child. Because if you are, you learn early on that if you formulate a wish or a spell with ANY degree of ambiguity, you are likely to get the complete opposite of what you actually wanted. So it was no big surprise that Merida got something she didn't want at all. "I want my mother to change" is possibly the most ambiguous wish I have ever heard. I don't know why the witch cast the same spell on Elinor as on the prince of yore but she seemed like a bit of a con artist anyway, so maybe she doesn't know any other spells. Maybe she had stolen the recipe for the spell from a proper witch.

• The morale of the story is as Disney as it gets. A young, pretty woman fights for ideas that are revolutionary in her time but completely mainstream in our own day and age. Because while Merida might be Brave, Disney most certainly is not, which is why the "inspirational" speeches the protagonists give at the end of their films tend to infuriate thinking people with their banality.

• The notion that proper communication is the universal remedy for all conflict is also central to this film. As soon as the mother truly understands her daughter, she, and later all the tribal chiefs, suddenly cast their aspirations to power, their sense of tradition and propriety and their plans for the future of the kingdom aside. The belief that honest conversation and sharing of all the important facts and viewpoints necessarily leads to a universally accepted consensus seems to be a very American one, as apparent in the political debates of the country as in its film industry but hardly anyone else - except maybe for Bollywood - seems to believe in this formula.

The film is really pretty though, and the characters, while not terribly complex, are likable. The scenery is very, very beautiful. So if you are planning to see the film, go see it while it's still in the cinema because it probably loses most of its charm when not viewed on the big screen.

Compared to this take on time travel, Doctor Who is the most believable thing ever made. Why does the car from the past take the same road every night? And why do the people in it pick Gil to accompany them? And why, most of all, does Gil accept so readily? I mean, who would get into a strange car in some dark road in Paris in the middle of the night and drink whatever the people in it offered? "Where are you taking me?", Gil asks, sipping his wine (?). If the answer had been: "Oh, we're drugging you right now and then we'll kill you and harvest your organs", Gil would have deserved a Darwin award.

Gil accepts the fact that he has just traveled back in time 100 years and that now all the literary greats of the time want to be his friends (and listen to him talk about all his problems at length) after about 5 minutes. Has he never heard of concepts like reenactment and cosplay? I find it pretty plausible that in a big town like Paris there might be enough people interested in these things to form a proper club that meets every night in a kind of a tavern. The fact that as soon as he leaves the bar the first night he finds himself in front of a laundromat instead doesn't convince me either: his fiancée had previously hinted at his tendency to get lost.

No, sorry, to me this film is the story of a man who by sheer luck escapes brutal murder and is then messed with by a couple of very good reenactors. But it helps him find his way, so I guess the morale of the story is that even incredibly naive people get lucky sometimes.

When I first watched this film, I hated every minute of it. The story is full of clichés, the main character is unlikable and the mythological figures are distorted almost to the point of being unrecognizable.

I re-watched the film a while ago after having seen the knockoff "Almighty Thor" and it was then that I realized how bad this film could have been but wasn't.

I realized that this film isn't actually that bad. The portrayal of Asgard and its inhabitants - you can call it distorting or you can call it original. Sure, giving the goddess Sif, whose golden hair symbolizes ripe wheat, *dark hair* (that's the colour of mouldy wheat, FYI) isn't exactly a touch of genius. Transforming the god of fire into an ice giant is more than a stretch as well. And the way they presented the giants was just lazy. Why should beings intelligent enough to seriously threaten the gods live in a kind of rubbish dumb surrounded by debris? But on the other hand, Asgard really did look pretty epic. I can't get over the electric rainbow bridge, but other than that it was really beautiful. And most of the gods looked a lot like I had always imagined them, especially Frigg was spot on. Heimdallr being black and Thor having a Japanese friend didn't bother me at all. I mean, why not? Lots of mythologies have gods with animal heads, a different skin colour is ordinary in comparison. Gods don't have to look like the people who believe in them. Asgard having more ethnic diversity than Midgard was strange, but that was a fault of the Midgard arc, not the other one.

The part of the story that took place in Mdgard was what dragged the film down anyway. I didn't care for any of the human characters and I thought Thor became very unlikable as soon as he lost his hammer. Maybe that's a hidden superpower of his weapon. In contrast, I liked Loki a lot... but not in a good way. He didn't come across as a real villain at all. He didn't seem evil and menacing, he just seemed smart, lonely and under-appreciated. My impulse wasn't to be wary but to want to hug him. From what I hear, he'll be the big baddie in the upcoming Avengers movie - he'd better be a little less relateable there because this kind of villain makes the protagonists come across as cruel. I'm used to rooting for the villain but I have rarely felt so sympathetic towards one.

All in all, this actually is an engaging movie, if not a very smart one. It looks good, it is well acted and it has its moments. 5 out of 10 stars.

If you haven't seen the film and wonder whether you will like it, look at it this way: the only reason this movie was made was because people might confuse the DVD for that of the Marvel film "Thor" which came out at the same time, and buy it *accidently*.

That is really all you need to know about this film.

Since I need to fill 10 lines however... well... this is possibly the worst film I have ever seen. I won't even comment on the costumes and CGI since it's obviously a low-budget film. But you don't need a lot of money to create a halfway decent story or get the mythology even remotely right. "Thor" takes a lot of liberties when it comes to this but at least in that film dead people don't go to Muspelheim (or, as the characters in this "film" pronounce it: Muscle-M) simply because it's hot there. And the Norns talk like American high school girls ("Loki will like totally destroy the world and stuff! I know, right? So messed up!"). Thor makes the same mistakes over and over again and, after millenia of being a hammer-wielding god, has to be taught to fight by a young mortal woman no older than 30. Loki spends most of his screen time wandering the streets in silence, apparently telling himself jokes in his thoughts. And the legendary hammer itself - which in the actual saga was forged by a dwarven master blacksmith - consists of a stone that is bound to a piece of wood with leather straps.

A villain without any kind of back story, a hero too dumb to tell his mouth from his rear end without assistance and a black street thug to fill the diversity requirement. What more could you ask for. Watch this film if you know a thing or two about Norse mythology and want to spend 90 minutes with a like-minded friend laughing and pointing fingers.

Air Force One is a film that really makes me wonder whether the true intentions of the director are as transparent as they seem.

It is strange enough in itself that a director who is himself not an American would produce a piece of thinly disguised US propaganda (who am I kidding? Not disguised at all! Naked, shaven and equipped with big flashing arrows pointing at it!). Not that Germans are immune to the grandiose nature of the nationalism (excuse me, I mean *patriotism* of course) that inspires many American films, and after all, films that portray German nationalism positively are not that well received, so what is a German director who likes trite militaristic show-offs and personality cults revolving around the local alpha male to do? But if you pay attention to the way the characters and the storyline are presented, it makes you wonder who is the real hero here. Sure, the president saves the day. Sure, the terrorists all die in the end and so does the man they were trying to free. I don't know if that's even a spoiler because most people probably guessed the ending from looking at the way the DVD cover was designed.

But just compare the way James Marshall, the president, is presented and the way the top terrorist, Ivan Korshunov, is presented. Who would you say is the more intelligent man? Who is willing to take more risks for his country? Who follows his morals - however much you may agree or disagree with them - more consequently? The US government in this film is actually very openly hypocritical. First they order the abduction of the president of Kazakhstan, then they are outraged when the same is done to them in return. First the president is willing to sacrifice all the hostages on board of the plane because "ah don negotiate wit terroris'", then he is willing to give in to all demands to save his wife and child - when before he did not care at all about other people's wives, children or husbands being killed.

And the character of the president himself is so stereotypical it hurts. Every one of his actions is predictable. Same goes for his wife ("I don't know what you want! But you won't get it!" Hellooo?). It is very difficult to be on their side, especially when on the other side the top terrorist makes statements that in 2009, after 8 years of Bush junior, countless proxy wars, several more US-backed coups and in the middle of another Iraq war, are probably much more popular than in the 90s. Maybe it's just Gary Oldman stealing the show, but maybe it's a subversive director who is way ahead of his time leading the embarrassing clichées of a genre ad absurdum ("red white and blue, I count on you" - good thing the person who installed the cables was just as much into nationalistic kitsch as you are, Mister President).

And then there's the scene where General Radek is released from prison and all the poor, downtrodden prisoners sing the Internationale from their small, dirty cells. It doesn't get much more epic than that. Way more striking than the long-winded rescue mission at the end of the film.

So I thoroughly enjoyed watching the film but I watched it "the other way round". Watched as it seems to be (and, in all seriousness, probably is) the film is of course, apart from the usual racist and sexist undercurrents that the director probably didn't even notice he catered to, also a piece of embarrassingly shallow kitsch. But at the very least, it gave the bad guys a fair chance to make their point (before getting their asses kicked of course).

(P.S. Drinking game: Drink one sip of beer - nothing stronger - every time a character says "Jesus", "Christ" or "God". After the film, check yourself into a hospital for your alcohol poisoning)

For some reason, it seems to be impossible for directors to stay true to Victor Hugo's book when making it into a film. I've seen at least 4 adaptations and none of them got the story even halfway right.

This one takes the cake though.

Not only has the story been changed at every turn (a happy ending? seriously?) but all the main characters have been turned into their exact opposite. Esmeralda, a naive and frail young girl, becomes a confident and witty woman. Quasimodo, in the book an antisocial, mean 18 year old (who is also, inconveniently, deaf - no way Disney would keep that little detail) becomes a cuddly stuffed animal who helps little birds learn how to fly. Claude couldn't possibly stay a priest of course. This isn't really unusual, as far as I know all versions before 1956 either made him a judge or left out his obsession with Esmeralda and Disney is almost always a few decades behind morally. But that they left out almost every redeeming character trait he possesses in the book, that he kills Quasimodo's mother and tries to throw Quasi down a well instead of adopting the monstrous child of unknown origin when everyone else thinks it's a demon, that he doesn't even show a hint of the romanticism that overwhelms him in the last third of the book (when he isn't threatening Esmeralda with death and/or rape that is), that instead of his fierce intellect and curiosity it is the lust for power that dominates his actions, this is unforgivable. And of course, perhaps the most absurd move, as much ridiculous as it is typical of Disney, Phoebus, the insensitive, dumb, opportunistic soldier who gets way more attention than he deserves due to his good looks, becomes the knight in shining armor - literally!

That being said, some of the scene were actually very intense and well-crafted. When liquid fire was running out of every hole of the cathedral, when Claude was hunting Quasimodo's mother through snow-covered Paris to a choir singing "Dies Irae", the song "Hellfire", these were the moments when the film, despite all its alterations, came pretty close to the dramatic and dark atmosphere of the book.

All in all I would say this is indeed the best film version of "Notre Dame de Paris" - as the book was originally called, without much focus on the hunchback, who in the book is only the 4th most important character - mainly because the other version are pretty bad.

One last thought: When I first watched the film, my reaction was: Talking gargoyles? Really? But then it occurred to me: The gargoyles aren't actually becoming alive for their friend Quasimodo, Disney in its dark cynicism made the poor, lonely Quasimodo imagine things to cope with his pain. His psyche is wounded by the constant ostracism and the emotional torture at Claude's hands to the point where it desperately makes up friends to gain at least some feeling of being loved. This is so wonderfully twisted. I have to watch the film again to check whether any of the other characters actually interact with the gargoyles and if yes, how much ambiguity there is in these scenes.

I went into this movie with almost no prejudice. I hadn't watched trailers, hadn't read reviews, hadn't talked to anyone who had seen it. And I really wanted to like the movie. After all, I still remembered how excited the previous movie had left me and the sixth book is perhaps the best of the entire series.

And then I suffered.

Almost no scenes were the way they were in the book, some of the characters were altered - flattened down - so much it was hard to even recognise them and the scenes that had been added didn't fit the storyline at all. I mean, I don't have anything against mixed-age couples but why does Harry have to catch the eye of a woman twice his age in the beginning of the film? Which point does the director want to make by including this? Harry's overwhelming attractiveness? His maturity? Same goes for the burning-down-the-burrow scene. Why would Fenrir and Bellatrix waste their time chasing 15 year olds around a fen and setting a house on fire (after luring all the inhabitants out of course. Setting the house on fire with all the blood-traitors, mudbloods and chosen ones still in, no, that would simply have been too... intelligent!)

So they include some pointless action, fair enough, perhaps films need that more than books. The 5-minute "Attack of the Psycho Tree" (aka Whomping Willow Workout) scene they put into the third film seemed rather random too, after all. But why then did they leave out the ultimate action scene in this book where the DA and the death eaters fight in Hogwarts? I liked the way they introduced the Vanishing Cabinet, different from the book, but since I knew they would never include a 5 minute dialogue between Dumbledore and Draco anyway, I liked the idea. All the more disappointing then that in the end, Draco went through all this effort just so Bellatrix could burn down Hagrid's hut.

But the ultimate unforgivable scene was the way they ruined "the flight of the prince". I'll sum up the end of the film.

Harry: Fight back you COWARD! - Snape: He called me coward? Mmh, I don't really care. - Harry: SECTUMSEMPRA! - Snape: Alright, let me explain this very calmly to you. You may not use my spells against me because I'm the half blood Prince. - *in the background Hagrid's hut is burning down but Hagrid and Fang are apparently too fast asleep to notice* - Snape:*walks into the forest* - Harry: *looks at the stars, surprised*

later:

Harry: It's a shame Dumbledore's dead. I kinda liked him.

Hermione: Uh-huh. BTW, Ron says it's OK if you're with Ginny.

Harry: k, thx. I never noticed how beautiful Hogwarts is.

This leads me directly to the thing that disturbed me the most about the film: the complete unwillingness on the side of the writers to stay serious for even one single minute. At every turn, some trite joke or shallow reference to clichée teenage drama has to be inserted and this robs the film of all its dramatic potential. I have no idea why anyone would call this film "dark". I've seen Disney films that were more serious and adult than this one. The film is a dumbed-down version of the book, suitable for audiences who previously fawned over Twilight.

And the clichée doesn't stop there. The portrayal of Bellatrix irritated me greatly. Isn't it about time we do away with this stereotype that an evil and powerful woman *has* to act hypersexual, speak with a sensual voice and creep around the men she's threatening? It was really annoying, especially in the scene in which Snape swears the Unbreakable Vow. It looks cheap and doesn't fit at all.

Also: - Ginny would never tie anyone's shoelaces. - Harry can use his invisibility cloak, it doesn't count as cheating. Especially if it keeps you from climbing random roofs just to get a glimpse at Draco - Dumbledore's funeral isn't a rock festival. - So Voldemort's Horcruxes could be any kind of object? Good luck breaking random things in order to defeat him then, Harry. Looking forward to seeing you stomp across rubbish dumps in film 7, crushing "hidden" old bottles that could be magical.

One star for the wonderful performances by Tom Felton and Alan Rickman, one for the beautiful Quidditch scenes and one for the soundtrack.