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Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Didn't work for me
I finally saw this film almost four years after its original release, and have to say it did not work for me, for exactly the reasons that kept me from going to see it in the theater back in '09.
The animation is good for the most part, but the changes to the story are forced and unnecessary, the voice acting by the all-star cast is shockingly bland and uninspired, and the whole thing is, in a maddening way, quirky just for quirky's sake. After the tenth time, the "laconic comment followed by five seconds of awkward silence" gag just isn't funny any more. Same with most of the music, it was just a placeholder for the Benny Hill Theme, because playing that over all the repetitive scenes of "Foxy" and his gang just moving about randomly would have been a little to obvious even for this flick.
And yes, like many other reviewers I'm a huge fan of the book, but even when viewing this as a work of it's own - maybe especially then - it just does not hold up. It tries way to hard, its parts don't fit together nearly well enough, and it left me without any strong feelings whatsoever. It was overshadowed at the box office by "Twilight 2" and "Chipmunks: The Squeakquel", and as someone who hates both of these movies with a passion, I still have to say I understand why.
Stellet Licht (2007)
Oh please!
All the guys who tell me how great that film is, you gotta be kidding me.
This film is boring and badly executed, without any premise or purpose except for being "art". It mocks the work of generations of artists involved in film-making, be it directors, writers, cutters, performers or whatever. It actually mocks the term "motion picture" itself, as the only thing more absent than motion is a story:
A bunch of non-professional "actors" (calling them that is actually an insult to every half gifted actor who ever lived) sit around, doing nothing but eating cereals or bathing or some other uninteresting stuff, and the director tries to cover up the fact that he has absolutely no story to tell by zooming in on his protagonists' less attractive body parts whenever possible. You can almost hear the guys in Cannes go "Ey, it's got a three minute shot of the pimples on an ugly woman's nose - it's gotta be art!"
As for the "insights" on the Mennonites - I didn't get any, except perhaps that they seem to be the most boring people on the face of the Earth - and that they make bad actors.
And the ending? I'd call it laughable, but I actually felt more like crying. It does, like the film as a whole, insult the viewer's intelligence in a manner that actually made me gasp.
First (and up till now, only) movie where I ever demanded my money back. As did, for that matter, at least half the audience.