Disclosure Day (3 Stars)

I saw the trailer for "Disclosure Day" frequently in the cinema, at least ten times during the Stuttgart Nights Festival. The trailer looked curious, to say the least, but I thought to myself, "It's a Spielberg film, and any film directed by Steven Spielberg has to be good".

I was being too optimistic. Today I sat down in the cinema, and despite the high quality production I had a sinking feeling in my chest.

Usually when I write about a new film I've just seen in the cinema I just tell my readers what the premise is. This time I can't do it. The film has a relatively simple premise, but it isn't revealed until late in the film, so it would mean giving spoilers to tell you what the film is about.

The film starts with two young people who have seemingly nothing to do with one another. Daniel Kellner is someone who's stolen secret data from Wardex, the company where he works. Margaret Fairchild is a television weather girl who suddenly becomes able to understand and speak every language, as well as gaining the ability to read minds. For the first hour the action jumps between the two people without telling us their connection. This irritated me, but I knew everything would be explained later.

Then it was explained. But I was still unhappy. Some things still didn't make sense.

Usually I would promise to write a second review with spoilers when I have the film on disc, explaining all the things I didn't like. Not this time. I have no intention of watching the film again, not even on streaming. I wasted two and a half hours of my life today. That's enough.

Steven Spielberg is responsible for some of the best films ever made. "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" are just two examples. His name is a guarantee for quality. Usually. If "Disclosure Day" is the best he can do now, it's time for him to retire.

The Fall Guy (5 Stars)

Despite my best intentions, I don't have time to write a lengthy review of this film. A film like this deserves more. It's an incredible action film about a stunt man, on and off his film sets. There are hints of humour, but not enough to make it a comedy.

Ryan Gosling is one of the last people I would have cast as an action hero, even though he started his career in the title role of "Young Hercules". And yet he steps into the role as if he's been doing it all his life. There are three layers, as we can see in the behind-the-scenes feature on the Blu-ray. Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is the stunt double for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). They dress up to look similar. But Ryan Gosling himself has a stunt double, Troy Lindsay Brown. It's amusing to see the three men dressed up to look as identical as possible.

It's a sin that the film wasn't a box office success. That means there's no hope of a sequel.

Success Rate:  - 0.6

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IF (4 Stars)

"IF" stands for "Imaginary Friends". 12-year-old Bea is living with her grandmother in New York City while her father is in hospital waiting for heart surgery. She finds that strange creatures live in an apartment in the building. They live with a man called Cal who collects imaginary friends that were abandoned when children grew up into adulthood. Cal is looking for someone to help him reunite  the imaginary friends with their former owners. Bea accepts the job, but she's not too successful.

I shan't go into the plot in any more detail to avoid spoilers. After seeing the trailers I was surprised that it's very much a children's film. I expected something that would bridge the gap between children's films and adult films, but there's hardly anything adult in the film.

I never had an imaginary friend as a child. As far as I know. One of the main themes of the film is that adults have forgotten their imaginary friends. As a child I was a loner. Until I was eight I lived on the grounds of Little Aston Hall. There were only three families, and neither of the other families had children, so I didn't have anyone to play with. If anyone ever needed an imaginary friend, it was me.

The Fall Guy (5 Stars)

I'm growing to like the director David Leitch more and more. His films are always full of exaggerated action sequences. He can't be faulted. But sometimes I'm weird. I went into the cinema today with my mind made up to give "The Fall Guy" a four star rating. Ryan Gosling is an actor that I don't usually like. This was sealed by his awful performance in "La La Land". And he's the last actor I'd consider for an action role in a David Leitch film.

But as the film progressed, I couldn't help but realise that it's a straight five star film. The film won me over, and Ryan Gosling won me over.

Gosling plays a stunt man called Colt Seavers. In the 1980's there was a television series about a stunt man called Colt Seavers, but it's wrong to say that the film is based on the series. Apart from the name and the career, there's no comparison between the film and the series.

Colt is one of Hollywood's top stunt men, and he has a close connection with the action hero Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), for whom he regularly steps in as his stunt double. Tom's fame is largely due to the stunts performed by Colt. Colt is the unseen hero. Only film insiders know his name.

Colt has an accident while performing a dangerous stunt which puts him in hospital for over a year. He doesn't want to return to his old career. He becomes a valet parking cars. But his ex-girlfriend is directing her first movie, and she asks him to return to make the film a success. It goes one step further. The lead actor of the film is Tom Ryder, but he's disappeared. The producer wants Colt to find him, and if he can't find him he should step in and become the lead actor himself.

It's difficult to describe the action that takes place, on the film set and in the real world. Ryan Gosling is surprisingly convincing as an action hero. Five stars.

Oppenheimer (5 Stars)

I'll watch any film made by Christopher Nolan, despite my disappointment with his last (almost) true film, "Dunkirk". Before going to see "Oppenheimer" I was tempted to read up on Robert Oppenheimer. I'd heard his name and I knew he had something to do with the first atom bomb, but I knew nothing about his life. Eventually I decided to watch the film first and inform myself later.

Imagine my shock when the film started as a courtroom drama. Almost a courtroom drama. It's repeatedly emphasised that it wasn't a court, it was a senate committee. The difference is subtle. If found guilty, Robert Oppenheimer wouldn't be sentenced to prison, but he'd lose his security clearance and his ability to work for the government.

The film shows three phases in his life: before the Second World War, during the war and after the war. They're easy to tell apart from the cinematography, with the post war scenes being shown in black and white. A slight criticism is that I only roughly know when they happen. I would have appreciated the dates, or at least the years, being flashed on the screen.

So far I've only skimmed the Wikipedia page on Oppenheimer. It's late at night. I'll read more about him tomorrow. All I'll do is give a very brief summary of his life. It's not spoilers, because people with more knowledge than me would have known it already.

Before the war Robert Oppenheimer was an internationally renowned expert in quantum mechanics. He wasn't a Communist, but he kept an open mind, and he attended informal meetings of Communists. During the war he was made the leader of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. After the war he was an adviser to the American government on the further development of atomic bombs, but his past history with the Communist party was dug up to discredit him, until he lost his security clearance and was no longer allowed as an adviser.

It's a powerful film. It's not exactly a pacifist film, although it could be interpreted that way. Oppenheimer built the bomb, and he was proud of his work, because it saved millions of lives. In 1945 America was planning to invade Japan, but every Japanese child from the age of 12 upwards had been given a rifle. It was estimated that at least nine million Japanese civilians would die in the invasion. In comparison, less than 300,000 died as a result of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, in the following years Oppenheimer had a What-Have-I-Done feeling, and he tried to persuade America not to make even bigger bombs.

Despite being shown in English, the film was almost sold out in Gloria, a cinema that has two large screens. The other screen showed "Barbie", also almost sold out. This made me happy. It's Gloria's most successful day since the Corona pandemic started in 2020. Cinema isn't dead, it just needs the right films.

A Quiet Place 2 (5 Stars)

Wow! I'm finally back in the cinema again! The Coronavirus has done more to destroy the cinema than television, videos, DVDs and streaming together. There was a brief period when the cinemas in Stuttgart were open between the first and second lockdown. I managed to see six films between 24th June and 14th September last year, but "A Quiet Place 2" is my first film this year; my first film in nine months. That's sad.

The release of "A Quiet Place 2" (which has since been renamed "A Quiet Place Part 2") has been delayed by the Coronavirus lockdowns. It was originally planned for March 2020. I took this photo on 19th January 2020, the second day of the Stuttgart White Nights Festival. A contest was announced for the festival attendees: the best photo of a person attempting to remain quiet would win two free tickets for the film.

This was Benjamin's entry for the contest. No, he didn't win.

As you can see from the first photo, the planned German release date was 19th March 2020. It was finally released last week.

The film is divided into two parts. The first part takes place before the opening credits. It shows the day of the arrival of the aliens. Nobody was prepared for their arrival, and it was a quick slaughter. The monsters rush around killing everyone they can find.

The motivation of the alien invaders hasn't yet been revealed, if they have a motivation at all. They run around killing as many humans as they can, but it isn't for food. They kill for the sake of killing. It's also uncertain how they arrived on Earth. They don't seem intelligent enough to pilot a space ship. We can still only guess how they arrived. My personal theory is that a still unseen intelligent race wants to conquer the Earth, so they've unleashed wild animals to weaken the Earth's resistance. They (the intelligent aliens) know how to control or eliminate the wild beasts when they arrive. That's just a theory. If anyone has a different idea, write your idea in the comments box below. Don't forget to tick the "Notify Me" box.

The second part is the rest of the film. It begins on Day 474, the day after the end of the first film. The Abbott family is still reeling after the death of the husband and father, Lee Abbott. They see a fire in the distance, which they interpret as a sign that someone else is alive. Evelyn Abbott takes her three children to the location of the fire, and they find a solitary man, Emmett. He used to be a friend of Lee. At first he's unwilling to help, but he feels sympathy when he sees Lee's young baby.

A coded radio message suggests that they should travel across the sea. Only the daughter Regan is willing to take the risk and leaves by herself. Emmett fears for her life, so he catches up with her.

That's enough spoilers for now. This is a very good film which relies on suspense for effect. I'm proud of my fellow German cinema visitors. The theatre was absolutely silent. Not one rustle of a crisp bag or the pop of a beer bottle. Silence. This intensified the atmosphere.

The first film's main character was the mother, Evelyn Abbott, played by Emily Blunt. In the second film the main character is the daughter, Regan Abbott, played by Millicent Simmonds.

A Quiet Place (5 Stars)

When I last reviewed this film I said that it's best viewed on a large screen in a dark cinema. I still consider that to be true, but today I watched it on a relatively small screen, probably 32", with my son, and I still enjoyed it. The key to enjoying the film is that the room should be pitch black, and there should be absolute silence.

The Earth has been invaded by aggressive creatures, presumably flesh eaters. "A Quiet Place" follows the story of just one family that's living in a house in the woods. They're by themselves, isolated from the rest of the world, struggling to survive. The creatures are blind, but they have very sensitive hearing. They can move fast, so anyone who makes a noise is dead. Anyone who talks is dead, so the family communicates by sign language.

The film takes place on the 472nd and 473rd days of the invasion. A second film, "A Quiet Place 2", will be released next month. Judging by the trailer it will be a prequel, beginning on the first day of the invasion. That will make the film a lot louder.

Success Rate:  + 18.1

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Looper (4½ Stars)

This film has a premise that's ridiculously illogical, but it succeeds because of the story written on top of the premise and the excellent acting. Any film with Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt has to be good, doesn't it? They both play the same character, which stretches credibility. I'll explain the reason below.

The film takes place in Kansas in 2044. I would have preferred them to say "the near future" than name a year, but I'll let it go. In the future (i.e. some time after 2044) time travel has been invented, but it's been outlawed. That's understandable. If everyone could travel into the past to change events there would be chaos. A criminal gang in the year 2074 is using time travel discreetly for its own advantage. It's difficult to cover up murder in the future, so if they want to kill someone they send someone into the past, bound and hooded, to be executed by a waiting hitman on arrival. The payment for the execution is made in silver bars strapped to the victim's back.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of the hired killers, called Loopers. The reason for the name is that at the end of a person's contract he has to kill his future self. The payment is in gold bars, after which he can do whatever he wants for the next 30 years. At this point he'll be captured and sent back into the past to be executed. That's the loop.

That's a tidy system, until Joe's future self (Bruce Willis) arrives from the future. He's spent years training, so he manages to avoid being shot. He goes on the run, and young Joe is sentenced to death for not doing his job. Young Joe goes on the run as well, and eventually the two Joes find one another.

Old Joe wants to work together with young Joe to kill the future gang leader while he's still a child. It's not certain who he is, so he's going to kill all the children on a small list. (Does that remind you of "Terminator"?) Young Joe disagrees with killing children, so he goes to war with his older self. They're fighting against one another, not together as suggested by the poster.

By being in the past, everything old Joe does changes time, including changing his own memories. This puts young Joe at a disadvantage. Whenever young Joe goes somewhere to search for his older self, old Joe immediately remembers it and hides somewhere else.

Maybe you can already see what the problems with the premise are. I'll name a few points. You might be able to think of others.

It's said that the problem in the future (2074) is disposing of bodies. Why not kill the person and send his corpse into the past? That would eliminate the need for a hitman in the past. All that would be necessary is an undertaker. Alternatively, the corpse could be sent back into a cage with wild animals waiting for food.

Why should the hitmen be expected to kill themselves? Someone else could be given the job, making it less personal.

In fact, why shouldn't a hitman from the future be sent back to perform the executions? That would be much tidier.

Success Rate:  + 3.9

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Mary Poppins Returns (5 Stars)

This was my first cinema visit of 2019. It started the year off with a bang. It's a film that has been a long time in the making. There are eight books in the Mary Poppins series. The first book was adapted into a film in 1964, and this is the second book. At this speed it will be more than 300 years until the series has been completed.

"Mary Poppins Returns" takes place about 20 years after the first film. Michael and Jane Banks were children in the first film, now they're adults. Michael has children of his own, but his wife has died, so his sister Jane is helping him raise the children. They live in the same house where they grew up. At the beginning of the film lawyers come with the information that the house will be repossessed within a week because Michael is three months behind with a loan.

At this point Mary Poppins descends from the sky. She takes her place within the Banks' household as if she had never left. Her priority is the children's well-being. She's aware of the problems with the loan, but she doesn't get involved.

This isn't a film to be enjoyed with your head, it's to be felt with your heart. The visuals are glorious, and there are more animated sequences than in the first film.

Many of the songs from the first film have become classics that have taken their place in British culture, maybe also American culture. People in Britain know the songs by heart. The question I asked myself while sitting in the cinema was whether new classics have been created. It's difficult to decide after only hearing the songs once. My impression of the first half hour was that there was nothing of epic quality, but as the film continued the songs improved. I'm not talking about songs being merely good, I'm talking about songs that will be remembered from generation to generation for the next 50 years and beyond. That's a lot to ask of any songwriter.

The film achieved its highest peaks in the big song and dance musical numbers. There was a Wow effect every time they were in full swing. This is a musical magic that's missing in weaker films like "La La Land". There are more of these scenes than in "Mary Poppins", making "Mary Poppins" a more spectacular film overall.

I love this film. That's all I can say. The rest of 2019's films have a lot to live up to.

A Quiet Place (5 Stars)

This film is still in the cinemas in most countries, so if you want to see it on the big screen please hurry. It's a film that's best experienced in a large cinema. You'll understand what I mean after seeing it yourself.

In the near future the Earth has been overrun by savage alien creatures. They're sightless, but they have very sensitive hearing. If anyone makes a sound they can hear it from a long distance, and they're fast enough to catch people before they can move. In order to survive humanity has had to stop speaking and use sign language.

The Abbott family, Lee and Emily, live on a small isolated farm with their three children. As far as they know there are three of the creatures living nearby, so they live in constant fear. Sometimes the creatures pass them, so they have to be completely silent. Don't breathe!

This is one of the scariest horror films that I've seen for years. There's occasional background music, but most of the scenes are totally silent apart from slight background noises like the wind. It wasn't just the film's eerie suspense that thrilled me; it was the atmosphere in the cinema, where the whole audience sat in silence. Nobody dared to open a sweet wrapper or crunch popcorn.

The Adjustment Bureau (5 Stars)

Today is only the second time I've watched "The Adjustment Bureau". I'm not sure why I've waited so long. Did I forget what a good film it is? Maybe the problem is that I don't like Matt Damon as an actor. I'm not saying he's a bad actor, it's just a personal antipathy that I have based on the way he looks. Doesn't it ever happen to you? You meet someone and you immediately like or dislike that person based on superficial details like their clothes or the shape of their nose. It's not a problem with Matt Damon, it's a problem with me. Sometimes I'm superficial, and rather than deny it I have to face up to it.

Having said that, I have to admit that Matt is the best person for the role of David Norris. He looks just like how I would expect a young Congressman to look, especially a Congressman planning to become a Senator and maybe even the President.

Matt Damon as President? We could do a lot worse.

The main reason why I decided to rewatch the film today is because my original review has become popular over the last few weeks. Today it's the second most popular post in my blog, based on the number of readers. I'm not sure why. It's taken my readers four years to discover this post, but I've just reread it myself and I have to agree that it's one of my best posts. That causes me problems today, because I don't think I can write anything better.

Please click here to read my first review. It sparked a short conversation with my friend Elizabeth. I wish other people had joined in, because the film deals with important questions about the nature of free will. These are questions primarily for those who believe in God, but it's also an interesting subject for atheists and freethinkers.

Rather than review the film today I'll just quote the speech on free will held by the sinister Mr. Thompson, as played by Terence Stamp, probably one of the best actors alive today.

"We actually tried free will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman Empire we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the Dark Ages for five centuries, until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought that maybe we just needed to do a better job with teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason, then in 1910 we stepped back again. Within fifty years you'd brought us World War I, the Depression, Fascism, the Holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that point a decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix. You don't have free will, you have the appearance of free will".

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The Huntsman: Winter's War (3½ Stars)

Isn't it funny to see Chris Hemsworth fighting with axes instead of a big hammer? However many films he appears in I can't help thinking of him as Thor. Unless something big happens in the next 40 years Thor will remain his signature role.

Chris might be a good actor, but one thing he isn't good at is doing accents. He's Australian, which is obvious at the beginning of "The Huntsman". In the middle of the film he seems to be attempting an Irish accent. After that his accent sounds Scottish. Throughout the film he speaks in an artificially deep voice, as if trying to disguise the confusion in his accents. If he were putting on any accent at all it ought to be German, because that's where the original fairy tale of Snow White is supposed to take place. But to be honest, I wouldn't have a problem if he just spoke with his normal Australian accent. In a fantasy world it doesn't matter if the people sound like they come from different countries. It also doesn't matter in historical films, in which the language used isn't the language spoken at the time. To take the example of another actor, Russell Crowe always speaks with his own accent. Does it bother you that a Roman general speaks with a New Zealand accent in "Gladiator"? It's okay with me.

Now to the film itself. It's been incorrectly labelled a prequel to "Snow White and the Huntsman", which was made four years ago. It's actually a sequel, because it takes place after Snow White has become queen. What might have confused reviewers is that the opening scenes are flashbacks to things that happened before Snow White was born. This will especially have confused reviewers who only watched the first five minutes before writing their reviews. The poor overworked reviewers must have so many films to review that they have to make sacrifices in their time allocation.

In "Snow White and the Huntsman" we heard that the Huntsman was a widower. In the flashbacks we see his wife and how she died. We also meet Queen Ravenna's younger sister Freya. Then, when the film's story finally begins, we see that after Ravenna's death at the hands of Snow White in the first film Freya has become a mighty queen and has conquered almost all of the kingdoms surrounding Snow White's kingdom. Freya now intends to attack Snow White using the power of the magic mirror. The Huntsman makes it his goal to find the mirror and return it to Snow White.

This is a cute little fantasy tale. The set pieces succeed, such as the romantic interludes and the humour surrounding the dwarves. Unfortunately, the end result is disjointed. Allegiances change during the film, and the old enemies seem to eager to forgive one another. It's a reasonable film, but far from a masterpiece.

Sicario (3 Stars)

As the film explains to us in the first few minutes, "sicario" is a word used in Mexico meaning "hit man". What we aren't told is who the Sicario is. For most of the film we don't see any hit man. It's only at the end of the film that we see who the hit man in the title is.

This is a film about an FBI agent who specialises in hostage situations being asked to assist the CIA in an operation against Mexican drug smugglers. She is soon shocked to find that her new colleagues act recklessly, endangering innocent bystanders in gun battles with drug cartel members. Do the ends justify the means? That's her moral dilemma.

I can appreciate the film, but I couldn't enjoy it in the cinema today. It's too dark, too violent, too realistic. The action sequences are more like a war than any level of police operation. After watching the film I tried to find a message that I could take with me, something to make the film a positive work of art, but I couldn't. Everything is negative. There is too much evil on all sides.

Into the Woods (3 Stars)

Right and wrong don't matter in the woods.

This is a weird film. It's a musical fairy tale mash-up swingers party. The central characters are a baker and his wife who have been cursed to remain childless. A witch promises to lift the curse if they give her four magical items: Cinderella's slipper, Rapunzel's hair, Red Riding Hood's cape, and the cow belonging to Jack, the boy in the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk" This brings them into contact with the characters from the four fairy tales, since their stories are all taking place concurrently in the woods.

A lot of the fairy tale action occurs off screen. For instance, we don't see Cinderella at the ball, we just see her leaving and being pursued by the prince. That's just as well. It would have added an extra 60 minutes to a film that already lasts two hours. All four fairy tales are resolved with their respective happy endings, but the story of the baker and the witch continues. Then the film takes a weird turn. The prince, already married to Cinderella at this point, meets the baker's wife in the woods and has an affair with her. We only see them kissing, but obviously more happens. As a result Cinderella leaves the prince and goes to live with the baker. It's all so unsettling to see the fairy tales that children love twisted into immorality. Welcome to the 21st Century!

Johnny Depp is the film's biggest actor, but only has a small role as the wolf. That's a shame, because he's the best singer in the musical. Only Meryl Streep (the witch) comes close. On the other hand, the "wolf" is such a creepy character. Rather than a murderous predator he seems to be a leering paedophile when he meets Red Riding Hood. It made me feel very uncomfortable.

The Adjustment Bureau (4½ Stars)

This is a fascinating film that deals with important topics. What makes a person make decisions? Is there such a thing as free will? Or are our decisions simply the product of the stimuli that we receive? These are questions that have been discussed in the realms of religion, philosophy and even psychology for centuries.

David Norris is a New York congressman running for the Senate in 2006. He's ahead in the polls, but on the day before the election photos are leaked to the press of an immature college prank which turns the electorate against him. The election results are announced, and by chance he meets a ballet dancer before he holds his speech to wish the winner luck. She inspires him to give a moving speech which boosts his popularity and makes him certain to win the following election.

A month later David sees the woman on a bus and finds out her name is Elise. He wants to stay in touch with her, but he is kidnapped by a group of mysterious men who burn the note with her telephone number and forbid him to see her again. They tell him that it isn't his plan. The men present themselves as the "Adjustment Bureau", an organisation of supernatural beings who have been guiding the development of the human race for thousands of years. Their job is to prod important people into making the right decisions, by creating chance encounters that will keep them to a plan written by their leader, the "Chairman". It's very rare for the bureau to let itself be seen, but David is a very important person who they want to become the American President.

David immediately makes the connection and asks if they are angels and the Chairman is God. They give a vague answer that leaves both David and the viewers to make their own decision. The bureau deny that man has free will. Everything a person does is based on the stimuli he receives from the environment, and it is up to the bureau to create helpful stimuli. The bureau members themselves are not omniscient, but they carry books with the plan written by the Chairman telling them the results from every possible stimulus.

David is not happy with being told that he has to follow a plan that forbids him to see Elise again. He demands the right to have free will and acts against the plan set for him. The word "destiny" is noticeably avoided in the film, as if to suggest that there's a higher purpose than the plan itself.

I'll stop here because I've already written too much. This review contains too many spoilers. This is a good film to watch with a friend and sit discussing afterwards. It won't change the mind of anyone who already has fixed views on destiny, whether from a theist or atheist standpoint, but it will provoke those who are undecided to consider the deeper questions of life.

Gulliver's Travels (3½ Stars)

For me this is an example of a film being too short. Fleshing it out for an extra half hour or more would have made it much more enjoyable. In particular, Jack's visit to Brobdingnag wasn't developed enough.

Apart from the name of the main character and the island he's stranded on this film has very little to do with the books written by Jonathan Swift. It's a comedy starring Jack Black. That says it all. Jack plays Lemuel Gulliver, a mail man in a large New York company. When sent on a solo trip to the Bermuda Triangle -- do companies really do that? -- he's shipwrecked and lands in a country where everyone is smaller than him. Supposedly he's 12 times their size, but to me the ratio looked more like 24:1.

Is it a good film? Ho hum, difficult to say. I like Jack Black, but this isn't one of his best films. It's enjoyable, good for a few belly laughs, but nothing memorable. Like so many films made today.