“I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.” – Who Framed Roger Rabbit ψ
Movie Review: The Dark Tower
“I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.”
Honestly, I wasn’t aware of the fact that Stephen King ever wrote a book that didn’t serve any kind of horror cliché. That said, I couldn’t have been more surprised when I read about this movie, based on a series of eight! books, written by Mister Horror himself and with zero likelyhood for me to have nightmares about clowns and pet cementeries afterwards.
So, when my friends asked me to join them on Saturday to go and see The Dark Tower, I said yes – or maybe it was something like: “The critics aren’t that good and it’s a Stephen King and why can’t we go and watch the Emoji movie???” before they dragged me into the car and locked the doors ….
My above mentioned hesitation didn’t only revolve from bad critics I read some days before, the fact it’s a King and a trailer that didn’t quite knock me off my feet, it was also the disbelief that they squeezed and squashed eight books into one movie. I mean: How? And why? And what?!?
To be fair, I haven’t read any of the books, so I cannot judge on that matter. I simply don’t know if the movie does them justice or if it is a complete fail on the series. But what I can judge, is what I saw:
Idris Elba, playing a gunslinger (with no clue what a Hotdog is) was – as always – a joy to watch. He is an amazing actor and I loved how he portrayed Roland, a guy who’s only purpose left in life is to find and kill an evil sorcerer called Walter, played by Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey for once playing the bad guy, was a change I welcomed. Child actor Tom Taylor as Jake, did a really good job too. He harmonized very well with Elba and they made a good combo.
The plot wasn’t mind blowing. It was flat, simple in an attempt to not be simple but seemingly complex and the end came too fast and to be honest, not fast enough for me. And the way it all ended, seemed way too easy, after the – as said in the summary – eternal battle between the two parties:
The last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain, has been locked in an eternal battle with Walter O’Dim, also known as the Man in Black, determined to prevent him from toppling the Dark Tower, which holds the universe together. With the fate of the worlds at stake, good and evil will collide in the ultimate battle as only Roland can defend the Tower from the Man in Black.
To sum it up: The Dark Tower is a movie you can watch when there is nothing better happening in your life. But I personally wouldn’t want to watch it again.
For me it would be interesting to know what people who have actually read all eight books say about the movie. Anyone read and watched it?
⊥Bookmark: Castle Rock by Stephen King
By pure chance I just saw the five month old teaser trailer for Castle Rock, a TV series by Stephen King and J.J. Abrams, based on the freaky, creepy universe Stephen King created in his books. The genre is declared as Fantasy, Mystery and – surprise surprise – Horror! Which, honestly, for me is normally a no-go, as I am as easily scared as an opossum, but – and that’s a huge but – I don’t want to let my fears dictate my life and the trailer, even though you can’t see much but what you can hear … that’s something different entirely, seems simply too promising to just let it pass me by.
The release date will be sometime next year, which hopefully gives me enough time to gather some courage to watch it …. ^^
Movie Review: The Circle
My first review ever on this blog will be about a movie I didn’t even finish watching. I made it to approximately minute sixty-something before I called it quits and literally walked away. For me to give in on a movie already half way trough … let’s just say, it takes a lot. It’s frankly not something I do. If I am not into a movie right from the start, I simply stop watching it. Five to ten minutes into the plot and I know that it’s not what I want to spent the next ninety+ minutes of my life with.
With The Circle, it took me longer, maybe even too long. The reason for this delayed surrender was the simple thought of “It’s an adaption! It’s Emma Watson (Hermione!) and Tom Hanks (Run Forrest Run!) it can’t be that bad. It will get better! Have faith!”. Well, obviously faith tricked me into … I wouldn’t call it wasting, but if the shoe fits …. so, yes, it actually felt like faith tricked me into wasting sixty-something precious minutes of my life to watch half a movie I only could shake my head about.
I mean, when you read the summary of the movie plot
“A woman lands a dream job at a powerful tech company called the Circle, only to uncover an agenda that will affect the lives of all of humanity.”
and you watch the official trailer, and it makes you think: doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
Your friend google tells you, that it’s the book adaption of a best-selling! novel and there is this feeling you have deep down in your gut, that the topic thematised in this movie, namely the fact that with all the technological progress, the steady rise of social media platforms and the ubiquitous pressure of being visible to nearly everyone in nearly every situation thinkable and unthinkable; 24/7, 365 days of the year, from now on until the day you die or the day they invent something like an after-world-wide-web with after-twitter or insta-after-gram or however you want to call it, that this movie should/would/could result in something amazing, inspiring and somehow shoking because of the truth behind it all.
But instead you get sixty-something minutes about a girl called Mae (Emma Watson) with a seemingly ill father, working for a tech company similar to a sect led by a man called Bailey (Tom Hanks), playing big brother the “big” way with only three minutes non-camera action for a toilet break, after a near death experience with a kajak and losing in the whole process of being 100% visible – no matter the consequences – not only her privacy but also her friends.
Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But what you don’t know is that I suffered through sixty-something minutes of – let’s call it “big brother propaganda” and the strange feeling that I was watching a propaganda video for the next sect summer camp, where everyone is carrying around tiny cameras on their bodies filming every boring and not so boring bit of their lives incl. parent-sex nobody wants to see.
Frankly, it was a nice try and it’s an important topic we all should be aware of and we all should think maybe a little bit more about. Especially about how much of our privacy we actually want to sacrifice for our online presence. I mean, how many of you ever ask themselves: “Did I just give too much information? Do they know too much about me? Is this too private? Do I really need to post a half naked picture of my body? Should I really tag my location?” Not enough, I bet. I’m honest, I never really gave it a thought, because using Instagram – after so many years – comes naturally to me. I don’t even think about it that much anymore. I take pictures and I post them. Simple as that. And I for sure, don’t do it for the likes, because let’s be honest, there are way better, cooler, fancier, more influential and blogger-isher Instagram pages out there than mine.
To sume it all up: The Circle is a movie not at all meeting my expectations, with flat dialogues, unnecessary backround stories, a credulous main character played by an okay Emma Watson, a theme not well played, but there is at least a winsome Tom Hanks as “sect” leader with some charming jokes to loosen the mood.
And in addition to the words on the movie poster
Knowing is good.
Knowing everything is better.
Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t even have started watching it.
Quote of the Month
“My Mama always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.'” – Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump⊕
