Fabian-Henckmann

An over-8 rating on IMDb is usually a certification of greatness or at the very least an indication that the movie is watchable. In my personal view, "Blood" is neither great nor really watchable. The main beef I have with "Blood" is the lack of a gripping storyline. The movie goes on and on and does at no point build up a climax. Secondly, it is indeed a dark and negative movie - which doesn't automatically make it bad, but in "Blood", there was just no compelling driver for the evil, no fight between good and bad. The movie lacked any sort of passion. Yes, I believe the acting by DDL was very good and yes, the visuals and camera were equally excellent. But as an advocate for storyline, I felt incredibly bored after about 30 minutes into the movie and that feeling never stopped.

The movie business in general tries to stick to the formulas that are known to work, and German films are no exception. Sometime in the mid-90s, Till Schweiger started to mass-produce comedy-drama hybrid movies and it seems that this is the way to go nowadays. "A Friend Of Mine" is full of great cinematography, moody and melancholic songs, a very slow pace and a lot of pseudo-philosophical garbage. But taking a few typical, well worn-out formulas doesn't always make for a great film. You can have a slow, subtle and gentle movie and it's brilliant ("Before Sunrise") and you can do the same and fail miserably ("A Friend Of Mine"). The story line is extremely uneventful and the characters unconvincing. Many parts of the script don't relate to the evolution of the story at all and are just puzzling at best. One thing proved: It takes a Jim Jarmusch to turn a story going nowhere into something very watchable.

Ouch, this one was really a pain to watch to the end. Hadn't I browsed the internet in parallel, I would've died of severe brain convulsions. Okay, I might not be the perfect audience for action movies like AF1, because I believe that even action movies should still follow some rudimentary logic at least some of the time. Just because you're making an action movie doesn't mean you are obliged to throwing all logic and sense for reality overboard. Wolfgang Petersen certainly doesn't share that opinion. Add some horrible visual effects (King Kong in the 30s looked more realistic - was CGI really that primitive in 1997??) and several scenes that just don't lead to anything, and you get an action movie that scrapes at the bottom of its genre.