• Alien vs Predator 1: Watchable, if you like Aliens or Predators. Switch off your brain first though. The Weyland tie-ins are neat.
• V for Vendetta: Well filmed, a bit too predictable and hard to suspend disbelief in a few places. Good message I guess. Definitely watchable – once. Not a classic.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars. Actually the movie is just the first few episodes of the show added together. Once you understand it, it becomes cool – the show is definitely better than the prequels. Recommended for any Star Wars or Science Fiction fan.
• Iron Man: Fun bubble-gum movie. Definitely one of the entertaining comic superhero movies. Recommended.
• The Dark Knight: It could be an excellent movie, if they had left out the half-burnt guy’s subplot at the end; it was, overall, about a half-hour too long. Also, the cellphone sonar thing was dumb. Keith Ledger really did do a good job, the Batman actor was too wooden.
• Chicken Run: Watched this years ago, still a fun movie. It’s an Aardman animation (of Wallace & Grommit fame). Awesome movie, too, if you like Wallace & Grommit, you’ll love this one.
• The Mummy: Another movie I watched a long time ago; good, straight-forward Indiana-Jones style fun. Highly recommended.

The young Chihiro moves to another town with her parents. As her father takes a short-cut, they end up in a decommissioned amusement park – something that isn’t very unusual in Japan. It’s deserted, but yet there are food stands, and the parents gorge themselves despite Chihiro’s wish to go. Things begin to go really weird at this point: The parents turn into huge pigs (literally), and Chihiro is trapped in a weird fantasy land. She ends up in a bath house for gods, and has to work there while trying to save her parents and escape.

To make it short, I totally love this move. It’s well-drawn, in a great style that just screams “mystical fairy tale land”. The characters are nicely-created as well, even though there are some bits in the second half of the movie that betray its Disney funding. The atmosphere is one of sense of wonder, and I kind of wish that we could explore this strange world further.

If you like fantasy movies and/or Japanese anime, you should definitely watch this movie. Even if you are not into Anime, Spirited Away is fairly mainstream… so give it a try anyway. It’s also very appropriate for children – there is some blood, but nothing truly terrifying I think.

Two thumbs up – this is an awesome movie.

Donnie Darko is about time travel and parallel universes, and mixes a dark atmosphere and scary imagery with what almost seems like a typical high school flick (but really isn’t).

The Director’s Cut is 128 minutes and thus 20 minutes longer than the original version. The package includes 2 DVD’s, one with the movie itself and one with extras.

The Movie

Donnie is a teenager with personality problems. He’s seeing a psychiatrist and taking medicine to control these, and except for sleepwalking, everything seems to be fine. Things turn weird when Frank, a creature in a giant bunny suit and a frightening mask, appears in Donnie’s dreams. He lures Donnie outside, and saves his life: In a freak accident, a jet engine crashes into the Darkos’ house, straight into Donnie’s bedroom.

From this point on, Frank is Donnie’s “imaginary friend”. And he begins to order Donnie to conduct increasingly destructive tasks. Donnie, initially just accepting of Frank’s presence, begins to investigate, and finds out that there might be a time-travel connection to his “friend” and the freak accident that almost cost Donnie his life.

Donnie’s school life is also portrayed; giving the movie a kind of 1980s High School movie feel. While Donnie follows Frank’s “orders” and floods the school and burn down the apartment of the local self-help guru, he rebels against the same institutions during his daylight hours; but not by being destructive, but by asking questions about the establishment.

It is hard to describe the plot of the movie without spoiling it. In the end, things are resolved and make sense – problem is, you still don’t know exactly what is the “truth” as told by the movie.

**Donnie Darko** takes classic elements of high school movies, horror movies, and mixes them up with time-travel and parallel world philosophy to create a thought-provoking and stiumlating whole. On the way it asks questions about reality, normality, and authority.

The script is written very well; there is nothing in the entire film that is predictable, and yet it all makes sense. The movie is choreographed very well, the characters are detailed and believable, and brought to live by an extremely good cast. Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie Darko himself does an especially good job; he manages to play the “psychotic” teenager extremely well; believable and never overdone. His mischievous / evil grin speaks volumes; we totally believe the character. But the other cast members are also good. I especially enjoyed Patrick Swayze as the self-help guru with a nasty secret.

Extras

There’s a bunch of extras, like a “Making of” and an audio commentary track. These are pretty interesting and a nice bonus, but I felt that they were just “normal extras”. Nothing really knocking me off my feet, but on the other hand it felt satisfying. The audio commentary was especially insightful.

Bottom line

If you enjoy a parallel-world / time-travel movie, horror / suspense movies, or really strange high-school movies, then Donnie Darko is for you. But don’t expect an easy movie. It can be confusing at times. It’ll make you ask: “Huh? What’s this about now?” – Give it time, or watch the movie twice. It becomes all clear in the end. The movie is easily worth its money. The double-DVD is choke full of extras, adding to the value. The only bad feeling I am left with is the “piracy is a crime” trailer at the beginning, that you cannot skip. The old text messages were annoying enough, but this is just too much. In case nobody at the company who sells these noticed: I already spent the money on this DVD, I am not a pirate, and I don’t want to be annoyed like this.

Still, I have to give Donnie Darko two thumbs up.

Who or what is Spider-Man? Well, he’s a super-hero, created when a shy school-boy named Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider. When he fails to stop a criminal who subsequently kills his uncle, Peter Parker realizes that he must use his powers to fight injustice – Spider-Man is born. The radioactive spider is nicely updated to a genetically engineered one in this movie. We get to see Peter’s first attempts at using his superpowers, and so on. A goodly amount of the movie is spent on establishing the characters. But this doesn’t hurt – it’s fun.

What can I say, the movie is fine. It’s not boring (except the love scenes near the end, but hey, it’s just about still bearable), good action, drama, and appropriate comedy. The actors did a rather good job of portraying believable characters. I think the one thing I disliked most was the costume of the evil guy. The comparison to X-Men – the last modern superheroes movie – is favorably for Spider-Man: The story is not so much better as it is told better.

We paid 3 Euro, so I guess I can’t complain. If you haven’t seen Spider-Man yet, go watch it, you probably won’t regret. If you can catch a showing (or the DVD, once it’s out), you should give this movie a chance. If you like the super-hero genre at all, you won’t be disappointed.