The Happening

The Happening is made by M. Night Shyamalan who had The Sixth Sense as a successful debut movie. Afterwards, he has made several movies, but not all of them have been as successful as the first one. In addition, his movies tend to be more boring for every new movie, so I actually had no expectations for “The Happening”. Probably therefore, I was positively surprised by the movie and liked it. It follows a man (Mark Wahlberg) and his family as they try to escape from an inexplicable natural disaster. The plot revolves around a mysterious neurotoxin that causes any person coming into contact with it to commit suicide.

Mark Wahlberg was cool in his role, and it was interesting to watch him in such kind of role. The background music of the movie seemed like heard before in other movie. Anyhow, it works in such movie.

The movie is a mixture of thriller, drama and horror. Actually, it isn’t that scary but still good entertainment.

Rating: 5 of 6

2012

2012 is the latest adventure of Earth’s doomsday, made by Roland Emmerich who has also made similar blockbusters like The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day and several others earlier. Actually, when you hear that this director has made such a movie, you know what you are going to experience during watching it. The movie is full of huge CGI-effects to show destruction of the Earth, and the story is also average interesting with some situation comedy. If we disregard some of the faults in the script, the movie is great experience.

Rating: 5 of 6

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Somehow boring melo-drama-thriller about an atmosphere, where all kind of sinister activities are taking place. The brother couple, Andy and Hand (in form of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke), are planning to rob a jewellery shop, their parent’s jewellery shop. In the meanwhile, Hank has alcohol problems and fails to pay his daughter’s child support. In addition, he also has an affair with a wife, his brother’s wife.

The script has several ingredients to make an interesting movie, but the movie tend to be boring. Woody Allen has also made similar movies, melo-drama-thrillers, which are interesting too, but this one is nothing more than a below average time killer if you have nothing else to do on a Friday evening.
 
Rating: 3 of 6

The Wire – Season 3

All right season. Actually, the previous two seasons were better than this one, but this one picked up during climax in the last disks.

Rating: 4 of 6

Tropic Thunder

Boring movie. It’s a comedy and has some laughing moments, but the rest of it is waste of time.

Rating: 3 of 6

Wanted

Cool and funny movie with Salman Khan. The movie is directed by Prabhudeva, and has Tamil movie style. Nothing wrong with it, in fact, it gives some freshness to the movie. The script has several weak points, but overall, the movie is good entertainment.

Rating: 5 of 6

Nasim Karim: Izzat

Boken forteller historien om Noreen, som er oppvokst i Norge og opplever utfordringer knyttet til å leve i denne sammenblandingen av to kulturer. Allerede i begynnelsen av boka skjønner man at hun er blitt utsatt for tvangsekteskap, så resten av boka forteller historien om hvordan hun har havnet i denne situasjonen. Boka har for forøvrig ingenting til felles med den norske filmen Izzat som kom i 2005.

Boka ble utgitt i 1996, og man kan tenke seg at hvor nyskapende den ble opplevd på det tidspunktet hvor man fikk mulighet til å lese om hvordan kvinner opplever å vokse opp i Norge. Temaer og hendelser som blir tatt opp i boka var ikke så kjente og synlige i mediebildet i 1996, som gjør at den ble opplevd som et friskt bidrag til å fortelle slike opplevelser. Per dags dato, dersom man følger med i mediene, så bør man ha klart å få med seg historier som blir beskrevet i boka slik at slike ting oppleves ikke så ”nye” i dag som i 1996. Noe av dette fikk man jo også kjennskap til via Pakkis (Khalid Hussain), og denne gangen er det hendelsene i en kvinnes liv som står i fokus.

Boka er godt skrevet, og språket er slik at den er enkel å forstå for de fleste. Imidlertid, så benyttes det virkemidler for å gjøre fortellingen mer dramatisk og rørende, og et av virkemidlene er at hovedpersonen, Noreen, er en følelsesladet person som ofte gir uttrykk for følelsene sine ved å gråte. Dette er for så vidt greit, men når hun gråter i nesten annet hvert avsnitt i boka, så blir det regelrett for mye. I verste fall opplever man at fortellingen er deprimerende, og det er ikke alltid et godt utgangspunkt for å få en stjerne.

Som en oppsummering kan det sies at boken er godt bidrag, og man må se den i sammenheng med når den kom. En historie som er greit å få med seg, med unntak av all den griningen som forfatteren utsetter oss for…

Terningkast: 5/4 av 6

The Mist

All right horror based on a work by Stephen King. The movie is about a town which got rounded by mist, and a man comes in warning of something in the mist. The people seal themselves within a store, and we see what fear can do in such circumstances.

The movie has somehow cheap animations, but what else can you ask for when the movie is relatively low-budget..

Rating: 4 of 6

Law Abiding Citizen

Interesting action thriller about a man (Gerard Butler as Clyde Shelton) whose wife and daughter got killed by some robbers. In the court, the criminals get away without exact justice, so Clyde decides to take the case in his hands in order to bring proper justice.

The movie reminded me of Man on Fire, which also was about a man executing retaliatory actions.

Rating: 5 of 6

Love Aaj Kal

Interesting and funny love story with Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone, made by Imtiaz Ali from Jab We Met. This is actually the very first movie Saif Ali Khan has produced himself with a partner, and the movie has gained great success at box office.

This movie has some similarities to another Saif Ali Khan movie which came some years back, but I’ll not mention the title in order to not spoil the story :).

Love Aaj Kal tells a story of a modern couple and their relationship and compares it to another (old) love story of Rishi Kapoor’s character in his younger days.

Rating: 5 of 6