My Reviews of German & Dutch Films

3/10

As per usual, whenever a horror film is in a "foreign" language, users rate it higher than if the EXACT SAME film had been given to them in English, by an American film company. This unusual prejudice/bias (or preference) is an important thing to know in terms of interpreting all these (baffling) averages. (If you're unable to interpret the averages here, then you'll be mislead time and time again.) I come across this bias all the time, so it's not even up for debate: fact is that, for whatever foolish reason, the (American/British) users here overrate "foreign" films. A typical bad horror film gets either 6.5 (i.e. Is popular because people love garbage), or if people correctly recognize its obvious badness such a film gets a 3.5 average. And yet, that 3.5 would become a 5.5 if you substituted English with a "foreign" language.

How revered would Bergman's dull, pompous dramas be if they were in English? I guarantee they'd have much lower averages. It's a psychological thing: people are rarely rational about anything, and are mostly unaware of their own foibles and prejudices. There must be this sense of "the grass is greener elsewhere" which is why merely by hearing a foreign language instead of "mundane" English one is convinced that the movie must be superior. Similarly to the way the mere sound of the French language gives some people an impression of snobbery and/or high quality or even artiness...

Anyway...

Another mediocre Dutch film, because the Dutch appear to be rather inept when it comes to cinema. They are reasonably good at metal, and very good at football, but films aren't their forte. And in that sense they are similar to their cousins the Germans, who also have great football and some good metal, but suck at making movies. I've never been able to explain why Scandinavians (with their much smaller populations) are better than Germans and the Dutch - i.e. Their southern relatives - in movie-making. No: Herzog, Wenders and Fassbinder most definitely do not impress me, let alone the Germans who sold out to Hollywood, trash-meisters such as Emmerich... Especially not Rainer Werner, a nepotist hack if there ever was one. (Hilariously enough, Germans are far better at making trashploitation such as the "Schulmadchen-Report" movies. Those are far more entertaining than their "serious" films.)

But considering that this film features both Dutch and English dialog, were audiences conflicted about whether to like this film or not? An amusing notion...

One scene that I found rather odd is when the blonde gets angry at the archaeologist and jumps out of the car. She is insulted that he called her "paranoid" (which she wasn't), so she proceeds to prove to him that she is mentally stable - by jumping on him at night, in the middle of a field and riding him for the first time. Yeah: nothing will convince a new male acquaintance of a woman's sanity more than if she sexually "assaults" him at a field at night, right after a spate of mysterious deaths (and a home invasion at her own place). I found this unintentionally funny because it was very clear to me that the writer wasn't even aware of the irony.

My biggest grievance is that the film is far too slow but without the style to make up for it, wasting needless time and space on a multitude of characters and pointless little filler scenes. I'm also not sold on the idea of males being hypnotized by ghosts into killing their own wives and daughters (and other women), I find that corny and average. After the old geezer fails to murder his wife, she becomes possessed and kills him - which turns the plot into a mess. "You didn't kill me so I will kill you" is anyway more apt for a comedy. (We later find out that she was possessed all along.)

The notion that a lineage of women have been routinely sacrificed - and in the same way - one generation after another every 2-3 decades for several centuries - while NOBODY noticed a pattern is just... too stupid. The Dutch are smart people, they would have figured this out a century earlier, at least, not as late as 2022...

The final plot-twist isn't bad, but it still fails to explain how NOBODY in this town managed not to notice that EVERY female in a long line of women have been dying a violent death in the exact same way - and for centuries. Ridiculous.

"Hey, that De Scooping family had another woman murdered, just like her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, her great-great-grandmother... It must be a coincidence, right?"

"Yes, of course it is. Even the police are ignoring it, they realize it's nothing."

Gimme a break.

The end-twist is both intriguing and silly. It's interesting in the sense that it means that every 30 years the daughter snuffs it, not the mother, because the latter had been already "killed" during the previous sacrifice, and is "merely" possessed by the demon. But that's also why it's silly: the notion that this demon IMPERSONATES a person for DECADES is more suitable for a comedy. Talk about patience and great acting skills! This demon is actually willing to impersonate one woman at a time, for so many years, day in and day out, just to ensure the next sacrifice goes without a hitch. There's something very goofy about this concept...

There are some loose ends with the various sub-plots involving the excavation team and the deaths of males. Why did that first guy die? And is it a coincidence that the archaeologists start their digging merely days before the sacrifice?

In Europe 13 year-old girls can be naked in movies and have sex - and all in the name of "art", of course.

4/10

A typical European pretentious "message movie", except I've no clue what the message could be? Here's a list of possible messages:

1. If you find a foreign boy who is wounded and running away from drug-smugglers, it's best to call the police, or at least tell your parents about it.

2. If you shoot a boy, make sure you check he's dead, because a rich adopted girl living in ther woods could find him, nurse him, have sex with him, and then... NOT call the police.

3. If you want to have pedophiles watch your movies, get your 13 year-old actress to take all her clothes off and have sex with a 13 year-old boy.

4. 13 year-old Afghan boys who are mortally wounded in the stomach are perfectly capable of having sex - for the first time - just hours before they die, with their new-found Dutch girlfriends.

The movie has barely any dialogue, as is typical of so many European, especially Scandinavian dramas (yeah, I know, Holland is not in Scandinavia, but it's close enough). However, the movie is sufficiently strange as to be watchable, in spite of its absurd premises.

Naturally, the movie ends tragically. Anyone surprised?

How many pedo internet forums discuss/worship this movie? I wonder...

Btw, read this TRIVIA segment on IMDb:

"There is a controversial sex scene in the movie, where the then 13-year-old Laurien Van den Broeck is shown topless. In a 2002 interview in the RTL Boulevard TV show, she said she actually did not like to shoot the sex scene, but the cast, the director and the crew had persuaded her to do it anyway."

What European "artists" won't do for their "art", ey? As long as you have a left-wing message you can get away with anything - including sexually harassing a 13 year-old to do a SEX SCENE. Interesting, how "progressive" Dutch society is... Did anyone bother to sue this director?

A movie that hates hence disregards its own rules.

4/10

This slasher film is so dumb it could have been penned by Argento or Hitchcock. (Those of you who give a damn about logic will understand what I mean; others will cry murder, off with my head.)

1. A very dumb incident leads to the soldier killing a hooker. That's comedy material, not horror. He enters her ho abode blindfolded (why???) then starts getting war-zone flashbacks (as they all do), then kills the prostitute. Duh. Double duh. Triple duh. Yet not that duh compared to how the rest of this nonsense unfolds.

2. The blonde is blamed for the bus being thrown into the water! That was quite the display of early BS, an early warning to the viewer that he should under no condition expect any logic or sense from this idiotic turkey. And that's the only promise the film does deliver on.

3. "Nobody believes me because I look so guilty!" The blonde plays the scapegoat for far too long. How suitably hitchcockian, this dumb plot-device. Not to mention how utterly harmless this tiny thing looks. The group actually believes she is killing off the tourists, one by one. How? With her spidey powers?

4. The blonde doesn't ask to be untied on several occasions when she would have been untied. Bloody hell, they just kept piling up the dung in this shoddy script.

5. The Japanese guy gets spared for repenting - yet gets killed anyway later on. The first example of a gross display of the movie breaking its own rules. Hey, nobody ASKED you to set rules, movie, but you did anyway - and then you broke them. How are we supposed to take you seriously, movie?

6. How the hell was the soldier supposed to repent (or not)? He never got a chance. There was no overture to his murder as there was for others. So the movie breaks another one of its own rules.

7. Did someone actually NOT suspect the Rod-Steiger-looking bus driver from the very beginning? You could read that "twist" an hour ahead. So obvious.

8. The interaction between the tourists is asinine, illogical and completely unrealistic. The dialog is moronic.

9. Does the "Happy Holland Tours" company give out an ad that says "looking for volunteers to be sacrificed at the gates of hell - murderers only"?

10. The demon evaporates after the house is burnt down - then shows up again: no explanation given. The movie goes back on its word yet again, breaks yet another of its own rules, sacrificing logic just for the sake of another lame "thrill".

11. The bus driver gets his throat slashed - yet he too reappears, and he's not even supposed to be a supernatural demon, but merely a human servant. No explanation given, because the movie thinks all its viewers are imbeciles. (Which isn't true. Not all of us are morons.)

A Dutch horror flick strikes out again. "De Lift" stunk, "Saint" stunk, and this stinks too. Three strikes and you're out. I'm not wasting my time with any more Dutch movies. The Dutch should stick to windmills and prostitutes, leave horror films to others.

Male fantasy perhaps?

4/10

Wim Wenders decides to test our patience straight out of the gate with a 20-minute intro where absolutely nothing happens and the scarce dialog is about as interesting as waiting for a cashier to give you your change. I must admit that I failed this test, because I cheated: I fast-forwarded.

What screams "art" more convincingly than a huge segment of non-activity? Aren't all plot-free movies artistic? Hipsters seem to think they are. If they ever do actually think, that is. Worse yet, the main character is Wim's alter Ego, an extension of himself. Poor Wim thinks that this skinny, goofy-looking actor is a hunk, which is how he treats him. Da ladies just flock to him. But we can laugh at that at least. We can sneer at a nerdy director trying to live out his male fantasies through celluloid nonsense. Less amusing is when Wim lets the inner/outer snob come out, as when the blond guy moans like a pompous hipster: "the television here is barbarous". Did he expect a bunch of Lenin/Stalin/Mao/Castro documentaries? Wim is a pseudo-intellectual/pseudo-philosophical left-winger, so obviously he misuses a few scenes to bitch about 70s America – despite this not being a political movie. I don't know who's the more pompous putz, Wim or the blond guy. Then again, they're the same person.

Speaking of male fantasy, there is a big fat elephant in the room and nobody is addressing him. Yes, a young adult male travels with a 9 year-old blonde girl. Wim's own pedo fantasy was such a strong urge that he came up with the ludicrous premise how his alter Ego can have a shot at spending time – legally - with a very underage girl that he barely knows. Apparently, the girl's mother considers it normal to let her daughter fly over the Atlantic with a man she'd only just met. She doesn't even discuss the finer details of such a tricky/fishy undertaking/trip with him face-to-face, but sends instead a vague letter, as if informing him that she'd just had a nice lunch at a nearby restaurant. Is Wim being a clueless moron or are German mothers really this uninterested in the well-being of their kids? Will Sting record a song called "Germans Hausfraus Love Their Children Too"?

The audacity I have to suggest that Wim might be catering to pedos and that this movie might be a thin-veiled "gift" for all child-fondling perverts! Yes, the audacity. Well, not so much audacity as an educated guess. Wim was one of the show-biz hypocrites who declared their opposition to Polanski's extradition to the States for drugging and rapping a 13 year-old in the 70s. Coincidence? I very much doubt it. 2 and 2 is always 4.

AITC was made at the time of the sexual revolution, which wasn't just about spoiled middle-class hippies having random bunny sex in smelly communes. No, there were those who wanted to relax child-protection laws, lower the age of consent: that sort of thing. All those zombified hipsters who struggle to find layers of hidden profundity in this banal movie should not sneer and spit at me, because I am doing the same as they are: I am merely "speculating" about this piece of "art". What if this is a thickly-veiled pedo-fantasy? I have just as many valid arguments to that effect as a random hipster has that this is an "existential drama about the human condition". In fact, I have more.

The pompous writer is a mirror-image of Wim; it's so obvious. He comes up with some lame-ass pretentious excuse why he didn't do his job – write articles – and offers cheesy Polaroids of his travels instead to his boss, pics that any cretin with ten functioning fingers could have done. Naturally, Wim never intended us to interpret the scene that way. He wants us to sympathize with the hack journalist, with his pompous "artistic" ambitions, because what is more artistic than shooting Polaroids during a road trip? Just ask Japanese tourists how artistic that is. Wim probably also considers himself some kind of a genius with that special magic touch that turns any recording or snippet into artistic gold. No wonder all of his movies stink. And no wonder he tries to sell the journalist's obvious laziness and unprofessionalism as some kind of noble artistic rebellion against his supposedly clueless corporate bosses – who DARE to expect from him a written summary of his travels, which THEY paid for.

Visually, the movie is a travesty. A 70s road movie that's devoid of colour? He might as well have not made it at all. What's the point?

Oh, yes, the point is the 9 year-old dyevochka, who just by chance happens to be blonde. And undressed. Yes, Wim didn't want to let down his pedo viewers, so he stripped her on two occasions. Logically, he left those scenes for the last quarter of the movie so as to time the viewer's climax perfectly, as in a smut film. Wim is a pro.

You don't believe me? Still doubtful? There is a scene in which she sits next to a bathtub – with the blond guy in it. He releases the water, making his nudity even more obvious to the girl. Or how about the scene when he comes out naked from the bedroom of that German woman, and the girl watches him undress while showing obvious signs of jealousy that he'd slept with "another" woman?

Trust me, this IS a male fantasy, or to be precise a pedo fantasy. Very thinly/thickly-veiled, very cautious not to be too obvious, but 40 years later it's kind of obvious what Wim was going for. Dirty old immoral pervert.

The movie has no plot, just so you know. In other words, it's just a ruse, a cover to write and film a story about a guy with a young girl spending nights in hotels.

The zany adventures of a disheveled nymphomaniac.

1/10

A reviewer referred to this catatonic movie as a "feminist horror story". While I wouldn't disagree with that, I'd prefer to call it a plot-poor yawn-fest melodrama with a cretinously banal story-line. Old people's love-triangle Bumsfest romantic drama? That works too. Or I could simply refer to this pseudo-cinematic drivel as GILF porn. The hideous actress who toys around with men (and very "fittingly" looks like one too) is naked throughout the movie. Yes, it's such a "deep", involving, artistic story, isn't it. Actually, all these different descriptions could be merged into one simple term: rubbish.

Pretentious rubbish. Note the absence of music – aside from the inane, superfluous choir scenes which somehow are needed to remind us that she is indeed old, and not 18. You see, the absence of music means the director bows down (to his knees, and then chin-to-ground) to Lars Von Trier's Pretentious Dummies 95 manifesto, which basically instructs its blind (and empty-headed, not to mention talent-free) adherents not to utilize music because somehow a soundtrack makes the story "insincere" (or some such rubbish; I don't pretend to know much about this cretinous, art-fart Eurotrash movement aside that it's absolute horseshit for bird-brained film students and impotent, obese film critics). One of the other tenets of the 95 (bowel) movement is that porn is not only acceptable, but that dangling (or upright) male genitalia represent another highly artistic step toward more sincerity. Yes, I know. We all know: Lars is a degenerate, pompous ass. And European cinema still wallows in its own self-indulging ineptitude laced with sexual obsessions most of which are perversions. No, I don't mean old folk having sex, I mean full frontal nudity of an underage girl, a scene which the lustful film-maker somehow managed to squeeze in, despite that being the only scene in which any minor appears, and despite that girl being wholly irrelevant to the plot. (The old "sneak-a-bush" tactic.) Or was this some tiny New Age feminist commentary about how "progressive" the nympho's daughter is to have her kids running around naked in the garden? European film-makers know their audiences all-too well: give them naked underage kids, incest, or bondage, and your movie-festival rating as an "artist with a unique vision" goes through the roof.

The story? An amazingly stupid old nymphomaniac woman (who looks like Gary Numan after years of alcoholic binging) screws her husband – literally and metaphorically – by cheating on him with an even older geezer. Now, it's not as if she develops a romantic, touching, unintentional, spontaneous relationship with this other guy over a period of time. No. Like a hormonally-challenged teeny-bopper she has him humping her within minutes of meeting him for the first time. No, this is no joke. Nor am I joking when I tell you that the woman's adult daughter LAUGHS and then SMILES and then APPROVES of her affair when her mother confesses about it. Her daughter – ever the ungrateful skank but viewed sympathetically through the film-maker's immoral feminazi prism – actually encourages her mother to continue the affair, because, after all, the man she is cheating on is "only" her step-father who "only" sacrificed his best years to bring her up (another man's offspring as his own) so why the hell not, right? She warns her mother to keep it secret though. She does have THAT much common sense at least. So not all female characters in the movie are necessarily utter imbeciles, only partially mentally and morally impaired. However, in the film-maker's eyes, they are not moral degenerates at all.

Alas, her daughter's advice is not heeded by the choir-singing floozy who turns out to be beyond daft. To selfishly unburden her sense of guilt, the fat ugly cow tells her hubby about how she's been shagging this other guy. As expected, her hubby is outraged, becomes depressed, and concludes that his wife of 30 years is "a moron". It is at that point that the audience in the theaters rapture into a spontaneous applause: "yes, man, she is soooo dumb!"

Oh, but I kid. Of course no audience applauded (nor would I ever watch this trash in a cinema). No, not because most of audience are feminazi zombies, but because most of them were snoring by this point. You see, this movie is so saturated with padding. It's so full of unnecessary Euro art-fart BS that if you'd compress this sex-film-impersonating-a-serious-character-study into its plot-relevant scenes, you'd get something like 10 minutes. So yes, the movie WOULD be a 10-minute GILF porn clip with a touch of generic drama if only there weren't all those fabulous scenes of German landscapes and parks, which are intended to give the typical hipster-hat-wearing coffee-sniffing art-fest film-goer a chance to MUSE over the incredible philosophical ramification of a fat nymphomaniac having sex, over the ridiculously underdeveloped characters, or simply a chance to go for a leak.

If only the lazy film-maker had had the common sense to make her husband impotent. At least that could've served as some flimsy but somewhat credible excuse for the affair. But no. Her husband is still sexually active, AND she enjoys the sex with him, whereas it's the new boyfriend who can't always get it up! Sure, in many ways this has all the hallmarks of an Ed Wood classic.

Her husband – very very very predictably - ends up committing suicide shortly after being ditched by his perpetually wet wife, and that's it. What's the point? The message, dare I say? Well, in terms of feminist "logic", the message is: "girls, enjoy yourselves, indulge your hedonism, and by all means screw over your loyal partner if your vagina ever gets that nympho need". For the rest of us, the message is more like: "all you fat, ugly, selfish bitches should keep your affairs secret – IF you're going to cheat on your husbands."

Want more laughs? Read the comments section.

Campy, colorful, idiotic, funny, and with several women worth seeing.

I saw several of these daft, wonderfully 70s, "Schoolgirl Reports", many years ago, and I think this one is the most fun. If you're looking for retarded (very) soft porn, which almost comes off as comedy, then you really cannot do any better than this. Narrated by a guy who sounds like a pervert who wants to fool the audience by trying to be on his best behavior (i.e. without the usual heavy panting), this little anthology has only one drawback: it's only 70 minutes long. Part of what makes these stories fun and not dull is the cretinous, bizarre dialogue.

It starts off with a typical male fantasy about a flat-chested but otherwise solid-looking German student who offers her body to her maths teacher as a bribe to save her dismal grades. The middle-aged teacher is (but of course) totally shocked and quite reluctant to jump onto the nearest table and take advantage of what would normally be the offer of his life. It's only due to her persistence (and him having consulted with his twixt-the-legs member) that he finally caves in. He has hot German sex with the trollop, falls in love with her, but after she'd received her fixed A grade, she dumps the prof like a cold potato.

The next story is a "let's play doctor" type of thing. A perverted 50-ish-looking man goes door-to-door, seeking out intellectually-dead females whom he then sexually molests, all the while pretending to be a doctor who is just examining their bodies because of an "epidemic outbreak". And because this movie is a male fantasy like any other porn (hard, soft, or very soft), the "good" doctor has great success: he finds a pretty redhead who let's a total stranger into her flat, undresses for him within a minute of him entering, and then moans with pleasure as he inserts his "thermometer" inside her. At that point she asks "can you leave your thermometer with me?". He responds: "Sorry, I can't. I need it myself, I've only got one". Or something like that... You get the picture. And to think so many guys go to medical school just to get to watch women undress for them! They should have paid more attention to "Die Schulmaedchereportagenfilme", and realized that it only takes to press a door-bell, and any fantasy can come true! Of course, provided that you can find women as retarded and as nymphomaniac as these very fictional and unreal German floozies...

The narrator grimly informs us that the "doctor" succeeded 42 times with this shtick! No wonder: in the world of "Schulmaedchenreportagen" all young women are either sexually twisted succubii, or totally naive Heidis from the Alps that have never heard of or even seen sex(ual organs) in their lives. (The middle aged and older people are, naturally, either totally repelled by the very thought of sex or are the very innocent victims of the sex-starved, cartoonishly decadent German Lolitas.) The third installment even has an anti-racism message! But that is typical of this series: the phony "social relevance" of these stories is constantly underlined by the sleazy narrator, lest we commit the foolish error of thinking that this is mere harmless sexploitation fare. The story, complete with a prototype 70s women-bathing-together segment, is about a black woman that is envied/hated by her female German peers to the extent to which they trap her by inviting her to a party just so they can all sexually degrade her. (It ain't easy bein' black in ol' Germany...)

The following story is just a plot-less teen party, with an extreme obese girl telling everyone that she can get laid any time she wants. Then there is some dull stuff, then another male fantasy about four extremely sex-starved girls who practically rape a clownish moron on a beach. After that is a very silly story about an 18 year-old girl who falls in love with her 19 year-old brother (more like 25), with whom she shares a room. The narrator informs us that the two "live with their parents in a three-bedroom flat". The sleazoid obviously knows his maths just as bad as the dumb bimbo from the first story, otherwise he would have realized that three rooms are enough for each of the siblings to have their own room (the parents being in one, obviously... or is it common in Germany to cram all the kids (whatever few that they have) into one room, while the mother and father each have their own sleeping/living quarters?). The actress that plays the incestuous harlot is one of the best-looking in the movie. Watch and laugh as she ever-so-casually spies on her brother as he undresses...

A marriage proposal womenkind had never before witnessed.

6/10

Fairly solid Belgian movie with the usual zombie silliness.

The most annoying thing is the language cluster-eff. Some characters alternate between Flemish and English, some between a Slavic mish-mash (***) and English, and none of the cast are native English speakers - plus we have Dutch actors playing Russians/Poles - so we've got a variety of mumbly, half-incomprehensible English accents mixed in with Slavic cursing, resulting in a linguistic mess. Hence you need to find subtitles that translate EVERYTHING, but there are no such subtitles.

Some good gags:

1. "What kind of caveman alphabet is this?!"

2. "You always had to look like a dumb teenage whore!"

3. The nerdy guy proposing marriage in a sewer, despite being chased by zombies and hunted by the military.

I like the fact that finally a movie mocks breast reduction, a very serious social issue that is somehow completely ignored by the media. Large natural breasts don't have the kind of powerful lobby that gays and illegal immigrants have, yet they too should have their voices heard. No pair of natural large breasts should ever be butchered to be made small. (Or to be made larger, I am against that too.) Women should have the right to have abortions, but NOT to mess with their cleavage! Especially not breast reduction which is a crime against mankind.

Maybe Simona Halep had her enormous breasts reduced at this clinic?

The dumb Dutch blonde wants her F size reduced to B - and her submissive simp boyfriend actually supports her decision - so perhaps the movie is trying to tell us that such people don't deserve to live, which is why they both snuff it. Everyone snuffs it.

The movie is almost never boring, but some of its characters are a bit too ridiculous. It's a slick production i.e. Isn't a B-movie. The female lead is very cute, but we never find out whether she really does have large breasts or whether the costume department made her that way. (No nude scenes.) The actresses playing the evil doctor and the Russian virgin are attractive too.

*** It turns out that the reason I couldn't identify the language is because it's a fake Slavic mish-mash "invented" by the director's wife, who appears to be Serbian.

Next time a movie promises killer-elevators, I want to see more elevators and less elevator repairmen.

3/10

This movie is 5% horror, 60% boring detective work, 15% dull family life, and 20% filler scenes. It's supposed to be a horror film, but most of it is as dull as actually sitting down and watching a lift repair-man in action. Well, "action".

It's as if a stuffy accountant directed this thing; even the main character is apathetic, almost always unemotional, with one facial expression (like a damn painting), going about his business with the élan of a nursing-home inmate playing chess with himself. I have rarely seen such a sleepy, disinterested-looking lead male/character.

The makers of this failed attempt should have aimed for either a tongue-in-cheek approach or an all-out horror film, without the unnecessary and very tiresome detective crap and the evil-corporation conspiracy nonsense. Ultimately, the film's undoing is the writer's attempt to lend this ridiculous premise some seriousness by connecting all the silly goings-on to the real world. But there is nothing even remotely serious or realistic about a malicious lift killing people, so the obvious approach would have been to give this less exposition/plot and far more action.

Will the repairman keep his marriage or not? It's exciting questions like these that turned the movie into the instant horror classic that it still is today. His wife's female friend speculates on why he's been depressed lately: "Perhaps he is having an affair?" she suggests stupidly, completely ignoring the plain-as-day fact that he's involved in the repairs of an elevator that had just killed a blind man and decapitated another. This does not enter as a possibility to explain his low mood? Straight to adultery – duh; a silly plot-device introduced here for just one reason: so that the repairman can have some family trouble – as if horror films with cheesy premises thrive on family matters as their main source of fuel. This serves as yet another needless sub-plot in a movie already choking in its own inactivity.

I find it hard to believe that a building with this many accidents has people going inside it, let alone using the elevators, over and over, as if nothing had happened. This sort of story would be headline news in Holland (and elsewhere), and everyone would know about it. But this medium-level illogicality is the least of the film's problems. The fact that it's dull is what most viewers, and I, were annoyed by. Far too much talk, too much focus on the elevator repairman and even his very dreary family life.

A 6.1 average? Had this been an American movie, the rating would have been half that. But for some reason non-American movies are reviewed and critiqued far less harshly than American ones. It's that silly old "exotic bonus", plus a bit of envy thrown in.

Ship-sabotage, more easily achieved than ever before.

5/10

CGI technology has made almost anything possible in sci-fi, and yet this genre is still in the hands of hijackers who insist on re-hashing the same daft clichés: either it's monsters or it's freedom-fighters saving the galaxy or Earth. I would like to finally see some real sci-fi, something intelligent, unique and awe-inspiring. Until then, I'll just have to watch movies like this one that look nice but are lacking in content.

As with "Pandorum", the mistake was made of turning the early portion of the movie into a far too dark, far too depressing black hole. By the time some of the incessant dark finally evaporated, I was ready to slit my wrists. Fortunately, just as my razor-blade was nearing the main artery on my left hand, someone turned the lights on. It wasn't much light, but enough to recognize the cast.

Watching the darker parts of "Cargo", especially the first half-hour, is like trying to look inside a small opening of an empty can, while standing inside a barely-lit room in the middle of a Finish Winter. The atmosphere in this movie makes "Alien" look like "The Sound of Music". Yes, movie, we get it, the future is bleak and everyone is unhappy! On the other hand, if this future mankind still has enough money to send such enormous "cans of darkness" into far reaches of space, then surely they will have enough dough to buy a couple of lamps to light up the bloody floating thing from the inside.

And there should certainly be enough money for TWO people to share shifts at a time. I find it utterly absurd that only one person guards the ship while the rest of the crew rest in frozen slumber. Have you seen the atmosphere in that ship??? Any normal human being would commit hara-kiri if faced with 8 months of solitude in such a badly-lit can. That's right, 8-month shifts. Basic Psychology 101, which any child even should be at least somewhat familiar with, suggests that the amount of food rations you save by freezing one additional person is nothing compared to the risk you undertake by leaving one person alone, without any real human contact, in such a gloomy environment. Especially a newcomer to the job such as Portmann. What kind of company entrusts such a ridiculously expensive ship, and such a supposedly important mission, to the care of a fresh-faced, gullible novice such as her - for an entire 8 months? Makes little sense.

I envy anyone who DOESN'T understand the German language, because then you can't easily notice how bad most German actors are. The way they utter their lines is often robotic, unconvincing, too forced, unnatural, basically lame. On the other hand, the Germans have exploited the benefits of CGI well. The movie does look like it's on a high budget, very professional, almost Hollywood-like. (Although that today might not be such a compliment anymore.) Unfortunately, imitating Hollywood is a double-edged sword, so you also adopt some of its more annoying habits such as astronauts that behave like teens and look like nu-metal-band bassists: I am talking of course about that bald, goatee-wearing putz who serves as some kind of a buffoonerish dancing monkey comic-relief. James Cameron was perhaps the pioneer in this, giving us a set of space marines in "Aliens" that acted and talked like mongoloids, not like actual professional soldiers. Why the puerile malarkey? Can't we have ONE set of movie astronauts that behave like level-headed adults? At least that was a simple monster flick, so it could be forgiven, but what is the excuse here? "Cargo" has an agenda, an environmental message to convey (admittedly a corny one), so it has no excuses dabbling in trashy characters.

The terrorist footage shown early on offers us a bunch of dilettante-looking bozos playing hide-and-seek with the government. Do they even remotely appear as if though they could sabotage anything, much less a bunch of expensive cargo ships? Not really. And yet, as it turns out, not only are these silly fist-pumping terrorists well-organized, but also RIGHT. The writer should have opted for a secret organization, rather than a gung-ho, very public, clown-like terrorist organization of loud malcontents. That would have made the movie more believable. I mean, it's bad enough they blatantly stole the main premise from "The Matrix". Then there is all that nonsense related to the composition of the crew. Surely a corporation as powerful as Kuiper would hire a more intelligent, more competent crew. The fact that a terrorist disguised as a Federal Marshall snuck in aboard only makes things cheesier.

The last half-hour is visually very nice (we're finally outside of the ship) but with a certain degree of questionable nonsense, which includes the goatee guy and his pal (who are closer to Beavis & Butthead than a pair of actual astronauts) who for some unfathomable reason decide to try and sneak away to the planet Rhea. Weren't they told already that the planet's success-story was a sham? Duh.

If you want an entertaining German movie, I suggest you try any of the "Der Schulmaedchenreport" flicks. They may be trashy, but so much better in every way than this nonsense...

3/10

Actually, Germans are not known for making good movies, to put it mildly, and this little Bunker-Tage bio of Hitler is an indication why. It's not the script, it is OK. It is certainly not the story, which is fascinating, if anything.

So how do you screw this up?

Actually, there is no way BUT to screw it up. And the reason is simple.

First of all, the acting - the cornerstone of any movie - is mostly unimpressive, rarely convincing, especially if you're a German speaker. Understanding German is definitely a drawback if you have interest in German movies, because the dialog deteriorates even more when you are able to catch every nuance.

Secondly, the cast is miserably unappealing and mediocre, and there is so little chemistry as a result. How am I going to buy into this historical account when so few actors look the part. Germans always envied American actors for their ability to be relaxed and act naturally, something German thespians very obviously struggle with. Great German Actors - the smallest book in the world.

Not to mention the rampant nepotism in the German film industry, a very real problem, and even more so than in nepotistically-challenged French industry.

Thirdly, playing Hitler is highly tricky for any actor, almost impossible, I don't care who they are, unless you're doing it for comedic effect in which case it is the easiest role in the world. Of course, many might rightfully argue that this movie DID go for laughs despite the obvious fact that it didn't. How do you play the most larger-than-life politician in the history of the modern world? You can't. However you play this lunatic it's gonna be unintentionally funny, because Hitler was such a damn wacko, like an over-the-top over-actor, a buffoonish clown, a deranged drama queen, an absolutely outrageous personality in every single way. You can't do him subtly, you can't avoid being broad - hence you have no real options. The only person who could play Hitler was Hitler himself.

Admittedly, one could say this about many famous people. Which is why all rock music biopics stink so enormously.

Hitler comes off as a comic character. Of course, this is always a problem with portraying Hitler; he was so outrageous/absurd/unreal in every way that it's practically impossible to play him without the performance looking like a broad parody of him. Which is why these scenes became world-famous YT memes. It's not a coincidence, this movie was begging for it.

Some people might not believe me, but I did my own spoofs of the Hitler scenes as early as 2005. In fact, I did the entire movie, changed all of the subtitles, every line. I didn't post it on YT because back then I barely even used YT, and had no clue how I'd do it anyway. I later posted a few clips, somewhere around 2008 or 2009, got 20,000-30,000 clicks on some of them, but they were rather quickly taken off due to copyrights issues or whatever. Shows how much I understood YT...

Hence, whenever Hitler (Ganz) shouts - and he shouts and bitches like a wild dog a dozen times at least - I was more inclined to giggle than to get into the drama of the moment. There's plenty of saliva flying out of Ganz's mouth, and if this movie were shown in 3D I would have feared that some might land into my face. Not a pleasant thought! Even Charlie Chaplin's spoof has more of the real person than Ganz's totally animated, grumpy Hitler.

Okay, the film isn't that bad. The subject-matter is too interesting to be botched even by a German film-crew, but the close-to 150-minute length is a bit of a problem, too. Frankly, to me the highlight of the movie was the ending, and I'm not trying to be funny. The outro, which reveals what happened to each of the main characters is interesting, but I guess that info one could anyway find in the books or the internet.

Besides, you just know that the Germans could never resist injecting a note of humanity into the main Nazi characters. (A little bias, perhaps...?) I found it laughable how some of these top Nazi psychopaths/sociopaths were portrayed. Another problem is that I could not really feel for any of the German "civilians"/volunteers dying as they defended Berlin. Why? Because considering how many millions of deaths were caused by Germany in WW II - of which the concentration camps represented the worst - I really didn't care that much...

Gee-whiz, a man-made road-block? I bet we could have fun if we got out.

4/10

Picture this: you've been barely surviving in a post-apocalyptic over-heated world for 3 long years. People have become savages, fighting violently over food and water which are extremely scarce. You are aware that malicious humans lurk everywhere. You drive along, and suddenly you nearly crash into an obviously man-made roadblock. Do you really stop to look around? Do you actually scatter, have a stroll? Do you leave a young girl in the car alone? Doesn't this look to you like a very obvious trap? It should - but certainly not to the morons in this movie. They get played over and over like a bunch of ninnies by a family of semi-retarded hillbilly cannibals!

The movie has a very bland, unappealing look, a great problem with most modern (horror) films. If you're colour-blind, you miss out on nothing - the movie has only two colors; green for indoor scenes, and yellow for outdoor scenes. Yeah, I get it; the Sun has expanded, it's very hot all the time, bla bla bla. The temperature went up by 10 degrees, not bloody 100 C! The indoor greenish hue is almost a coincidental or at the very least ironic tribute to "Soylent Green", an old non-greenish movie that must have exerted some influence on this movie's creators.

Speaking of which, that was no surprise at all. The stench of cannibalism followed this movie from the very start; it was obviously going to play a role at some point. And yet another such movie presents cannibals as people with super-human strength and skills. But eating human flesh doesn't give you any such powers or we'd all be munching each other by now, right? Where did these people develop such dexterity, speed, and even web-throwing skills? I have seen seasoned Texan cowboys who'd be jealous of the precision with which these man-eating buffoons catch their prey with mere webs. Anyway, this family would have to be much larger in order to carry out such a successful operation.

Nor do I find a speck of logic in a family of savage, butchering cannibals saying their PRAYERS before every meal – aside perhaps in a horror comedy directed by a young Peter Jackson. Real (ex-Christian) cannibals would have dropped the Bible and God a long time before starting to stalk, maim, butcher and cook random humans. Even though I'm an atheist, I'd have to side with the religious sheep on this one; a true Bible-hugger is less likely to start killing people for food (and not even temporarily but as a way of life) than a non-religious person, simply because a religious nut has larger barriers i.e. bigger walls to pull down in order to commence engaging in an activity that is so blatantly Satanic. I am not saying violent sects don't exist, but this is CANNIBALISM we're talking about.

Besides, I see plenty of trees and other vegetation here. I don't see how this green-surrounded family had to turn to cannibalism so quickly.

The older sister is a bona fide retard; she makes all the dumb decisions, one after another. Her biggest blunder was giving away the location of her wounded hence vulnerable boyfriend to a woman she'd just met 5 seconds earlier – in spite of already having realized that someone had set that roadblock as a trap. So 3 years of bare-knuckle struggling in a post-apocalyptic dog-eat-dog world hadn't taught this woman anything at all? If she were really this stupid, my guess is that she would have been dead a long time before this wee cannibalistic adventure even began.

The less said about her younger sister, the better. She is a spoiled, back-stabbing, dumb, egotistical little brat, and yet it's expected from us to actually care about her ongoing rescue efforts? Couple that with her group's overall stupidity and I see no reason why we should not root for the cannibals to eat them. It's not as if anyone has a future anyway in this totally bleak, hopeless wasteland. (Unless there's a sequel in which the Sun starts shrinking again - which could make for a great comedy.) Hence the predictably inconclusive ending; the plot simply had nowhere to go.

Still, for a German movie it wasn't badly done. 4/10 is probably the pinnacle for them.