Reviews

I might not be an aficionado of the "mumblecore"-genre, and this film didn't make me one either. But it did give me a minor crush on the female lead (and writer) Erin Fisher, maybe that's a good thing.

So in this film we see a cute girl from Atlanta (Erin Fisher) who visits New York, can't get hold of her friend, and then instead hangs out over 24 hours with a random slacker (Cris Lankenau) she meets at the subway station in Brooklyn.

It's cute, and you do get to feel that the boy and girl are connecting over an intense period, but it didn't really made an impression on me. Maybe it wasn't dramatic enough, maybe the realism bored me, maybe the long shots were a bit too long, or maybe it was the "American" dialogue.

What I mean by that is that they use all of these "pause words" a lot. I even spent a few minutes counting them (by opening the subtitles in Word): "like" (229 times), "you know" (28 times), "kind of" (39 times), "sort of" (22 times), "uh" or "um" (43 times), "I don't know" (22 times) and "really" (55 times).

It isn't that much dialogue in the movie, so that is a LOT of pause words, all of which are basically unnecessary for saying something. (Sarah Hellman's two-minute random monologue might have accounted for half of the "like"-quota, for instance. How ditzy is it possible to come across as?)

Even if this is how Americans actually talk, for us europeans it sounds like they have no vocabulary and are very slow thinkers who need to insert a lot of "pause words" just to get through a sentence.

"Mumblecore" might be supposed to be ultra realistic, but I am pretty sure it could benefit such movies to tighten up the script, thereby making it more interesting and transcend boring reality just a little bit.

Finally I have to make the obligatory reference to "Before Sunrise" and say that it's unfortunately much more interesting, substantial and memorable than "Quiet City", even if the two movies are a bit different in style and shape.

I realise this review will blow all my chances of ever getting to flirt with Erin Fisher (and Sarah Hellman), but it's mostly meant as a warning for people who are interested in "real" movies, and also as a message to the director Aaron Katz.

A movie like this would have been much more interesting if the dialogue was better and more meaningful, and if it just had more of a "real" movie-feel about it. Right now it seems like something anyone could improvise over two days. And that's unfortunately not a compliment.

But of course I would rather have a thousand indie-movies like these instead of the usual predictable Hollywood-crap. I only wish they could be better than this.

Another movie to be avoided. Probably shot on DV, the sound and picture is pretty low quality, along with the unrealistic dialogue, the horrible "effects", plus the amateurish directing, acting and cinematography.

Maybe they were going for some kind of "realism", but it just doesn't work. The script is tedious and boring, the scenes go on forever, the editing (and everything else really) is just so predictable that you'll end up getting thoroughly annoyed and wanting to turn it off. I know I did.

I'm sure they had great fun making this movie, but it's just not worth anyone's time actually watching it. It's not kitch, it's not camp - and if you want to see a good movie about revenge, check out "May" instead.

Out of all the sequels I've seen, this is possibly the worst ever.

* The special effects seem very "digital" and unrealistic

* The script is obvious, full of bad lines and really just pathetic

* The actors don't really get much to work with, so they seem bland and uninterested

* The director has tried to cram too many stories into one move, and you never get to sympathise with any of the characters

* It feels like the movie is full of obvious product placements

* Everything you see is very black and white, the characters are so spelled out that nothing becomes exciting. They become caricatures of characters, not someone you could be interested in.

* Instead of flowing naturally, it's very sequence-oriented and stiff, and the transitions from sequence to sequence often feel very contrived

To sum it up - this is a movie made exclusively to earn big money, with no heart, no soul and no passion. Even the special effects can't save this pile of commercial crap.

Shame on you Stan Lee and Sam Raimi! You could have done something much better than this.

Definitely Scott's worst movie to date.

Imagine a horrible and violent reality show void of content, and then stretch that show out over two hours. This vague attempt at a "movie" plays more like such a disastrous show, or a very extended music video.

This production is exploitative in every way you can imagine. It's just a miserable excuse for Scott to make something look and feel "stylish" and "cool", while the dialogue and plot is absolute drivel.

A complete waste of talent, money and your time. It's over-explaining itself in every little detail, and comes across as stupid and insulting.

Stay away!

"Bare skyer beveger stjernene" is a beautiful little piece about a girl dealing with her brother's death while the family temporarily disintegrates. At the same time she meets a boy and finds some sort of first bonding/love.

Sounds simple, but it really works, due to solid natural sounding dialogue, somber editing, wonderful photography, excellent chemistry and directing - and not much over-acting, even from the children's main characters. (Unnatural over-acting is a huge problem in Norwegian movies - they are often populated with Theodore actors who act too much, and with sometimes surprisingly weak dialogue that no normal people would say in reality. If you think I exaggerate, just watch "Buddy".) I would say this is one of the best Norwegian movies from the 90's, and quite underestimated. It's a shame it's not out on DVD (yet), but let's hope someone manages to get it out in widescreen, DTS-sound and with foreign subtitles. It deserves to be seen by many more! (This review is based on my memory of seeing the movie in 1998 - I hope it's still valid if I see it again now.)

"Ikke naken" disappointed me. Here's why: The director's 1998-movie "Bare skyer beveger stjernene" was a beautiful little piece about a girl dealing with her brother's death while the family temporarily disintegrates. At the same time she meets a boy and finds some sort of first bonding/love. Sounds simple, but it really worked, due to solid natural sounding dialogue, somber editing and not too much over-acting (even from the children's main characters). Actually it's one of the better Norwegian movies from the 90's, and quite underestimated.

This movie, however, lacks the good script, the child actors are not able to deliver the lines in a natural way, the editing is over-simplified (I know it's more of a children's movie, but still) and the music is just too much, beautiful as it may be.

In short: It lacks a bit of subtlety and nuance, and it's obvious where it's going. I'm usually quite tolerant with movies, but this one started to really bore me after 30-40 minutes. Maybe children will like it more? Also, huge parts of the dialogue have been re-recorded/dubbed, and you find yourself getting seriously annoyed about how little synchronized it is. At points it looks like the actors originally spoke a different language, then were dubbed to Norwegian. This, of course, contributes to taking you out of the cinema-experience.

Finally I should complain about the lack of any subtitles on the DVD - don't the Norwegian distributors want to sell films outside of the country?