The Spectacular Now

Rating: 4/4

 Length: 1h 35minutes

 Director: James Ponsoldt

Writers: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber

Novel by: Tim Tharp

Stars: Miles Teller, Shailene  Woodley

Country: USA

13. September 2013

"There are two sides to every story" a quote that excellently describes this movie. Mrs.Perfect and mr. sometimes a complete asshole. Meet Sutter (Miles Teller) he's mostly a very nice, charming young man who gets along with everybody. He talks himself out of every scenario whether it being an argument with a teacher or a fight with his mum he's a great negotiator. Now meet his blind, angry and idiotic side, this side of Sutter is a complete asshole, he can hurt every single human being that is close to him while being in this state of mind.

He has just broken up with his girlfriend, and the movie starts out him remembering the good ol' days with his ex Cassidy. He's a character that grows more and more mature over the course of time. In the beginning he's a young 18-year-old man, who just doesn't  want to grow up, thinking that partying, drinking and living in the moment is all that matters. He's a bit of a player, that being said now meet Aimee (Shailene Woodley ) she has never had a boyfriend before, she's a smart, quiet and very beautiful girl who draws and reads a lot, she's not the most popular girl in the school but she has one of the biggest heart imaginable example: While driving in a car with Sutter, Sutter rages and starts yelling at her, he doesn't pay much attention and then "Bang" he drives off the road. Aimee starts asking if Sutter is okay not caring about her own health at all.

After a heavy drinking Sutter wakes up in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar lawn, awakened by Aimee. It's the sight in their eyes, the walk and talk that melts your heart from that point on. That leads into a nice and cosy talk between these two and since Sutter has lost his car, Aimee takes him home. Excellent acting has made both of them reach the unreal stage of chemistry on-screen. Sutter invites Aimee to a party, while still being in love with her ex Cassidy none of them actually want a relationship in the first place. It's his very first kiss with Aimee that boosts our knowledge of their relationship and everything gets real. It's a  complicated love story that luckily has no "Cheerleader" nor "Joke" coming between them, realistic course of love in its finest naturalism.

They fall in love quickly and that leads to their first making of love scene, every detail leads them to that point where they have been together long enough and want to know each other better. It's so realistic that it's a one in a million, a jackpot people don't notice how rare it is today. Doing it nice and sweet, respecting each other, Aimee gently gives Sutter a condom with a warm smile on her face, they both ask if you really want to do that. Rarely we can say this thing about love scenes in movies, this is not a love scene that they should be embarrassed about it's a gentle, realistic stage of relationship that has been directed with excellence by James Ponsoldt.

Both Aimee and Sutter have their own problems, mostly with their family. Aimee's father is dead and her mother takes a bit of advantage of her while Sutter's father has been gone half of his life and his mother not telling anything about it. They promise each other that they will both stand up against their mothers.

It's not a snow-white fairytale that has one big obstacle to over come and then everybody is living "Happily ever after" in the end. In real life it's a lot more complicated and in this movie it's brought out like never before, everyday struggles affect your relationship. We can be sure from the start of the movie that Aimee would not cheat on Sutter nor do anything that could affect their relationship at least not in a bad way. Sutter in the other hand is not very stable guy he can hurt people sometimes. You can try to predict the story but you are not going to be absolutely certain till the end, challenging  is not to change your predictions as the story moves on.

Made in a realism moviemaking style and creative visions and unique camera angles have been used. Don't go to the cinema with hopes up seeing a cliched, cheesy and ridiculous love story, "The Spectacular Now" is none of it, it's treated with honest and intelligence, pure effort and heart has put on this movie, it's not using characters for its own egoistic purposes they are falling in love like any normal couple would do in real life. "It's fine to live in the now but the best thing about now is that there's another one tomorrow and I'm going to start making them count."

New Kids Turbo

Rating: Turbo 1/4, Nitro 0,5/4.

Length: 1h 24 minutes

Directors: Steffen Haars, Flip Van der Kuil


Writers: Steffen Haars, Flip Van der Kuil

Stars: Huub Smit, Tim Haars, Wesley Van Gaalen, Steffen   Haars, Flip Van der Kuil

Country: Netherlands

9. December 2010 (Netherlands)

A sketch comedy squeezed into a full motion picture is never any good, with some exceptions of course, with that said "New Kids Turbo" isn't an exception. It follows a seemingly boring, very poorly detailed storyline. Comedy is not catastrophic, but it relies on cheap, drab insult jokes that wear off pretty quickly example: mongool, kut, lul, these words are funny for only a short period of time, but we have to hear each one of them being involved in every held conversation.

Take-off is already introducing moviemaking style very effectively, a man being hit by a car in the start is the moment when we get to know the direction of the movie, cheap and insulting comedy is what we expect to see further on. Five silly friends from a small very unrealistic Netherlands town Maaskantje are all ironically getting fired in the same time period due to economy crisis, bringing them together to live in the same house.            

As soon as the characters start to evolve we instantly  get to see the combination of bad characterization and greedy writing. All five main characters are quixotic and dumb, in fact every character in this movie is worth being in this discussion, with five main characters, full cast of complete badasses, despite being stupid, skinny and having no knowledge of fighting at all each one of them could've beat Mike Tyson in a ring, it feels like a rotten milk's aftertaste. This movie features many "DNITSIYM" moments, Do not include this shit in your movie. With one being told, shown, featured over and over again..... overuse of action heroes, it has happened since the dawn of the action genre and there's no sign of it ever stopping. Believe it or not, it's not exactly the core problem of a bad characterisation, in this case it's something far beyond, cloning Chuck Norris look alike five times and making a full motion picture out of them sounds awesome doesn't it? That being asked with sarcasm overload though.

Second big twist in the plot starts when they all refuse to pay for taxes, no matter how many times they try to explain it in this flick, it's still left very unclear. Law officials first try to negotiate with them, but they're being hit in the face and offensively called "Kuts". That outrages the government and they start to raid their house. Destroying many things, and almost murdering a "Very Important dog for the movie". Now this scene is probably the worst among the very bad. A guy that owns the dog, sees his own dog, so far we were sure that he would not do anything to hurt his dog, but in the very next moment this guy unexpectedly crushes his dog with a sofa, bravo.

Unprofessional camera angles, very poor editing, it feels like their budget was so low that they had to film the entire movie with one camera. Later on there's a war between police and a punch of retarded Hilly Billy's, that most of the story, there is a "Breaking the third wall" sequence somewhere in the middle of all this, it should have been good, it should have add something, but no it only reminds us that we are watching a TV sketch comedy. Two laughs I counted, I counted two laughs... and they were both in the first act, after that every scene loses its magic, there's no originality left and  no excitement after the first act at all. Humor is childish, odd and relies on everything that makes it weak.

When a company is losing money, and desperately needs new ideas, then make a sequel, it's a typical movie making tactic, mostly used by horror moviemakers. First one was awful, but the second one somehow made every mistake shine out more, I can mostly pare a movie till the end no matter how bad it is, with "New Kids Nitro" it was really challenging.