JTMokko

Adam Sandler became known to the general public from the comedy Airheads (1994), in which he, along with Brendan Fraser and Steve Buscemi, played members of a fledgling grunge band. Adam Sandler's real breakthrough came with the films Billy Madison (1995) and Happy Gilmore (1996). Sandler's films represent the genre of comedy that has been a favorite of the general public for several decades. Other films representing the genre include Top Secret, The Naked Gun and Airplane.

Happy Gilmore 2 tells the story of Happy Gilmore, played by Adam Sandler, a successful golf professional who has built a respected career. His wife tragically died during a golf tournament and Gilmore has not played golf since. The plot begins to develop when Gilmore's daughter, Vienna (Sadie Sandler), gets accepted to a private school in Paris to study ballet. In order for Gilmore to be able to pay for her daughter's tuition, he has to start playing golf again.

I've never liked Sandler's comedies. This was true even when many were enthusiastic about how great a comedy Little Nicky (2000) was. At the time, I remember saying, under social pressure, that it "was pretty good", but in reality I hated Adam Sandler's whiny, flabby voice and loose facial expressions. The jokes in his films were also the easiest and usually politically correct and suitable for even 5-year-olds - mainly poop and fart humor.

Adam Sandler is a 5-year-old playing an adult. He wears an oversized hockey jersey even though he doesn't play and a beanie that says Iron Maiden even though he thinks the band is too loud. He feels lost in every situation and resorts to solutions that a child would resort to - for example, hitting a golf ball with an ice-hockey stick. On the other hand, sometimes new innovations can be born through childish ideas, but in reality, a person who behaves like a child is only annoying in the long run. The supporting characters in Happy Gilmore are mostly adult children. Gilmore's five boys are blank stereotypes of rascals - if they're not fighting, they're making movements that simulate sexual intercourse and screaming. Steve Buscemi, who plays the neighbor, jumps, drinks and does ballet moves. So does the white-bearded John Daly, who lives in Gilmore's garage, who, unlike the previous one, just sits and occasionally says something... and drinks. You could say that Happy Gilmore 2 is truly a "leave our brains at the cloakroom" comedy, with the difference that in the process you drop your brains to the dusty floor before leaving them to the cloakroom.. Sandler represents a baby man who, with his own inanity, seems to be rebelling against the system for no apparent reason. However, the baby man roles are better and more gracefully played by Jerry Lewis, Pee-wee Herman and Jim Carrey. They surrender to their roles much more courageously and bring something of their own and personal to their performances, while Adam Sandler is tired and monotonous. The dialogue he writes is lazy and devoid of any kind of deep meaning. The pathology of Sandler's comedic style could be delved into more deeply, but that would just be a waste of time and would not make it any more pious when the typical Adam Sandler fan does not read any text that uses civilized words like, "genre".

Still, if you forget all the lazily written characters and the annoying acting style, then basically the biggest problem with Happy Gilmore 2 is that it is not funny. Sandler's previous Netflix comedy Hubie Saves Halloween (2020) was actually pretty good in places and above all it wasn't annoying. If there is a hell, Adam Sandler comedies are playing on loop there.

His dramatic roles are surprisingly good. Punch-Drunk Love and especially Reign Over Me were absolutely amazing. Watch them and throw Adam Sandler comedies in the trash.

This film has received a lot of attention and critics and audiences seem to like the film. IMDb gives the film an 8/10 rating and Rotten Tomatoes has 95% of critics saying it's good and 87% of the audience saying it's good.

The film is set in a small town where a class of elementary school students mysteriously disappear. All but one of the students ran into the woods at 2:17 AM. The students are not found despite a search. The villagers' biggest suspicion falls on the class teacher, Justine. Meanwhile, the only remaining student, Alex, continues to attend school carrying a secret that is revealed throughout the film from the perspectives of different characters.

If Pulp Fiction, Magnolia and Substance were to have a child - that child would look like Weapons.

The film holds its own well: it's not boring, the events move along well, and the characters are somewhat likable. The director and screenwriter, Zach Cregger, has chosen to tell the story from the perspectives of various characters. However, I think there were too many characters and it took away from the development of other characters. The audience only gets a perspective on the experiences of the main character - Alex - halfway through the film. The same goes for the other main character, Aunt Gladys, played by the well-known (at least in the 80s) actress Amy Madigan. The narrative focuses for an unreasonable amount of time on the stories of the police officer and the drug addict, which, however, did not have much importance in the overall story. The characters are possessed by the same looseness as all the characters in Quentin Tarantino films. The characters are just a means of narration and the filmmaker, Cregger or Tarantino, are more interested in using them as means in telling the story than focusing on their motives or inner world. The clever way of telling the story in flashbacks from different perspectives seems more like a gimmick in retrospect.

Weapons creates a world where the supernatural was possible and it brought a sense of magical realism to the whole film - in this respect it is reminiscent of the film Magnolia, from 1999, which also had a similar episodic structure to Weapons. However, the similarities end there as the characters in Magnolia were much deeper and more interesting than those in Weapons. This one-dimensionality of the characters is also reflected in the motives of the film's villain or antagonist. The villain was just evil - nothing more. The audience never really finds out why he kidnapped the children or what the background to this evil is.

The violence in the film is sudden and even over the top, like in Substance. This film cannot necessarily be recommended to people who don't like bloody horror films. In the cinema, my wife covered her eyes at least three or four times during the film. As a big fan of special effects myself, I watched in rapture and at the same time mild disgust at how... well, no spoilers. Go see it for yourself. In a few scenes the violence was a bit over the top, but otherwise the effects were quite inventive. Special effects were handled by Richie Bearden - hats off to him for his professionalism.

It's hard to find a deeper meaning to Weapons. It's good entertainment and keeps you hooked until the end of the film. However, I wouldn't go so far as to praise it as the film of the year as my more enthusiastic colleagues have done.

Willow is a fantasy film that tells the traditional story of the battle between good and evil. Queen Bavmorda has learned of a prophecy that her reign will end when a baby with a certain birthmark is born. The evil queen captures the pregnant mothers and finds the predicted baby. However, the baby's midwife smuggles the newborn out of the queen's castle. Their escape is cut short when the hounds find them and kill the midwife. However, the midwife manages to place the baby, Elora Dana, on a small raft to be carried away by the current. The current carries Elora Dana to the outskirts of the village of Nelwyn (dwarves), where Willow Ufgood's family finds the baby. Willow is tasked with returning the baby to the humans (daikini), and this begins an adventure, along which she is aided by the chaotic good swordsman, Madmardigan (Val Kilmer). Willow is played by Warwick Davis, who played Wicket the Ewok in the Star Wars films, Leprechaun the goblin in the horror films, and Professor Filius Flitwick in the Harry Potter films. The role of Sorsha, the daughter of the Evil Queen, is played by Joanne Whalley, who later married Val Kilmer, whom she met in the film.

Willow was one of the most significant fantasy films before the Lord of the Rings film series. The film has also been significant to me personally since I first saw it on VHS sometime in the late 80s. I haven't seen the film in about twenty years, and now that I saw it again, my image of the film has changed.

The film represents high fantasy, whose world is imaginary and where magic and monsters are commonplace. Exaggerating these elements can easily make a film childish and silly. I think that's exactly what happened with Willow. Magic was presented exclusively in the form of "simzalabin"-style wand-waving, which many Harry Potter fans will undoubtedly like, but I didn't get into it myself. In the film, magic was more about shooting lightning from a wand or transforming into animals - in other words, not much imagination was used in the manifestation of magic. The monsters were also either very traditional or otherwise poorly executed. The film's makeup and practical monster effects could have been of a higher class if the makers had had more skill and imagination. Before the year the film was made, 1988, incredible effects could already be done - for example, the work of effects master Rob Bottin in the films The Thing (1982) and Legend (1985), whose special effects are still top of the field.

Of the supporting characters, a group of little people called brownies was an unnecessary and silly addition to the story. The pair Rool (Kevin Pollak) and Franjean (Rick Overton) ran after the main characters and said something meant for comedy. It seemed miraculous that very small - about 10 cm tall human beings survived in the midst of all the rushing and fighting. They had no other job than to be the comic relief in the film.

The best thing about the film, however, even after all these years, is the music. Composer James Horner drew influences from - or some might even say plagiarized - traditional folk music and classical music. In my opinion, the best song is the "Elora Dana Theme" at the beginning of the film, which is based on the traditional Thracian folk song "Mir Stanke Le". Special mention goes to Japanese flutist Kazu Matsui, who masterfully plays the theme melody on the shakuhachi bamboo flute. Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 3 has also been a strong influence on Horner's Willow music. It's interesting how much music influences the movie experience. Often, no attention is paid to film music, but it still has a strong effect on creating an atmosphere. When I think back to the movie Willow, the first thing that comes to mind is always the film's theme song.

In addition to the music, the heart of the movie Willow is the sympathetic Warwick Davis in the lead role, who succeeds excellently in his first lead role and is a refreshingly different main character in an otherwise traditional story. A similar small-sized main character was only seen with the Lord of the Rings film adaptations. About ten years ago, I watched the reality series Life's Too Short, which followed the life of Warwick Davis, in which he said that he earns extra income by selling his autographs online on thesignatureshop co uk. I assumed that the site was invented just for the series and that nothing was actually sold there. I went to the site and found that Davis really sells his autographs on the site. I'm attaching a picture of the Willow movie promotional photo I ordered, with Davis's signature and dedication.