Strange days - Strange story

Its the day before New Year '99/2000 and America is a mess. Crooked cops arrest innocent people after rascist statistics and just a few strike against that system. And some new technology took over the youth and easy to addict citizens in between that mess, a technology that records some kind of videos directly from the brain of the acting person. Lenny Nero (Ralp Fiennes) deals these clips to junkies who want to live those few moments of someone elses life for quite much cash. Then some murder happens, the leader of the revolutionary gangs who strike against rascism and a police state is found shot and Lenny receives tapes of a psycho who kills people he knows and let him feel the rape and murder through the clips.

'Strange days' is a bit confusing on the first look, a masterpiece at the second. Shot in '95 it is probably the only movie of this kind that makes a so close future look so futuristic. While you follow the story through L.A. in '99 you got the feeling you are in 2030 or later which probably is the effect of that the movie is 13 years old but still plays in your own past. Hard to describe what makes the flair of that but somehow the story catches you. It is also a really long movie so the story catches you for 2 hours and about 15 minutes at all.

But for some reason the film was never really successfull even though it comes with a star cast. Produced by James Cameron there are Angela Bassett, William Fichtner (one of my absolutely favourite actors), Michael Wincott and many more actors you might know in it. Make sure you watch this action / thriller / cyberpunk masterpiece or you gonna miss a really good movie!

Sleeper cell - An acceptable view on terrorism

A cell of self called islamic terrorists is under watch by the undercover agent Darwyn (Michael Ealy). He has to be „inside“ the cell as much as possible, has to lie on his girlfriend, ignore his private life and from time to time even kill someone. Meanwhile the viewer also gets to know about the lifes of the self called terrorists, who follow their boss Farik (Oded Fehr), a top class terrorist with no qualms about anything. Their only target is to kill as many „unbeliever“ civilists as possible and Darwyns job is to prevent the country from it.

Here we got the best view, I so far know on „islamic“ terrorism. It shows that the people who plan attacks arent really muslims, they drink when they are depressed, eat pork when „needed for cover“ and some of them havent even read the holy Qur'an and just believe what they are told about it.

On the other hand its one more series that tries to scare the viewer and tells everyone who likes to hear it „Probably your neighbour is a terrorist, too – you better keep an eye on that!“. Farik pretends to be a jewish security company owner in public, Christian is a french bus driver, Tommy is a blonde all American guy and Steve is a teacher at some college. They got their confused hate on everything Western in common while on the other hand they visit strip clubs and make out with whores.

The summary of this series is: It may be close to reality but still tries to heat up public fear in a disturbing way. As a muslim I still find it watchable and well shot, you better take a look if you are bored of CSI and such.

JM inside - "Tierärztin Dr. Mertens"

This week JM!-editor Canan (which is me) spent some quality time on the set of the German TV series "Tierärztin Dr. Mertens" as a paid extra, not as a reviewer. It was quite interesting to watch the shooting of the episodes 3-6 of season 3, will be showed around fall 2009, at least the scenes playin at the art university. We, the extras, played our parts as art students.

Probably the bothering part went a bit too long, we waited 8 of 10 hours for the shootings but hey it was work, not spare time. I came to read 2 full books in the end (these days am reading Wodehouse because I liked to check why Jeff Goldblum is as fascinated of this author).

"Tierärztin Dr. Mertens" is a typical weekly soap and quite famous in Germany.

What I've film technicallywise learned at the shooting is, that German series scripts are much less detailed written than American ones. The actors with less than a page text get their lines a minute before the shooting tries but still they are not less professional.

Short rev : You don't mess with the Zohan

A bit too much. The story could be worth a try if it wasn't completely over the top of good comedy. Good comedy is, let's say a few good laughs to remember, a background story and good actors. We got good actors here: Adam Sandler, John Turturro ... it could be good, it could if it wasn't totally dumb and flat. You don't know if you wanna cry or throw up when Zohan decides to "satisfy" every single old woman at the beauty salon and also the sarcastic over the top action special effects get boring in time - about 20 minutes from the start of the movie. Probably the only good thing at it is the soundtrack otherwise this movie may seem funnier when you're drunk.

What is Jebby Movies?

-> What is "Jebby Movies"?

JebbyMovies! is an independent project for movie reviews of not so well known and remembered but great movie productions and also great actors you maybe never ever heard of or never could remember their names. We want you to take an outside look on the world beyond your tv screen "because there's more out there"!

To interact with out opinions JebbyMovies is open for comments at every blog post without asking you to register for anything. Just click the "comments" button and drop your own!

We are two young movie critics and screenwriters who just wanna share their opinions on movies we like or dislike, not just those common cinema films you could watch on every corner and later could buy at every supermarket!

Sina Hawk is a novelist and screen writer from Leipzig/Germany, interested in movies for years and working in stage play writing these days.

Cousin G. alias Ghanoo D. is a web designer and screenwriter from Alger/Algeria & a huge fan of Tarantino and the Coens.

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Tremors 3 & 4 - Back in time and in storyboard

Time moved on and "Perfection" made his money based on the underground "worms" even though they are history. Burt Gummer, the weaponary freak who still waits for world war the 3rd went famous by showing the tv how to hunt graboids and theire mutations but when he comes back to visit his town after eleven years he has to face others made much more money out of nothing. Business guy Jack opened his safari tour, showing tourists around between faked special effects pretending to be hunted by the original worms. But Burt brings some graboids unwanted back on his track and once again "Perfection" is under attack - and that last time their enemies are able to fly!

Part 3 of "Tremors" wasn't as good as the first ones, somehow the laughs got lost on the way and except for Michael Gross (Burt Gummer) there is a new cast and the characters just seem to be less likeable. It was worth a try but from my point of view, part 2 should have skipped directly to part 4.

Part 4 takes us back in time. In 1889 the small village "Rejection" makes its fortune on silver mines. Some workers get killed while digging at the mines and so the village has to shut them down and wait for help. It is not really help what they get when Hiram Gummer, a man of the mining company, comes to look for what stopped the digging and so they have to hire the gunman "Black Hand Kelly" to get rid of the mini worms.

What a nice idea. Part 4 explains how Burt's ancestor came to like (lets say "love") guns & rifles, how "Rejection" became "Perfection" and all in all it's a Western ... Action ... Comedy movie par excellence! You meet relatives of the nowadays citizens of the small town and get to understand why they stick to the place that much - played by the same old cast!
And to me as good old special actors' fan this movie has a great bonus: Mr. Billy Drago as Black Hand Kelly! You don't wanna miss that, believe me! What part 3 missed is doubled at part 4, a great ending of the "Tremors" era.

So what is left to say about "Tremors". From 1990 to 2004 "Tremors" was a really entertaining piece of work with various cast but the same topic. You should think it'd get boring to watch ppl hunting underground monsters after the first movie already but since the directors and writers always came up with new mutations and ideas you get the feeling to have watched one really good movie in the end.

Millions of people bought and watched the 4 single masterpieces (okay 3, you know part 3 and so on ...) and I am one of them. Hopefully you are soon, too - really a good gimmick for 1, 2 film evenings with friends, nachos and soda. Enjoy!

Tremors & Tremors 2 - Please do not feed!

"Perfection" could be a silent little Western village with trailerparks and Chang's market as the center of everything happening around. It could. If not something would have lately attracted some monsters that no man has ever seen before. And why were they not seen? Right, because they are subterranian what basically means they live under your feet. The casual workers Val & Earl decide to fight against them, rather than running away and succeed. They soon find themselfs facing huge worms that move highspeed underground and pull down everything into the ground, they catch.

One who didn't watch those great film series yet may now think "Ok monsters ... that live in the ground? Wth wasn't Godzilla unrealistic enough?" but no, no, no there's an explanation for everything - coming in part 2-4.

Part 2 begins where part 1 ends. Logically. Somewhere in Mexico the monsters have been showing up - and this time they are prepared to change their look for the faster, smaller and breed themselfs in a minute. Now they are not huge worms anymore you can blow up easylie but fast, little, things that use infrared to catch their prey - which of course are the workers at the oil field and Earl who needs the money he'll get if he blows them up.

You are here looking at a classic! In 1990 when "Tremors" was released it was quite fresh and it came as a likeable funny and entertaining adventure movie with an unknown kind of monsters. This breed wasn't "evil", it was just ... hungry and learning! Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon make it a really watchable thing, you shouldn't miss.

Just one question remains unanswered even after 4 parts - why does the worm on the cinema posters and dvd covers always have teeth when he doesn't in the movie?

(Hold on for the rev of part 3 & 4 coming soon)

City of angels - The ultimate definition of: romantic

Oh yes, sometimes even we at JebbyMovies like to watch some cheesy romances like this one. "City of angels" is not a new one, nearly everyone has heard of the movie the last years and you can only have one oppinion on it: cheesy as hell! Don't you dare denying it, everyone finds it cheesy but is that a reason not to like it? The first few times I watched it, I even had to cry! (You didn't read that, Canan Houari never cries)

For anyone who's missed this piece of movie history here is the story:

Angel Seth comes to the hospital to take a patient "away" who dies in an operation and desperatly falls in love with the young surgeon Maggie who crashed the whole thing. He decides to follow her around a bit and gets visible for her. When she falls in love, too he thinks about to "fall" and become human to be together with her.

Noone could have picked a better actor for the role of the angel than Nicolas Cage. We've seen him in action movies, too but frankly he's best in slimy romace dripping roles! Meg Ryan as Maggie is also touching but at some parts of the movie not surprised enough. I mean if I would meet a guy who says he's an angel I would do a bit more than run against the fridge while walking backwards.

All in all you shouldn't miss the movie, it's a well shot piece of cheese cake and make sure that you also hang the slimy movie poster to your wall (does fit wallpapers with rose textures on it ...)