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The Numbers Station (2013) Directed by Kasper Barfoed



This easily could have been a high profile movie. It basically had the right sort of actors and concept for it but nobody picked this movie up and it's not hard to see why really.

Having a good and potentially interesting concept is one thing but turning it into a decent and suspenseful movie is a whole other ballgame. This movie just never develops into something truly engaging, tense, mysterious or surprising to watch.

It's one of those movies that's mostly set at one location and to be frank, the movie started off promising as well. It showed plenty of potential with its concept and side-plots but the film-makers did absolutely nothing with it at all. You would expect this to be a movie with plenty of twists and turns in it, or one that plays mind-games with its two main characters but the movie as it is is actually being a pretty straightforward one with its story. What you see is what you are going to get and you shouldn't expect anything surprising or truly mind blowing of it.

That's the most disappointing aspect about this movie. Every time you are starting to believe that it's going to develop into something truly tense and original, it just stops and continues to do absolutely nothing. Watching Malin Akerman punching in a bunch of different random numbers is about the most exciting thing that this movie has to offer you. It doesn't elaborate enough on things and it never builds up toward any sort of all revealing or tense climax. This is also because of the movie its villains, who are hardly in it at all and their motives are never made fully clear. The whole movie you are trying to figure it what it is that these guys want exactly from our two main characters. You are waiting for answers, that this movie just never provides.

No, it's not like this is the worst of most boring movie you could ever watch. It luckily mostly is too short for that and the movie as it is still remains a good looking one. Technically not an awful lot wrong with this movie. It has decent cinematography, editing and action in it, as well as some pretty good actors. It's also definitely a watchable enough movie but it starts to run out of steam, before it even reaches the hour mark. By the end of it, there is also just absolutely no way that you could say that this is a very good movie, that surprised or impressed you.

Not the worst movie you could watch but you're definitely still better off skipping it.

5/10

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RKO 281 (1999) (TV) Directed by Benjamin Ross





(Review originally written at 16 May 2009)

This is more of a shot docudrama with big name actors in it, rather than a movie that tells a real story. To me this movie was lacking a bit of a point and it didn't achieved much with its story or characters. It's a quite distant movie in which everything remains on the surface. Questions such as who was Orson Welles, why was he such a genius and how "Citizen Kane" influenced basically all later cinema are hardly being answered or handled at all. As a matter of fact this movie isn't even really about Orson Welles or the shooting of "Citizen Kane" at all. It's more about the battle of getting the movie made and eventually released.

The movie does have some interesting things in it, that explain how "Citizen Kane" got first thought off, what the influences were and how it caused lots of troubles for the persons and studios involved but it does this in such an observe documentary kind of way that you just never feel involved with the story or any of its characters. The movie just doesn't always flow well and it doesn't always know to keep its main focus on the right things.

Of course the movie is not horrible, for a made for TV-production it's simply still a quite good one, with some good production values and a great cast involved.

Unfortunately it's not a really well cast movie. Sure it has big names n it but big names aren't everything. Was Liev Schreiber really the best pick to play Orson Welles? I just don't think so. I like Liev as an actor but more as a supporting actor. Some actors just aren't suitable to play important main leads. He of course also looks very little like Orson Welles. The movie also has further more James Cromwell, John Malkovich, Fiona Shaw and Melanie Griffith but it's perhaps only Roy Scheider who knows to make an great and lasting impression with his role.

Worth a go if you're already a bit familiar with Orson Welles and the movie "Citizen Kane", otherwise this movie will hardly keep your interest throughout with its superficial, more documentary-like, telling of the story

6/10

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