Casanova

Casanova

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova is the name of the man who was famous for his persuasiveness. A short part of his life he lived in Venice, the city where the movie is taking place. Casanova (Heath Ledger) is notorious amoungst women in Venice, he doesn´t care if he stays with a married woman or a nun. So it´s not a surpirse that he is pursuited by the church, which is not quite happy with the debauched situation in this city anyway. Casanova has to find a wife within four (I think it was four, maybe five) days or he will be banished. He is not very choosey and finds a beautiful girl who wants to marry him soon, but then he meets Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller), an intelligent and educated young woman, and falls for her. What now? This film is very clean, not surprising and after I have seen Heath Ledger as Joker in "The Dark Knight" I was a bit disapointed, this charakter here has not the fire, the life and the passion that I know Heath Ledger is able to give the figures. It´s  very light entertainment, not deep or touching, you don´t even really feel with the charakters because it´s too much slapstick and the whole story is brought up in a superficial way.

Untitled

Pornorama

 

...oder die Bekenntnisse der mannstollen Näherin Rita Brauchts. (I am sorry, but this is not possible to translate:) As you can probably guess, the main topic is sex. It´s in the 60s and the story is taking place in Germany. The revolution did reach the place München-Ramersdorf, Bennie Köpke (Tom Schilling) is making a apprenticeship as a cameraman at the police. He does this for his mother who has worries enough with his older brother Freddi (Benno Fürmann) who has always problems with money. So he has now, that´s why Freddi persuades Bennie to make a movie, because he desperately needs the money. And what kind of movies you can make money with is obvious, sex movies, particularly at this time just in the rumours of the sexual revolution. This happens just after Bennie met Luzi (Karoline Herfurth) for whom he falls immediately. Luzi is on the rebellion side, lives in a activist-commune and should never find out that he belongs to the enemies (the police). The caotic film crew consisits amongst others out of a female main actor who can´t speak German (because the language of love ist always italian) and who doesn´t want to undress (the first sex movie without sex, "geht gar nicht" (not possible)). The lightning idea for the story comes from Luzi, after she and Bennie went , for a creative input, to a therapist for marries couples. It´s light and funny entertainment, playing in a not-suprising way with clichees, but nevertheless I was laughing a lot about all the small obstacles that are put in their way while the crew is shooting in a very improvisational way the film.

 

In Bruges

In Bruges

 

Bruges is an old city, one of the best achieved cities from the middle ages. It´s beautiful but a bit dismal, it´s foggy and a bit like a dream. Like the movie. Sometimes you have the feeling to dive in some sureal dimension and on the other hand there are these touching moments when it hits you from the back. For example when Rey (Colin Farell) lays in his bed, his face is not moving and then he starts crying without a sound or a change of expression and somehow you realise how deep his despair must be. Or when Rey and his friend Ken (Brendan Gleeson) sit on the bench talking about nonsense and suddenly, out of nothing, Rey can´t stand it anymore, being guilty of the murder of a child, saying that it will only end when he ends. Within the helplessness of the the main actor there are these very funny scences, that fit so good without leaving the tragic focus of the story. Tragedy and humor are closly and sensitive interlocked. On the other hand there are very drastic and brutal situations, we see the killings, the open wounds, the blood. Bruges is a stage for characters that have a story to tell, not in words but in gestures and looks. Harry (Ralph Fienesse), the agressive boss of Rey an Ken who is highly convinced by his principles and can´t say one sentence without swearing. The "good" girl that is a drug dealer, the gnome that wants to be characterized as a dwarf. The black jokes are trailed through the whole movie, not one precarios topic is left out. There are jokes about black and white people, about gnomes, about homesexuals, about fat people,...and so on. Sometimes I was laughing just because I was schocked. But even when it is loud somehow there stays this sad silence in the back.

 

 

Fight Club

Fight Club

First I have to say: Great. I love it. Brutal, creative, crazy, funny, bloody, agressive. It starts with : "People always ask me if I know Tyler Durden". We see a pistol and after that scene a man who has breasts like a women because of hormons he has to take. But wait, "back up. Let me start earlier". Edward Norton, the narrator, couldn´t sleep for six months. Nobody can help him, so he starts getting addicted to self-help-groups (in one of them he meets the guy with the breast). He has one every day, where he can let go for the first time. That´s when he meets Marla Singer. "Marla's philosophy of life was that she might die at any moment. The tragedy, she said, was that she didn't." The narrator has a boring life, where his big sense is to find the right furnitures who express his personality, defines him as a person. He meets Tyler in a plain, he comes home, his apparment is burned, so he calls Tyler and they drink some beer (I think it was beer). "What are we (...)? (...) Consumers. (...) We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession." Tyler is a charismatic and radical guy, he knows what he wants, he does want he wants, he has no fear, because: Only when you arrive at the zero-point you are completely free. Pain gets a new dimension, it´s the proof that you live, you can feel that you are alive. All the agressive emotions that are held behind in society are accepted and you can express them in the "fight club". The central point in this movie is the crack with the moral of our modern civilisation, the fight against social conventions. The dialogs are dazzling, very intelligent, critical. And ladies: Bratt Pitt is so...wow in this movie. His body is beautiful, just a pleasure to look at. But of course this wasn´t the reason to watch the film, well, at least not the only one.

 

 

 

Let the Right One In / L

Let the Right One In / Lat den rätte komma in

 

First I have to say: I like vampire-movies. I´ve seen a lot of them. So when this one started (as usual in the Sneak:) I was surprised. In the beginning it´s not clear what all this is about. We get to know Oscar first, he lives alone with his mother somewhere in Sweden. Oscar is twelve years old, an outsider at school and he gets bullied by his classmate Conny and his friends. But Oscar can´t defend himself.  One night he meets Eli in the garden, she and a man (whose relationship to her is not clear, is he her father? Anyway he kills people for Eli, let them bleed out and takes the blood for her to drink it) just moved inside the house, they are neighbours now. Eli is twelve, already for a long time, and she makes clear that she and Oscar could never become friends, but slowly they develope a fragile sympathy to each other. She pukes from sweets, can´t stand the sunlight and people vanish that she had killed before. Once she asks Oscar: Would you still like me even if I was not a girl? And Oscar says yes. He finds out that Eli is a vampire, she shows him how to defend himself and my God, he is really the calmness in person, he doesn´t care that she even once kills a man right in front of him. Quite fearless. I have to say, this movie needs to get used to. It´s a swedish one and that´s probably the reason for many weird scenes, one thing I like particularly about scandinavian films. It´s very calm, very slow, too slow for my taste. The soundtrack is nice, the actors are great and Eli is sometimes a girl but sometimes she is a completely different creature. And I must say, it wasn´t very thrilling. But a very different kind of horror-vampire mixture.

 

Death Race

Death Race

 

Again I went to the Sneak this week. Me and my friend where sitting exited in our seats, the regular trailers started, and then, the movie... Well, my friend next to me kept saying for about five minutes: "No no, this isn´t the movie, it´s obvious that this is just another trailer." She was wrong and we were a little schocked even by the start. Just speed in some fucked up cars with guns and whatever other stuff that had a race and the drivers were trying to kill each other. And that´s more or less the story. But I will get a bit more detailed of course:) Ít´s 2012, the financial markets had collapsed, concerns rule the world only with the desire for profit, and not to forget the criminality rate is unbelivable high but for the movie itself this is really not important at all). So we have our innocent but keen main actor Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) whose wife gets killed but he goes to prison for it. It´s all an intrigue against him and for the quotes of death race. This death race thing is an invetion of the female director of the prison, who by the way is wire puller of the murder of his wife. Jensen has to win just one race to become a free citizan again. Ah, this I should mention, the clue is, that after a prisionor wins five races he is free. And the whole battle is coveraged live on TV. Great. I can only say, it was horrible, I never watched any car-race-no-brain movies before and I won´t watch one again. Just senceless. Waist of time.

Nordwand

Nordwand

 

This is also a movie I watched in the Sneak Preview´, it´s very good made, it´s a true story and it´s a german one. The Eiger Nordwand is a difficult and dangerous wall to climb and it lays in the Alps in Austria. To make this clear, this ascent has nothing really to do with climbing anymore, because the weather on the Eiger is very insecure, it changes from day to day and even faster. It takes about two days to reach the top when the weather is good and stabil, this weather thing makes it so dangerous to go on this wall because it doesn´t matter that you are a good climber when you have to fight with extreme coldness, lawines and rockfalls. To the story: It´s 1936. Toni (Benno Fuermann) and Andreas (Florian Lukas) are friends since they can think, they live in the same village and during their free time they go on climbing tours. An old friend of them, Luise Fellner (Johanna Wokalek), visits them, because she wants to write an article about the first ascent of the Eiger Nordwand. She wants to convince the boys to go to the cpmpetition that´s taking place soon, and they could win Olympic Gold for Germany with this. Before nobody was able to reach the top, many tries ended deadly, the second name of the Nordwand is Mordwand (murderwall). Anyway, they go there, everybody is exited, there are other teams from different countries, in the end only two teams start the climb :Toni and Andreas and the other team Willy and Edi. Not long after Willy gets hit by a stone but despertly wants to go on. The weather changes after one day, the four guys are stuck together, lawines, rockfall, snow, storm and freezing temperatures. Willy falls and is injured with an open fracture. They decide to turn and get back. But this is not as easy as it sounds like. They all die. What I liked especially was that the movie was so close to the characters, you get to know them, you feel with them, and the two extrems are very clear: lively and full of impulsive delight in a realistic way in the beginning, and the struggle they have in the end, the fear, hope and hoplessness, death. The pictures are beautiful, the Nordwand seems to be son inviting when they start but changes to hostile place from one moment to another. It´s a sad film and not easy to watch, but very good.

The Accidental Husband

The Accidental Husband

 

Emma Llyoid (Uma Thurman) is a woman that knows what kind of men women need. She moderates her own talkshow in the radio and gives advice to all the unhappy women. And well, they listen to her, take her serious, do what she says. Because Emma is an expert according to true love, you know, there is no prince charming. So one day Sophia calls, she is going to get married on the weekend, but all the five point whatever stuff didn´t fit to her potential husband. Emma is shocked, so Sophia is not getting married and her ex-boyfriend kind of angry about this radio-lady. He takes revange by changing Emma "unmarried status" into a "married status" with a friend of  him who is a hacker. This is a dramatic step, because Emma wants to marry the perfect man, but now first she has to get divorced. She gets to know her husband Patrick Sullivan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) better, and guess what, she falls for him, he for her, and so on. I watched this movie in the Sneak Preview, I was laughing my head of. All clichees existing about men and women and love are packed here, and of course it´s Hollywood style, it´s a light entertainment, nothing to take serious or to think about. In the end it becomes so horribly sweet and wonderful that I just couldn´t believe people would pay money for this. The actors look extremly good, both men worth watching and Uma Thruman is dressed just great all the way long. There are some funny scenes too, and the indian friend of Patrick is really nice´and smart, but I can´t remember the soundtrack, so this could not have been any special. So in conclusion, I wasn´t convinced.

La graine et le mulet / Couscous mit Fisch (France 2007)

I have a movie to recommend! "La graine et le mulet" is set in southern France, in a pretty deplorable setting for starters - a breaking-down harbour scenery, with people living crammed-ly in GDR-looking apartment buildings losing their jobs one by one. The ship you see on the picture is the corroded cargo ship after it has been turned into a lovely Arabian restaurant with lots of potentiality (couscous and red mullet!) by Sliman and his family. (Sliman is the old guy in the picture who gets fired for being inefficient. He has a wonderfully contemplative look in his eyes.) You cannot see the apartment buildings in the picture, although they make for some quite poetic imagery towards the end of the movie. 

What I liked most about the movie is its way of realistic story-telling that reminded me of "This is England". It's not as harsh but it also must be made by someone (name's Abdel Kechiche) who knows these people in real life. (For instance, the clash between the families of the Arab immigrants and the French officials is hilariously accurate - for all its sadness in the storyline.) With the scenes being seemingly uncut and lots of characters depicted going on and on in their chitchat or crying for minutes on end (great acting especially on the part of the casual and straightforward girl "Rym" - Hafsia Herzi, also in the pic above) many of your cinematically trained expectations go down the drain. Especially at the end! Daniel wondered whether they ran out of money... but no, it's just that you cannot count on everyone to work according to plan nor for fortune to fill the gaps to make a happy ending, not even for great dreams. Nicely, the lose ends in "La graine et le mulet" leave a lot to one's phantasy to complete. 

Batman Begins

Because I was so owerwhelmed by the new Batman movie (The Dark Knight) I decided to watch the previw one, too. The one that shows how and why Batman rises so to say. And I must say I liked it very much. You get lots of background information about the character. In this film Batman is somehow more human, we get to know about his greatest fear and why he chose the bat as his symbol, and that the figure Batman is a symbol for the right path, a sign for hope and justice in these criminal times in Gotham City. When Bruce Wayne was a boy his parents (probably the most perfect parents you ever saw) got killed. Bruce is convinced that it was his fault, he is full of anger, hate, fear and guilt. Therefore he escaped from his life in Gotham, traveled, stole and went into prison somewhere in Asia. Finally he found his master, a Ninja fighter, who tought him about fighting, anger and a bit of philosophy ("Technic is nothing, will is everything") imbedded in the breathtaking landscape of the Himalaya. After this he is ready to leave for Gotham and claim war against criminality. He meets Rachel, played by Katie Holmes here and probably the worst choice ever, she is just not a good actor and was annoying me with her sleepy expression in her face and she just is not able to give her figure character. Well, Bruce and Rachel were friends when they were children and of course they are attracted to each other but nothing really happens. Batman brings one of the worst criminals into prison and then has to face his real antagonist, his old master. What I appriciated about this movie was the connection to the comic. The camera work created pictures that clearly show comic like scenes, they almost looked like drawn (so maybe they were). Christian Bale (who plays the Batman) has more to do than in the following movie, but he was the right choice. I would recommend to make a Batman night, to watch this one and the the second one. They are very different in atmosphere and camera work, but both worth watching.

The Dark Knight

The old battle beetwen good and bad picurized in the new Batman movie. But how... I don´t know where to start, first, even though there were some questions left open in the end (like how did the Joker come to so much power, how did he manage to collect all these people around him and why did none of the policemen shoot during the chase in the tunnel???) I was overwhelmed, this is a great film. It contains love, hate, good, bad, drama, action, fear, revenge, insanity,....and so on. It´s just worth watching to see Heath Ledger in the role of the Joker. I was reading an interview with him about this character and he was saying, that he could invent this character all by himself, there were no fixed items but the clothes. Even the make up was his idea. Well, he does a very good job, he is by far the best actor here. He is so scary all the time because the Joker lives the theory of chaos, you can´t see through his madness and anarchy ideas, he´s completely crazy and highly intelligent at the same time. This coctail makes him so interessting. The battle he and Batman are fighting is the endless battle, because none of them can exist without the other. And sometimes it becomes clear how close they are, how tiny is the step from one side to the other, from love to hate, from good to bad and that sometimes you can´t even see what is what, because we are just humans. I also liked the role of Batman´s butler very much, with his smirk humor, the wise advices and his complete loyalty. The questions comes up, if Batman is fighting criminality in the rigth way, if it is defensible to answer to violence with violenec, even though the movie seems to answer this qustion with yes, it´s still there for me. Christian Bale as the Batman is doing a solid job by having a straight back, a handsome apperiance and a serious, stony face that sometimes shows a smile, but not too often. The dark hero, and dark is this whole film indeed. But we have another hero, Aaron Eckhart alias Harvey Dent is the white hero, the good guy and new district attorney that brings hope and humanity into Gotham City, not having the same abilities as Batman of course, but having a lot of power that he is using for the right and order. So he ist also a target for the Joker and it is Batmans who has to save the hope for the City. Will he succeed?

Lost in Translation

Bob Harris is doing a Spot for Whiskey for a lot of money and Charlotte accompanies her husband, a busy photographer, in Tokio. They are from America and stay in the same Hotel and meet one night at the bar, because they can´t sleep. Charlotte is a young woman, not sure about what she wants and married for just two years. Bob is an aged man, married since 25 years and tired of life. A friendship developes and they are obviously attracted to each other, but none of them makes a step. I liked a lot the sublimal irony, the subtle humor and the tragic. The combination works together very well. It´s nice to get an everyday impression of two very different people in a foreign country, just a cutting from their lifes. Nothing particularly special but very pointed, with many views on the faces.

Transsiberian

Roy and Jessie, a married amarican couple, were doing some childrens-help work in China. After they finished their work, as an adventure in between they take the Trans-Siberian train from China to Moscow. It´s winter in Russia. A couple is sharing the cabin with them, Abby and Carlos. We notice right away that Carlos and Abby are strange, two people you shouldn´t trust. But nevertheless Roy and Jessie come along with them very well, even though we observe the looks that Carlos gives Jessie. On one stop Roy gets lost, Jessie searches the whole train for him, but he vanished. At the next station she decides to wait for him, solidary as they are Carlos and Abby go off the train to wait with Jessie. While Abby is away Carlos and Jessie make a tour to some church ruin. Jessie got a call before that Roy is fine and was just doing some seightseeing. She and Carlos are somehow attracted to each other, but as she backs down he tries to rape her. Jessie is not the helpless little girl as we learned before, and as Carlos doesn´t let go she apparently kills him. When the next Trans-Siberian train stops, Roy and his wife meet again and drive on together accompanied by a police officer, who starts to make Jessie extremly nervous when she finds out that Carlos was in fact a drug dealer and had exchanged the inside of their suitcases while he had had a shower in Jessies room in the hotel. And the nightmare just starts, because the police officer is involved in the drug-dealing. A wintery, snowy and cold movie, somehow weared but fascinating at the same time.

Nirgendwo in Afrika

Nowhere in Africa. Germany during the second world war. Jettl and her daughter Regina follow Walter, Jettls husband and Reginas father, to Africa where Walter works on a farm. They escape from their homecountry Germany because they are jewish. When the two arrive at the farm Jettl is shocked and not willing to accept a long term stay. Walter and her start having troubles, they are not able to talk, Jettl misses their old and luxery life while Regina learns the language of the african people fast and developes a close friendship to their cook Owuor. Meanwhile the war in Germany goes on, the pursuance of the Jews is getting worse, more and more try to escape before it will become impossible. Jettls starts to realise why Walter decided to go to Africa, and even here the war catches up with them. They get incarcerate by the British Army in Namibia, just in case they are symphathizer of the Nazis. Jettl manages to organize a job for Walter and they move to another farm. But still the relationship is brittle. Once in while letters from the familymembers that had decided to stay in Germany arrive, and the news become worse each time. The movie shows in beautiful slow motion views how the life of this family developes during the years they stay in a foreign country, how they change and how different the experiences are for the parents compared to their daughter. The music is very nice and african like. Nothing is rushing, we have a lot of time to get to know the characters, what I like a lot.

Taken

Bryan was a spy for the governement and his wife Leonore and his daughter Kim left him, because he never was at home. Leonore married a rich man who has apparently a lot of time and money for her and her daughter, even though Leonore seems to be still in love with Bryan. The movie starts very much on the birthday of Kim who becomes 17. And soon after she and her best friend want to make a trip to Paris. Bryan is of course very suspicious, because Leonore and Kim don´t know anything about the bad world outside, Kim and her friend are only 17 and too young, and so on. But well, Kim gets the signature she needs from him to make her trip, and guess what, as soon as they arrive in Paris they meet the wrong people and get kiddnapped by slave traders. And now the movie starts to become interessting. Bryan uses all his skills he was trained to have for his further spy job, and promises to find the kidnappers. And he goes his way without compromising and we have no doubt that he will do anything and he really does anything. From here on the plot is very realistic, far away from beautiful pictures and dream-reality young enlsaved prostitudes are shown, under drugs not councious about their environment or not capable to fight anymore. The fury of a father is shown, who has nothing in mind but to fnd his daughter. Very convincing. Really. But the end is again a bit Hollywood-like. So women in the world, never travel alone, never let your daughter travel alone, be scared of men,.... This bores me. But appart from this the film is absolutly worth watching and Liam Neeson is proving his authentic abilities as a actor.

Across the universe

Jude is part of the working class in Ireland, he lives with his mother. His father disapeared to America and he follows him to find out who he is to let him know he has a son. He arrives at the the States to find out that his father is also a worker at a university and not a professor as he was hoping. But Jude meets Max and is thrown into the movement of the 1986, falls for Max sister Lucy and they live a life far from rules, with drugs and freedom. But then Max gets confiscated by the army and is send to Vietnam. So while Lucy gets involved into the protest movement that is getting more and more violent, Jude becomes an artist, but the relationship suffers under the different point of views, way of living, envy. The soundtrack is only Beatles new composed, very nicely made. The story is told in a kind-of-musical-way, lots of singing, dancing, art-hippie scenes, coloured and lively, switching between reality and drug-cognition, the war in Vietnam and the revoluton going on in America, but never failing to show the seriousness and violence that broke out.

Mongol/ The untold story of Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan is known as Khan (ruler) of the empire of Mongolia from 1206 to 1227, the largest empire in history. During his reign he occupied most af Asia. The movie shows the life of Genghis Khan from the time when he was a boy (and called Temujin) of 9 years and chose (was chosen, as Borte would say later) his bride Borte till he rose to full power. In a beautiful and unagitated way the wide and emty landscape of Mongolia is the stage for the story of a boy that grows up to be a cruel but respected/ feared Khan, that built his empire on strict rules: The mongol punishment will be one - Death. All Mongols are afraid of thunder, only Temujin learned to control his fear because he has no place to hide. The story is not only concentrated on the main plot but gives time to the culture, to the way of living, to the characters, to the landscape and to the soundtrack, that somehow mirrors the pictures in their scantiness.

Into the wild

Alex says: "I´ll paraphrase Thoreau here: Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness, give me truth". Alex Supertramp went to Alaska, a longing for lonleyness, truth and ultimate freedom leaded his way. Growing up with violence and lies within the family his desire for another way of living rose. But this might just be the obvious explanation. He was looking for something he couldn´t find in society, "society man". He cut his ID, his cards, everything that could identify him or make his experience easier. He never called his family, his parents had to realise at some point that Alex simply didn´t want to be found, didn´t want any contact, maybe decided not to come back ever. He was heading to Alaska, Alaska, not the city Alaska. "Just be out there in it, you know? In the wild". He hitchhiked most of the time, worked at some point, tasted various ways of living far from richness in the sense of money-richness,lived in the desert for some time, canued illegally to Mexico and had some troubles to go back to the States. But always kept his dream, he never let somebody catch him. He had this idea in his mind, "Your just there in that moment, in that special place and time". Aside from his longing, when Alex finally made his way to Alaska, his dream was confronted with reality. It´s not that easy to shoot an elk in the summer and prepare the meat fast enough, so the flies don´t place their eggs. Or to shoot a reindeer with a calf, not matter how big the hunger is. The truth he finally found was this: Happiness is only real when shared. When he decided to head back from Alaska the river he had crossed in the winter had grown huge and wild, he wasn´t able to pass it. Two weeks after he had died moose hunters found hid dead body.

Three Colours: White (1993)

When I rented this movie, the movie-renting-woman asked me whether I had seen any other movie from this trilogy before. I said, yes, blue. And that I had liked the athmosphere. Yeah, she said, no wonder, I mean, it's not like you could tell their plot. 

Let me try: Karol, a Polish barber, gets thrown out by his French wife in Paris because he cannot satisfy her sexually. Wow. As he is blowing the comb in the metro, Mikolaj picks him up. Mikolaj takes Karol to Poland in a suitcase

because he wants to die and cannot do it himself, he wants Karol to help/kill him. Karol then makes a lot of money and stages his own funeral. He wants his ex-wife to come and the only way he can think of to make her come is by bequeathing her a lot of money. She comes, they have extraterrestrial sex and possibly live happily ever after (the movie ends before that). 

If you were wondering whether Karol killed Mikolaj: No, he didn't. The first shot was a blank cartridge and while Karol was crying, Mikolaj began to want to live again. Seemed like the theatrical radicalisation of something I talked about with Rieke the other day: How much you can approve and love a decision of yours when you were almost completely sure before that you would do just the opposite, which you had all thought through.

Schwarze Katze weißer Kater/ Black cat white male cat

We have: three mafia bosses, one grandson of a mafia boss who falls is love with a girl but his father, the son on one of the mafia bosses got cheated by another mafia boss and now his son, the grandson of the one mafia boss, has to marry a girl he doesn´t love. She wants to marry someone she loves, he loves another girl. And in the end everything happens like we don´t expect it, or maybe we do? Well, that´s more or less how this movie is, crazy, unexpectd, funny, wild. I didn´t have time to take a breath. And the soundtrack is gorgeous. Wow, I love it.

Some like it hot

I watched another sweet classic: Marilyn Monroe is half naive, half sensual, and half cunning. The two pals dressing up as women stick together through thick and thin and don't care much when Marilyn Monroe switches from one to the other. Arguing is their hobby anyway. The dressing up is completely unbelievable and I wonder: could they get away with it because people didn't look as closely back then or just the movies were more theatrical? Oh, and I fall for Billy Wilder slapstick dialogues and chases. But what I liked best was how the bass guy - who becomes the loved one of a millionaire - looks and laughs like my (female) literature professor. Could she be dressing up?

Kung Fu Panda

This is one of the movies you catch when you visit the "sneak preview". When it started I thought I won´t make it till the end. My first impression was: A chinese movie, full of life philisophy stuff and wise slogans, computer animated and with animals. So the worst mixture you can imagine. But it turned out to be a realy funny movie, which wasn´t interested in any realism whatsoever, and a fat, hungry hero (the panda called Po). Po grew up as the son of a nudle cook. But is this all? He dreams of an adventures life as a Kung Fu fighter, and his wish becomes fullfilled by accident (ah no, this "by accident" doesnt exists, as the wise turtle was saying). Our hero isn´t quite the kind of Kung Fu student the mouse like teacher was expecting, but something has to happen, because the dangerous, revenge claiming snow leopard Tai Lung has broke out of prison. What I took from this movie? Well, there is no secret ingredient.

Muxmäuschenstill (again)

I remembered Tanja watched this movie and tonight, as she was out watching an apparently poor German football performance, and thus I couldn't talk to her, I watched the mux-movie, remembering she found it shockingly real and disturbing, for which I was in the mood. Anyhow, I had expected it to be more funny, it being announced as a movie about an idealist. But Mux is very serious indeed about making the world (Germany and its fast drivers, rapists and drug addicts) a better place (where people drive slow, don't have sex [for fear of exploitation] and drink beer with the elderly in ocre-coloured Berliner Eckkneipen). Kant is on his bedside table, but Mux is mixing up respect with threat and fear about 60 times every day, when he convicts and humiliates yet another 60 wrongdoers, taking some money from them on the occasion to finance his idealistic business. The business is strikingly well-run, considering Mux used to be a philosophy student, all documented videos of wrongdoers are in alphabetical order. Mux is terribly prim. He can talk the girl of his choice into his dreams for a while, but then this smart teenager notices quickly his "komisch" (strange/funny) side and takes off with a fellow teenager who's better at letting out his sensuality. Mux is terribly concrete, too. Clean from the outside, that's what he's trying to make the world. Unfortunately, the "unsachlich" ("unobjective") voice in his head doesn't shut up. Moviewise, that's a nice move: as irrational and scary as his acts seem, he becomes quite understandable as a character... scared, aggressive in spite of his "decision" to be objective... the scary counterpart to being oh so reasonable. Oh, another nice movie technique: Many parts show what is being seen through Gerd's video camera: the real crimes that we all wish to "do something against". His formerly jobless bum-companion Gerd remains an obedient helper most of the time, glad at every cake he is being offered. His scant portrait shows a simple character that couldn't hurt a fly, especially as opposed to Mux, of course. In the end when Mux offers him a "higher position" in what is by now a big company of strengthening responsibility, he straightens his posture and smiles. In the end, carrying his securing endeavours to Italy (for personal reasons that he doesn't admit to himself), Mux gets run over by a fast car he effectfully wishes to slow down, a martyr for his silly mission. As an outro, we hear in his testament that he doesn't know other words than those of that mission, which we have been hearing all through the movie. At least not outside of his head, he doesn't.

Eastern Promises

Anna Naomi Watts is a nurse. She works in Russia in a hospital. On Christmas a girl of 14 years gives birth to a child and dies. Anna takes the diary of the girl. It is written in russian language that Anna can´t understand. So she asks her uncle, a Wodka drinking silent man. But he doesn´feel like it. So Anna give the copie of the diary to a man called Kirill, who is, as we will find out later, one of the heads of the Russian Mafia. But to be honest, I had a strange feeling about him the first time Anna meets him :-)Her uncle has started to translate the diary in between, and what he finds out about Prostitution, Pornography and human trafficking is not funny. The same thing is what the Russian Mafia thinks. And anyway, what is about this somehow smart and somehow scary guy Nikolai Luschin. His role is not clear at all. I liked this movie very much. And I also liked the actors. The cool, inaccessibly, smart Nickolai, the despereate, moral Anna, the unscrupulous but grandfather like looking Kirill, and so on. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the end.

The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)

Last night Charlton Heston died at age 84. He is not an actor I fancy much but I wanted to watch 'The Agony...' for a long time. The movie itself I find very weak, somewhere near a documentary with all the poor and pretentious talk I can imagine. 'I'll die for my work' - Michelangelo exhibits mood swings worthy of some capricious wench rather then a passionate and focused artist. Read the book - it is much better.

The Last Hit Man (2008)

There's been a few like this in the past years - the killer and his daughter - or how interesting it is to kill for a living and love at the same time. Nothing very special about this movie, maybe some loose ends (the old man missed his date, the daughter didn't fall for the new guy, what the H is Todd doing there at all?) but I liked these. I also liked the first scene - what happens before the credits. Like an essay sums up the whole thing and I would stop right there - the movie doesn't really get any better then this abstract. I would be probably horrified should I take this movie seriously - the possible range of issues that it touches is so great and so heavy that it has no time to do it. It's like one of my essays - too much ambition and too little space. It turns out that if reality is complex one way to deal with it is to focus on fewer aspects. I don't generally agree but I can see the point here - it really does take time to deal with issues.

Perfect Hideout (2008)

The movie would be a perfect example of how the mouse eats the cat. It is not because the mouse is so stupid and the cat so strong that there is no possible comparison - the cat simply has to commit suicide. Surely there are secondary stories going around and the plot goes like this (spoiler warning!): A couple is ready to make a new life for themselves, moving to some other country and starting anew. Before they go to the airport a mafia-type guy calls the boy and asks for 'the money back'. The amount of money is so huge that 'the boy' wants to rob a small shop to cover for it. During the chocolate bar rubbery a young angelic cop comes in and is shot it the fight that starts. Running from the little shop 'the boy' and his hysterical and emotionally labile girlfriend have a fight so the car ends up in a ditch. Only after do they kiss and make up and start looking for a car which they find in front of a rich house. Trying to get the keys they manage to enter the house and a surprised scream of 'the girl' in front of an espresso machine calls Victor-' the guy from upstairs' - whom they 'kidnap'. Long story short - Victor is more dangerous then even I imagined. Please watch a Stan Laurel movie before and after this one - they are the same - stupidity drives the plot - there is no real action - In a movie with serious crime and issues that doesn't appear to be a parody - But it is.

Aces 'N Eights (2008)

2008 Western! People didn't get enough of westerns and they do more. Please watch the oldies again and spend the money on some serious stuff. "Aces 'N Eights" has some rough camera and gratuitous violence but it really doesn't get close neither to the Eastwood ones nor to modern sculpture like "The Assassination of Jesse James...". I missed the rhetoric of progress so much - "with the railway not only trains but the rule of law comes about". Sure you have to die a bit and we killed these other people but it will come. "And if you touch that gun and kill me you won't get a ticket to this train". I'm so impressed, this is such low propaganda that I cannot imagine serious people ever taking it into account. And don't forget "It (the railway) is bigger then you or me". Fuck off! Ah...and if I hear once more from a sad woman standing in front of man "What happened to us?" I'm going to eat some industrial sugar - I know it's bad for me but I cannot resist. It's 2008, wake up "Nothing happened" to us other then we're terribly bored by this line.

The bank job (2008)

Random action flick with one moment to remember - picture this: the middle of a harry business involving royal family sex, a bank job, drungs, politics and the violence that go together. The leader of the pack (just out of the bank) comes home to wife and children for a brief update. He manages to tell her that things are worse than what she saw on TV one of their friends being dead and all. Guess what she says: I hear there was also a woman in the bank. Did you sleep with her? Yeap - that would have been really serious.

Der freie Wille/ The free will

Theo (Juergen Vogel) had brutally raped girls in the past. He came to prison and after he wants to change his life. He wants to prove that you can change yourself even if you started in the wrong way. But he got this appetite that´s getting worse. Then Theo meets Nettie (Sabine Timoteo) and falls for her. A fragile relationship developes. Nettie is his chance. But Theo cant´t repress his inner appetite. He splits with Nettie and tells her everything. She wants to find out about him and instead of going to the police she follows him in secret. Not a movie for sensitive minds. There are some really brutal scences and it is quite depressing to see how much of a free will we seem to have, even though in the end Theo proves that he has it by making suicide. This movie isn´t showing black and white point of views. The viewer is confronted with Theo as the evil-doer and as the victim at the same time. Nettie confronts herself with one of Theos victims and still she is disrupted. Sabine Timoteo plays this role just brilliant. It is a very hard topic and it´s concentrated in this movie in a way that the viewer is left with an hundreds of quesitons. Absolutely worth watching.

Emmas Glück / The luck of Emma (2006)

This is the most beautiful love story I have seen within years. It is authentic, unsentimental, light, sad, and so many things more. The setting is perfect and Emma is wonerful unconventionel. So here we go: Max steals a car ( ah well, not a car, a jaguar:-) and a lot of black money from his working place. He just came to know why he always has this pain in his stomage: cancer. But his way leads to an accident after which he wakes up at Emma´s farm. Emma lives alone at her farm wiht her pigs and chickens. Her farm is going to be auctioned in six weeks. Max stays at Emma´s place and a frail love story starts that just can´t find a happy end, because the cancer is uncurable.

101 Reykjavik (2000)

101 Reykjavik is the adress of Hlynur who is 30 years old lives still at his mother`s appartment. He is not willing to do anything more than watching pornography and making party at the weekend. He is weather stupid nor intelligent and quite convenient with his boring nothingness. The everyday life changes when Lola arrives, his new "father in law", because his mother has her coming out as a lesbien. So while his mother leaves over new years eve he impragenates Lola. I can recommend this movie which is full of dark humor, depressing scences, absurd happenings and snowy cold weatherand a main actor who isn´t able to make anything out of his life not even capable to make suicide, by the way one of the most funny scences in my opinion.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Surprisingly another good one for the Oscars. Brad Pitt is good but Casey Affleck is fantastic. The image is great as the number of 'tricks' that it plays on us. There's more to say about colours and camera movement but you should just watch it. This may be a western but it is not what it sounds like. Gunshots and robberies amount to meditative states. The plot is discovered in a nice painful pace. Yeap - another one to watch. The weak trailer:

Atonement (2007)

Finally a movie that deserves the Oscar nomination. I liked most things about it - from the sound to the camera, to acting and plot. Joe Wright (the 35yo director) puts together an new type of non-linear epic story that poses problems close to me. We'll probably see his name again. The image is fantastic - and I don't have in mind only the long shoot in the middle of the movie but the many little elegant camera movements and framings that are also meaningful. I have to mention the typewriter in the soundtrack and the way it stresses characters and situation but also as a meta-comment on the power of words. I liked the acting of Saoirse Ronan who can be wonderfully senseless. I will watch this movie again for sure. Let's see if it also ages well but for now I totally recommend it.

Juno (2007)

It's Oscar time and this is one of the nominated movies. This is just another American teen movie. However, I had the patience to watch it to the end and for somewhat of a good reason - it is better. The main character is much stronger, stronger out of its context, out of any expected proportion. Juno is stylized to a such a degree that she resembles the ideal 21st century women - cynical but sensitive, kind of stupid but learning, glacial but on fire. Ellen Page (I love her act) is and does everything-the bad and the ugly included, she is the undisputed center of attention. Trying to escape the attraction of the Juno sun I was happy to see Jennifer Garner the future mommy doing an exceptionally tensed role. I like the idea - she is this 20th century women with work, position and seemingly independent but also incapable of having her own children. I enjoyed this parallel enough to make the movie worth watching and the music also helped a bit. Ok - it is not the regular teen movie, it is even good, but is it really worth a nomination for the best movie? I would watch it again but not many times. Here's a trailer mixed with the song that I actually like >

Michael Clayton (2007)

Another nominated for this year's Oscars. Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is 'mr. fix it' in a law firm. We do not get to see how Michael fixes things but we do see how he doesn't - he is in a middle of a too-obvious-to-be-real moral dilemma out of which he is lucky enough to get out. Mr Clooney does an normal job at acting - which in some contexts is praised as masterful. I find much better Tom Wilkinson who has fewer but poignant scenes. Also Tilda Swinton is great at creating tensions while all the tensions are only economically pointed at. The plot wants to be intricate but it ends up being just a bit convoluted. Another OK movie that makes me think there were better years in the life of cinema.

My Blueberry Nights (2007)

Eventually we went to the movies! My Blueberry Nights it was. Personally, I adore blueberries and I would never leave a blueberry pie untouched if Jude Law's café happened to be in my neighbourhood. Typically for Kai War Wong movies (Ulli says - I haven't seen it but "In the mood for love" is very nice she says), the images are strong. He plays a lot with colours the scenes are bathed in and he's not shy to make it fully orange or blue, with mirrors and café windows through which you watch everyday phrases gain deeper meaning, and his style is very slow. I liked for instance how the whole first part is set only in the café where Elizabeth (Norah Jones) tells Jude Law about her unfaithful boyfriend. We never get to see the boyfriend except once when she watches him through a window. There's a cheesy bit about keys that people left at his café and never pick up, and the love-on-first-sight way Norah Jones and Jude Law get in touch ("I need to talk to some one. Can I come in?") is also a bit unusual for a regular NYC café I'd say. But then it gives a nice frame for the road trip she's taking and she can write him postcards from everywhere ("I always had the feeling I could tell you everything"). - There's a strange contrast between the slowness of the images and numerous observation scenes, and the fact that there is No development of the relationship whatsoever. Really - if the love on first sight thing didn't work, it'd be pretty tough for them to get together. Norah Jones as an actress.. hm. It always seems she is watching very attentively something on the far horizon. But the song in which she sings "I don't know how to tell the story, it's all been told before" at the beginning and end of the movie is nice.

Merlin I and II

Merlin is a TV production, but nevertheless a very good one. The saga of Arthus is told from Merlins (Sam Neil) point of view. Merlin is the creation of Map (Miranda Richardson), the dark queen of the old way. She wants him to bring the humans back to the old way and she fears the Christianity. Because she will vanish if nobody believes in her. Merlin grows up at the nurse Ambrosia. When he becomes eighteen Map comes to take Merlin to teach him magic. But he can olny think of the girl whose life he saved, Nimue (Isabella Rossellini. When Map kills his nurse Ambrosia Merlin averts from her and never wants to use magic again. he becomes involed in the rising and falling of kings and he is the teacher of Arthus, who builts Camelot. But he can never forget Nimue. The special effects are really not worth to mention, but the actors are fantastic. Sometimes you are reminded to a theatre, which I find very good.

Darjeeling Limited

This is the name of the train in india where the three brothers Francis, Peter and Jack start their spiritual search. They haven´t senn each other for one year, since the funeral of their father. The chaotic trip developes not quite how they imagended it, so they get kicked out of the train, decide to meet their mother and do some sidseeing in between. Tragic and funny at the same time. I love it.

Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995)

To prepare for my trip to St. Andrews and Scottish especially, I decided to watch Scottish movies. I thought it might be a good idea to start with the one about Scotland's "independence": Braveheart. - Scotland, around 1300. Lots of warriors. - I liked Mel Gibson's Scottish accent, I thought it wasn't bad. Some other people sound quite American, that's funny... but then I remembered how much English itself changed from earlier (Shakespeare let's say, or think of medieval German literature) to now and I realize probably it doesn't matter anyway. For instance William Wallace (Gibson) telling the French princess "I don't know why I tell you this, probably because your looks remind me of my wife whose killing by the English is the whole reason for this combat" made me laugh. - In general I liked the movie, though. Actually this medieval kind of raging and killing I enjoy. Usually I get disgusted by fights, but all this beating, slicing and stabbing I found quite well-done. Maybe modern technologies are just too complicated for me, or it's that I long for the uncivilized life. - Another thing: this freedom babble. How does it work, can you imagine they were all shouting "freedom!" when they rushed into battle? And what did they mean by it? Unfortunately That we don't get to see because after Wallace dies there is only 90 seconds left to the three hour movie, in which the Scots overthrow the English and gain it. Happy-go-lucky toys...-----ok I have a have a problem uploading the pic. Imagine a long-haired dirty guy with a sword walking towards you, and everything behind him burning, but the cool way.

The Orphanage/El Orfanato

A child disapears and his mother tries to find her adopted son til the end. He had seen children that died a long time ago, his new friends, but his parents thought it was a only childrens game. Then he disapears and to find out the truth his mother has to leave all her fears snd doubts behind. This movie is thrilling, it´s so scary if I had been alone to watch it I would have left the room. And still there is a fairy tale hinding inside. The soundtrack is awesome, it cerates this whole dark and mysteries atmosphere that surounds the story. The actors are brilliant, especially Belén Rueda. Do I have to say more?