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.