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.