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Reviews
Nimmermeer (2006)
Magical
There're not many films around these days that could be described as sheer magic.
Nimmermeer - as I understand - is the premiere work of a young German director and it was made when he was still at filmschool. Alas! I don't want to know what we have to expect from this guy if this was really his first film!
The simple story revolves around a young boy in an ancient fishing village who must come to terms and start a new life after his father's gone. The storyline is linear, simple and one-dimensional - but everything else is pure magic. No film I've seen in a long time has so beautifully and imaginatively conjured up the spirit of childhood and innocence.
The young director has a firm grasp on actors and locations and supported by great camera work has created a unique and mesmerizing world. So if you're into haunting, dark, fairy-tale like images and Burtonesque atmosphere - watch it!
Palermo Shooting (2008)
What a disaster!
In every serious artist's life there're great oscillations and changes. Years of great and masterful work are followed by long passages of creative drought and emptiness. But every artist who takes himself seriously one day must understand and face facts that his best years are over and it would be wise to drop the pencil and leave the field for a new, emerging generation.
After seeing Wender's latest "work" at its premiere in Berlin last night I felt that everyone in the audience quietly shared the same thoughts about this flick:
That this can hardly be called a film anymore - but is a preposterous, embarrassing, empty and painful blow to anyone who liked some of the better of Wender's works in the past.
"Palermo Shooting" is a pseudo-surreal, pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-cinematic derangement, full of lame clichés, bad acting and dialog that only serves one cause:
It holds proof to the sheer yet painful fact that Wenders' time as a serious filmmaker has long come.