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Reviews
Sie haben Knut (2003)
Between fun, love and politics
A fine German winter relationship & skiing movie. Taking place in the beginning of the 80s, some very different young people, some with kids, meet in an Alps tourist cabin. When informed that the leader of both the "volleyballers` and the "political agitators` has been arrested on a demonstration in Germany (therefore he can't join the vacation), the group splits. We see very clearly now, that the youngs at least have one thing in common: working on their momentary relationships and centres of life through the dynamics of the groups. Soon the mood becomes aggressive, the ski teacher, who just wants to have fun, flirting with the girlfriend of the actual prisoner Knut, is attacked by the "political` friends, and love hurts all the way long. People part and come together, that's the way the cookie crumbles. This is an good example for the momentary German trends both to "real life` chamber plays like "Halbe Treppe` and to reflections about the immediate (more and more not only Eastern!) German past like "Liegen lernen`. The acting is very close to the viewer's eyes, the characters accord to our everyday experiences. Although, it's never boring to see this, because the dynamics inside the group produce a subtle sort of suspense. But it could have been more ideas in the script, especially courage for more stirring dialogues. The years around 1980 had been high tide for political action and discussion. The Red Army Fraction, the squatters, the conservative renaissance with Helmut Kohl, some of the subjects very exciting for German society in these days. The movie is very clever in showing the opening divide between engaged and hedonistic approach to the contingent present. Perhaps the main thesis is a little bit unfair to the advocates of the political utopia, which is mainly showed as strange and naive.
7/10
Mandei (2000)
Tarantikitano !!! - SPOILERS
"Falling down" in Japanese: a young salaryman, utterly drunk, had murdered four people - gangsters all of them, but that's no excuse. Days later, as he wakes up in a hotel room, he has no remembrance of what happened. With his brain restarting, he begins to call up the pictures of the dreadful night. This ist the strongest part of the film, almost two third of it. The scenes in the night club, the dance with the beautiful white Yazuka bride, and his first steps becoming a mass murder, are full of magnificent ideas and pictures. The action and the atmosphere comes from Tarantino school while the minimalistic silver-blue photography resembles Kitano a lot. The problem of the film is, that he doesn't know, how to bring the story to a neat end. Shall we believe, that this harmless man kills some guys of the special police forces, which advance to his hotel room? Can we understand his behaviour after he took the chief inspector as hostage? Are these phantasies of almightiness not too much of Tarantino? Some scenes seem as if the director wants to gain minutes in order to fill the hundred minutes. The film should had come to an end, when the "tragic analysis" finished, that is when the hero noticed that the police had surrounded the building. Because of this incoherence it is not even a good movie, despite of the strengths especially in the scenery and the photography.
Billy Elliot (2000)
Boxing and Ballet, Thatcher and Blair
Of the recent-years-"coal and music"-films (Brassed Off, The Full Monty), this is probably the best, and that's because of the acting and the human warmth in characterization. Jamie Bell (look at his reactions reading the letter from the Royal Ballet School, for instance!) gives one of the best performances I've ever seen by a child of this age. More than the other movies it tells the story of strong, "emotionless" people, who "find themselves" by losing their identities as miners and workers, by searching for a last exit from their helplessness and sadness. The career of Billy Elliot is born from despair. This is the key to understand the political and historical implications of the movie. It produces an integrative patriotic myth of the nation, by bringing together opposite cultures: coal and castles, workers and middle-class (Julie Walters!) strike and strikebreaker, boxing and ballet, not at least old sexual standards and new sexual frankness (Michael!). In a way, "Billy Elliot" neutralizes the great divide in british society: the sportive elegance of the ballet reflects the pragmatic flexibility of the Tony Blair England, which reconciles the Tories with labour, and the miners with the Thatcher tradition. In the very end, everybody comes together in a big national theatre and smiles at each other. Are the people just spectators of a political play, or do they form a national discussion group? It depends on death or survival of the "swan" Tony Blair!
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Like "Breaking the Waves", better music, but the cameraman is too nervous
I can't bring it together: Catherine Deneuve and the hand-camera!... But this is not the only dissonance in the movie. On the one hand, I can understand the fascination effects (for the Cannes jury, for instance): This is something new, a whole genre (the musical) reinterpretated. And (some of) the musical scenes are really superb. But, on the other hand: it's nearly an hour, until the first of such scenes begin! And, the same complaint as for the director's "Breaking the Waves": the message (weak woman is dying for something, anything, everything else) plays with the form of christian conviction, without really hold its essence of religious sense. And, by the way: Bjoerk is not "a Goddess". 4/10
Nachtgestalten (1999)
Gwisdek and the boy
A film spreading some metropolitan flair upon Berlin. Unfortunately the episodes told have not approximately the same level. The "berber" story doesn't touch, it's too sentimental and incredible. Problems of poor people have to be shown otherwise! But the story about the little african boy is wonderful, especially because of the tension between his silence and the gestures and countenance of the magnificent actor Michael Gwisdek. 5/10
Luna Papa (1999)
A Western! Not even an Eastern!
Splendid! In the beginning, I needed some time to accustom to the pictures. Then I realized, that I've been confused by some of the stage-like settings and, of course, by the "unnatural" colours. This is a quite ironic hommage to all the Cinemascope movies of the fifties an sixties, perhaps of some of the obscure ethnographic movies of the former Soviet Union...? Anyway, the camera, and some of the motifs, are producing a real American Western athmosphere. Remember the shooting of the gynaecologist: a Sergio Leone shootout! The visits at the grave: Four Sons of Katie Elder! The village - no contradiction, please! - is in effect a mexican one! But I suppose, that there had never been a Cinemascope movie with such a treasure of excentric, magic and witty ideas! By the way, the speed of action is influences by Emir Kusturica... The girl is really cute.. And a great comedy talent!
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Full of philosophic ideas, nevertheless it's not a good movie
After half an hour, accompanying Craig to the 7 1/2th floor, meeting the love of his life Maxine, their boss Lester and his linguistic secretary, you shout: Wow, it's great, it's like "Brazil", I like it! After discovering the tunnel to Malkovich's head, it changes. Although Malkovich plays very well, it doesn't work together: the nonsense of the basic idea and the drama of identity crisis in Craig and his wife. Comedy and tragedy co-exist without a link or a hint, how to work it up in YOUR brain! In the very end, your mood changes again. You say: Wow, never seen a film with so many philosophic ideas and so many levels of reflection! But I had a date at the cinema, hadn't I, and I planned to watch a good movie, and I didn't get it...
Magnolia (1999)
nice men, hysteric women - just a coincidence?
The perfect alternative for somebody who had been disappointed by "American Beauty". The story line is similar to "Short Cuts" (the apocalyptic punishment in the end!). "Magnolia" has its advantages in the density of acting and action, while Altman's movie sketches lacks of society better. Who can say what's the more brilliant movie? But "Magnolia" is too long, really, while it's the first film, in which the permanent Hollywood music sauce got not on my nerves... They use is dramatically, after two hours of music Anderson put in some silent moments... Besides, the music consists of songs, which are chosen very tastefully. I liked the characters, especially the Cop Jim and the male nurse Phil. The men were sketched with some more affection, but the women cried too much and shouted too loud. Coincidence? The introduction is perhaps the best I'v ever seen. With these little stories of coincidence the spectator gets into a suction he can't escape for the rest of time (of his life?). The Oscar nomination for Tom Cruise I can't understand, he is the worst actor in the film. But I'm interested in the white and blue book of Frank Mackey, can somebody help me where to buy "Seduce and destroy"???
Man on the Moon (1999)
Now I understand the R.E.M. song - but this gain is not enough...
This film has one big problem: its subject... Andy Kaufman isn't interesting enough that you feel like spending an evening with him, not even in cinema. It would be good for a semi-documentary (IF - I want to see the real Kaufman, too!), but Forman decided to bring his life onto a big picture - with all the ingrediences you need to reach the masses, especially the pathetic stuff. Infortunately it doesn't work here. The film can't tell me where is the special significance and the importance of Kaufman. He provoked the TV-public with his artistic and humoristic extravaganzas, Forman says, and he is right, but he did it in an era, in which the public was already accustomed to nonsense in TV programs. In fact, Kaufman didn`t hurt existencial taboos of society, but just the feelings of some of its members. There was a documentary about the Sex Pistols on the Berlin Film Festival, where the anachronisms in society (monarchy and british hypocrisy vs. punk phenomenon) is shown much clearer. If you mind the circumstances (wrong subject, wrong type of film), Forman even made the best out of it...
Extension du domaine de la lutte (1999)
There are women and the world, it's not a device of a modern sexualized society.
Two years ago, on Berlin Film Festival we watched the Amos Kollek movie "Sue" in the Panorama program, with a wonderful Anna Thomson in the leading part. It's a film about loneliness and sex, and how the one thing is compensated by the other. In the same section on the Festival now we have to complain the superfluous antithesis of Sue, "Extension du domaine de la lutte", which now tries to convince us that loneliness and having NO sex is one and the same problem. But unfortunately we can't sympathize with "our hero" (how he is called by the story-teller), because he is unnecessarily and incomprehensibly tired of company and himself. Own fault, I'm sorry. I can't understand him. Not enough, the writer/director/actor want us admitting to him, that it's not his destroyed self-consciousness or the passivity of his personality, what brought him so far, but the rotten society and its image of sexuality. Yes, there are some deeper insights about gender relations, but we won't follow him so far... And the point is, that there is rather any sign of reflection about his own portion to the fate, having no sex. Who didn't notice yet, it's a quite depressing film...
In the beginning, there had been some starts to be more accurate in sketching the situation. At the bed store the "hero" speaks about the hindrances buying a new bed. Perhaps it's too broad getting up the stairs, you have to stay at home half a day... THIS is a satire about a character, who doesn't know taking the life and heart in hands, DOING something... The movie doesn`t follow this path, but handles his characters with helplessness. Nobody believes, that "our hero" is able to instigate Tisserand for a murder. Too dull, too kind, too - passive (not to mention Tisserand's complex; he has an inhibition, but he couldn't be, of course, a murderer of women!). To finish: There are women and the world, it's not a device of a modern sexualized society. Help you as you can, but don't follow the messages and the "wisdom" of this movie, which announces bankruptcy to human relationships, without seizing the real conflicts within.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
The rap-loving gangster and the heartattacked one touched me deeply...
A sort of a footnote in J.J's opus, that means it isn't part of the main work. Nevertheless, a good movie! I liked the gangster characters, who were so "normal" in a half-proletarian-half-philistine way, as if they lived in Berlin's Sonnenallee... Especially it were the rap-loving one and the heartattacked one who touched me deeply... The Samurai phrases were the only thing that made the difference to other "Killer Movies" like that, and it would have made no difference, if Jarmusch renounced it... The Shoot-out and dying scenes weren't good made. A poor seven.
Pola X (1999)
Pestilence to conceited symbolic film-language and impervious chiffres!
French Cinema sucks! Down with all these psychiotric visions with their my-God-am-I-cultivated distinguished attitudes! Pestilence to conceited symbolic film-language and impervious chiffres! I'll no longer have a mind for that! Léos Carax, did you ever think about, that a dialogue in a film could be natural and vivid??? Maybe I'm too common to understand you? Or had it been your task to confirm all the clichés of a Frenchman the world can have? Guillaume the to-be-guilliotined comes to his home-palace, Mme. Deneuve, not in the picture, plays the flute: "Here am I, darling!" In this moment, I knew, that she's in the bathtub, and we`ll see her lying in there soon. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not prudish, and the incestous sex scene was the climax of the film. But this is, in Berlin, we say "etepetete", what means something like "être-peut-être", a snobistic, self-satisfied, and, the worst, seen that often in French movies I can tell! Other example: She, beautiful and willing, is looking at herself in a mirror, combing her hair, and her wild-bearded, dirty young guru rushs into the room, breathless shouting: "There's no escape, there's no escape!" Forty years after existencialistic Sartres and consorts- what's new, what's exciting about? My God, there's that woman and she loves and admires you, what would be more natural to be happy with your life? And when you're not, please explain much better, why!! Born French means you have to live a life in extravaganza, no escape, is that the point?
La vita è bella (1997)
Now, you have to mention "Benigni" in a row with Chaplin and the Marx Brothers...
Once, I thought about Roberto Benigni to be a clown, now I know him as a comedian. Comedian, that doesn't mean, an actor, who plays funny roles, but a film-maker, who developed his own style of comic - like in the old days: In importance for movie history to compare with Charles Chaplin (and with the "Great Dictator" ), with the Marx Brothers in his sense of humour. Remember the absurdity of the hat exchange! It's the variousity of ideas and running gags, that makes it to one of the best comedies ever. The box, in which Josue is hiding to take refuge from the bath, reappears at the end when it saves from the Nazi troops, Maria's key becomes the key to a woman's heart, the tank is the ambiguous symbol for childhood dreams and warfare fright. The naivity and purity of the message is heart-healing, not ony concerning the horrors of war and concentration camps, but also concerning social and emotional boundaries that love-foolish attitudes commonly may have. It's one of the most beautiful romantic movies ever, too... As to the discussion about jewish fate vs. comedy: The first half of the film is refreshing and a flower of comedy. It seems as if Benigni said at this point, laughing at the audience: Now I show you, of what I'm really able, my comedy can't stop at nothing, because it's not only a nice film, but a mode of living. And he succeeds in a triumphal way: Not a single scene that touches uncomfortable, despite of the severe affairs... I have a new cinema hero.
American Beauty (1999)
Already the most overestimated film of the decade
That's just a digest of all the American-Dream-an-Horror-Movies of the last decade, such like "Short Cuts" (at the Drama End) and "Happiness" (at the Comedy End). Disappointing: No sublime critique of American culture or society, just a story of a simple All-American-Guy who finds himself and his virility, and, for the viewer, in a not very convincing way. Sometimes I associated, sorry, an ordinary sitcom setting... This genre is called, normally, Tragi-Comedy, but this movie doesn't place the tragic and comic elements at the right places: You don't laugh about a mirror of your own ridiculous and poor lives, but about slapstick sequences in totally dramatic and severe contexts. The parts don't fit together, and especially Spacey and Bening don't act in a way, that I could see over these mistakes... In Germany, they advertised the film as "the best for five years". My opinion, it's already the most overestimated of the coming decade.
The Straight Story (1999)
Splendid Sissy, blameful Badalamenti
Beyond the contents of the film, the most interesting thing is, that it is a David Lynch movie. There are questions: Have we seen here his future as a film maker? Did the message of "The Straight Story" already appear on the underground of his earlier work? Did he become schizophrenic? I've heard, that his wife urged him to use a material, that she had found in a newspaper, as a screen-play. At least a likable trait. But my prophecy is, that the friendly spirit of this movie will take influence later on... We'll see! I can understand the people, who found fault with the film's slowness. That's not my point. I had some difficulties with the episode structure, because not every episode is (can be) as strong as the war veteran talk in the middle of the film. The scenes in the biker camp, for example, have no urgency. I am old, you are young, o.k., and what else? At the other hand, it works, that this wise old man uses to speak in "sentences" (I can't say it in English, in German it's "Sinnsprueche" or "Sentenzen", "Schiller-Sprache"). He is our teacher for life, and the spectator submits willingly to the role as his student. The acting is superb, but Sissy Spacek is spectacular. For her autistic Rose I give thousands of Dustin Hoffmans. Ambivalent is the effect of the Badalamenti-music, in the road-movie-scenes ist fantastic, in the emotional moments (the campfire-scene with the pregnant runaway) it is unfortunately sentimental rubbish. What a distance to the true emotionality and the loving spirit between the moved brothers at the end of the film!... It's a good Seven for me.
Runaway Bride (1999)
Julia Roberts is the personal surprise for me
Wow, Doris Day and Rock Hudson are back! But now, the struggle of gender is not just a comedy plot, but a play of male and female wishes and pretensions to life and love. I know, that nobody liked this film who has seen "Pretty Woman", but I don't carry that burden, and so I really enjoyed the ninety minutes. The surprise of last year, and Julia Roberts is the personal surprise for me. Sometimes exaggerating, she is nevertheless a great comic talent. Especially I've been enchanted by the many playful and self-ironic moments in her acting. Richard Gere is not that good, but he is more than the hat and coat stand some critics want to made out of him...
The Ninth Gate (1999)
A film for art historians who wonder what they'll do with this stuff later on...
This movie is a relief for all the students who think that art history or library studies are not very valuable fields of science and after the degree you'll not have any chances to gain money at all. Johnny Depp here is our brother in spirit, although (or because??) it seems that he doesn't know much about books. The movie can`t answer the question, why this unable (but likable!) man is one of the best "book-hunters". For instance, in the beginning he has to ask the "Toledo Twins", if it would have been difficult to fake antiquities like these satanic verses. That's poor... but relieving! After all, it's one of the Polanskis you'll forget soon. He can't handle this x-files-like-mystifying sujet for a long time. The scenes at the castle, on the satanic feast of high-society, are embarrassing and terrible, if you remember the morbid touch of "Dance of the Vampires".