The Girlfriend Experience (Soderbergh 2008)

A high-end hooker lifes with a struggling personal trainer, she is too independent for his comfort, he is too honest not to tell her. She gets entangled in a web of customers pretending to lover her but returning to her families, website promoters promising to bring her out big-style but actually only chasing freebies, and maybe also her own dissatisfaction about what she stands for.

It took me a while (some years, actually) to understand this is not a RomCom, but one of Soderbergh's more experimental efforts in filmmaking (after some research I now learned that the GFE word is actually quite clearly defined… who knows that the mongers of the world have their own code). I am all for experimental, and Soderbergh seems to have a soft spot in most of my generation's hearts, even though he may be the most inconsistent filmmaker ever to show up in an arthouse cinema.

With this film, he shows his love for stylish appearance and rotten inside, or maybe he wants to expose the supposedly tough girl who knows how to get along with her business, but is really a cheap and empty shell who has no control whatsoever over just about anybody. She fails in competition, in love, in advertising… in everything she tries, but holds up the pretentious façade. This can be read completely different, I am sure, but after a while I really started despising her for representing nothing but nothingness.

As a film, it's not a big thing, just a glance at some people's lifes, which is perfectly fine to make an interesting film…

Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton 2010)

Alice revisits Wonderland more than 10 years after her first visit, in an effort to flee from a jerk lord trying to marry her. Even though she does not remember going as a child, Wonderland remembers her, and sets the hope in her defeating the evil queen and the Jabberwocky.
To be honest, I missed a substantial part of the movie, falling asleep now and again. I blame my jet lag, but I can also blame Tim Burton. As in almost every other movie of his that I have seen, he takes a great premise, mixes it with great actors (and with Helena Bonham Carter), creates a great production design, and then seems to lose interest in the movie. I am not sure whether apart from Edward Scissorhands there was a Burton production that I really loved (Beetlejuice was nice, I seem to remember). There are great bits and pieces, good creatures (the cat, the twins), but there is also an odd feeling of Burton running out of interesting ideas and throwing the leftovers of his considerable budget at the Lord of the Rings software to create some battle scenes and involving a Jabberwocky right out of some … what was that Verhoeven SciFi film with the alien bugs? Hmpf… try again.

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman 2008)

An acclaimed director sets his mind on the development of a new play. A lifetime later, he has found out a lot of things about life, universe, himself, and the nature of the beast.

I was wondering what to do with my own stupid decision of placing a plot summary at the beginning of every single movie review for a while … no, it's not reviews in the first place, it's comments and remarks and things to remind me of what the film was about when I come back to think about it years later. So: no review, but a plot summary – and that for "Synecdoche, New York"…. way to go. What I will remember about this film – or the aspects about it that will help me remember, are:

• Every character comes up a couple of times, being replaced with their respective older iteration, while a replacement for the younger one comes in
• The set of the stage play is a massive brick complex in New York, sitting like a fat walrus in the middle of what looks like Brooklyn – and that building takes on a life of its own, growing with the play, getting modified according to the ever evolving script, new walls coming in and down
• Which leads to the script: the director uses his life as a model for the play, reenacting the cornerstones word by word
• His assistant and love of his life, running around each other for what seems to be a decade
  

"Charlie Kaufman is one of the few truly important writers to make screenplays his medium. David Mamet is another. That is not the same as a great writer (Faulkner, Pinter, Cocteau) who writes screenplays. Kaufman is writing in the upper reaches with Bergman."

This is quite a sentence by Ebert, not just because of the praise it involves, but in particular because of the appreciation screen-writing as art, as truly artistic authorship. And how many screen writers are well-known, stars in their own right even? Not too many, William Goldman comes to mind, but the one superstar is Charlie Kaufman, so maybe he has defined a new segment of artistry.

The amazing thing about "Synecdoche" is that I indulged in what I felt to be an absolutely fantastic movie experience without having a clue why I thought so. I have my troubles following plot lines and chartacter interrelations under the best of circumstances, I am the worst possible audience for all those mafia setups where you have three generations of family links wrapped in an international drug trading plot – because I just do not remember the names and faces quickly enough to realise that the woman I see sleeping with the family doyen is the one I just five minutes ago saw getting married to the Japanese yakuza warrior… so imagine how helpless I am with all those overlapping time layers and doubling and tripling of caracters through bent time-space continua? In the words of the South Park experts: just AWESOME!

Who gives a damn where and when we are, whether it is reality we are observing, or reality's replay as written into the script, or the reliving of the script reality by life itself? I don't. I let the magnificence of the scenery and the richness of this life overwhelm me, trust the author-director not to mock me without need, and feel that I am somehow witnessing cinema at its largest.
Read somebody competent trying to explain the movie's greatness here (Ebert) and here (NYT).

Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore 2009)

Michael Moore looks into the income and wealth gap that he believes is tearing the US apart. He visits families in Florida being evicted from their homes, sit-in strikers taking on the fight for their final wages and their pension payments after their factories were shut down, and Wall Street bankers to get back US taxpayers' bailout money from the fat cats and make some citizens' arrests along the way.

Just like "Sicko" before, the approach of the film is to take a very American perspective on a global topic. It is clear that you can point out the ruthlessness of a specific system most poignantly when being … well: specific. By using American fates and American scandals, making American politicians confess an American system failure, this makes a very impressive setup – if you happen to be American. Seen from the outside – again, just like in the case of "Sicko" – this is a very abstract tableau of situations. The way US households tend to lay their fate into the hands of mortgage banks or credit card companies is stunning, the sheer level of ignorance towards rational economising on household resources mind-boggling. I wished the links between for instance the Reagan system and the corporate sponsors would have received more elaboration instead, or other links into the Clinton and Obama administration that were merely hinted at.

Part of these deficts seem to stem from Moore having increasing trouble making his highly personalised films – wherever he goes, security staff alerts everybody that "that filmmaker Moore" is around, bankers he tries to stalk in front of their office buildings have learned their lesson from other Moore films and never engage in conversation (and here comes the proof: the one who does immediately makes a fool out of himself when advising Moore to "stop making movies"). So Moore needs to change style to something more like a visualised film essay, where most of the footage comes from the victim side, and most of the talk is being done by Moore himself. Having a Greenspan, Clinton, or one of the Bushes on record – that should have been the target!

So he falls back on some small-scale guerilla actions: coming with big money bags to collect the debt or rolling out Yellow "Crime Scene" tape all around the Wall Street banks. This makes good symbols, but the end of the film leaves him not much more than asking the viewers for help, because it is more than clear that the offenders will not pay for their crimes.

The Road (John Hillcoat 2009)

A Man and A Boy, his son, walk the road, pushing an old wrecked supermarket trolley. All their belongings are in there. There is nothing but them and the Road. The aim is to reach the Sea, but why? There may be hope. Where there are, there is none. The world has been destroyed. There is no more life, no vegetation, no food, no humanity. Just a few survivors of whatever catastrophe came upon them. The suicides are of the past – today, it is only an exit route if you get caught by the cannibals and breeders.

I have certainly read no bleaker book in the last decade than Cormac McCarthy's The Road. What can you do with this material that defies all hope? You can only try to catch the atmosphere of movement, of vacated minds and restlessness, of vagueness in ambition. The film cannot match the book's bleakness, because you can imagine so much more despair than you can show. But director John Hillcoat and DP Javier Aguirresarobe go at great pains to convey the feeling of a burnt world, and of apocalyptic normality. It is one of the cases where I do not really see the need for a film, because there are so few elements the film can use to transcend the book, but as a isolated piece of art, the movie has a stunning beauty, designed around the brilliant actors Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The boy is a nice surprise, as he is restrained, controlled, but not cool. He has the ability of his age to still be awed, or scared, or terrified – but to pack these sentiments into the cage of a boy who has spent his life on the road trying to survive.

A serious Man (Coens 2009)

Larry has a terrible time: a student tries to entangle him in a bribery web, his wife leaves him, his wife's new lover is incredibly annoying, his supervisor is incredibly annoying, the rabbis he consults are either half-dead, full-fledged idiots or incredibly annoying. Oh and his brother is a criminal.

Ah - … er … em… I cannot say a lot about this, because I am not sure what it was a bout apart from … scenes of a dorky nature, present by a not very spirited Jew suffering under his Jewishness. As I know very little about Jewish habits, festivities and rituals, it always strikes me as very exotic to see those rites presented in films. But actually I have the impression that the writers and directors of these films also feel that those habits are kind of odd – celebrated with even more vigour and fervour than the Christians would celebrate their own Christmases, First Communions or Easters. So by just exposing their tortured main character (him being a sufferer of Lot-ian dimensions, hence becoming an old testament reference in and out of himself) to all those family and relatives traditions that he clearly seems to be overwhelmed by, they can already ruin his life. Bar mitzvah or separation ritual, it all stinks to him and he wants to escape from it, making him a very lovable annoying character out of the big sketch book of the Coen brothers' annoying yet lovable characters. And it seems the new habit of Coens is to end their movies early and abruptly. In the words of the Salon.com reviewer:

"A Serious Man" — I blow hot and cold on the Coens, but even their weaker films (e.g., "Burn After Reading," "The Ladykillers") reward repeat viewings — and their better films reward them even more. This utterly delicious black-comic Jewish fable, set in a middle-class Midwestern suburb in the '60s (a place that still carries buried undertones of Eastern European shtetl) is among their funniest and darkest films, both humane and ruthless in a way that's highly Coen-specific. As the last shot faded to black, I sat up in my seat and said, "Oh my fucking God!" Which is precisely right."

The Fantastic Mr Fox (Wes Anderson 2009)

Mr Fox and wife are looking for a calm and quiet autumn of their fox lives. They even move into the calm neighbourhood of a tree where the regular chicken hunting days should be over. But Mr Fox has a plan, he is up for a final mission involving the three largest farms around.
Make no mistake: this has nothing to do with a children's movie. It is about existentialist fears, manhood in the face of adventure, boys growing up to the attention of their fathers, drinking and killing, and the big chicken hunt of live. It's great, but do not take your kids, they will faint of boredom. Instead, enjoy the nice details such as the Home vs Stray teams display at the whack-bat ballgame. Dialogues like "I am not different. We all are. Him especially." Strangely monotonous voice overs by George Clooney, Meryl Streep and some regular Anderson cast (Schwartzman, Murray). Nice high noon showdown quotes. Mortal peril in underground labyrinths. A lot of stuff that may be incoherent, but is fun to watch. More in "oh look what they did here" way than in an immersing fashion, but in a month that gave me "Men -> Goats" and "Sherlock Holmes", that was more than I hoped for.

Whiteout (Dominic Sena 2009)

A bunch of researchers and additional staff (one police woman among them) hangs out around Antarctica. They discover a body in a remote area, and when following back the traces, they discover a plane that crashed decades ago, and that still carries a cargo worth killing for.
The most amazing bit is the beginning, when for absolutely no reason whatsoever the director decides to spend 5 minutes observing the girl character undressing and taking a shower. Never in movie history was a scene so completely annoyingly out of context and gratuitous. And for Christ's sake: it's the girl from those terrible Underworld movies, so if you want to see her buttocks, go there! While the plot unfolds, I kept thinking that this surely must be a distraction, that the actual THING (take this for reference, haha) must be happening or showing up soon. No such THING, just a bit of greediness with the slightest bit of surprise when (again, in a fashion distractingly out of context and gratuitous) some limbs freeze and need to get chopped off.
One of the possibilities for the end actually comes to terms (after some annoyingly boring fights with axes and wind and snow), and tell me who cares at this point. One question as to the surprise factor: if you cast an old bearded guy who looks like Juergen Prochnow as the camp doctor, how would you want to make your audience believe that he does NOT have a dark secret???
(a whopping 7 per cent on the tomatometer … that must have been the worst-rated film I ever watched… I would say it is not that bad, maybe 20 / 100).

Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie 2009)

Somebody called Sherlock Holmes (but without the detective's sophistication and wit) tries to break a plot of sinister Lord Blackwood to somehow overhaul the UK and the world and everything else.
Just a short word, because I really cannot remember any details: this film is rubbish. And even worse: it's terribly boring. I am not sure what got into all those reviewers who suddenly converted to become Guy Ritchie lovers. I could not follow the black whole of a plot for half an hours without falling asleep. The loud explosions and fist fights are things that I do not want to see in a movie based on the Sherlock Holmes character. The intelligence and witty ways of discovering the evil plots is absent – but this is the only thing interesting about Holmes in the first place.
A disaster of a movie, an insult to the literary character - reminded me very much of "League of Honourable Gentlemen" and "Van Helsing".
7 / 100

The men who stare at goats (Grant Heslov 2009)

A journalist stumbles across a former member of a special elite group within the US army, trained for paranormal warfare. He digs deeper and discovers people who believe they can break clouds by power of will, stop goats' heartbeats and run through walls.
The cast and the story made for one of the films I anticipated most last year. Come on: George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges – what can go wrong? Being part of a hillbilly LSD experimental training camp? Hilarious!
How can one write a script based on this that is so stunningly dull? It really eludes me how you can downsize the hilarity of each element to form just a patchwork of irrelevant and fleetingly funny bits and pieces. Not even the poisoning of whole battalion (or whatever the measure word for these people is) of soldiers with LSD probes creates any laughter, not even smile. Nothing. This film is nothing. A spectacular and inexplicable waste of talent. What a shame.

Up in the Air (Jason Reitman 2009)

Ryan Bingham travels around the country (and a bit of the world) to sack people. He is a mercenary of the economic downturn, his company is eating off the flesh of corporate carcasses. He himself is quite pleasant at it, he has the skill to express sympathy and show the bright light on the horizon. His passion is travelling, is being on the move, feeling like a shark that is in danger of dying as soon as he stops. The change comes with two women he meets: the new kid in the office who seeks to get rid of all the travelling expenses by introducing a remote sacking software - and a mature woman of style with whom he can swap frequent-flyer stories and body fluids.

At last a film that only and exclusively serves as a vehicle for George Clooney's essence: charm and handsomeness. It is a clever understanding of what charm is really about to set these features loose in a job to serve as a hired hand systematically sacking employees of companies that "are too much of a pussy to do it themselves". Charm is not, this states, about seducing a woman who wants to sleep with you anyway, but about creating an atmosphere of comfort where all facts point to despair.
The film is far from perfect: some elements get forgotten over time, such as (thankfully) the annoying teenage assistant that starts travelling with him to learn and improve the system. The philosopher's side of his lifestyle also gets a lot of attention at the beginning, and gets picked up occasionally, but it is never really elaborated why it is that we are supposed to respect what he is doing instead of just shrugging it off as something some people do, others don't. Why would we care that he states he wants to live alone and flexible? That's only relevant insofar as it concerns us, and it only concerns us when he needs to discuss the virtues of partnership and marriage in a scene where he suddenly needs to play the devil's advocate, trying to talk his potential brother-in-law into a marriage, while standing as a role-model for marriage being superfluous. More of that quality would have been nice.
With its generally light touch and pleasant humour, the film is nice enough to never drops us from too great a height into the less pleasant moments, and even the almost final turning point is cushioned and prepared in a way that we do not feel to shocked when we realise what is happening. I would have appreciated a more cruel approach, especially as the life Ryan Bingham leads is one that is built on absence of empathy, but the mere simulation of it. But then again, now it's a family-friendly warm-hearted film, almost a rom-com with a little bit of an edge.
And that guy looks so gorgeous! (nice cameo by the narrator from "Big Lebowski", by the way, good to see you again)

Lilo and Stitch (Dan DeBlois, Chris Sanders 2002)

The Earth is the aim of a small ferocious creature that has been designed by a mad scientist on a faraway planet. Escaping from captivity was easy for the ugly thing, but now the scientist and half the planet's star fleet is chasing the little guy to bring it back. But on Hawaii, where it lands on his escape flight, there is little Lilo with her sister, and they happen to look for a pet anyway on their mission to show what a well-functioning family they are. Stitch – as Lilo calls the little monster – wreaks havoc, of course, but also learns to control its inner demons, so to speak.

There are some absolutely hilarious ideas in this: my favourite one is the fact that the Earth – useless as it is – is only protected from destruction by the fact that is has been established as a breeding station for the endangered Mosquitoes… and when the alien scientists visit, they go at great lengths not to interact with the local population of strange animals, such as humans (as they are the most important element in the Mosquito food chain and you don't want to mess that up).
All the creatures are hilarious, the humour is rough, there is the physical fun of a Tom & Jerry cartoon, and the dress-up humour of a Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau film. The setting on Hawaii is new and at least to the like of me exotic (it's a strange idea that people actually live their living normal lives… how can you not fall into a permanent state of holiday mood? Or maybe you just have to embrace the holiday mood…). But first and foremost, the characters are all that: characters. The sisters love and hate each other as sisters do, the old sister is overwhelmed with her task as sister-mother, at the same time on the quest for boys and jobs. The special agent ex-CIA ex-Area-51 who is assessing whether Lilo should come into foster care is a rough piece of wood with a warm heart, the scientists from outer space are dumb madmen of Stooge quality.
Rarely have I seen a film that was so surreal in setting and yet so real in storytelling and emotions. The heart-breaking and heart-warming ending proves that it does not matter whether you are a monster from outer space – if you can fight the inner monster, all be well … ;-)

An Education (Lore Scherfig 2009)

Jenny is supposed to take a proper education at a British boarding school, carry on to read English at Oxford, and finally become a decent member of the establishment. She likes Piaf and Sartre, and chooses smoking French cigarettes over studying Latin any time. David, the handsome older guy with the fancy car and the generous savoir-vivre lifestyle, naturally appeals to her. She follows his "school of life" approach, doubting the benefit of boring stuff leading to more boring stuff.
This is the category "mainstream art house" that I usually do not like too much: happiness, followed by sorrow and despair, followed by relief and a bit of sadness. What distinguishes "An education" from less interesting films like "Les Choristes" of the same category are primarily the actors, namely Alfred Molina as Jenny's grumpy but well-intentioned father, Peter Sarsgaard as the exciting David who shakes Jenny's life, and finally Jenny herself, played by Carey Mulligan who looks the French femme fatal that she so strongly desires to be, paired with Lolita and all other dangerous things. (Rosamund Pike as teacher Helen is actually also quite good, but seems too pretty for the role, and looks a bit as if in a carnival mask when trying to look the grey and unsexy teacher). Director Lone Scherfig (of "Italian for Beginners" fame, at least that's what I associate with her: showing that Dogma films can look great and be fun). The story itself crouches along the lines that you would expect, only with a bit of odd pacing, as the script gives ample time at the exposition, but when the drama ensues, suddenly the film is over (I understand this kind of film relies a lot on what the theatres can accommodate, but really: allow five minutes more and the film has a proper resolution).
I am not sure why the film is a serious Oscar contender, but no doubt it is a substantial drama about temptation and convention, about conservatism and rebellion – and as such it almost works out. I am not sure whether the final scene (the final real scene, there are some more quite unnecessary minutes after that) should be called strong and consequent, or just again fulfilling expectations (maybe because I just don't know whether everybody would have the same expectation at this point). An engine starts, a car departs, and the film leaves you wondering whether a catastrophe just happened, or whether all is fine now. That ambiguity is at least something.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs (Phil Lord, Chris Miller 2009)

He always wanted to be an inventor – and one day his dream of inventing the ultimate machine to turn water into hamburgers finally comes to pass. But while Flint Lockwood has saved his desperate town from the fate of becoming an open air sardine museum, now he has to fight off the greedy mayor and hordes of tourists. All that while he must conquer the pretty girl reporter Sam and live up to the expectations of his sad old father.

Absolutely stunning: a crazy ride through a psychedelic child's dream, whith heart-warming father figures (oh when the father finally wears the think-to-talk-cap!), killer monkeys on the rampage (ever seen an angry monkey rip a jelly-bear's heart out of the chest, chuckling madly? Indiana Jones would have loved it!), a wicked mayor whose greed bloats his body and his ego, leading both himself and the city towards destruction. I think childred would be creeped or left flabberghasted, but I enjoyed myself a lot. While I do tend to like the clean and super-professional politically correct Pixar output, whenever I come across material more edgy this comes as a great relief and I realise immediately what is missing in the Disney factory ingredients.
I guess best animated film I have seen over the last 12 months, and surely among the 5 most entertaining films of the past year.

The Hangover (Todd Phillips 2009)

Four guys head towards Vegas to make sure their friend Dug is having a good last impression of bachelorhood before he subjects himself to marriage two days later. The night starts off well with booze and drugs, but zap! - they wake up next morning without any recollection of what happened during the night. And the groom is missing. And there is a tiger in the bathroom. And one of them lacks a tooth and has one wedding ring too much.
Surprisingly funny. I might get the hang of those comedies if they manage to keep the characters somehow real and avoid the slap stick goofball comedy approach. After "Funny People" some weeks ago, now another one I actually enjoyed. I have never heard of the director or the actors before, and that may be one of the movie's strong points, there is no distraction with individual mannerism or the ever-returning comedy faces. Every character can be surprising (including Mike Tyson…). Those dudes try to work their way back through the night like detectives in a CSI episode, only what they find is a police car, crazy Chinese guys with small dicks, strippers with a heart of gold, chapel ministers with a return policy and some drugs you don't want to try out.
Nice end-credit sequence with the pictures they boys had taken during the lost night on their camera.

The Incredibles (Brad Bird 2004)

The superhoeroes are out of fashion: after threats of litigation because of all the damage they have caused, the government deems it wise to send them into retirement. This also affects the Invincible family, with superstrong Mr Invncible getting a job in insurance (nice boss he has, does he remind me of some William H Macy role?), Mrs Invincible-Elastogirl taking care of the kids and trying to keep the depressed husband happy. When Mr Invincible gets called into a new job on a remote island, where his superpowers are called for, he does not hesitate long, but gets the superdress fixed and starts fighting giant bubble robots and his nemesis Invinciboy-Geekfreak whatever his name was again.
Interesting that the opening sequence that I liked at first watching (interviews) got across a bit boring this time. Now what really got me are the action sequences, the amazing speed of the chases, the choreography of the flying saucers that serve as Star Trooper reference one-man-vehicles in the jungle. And again, the same "favourite scene" as five years ago: when Elastogirl walks by the mirror and stops to throw a sceptical glance and a sigh at her buttocks, nicely played!
One other stunning thing, stressing my previous suspicion that maybe this is not for the smaller kids: a lot of people are dying in this, because their saucer-scooter explodes, they fall from great heights, get sucked into jet engines or suffer similar fates. In some case kind of casual in the scene background, but in other cases affecting main characters… it's not that they paint the engine fans red with blood… but you you it's there…
Still not my favourite animation film, but ok for the kind of tired evening mood where some kinetic action is all you need to avoid going to bed at 7pm.

My short review after first watching it in Germany some years ago:
Subject: "Die Unglaublichen" (Bad Reichenhall, Parkkino, 06.01.05)
So, haben wir den jetzt also auch gesehen. Die beste Sequenz kommt zu beginn, wenn die Superhelden noch zu ihrer aktiven Zeit in TV-Interviews das prototypische TV-Interview-Gefasele von sich geben, das nur hartgesottene VIP-Verehrer speifrei überstehen können. Nach dieser Exposition gibt es eine Durchführung, die mich persönlich ein wenig beklommen machte, da ich immer besorgt auf die Kinder im Publikum schielte, auf die der Humor und die zuerst eher bedächtige Erzählweise so gar keine Rücksicht zu nehmen scheint. Ich habe die befürchtung, die amüsierten sich nicht recht dabei. Ich mich schon, alelrdings nicht weil es die großartigsten Schenkelklopfer gegeben hätte, sondern weil der Film sich so erfreulich viel Zeit nahm, Normalität zu simulieren. Als die Story dann mit der Rückkehr von Mr Incredible in seinen alten Job (= Superheld) an Fahrt gewinnt, gibt es kein Halten mehr: viele (gute Gags), hohes Tempo (wiederum: das Kleinkind, das die Verfolgungsjagd durch den Wald ohne Gleichgewichtsstörungen überlebt, hat, glaube ich, in seinem Leben schon viiiiel zuviel fern gesehen!) und nette Leute (meine Favoritin ist die Elastogirl-Ehefrau, die es nicht schafft, an Spiegeln vorbeizulaufen, ohne herzzerreißend seufzend auf ihren eben nicht mehr 19-jährigen Hintern herunterzublicken). Ein Macht-Spaß-Film, den man kommendes Jahr wieder vergessen haben wird, der aber in der Summe deutlich unterhaltsamer und durchdachter war als das meiste, das man sonst an US-Animation bekommt (incl. Pixars eigenem "Nemo").
Schönes Kino übrigens mit sehr (!) gutem Programm, in dem ich den Film angeschaut habe. Wenn man mal zufällig in Bad Reichenhall ist...

Robin Williams - Weapons of Self-Destruction (HBO 2009)

At DAR Constitution Hall, Robin Williams gives his first solo special in seven years. He covers – in the words of the producers - "such topics global warming, sex and politics, the state of health care in the country (suggesting a cash for clunkers program for elderly relatives, among other things), drugs - recreational and otherwise - and more personal topics, including his recent heart surgery" – and that heart surgery thing actually is when, after about one hour, he really wins his audience back, they are rolling on the floor with laughter, waiting for their own coronaries to burst. Who will win the post-surgery battle of Viagra falls: heart or dick?
Williams has good moments such as the LSD visions in a football stadium, and some straightforward equal offender jokes covering fairly all breeds, nationalities, races and origins. There are some moments of brilliance and hilariousness. It is never boring, it is well-timed, apart from the energy that is not the same as twenty years ago he really seems to be on old form. Nice to see the unchallenged champion of stand-up comedy on his home turf, and to see that he can still do it.
And a very nice Walter Cromkite joke hommage at the end – need to remember that for future use…

Underworld (Len Wiseman)

Part 1: Underworld (Len Wiseman 2003)

A story of Vampires and Lycans (werewolf-like creatures), the war between which reaches the life of Michael, who then kind of transforms into a merged converged superthingy, because several hunts and fights later, usually won by a pretty woman in black tight leather pants, he ends up bitten by the wolf and the vampire, being the supposedly only hybrid creature around. Unfortunately on the way, they have built up antipathies not only by Lycans and Vampires (by killing one of their elder statesmen), but also of some strange government institution that is apparently hunting down that kind of creatures.




Part 2: Underworld Evolution (Len Wiseman 2006)
The two pretty ones are on the run together, and they are now being followed by the new elder in the order of things, Marcus. And those government guys. And then they go to see yet another vampire that has werewolf guardians and ...
Stopped watching after half of it, abandoned the project, it is really a stunningly boring waste of time.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog 2009)

We follow the Investigation of the murder of an immigrant family in New Orleans by Lieutenant McDonagh. He steals dope, threatens suspects, harasses girls and is altogether not a very nice guy.
It needs to be said: the Werner Herzog as grand auteur phenomenon is as inexplicable as the reputation of the Germans for continuously eating pork knuckles. Both has been witnessed, but both is far from granted in any given moment. Especially after his documentary-driven US renaissance, Herzog has become a creator of extremely self-confident movie burlesques. Those are sometimes professionally done, sometimes just with the wide-eyed naivete of a film student who is allowed to take his camera on the first trip to New Orleans. In the midst of a sometimes straightforward cop thriller, you find here surreal scenes involving alligators and lizards, break-dancing spirits of gangsters just shot, and a Nicholas Cage whose over-the-top performance would in other contexts have cause reprimands by the director, while here I am sure it only caused wide eyes and a fascinated “I think that was a very good performance, you are crazy” exclamation with a Bavarian accent. Is this a new congenial symbiosis like the Werner Herzog – Klaus Kinski axis of yonder times? Absolutely not, because Cage, with all due respect, does not have the seriousness a Kinski had – Cage is acting crazy, and is not too good at it. Especially when breaking into hysterical laughs towards the end of the movie, it is slightly embarrassing to watch him let loose. A more serious and controlled director would been able to put of control fences and guide the actor towards a hysterical and rotten and impressive and mad and aggressive performance. But then again, that director was Abel Ferrara and the actor to pull it off at the time was Harvey Keitel. Different league.
It may be the best career performance of Val Kilmer, because he has nothing to do but stand around – almost flawless.

Saw 6 (Kevin Greutert 2009)

Saw VI provides a critical glance at US Health Policy and the the impact it has on the tormented individual, with a well-balanced glance at patients’ and corporate interests… er, no: it takes the oldest and cheapest from of injustice US script writers can come up with (the treatment unfairly withheld because of the greedy health insurance company) and uses it to show some more ways of playing people to pieces. Or to show what supposedly happens to a human body if you pump some litres of Hydrofluoracid or something inside. And the only balance is shown right at the beginning, when a Lear-like competition is encouraged to fill more punds of one’s own flesh onto the scales of fate.
I am not perfectly sure why I keep watching the franchise, maybe because the films are never longer than 90 minutes, which is just fine for an in-between snack of irrelevance. I do not even understand them, because there are so many cross-references to previous installments that I feel as lost as halfway through Goodfellas. Good thing is that they can draw on so many previous films that most of the film consists of montages taken from old films, so that at some point I will surely have seen scenes from Saw 1-5 so often that I know what they are about at last.

Drag me to Hell (Sam Raimi 2008)

She had great hopes: Christine is working her way up in a bank, and that sometimes, she thinks, involves tough choices. So she rejects a loan extension for an old gypsy woman, causing humiliation. She gets cursed for it, quite literally, and has to fight with bad dreams and strange events from then on. A paranormality expert explains what happened: she has only a few days before she will be dragged to hell by some evil creature, and she has only very few options open.
It is a very straightforward, well-directed and –designed horror flic we’ve got us here. Sam Raimi knows what he is doing, he is on home turf when he makes the normal world more and more fragile, allowing dark things to happen and hope to disappear. Humans reacting to non-human events – that is at the heart of all horror tales, and that is what Raimi shows us here. Solidly entertaining for the fans of the genre, way above the average horror merchandise of the decade. And I always appreciate a nice happy ending … ;-)

The Departed (Scorsese 2006) and Infernal Affairs (Andy Lau 2003)

Infernal Affairs: Watched it about three years too late, but what is ever too late...: the same story as below-mentioned Departed, but imagined six years earlier by what played then as HongKong's finest: Leung, Lau and the rest of the impressive cast. The antagonists are intense, the setting is cool, the suits and tieless shirts super-cool, and now would be the time to go to HongKong's Peak and watch look down looking very Leung'ish. Quite limited, rather ... stark in its direction, but effective nonetheless.

And upon watching The Departed again right afterwards, I really have to stress how much genius there is in Scorsese: the direction is richer, fuller, more arabesque, but in a nice and savory way. Of course the setting demands that, and even more than upon watching it for the first time, I see the achivement here. Very good Alec Baldwin, de Caprio, Matt Damon acting.


The Departed: A lot of expectations, and too much chattering about whether or not the film would enable its director some oddly belated lifetime achievement Oscar. The story is well-organised, given the usual danger in mobster films of having too many characters plotting at the same time against too many government depaartmens, police squads, other gangsters and whomever. It was easy to follow, and the characters were established in a sufficiently pleasant and oversketched way so that their motivations were never obscure. I like that, I have to say. I keep being overwhelmed by plot or character complexities, getting angry at scriptwriters who try to prove that they can keep it all together, that they can add a couple of smaller and bigger issues, bring in more fistfuls of support characters with their own problems and still finish the film within 125 minutes. So: the film is sufficiently simple to be good. The actors are quite interesting, too. Casting De Caprio in this role of Billy Costigan was rather apparent, but Matt Damon was a bit of a dangerous choice. Too slick, to much off-the-shelf Kevin Bacon material, a bit too boring in appearance, I think. It works, though. He must be the straight police goodie to make his evilness work (or is evil? Maybe he is just on the same level of outright commercialness that we all are, just in another environment). I admit that I do not know where the hype about mark Wahlberg's performance comes from, as - without trying to discredit it - it's a comic relief part he is playing there, and overdoing big style is not what you should get an Oscar for. Or may it is, see Rain Man. Overcraziness is a good part of this film, and it's a good opportunity to mention Jack Nicholson and his pleasant madness that I find much more decent than in, say, About Schmidt's slapstick moments (this is in direct opposition to what Dargis writes in the NYT, if anyone cares: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/movies/06depa.html).

While there are a couple of issues I have with the film that I did not find too pleasing (more comprehensively analysed by the press reviewers, but let's mention the apparently desperate effort to get a woman into that film, and the failure of the script writers in doing so), all in all I stick to what you are supposed to say it: Scorsese not 100 per cent up to form, but as close as he got in 20 years. I do not expect anything drastically independent and artistic in style of him anymore. I think you lose that once you get chewed up by the film establishment. But as long as now and again he comes up with things like "Departed"'s final minutes, or some "Bringing out the Dead" darkness, or some "Casino" title sequences, I will keep loving him and thanking the world of film for making the world a better place.

Here's the overview over the most important reviews: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407887/externalreviews, and special reference maybe to the one by Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2006/10/06/departed/

Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino 2009)

A small bunch (platoon? Ah, group, anyway) of US military is parachuting into Nazi-occupied France in order to kill and scalp as many Nazis as possible and spread fear among the remaining ones. A German soldier falls in love with a French cinema-owner and seeks to convince her of his human nature. A surviving member of a massacred Jewish family lives under a new name and waits for any chance to take revenge. A dealer-and-wheeler Nazi Jew Hunter bathes in the glory of his reputation and interprets his job as a burlesque of vanity.

As usual, Tarantino plot lines are not easy to describe. Does not matter, though, because in Inglorious Basterds, it never gets overtly complicated. The strands of narration start off neatly separated, touch occasionally and converge sometimes. Some characters are disappointingly taking out off the equation too soon (Michael Fassbender’s cutely over-Englishified Lieutenant Hicox, in particular, how sad he had to leave so early) or spend a very short time in the movie after receiveing a grand-style introduction - all the “Basterds”, actually – the film could as well be called “Operation Kino”, as much more time is spent on that plot line. The film projectionists are much more busy than the Brad Pitt killing squad in this film.
Almost no need to repeat the praise for Christph Waltz’s interpretation of the mean and genius Hans Lander, it is the kind of villain that receives audience applause and award recognition. It is the kind of dialogue to learn by heart and use to annoy your friends over dinner with for the next ten years. But most of the other cast also performs very well, excluding maybe the slightly annoying Diane Krueger as German film star Ms von Hammersmark – each time she started talking I could feel her wishing for a tele-prompter, or actually looking at one. Daniel Bruehl is pleasantly well-mindedly slimy, and all the Nazi staff is doing surprisingly well (honourable mention to Ulrich Muehe, one of the greatest living German actors, anyway, quite some Hitler you got us here!).

The intensity and fun of the first half is not permanently maintained through the second. Once it became clear that many lines would converge towards the end, and how that would be, the individual stories lost a bit of their touch.
Throroughly entertaining, though, and definitely worth a second viewing.

Das Netz - Unabomber, LSD, Internet (The Net / Lutz Dammbeck 2003)

“Now I have to ask a stupid question.” – “Yes, I know.”

It is one of those films that claims to be about one thing, but actually is about something else. It claims to be about LSD and the Internet and the Unabomber, at least the title says so. But it is about everything the author / director finds fascinating when stumbling across during his trip along the US East coast. There are students and mathematicians, there are old mathematical challenges and hippie cybernetics experts. There are old men sitting in their forest cabins and reflecting on the flow of time and science. It comes back to the Unabomber and seeks to insist that there is more to him than just a murderer out of paranoia. The scope is from the technologists developing the ARPANet to the LSD experiments of Leary. The author claims both are part of the same… idea?

Either I cannot follow the complex considerations of the author, or the author’s chosen complexity is wrong in that it misunderstands what the “system” is that is under scrutiny. Admittedly, I believe both is right, with the disclaimer that many of the film’s aspects are more interesting if you happened to have had your share in the 1960s and experienced the drugs, the discussions, the media and the art of the time. The film gets carried away by a childish fascination for a murderer, and the fact that several victims and contemporaries refuse to honour a murderer by offering a sophisticated discussion about him, only encourages Dammbeck more – the fatal consequence is that at the end of the day, he is offering an ode to Ted Kacinsky, instead of positioning just to be one of the elements that were typical for the time.

Oldboy (Park Chan-wook 2003)

Oh Dae-Su is a really annoying guy, but when he suddenly gets kidnapped and held in a private prison, he is still clueless as to who did this or why. He realises he is in for trouble, because they just will not release him. Only after 15 years, rather suddenly, captivity ends. On his quest for the kidnappers he gets acquainted with a strange group of professional kidnappers, with characters from his past and with a young woman who may or may not be able to help him.
This may the most characteristic film to show why Korean cinema is very interesting and very very strange: extreme violence and emotion, comic fighting. “And there is a scene during which an octopus is definitely harmed during the making of the movie.” Villainous villains and innocent girls, it’s all there to the extreme. And an abundance of guilt! Much more mature than the previous “Mr Vengeance” film, it shows how the director / auteur grows from a rogue creative kid into a mature narrator about the abyss of the human mind. Not always an enjoyable watch, and most certain to have the nails of your next-seat girl dug deep into your arm, but if you are Korean, you will probably enjoy this sweet torture. The turns and twists of the story are not necessarily logical to an outside observer, especially towards the end I needed to repeat to myself that the Asian perception about guilt and punishment is very different from mine. In no definition, however, does the film have a happy ending, and this alone makes it worth seeing. Looking forward to the final part of the “Vengeance” trilogy now…

Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli 2007)

Katie and Micah are chasing something like a Poltergeist in their house, with the chase starting for Micah as nothing more than a nice video documentary project allowing him to get in the nerves of his girlfriend (and maybe catch some sex on camera if he’s lucky). Turns out the opponent in the house is in a less playful mood.
What is the genre called? “Amateur camera found” category? Or rather just “ghost story” in the term’s most traditional and straightforward meaning. The night vision of the camera and the time coding allow for a handful of pleasantly creepy images. No Blair Witch Horror most of the time, no destruction of the world (what’s that film called again), just people who get more scared every minute. The problem is that it is not really clear why they don’t go away (just because one of the paranormal experts says the ghost would follow them? Come on, grow up!). And especially the Katie character is, in all honesty, terribly played. I think it’s actually less the acting skills of Katie Featherston, but rather the way the part has been developed, I suppose between the director and the actress. That was not convincing incredulity, fright and terror, but mostly slightly annoying and not very credible hysteria.
Not an important contribution to the genre of horror, but a nice enough reminder what the elements of a thoroughly frightening campfire story could be.

Funny People (Judd Apatow 2009)

George Simmons is a famous and rich comedian and actor, and he is seriously sick. Some form of blood cancer shakes the foundations of his life, and he turns rather arbitrarily to Ira, a young and not too talented comedian, draws him into his life, makes him assistant and trustee. The effort to cope with his disease also leads him to face his former love interest Laura again – and they both realise that this would be the chance of their life to make things right between them.
When reading my own content blurb, I realise it does not represent the film in the slightest. Why is that, I wonder? I think because the script, especially for the first half of the movie, is so brilliant that it manages to merge the genres of “disease drama” and “goofball comedy about comedians”. Both is done very solidly, and the combination could have gone tacky or annoying, but does not. This is a film about a group of professionals who depend on never allowing themselves to grow up, and on fighting with claws against the dominance of normality. That can be sad and hilarious at the same time, and it is (even though not as sad and depressing as that Jerry Seinfeld documentary I watched recently). The ruthlessness of Comedians’ comedy, the desperate hunt for the next joke and the rough competition is at least indicated. The script does so in a pleasantly entertaining manner, does insist on being fun while sharing some insights. Ans so it deserves the right to let sadness and disease seep in and out again. It works well, because Adam Sandler, when used properly, is a fantastic and mature actor. He is natural, cool, funny, vulnerable, virile, and everything a successful, arrogant, dying, desperate and cynical comedian needs to be. Seth Rogen is more like Seth Rogen standard, but that is also quite good, because what I liked about him in “knocked Up” and “Superbad”, too. He is not hysterical, but just one of these dudes with a loose tongue and sometimes a heart.
The film loses steam about halfway through its more than two hours running time. It seems as of the starting point was more than clear, the brilliance of throwing this character and actor into this kind of situation was evident – but when it came to the “and what happens to them” questions, some of the brains sneaked out of the writers’ room. Still a surprisingly enjoyable movie to me comedy-disliker…

Män som hatar kvinnor / The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev 2009)

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist gets in a tangle with an industrialist, and ends up being framed and jailed. After his release, he receives an offer to help the old head of the Vanger family clear up the unresolved disappearance of his daughter many years ago. He ensures the help of Lisbeth Salander, a hacker and punk and abused loner. Together, they move onto the lonely family island, amidst the snow and cold of Sweden’s countryside.
I am not too much a fan of the new Scandinavian wave of crime literature, but I always was fond of their movies. There is the pleasant desolation and boredom of the wide landscape, there are characters that very often are happy with a lot and isolation and solitude, there is the pleasant sound of boots crunching on snow. Same here: a lot of loners, a lot of boots on snow, and a lot of wide landscape. There is not too much about the story (serial killer?) and there is the problem with a back-story for Lisbeth that seems rather out of place and free of context (I assume that this is important for readers of the voluminous book, and for sustaining her character – taken this as a stand-alone movie, the story of her abuse through those who are supposed to protect her is distracting and unnecessary). Bot both main characters Mikael and Lisbeth are interesting and unconventional enough to make the viewer care, so the side characters including all the villains do not matter so much. An interesting and sometimes thrilling crime story evolves that surely will hold up through a couple of more installments.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott 2009)

A gang of … em, yes, gangsters kidnaps a subway car and threatens to kill the hostages unless 10 Million Dollars are being coughed up by the city of New York.
It was never more simple to summarise a movie, because it is not just simple, it is outright primitive in its premise. That is not necessarily bad, but here it is. There is nothing beyond that basic starting point, there is no single surprise, no plot twist, not hidden meaning (beyond the additional line of income lead gangster John Travolta expects through the stock exchange decline following the new “subway terror attacks”). Of course Denzel Washington as dispatcher is very watchable as ever, also Travolta as bad guy and John Turturro as lead agent, but every single scene looks as if it would have been done like that 35 years ago, when big-scale blockbusters were satisfied when they managed to avoid microphones in the frame and if all stuntmen survived. There is no subtlety, no originality. The only thing slightly original is the title sequence, which again is completely detached in style from the rest of the movie (and looks like a Google Earth advertisement). And Gandolfini as the completely fed up New York mayor is amusing at times. The runaway subway just stops when crossing the stop signal? What?? The gangster just gets shot when facing his adversary? WTF?!? This is really uninspired. And Walter Matthau keeps rotating in his grave…

Der Knochenmann (Wolfgang Murnberger 2009)

Inspector turned repo man Simon Brenner encounters a strange brew of family feud and absurd carneval plot.
The interesting thing about the books and films based on the Brenner character is not necessarily the plot and the whodunnit. It is the very Austrian weirdness of the hero cop (the most worn-down charatcer this side of Bogey, minus the cool, plus some morbid thing that is the Austrian cool, if you know what I mean), based on a whole legacy of Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Ernst Jandl and Hermes Fettbergs. Austria is different, and so are her crime fighters. And her criminals, for that matter, because the keeper of the inn in which the better part of the movie plays is a pragmatic maniac, able to do everything that is necessary with great stoicism, from pushing his son off the icy road to … well, see for yourself, nasty things with butcher utensils.
The laconic depression of the first “Brenner” movie “Komm, Suesser Tod” remains unsurpassed (“ziehen, net blasen” – “suck, don’t blow”), but on second viewing, “Knochemann” is on par with “Silentium”, and no doubt will Josef Hader, prime Austrian cabaret / comedian get a chance to play the character a couple more times – after all, the novel Brenner had its resurrection almost at the same time with this movie coming out, when Wolf Haas published the latest instalment. More to come, and that’s appreciated.

Le scaphandre et le papillon / The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel 2007)

Jean-Dominique Bauby or Jean-Do suffers a stroke, wakes up in hospital with a very limited set of physcial capabilities, but a mind as alert and active as ever. He is arrogant, self-centric, pissed off with the world around himself and in general not a nice guy. With the help of his therapists, he learns some basic survival and communication skills again, and with his ability to express himself, he experiences a satisfaction that may be more substantial what he experienced in his previous life. He starts writing a book by dictating his thoughts to the hospital staff, his family and friends.
Despite its richness, there is very little to say about the film, apart from: it is of dreamlike beauty, with stunning sapia filters and floating camerawork in some of the flashback sequences, with unpretentious medical sobriety in they eye of a shattered body, with lovably tough characters to help the ill former fashion superstar to overcome his self-pity and death wishes. Especially the latter is a wonderful scene, when he is asking the young girl who has been working her butt off to help him get going again to help him kill himself. The incredible insult this constitutes, the ignorance to her self-defiance and sacrfices hits back at him the second he expresses the wish, and Jean-Do cannot but understand for maybe the first time ever that other people have feelings and that he keeps hurting them.
Excellent acting on all parts, especially Mathieu Amalric as Jean-Do, without whose great performance you just cannot do such a film, but equally good, maybe harder self-contained parts by the girls and women around him, the wife, girlfriend and therapists. And the bloke who brings a fur hat and puts it on Jean-Do’s head each time before reading to him is just the right level of comic relief. Masterful music, too. Ah – masterful everything! I heard Julian Schnabel is a complicated self-indulgent… artist. So what, he made this film and he put Johnny Depp into a drag queen dress. He is forgiven!

Sympathy For Mr Vengeance / Boksuneun naui geot (Park Chan-Wook 2002)

Deaf and dumb twen Ryu lives with his sister, and he wants to find her a new kidney for a transplant. He gets involved with an organ dealer mafia, and ends up minus one of his own kidneys and short of some million won to pay for his sister’s donation organ. In order to get the cash he plots the kidnapping of an industry manager’s daughter.
To be honest, I had a hard time following the plot, partly because from the beginning, I was rather captured by the beauty of images and sounds (especially the stunning sound design inside the factory where Ryu works) and forgot to pay attention who is plotting what to what effect. It does not matter much in the end, because it gets quite clear that they are all heading for disaster, including Ryu, his sister, his friend with whom he is planning the kidnapping and who pays a high price when the stunt goes wrong and the father’s wrath turns against her. And the father himself, who has to realise that he has lost his family and life long ago, but loses everything again.
I would not say that the film has the breath-taking strangeness of “Oldboy”, which I saw some years ago, but it may be even more powerful in being more human, focussing more on the caracters as truly desperate beings. But – like “Audition” that I just write about a moment ago – a good representative of what was interesting about East Asian cinema in the last decade.

Audition / Ôdishon (Takashi Miike 1999)

Looking for a new girlfriend / wife sounded like a fun idea. Shigeharu Aoyama sets up an audition for a film, only to use it as a cover for inviting girls and seeing which one could be a match. He finds Asami, and it seems they are good for each other, despite the strange behaviour on both parts, probably attributable to the awkward situation of mature mating. As it turns out, the first night they spend together is the start of a very different relationship from the one Shigeharu had in mind.
It is a very typical Japanese thriller, in many ways. It is not ashamed to be very cruel about human flaws and behaviours, it goes for the gore when the thrill has been done, and it does not stop to leave anything to your nightmares. The nightmare images are being delivered to your doorstep, and what I mean with typical Japanese is that this horror always seems to be coming with the face of a pretty girl, presumably innocent and fragile. Is that what the Japanese, Korean and sometimes also Chinese filmmakers are scared of: pretty girls, because they will mutilate them if you get too close to them? Is worth analysing back to the gender roles and perceptions of East Asia. In any case, it always makes for very interesting horror flicks for the not cringy.
http://www.best-horror-movies.com/audition.html Looking for a new girlfriend / wife sounded like a fun idea. Shigeharu Aoyama sets up an audition for a film, only to use it as a cover for inviting girls and seeing which one could be a match. He finds Asami, and it seems they are good for each other, despite the strange behaviour on both parts, probably attributable to the awkward situation of mature mating. As it turns out, the first night they spend together is the start of a very different relationship from the one Shigeharu had in mind.
It is a very typical Japanese thriller, in many ways. It is not ashamed to be very cruel about human flaws and behaviours, it goes for the gore when the thrill has been done, and it does not stop to leave anything to your nightmares. The nightmare images are being delivered to your doorstep, and what I mean with typical Japanese is that this horror always seems to be coming with the face of a pretty girl, presumably innocent and fragile. Is that what the Japanese, Korean and sometimes also Chinese filmmakers are scared of: pretty girls, because they will mutilate them if you get too close to them? Is worth analysing back to the gender roles and perceptions of East Asia. In any case, it always makes for very interesting horror flicks for the not cringy.
Nice website for hoor fans, by the way: http://www.best-horror-movies.com/audition.html

Das Weisse Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke 2009)

The film follows the fate of a small village of Germany’s early 20th century. Triggered by a number of accidents and small assaults, the narrator takes us through the characters one by one to provide us with an image of regular life at the time, while setting up a thrilling whodunnit. It is Haneke’s masterful storytelling (with Jean-Claude Carriere supporting the scriptwriting) that this odd combination of period piece, crime story, psychological thriller and cruel relationship drama stays on track. It is hard to say how to judge all these characters that according to modern standards would all be called thugs, villains, sadists, masochists, and what not. The priest is a ghastly patriarch, his hypocrisy exposed in how he treats his and his son’s bird. The doctor is a disgustingly cruel abuser of his the women who help him sustain his life. The administrator almost beats his son to pieces. The farmer leaves his son alone in his desperation. And so on. It is a bleak world in which there are only very few warm-hearted and honest moments, most of them involving the young love between the village teacher and a young maid. The only way out of the misery is to flee, and some do, such as the Baronesse with her children, or the midwive with her handicapped and abused son.
The bleakness culminates in answering not a single of the questions raised during the film –stressing how rarely life offers closure and satisfaction. You may judge life for this, but it does not help yo either.
Brilliant black-and-white photography stresses the bleakness, but actually also allows for stunningly beautiful and eerie images, such as a devastated field of cabbage or a snow-white and crystal-clear winter landscape, the snowfields virgin in a way that hardly can be seen today.
Brilliant movie by one of the world’s greatest filmmakers of the time.

The Damn United (Tom Hooper 2009)

Brian Clough succeeds in turning bottom-of-second division team Derby County into the English champion. His self-esteem makes him successful, but lets him permanently clash with the club owners. One such turns leads into his sacking, and he ends up coaching the arch-rival, Leeds United, whose manager has been promoted away to take over the England squad. The time at Leeds starts as a disaster…
Who does not immediately think of Jose Murinho when seeing the smirking in Michael Sheen’s eyes and grin? He is not the best manager in England, but certainly among the “Top 1”… that sounds like a role model for modern posh coaches. But he is depicted as a torn character, there are doubts, and there is the realisation what he is unable to do. His assistant coach plays an important role in unfolding this vulnerable side of his, and the two stand in the centre of the movie like the good and the evil angel on the shoulders of professional football. Clough seems himself as such a superhuman being that the sheer realisation that some other people can perfectly ignore him (like former Leeds coach Don Revie, who does not even remember why he is supposed to have insulted Clough years ago) shatters his foundations.
Michael Sheen plays brilliantly (again), Timothy Spall as Clough assistant Peter Taylor and Colm Meany as Don Revie (I always have to think of him telling off his family for questioning Elvis’ greatness, sorry…) make this a really enjoyable cultural period piece, with pro-football locker room full of smoke and an ashtray next to every locker, with two-class football mannerism that is probably even worse today, and with the age of innocence ending slowly through the realisation that money does score goals.
I did not know any of the characters to begin with, but that never mattered. At the end, you know them.

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks 1959)

The Sheriff (John Wayne) has made a catch – local crook Burdette got arrested after killing a bystander. His brother alerts the gang, and a stand-off begins. The prisoner cannot be brought out of town, and the Marshall will only be coming in a couple of days. Sheriff and deputies Stumpy and Dude (Dean Martin) team up with pretty love interest Feathers to get through the days.
An interesting melange of hard-ass cliché Western and romantic musical. Not too much music, but there are two or three scenes when Dean martin is allowed to bring the action to a halt, sit in a rocking chair or a bathtub and give us a very mellow tune. But most of the time, the expected shoot-outs, plots and traps happen. The showdown involving a surprise hero Stumpy and a lot of dynamite seems a bit short cut, as if they were running out of film stock and needed to rush off the final scenes. A much lighter bit of entertainment than “The Searchers” that I watched a day earlier, but with prototypical characters that are worth liking. It is no surprise that John Wayne’s presence is solid, but especially Dean Martin surprised me with subtle acting and a very cool screen presence.

The Searchers (John Ford 1956)

Ethan returns home after months (or years) on the road. Upon his arrival, he is immediately dragged into a quest for two girls from his family that got kidnapped by a posse of Comanches. It takes him and his fellows years, and what they find is not what they had hoped for.
Often quoted as one of the great Westerns, if not the great movies of all times, the film makes it easy to show why that is. There is very little Western romanticism and heroism. John Wayne’s Ethan is superior in his instincts, experiences and skills, but even he is fallible, a sometimes angry and desperate man who realises that his life’s core may be empty and the quest he is on in vain. Not because he will not find the girls, but because it may not be worth looking for them. He rampages among a herd of buffalo (a scene that may well be the inspiration for Lawrence of Arabia’s “no prisoners!” massacre?), he breaks down and cries upon finding bodies, he turns around only to start again, because that is all he has to do. John Ford dares to be bleak and artistic, he makes huge jumps in narrative time, finds unorthodox images (such as snow-covered desert plains) and apart from the showdown, he moves towards what could easily have been the first neo-Western, pessimistic and devoid of hope. The end looks as if suggested by the studio management, and hence is not quite coherent, but overall this movie leaves an impression of depth and seriousness, making it more akin to what followed from Eastwood than what preceded it. There’s even some humour in-between, especially in the long scene when a letter from the search party is read to those waiting at home, where one of the Searchers narrates his adventures, involving him getting married by accident to a fat squaw. Yet even those moments are but short relief, because the light pleasure of the moment gets turned on its head when moments later he realises that he virtually condemned his wife to death by sending her sway carelessly.

State of Play (Kevin Macdonald 2009)

Plot as in the tv show of the same name. Relocating the action to the US requires some adjustments for plot, in particular the background of the House representative as a defense expert battling against the private contractors, while the original featured, if I remember correctly, the Health lobby. Similarly ruthless, no doubt, but I feel a bit tired of the Blackwater bashing, maybe it is more interesting to use the not so obvious industry, as the BBC show did.

Ben Affleck as Stephen Collins has not a lot to do (and since my recent Kevin Smith marathon, that is all the better, because I will never be able to grant him a serious expression again – or an adult character, for that matter), his wife nothing at all – to the point that when she is involved in the final “confession scene” in the news room, it is completely unclear why she needs to be there and why everybody is staring at her as if she was important in this. Chubby Gladiator is fine for the role, in principle, only that John Simms is so much better, more serious and energetic and real and desperate. It is not just out of principle, but out of failure of very specific characterisations and plot elements, that I stand by my opinion that this story should not have been condensed into a movie. The original short series was just perfect to show the evolution of the characters, and in Hollywood’s executive summary version, the key plot twists towards the end just fall flat on their face (plus they leave you wonder how often per night you can postpone a final editorial deadline for a national newspaper).

Frost / Nixon (Ron Howard 2008)

After Richard Nixon steps down as US president, David Frost – UK boulevard journalist of varying success – sees his chance to get a coup by convincing Nixon to a series of interview “to set things straight”. Between financial woes about the costly production, immense research requirement, and the growing feeling that Nixon is not the kind of opponent one should pick in a one-on-one interview situation, the deadline of the show is approaching.
Firstly, the movie leaves you a bit alone with history. It is clearly made for an American audience that has detailed knowledge about the happenings around the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s involvement in the Vietnam war, the public opinion at the time, the hearings, impeachment procedures and the Nixon tapes. To be honest, if a European movie would expect as much from a US audience (e.g. on the Second World War or Nazi Germany), this would be answered with utter lack of comprehension. The indication of historical events edited over the opening credits is but a small effort to bring people on track. I had the impression the film starts with the expectation that the audience knows quite a bit about the facts, and has a clear opinion formed against Nixon (whom many still see as evil impersonated). Interestingly, when you watch the film without this starting attitude, there is little not to like about Nixon. From a clean sheet, he easily wins your sympathy by way of charm, rhetoric and argument. Especially with a smug and slightly slimy boulevard entertainer like Frost, sympathies must be clearly allocated. One of the two takes history and man’s role in it seriously and tries to shape it, the other seeks to find some way to earn some million dollars by exposing the fallacies of another man. That Nixon is frequently depicted as monetary greedy seemed like an effort to create at least something set in the presence to justify letting him go down.

Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet 1993)

An office of real-estate developing salesmen is challenged by their company to either improve performance or go. In their desperation, some of them plot a heist to lay their hands on the safe with the latest “leads”, addresses of promising potential buyers. Indeed, next day, a break-in has happened, and the police is investigating.
Very very strange to try to explain what the film is about. The one-line starting-point turns into a psycho-drama of epic proportions – but on a microscopic scale. Ahem. The sad character played by an aged Jack Lemmon, still believing that he is competitive after years of failure (a very Willi Lohman character), Ed Harris being nothing short of creepy in his plotting of the theft, and most formidably (find it on YouTube, maybe as part of the “20 Mega-rants of film history”) the man who insulted his baby daughter on the phone, Alec Baldwin. His introductory speech, laying out the problem, the challenge, the rules and the impossibility that any of the losers present to hear his speech will ever be able to close any deal before hell freezes over, this speech indeed is movie history and I watched it about seven times now, need to practice more for the next Jour Fixe. Al Pacino (yes, this film is rimful of really weird stars) may log this in to be among his top 5 ever performances. And whoever played the man who wanted to sign some land but now his wife told him to cancel it and who throws himself into the charm machinery that is Al Pacino deserves and Oscar and compensation money anyway. Fabulous drama, and I cannot wait to check out next time the stage play comes around. (why did it take me 15 years to watch this I have no idea… was it a hit back when it came out?).

Public Enemies (Michael Mann 2009)

I never understand this kind of gangster film, usually because I never manage to concentrate on the interellationship between all those gangster characters, and if that happens, I never know whom to blame: script, diretor, me? In the case of Michael Mann’s latest film, I would say we are all to blame. He focuses a lot on the two main opponents, a bank robber (who, dear US producers, is nowhere near as famous internationally as you seem to believe) and the copper chasing him. We have seen that in various settings, not the least in Mann’s own “Heat”, but also there are clear traces of the “Untouchables”, if only the three-piece suits (never worn with more sex than through Andy Garcia – what’s he doing these days??). The film has fabulous moments, mostly when the irony that belongs more to Johnny Depp’s look than to Dillinger’s character takes over (the visit at the Dillinger task force in the police headqarters is an example – I am positive that cool was Depp cool, not Dillinger cool). The use of HD footage throughout makes for a look that takes some time to adjust to. If one does not adjust, you could believe that film was shot with the same equipment than any given porn flic, so you better take it for innovative camera dynamics instead. No seriously, I keep not understanding why you need to use this kind of technology when you can afford proper film. Next thing is they shoot it on 3D… because we can!
As most “based on a true story” movies (I keep remembering “Zodiac” for this), there is a certain anti-climax that comes with real life, and despite all the effort put into the showdown, it comes down to *** spoiler now, ok, also before, but now really! *** it comes down to the cops waiting for Dillinger in front of a cinema, waiting for him to come out and gunning him down. There is not much thrill that can come out of such a prosaic ending.
Christian Bale assessment line: still not a useful actor, overrated. I do not expect his hype to last much longer. Much better suited for roles where he does not need to move his neck.