FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Il Postino

When we first see Mario (Massimo Troisi), we have to assume that he is disabled. He talks to his father, who seems to be debil too. Or just weird. In the next scene we realize that Mario is of normal intelligence, but grew up in an area where there isn't much to tell. But that's going to change... Mario lives on an island in the south of Italy where new things arrive very late, if at all. But one day Mario is hired as a temporary postman. He has only one customer, a stranger. It's the famous poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) who fled Chile and went into exile on the island. Mario is fascinated by Neurda, who receives countless letters, especially from women. He discusses with his boss, the postmaster, about Neruda: The expelled communist rebukes Mario: Neruda is a political writer! Neither the one nor the other understands Neruda, but Mario decides on the job to visit Neruda daily - and maybe there are girls too! Slowly a relationship develops between the two. Peruda lives quietly and withdrawn with a woman, maybe his wife. Anyway, Mario notices that both love each other deeply. Mario takes every opportunity to talk to Neruda (which is very cute) and has him sign a book. Mario reads the book and says, "How can this book attract so many women? But in the end he goes through a development. He's no longer the naive postman, in the end we think we've discovered the soul of a poet in him (only that he didn't grow up in this environment). But Neruda also learns from the people on the island, whom he describes as the simplest in the world. Mario smiles knowingly - so he can't be that simple anymore. The driving force behind this quiet dreamy masterpiece is Massimo Troisi. He also co-wrote the script and took on the title role himself. Just one day after the film was finished, he died. Troisi plays Mario without ever wanting to create an effect. He doesn't seem to be making any effort, as if he's already merged with his role. Philippe Noiret is exactly the right cast for Neruda. He has this mischievous smile that made him a kind of folk actor in France. The moment others react in surprise, this smile seems to express: I knew it, I knew it! Together they turn this little big film into a meditation on fate, decency and poetry. One could almost imagine Mario being the poet and Neurda the postman. After all, Mario ultimately proves how poetry affects women by making his dream woman Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) curious. The film is based on a novel by Antonio Skarmeta. But I don't really want to know whether it is based on real facts.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Debra Granik - Winter's Bone

Since the 1990s we have learned that the state has become increasingly slim and helpless. During the Corona period, however, we were surprised to discover that the state can close down the whole country. Now, in the following social upheavals (60% of the wage, but 100% of the rent etc) it will claim that it cannot influence everything. Such thoughts come to me in Debra Granik's Winter's Bone.

The screen heroes who touch me the most are not extroverted. They don't strut up and down vainly in front of us, they don't make great speeches, they don't lead armies. They don't have superpowers. They are ordinary people who have to face a certain situation. Ree Dolly is such a hero. She must be 17 and acts as a kind of maid for her younger sister and her little brother. You're like a mother. We are in the hinterland of the Ozarks. Her mother is mentally blacked out and just sitting around all day. Father cooked chrystal meth and got arrested for it. Anyway, he disappeared without a trace. Now Ree takes care of her siblings, raises them and feeds them - always dependent on the neighbours, on support. The two children - like all children who are not beaten - are friendly and full of energy. They love to play! They have not yet realised that they grow up disadvantaged. This world in which Debra Granik's film takes place is presented in a desolate sobriety. We get to know a society that's lost. One that will never fit into a Hollywood movie! The question of how Ree could grow up and become so strong in this world remains unanswered. How did she become so independent, so proud? She can't have inherited it from her parents. The reason we immediately accept Ree as such is Jennifer Lawrence. Like all over the world, we experience an unprecedented Lawrence boom at the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo. The then 19-year-old acts as passionately and steadfastly as in her later expensive films. Lawrence, the quiet heroine, doesn't boast, doesn't dodge problems and seems to believe unshakably that people will do the right thing. Winter's Bone is also a film in which a star sees the light of day! "Don't ask for what ought to be offered"; teaches Ree to her little brother. Is that how she raised herself? Everyone around knows her father made amphetamines and sold them. Obviously, he couldn't even make money on meth! Now he is gone and Ree is looking for him, otherwise the house would be seized. She stays for a week... I think the model for Granik's film is the Odyssey. The endpoint is Ree's father, dead or alive. Ree struggles through a landscape as inhospitable as if we were in the middle of the apocalypse. A post disaster. Sometimes you think that the TV sets or cars don't even fit into the picture and are probably relics from earlier times. It is the houses of people who have reached the bottom. For them, there is no chance. Incidentally, Granik's film is not about these people, but plays UNDER them: Ree doesn't consider any of them inferior - after all, she herself belongs to them! I think for a girl like you, this life is normal. Heartlessness and disappointments are commonplace for Ree. In their father's world, everyone is a criminal, has contacts with a criminal or is subject to one. Everyone suspects everyone. In older "Badlands" films, these people would distrust such films from the outside. In Winter's Bone you don't trust your friends, even your own family. Every encounter with Rees brings us closer to one of these people and every time we realize how damaged his humanity is. Is it so that they see a girl in need of help in Ree? No, they perceive them as a danger to take something away from them, since they themselves are in need of help. A story like that, full of hate and amorality, could easily become unbearable. But real courage and hope can compensate for this. We are born optimistic and in every horrible situation, there are few people who will help (at least that's how Ree would judge it).

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Ingmar Bergman - The Seventh Seal

A knight returns from the Crusades. He finds a church that is still open, even though the plague is raging all around him. He confesses. He speaks to a man with a frock about his indifference, which excludes him everywhere. He lives in a world full of spirits as a prisoner. He wants God to stretch out his hand and speak to him. He screams into the darkness, but there is no one there. The man in the frock turns around. It is death. Can anyone tell me a modern film that presents such pictures? Nobody. Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal has much more in common with a silent film than with modern cinema. A rugged, uncompromising film (some of you may find it ridiculous or outdated). Hardly anyone asks about the DVD in our video store. Bergman has gone out of fashion. The subject, the absence of God, interests no one. But I am addicted to Bergman. I watched all his films one after the other. And The Seventh Seal is not primarily about the absence of God. It's about our gossip. Our restlessness. Bergman, on the other hand, poses existential questions. In contrast to his films from the 60s he still asks these questions directly in the 50s and therefore I prefer The Seventh Seal. A straightforward Bergman movie like he wasn't supposed to do later. In most of his movies Bergman settles accounts with God. Who doesn't know the famous picture of the knight playing chess with death? The work ends with an equally famous picture: The macabre dance of death before the horizon. Once the knight (embodied by Max von Sydow) asks a girl about the devil, who must know whether God exists. "Look me in the eye"; the girl answers. She refers to the priest who could see him. She tells of it almost proudly. But the knight's squire discovers nothing but emptiness in the girl's eyes. There is nothing. So is there only death and God doesn't matter? Bergman's films deal with this spiritual search. They desperately seek answers to the big questions of life. With regrettable answers. But there is one thing in Bergman's work: love. It exists. Like a consolation.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Bal

I grew up with Turkish friends and have a Turkish girlfriend and tried to learn Turkish in Istanbul (and forgot everything again). In short, I am a typical West Berliner, because after all we are one of the biggest Turkish cities. This is especially noticeable here in Reichenberger Str. and in our video store. So if you want to get a bit more involved with Turkish films - after all, we live in a Turkish city - my friend Nazli has brought a whole bag of DVDs for you. Everything with English subtitles. Remember Bal, the Berlinale winner ten years ago? Bal is part of the childhood trilogy by Semih Kaplanoglu. This trilogy is told backwards. It begins with a bookseller, around forty, who hears about his mother's death in Istanbul. Her last request that he return home, complete one last task. Yusuf, that's his name. That's how "Yumurta" begins, which translates as egg. It is followed by Sut, translating milk, and finally Bal, meaning honey. In Bal, the third part, Yusuf is a child. Yusuf grows up on the coast to the Black Sea, a wooded landscape in the north. His father Yakup (Erdal Besikçioglu) lives from hand to mouth. He climbs trees and harvests the wild honey. One day Yakup simply disappears. For his wife Zehra (Tülin Özen) and little Yusuf (Bora Altas) this means endless torture. Through their perspective we experience this tragedy. We are Yusuf. Yusuf is a lonely child. He stutters. So much he longs for a reward badge! The strict teacher gives it out in class when children read aloud well. But there's something else in Yusuf's life. The abundance of nature, the happiness of experiencing it outdoors. That is what wild honey stands for. We're in the middle of the forest, on a hillside. There, the moon is reflected on the surface of a forest lake... If you look at all three parts of the childhood trilogy, you will be confronted again and again with eggs, milk and honey. They appear again and again in the respective parts. Nazli explained to me that Kaplanoglu uses images from the Koran. We know this from filmmakers like Krzysztof-Kieslowski, who likes to take his metaphors from the Bible. But I've never seen a film that tries to do that with the Koran. Yusuf is Joseph. He experiences things that also happened to Yusuf from the Koran. We can understand Bal as an allegory. Because Yusuf's world is the shady forest. The paradise of his childhood. Then, step by step, Yusuf goes out into the world. It's hard for him, he stutters, has trouble speaking. Yusuf leaves HIS world while walking into the world. His devotion to nature. The paradise of his childhood. But we have already seen in "Yumurta" At forty, Yusuf will return to the shady Northern Woods

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE What's Eating Gilbert Grape

CINEGEEK.DE is our idea to create a every day free TV channel for you. Just like the guys who always want to choose the movie on video night.

The world of Gilbert Grape in Iowa is small but full of excitement. His brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio) always finds a way to climb the water tower without coming down again. Gilbert's obese mother spends every day on her sofa. His boss, who runs a small grocery store, suffers from competition from a supermarket. All these emergencies put together, this is Gilbert's life. In a big city, the Grape family would probably not work, but in a small town, where everyone knows everyone, it does. It is Gilbert's greatest help that he lives where he fits best: In the small town. What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a film about outsiders. Not the kind of outsiders who see themselves as such, but real ones. The secret is not to look at them with tragic seriousness. Sure, it's a problem when you have a handicapped brother like Gilbert. It is also difficult to have a mother who never leaves home because she weighs 500 pounds. Gilbert even helps the neighbor's children to take a look at her! For Lasse Hallström such dysfunctional families probably have a special attraction. That's why the movie's peculiarity isn't the fact that it's quite strange, but how warm-heartedly everything is viewed! Johnny Depp as Gilbert Grape gives the event a friendliness, even a grace! He was already used to playing eccentrics at this early stage of his career, and that's why they don't seem to be anything out of the ordinary for Gilbert. Johnny Depp as Gilbert seems convincing and easy to like. Finally a young woman, Becky (Juliette Lewis), appears in her grandmother's RV. She is on her way through and remains just long enough for a romance to develop between her and Gilbert. This love acts as a catalyst for the Grape family and breaks open patterns that probably would have lasted a lifetime. The best moments are when the film looks at the handicapped brother and the fat mother with sympathy, not pity. Becky looks at both of them in the same way, and that seems natural to her. At the same time DiCaprio seems difficult, almost annoying, but also priceless. Darlene Cates as mother is extraordinarily present, we see in her all the disappointments of life, but also the ability for a new start. Basically, Gilbert Grape simply shows the daily life. A film that observes closely, so that we slowly get to know the characters. So precise that we can even find out something about ourselves! Hallström's direction combines all these aspects with moments of comedy, romance, but also melodrama. If you're still wondering what Gilbert Grape is actually about - that's it!

Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo Crowdfunding

In the picture you see Lea, who is producing a film about our bar. A total "auteur" the French would say, because Lea with her friend Katrin is responsible for: Direction/Screenwriting/Production (in every sense)/Casting/Camera/Sound/Editing etc. In front of the camera are us and all the guests who couldn't escape fast enough. Lea's film will be a kind of Berlin version of Smoke - if you remember. But right now it's Corona time and the whole creative economy is on ice. Self-proclaimed economists like to explain to me that you have to be flexible and adapt to the times. We do that. Our bar is a late one now. Still, economic arguments seem a bit cheap to me for people who came to our city to live their dream. How about this instead: If you are lucky enough to work in a home office for the same salary, you are welcome to support people like Lea, whose account shows -37 cents Until the creative industry picks up exactly where it left off. And with living a utopia too! Here is our cowdfunding, which goes exclusively to our colleagues:

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Cloud Atlas

You watch Cloud Atlas once, you try again. Then you look at him a third time: A mystery wrapped in a mystery surrounded by a secret. Meaning: Even after three passes you have not understood anything. You may not even succeed in getting from one moment to the next. And already you are in the middle of one of the most ambitious projects ever shot! Impossible to explain something that is beyond logic! We learned this in school: you look for the explanation IN the work of art itself, but it's best to look outside the work of art. When you start conjuring up parables for the works of world literature, I would always answer: "And why can it not be a narrative in itself? So Cloud Atlas provides six stories set between 1849 and 2346. The same actors appear in different roles, embodying different race/gender/age. Sometimes you wonder; is it really Tom Hanks, Halle Berry or Jim Broadbent? But that doesn't really matter. Each segment serves as a transformation of the previous story. The same birthmark appears in each segment. Or the same? All lives are connected by the longing for freedom. I think this is the recurring motif. The one story consciously refers to the inside of the other. How's it going? I'm sure I'm not. It wouldn't help either to list the different characters (of the same actor). Following the motto, here Halle Berry plays an investigative journalist during the 70s, there Tom Hanks plays an old man. Such a kind of timetable would still confuse you. The best thing to do is to follow the direction of Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski - and afterwards try to discuss what you've seen with other geeks. This is exactly what I experience in our video store and it never ends successfully. Some will refer to Freud, others desperately hope to solve the mystery. As if Cloud Atlas is just a mystery. For my part, I for one simply gave up trying to force the events into a logical pattern by the third run at the latest. Clouds do not follow a logical principle. But you will hardly find another film that conjures up the magical qualities of cinema as fascinatingly as Cloud Atlas! Finally a movie that breaks the shackles of continuity and allows its actors to shoot completely free! If you yourself accept this degree of freedom of NOT being able to explain everything, then you will understand that the wisdom of the old man staring into the flames of fire does make sense. Please combine with science fiction puzzles like "2001", "The Fountain" and "The Tree Of Life" - your video store advises you.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Bille August - Pelle The Conqueror

 It was like this at all times. Immigrants have always believed that the new country is a land of milk and honey. People like Lasse Karlsson (Max von Sydow). Lasse is a Swedish farmhand who sails to Denmark with his son Pelle at the beginning of the 20th century. Still in Sweden, Lasse promises that on Sunday people will have breakfast in bed. When he arrives in a shabby harbour with his little son, disappointment sets in immediately. Almost everyone on board is a worker from Sweden. They are inspected by the local farmers like cattle. One by one they are hired. But not Lasse. He's too old. And he has a child. Half drunk, Lasse forces himself on the last farmer. His name is Kongstrup (Axel Strøbye) and he is a devious type. Lasse and Pelle are now sitting in the back of Kongstrup's wagon, driving through the fields, on their way to the future. A beginning full of hopes and dreams, which will be followed by many years on Kongstrup Farm. In the changing seasons, life always remains the same. Everything seems to be organised to disappoint Lasse. It is Pelle who decides to emigrate once more and make a much bigger trip... At Kongstrup Estate the seasons determine the lives of the people. Kongstrup, whom the workers seldom see, chases women - while Mrs Kongstrup drinks brandy. Kongstrup has no shame, and even tries it on the woman who appears at his door from time to time with her child in her arms. Meanwhile the workers are tormented by the "manager" and pre-worker. Pelle in particular becomes a victim of the sadists. He turns to Lasse, asks for protection. But Lasse is too old and tired. In the future Pelle will form his own alliances and friendships. Who remembers the three-part epic "The Emigrants" and "The New Land" from the 70s? It's about Scandinavians settling in Minnesota. Starring Max von Sydow. I think Bille August knows these, his role models. He also knows how to use Max von Sydow, who never gives the impression of acting. He always seems simple and true. So much is happening around him. The intrigues in the house of Kongstrup, the beautiful local woman who falls in love with her stall, the torments of the workers. Then Pelle also falls in love, and so it happens that coffee in bed on a Sunday no longer seems so far away and outlandish. But that's only possible if Pelle no longer follows his father, but his own dream...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Oskar Roehler - Die Unberührbare

After the fall of the wall I suddenly lived in a new world. Today I think I'm living in a dystopian science fiction movie Yesterday six (in fact six) cops approached two hippies in front of our store. They sat on two stones in front of the flowerbed. The stones were too close together.

Oskar Roehler shot No Place To Go in black and white. Not because black-and-white films are hip, but because his heroine Hanna Flanders (Hannelore Elsner) sees the world that way. These are her last days. Hanna grew up in the GDR. She loved the GDR. Uncritically she loved what they called "real existing socialism". I think I even understand her a little. Nanna is "Old 68er". A generation to which my father belongs. Many thought at that time that the new GDR should become the better Germany. Not the old Germany with a Nazi as Federal President. Of course also the Old-68s saw that the GDR did not represent an ideal. But they believed in the construction. They understood the "real existing socialism" not as real, but as utopia. Then Hanns world collapses. Hanna loses the connection. In the GDR she was a poet, in the new Germany her old publisher shows no more interest in Hanna. Her visit to her upper middle-class parents in Munich also went wrong. She does not want to see her son (Lars Rudolph). Hanna is on the verge of financial ruin. "How can you just go on living?" Right from the start, No Place To Go is about death. The whole world has become ugly. Can play "She brings the rain". Roehler has modeled Hanna after his own mother. She, Gisela Elsner, is considered a forerunner of the student movement and published a satirical novel about Germany in 1964. But she disappeared into oblivion before the fall of communism. The fall of the Berlin Wall meant the end for her.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Claude Sautet - Mado

On the death of Michel Piccoli

Who could ever forget the gloomy face of Michel Piccoli? With the black eyebrows and the wild grey curls? The French star of the 60s and 70s can convey a kind of dangerous eroticism like hardly anyone else. Piccoli is the type "adulterer". In the late 50's he took older men's wives, later he took younger ones. In Mado he sleeps with the prostitute of the same name. She - Mado (Ottavia Piccolo) - is young and very pretty. She argues that it is more honourable to sleep with men for money than to incur debts. One of these men is Piccolis Simon Léotard. But Mado does not love Simon. She loves the younger Pierre (Jacques Dutronc). So, unusually, Piccoli is not playing an adulterer, but a man whose love is not returned. At the same time a story from the financial industry of the 70s is constructed. It deals with the complex financial transactions of Simon, whose friend got into debt with a dubious investor and committed suicide. With the help of Mado, Simon wants to take revenge. Because whores usually have the necessary information to ruin a man. Simon wants to blackmail and finish off his enemy using the tricks of bookkeeping. A white-collar crime? No, a film by Claude Sautet. It's about sex, love and money: even if Simon were to win the whole world, he would never get Mado's love. All his money won't help him. That's why the fine society of businessmen sinks into mud in the finale. Meaning in mud. Somewhat off the beaten track is the episode with Romy Schneider as alcoholic and ex-lover of Simon. Because of Romy Schneider, most of you rent Mado - but watch out! Schneider plays a minor supporting role in a kind of movie within a movie. Sure, we experience Schneider as she must have been in 1976. Shielded from the world outside in her darkened room. But in itself this doesn't fit to the rest of the movie and somehow seems stuck.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu - The Revenant

Watch fast, it only runs for a short time!

Really great films have the power to convey the unbelievable. While we sit comfortably on our couch, the protagonists have to endure torments and suffering that we can hardly understand. Too often, however, we see through this manipulation, because the actors do not fulfil their role. It seems made. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritus The Revenant takes us back in time, but reserves the right to remain a work of art. We don't just see The Revenant, we experience the movie. We leave the cinema, are overwhelmed by the art of filmmaking that Iñárritu shows, but we are also grateful for our own comfort in life. Early on we become aware of what tone The Revenant strikes: We survive a Native American raid on a group of trappers. The natives are not presented as enemies, but as an intriguing force of nature. Arrows rush through the air, wounded flesh of the injured everywhere, the camera in the middle of the turmoil. We learn that the tribe is looking for the chief's kidnapped daughter and kills anyone who gets in his way. At the same moment we see that one of the trappers, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), has adopted a native son. The trapper leader, Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), orders the group to return to base. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) contradicts because he wants to save his skins. The seed of discord is sown. Fitzgerald doesn't trust Henry or Glass. The highlight of the film: Glass is attacked and life-threateningly injured by a bear. I haven't seen such a frightening scene for a long time that made my heart beat so fast! It seems Glass can't make it back to base. With the natives in the back, the group decides to split up. Tell Fitzgerald to watch Glass and give him a proper burial. Together with Glass and his son he remains, accompanied by a young man, Bridger (Will Poulter), who admires Glass. Tell Fitzgerald to guard a man whose death he doesn't care about. He kills the adopted son and buries Glass alive. But Glass survives, almost as if he were standing up from the dead (this is what the film title The Revenant means). He thirsts for revenge, struggles with broken bones, without food through the snow, to get the man who killed his son. Basically, he is a spirit, unwilling to move to the other side before justice has been done. Cameraman Emmanuel Lubezki accompanies the painful journey by showing the inhuman conditions, but also his great craftsmanship: the horizon seems endless, the sky always in motion. Lubezki works with the colours of nature, which are nevertheless reinforced: Its snow looks whiter than in reality, the sky bluer. During the second half he makes the journey increasingly mystical. At this point the film swings, seems aimless and rambling. Surely it is fascinating to experience a man who is unwilling to die. But you could have said it tighter and more effectively. The Revenant is ultimately a classic adventure film, only a showdown is withheld from us. The climax takes place during the first minutes, an erection not recognizable. What about DiCaprio's long overdue Oscar? His performance in The Revenant would have overtaxed less good actors. The absolute will to survive, his concentration - we believe DiCaprio's character will not give up. Unfortunately, the direction allows him less than two facial expressions, as becomes apparent from the 100 (!) minute at the latest. DiCaprio, a superhero who crashes down slopes, sleeps in broken horses cadavers and simply seems immortal. Tom Hardy with rolling eyes, plays a classic villain. What would you sacrifice for revenge? What obstacles would you overcome to get them? The Revenant has the strength to ask these questions, but likes itself too much as a mystical search for meaning.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Harmony Korine - Spring Breakers

A sugary fever dream, that was the most unusual film of the year! Yes, I mean Spring Breakers, the movie in which former Disney Stars tear open their bikinis, drink, sniff and play tongue games on every occasion! A week of emergency, then back to the desolate life in Kentucky. Harmony Korine, the eternal polarizer, films this through the foggy perspective of a 21-year-old who leaves for Florida in April. Now everything is going on for a week: Showing yourself naked in public, anonymous quick fucking and sexual humiliation. Like a sharp weapon, the camera dwells on the bodies of Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and his wife Rachel Korine. Four lifelong friends on tour! Spring Breakers is made in such a way that you can only expect the incredulous reaction "What are you looking at?" when someone catches you alone with the movie. And anyway: What are these girls doing while indulging in anonymous fun? Are they cutting back the women's movement by 40 years? Are they even very modern women who choose for themselves? Has Harmony Korine now elevated James Franco to the avant-garde as a gangster rapper who celebrates Britney Spear with a fistula voice and is surrounded by four half-naked nymphs? Korine's humor is wicked, his whole film spoiled. Every scene is staged like a shot from a rifle, sometimes you think everything was shot with a shaky iPhone. In the end, we even see the four in court in bikinis. As the girls are in normal life, we learn most from Selena Gomez' Faith, who is a believing Christian. Vanessa Hudgens figure undergoes the greatest development as she loses her conscience on the trip. Spring Breakers makes the hedonistic hell break over us, is funny, dark and highly provocative!

Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo open again!

We're back!!! Daily from 17.00 there are DVDs for rent, cheap drinks like at the Späti (big beer 1,50 and small beer 1,30, Augustiner 1,60, bottle of wine 6,00, bottle of Prosecco 5 Euro etc), lots of seats on the curb to the street, because our terrace has to stay closed.  So what? Nobody has any money left. So we meet on the curb with a bottle of beer. This will be a "Späti" summer. And who missed the Berlin of the 90s - here it is again!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Larry Clark - Wassup Rockers

Isn't it nice? Our video store's open again. You are welcome to get films from us or to stream free with our "Corona TV". Gives every day a film in good quality.

Wassup Rockers is about another day off in the life of a clique of Latino friends from Los Angeles. They fill this further day off with a trip from their home in South Central to Beverly Hills and back. You might think this is a carefree trip in search of fun, but these kids have no idea what will happen to them next. Time unfolds just like that - thoughtlessly. Photographer Larry Clark has made it his mission to make films about kids and their relationship to them. These are films that play in the world of these kids. A world in which we adults do not exist. The world in Wassup Rockers is full of Latinos and blacks; full of squatters and policemen. Clark's kids have their roots in Salvador, but are routinely mistaken for Mexicans. They all come from the poor neighborhood where the mothers have jobs like striptease dancers. Clark's kids aren't armed or dangerous. His topic is a different one: What happens to teenagers when they come into contact with sex and drugs, even though they are still half children? They're not looking for trouble, just fun. But that in turn will provoke anger and violence. Jonathan (Jonathan Velasquez) is the leader. Everyone looks up to him. Right at the beginning he introduces his clique (and starts every sentence with "and then"). His friends have names like Spermball (Milton Velasquez). They play in a band, hang out, tell "stories" like that of the child who tried to drown himself in the sink. Somehow they make it to Beverly Hills despite a police control in their car (without a driver's license), because there is a skateboard competition there. They also meet rich girls. One even invites them home. Of course they come. Larry Clark, by the way, observes very closely that there is no tension between the rich kids and the poor Latinos. They talk to each other about their differences. Nevertheless, the police are looking for the Latinos and they have to run. Home is by train, on foot and by bus. One of the friends will be shot, the others are tired and frightened. And the streets at home in South Central don't look too inviting to them. Black children are already lurking everywhere, watching them like enemies. But still: The Latino kids like each other, they are real friends. If you compare this fact with other cliques from Larry Clark's films about teenagers, Wassup Rockers is the least shocking.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Terrence Malick - Badlands

The Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo is open again as Späti! You can buy alcohol at late prices, cocktails of course and you can get cigarettes, sweets and chips. But most of all, our beloved video store is opening again and offers staring packages like 1 bottle of Prosecco + 1 bag of chips + 2 DVDs overnight = 10,00 Euro

Holly describes her life like a Pulp novel. "Little did I realize, that what began in the alleys and back ways of this quiet town would end in the Badlands of Montana." It is her questioning narrative voice that lingers throughout Terrence Malick's film. Sometimes it seems as if human existence simply disappears behind the majestic landscape. Holly is playing with a twirling stick as she meets Kit. He worked in a garage. She's fifteen, he's 25 - but we don't learn about his former life. He simply takes Holly with him and within two days he has shot her father and set her house on fire. Both are on the run to South Dakota. Terrence Malick tells an essentially familiar story. A criminal couple fleeing through a neglected America. Malick films these crimes without seeking meaning in them. He never psychologizes! Kit is simply an attractive psychopath that Holly adores. She herself is still a child - quite simple and unworldly. Holly describes her odyssey in the third person, as if everything that happens is fate. Holly lives in one of these country houses, which will appear more often in Malick's work. Own memories? He now throws his couple from one breathless sequence to the next. They live in the forest and cross the Great Plains in a series of stolen cars. "At the very edge of the horizon. We could make out the gas fires of the refineries at Missoula, while to the south we could see the lights of Cheyenne, a city bigger and grander than I'd ever seen." Badlands is definitely one of the greatest films from the New Hollywood era of the early 70s! Malick's debut introduces actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, both of whom were still unknown. Sheen came from TV, Spacek appeared in her second film. Sheen in Blue Jeans looks like one of the rebels of the 50s, like a real movie star! Spacek, with red hair and freckles, looks like a girl, not a woman. Both characters have little depth and that is in contrast to their death instinct. Two basically uninteresting people who kill a family without motivation. "Listen to your parents and teachers. They got a line on most things, so don't treat 'em like enemies," Kit comments stupidly on his actions. He thinks his words have a meaning now that he's famous. The truth is that neither Kit nor Holly are the focus. It's the little birds and animals, the grass as it moves in the wind. In love with detail, Malick films the beauty of the landscape as only he can. Technically, Badlands is a road movie. For me it is THE genre, the New Hollywood movement. A genre that can open up to everything that happens along the way. Only the travelers are constant. Kit and Holly flee to nowhere. Kit vaguely talks about wanting to go north, Holly follows him out of love. Another reason she goes with him is to break her father's (Warren Oates') ban. His death, it seems, is comfortable for Holly. "It hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me?" Did their existence ever have any meaning at all? Terrence Malick is one of the real Hollywood legends. A hermit. If you google his name, you'll discover just a handful of pictures. Interviews with Malick? No way. I think he's simply a private person who is absorbed in his work and otherwise lives on a ranch. Probably he is happy without publicity, simply in the circle of friends. Colleagues describe him as a friendly, cheerful man. Malick is not an intellectual, but a pure humanist. This is certainly the reason why his complete oeuvre (in more than forty years!), now comprising seven films, is so unique!

We open again tomorrow! Not yet as a bar to sit at, of course, but as a "Spaeti". Augustiner 1,60, Cocktails to go and our DVD rental! You can't imagine how relieved we are!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Volker Schlöndorf - Die Blechtrommel

The difficult thing about allegories: If you present them all too convincingly, they can no longer stand for anything else. All right? Is Volker Schlöndorff's classic a story about the cruelty of the world? Or the story of a disgusting boy? The boy's name is Oskar and on his third birthday he decides not to grow any further. Because the world is too cruel. Normally The Tin Drum is understood as an ode to childhood. According to the motto: The innocence of the child vs. the cruel world of National Socialism. We see this world through Oskar's eyes. The difficult thing is that Oskar himself is not a popular figure. On the contrary - he is at least a difficult character. Can we stand him? Günther Grass worked on the script alongside Schlöndorff, which is logical. Finally he wrote the underlying novel, which in turn is based on his own biography. Oskar is Grass. Oskar's world is divided. He was born in Gdansk. Just like Grass. Back then, after the First World War, Germans and Poles lived together in Gdansk without ever getting along. For inexplicable reasons, Oskar carries both nationalities within him. Around him, nationalistic chauvinism. Therefore he wants to stop growing and falls down the cellar stairs. From then on, he wanders the world, beating his tin drum (which he always carries with him) and screams so loudly that glass breaks. Do you notice anything? The tin drum could play just as well today, since the same nationalism is strengthening in Germany and Poland. In any case, Oskar confuses a Nazi band with his tin drum and causes unrest. Allegorical restlessness. That is and remains difficult: an annoying child who carries the drum as a moral symbol. When was the last time a German film challenged you so much? But the time has long since come!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Kops (engl. subt.)

Our "Corona TV" offers you today a real Sunday Feeld Good Movie from Sweden!

Kops, the original by Josef Fares, is based on an idea as simple as it is good: law enforcement officers become thieves, rioters and kidnappers. How did this happen? We have to imagine the idyll in the Swedish hinterland: Högsboträsk. A place where there hasn't been a crime in 20 years. Four policemen have been stationed there who have not worked for twenty years. One is called Jakob (Fares himself), who is mainly looking for a friend. Apparently with success, because he manages to date the lovely Jessica (Eva Röse)! Too bad she's meeting him the next morning as Jessica Lindbladt from police headquarters. She is the superior the police station in Högsboträsk wants to close down. She offers the four "cops" jobs outside her home village - impossible! Kops plays with the type of "slacker", in the form of policemen. "Slacker", they're losers. They hang out at gas stations or in late shopping and discuss certain topics that are not necessarily part of general education. Above all, however, they are sedentary. The "Slackers" from Högsboträsk therefore take their fate into their own hands and pretend to commit crimes where there are no real ones. An explosion of crime in the middle of Högsboträsk - but Jessica becomes suspicious and investigates on her own... Josef Fare's second film contains a lot of "indie" cinema brand Hollywood. Not only do his protagonists hang out on a snack joint and destroy waffles, the (imaginary) shootouts also look like a Hollywood fantasy. Kops, in any case, is a film that lives from its basic idea, sometimes comes along a bit too sedate and pleasing, but is fun. P.S. Every seventh Swede was watching cops at the movies. Such a big success that of course there was a Hollywood remake. A boomerang in a way.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Leos Carax - Holy Motors

We knew that Leos Carax doesn't live in the real world, but in movies. In Holy Motors we meet a sleeping man (Carax himself) who wakes up and approaches the wall of the room. The wall is a forest. But Carax knows where the door is. The key grows out of his hand. With it he opens the door. This is exactly the kind of thing artists can do, can't they? Then we meet the man again. In the cinema, of course. Appearance by M. Oscar (Denis Lavant), who lives in a building that must have sprung from the world of Jacques Tatis' architecture. He gets into a limousine with an almost mute driver. From the outside, the rear of the limousine looks much smaller than from the inside. From the inside it is a wardrobe full of costumes. When he comes out for the first time, he has turned into a beggar. The first of many rooms. It seems to be the pantomime's wish to want to entertain us permanently. That's why he always keeps to a kind of schedule. The different roles are so monstrous that it seems completely pointless to make any kind of connection. Is there a narrative thread or a coherent symbolism? Nothing to report. Oscar as a madman who walks through the streets and eats flowers. Oscar at the famous cemetery in Paris - but the gravestones have no names, only the invitation to visit the respective webpage. Then Oscar transforms a model (Eva Mendes) into a woman of Muslim faith. She must have been stuck somewhere in that costume. In any case, the silent chauffeur Celine (Edith Scob) has long since got used to Oscar's schedule. She probably works around the clock, never sleeps. In summary, Holy Motors can be called an anarchic film that is constantly renewing itself. Sometimes funny, sometimes not, often frustrating and annoying. If you try it out on video evenings, you'll notice that some of them slide back and forth restlessly on their seats. Holy Motors really isn't something for everyone!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jean-Luc Godard - Weekend (engl. subt.)

Our "Corona TV" now counts 190 free streams. Only good ones like Godards - Weekend!!!

In order to stream Week End freely on YouTube, enter the year 1967 behind the title. Then it goes. First Jean-Luc Godard had shifted the rules of cinema forever, then in 1967 he concentrated on their core with Weekend. Weekend is pure cinema! One of his best and most imaginative films! Even today, Weekend is likely to repel and alienate its audience - but that's the way it is with truly revolutionary films. Weekend is about violence and hatred, about the end of any ideology and the beginning of disaster. Weekend is hell! Civilization has failed, it is being destroyed. Normally sick films, which deal with the end of all this, because their subject is too broad. But Godard has staged Weekend very effectively! He simply avoids showing us "real" war. Instead, he shows us the attitude of suffering and destruction. Everything begins with "motorized" people (doesn't that symbolize the animal in us?). A motorized couple sets off for the weekend and their trip is supposed to find a miserable end to the "consumer society" (Godard would have put it that way). Everything stands still in an eternally long traffic jam. The "motorized" leave their car and begin an odyssey. They experience the end. Godard's bitter gaze does not allow us any liberal solutions. Bizarre things happen, so the political speech. Should this nonsense be taken seriously? Or: Why is the politician so serious when everything is just a joke? Is that not the essence of politics? And isn't that the essence of "hip" radicalism? The end, an allegory. Everyone eats everyone. At the latest here we may feel lost in Godard's universe. Everything makes sense, but nothing fits together anymore. Do the protagonists talk to each other or do they talk to us? What is going on at all? Anyway, it is just as crappy as life.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Michelangelo Antonioni - Zabriskie Point

You know, our "Corona TV" follows the idea that you can watch a free stream in good quality every day. Just enter cinegeek.de on our site: YouTube - and you will find all free streams. Must be 190.

Nothing is more unpleasant when adults behave like children in the movie. When it gets madly greasy, both romp through a park and feed the swans and giggle all the time. Michelangelo Antonioni has expressed his deep insights into how cultivated boredom sucks every life out of man in a series of masterpieces from the 50s and early 60s. Then he accidentally became world famous as a pop art icon. For Zabriskie Point he finally went to Hollywood. Antonioni had found his style. He staged movies of great emptiness, which probably nobody understood completely. They were movies from the upper middle class. Now he felt obliged to make a film about the hippie era. A victim of the late 60's which made so many great authors into "engaged" filmmakers. But Antonioni is not an activist and his talent is not to pick up political topics. Antonioni's figures always seemed so incredibly blocked - paralyzed. But in Zabriskie Point they raise their voices - and sound empty. The actors do not act together. They have narcissistic self-talks. The hero from Zabriskie Point makes a radical impromptu speech (without any motivation) and then decides to intervene personally (without any motivation). Maybe he killed a policeman (but we know what a murder of Antonioni can be like). He steals a plane, flees into the desert and picks up a beautiful girl. He circles her a few times, then both run into the dunes and love each other. In the lowest point of the USA, in Zabriskie Point (note the symbolic content). The sex scenes seem to have been copied from other movies, without any real feeling or even joie de vivre. We simply watch as a couple of lovers roll around in the sand. A ridiculously long sequence. What's the next step? Our hero paints his plane with psychedelic colors. He flies back to Los Angeles and is murdered by policemen. It's not easy to follow Zabriskie Point, but the film is basically that simple. Besides, Antonioni shows how corrupt and corrupt America is (to be noticed by public attacks). It remains to be seen that Antonioni has no feeling for how young people are. In his Italian films, he showed us adults. In Zabriskie Points we see kids rolling up and down the sand dunes.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Bernardo Bertolucci - The Conformist

I know that many hate Bertolucci - but once you've seen The Conformist, you start a new life!

Here comes the revolution of political drama par excellence! The first great film by Bernardo Bertolucci boldly elevates the visual, the stylistic will over the content. Yet The Conformist is also a fascinating character study with one of the most enigmatic cinema characters I know! His name is Marcello and he is played by Jean-Louis Trintignant (dubbed into Italian). We get to know Marcello while he is preparing an assassination attempt on his old professor. He works undercover in the underground for the fascists - but will go through many turns in his life. He is also about to marry Guilia (Stefania Sandrelli), a rich but naive woman. She knows nothing of what Marcello is preparing politically. Basically Marcello hates women. He struggles with a sexual childhood trauma and since then lives impaired in his relationships with women. The trauma is said to have serious consequences for Marcello's political actions and he is threatening to disintegrate psychologically. And now imagine this in artfully framed photographs: The drama is underscored by a rich sunset, the night is bathed in a spooky blue Who would object that fascism here is merely a splash of colour in this work of art? For years I tried unsuccessfully to get a DVD with English subtitles. Then, finally, Raro Videos released the present version. I bought three DVDs for the shop! Additionally, you can enjoy the film for free - with English subtitles - on YouTube. Get your own picture of Bertolucci's greatest film! At that time he was at the beginning of his career and offered the Italian cinema of the late 60s something like a new beginning. Later he emphasized more and more the sexual obsessions and forgot about the political foundation. But that's another story...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Akira Kurosawa - Dreams

The cinema resembles a dream. The surrealists tried to suspend time and space and to capture the disturbing experiences of the subconscious. Akira Kurosawa does the opposite. His dreams contain biographical passages, are filmed soberly and with restraint. Akira Kurosawa's dreams seem almost naturalistic. If you emphasize the personal, it takes on a universal meaning. We meet the young Kurosawa (Mitsunori Isaki) as he attends the forbidden ceremony of a fox wedding. Enraged, his mother (Mitsuko Baisho) confronts him with the choice to ask the foxes for forgiveness or to commit hara-kiri. This may seem strange. However, what remains in our memory is how meticulously Kurosawa films the house of his childhood. And everyone has these extremely detailed memories of his childhood! Then we meet the middle-aged Kurosawa (Akira Terao) again during a funeral procession. This time he records his father's house, as if FILM takes on the function of memory. As we witness the memories of childhood as well as adulthood, we become aware of how mortal we are. Then a group of mountain climbers is fighting a snowstorm. One by one they succumb - only Kurosawa holds out and meets a snow demon. An apparition who wants to kill him. What does this desolate fable want to tell us other than the futility of human resistance against a hostile nature? In Dreams, nature is cruelly depicted. Evil demons bathing in blood. Man's descent into the deep. We meet Kurosawa again as an aspiring artist visiting a Van Gogh exhibition. He dives into the world of paintings and meets the painter himself (Martin Scorsese with a lot of make-up). Van Gogh gives a monologue about how man is threatened to be devoured by art. This is exactly what happens to Kurosawa in Dreams. He literally can't find his way out of the artwork. Isn't it the case that the young artist has to give up his fearful influences in order to find himself and not sink into the role models?

David Bowie - Absolute Beginners FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE

If you enumerate the best dance movies and musicals of the 80s, you always forget absolute beginners, although even David Bowie sings along! The original recipe: In Absolute Beginners we see the emergence of teenage culture in London, and we see it sung. It is based on the novel by Colin MacInnes, set in the years just before the explosion of pop culture in the early 60s. The plot is negligible. It's about the beginning and loss of the first teenage love - but in reality it's about the imaginative musical numbers. Here comes up-and-coming photographer Colin (Eddie O'Connell) who falls in love with fashion designer Suzette (Patsy Kensit). But Suzette takes her career more important than Colin... For this Julien Temple recreates the London part of Soho during the late 50s as a wonderful studio decoration. There's music to go with it, which sounds suspiciously like 80s! The film follows the concept of style over substance. None of the characters seem real, they are all comic characters. Fitting to the studio buildings. All the interesting British actors of the time appear very briefly: Robbie Coltrane and Steven Berkoff and so on. The best way to do this is as follows: Ignore the film as a whole. Enjoy the good individual performances, the setting, the successful parts. Ignore the bad parts. It may well be mean that Temple also deals with the racism of his time. But much more important to him is colorful neon light. In addition the music of Sade, The Style Council, Jerry Dammers, Ray Davies and Tenpole Tudor. Plus David Bowie. Julien Temple has always been a director of music films and so you can also listen to his musical as an outline of the British music scene of the 80s. I was not bored for a second!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Asghar Farhadi - A Separation (engl. subt.)

In A Seperation, each of the characters tries to live their lives within the boundaries of state and religion. It's a Persian film and we learn a lot about a system where the state represents religion. Eventually, all involved parties end up in court, which tries to settle human feelings through a catalogue of rules. We, the viewers, are involved in these negotiations as directly as I have ever experienced in hardly any film! We understand the logic of each position and even our own feelings contradict each other. Let us try to imagine a life in Iran, a modern society that has imposed the laws of the Koran on itself. A Seperation, by the way, has no problems with Islam; the film shows how theory and practice of law are incompatible. A problem in all states of the world. The law tries to judge hypothetically and there is a danger that the law will be replaced by principles. And this is how the basic constellation works: Nader and Simin (Peyman Moadi and Leila Hatami) are a happily married couple from Tehran with a sweet eleven-year-old daughter named Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). Nader's sinile father also lives with them. To give their daughter a better life, Nader and Simin want to emigrate. Nader only wants to stay for a while to care for the father. A conflict: His father would no longer know him, Simin says. But Nader contradicts that he would know his father very well. For the father, Nader has hired a nurse, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). She works in secret because her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), would never allow her to work in a household where she is alone with a man. A strict Muslim obviously. One day Nader returns home and finds his father tied to the bed. Razieh did this for a good reason, but at that moment neither Nader nor we know that. Nader fires Razieh and she accuses him of pushing her down the stairs. In the process, she has suffered a miscarriage. Nader is accused of manslaughter. I think that's all you need to know about the initial situation. The judge, by the way, is fair in this trial, and the jury will try to be as objective as possible. But nobody in the courtroom knows all the facts and the verdict must be in accordance with the Koran. Nader and Simin are of moderate faith, Razieh at least considers whether she should be allowed to change a man's underwear, even though he is old and ill. The driving force behind her is her family. I think we're dealing here less with a courtroom film that aims to find the truth. A Seperation rather tries to understand all sides and to build empathy. It focuses on lovers whose actions distance her. In the end it is difficult for us to condemn anyone at all. I had the biggest problems sharing Nader's position. Yes, I understand him. No, I think he is acting wrong because he still operates in the categories right vs. wrong - but at the expense of his family. I think in the days of Pergida and Trump, when the most stupid people assume that Iran is a nation full of crazy "camel drivers", A Seperation is a sensible medicine. We get the portrait of a society in all its nuances. The people in the film act moderately with the will to do the right thing. To decide right and wrong, this turns into a moral finding about the nature of judgment itself.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Werner Herzog - Nosferatu

Okay, I admit, as a video store owner in a business from two days ago, I subscribed to the Disney Channel. After a long Disney night, I had a deep desire for a European film. For Werner Herzog and Isabelle Adjani!

It is the colours in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu that get under my skin! It would be insufficient to describe them only as saturated. The colours are rich and heavy and deep. The earth, it looks dirty. There is little green in it, but a lot of wetness and mud. The mountains of Transylvania, jagged, grey, sharp. The interiors are filmed with shades of red, white and brown - white are mainly the faces, especially that of Dracula. A work of great beauty, but one that never tries to impress us. The journey to the castle of the count, it seems epic. Not as if a film team had only recorded some scenes of it. Werner Herzog often shows nature with an undertone of fear in his films. Eerie shadows, low-hanging clouds and farmers with little confidence also accompany Jonathan Harker on his journey. Herzog takes his time - before we meet Count Dracula, we see the frightened faces of the people when Harker asks for directions. Herzog follows the structure of Murnau's great silent movie, which in turn is based on the novel by Bram Stoker (although the names had to be changed due to copyright laws). Herzog, however, is obviously allowed to use the original names: Dracula (Klaus Kinski), the estate agent Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz), his wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani), Dr. Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast) and the manic Renfield (Roland Topor). At the beginning Renfield Harker opens his order for Dracula to buy a property in the city. Harker accepts the arduous journey because Lucy is pregnant. There is probably no other film adaptation in which the way to Transylvania takes so much space. Nobody wants to help him find Dracula's castle. On the contrary, when he mentions the name, the people stare at Harker in horror. The depiction of the count follows the example of the silent movies. Dracula doesn't look like one of these modern attractive vampires. Rather like an animal than a human. His fingernails look like skewers, his ears like those of a bat. The two front teeth are also reminiscent of blood-sucking fliers. Many Dracula details are affectionately considered by Herzog. Once the count draws our attention to the sweet sounds of the children of the night, as a wolf howls. When Harker cuts himself with a knife, Dracula can only with difficulty suppress his lust. Finally Dracula's journey to Bremen begins, where he wants to buy land and Lucy is expecting her child. Herzog can be considered one of the most unique filmmakers of all time. Unsuspicious to produce a remake. But why did he film one of the greatest German silent movies again? I think you can only explain it by his love for the original! Another reason is called Klaus Kinski. Who could you better imagine to play the title role? Beside Kinski there is Isabelle Adjani. The French beauty never plays "normal" women, she always seems to be from another planet. Her face, as white as porcelain - an irresistible catch for Dracula! And Kinski? He doesn't give the crazy one from the service, but plays a quiet and deeply sad vampire. Kinski has always shown his best performances when he could control his temper! But the greatest quality of the work is its beauty! Yet Herzog shows only a few pictures that look like they were painted. Instead, he concentrates entirely on the action. But when he plays with light and shadow and his poetic palette of colours, it takes my breath away! Nosferatu has not become a horror film. A lot of things seem very real here. If I would believe in vampires - I think they must look like Klaus Kinski!