FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Gus Van Sant - Good Will Hunting 

It must be wonderful: To be able to appreciate the true genius without ever getting there yourself. You study all your life. And then the supposedly "simple" janitor gives you answers to the scientific questions. And what if the genius doesn't recognize himself? Because that's what Good Will Hunting is about, the story of a worker child from Boston. Matt Damon plays Will, who works as a janitor but records all the books in the library thanks to his photographic memory. The professor at the college Will is working on offers the students to find a solution to a difficult problem. The next morning, the answer is on the blackboard. Who knew the solution? None of the students. But days later Professor Will is caught and recognizes his mathematical genius. He wants to help him, but shortly afterwards Will and some buddies drive through the neighborhood. Will beats up a guy and gets locked up. Will thinks his life is like this: Working hard, spending a lot of time with his friends, drinking a lot. What's wrong with that? Will doesn't realize why mathematics should be work. Maybe because it's not an effort for him. Appearance Sean McGuire (Robin Williams). A professor who has screwed up his own life, but is a good advisor. And then there's Skylar (Minnie Driver), a Harvard student who falls in love with Will. Anyway, Will's childhood friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck) has been telling him for quite some time that it would be a shame if he would still be sitting here twenty years from now. As a janitor. Say: Will should take his chance and study. Now he gets the chance. And Will? He sees things a little differently. Mental wounds from before torture him and he doesn't want to betray the buddies from the neighbourhood. But it is McGuire who lets him repeat like a credo: "It's not my fault". Who has forgotten it: Good Will Hunting was written together by the (at that time still little known) youth friends Matt Damon and Ben Afflek. Both grew up in Boston and the movie has something to do with their lives. A story that is predictable, of course - but that's not the point here. The help Will gets isn't easy for him. He has to say goodbye to old defence mechanisms. Of protective functions. A step he would never have dared to take on his own...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Krzysztof Kieslowski - A Short Film About Love (engl. subt.) 

It was at the end of the 1980s that Krzysztof Kieslowski, together with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, created Transcendence of Film and Television. Their Dekalog was divided into one-hour television episodes each, and yet it is in the language of cinema. It is difficult to put Dekalog into words. The work is based on the ten commandments, but does not work through one commandment after the next. Dekalog never reveals which one it is explicitly about. And really only one? The characters in Dekalog are deeply flawed (but not to be misinterpreted, by any stretch of the imagination, as something like the sinners in the modern world!) The characters are flawed, in that they refuse to believe in anything greater than themselves. The point, however, is not to denigrate the godless, but rather to examine human experience. All the episodes take place in the same apartment complex, which means you can meet characters from the second episode again in the fourth. This creates thematic lines, such as the vulnerability of children, and this cumulative one is reinforced by subtle references. Decalogue conveys kindness and compassion above all. This is not a film that dislikes its own characters! Kieslowski, on the other hand, really gets involved with the people in his film. Although we have nothing to do with certain situations like incest, we discover something of ourselves in each of his characters. And what we see changes! Try it and look at individual films with some distance. After a few years. You will see that they change just as your own life, your perspective changes. Dekalog changes with us as we grow older. It was indispensable for me then and it is now! A Short film About Love works like a spin-off to the series. It centres on a 19-year-old postal worker who desires the slightly older woman across the street beyond measure. It must be torture! He buys a pair of binoculars and thus spends every spare minute with her. Without exploring the depths of his passion, the woman notices this observation and reacts... A film about love in the 20th century. Presumably it makes sense to watch The Decalogue first (the sixth episode about inbreeding) and then watch this counterpart. However, A Short Film About Love not only works in correspondence to Dekalog, but also to A Short Film About Killing, which was also borrowed from the series.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Spike Lee - Get On The Bus 

Here comes a film that was obviously shot very quickly and with great passion - which explains its immediate impact! The theme of Spike Lee's Get On The Bus is racism in America. It is very close to the often unspoken problems and who knows, if Spike Lee had had less time and more budget at his disposal, Get On The Bus might have turned out much more detached? The film follows a group of 20 men on their trip to the Million Man March in 1995. Right from the opening credits we learn that 15 men produced Get On The Bus. The money was enough for a hasty production, a kind of guerrilla shoot. Spike Lee introduces us to the individual bus guests. His message: we always identify with our own group and distrust outsiders. In other words, people we perceive as different. But that is what we humans have been equipped with a brain for. To learn what is not necessarily God-given: empathy. There are very different men on the bus. The tour guide (Charles S. Dutton) acts as a kind of referee. The oldest man on board is called Jeremiah (Ossie Davis) and studied black history. Now he can explain to the whites which cultural shrines were invented by blacks. We meet a father and son who have been shackled together by court order. Now they go to March in chains - what irony! Then a gay ex-Marine boards the bus with his lover - and the pair are immediately antagonised by a homophobic _actor. Other passengers: a member of the Nation of Islam (Gabriel Casseus) and a film director who is making a documentary about the trip. The conversations are sometimes philosophical, sometimes funny or sad. The homosexual couple provokes the resentment of the homophobe, because homophobia knows neither black nor white. The Million Man March was not without problems in retrospect, as anti-Semitic messages were also recited. Spike Lee could have left that out, but he doesn't. And the member of the Nation of Islam? The man is silent behind his black glasses. Like the symbol of the religion none of the other passengers want anything to do with. We even see a cameo by Wendell Pierce, who is allowed to blithely spread self-hating clichés about black people. Finally, white police officers stop the bus in Tennessee. With a drug-sniffing dog, they search the vehicle in a blatantly racist manner. The thoughtful faces of the men on the bus reveal that each of them has felt accused by the police at some point. Simply because he is black. What is special about Get On The Bus is that the passengers face one hard truth after another. Always, Spike Lee remains fair. Whites get a chance to empathise with blacks - and vice versa (we remember the pizza baker in Do-The-Right-Thing). There are neither heroes, nor villains, but something much worse: racism. At no point does Spike Lee try to score cheap rhetorical points, instead he shows things as they are. This is a film for the heart!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jim Jarmusch - Permanent Vacation 

Later he revived the independent film in the 80s: Jim Jarmusch, America's first hipster. Jarmusch is never in a hurry. Filmic. He lingers on a scene. He doesn't follow his characters - their movements seem to determine his pictures. Jarmusch inconspicuously manipulates time itself. Who remembers his breakthrough with "Stranger than paradise"? Officially his debut, but before that he filmed Permanent Vacation, the most original of all New York hipster films. His eyes are on the fools and outsiders. He observes them objectively, even at a high level. In his early work he prefers black and white. Jarmusch loves poetic, strange conversations and situations. And he established his very own kind of "stars": Jim Jarmusch "stars" like Tom-Waits or Roberto-Benigni. His films live from nostalgia and shabby melancholy (does that even exist?). All this is embedded in comedies of visual beauty. Inspiring, isn't it? Let me say to the many filmmakers in Kreuzberg: Permanent Vacation is a student film. It follows two days in the life of Aloysious Parker or Allie (Chris Parker), a slacker without a fixed home, without a school-leaving certificate & job. He has lived in different places with very different people. They all have one thing in common: they do not belong to the daily working world. Does that sound familiar? Yes, that could be around the corner with us, even if everyone claims that Kreuzberg is changing too quickly. At any rate, Allie is now sixteen. Always on the move, always one step ahead, but there is something following him... Whoever reads more about Permanent Vacation will find out that the life of the main character and the main actor is similar. The film takes place in the backyards of Manhattan, but above all in Brooklyn - based on imaginary (or real?) experiences. Even the dialogues seem to be "real" at times. So who got in the mood for a hypnotic walk through Brooklyn 1980? To a touch of Punk & New Wave? Please. Here.

HEAD UP!!! 

People we sit at home, have to put up with RTLII advertising "We stay at home", Amazon making more money than has ever been made before, netflix beaming its cheap programming into every household - HEAD UP!!!! It won't be long now before we are at the dawn of a golden age! When we are all allowed to get out again, fall into each other's arms, dance and, of course, take real & good films from the video store.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Billy Wilder - Irma La Douce 

Billy Wilder, who began his career with us in Berlin, was a cynic, a buffoon, a philosopher and, of course, a genius all in one. There are no less than four Wilder films among the 100 best films of all time, and even in 2020 his comedies have not aged at all. They still seem as fresh as the day they were premiered! Wilder only made Marilyn Monroe a superstar, he also made sure that Jack Lemmon became one of the great Hollywood comedians. Lemmon appeared seven times in Wilder films! Next to him in Irma La Douce: Shirley MacLaine, whose career Wilder missed the decisive turning point. Samuel Wilder, his real name, was born in Austria in 1906. He felt drawn to Berlin, where the best films in the world were shot. In 1933, however, he had to leave Berlin because Wilder was Jewish. He hardly spoke any English; "I knew 100 words when I got off the boat". But he knew a lot about characters and constructions. After all, Some-Like-It-Hot offers the best ending in film history! i think his comedies are so timeless because they refuse to be sentimental. Wilder anticipated the age of irony, indeed he may be considered the inventor of it! He always maintained a cynical view of human nature (the tragedy of Billy Wilder, who lost his family in a German concentration camp, plays a part in this, I think). Irma La Douce, his two-and-a-half hour comedy set in the red-light milieu of Paris, looks like a brightly coloured musical. It is also based on a musical, though Wilder removed the songs. Lemmon plays a gendarme who falls in love with the prostitute Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine). His name is Nestor Patou and he appears as a guardian of morals, only to be left humiliated and homeless. Eventually, the ex-gendarme starts working as a pimp himself. This is how Nestor falls in love with Irma. Obsessed with the whore with a heart, he creates the fictional character he calls Lord X, who will henceforth be Irma's only suitor. And what becomes of Nestor? He mutates into an irascible creep who threatens to kill anyone who gets involved with "his" Irma. Could it be that Wilder's cynical world still provokes today?

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Mon Oncle Antoine

 This is the story of Benoit and his uncle Antoine on their icy journey on Christmas Eve. Everything takes place over a 24-hour period in the mining town of Quebec. During this time, young Benoit's (Jacques Gagnon) life will be changed forever. Everything takes place not so long ago, in the middle of the asbestos mines. Not so long ago means during the 1940s. The town is poor, people don't own cars yet, but horses. We see the mine worker Joe Paulin (Lionel Villenuve) arguing with his (English-speaking) boss. Joe hates the mine and the English! So he quits, leaves his family and heads off to the loggers where no one can give him orders. We don't see much of him until the end of the film. So the central story also begins with a funeral. The deceased suffered from a lung disease. It is a sad funeral. The flowers are plastic, the rosary is taken back by the undertaker to be used again. Afterwards they return to the general shop of Antoine (Jean Duceppe). Most of the action will take place here. Outside, you see the grim operator of the mine throwing Christmas stockings in front of his employees' houses. Most of the time they end up in the dirt. The employees are treated like serfs and anyone who studies Quebec a bit will notice that we are in the middle of a political film. Even though it never becomes explicit, we are at the height of Quebec's separatist movement. At one point, Antoine flirts with Cecile. Then we notice that Benoit is in love with Carmen. With sad Carmen, whose father collects her wages and doesn't even wish her a Merry Christmas. Then the call from Madame Paulin. Her son has died and Antoine wants to pick him up. Benoit asks his uncles to accompany him on the cold carriage ride. A ride through an oncoming snowstorm. Antoine begins to drink. Don't worry, the horses know the way! When they arrive, Madame Paulin prepares a warm meal for them, while Benoit's eyes keep wanting to go to the next room. There lies the dead boy. On the way home, the coffin gets lost. It falls off the cart. Antoine is too drunk to reload the coffin. He cannot help Benoit. Instead, it bursts out of him; he hates the country, fears corpses and his wife never gave him a child of his own. Now it is up to Benoit alone to help in this situation. He does. Inevitably and responsibly and this leads to the heartbreaking finale of the film that encompasses everything: The endearing, the joyful and the tragic.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! John Huston - The African Queen 

 There are good and very good actors! And then there are unique actors! The likes of Hepburn & Bogart in John Huston's The African Queen! After all, the team travelled all the way to the Congo to get Bogart his only Oscar! The African Queen attracted numerous parodies and practically serves as the model for all films set in a boat on a river. In 1951, this came as a surprise, as it was assumed that Hepburn & Bogart's best days as stars were long behind them. Apart from an exciting opening scene and the big ending, The African Queen consists entirely of Hepburn & Bogart sailing down an obscure river on their old boat as the First World War breaks out. Of course they fall in love - but who would want to see these middle-aged stars in a romantic comedy in 1951 when the young, angry lovers of the 50s were performing next door? Well, apparently a mass audience! And that's still true today at Christmas 2020! My favourite thing to do in our video library is to conduct mini-polls on which film you want to see again right away. The African Queen is always one of them! After all, it's an ideal family treat! The film is not even particularly demanding, but everyone, no matter whether big or small, has a great time! Things happen on the screen or monitor that make us happy and we get directly involved. The African Queen respects its audience, our sincere desire to be well and intelligently entertained. So many films are made with little imagination and no passion that The African Queen still holds up as a Feel Good Movie 70 years after its initial release. For what starts as an adventure film turns into a romantic comedy. And even one that can make basic statements about life! I think a lot of the humour is in the personalities of Hepburn and Bogart. In their interplay, not so much in the story itself. The gin-addicted captain on his riverboat, intimidated by the Bible-reading missionary. Katherine Hepburn's role is particularly difficult, because her missionary had to be both aloof and human at the same time. And what to do when both are captured and led to the gallows? What realist can still believe in the mission of the African Queen at that moment and that it could actually lead to success? 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE John Hughes - Home Alone 

When I was Kevin's age, I got up extra early on Sundays. My parents were still sleeping and finally I was: Home Alone. I was able to do everything that my parents would normally have forbidden me to do! But John Hughes Home Alone also brings up the kind of unpleasant memories. Being left home as a child, strange noises coming from the basement and fear. In the beginning, eight-year-old Kevin does all the same things that I liked to do when I was home alone. But he also takes down two burglars with a booby trap. If you wondered how a child can make such constructions out of everyday objects - I wondered too. Still, John Hughes' film seems real. That's because his genius lies in remembering exactly what it was like to be young. Hughes' best films are always both: crazy AND plausible. And Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) is real! He lives in a suburb of Chicago (all Hughes movies are set in Chicago). It's the night before the family Christmas vacation to Paris and everyone is excited, rushing around the house. Somehow they missed Kevin in all the confusion. When he wakes up the next morning, the house is empty. I think about how I would have reacted as a kid. Probably more scared than Kevin. Probably would have gone over to our neighbor Nowack's. But Kevin's neighbor, they say, is the notorious Snow Shovel Killer. Just as Kevin's parents are unable to contact him. An incredible scenario with a real Kevin in it. Macaulay Culkin manages to make us still understand the action scenes in which Kevin has to chase away two burglars. Even though I wouldn't have designed a booby trap as a child for what felt like 5000 Euros, I can still identify with Kevin. Therein lies the art of John Hughes.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! The Nightmare Before Christmas 

Are you ready for a whole new, enchanting world? Few films can offer us such a world. Nightmare Before Christmas does! Best of all, not a single landscape in it looks like it's real. Even Santa Claus would hardly be recognizable - if he didn't have his red cape and white beard. And so Christmas becomes Halloween. The film was made in stop motion. That means; all figures are made and moved step by step. Recording by recording. Every house and every tree was created in the same way. Introduction we are introduced in Halloweentown. There is Jack Skellington, who could be from a musical of the classic Hollywood time. Apart from the fact that you can see his bones. But one day Jack stumbles and finds himself in Halloweentown in the most beautiful preparations for Christmas. Where are all the ghosts and pumpkins? Instead, Santa's helpers come and they want to give us peace. Jack also wants to be a better guy. That's why he kidnaps Santa Claus to give presents to the children himself. With bizarre gifts! So Jack is a typical Tim Burton figure. An outsider who wants to be good, but with a character no one can bear. Like his fellow Beetlejuice or Batman, he has no idea of human emotions. Nightmare Before Christmas can be seen many, many times. With each run you will discover more wonderful details! You dive deeper and deeper into this artful world. The music would honor any classical musical. And then the bizarre figures and finally the whole landscape move to the beat of the songs.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jacques Demy - Lola (engl. subt.)

 Most of our customers associate the Nouvelle Vague with names such as Godard-Truffaut-Chabrol etc etc. One name that rarely comes up in discussions at the counter of our video store is that of Jacques Demy. Yet Demy also made his best-known films during the heyday of the Nouvelle Vague. Unlike the relevant representatives, however, many accuse him of being too dependent on Hollywood themes. Demy is rather mentioned as the husband of Agnes-Varda. Sometime in the 90s, however, the world of geeks changed its view of Demy and finally he was ennobled by the Criterion Mammoth Box "The Essential Jacques Demy". If you now look at his films (very successful at the time, by the way!), you'll notice how out of step they are with the rest of his Nouvelle Vague colleagues. After all, their work revolves primarily around the question of HOW films were made. They always question the stories they tell. Demy, on the other hand, is content to create a universe all his own. In the Demy universe, everything is more exaggerated, more colourful, more kitschy than in real life. A universe full of deeply felt fantasies, underpinned with lots of music. Demy loves such stylised genres as the musical or the fairy tale. He loves colours and emotions that can only be expressed by singing them. Contemporaries and some of our clients would probably dismiss this as the work of someone incapable of dealing with reality. And who would deny that Demy's favourite genre, the musical is the most surreal representative of all genres? His debut Lola will probably still correspond most closely to what we think of as Nouvelle Vague. The film is set in Demy's native Nantes and features Anouk Aimee in the title role. Lola is a nightclub singer who longs for her lovers - but is also not averse to an adventure. And then there is Roland (Marc Michel), who returns to Nantes and gets involved in a shady diamond business to get Lola out of the whole swamp around her. Even today, Lola is rarely rented. But if you watch the film anyway, is it hard to understand why this never became one of the great classics of the New Wave? Lola features vivid, realistic actors and a shaky camera that takes us through the streets of Nantes. There are numerous allusions to great classics, just as is a preference of the Nouvelle Vague! But there is one big difference: Demy has choreographed his action with such virtuosity as we only know from Hollywood musicals! Nothing here is due to chance (unlike in so many Nouvelle Vague classics). Lola is just as romantic as the love films of Godard-or-Malle - but much more pessimistic. Are his characters allowed to find happiness? Demy takes a big step towards darkness here, and his contemporaries preferred to refuse...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Jacques Rivette - Paris Is Ours (eng. subt.) 

Who was actually the very first in the Nouvelle Vague? If you believe the production notes of Rivette's Paris Is Ours, you will learn: it was Rivette, because he began shooting his debut as early as 1957. Nevertheless, Paris Is Ours was not a success at the box office, because Rivette always takes some getting used to. What other director can boast a thirteen-hour feature film? And even Rivette's more accessible works tend to be six hours long. Paris Is Ours runs only 141 minutes. The film revolves around the death of a character we never meet. His name is Juan, he's a guitarist from Franco's Spain. An exile. Now the young student Anne (Betty Schneider) is trying to find out the reasons for Juan's death. Did Juan die by his own hand or was he the victim of a political plot? Now Anne is looking for a theatre recording that Juan made before his death to present his production of Shakespeare's "Pericles" to a theatre director. Anyone who has seen many Rivette films knows that theatre rehearsals are a favourite motif with him. Anne is usually accompanied. Among them her brother and another exile, this time one from McCarthy's America. They all chain-smoke and tend towards cynicism, nihilism and paranoia. That's what Paris Is Ours is about: precisely this world view. (For us geeks, of course, it's also about the cameos by Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy). It may be that Rivette came to the cinema a little late, but he was instrumental in developing the LOOK of the Nouvelle Vague!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Francois Truffaut - Fahrenheit 451 

Ray Bradbury was said to have written his short story The Fire Man (which he was to extend to the novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1953) with a typewriter that worked with a coin slot. His main concern was not to criticize a totalitarian state, but to warn against the medium of the future: television. We are therefore in a repressive state of the future. The fire brigade no longer has the task of extinguishing fires, but of burning books. In a society in which everyone should be equal, writing or reading a novel means to rise above the others. Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) has been working for Fire Department 451 for five years and has just been offered promotion. While he is burning books, his wife Linda (Julie Christie) is at home watching state television and swallowing psychotropic drugs. Until this moment we could be in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the USA equally. One evening Linda swallowed too many tablets and collapses. But she can't remember anything the following day. In general she lives only in the here and now and doesn't even know how she got to know Guy. One day Guy is asked by his neighbour, the teacher Clarisse (Julie Christie), if he would read the books before the burning - a question that leaves him no peace anymore and Guy begins to read secretly at night... Truffaut leads us into a kind of commune in the forest, where the book people live and learn the great classics by heart. One would pass them on orally. However, the occupation seems pointless, since everyone in this commune only reads and learns by heart. Conversations about what is read do not take place. People in society live happily, but spiritlessly. They, too, hardly speak to each other. Bradbury once described how he saw a couple walking a dog in California. She wore a radio as small as a pack of cigarettes and listened to music with headphones. Neither her husband nor the dog paid her any attention. How must that have happened to a couple during a TV night? Truffaut's dystopia has a conservative aftertaste, just like Bradbury's pattern. The statement; "Television is to blame" may seem a bit brittle, but we should see this homage to Western culture in the spirit of its time: The year 1966.

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

"We are the children of Marx and Coca-Cola"; from this famous line comes the German rental title. In Godard's film all characters are fascinated by America. They are young French people who are so fascinated by America. And in return, the young American audience was fascinated by Godard. But what exactly did they like about Godard? The world of chic cafes? Paul from Masculin Feminin (of course Jean-Pierre Leaud) moves casually in it. Or the bedrooms of young beautiful girls? Probably 70% of all young people in 1966 wanted to be Jean-Pierre Leauds Paul. Or at least Jean-Pierre Leaud. Or at least live in Paris. All the rest, demos, radical political ideas, endless conversations about sex, etc., can be considered accessories. Performance Art. By participating in all these activities, Paul meets the sexy singer Madeleine (Chantal Goya) and her equally sexy roommate. Of course we are aware that these are all girls and boys, like the Fridays For Future movement today. By the way, Godard played long before later movements with natural light, real time and original locations. The plot behind it is this: Paul is all about getting into bed with beautiful girls. He claims to be a communist and "worker", paints slogans on the walls and supports the student streets barricades. Above all, he tries to smoke like Jean-Paul-Belmondo. And he never succeeds. Paul is just one of the guys who go to the cinema and try to copy their role models. That's exactly how Masculin Feminin works.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.19 Federico Fellini - Satyricon (engl. subt.) 

This is a bloody, disgusting, disgusting movie. It's a masterpiece that doesn't please everyone. It's like a ruthless gesture that shames our boring times, as everyone is just watching boring series. Free from 16th Satyricon reproduces the Greek and Roman myths in a degenerate way. The model depicts the fragment of the same name by Petronius - a hedonist who celebrated and mocked all decadence at the same time. Most importantly, Satyricon was created in 1969 at a time when unbridled sex still went unpunished. The characters in the film correspond to those in the legends. They know no "characterization" in the sense of psychology. They simply act according to their nature. Without self-observation or the possibility of development. Is there even a character that is important to us in the film? I don't think so. I didn't care about any of them. None is defined by their personality. They all simply correspond to their myth. But Fellini seems fully in his element! Never again did he film grotesquely! Everywhere dwarves and giants, fat people, hermaphrodites, transvestites, cannibals... In short, a visual excess! Satyricon plays in a world full of self-hatred and amorality. A cruel and passionate world! Like the poet Petronius, Fellini is fascinated by excess. From the abnormal. But is Satyricon really about ancient Rome? Or rather the summer of love 1968 - doomed to ruin?

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.18 Asghar Farhadi - A Seperation (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 THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.17

 I came across the puppet film Marquis because we wanted to show it in the open air cinema of Bar 25. I was surprised to find out that the Marquis had a lot of bizarreness to offer, but above all he tells a funny story with a friendly main character. It's this kind of film that you can also see on a Sunday afternoon. Paris 1788, the dreaded Libertin Marquis de Sade is imprisoned in the Bastille for fornication (and the desecration of a crucifix). Alone, he has only his oversized tail with which he has stimulating conversations about art, literature and the human instincts. It is up to his genitals to present their own designs to the Marquis. Outside, the revolution develops, inside the Marquis becomes the victim of a conspiracy... The Marquis de Sade has left his mark like hardly any other radical thinker. A noble philosopher who propagates the right of the strongest (and by this means his class): the right to unrestrained pleasure. The Marquis, a ninilist, a despiser of the human, is portrayed by Henri Xhonneux and Roland Topor as the only figure of integrity. In 1989, the 200th anniversary of the Revolution, both had the idea of turning the writings of the Marquis into a cheerful puppet show. We experience actors in animal masks who perform dialogues for a mature educated bourgeoisie. Author Topor strives to be faithful to the original, so that the dialogues of the Marquis with his tail are always below the belt line. The Marquis has the faithful face of a cocker spaniel, while his tail rises steeply. Pathological sexuality, exploitation and intrigues - the Marquis' themes seem all the more bizarre as they are presented in a warm tone. Intellectually, the puppetry of Roland Topor and Henri Xhonneux is waterproof; surprisingly, the film also looks really good. Thanks to a generous budget you can see the loving masks and costumes, which were realized as a heart project. The audience in the open-air cinema stage was really intoxicated by the costumes and masks. We listened in amazement to the dialogue between dog and tail. Not only that there was enough to laugh about: With his sincere, funny manner the tail had simply moved us! 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.16 Claire Denis - U. S. Go Home

Claire Denis has ventured into the genre of teenagers trying to lose their virginity. But with so much more tenderness and toughness than we are used to from this genre! U. S. Go Home was originally produced for television, but it really belongs on the big screen. And of course in our programme film video library! For those who find the subject a little touchy, Claire Denis has made a very warm-hearted film - not least because Denis obviously remembers her own teenage years. For a long time, the director was considered an insider tip, partly because her films were so hard to get hold of. Well, fortunately that changed over the years and today I can proudly link one of the best films of the 90s even on youtube! All boys and girls their age, approximately, is the translation of the original title from French. That was the name of a French TV series that asked various directors to reminisce about their own youth. They asked the most popular French authors of the time and got real stars like the great Élodie Bouchez! A very important requirement if you want to get to know the TV series better: Every episode must contain a party scene. Denis took this requirement very seriously. One third of the film is a party! There are 60s mod bands playing, right up to the heartbreaking cut to the end credits. This one event, the party, dominates the whole film. The opening scenes are about the personal struggles along the way. The following sequences relate to the party episodes for the siblings (Alice Houri and Grégoire Colin). P.S. For the Claire Denis geeks; they also both star together in "Nénette et Boni". Very few contain so much power and so much everyday wisdom! And hardly any film finds such a pleasant tone! Denis photographs the bodies of her protagonists, plumbing the psychological depths of their characters. Each time you discover new facets and so you catch yourself enjoying U. S. Go Home over and over again! (As do I).

 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Robert Bresson - Une Femme Douce (engl. subt.) 

Bresson's sparse and off-putting adaptation of Dostoevsky's short story Krotkaya doesn't look like a film that was released in 1969. It could just as easily have been made in the 1940s or 1950s. In short, Bresson didn't look like the others in the late 60s either. He remained true to himself. A Gentle Woman was his first colour film, but the colours seem muted and darkened. Dominique Sanda plays Elle; the wife of a pawnbroker. Unexpectedly, she takes her own life. She jumps from the balcony of her Paris flat, leaving no suicide note. Luc (Guy Frangin), the widower, shows no emotion. His face resembles that of a mask. It probably expresses what characterised the entire time of their marriage: suppressed emotions. While he sits with the maid in front of the laid-out corpse, he explains his marital relationship to her. A narrative that is almost eerily interlaced with the present through flashbacks. Sometimes Elle is dead, then alive again. "Douce" = gentle I don't find Elle. She never smiles, With a cold stare, Unreconciled. She is the victim of Luc's controlling jealousy. Elle meets Luc as one of his clients. Ironically, she pawns him a crucifix, the value of which he assesses with a glance in his usual routine. Luc makes no comment on the value of this crucifix. He removes the plastic image of Jesus Christ before weighing the golden cross. Elle's suicide is no great mystery. In a way, she pawned herself to Luc. Elle pawned her soul in order to have a marriage of material comfort. Maybe that's why she spends so much time at the zoo, watching the captive animals? Sometimes Elle tries to consume culture at Luc's side. Unsuccessfully, despite the fact that Hamlet certainly arouses her interest. (We may transfer Hamlet's advice not to exaggerate to Bresson's actors, who never convey emotion). But while Luc remains reduced entirely to the tied-up bourgeois type, we glimpse something wild, unbridled in Elle - which, of course, never gets out. Elle is in turmoil against her marriage, marriage itself and her entire existence. Anyone who now asks me, as a video store owner, which film comes closest to this? "Belle De Jour." In A Gentle Woman, however, we don't experience an erotic turmoil, but a spiritual one. Elle's spiritual crisis discharges in suicide, the transcendent moment of the film. That is why it is difficult to establish a motivation for this act, because that would be all too worldly. When Luc and the maid sit before Elle's dead body, it is a dark, unforgiving outcome. It corresponds to Elle's life.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.15 Un Homme Qui Dort (engl. subt.) 

A nice job, video store in the film art bar Fitzcarraldo! A customer asked me about Un Homme Qui Dort. A film that we don't have yet. Finally I found it on youtube in good quality. - Here comes a man with a very ordinary face. He's neither unusually handsome nor particularly ugly. You see him, you forget him. He's not particularly memorable. It's like his life when he pours himself a cup of Nescafe every day. With a drop of condensed milk. He usually wears T-shirts and has a corduroy jacket on his bedroom door. His hair is a little tousled. He stays at home, doesn't want to see anyone, doesn't want to talk or think. It's almost like the whole world is slipping away from him... existential depression, alienation, nihilism. A young student from Paris, isolated, lonely. This is the theme of Bernard Queysanne's 1974 drama, based on the novel by Georges Perec. It seems as if a diary has been transferred to the screen here. As slow and sluggish as this student's thoughts may be. Cold and distant, the work, like the world of the protagonist, forces Queysanne's perspective on us. His name is Jacques Spiesser. A beautiful, inconspicuous man. We accompany him as he strolls aimlessly through the streets of Paris. Paris in exquisite black and white images - the beauty of the film corresponds to that of the protagonist. Spiesser slowly escapes his "normal" life and he estranges from the world, falls into a hole of deep isolation. Pretentious? But no, it is a radical attempt to adapt the film's aesthetics to its subject. A depressing challenge and cinematic voyage of discovery! Un Homme Qui was considered one of the best films of all time. I would call it a forgotten masterpiece! (Unfortunately the DVD is currently out of print. There is a nice release, which also runs with German and English sound. Will be purchased immediately, when available again!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.14 John Ford - My Darling Clementine 

I think Wyatt Earp is seriously shocked: "What Kind of town is this?"; he asks as he enters Tombstone. The answer is: "A town where you get your head shot off when you're shaving. Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brother are driving cattle east (ironically, in the opposite direction to the usual western). Earp, Virgil, and Morgan leave the herd to little brother to have a drink and a shave in Tombstone. From a distance, Tombstone looks almost romantic under the sinking evening sky - but then you hear the shots in the saloon and quickly realize that this town is one big graveyard. My Darling Clementine deals with the central moral question of every western: Wyatt Earp will be the new marshal in Tombstone. Then it comes the showdown between law and anarchy. In the end, right wins. We even see a little schoolgirl symbolizing the beginning of the new civilization. But in John Ford's western, the showdown is not the main event. He observes the little things of everyday life: haircuts, poker, romance and friendship. Earp represents a modern Westerner. One who stands up as soon as a woman enters the room. By the way, the herd they leave to their little brother is found dead, which is why Earp accepts the Marshall Stern. Main suspect: Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan), who shows his teeth like a wild animal. But Earp won't shoot Clanton and his men. He wants to arrest them as marshals. A legal form of revenge. As such, Earp's natural enemy in Tombstone is Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), the local gambler. However, when Holliday dies of TB, a silent, unspoken relationship has developed between the men. Perhaps Earp senses how sad Holliday is deep inside? At one point, Holliday was a doctor. Then he hung his doctor case on the wall of his shabby little room. He started drinking. To his mistress, a whore, he promised to go to Mexico. But by that time he was coughing up blood. When Holiday Earp first meets Earp in the saloon, he challenges him to a duel. Not knowing that the guns of Earp's companions are already pointed at him. There is no duel, instead they drink together. Twice Holliday orders men out of town and each time Earp reminds him that this is the marshal's business. The greatest scene with Holliday is the one where he recites from Hamlet. Does he talk about himself when he articulates his longing for an undiscovered country? And then the beautiful scenes between Earp and Clementine (Cathy Downs), who comes from the East and is looking for a certain "Doc Holliday". Isn't it romantic how Earp shyly and awkwardly asks Clemetine to come to church with him? Aaaaach yes... When they both dance down by the river, it marks the turning point. The Old West is dead. Civilization has arrived. My father has a big book about John Ford, written by Joe Hembus. I think I've known it by heart since I was a kid. I know exactly how John Ford made his westerns. Out in the field, preferably in his beloved Monument Valley. Together with his crew he also slept outside, just as if the film production was a settler's train. Ford made dozens of silent movies until he ushered in the classic period of the American western in the late 1930s. Ford even met the real Wyatt Earp! Normally John-Wayne played the leading role in Ford's Western, but in My Darling Clementine he played Henry Fonda. Fonda was probably better able to embody the new West, while John-Wayne was better able to embody the old West in his person. For all those who don't like Westerns: My Darling Clementine is the warmest, the kindest, the sweetest Western of all! It's not about gunfighting or Wyatt Earp. It's about Clementine. One time, she's standing next to Earp at the barber shop. Clementine says she likes the smell of desert flowers. "That's me," says Earp. "Barber." 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT13 Blake Edwards - 10 

The longing in its absolute final stage. This is what Blake Edwards 10 is about. 10 is about the desire of a man who is no longer young for a woman he cannot have. This woman is so desirable that she gets a smooth 11 on a scale of 1-10. Is it helpful that the man himself is small, already 42 years old and full of unsolved problems? Wait; George Webber (Dudley Moore) actually has everything a man could wish for: He is a successful composer, he drives a Rolls, lives in a beautiful house in the mountains. And his wife is Julie Andrews (= Samantha Taylor). He even has cable TV! But when George drives with his Rolls Royce to Santa Monica... At the red light in the car next door, he sees a supernaturally beautiful woman who turns to him for a moment. But only very briefly. The woman is wearing a wedding dress. George is helplessly in love. He follows her into the church for the wedding ceremony, is stung in the nose by a bee. Then he visits her father, a famous dentist. George gets six fillings. He numbs himself with painkillers and brandy, finds himself aboard an airplane to Mexico. In the same department as his dream woman. There she spends her honeymoon with a guy who looks like Barbie's friend Ken. Summarized: George Webber has to endure inhuman physical torments. The humor of 10 works by triggering longings that we all know well. I would say; released for men over 35. The central question: Can George ever get this girl? 10 is much more than just a comedy. It's a study of the craziness of human life. The girl who gets the eleven points is embodied by Bo Derek. We remember 10 founded her ten minutes of fame in Hollywood, especially through an accidental sex scene to Ravel's Bolero. 10 was a turning point for Blake Edwards. It was the first wistful sex comedy for adults after the exuberant 60s.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE FINNISH INDEPENDENCE DAY MIka Kaurismäki - L.A. Without A Map 

Mika Kaurismäki, the Finn in exile. Obviously he produces his films where it is sunny and no longer in the far north. But L.A. Without A Map has also become a bit Finnish. Richard (David Tennant) is a funeral director (but above all a writer!) and has lived his whole life in the same place in Scotland. One day he meets her, Barbara (Vinessa Shaw), an actress from L.A.. She is the love of his life. After a day together, he travels to America after her. But Barbara reacts as any woman would if the Scottish funeral director suddenly appeared in her cafe. Of course, Barbara is a waitress for now. The nasty producer Patterson (Cameron Bancroft) is supposed to judge her acting career. Mika Kaurismäki's romantic comedy, however, is particularly appealing because of the details and they begin with the cast: we see Vincent Gallo as Richard's best friend, the Leningrad cowboys as energetic support, Julie Delpy as Barbara's girlfriend, Johnny Depp, Joe Dallesandro, Monte Hellman, Jerzy Skolimowski or Amanda Plummer. Meanwhile Richard mutates into an "American" until he learns that he just has to be Richard (nobody less than Johnny Depp teaches him that)! Hollywood from the perspective of a European. Mika Kurismäki collects clichés to decorate his love story. The fact that Barbara is a rather uncharming bitch hardly matters any more... In the end not everything was right in Kaurismäki's film and yet I liked him. I even watched it again!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.12 Vittorio de Sica - Bicycle Thieves (engl. subt.) 

Vittorio de Sica's Bicyle Thieves is such a venerable masterpiece, praised in every encyclopaedia, that I was truly amazed at how vivid and fresh the film still is today! Sure, in 1949 the film was awarded an Oscar and since then, in pure routine, it has been counted among the greatest films of all time. But actually it is a simple film about a man who is looking for work. The director Vittorio de Sica was firmly convinced of one fact: That each of us can really play ONE role - himself! Bicycle Thieves was written by Cesare Zavattini, who is considered the father of Italian Neorealism. He wrote a famous essay about how he and de Sica searched for characters in real life. It was the time after the Second World War and Italy was paralyzed by poverty. The story is quickly told. Lamberto Maggiorani, a non-actor, embodies Ricci, a man who every morning makes the hopeless attempt to find work. But one day he succeeds: a job is offered to a man who owns a bicycle. And Ricci owns a bike! But he had to pawn it. Only with great effort Ricci and his wife manage to cash in the bicycle and Ricci is able to work as a postman. One day he carelessly parks his bicycle without plugging it in. We expect it to be stolen - but the bike is still in its place when Ricci returns. But then it is actually stolen - no doubt by another man looking for a job. Ricci, together with his little son Bruno (Enzo Staiola), tries to catch the thief. But HOW in the winding streets of Rome? And of course the police are no help. Ricci finally gives up and teaches his son that life means nothing but suffering. You live and you suffer. To hell with life! - and that's why Ricci and his son are eating a pizza. To be able to afford it, you'd have to earn a million lira a month, Ricci told Bruno. But a moment later, Ricci discovers the bicycle thief and follows him to a brothel. An ugly crowd is waiting there. A policeman approaches, but he can't help, because there are no witnesses except Ricci himself. What should Ricci do? Finally he himself is tempted to steal a bike in this cycle of poverty and theft. Bicycle Thieves is told so directly that it resembles more a parable than a drama. Sometimes it might be a little bit disappointing that Ricci's character basically only seems to be really alive in the pizzeria scene. But this might be because of the character of the parable. Nevertheless, Ricci is a timeless character. A man who does everything to protect his family. Who could not identify with him? And seriously; who doesn't have to cry after Bicycle Thieves - what does this man feel anyway? Neorealism as a term can mean a lot. But above all I understand it to mean films from everyday social life, born in the poverty after the war. In Bicycle Thieves, de Sica introduces the neo-realist world in a very pointed way, at the moment when Ricci is looking for his bicycle in front of a big "Rita Hayworth" poster. Here the neo-realist world, there Hollywood. The key message is that in a better society, prosperity would be more fairly distributed.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.11! Vittorio De Sica - Shoeshine (engl. subt.) 

What to do? Like every evening at home, you sit in front of the TV with lots of sweets. The task: Find a stream on amazon. But: No result. All just cheap junk. The night is over until you find something in this programme, which would have made every village's video store proud in 1982. And netflix? Their own feature films still seem so strangely unfinished. Produced by copy & paste, but without the great art of staging, for which one would actually have spent money at the box office. And series? No, today it should simply be a good film. So here is our alternative: A great film that will touch you, move you to tears and even more, change your whole life a little bit.

Vittorio de Sica's films deal with the tragedy of everyday life. About pain - but also about the beauty of life! If you know de Sica as an actor, you will be surprised how this attractive man, who loves to be the cavalier in sentimental love comedies, could become one of the greatest tragic filmmakers ever? One thing, however, you will notice when you see de Sica's neo-realist films twice: just like his light comedies, his social dramas are great audience films! Basically, de Sica adopted a lot of what he had learned as an actor in his directing work. There is this famous statement of de Sica that EVERYONE is able to play at least one role: Yourself. That's why de Sica instructed amateur actors. Later he was to shoot with real stars, but de Sica's early films with non-actors touch me most. His extraordinary films of the 1940s and early 1950s - the phase they called neorealism. I translate Neorealism primarily as showing social injustice. Of course there are more principles, but that would become "scientific" at this point... The recourse to amateur actors is surely born out of necessity. In Italy after the war there was no money for such social dramas, just like today. But it also results from a simple equation: If there are only about 50 film stars who are cast again and again - how could they be able to portray the lives of so many? When we once screened de Sica in our small cinema, the audience was really excited. Completely thrilled! Sure, because de Sica doesn't present the misery of this world in a documentary way, but rather in the form of a poetic poem. Shoeshine is at heart - like de Sica's other neo-realist films - a masterpiece about how communication fails. Everything begins with an illusion. Then two boys, two friends, are placed in different cells in prison. They are separated. In this way each loses trust in the other. The language fails, they no longer understand each other. Man achieves nothing with words! Everyone stands alone and isolated from the others in the world. Does this remind you of our present Corona time today? It reminds me a lot! Everyone, caught in his loneliness, asks for donations and loans or support. But no help comes. Winning or persuading others fails. No charity, no sympathy. Characters like the boys in Shoeshine exist all around us. But they are ignored by us. They are invisible. The lack of what would be a small amount of money for us drives them to despair. Through the art of de Sica, such people are made visible for the duration of a film! And what happens to de Sica's heroes? They are often forced to make moral compromises. That means they become exactly what they condemn. In Shoeshine they develop into murderers and traitors. They simply suffer too much to become heroes or even saints. P.S. The sadness in Shoeshine is not inevitable. It is a consequence of the social structure.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.10 Stanley Donen - Charade 

Here the last sparks of classic Hollywood glow! Shortly before the audience should finally turn away from stars like Cary Grant, we experience a perfect old-school thriller here. A perfect Hitch_cock movie Hitch_cock never made! In 1963, just a few weeks after the Kennedy assassination, Charade was released in cinemas. During the dark days of America. On the screen: Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn - perhaps the two most attractive stars ever to perform together? In addition a score by Henry Mancini and in the background the glamour of Paris. If the world outside had gone crazy, Hollywood remained true to itself in Charade! Venerable Pauline Kael wrote at the time: "I couldn't persuade friends to go to see Charade, which although no more than a charming confectionery trifle was, I think, probably the best American film of last year." For her, Charade had to be everything she loved and hated about Hollywood: Charade is wonderfully frivolous and vulgar at the same time! When the sexual revolution began, Hollywood was on its last legs back in 1963. Several deaths were caused by television or the new wave in Europe. Last but not least, the guards of the old stars retired. Grant and Hepburn took sooo long to finally play together - and never did it again (once you read it, a remake of "Notorious" was planned, which was never realized). Grant, with his legendary irony, seems to be himself here - although we sometimes have the feeling that he is standing beside himself and delivering a self-persiflage). Besides Hepburn with her own seriousness - paired with her gift as a comedian! how often does seriousness turn to silliness here? Director Stanley Donen actually delivered a suspense screwball comedy. Humour and violence alternate. Sometimes Charade seems as light as Hitch_cock in his best days, then again very gloomy. Charade offers a plot with numerous side plots and a Cary Grant that constantly changes its identity. Four times in total! Sometimes the killer Grant (who remembers early Hitch_cock roles) looks over the charmer's shoulder. But what is the basis of truth? Love! Especially in a world full of thieves and scammers! A world you can't trust! Both stars, Grant and Hepburn, live off their naturalness. Charade asks us: How can we even know if someone is lying to us? Can we trust Grant's character? Hepburn, on the other hand, always played the child with the funny face that turns into a beautiful woman, only the right light falls on her. Throughout her career she was given the right to "remake" her role from "Sabrina". But something is new in Charade, because for the first time you see her ageing and the big age discrepancy between Hepburn and her older co-star doesn't seem so significant anymore. Cary Grant retired from the screen in 1966, Audrey Hepburn played successfully throughout the 60s. In all their roles, one may ask oneself whether the world was not a better one with the artificial studio films brand "classic Hollywood"? This celluloid world, that's Charade! 113 minutes of adventure and true love! Charade is obsessed with beauty. Grant and Hepburn, two Europeans in Paris, make an essential Hollywood movie! While we see him, we remember with some sadness the greatness of old Hollywood, the faded miracle of American beauty...