Berlin Movies - Classics incl. FREE STREAMS
The longing for a Berlin of the 20s seems unbroken even in 2021. We look back on the cesspool of Berlin and a rampant nightlife full of cabaret and cabaret. Really? Probably only films can show us how it really was.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Henri-Georges Clouzot - Picasso
It was my father who told me this story about Picasso. The painter worked in a small mountain hut, quite remote, unlocked. This attracted the interest of a journalist who asked the artist how he could just leave all those paintings unsecured in the hut. "Are worthless"; Picasso is said to have replied. "Unsigned." For his part, the manic artist Clouzot now shows for the very first time how a painting by Picasso is created. Well noticed; he does not describe, he SHOWS! That's why this documentary can be considered unique! And isn't it an extremely intimate process that Clouzot now lets his friend Picasso demonstrate to the public? The idea: Picasso paints on transparent canvas, Clouzot films. Because the canvas is transparent, we can watch Picasso paint. Picasso uses special pencils for this, switching from realistic to surrealistic representation. Interspersed are conversations between the two friends Picasso and Clouzot. Note that we do not witness Picasso drawing one of his masterpieces, but we witness the process of his art. And the works are not yet signed.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Robert Bresson - Four Night A Dreamer
Sooner or later, true geeks discover Robert Bresson, although it's guaranteed not to be on netflix. Many of his films are generally not easy to find, so I was especially pleased to have discovered Four Night A Dreamer in good quality! Bresson worked on his first film, after all, in 1933 - his last in 1983. He was never commercially successful, but like no other master of cinema, Bresson is appreciated worldwide. As French filmmakers learned to copy box-office hits during the 1950s, Bresson developed his rigorous, personal style. No one films like him! His films explore nothing less than the mystery of human life. Why do we endure it all? What is our reward? What is the good and how can we achieve it? He is always about characters seeking personal redemption. Many of them are outside of society. We remember the country priest and the pickpocket. Even the donkey. Bresson loves Dostoevsky, and just like Dostoevsky, he prefers characters who stand outside common rules. Four Night A Dreamer is also a Dostoyevsky adaptation. Bresson's working method is famous: he doesn't look for reality, but for transcendence. His actors must repeat the same scenes over and over and over and over and over again. Until total exhaustion. Until any spontaneity becomes impossible and one gets to the essence. He is not an actor-director. Actors are material. Like the light or props. Once you come to terms with his method, you can penetrate Bresson's work. You will never forget it! His films work like acquired taste. Some find them beautiful, but many a hip client of mine was deeply bored. Bresson's work is austere. And spartan. my colleague sulgi liked to call it that. Extremely austere fare. The dreamer in Bresson's film is named Jacques. he works as a painter. He always paints in solid colors. He uses the light to the maximum. All a big cliché? But Jacques doesn't believe the great oaths of love. I think he feels shame. Marthe, on the other hand, is a great romantic and maybe it takes a dreamer to recognize another dreamer?
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Wir sind jung, wir sind stark
August 25, 1992 in Rostock, Lichtenhagen. About 3,000 neo-Nazis are setting fire to an asylum-seekers' home in which around 150 Vietnamese still live. Also a camera team from ZDF and a few city employees. The police withdraw their line of defence, the Nazis can act unhindered. Director Burhan Qurbani occupied himself with the subject for five years before laying this fictional story about the events of Rostock, Lichtenhagen. He approaches his subject with sovereignty and artistry and does not feed us with simple truths and supposed certainties. Yoshi Heimrath's camera initially shows the world in black and white, almost as before the apocalypse. A poetic nightmare. We see the dreariness of the prefabricated buildings, garbage, the grimaces of the Nazis. The moment the violence escalates, the film becomes colourful. In the center of attention are the psychologically striking Robbie (Joel Basman) and the sensitive Stefan (Jonas Nay). Then there is the pretty Jennie (Saskia Rosendahl), who stands between the two. Lien (Trang Le Hong) lives in the home, works and tries to organize a life in Germany. She'll regret it. The people of the GDR, the losers of history, were driven to lose nothing. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, dream of work and a better life. Devid Striesow plays Stefan's father, an agonizingly despondent local politician. Jonas Nay as Stefan is the key figure. He throws the first Molotov cocktail, torn between ecstasy and conscience. He doesn't believe in anything, which makes him vulnerable. Sometimes he seems like he wants to wipe himself out. I had to think of Gottfried Benn and his inner emigration during the Nazi period. "The crown of creation, the pig, man."
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Vier Minuten
Four Minutes is uncompromising film about the battle of wills. Carried out in a women's prison between an elderly piano teacher and her talented but aggressive student. Both women guard torturous secrets. Jenny Von Loeben (Hannah Herzsprung) was once considered a child prodigy, but was convicted of murder. As dynamic as Jenny reacts to everything, so uptight is her teacher Traude Krüger (Monica Bleibtreu), who dedicated her entire life solely to beauty. The plot is driven by a competition that could rehabilitate Jenny, the murderer, to some extent (...)
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Searching For Sugarman
Is it true that some stories only exist because we need them so badly? Searching for Sugar Man is about a talented Detroit singer/songwriter whose face was covered by his long mane and dark sunglasses. He sang in bars, turning his back on the audience. His name was Sixto Rodriguez. Although he had no fan base behind him, he was offered a record deal on two albums - simply because he was so good! The two records Cold Fact and Coming From Reality sold so badly that the contract was cancelled again. One heard nothing more about Rodriguez. But his records traveled around the world, all the way to Cape Town. Bootlegs of the two works were passed from hand to hand there and his songs served the anti-apartheid movement to encourage people. Stephen Segerman, who ran an indie record store, released them in South Africa and Rodriguez sold as good as Elvis and the Beatles! Swedish documentary Malik Bendjelloul's documentary now jumps back and forth between Detroit and Cape Town. Famous South African singers like Rian Malan call Rodriguez a big influence. And Rodriguez himself? Nothing! There were rumours that he had shot himself. A man of whom you only knew his music, not even his face! Segerman went in search of the musician, so much so that friends already called him Sugar Man. There were no entries about Rodriguez on the internet, so Segerman posted a webpage about his search. In the late 90s he got an answer, not from Rodriguez, but from someone who probably knew something... Searching for Sugar Man is the document of a sometimes frustrating search. The clues Segerman obtained gave the impression that Rodriguez was a saint, a soul of man, whose music expresses this inner beauty. Segerman's search will end as inspiring as if a miracle had actually happened... If you haven't seen the film yet, do it today on Sunday! You deserve, just like me, to experience such a wonderful story!
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu
Is this really a story that would only be possible in Romania? An old, not very fragrant alcoholic, calls an ambulance. They ask so many questions that the patient is confused. He asks the neighbor for help. The ambulance has to come again... The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu accompanies this dying man for one night. Slowly he will slip out of the world - and nobody in the world will notice it. The film is by no means heartless, but does not make any effort to artificially heighten this drama. The fact is, a person dies and no one cares. Cristi Puiu's film sees everything, but never intervenes. Mr. Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) has long lived unnoticed in his Bucharest apartment. He has a sister in the surrounding area and a child in Canada. There is hardly any contact between the two. That's why he lies alone in the ambulance during this long night. We never get bored, we are too deeply involved. In the hospital Mr. Lazarescu is asked to fill in formulations and answer questions that he obviously does not understand. He is told that there is a problem with his liver and brain, but no one can solve it. Dryly one notices that everything else "Disney Channel" would be nonsense! But the movie doesn't really focus on the dying Mr. Lazarescu, who is finally lying there speechless. The focus is on a kind of hospital warden named Miora. Not a heroine, more like a passive person. However, she almost sarcastically notices how the patient is denied medical help. The doctor explains that without the patient's signature, he could go straight to prison. Finally Miora (Luminita Gheorghiu) finds a doctor who takes care of the patient - in the fourth hospital! The dying man is still wearing his dirty cap and only now is he being stripped and professionally washed... Cristi Puiu's work has always been seen as Krik in the Romanian health system. One customer of our video store even said that the real circumstances in Romania were much worse! I think the film is directed against the conditions in hospitals worldwide, where the staff is overworked and more problems than solutions exist. Mr. Lazarescu seems to be a damned man of this system no matter what he did before. It simply seems to be another detail in a chain of overlong night shifts and impossible situations. And Miora? Basically, she is constantly insulted by younger employees, all of whom do not have their experience. She could freak out, but she's been doing the job too long. And Lazarescu? When I think of him, it drives me crazy. Doesn't he deserve the full attention of the nursing staff? Here, however, it seems as if he is accepted as an industrial accident that the doctors can then relax and have a cup of coffee. Life goes on for them.
Film List Berliner Schule inc. FREE STREAMS
The French found the term "Nouvelle Vague Allemande", the Germans say "Berliner Schule". But school is the wrong term for a loose group of directors who shoot mainly in Berlin and whose films are minimalist and oriented to everyday life. More and more often, however, one hears that these films of the Berlin School seem to be unworldly and hostile to the spectators. In 2001 the impossible happened, Christian Petzold's Arthaus Action film Die innere Sicherheit was awarded the German Film Prize. Petzold's fame was colored by Angela Schanelec (My Slow Life) and Thomas Arslan (The Beautiful Day). This was not the German mainstream with its bestselling films, but the revival of great role models such as Robert Bresson, Eric Rohmer or Kiarostami. When Christoph Hochhäusler's Milchwald ran at the Berlinale, he was given the label "Berlin School". Filmmakers grouped around the film magazine Revolver, Christoph Hochhäusler, Benjamin Heisenberg, Valeska Griesebach, Ulrich Köhler and Jessica Hausner, were now Berlin School. Formulating one's own subjectivity means alienating figures or places. The almost frozen-looking inner worlds of Milchwald, the apathetically observing sleeper of Heisenberg, the passengers of Petzold in ghosts. Just a moment ago friends or parents, disappeared in the next moment just like ghosts...
The Cell comes across as a bizarre mix of science fiction and serial killer thriller, a clever mind game and pop psychology. We take a trip into the mind of a killer so abysmally perverse that other well-known serial killers could go to school on him. Best of all, for all its visual fireworks, The Cell also always remains a story in which we care about the individual characters. A lot is at stake and we are completely involved! Some customers of our video store don't like The Cell, consider it too pretentious. But I think it's one of the best films of its time! Jennifer Lopez plays Catherine Deane, a social worker. She is a strong woman who builds bonds with particularly problematic patients. Now she is chosen for a technical experiment in which her mind must connect with a young boy. The boy is in a coma. Will she be able to free him? Right at the beginning she rides through a desert in a white robe, she almost manages to make contact, but then... The Cell uses the method of mind sharing. The mind trips take place in a laboratory, so that scientists observe the test subjects. They, in turn, hang in the air using virtual reality equipment. The thriller plot runs in parallel when the police find a prepared corpse. The victim of a serial killer, recognizable by the fact that he makes up the corpses like dolls. It is found out that he kills in a kind of ritual for hours. But how to determine the identity of the last victim before the ritual will be completed? But only by sneaking into the killer's subconscious. For that, the FBI turns to Catherine Deane.... Three types of stories are intertwined. A science fiction film about virtual reality, because once the mind thinks something is real, it can become real and deadly. On this level, The Cell functions as a visionary fantasy in the spirit of the surrealist classics of the 1920s. Spaces of thought are created. Last, The Cell is also a suspenseful psychological thriller in which a victim fights for his life while the FBI puzzles together clues. This mix may put some off, but throughout The Cell serves our imaginations as well as our emotions. In a Hollywood world of remakes and despondent Netflix films, The Cell comes across as an ambitious venture! Directed by debutant Tarsem Singh, it's all about risk. Namely, the risk of making a complete fool of himself! He proves that ancient visual language and modern technology make a whole and indeed a creative thrust, as we would not even think possible!
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Asghar Farhadi - The Salesman
The Persian director Asghar Farhadi should actually become the victim of his great success! Oscar and Golden Globe awarded, awarded in Cannes... The expectations for his new film The Salesman are immense! My heart's back to a marriage in distress. Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) have to leave their old apartment building in Tehran. They are offered an apartment for rent, the previous occupant left his furniture and even his clothes. One night Rana is attacked in the shower at night. Despite a bad head injury, Rana knows she was raped. At least there are strong signs of this thesis. Rana is ashamed not to tell her husband. Rana insists she never saw her attacker... Was it the previous tenant? Don't they? Did Rana really not see him? Or is it? What is clear is that nobody seems to tell the whole story. But what can Rana gain by not telling the truth? Again and again the action is interrupted by scenes of Arthur_Miller's "Death Of A Salesman". Basically, Miller's classic has no connection to the framework plot. It is inserted as a play in which the couple also act as actors. I think it's only on stage that the script allows them to say things to themselves that they could never confide in in private.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Vodka Lemon
Somewhere in the mountains, in post-Soviet Armenia, we get to know a small village. A village whose inhabitants know how to get by despite abject poverty. Here lives Hamo (Romen Avinian), a former soldier who travels every day to his dead wife's grave to tell her about the sons' latest embarrassments. There he meets the beautiful Nina (Lala Sarkissian), who also visits the grave of her deceased and works at a lemon stand. Over a long period of time, the two grow closer - punctuated by interludes of poverty. Hamo haggles over furniture, a woman prostitutes herself, and everyone ponders whether things weren't better under communism back then. The beauty is that the people in the film are depressed, the film itself not at all! At one point, Hamo sells one of his pieces of furniture to a couple. Unable to wear it, they set off a chain of hilarious mishaps that remind us of Polanski's Two-Men-And-A-Wardrobe. In the end, Nina and Hamo are also so confused by a simple question that they finally find their way out of their mundane rut. Life is beautiful, Vodka Lemon tells us, celebrating the perseverance of these people. And that's exactly what the beautiful images reflect, when the snow gently trickles down as if in love. A happy ending just like in a fairy tale (only much more whimsical!). Just across the street from our video store is a Kurdish film distributor and I believe it was he who told me a bit more about the production. How director Hiner Saleem actually never wanted to return to the village where he already shot his debut film. Everything there was far too complicated, he said, and after all, he would come from just such a village. Things that could be done in a few minutes take days. But he obviously willed himself to shoot a second film there about the proud and poor villagers, the late happiness of love and the absurd charm of the region.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Jane Campion - An Angel At My Table
An Angel At My Table tells the story of a curly-haired redhead who grows up to be one of New Zealand's best writers. Until then, however, she must endure ordeals that would probably have sent most people to the insane asylum. The irony of fate is that she was already in a mental institution, falsely diagnosed as schizophrenic. They subjected her to over 200 electroshock treatments, even though this girl is just a bit shy and depressed. Her name is Janet Frame, she published novels, poetry and plays. She wrote her first two works in the psychiatric hospital, and presumably that's how she survived. Writing as a place to order the chaos around her. This is what Jane Campion talks about, and it's no spoiler to state that An Angel At My Table is riveting from beginning to end. If you don't like gussied-up biopics, you're in for a treat! Campion's film simply traces a life as it was lived. It follows the path of Janet, who was driven by society to a place that nearly killed her. We follow that from Janet's childhood into her 30s and that's why she's portrayed by three actresses, Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson. Everything seems real, as things turn for the worse, but Janet's strong nature fights against it and also prevails. New Zealand during the 30s appears as a green paradise. We meet Janet as a strange child, with bad teeth and her shock of unruly red hair. She looks strange, yet there is something special about her! For Janet has the imagination of a poet, and when she writes an essay for elementary school, she shows absolute confidence in her choice of words - and no authority can make her change a single word. Slowly Janet grows up, never going out and having no social life. At school she associates with the non-conformists and artists, in short, the outsiders. She looks enviously at the popular girls. They live in a distant world that she hopes to understand. Janet is also a loner in college. Shy and withdrawn, she confides everything to a diary. In her later job as a teacher, she never drinks tea with her colleagues. Once, when the school inspector appears, she freezes, unable to stammer a word. A panic attack - and one diagnosis leads to another. She is admitted to a mental hospital and experiences eight years of unspeakable horror. They experiment with shock treatments, threaten her with a lobotomy. But whatever happens there, nothing can rob her of her cheerful mind! It is her books that save her from everything terrible. They intimidate Janet's father into extending her stay - but he swears she'll never have to return there! Finally, in her 30s, Janet begins to live. She receives a scholarship, joins a group of bohemian writers and painters in Spain. And she even loses her virginity. In short, it is a joy to witness her leave her dungeon of loneliness! Unlike Janet's life, Jane Campion's film requires no struggle to enjoy it to the end. Everything is told with great clarity and simplicity. Visually, An Angel At My Table is beautiful; the actresses are strong. This allows Campion to tell her story quietly, with an eye for detail, and very few films have been able to draw me into the action so much!
Film List Postmodern 80's Movies
You can see something like the blocked power in Hollywood movies since the 80s. The pathological, hysterical and mysterious are the motivations of modern cinema heroes. On the one hand the stories and types in the film seem to be quite classic again, on the other hand manipulation of time, coincidences and reversals stand in the foreground, so that the films achieve a completely different effect again. Whereas classical cinema had dealt with life and death, it is now a matter of survival, afterlife or parallel life. The preoccupation with memory, memory or trauma begins in the cinema of the 80s and seems to be something like coming to terms with the past. Not certain of our origins, experiencing the future as a return of the ever-same; they are completely new life stories in the cloak of the old genre. A fallacy would therefore be to believe that the 80s returned to the pure genre: Blade runner, for example, functions as a science fiction film with the story of a film noir - a furious genre mix. While the cinema of the 60s and 70s expressed great skepticism about the genre, the 80s even revived grubby pigeonholes such as Exploitation films and TV formats. Everything is enriched with the art world of comics, pop songs and pulp literature - and of course their own film history. Postmodern cinema itself is referential and constantly on the lookout for new quotations: The invention of the old in the new.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Ernst Lubitsch - Cluny Brown
"Lubitsch Touch" is the name given to the thrill everyone gets to enjoy when they laugh along at a raunchy joke. Lubitsch loved those clever evasive maneuvers, the pans before it becomes obvious. He relished the arc of ambiguity that worked like a secret agreement between him and us, the audience. And lo and behold; this very agreement allowed the Berlin director from Spandau to never run afoul of the censors! Of course, the "2Lubitsch Touch" presupposes a certain knowledge of sex, romance, and the nuanced ways of behaving "adult. In Lubitsch's case, these are all fads to which he is sympathetic. In his film, he responds as sensitively as he does ironically. I think irony and a slight tendency toward cynicism made the Lubitsch comedies so timeless. Try it sometime, watch, say, Pretty Woman followed by Cluny Brown. You'll be amazed at which film sounds much more contemporary! In all his works, Lubitsch observes the all-too-human. How we react to it depends very much on our temperament. How do we ourselves relate to the pleasures of sexual transgression? What relation do we still have to true European sophistication, which is casually celebrated here? Lubitsch's comedies usually feature: A) Clueless aristocrats B) Snooty spitfires. They surround Lubitsch's heroes and their sly distrust of social conventions. The moment they break free from ridiculous social constraints, Lubitsch applauds. But he also recognizes the difficulty of this, to regulate his own life and love so freely. What solution does he offer? To join in and yet remove oneself whenever possible. Cluny Brown is Lubitsch's last film. The year is 1938, and anti-Nazi fugitive Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer) arrives in London. A wily man, he immediately makes himself at home and wins the affections of a pretty orphan girl (Jennifer Jones). Her name is Cluny Bown and the paths of Belinski and Brown will cross many times. There are, after all, economic barriers between them, and Lubitsch's comedy knows this like no other film of the time (but of course in Lubitsch's universe such barriers can be overcome, even if only very rarely). And the happiness? I think for Lubitsch it must be the pleasure of laughing at such absurdities of the world.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Agnes Varda - Vagabond (engl. subt.)
Very slowly the camera moves across the bare fields of a French winter landscape. At the top of the hill there are two barren trees, strictly outlined. Nowhere does anything like happiness or joy exist here. At the bottom of a ditch, the lifeless body of a woman is discovered. A field worker lets out a cry. Then the medics approach, trying to determine the identity of the dead woman. What is her name and how did she end up there in the ditch? A voice - it is that of Agnes Varda - tells us how much she was taken by the fate of the stranger during the last months. Now she is looking for witnesses. People who perhaps knew the young woman. But Vagabond is the story of a woman who could not have been known at all. Surely there are some people who spoke to her. Maybe even some who sheltered her, gave her something to eat. Or shared a bed with her. But knew her? No one knew the young woman. This is exactly what Vagabond investigates, entirely in the style of a documentary via flashbacks. But in truth, it's all fiction. And like any good story, it hints at more than it actually knows. From scraps of information we learn that she originally comes from a middle-class family. Once upon a time she trained as a secretary, worked in an office. She hated it. Then she went out on the street, carrying everything she owns in a backpack. She begged and did work for some money. When you look into her broad, friendly face, you see a normal woman. Her calm smile seems peaceful. But people talk about the fact that she smells. Sometimes she prefers rolling her own cigarettes to a meal. And sometimes she throws a few coins into the jukebox instead of buying bread. We quickly realize how passive she must be. At one point, a goat herder offers her a trailer, but she doesn't take the chance to help him work in return. Instead, she remains in the trailer, staring into space. Does she detach herself from any aspiration? But who knows how to interpret all the signals. Sometimes she seems content, opens her tent, gazes into the morning sun. She gets drunk with a countess and talks with a professor. But is she interested in people at all? It is painful, as we notice how the girl's defenses are slowly weakening. Deeper and deeper she sinks. From a vagabond she develops into an outcast. Disoriented, she seems like a wild animal. Confused, frightened and amazed at how far she could fall. She cries. It is heartbreaking, because she is still a girl! A girl first. Defenseless, she is. What a movie! As only the very greatest films do, it tells us - most definitely - this story about this very person. Because this girl is her own story and should not symbolize anything. Agnes Varda does not want to present us with a parable. And finally we realize that this story of the vagabond could be our own: How many people have really known us?
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Fatih Akin - Solino
"We have become enemies"; such is the fate of the Parondi family in Visconti's "Rocco And His Brothers". The family, cornerstone of southern Italian tradition breaks up after they set off north to seek their fortune. In Fatih Akin's Solino, the Amato family heads to Duisburg, Germany's gray mining region. Sometime in the early 60s as what was then called "guest workers." They leave their beloved homeland of Solino in search of work. By train, father Romano (Gigi Savoia), Rosa (Antonella Attili) and their two young sons begin the journey. In the dreary Ruhr region, Romano soon decides to stop slaving underground and instead open an Italian restaurant bearing the name of their home: Solino. The restaurant flourishes while both sons are left to fend for themselves. Gigi (Barnaby Metschurat) quickly learns German, becomes fascinated by modern photography and eventually falls for cinema. Cut. The year is 1974, and Romano demands that his adult sons follow him into the restaurant business. But the sons love parties and girls, especially blonde Johanna (Patrycia Ziolkowska), with whom they share a shabby apartment - but not yet the bed. Gigi starts his film career, a short film of his is shown at a local film festival, and yet problems force the family to return to Solino. The last part takes place in the 80s. It is the part where the Amato family slowly breaks up.... Solino is an epic of modern Italian history and even if the word sounds a bit overused, "operetta-like" fits Akin's work. So much happens and in such complexity that we have the feeling of witnessing an opera. And just like in real operas, too many melodramatic climaxes are built into too little time.
Film List Mafia Thriller incl. FREE STREAMS
"Basically, the Mafia and America think of themselves as charitable institutions. Both the Mafia and America have stained their hands with blood in what was necessary to protect their power and interests" (Francis Ford Coppola). The Mafioso represents the "no" to the great American "YES". Mafia thrillers in the best sense are morality tales between epic and thriller. Much more clearly than the gangster films of the 1930s, the great Mafia thrillers tell of loyalty and dissociativity, of the struggle for one's own personality and of the failure of this struggle in the mesh of the Mafia microcosm. The questions of morality, honor and personality are posed from the perspective of organized crime, only to turn abruptly into merciless brutality. Good mafia thrillers are always a journey into the heart of darkness, stylized to the point of glorification, cynical and bombastic.
Film List Thriller Skandinavien
The Italian thriller has the Mafia, the British one is about agents, and the French one is in the tradition of film noir. Is there such a thing as a Scandinavian thriller? Nordic murders could be an association, resulting from the Scandinavian crime literature that so often makes it to the screen: Wallander or Martin Beck. From the North come refined thrillers that, in the case of the Millennium trilogy of Infatuation, Damnation and Forgiveness, far exceed expectations of a cultivated evening of crime fiction as a cruelly existentialist trip. The big cities are not crime scenes, but the sparsely populated, gloomy landscapes, lonely forest lakes and cut-off islands. The land and nature are stylistic in the tradition of elegiac sagas. The mysterious pond that casts a black spell on nearby inhabitants to drown themselves (The Pond of the Dead), that is the Nordic crime novel
FREE CINEGEEK.DE Los Debutantes
As a Kreuzberg video store owner, I naturally have a lot of contact with filmmakers who are trying their luck without a budget. You are all advised to check out Los Debutantes, which has gained a loyal following at our store over the years. Los Debutantes shows many qualities of a production that is very sparsely equipped: a film noir - because traditionally the representatives of the black series belong to the category of B-movies - with a polished script. When Los Debutantes hit theaters, Tarantino-mania was in full swing; everyone was eager to invent a convoluted script and lead us viewers by the nose. Debutant Andres Waissbluth takes Akira-Kurosawa as a model and tells his thriller in three perspectives. At the center are two brothers, just arrived in Santiago and penniless. They find themselves in the haze of a strip club, where the older finds a job. Here dances the beautiful Gracia (Antonella Rios); a femme fatale who is to cast a spell on both brothers. Where will the journey take them? What can the three social losers expect? Los Debutantes tells this love triangle story with sparse means and a lot of speed. The eye-catcher: the manipulative Gracia as the center of the unfolding carnage. P.S. While the film accuses Gracia's gangster boss of feasting on Gracia's body, one must make the same accusation against the film of having Antonella Rios perform a dance before our eyes only smeared with cream. Los Debutantes, however, gains depth when we learn things that the characters themselves are too busy to notice. Is the wicked Gracia herself a trapped innocent; a desperate mother? It's telling that the characters never ask themselves such questions, let alone care about the answers. It's a tough world, neo-capitalist Chile! Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
Film List Sundance Festival inc. FREE STREAMS
The largest film festival for independently produced film in Park City (Utah) has become something like the seismograph of the film industry. Already in 1978 the festival was a podium, especially to attract more filmmakers to Utah. In 1981, Robert Redford saved the festival from remaining a marginal existence by becoming chairman of the board. It takes its name from Robert Redford's role as the Sundance Kid. The list of famous directors who celebrated their breakthrough in Sundance reads like a who's who of modern American film: Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, the Coen Brothers, Robert Rodriguez or Kevin Smith. After the decline of New Hollywood and the resurgence of US cinema in the blockbuster, Sundance took on the function of continuing the demanding American film. Since the big studios no longer relied on authors after the debacle of Heaven´s gate, the small independent distributors positioned themselves. Eventually something like a type of "Sundance film" established itself, which can be attributed the attributes Coming of Age, Province, Suburb, Drugs and Poverty. But in Sundance also movies for the public like Little Miss Sunshine were born. The success of Beasts of the Southern Wild 2012, which was traded as an Oscar candidate, proves how much the American film industry still looks to Utah.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! John Cassavetes - Faces
Faces by John Cassavetes is one of those movies you start a video store because of: To grab people and shout "Here, you watch this one today, it's that great!". After all, in Corona Lockdown in particular, we're inundated with all the crap on netflix and amazon that such a triumphant film is absolutely needed! Because no one lives like they do in the movies that run 24/7 on netflix. Nor does anyone we know. What Cassavetes has made is therefore only all the more astonishing: Faces is tender and honest and uncompromising - a film that examines how we really live. The main characters are middle-aged, middle-class and quite ordinary. In fact, they possess everything they desire. Except love and fulfillment, perhaps. They have become consumers in the cruelest sense. Their essence is that of an economic being who earns money and spends it again. Beings with meaningless existence. They do nothing, create nothing, they only use. Thus stranded, with no possibility of escape. In a long night, when the marriage reaches its breaking point, there are only two possibilities of escape: alcohol or adultery. Because, unfortunately, our life does not offer too many other possibilities, or does it? It all starts with the man (John Marley), a manager, successful, stopping at a whore. The prostitute (Gena Rowlands) and her roommate are already entertaining two clients and so it comes to a meeting full of dirty jokes doused with lots of alcohol. The man goes home to his wife (Lynn Carlin). They sit at the dinner table and talk about sex and we notice that they are terribly "sophisticated". In truth, however, they are rather frightened and uptight. In an alcoholic breakdown, the man announces that he wants a divorce. He makes a phone call to the whore. He will visit her again, while his wife goes off with three friends.... This could all seem very maudlin, but Cassavetes film never reaches that level. Faces is at no point cheesy. This is mainly thanks to the great Gena Rowlands, who plays her prostitute with so much human compassion that I wanted to see Faces again right away - and give the DVD to everyone else as well! P.S. For a long time, the film was out of print in our country, so Henry Hopper, Dennis Hopper's son, rented it and never brought it back. One of my favorite anecdotes and after all one of our most prominent reminder customers.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Forrest Gump
I have never met anyone like Forrest Gump in any other movie, ever before or since. Consequently, I have never seen another movie like Forrest Gump! To describe this classic by Robert Zemeckis even runs the risk of making it seem more conventional than it actually is. An attempt at description would have to start like this: Is Forrest Gump a comedy? Or a drama? Perhaps a dream. The script is reminiscent of modern fiction in its complexity. It never works with the formulas of modern films. At the center is Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), a decent man with an IQ of 75, who somehow manages to be involved in every event in American history from the 1950s to the 1980s. And he survives it all thanks to his niceness and honesty. Fortunately, however, Forrest Gump does not present a heartwarming story about a mentally retarded person. That would be an overly hackneyed Hollywood formula and far too limiting for Forrest Gump. Rather, the film functions as a meditation on our times through the perspective of a man who lacks any cynicism and accepts things as they are. Can anyone imagine anyone other than Tom Hanks in the role? I don't think so. Hanks makes Gump a dignified and straightforward human being, and seemingly along the way, he walks a unique tightrope between comedy and sadness. It's a story rich in laughs, but also in truth. Forrest is the son of an Alabama boarding house operator (Sally Field). She tries to correct his attitude, gives him a corset. His mind, however, she never criticizes! He is not stupid! Rather, Forrest proves incapable of anything less profound. Eventually, the corset just falls off Forrest and he can run like hell. Because of this, he gets a college football scholarship and Forrest becomes a football hero. It's not supposed to stop there. He gets a Medal of Honor in Vietnam and advances to ping pong champion. Forrest becomes a shareholder in this new fruit company that makes computers with an apple. And he runs across America. Now, you might assume that Forrest, with his IQ of 75, doesn't really understand what's going on. But that would be a mistake. He understands everything he needs to understand. Forrest also knows what love means, although his great love has been telling him since elementary school, "Forrest, you don't know what love is." By this time, however, she is already working as a stripper. The tour through recent American history is simply brilliant! In this sense, Robert Zemeckis has created the very first blockbuster for adults. Forrest teaches Elvis how to swing his hips and he visits the White House three times. He speaks at a peace rally against the Vietnam War and even gets a recommendation from Nixon: the Watergate. His grade school sweetheart Jenny (Robin Wright) also takes a tour, but one into counterculture. Jenny goes to California as a dropout, takes psychedelic drugs, and at some point we realize that Forrest and Jenny have been through all the stages of recent cultural history. Counter-cultural, of course, and when they find each other at the end, it's like a reconciliation for the American people. What a magical - and today in 2021 - timeless film!
Film List New Hollywood Thriller
I can well imagine how the audience must have felt in 1967 when they saw Arthur Penn's Bonnie And Clyde on the screen: This "first modern American film" had the effect of a punch right in the face! Never before had anything like it been seen! In tone and freedom, Bonnie And Clyde descended from the French Nouvelle Vague - especially early Truffaut. And much like the French models, it sparked a worldwide fashion boom (Warren Beauty's beret and Faye Dunaway's skirt), plus the soundtrack by Flatt and Scruggs). At the center; a violent character with sexual problems. None of the main actors were known before, all became stars. The idiosyncratic camera and editing techniques triggered a flood of imitators, all wanting to look just as French Impressionist. In short, something new was born: New Hollywood. Born out of the bankruptcy of Middle America with the courage to break old cinematic habits and self-destructive antiheroes. The America of rural backwoodsmen, seedy motels and decaying cities, the America of bigoted communities in the bible belt. New Hollywood is not simply the end of the old studio system and the brief flowering of the American auteur film, but simply a time of upheaval full of new talent, a "regime change." The thriller is one of the most typical forms of New Hollywood cinema, openly marked by the loss of confidence in the USA and the self-doubt as to whether life, liberty, happiness and justice are still American values.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Billy Wilder - Kiss Me Stupid
Billy Wilders Kiss Me Stupid is considered a fiasco. Wilder himself only likes to talk about his hits and dislikes his flops. Statements about Kiss Me Stupid are therefore rare. I think: Wrongly! In his heart, Kiss Me Stupid is a comedy about jealousy. Vulgarly presented with a Dean Martin who is obviously allowed to be himself. A cynical Bedroom Exploitation - and of course the American women's federations ran storm against it (no wonder, Wilder gives two of these ladies a nasty performance!). Here comes a still refreshing farce about our human weaknesses! Dean Martin plays Dino, who in turn is Martin. He performs in front of a sold out hall in Las Vegas, with a bourbon in his hand and blasphemes about his friend Sinatra and himself. Dino announces that he will then shoot a film in Hollywood. The path leads via Climax, Nevada, where he meets two songwriters who hope to make a breakthrough through him. Orville Spooner (Ray Walston), organist in the church and married to a beautiful woman and the local gas station attendant (Cliff Osmond) who manipulates Dino's car. Dino is forced to spend a night in Climas. He hopes it will be a wild night with the beautiful wife of morbidly jealous Orville. Orville is the typical wild figure. A husband and good citizen who, when asked if he trusts his wife, immediately yells "No! Therefore she is not allowed to be present and is replaced by Pistol Polly (Kim Novak), a prostitute. Orville's wife spends the night in Pistol Polly's trailer. The housewife and the hooker, they change roles (although the housewife has no idea what is being played). But Pistol Polly discovers her love for Orvill and her abilities as a wife - the pathological Orville, on the other hand, wants to protect his bait from Dino. But how can Dino be persuaded to buy songs without spending the night with the lady of the house? The best surprise: How Polly turns from a $25 whore into a loving wife, disgusted by the drinking and grabbing Dino. In the end, it's the women who practically decide how to get Dino to buy. Why didn't anyone like Kiss Me Stupid? Didn't Dean Martin want to come across as pathetic? Did Billy Wilder not want a comedy with such a bitter basic tone? But Kiss Me Stupid has become a real feat and finally we decide, the audience!
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Klaus Lemke - Ein komischer Heiliger
Klaus Lemke, who just turned 80, films according to his own rules, and they are strict. O-Ton Lemke: "German film is paralyzed by agreement with a funding system that is a kick in the creativity of every director. Creativity needs independence. And that only exists in film as long as the money at stake is the director's own. Everything else is clapping with one hand. Distortion. The aesthetics of casualness. I try to draw the audience into my films by inventing what happens right before their eyes. I don't know exactly what happens next. This gives the viewer the impression that he is the one whose premonitions are pulling the story. Film was the last great boy's sport - where there's always more in the mouth than kissing in the dark. Today, there are only crybaby proposal writers. And key pressers. I always ask: Who is actually acting out in my films? Who is this "dark passenger"? Under the skin. With every film I try to lure the invisible stranger out of the blind spot of perception... by making the concentrated irrationality of the film even more irrational. I don't have a computer. I've never seen Tatort. And I haven't had a shower in 35 years until a year ago. I have very few pockets to reach into. But at least they're my own. I'd rather be the film itself - than just the director of my films. Like in Japanese films: where the furniture in the house eats the master of the house. I know how film wants to be moved. You don't need money for that. Because you can buy market share. Profit can't. Few films get beyond a German Leistungskurs about the FFA (Film Förderungs Anstalt). Because usually the mechanics of a stupid plot kills story and characters. Exception: Petzold, Graf and few others. And THE BIGGEST SECRET: Supa loose beachmen and greedy nymphs locked in the Charterhouse of Parne, Stendhal. Mon Amour" (In Thomas Groh blogspot, post by Lemke). Klaus Lemke's rules are recognizable as dogmatic. None of his actors may be an actor, because actors are spoiled and prefer to become stars. But they don't exist in Lemke's world. The filming locations must also be the same as in real life. Nothing may be changed. Lemke works with little scratch sheets. He scribbles dialogues and instructions on them and gives them to his actors shortly before shooting. Sometimes something inspires him during the shoot, and then the story changes. That's why he needs actors like Cleo Kretschmer, who obviously has great comic talent and improvises freely. She always seems genuine and spontaneous. The girl next door, who may not be as tall and blond as the other girls, but always says exactly what is on her mind. Just as unfiltered as Lemke's films. Beautiful, isn't it?
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Brian de Palma - Blow Out
Blow Out by Brian De Palma seems strangely familiar and also quite strange. The paranoia thriller was constructed from some events of recent American history, thickened with references from other films and by other filmmakers. Nevertheless: Blow Out is an independent, phanatastic achievement! The title is reminiscent of one of the greatest 60s classics. The story in which a photographer takes a picture of a corpse and finally analyzes his photos for the find. Was there even a dead body on the negative? In Blow Out John Travolta plays the character who is confronted with the same questions. He works for a greasy B-movie production company in Philadelphia. He makes cheap cynical exploitation films - according to De Palma's taste! One night he stands at a bridge in the park. The cry of an owl and similar noises fill the night he records. Suddenly he witnesses a car accident! The car crashes off the bridge, a blowout. Travolta jumps behind, saves a girl (Nancy Allen) and later finds out that the driver of the car was a presidential candidate. Listening to his tape, he thinks he heard a shot just before the accident. Is it a murder? He follows the trail of Nancy Allen, finds out that she was a helper in a blackmail. It's wonderful how the plot now condenses! Apparently De Palma doesn't just have a handful of ideas, he floats in abundance! We meet a series of violent characters like Burke (John Lithgow) as Travolta's character gets deeper and deeper into the swamp of a conspiracy. Something personal is at stake for him: his ability as a sound engineer and his personal pride! "I'm a sound man!" In the best Blow Out scene, he recreates all the events of the night. He follows the tracks of his own recording. De Palma's technique follows that of the greatest thriller specialist of all time. It hitchcocks really powerful! Numerous references like the shower scene are dedicated to the "Master of the Macabre" (De Palma). He gives a whole series of ugly murders in unusual surroundings and a hunt through Philadelphia while Liberty Bell strikes for the big jubilee. Two strategies of "Hitch" are used here: First his patriotically charged images, then the desperate hunt within a human mass that cares for the individual but not further. However, De Palma's film takes all this away and so Blow Out stands alone. The desire for exaggerated violence and nihilism, the sexual insinuations, quite naturally alongside the postmodern quote cinema - all this is Brian De Palma! But you hate or love him. So he unites the cinephiles with the onlookers! Note: As in his best films, De Palma fills the action with three-dimensional plausible, even interesting characters. We like to believe that characters like John Travolta, Nancy Allen or John Lithgow are real. They all have these little quirks, the quirks of life. For me, that's the difference between a good De Palma movie and a big one: The characters! De Palma often uses stencils to throw himself at his beloved surface stimuli. In Blow Out he goes to as much trouble as he does in his greatest works! The protagonists really behave like people in similar situations. They don't just follow the requirements of a plot! But the most beautiful thing: Blow Out is held together by real cinematic intelligence. In scenes like this, where Travolta is following the accident, we are taken on a journey of discovery. We are allowed to find out what he is reconstructing! At last we are more than just passive witnesses of the events - and that really doesn't happen so often in the cinema.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Barry Levinson - Diner
Women are not strange at all. And they're not mysterious either, unless you happen to be a man. Young men in particular look at women with a mixture of desire, fear and admiration that is beyond their control. To understand what that must have been like for men in the late 50s, I listened to the conversations of our bouncers from the bar (= young men, entirely without female contact, drinking Coke and smoking pot together in front of Playlstation 4): Back in the late 50s, the Playmates on page three of certain newspapers might have been stranger than any alien race. And if a young man from the late 50s actually had a date with such a woman, he had to restore his mental equilibrium afterwards with the therapeutic consumption of cheeseburgers, black coffee and Lucky Strikes, together with the boys. Diner is about such young men from Baltimore. They all share a problem: painfully and awkwardly growing up when they should have been adults long ago. For some, however, adolescence lasts much longer than society's standards (I know about this; I'm from Berlin). The boys in Diner are best friends, although their paths are soon to part. University, jobs, marriage... it is possible that they will never see each other again. But for now they cling to each other for mutual security - because out there lurks the world with RESPONSIBILITY (which in turn has a lot to do with women). The boys from Baltimore have plans, but they are never as real as their dreams! Diner is episodic, about sexual adventures, romance, drunken weekends and hungover mornings with lots of coffee afterwards. Some of it may seem a little unbelievable, but all the situations fit the pattern of being afraid of women. In one bizarre sequence, a young man demands that his wife pass a sports quiz before he will marry her. Symbolically, the situation is true because the boys are not actually looking for women, but for imitation men. Moreover, we learn from a married man how marriage works: Completely without communication. He does not talk to his wife at all, because she functions exclusively as a "wife", never as a companion or confidante. She is a strange creature who doesn't even know all the top 10 hits from 1958 (but what might be going on in her head that he, in turn, wouldn't dream of?). Diner is a funny film that, above all, listens very carefully. Typical dialogues that we have probably all had in one way or another are rendered with absolute precision. Of course we have to translate the language, clothes, cars of the 50s into the here & now. Sometimes you think that director Barry Levinson has not created any three-dimensional characters at all in this prelude to his Baltimore trilogy. But then I came up with an even more disturbing interpretation: maybe these men didn't possess any three-dimensional characters at all?
