FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jean Eustache - Mes Petites Amoureuses (engl. subt.) 

In the summer of 1973, audiences around the world wanted to embrace the hero from Eustache's famous debut The Mother And The Whore! His endless conversations with the two women he loved became a model of how to live together in a "modern" relationship! Jean Eustache's debut in the Parisian student scene was spectacular and aggressive! His second work is quite different, a simple children's film. He remembers his (his?) childhood in a very sober way, almost conspicuously inconspicuous and very laconic. Daniel is twelve years old and lives with his grandmother in the country. With his friends he plays tricks on the seniors in the village, experiences the visit of the circus as a real sensation and slowly begins to take an interest in the girls... But then the shock: His mother comes from the south and brings Daniel to Narbonne. There she lives with a taciturn Spanish farmhand. The mother works as a seamstress, the flat has come down. Since the money is tight, Daniel is no longer allowed to go to high school, but has to work as a temp in a bicycle shop. He is no longer the leader of his playmates, but only "the little one". No longer privileged, but exploited by adults. Daniel has to put up with all this and suffers quietly. But despite his social decline, he experiences the first erotic feelings: Daniel observes other lovers, imitates the elders and practices with little girls. In the French "Midi", however, there is sex only after marriage and Daniel is still too young for that. Let me be clear: Daniel's life is already set to end like his mother. And yet: Eustache evokes the paradise of childhood with melancholic poetry. We can already see Daniel's future at the edge, where the young machos are roaring around with mopeds, hanging out in bars and looking like shabby suburbs of Casanova. A Mediterranean male society as seen in many French or Italian films. There is no rebellion, only lethargy and quiet grief. Above all this lies the veil of Daniel's lost childhood in the country. Daniel's mother, by the way, is not without love for her son. Ingrid Craven plays it as a petit bourgeois workhorse: pepped up, innocent, a bit stupid. Eustaches cameraman Nestor Almendros films this in long shots and brittle images. The film takes Daniel's perspective, remains emotionless and without romance. Eustaches Mes Petites Amoureuses follows the great French tradition of works that have puberty as their subject. Eustache is the rigorous observer of French cinema. He committed suicide in 1981 at the age of 43. Until then he had made a dozen films, but basically everyone was always talking about his debut The Mother and The Whore. This is certainly due to the fact that no other film observes daily life in Paris in such detail! Mes Petites Amoureuses chooses a different tone, because here the focus is on a little boy. The film doesn't show chic Parisian cafes, but life on the social fringes. We don't see any beautiful people here discussing, flirting and smoking. Not people we want to identify with. Instead: A family who at the very most treats themselves to dinner on a Sunday as a common time.

Seaspiracy 

1. the industrial fishing industry will have fished the oceans dry by the year 2048. 2. fish and marine life will continue to be taken in an uncontrolled manner. Neither states nor "sustainability" labels control this. 3. The oceans absorb most of the CO2. Without the oceans, we die too. Simple answers to simple questions, but no one wants to answer them. Here comes a devastating and illuminating documentary that lifts the veil that clings to our oceans: Seaspiracy exposes the rotten and corrupt core. For behind the sustainable promises of major corporations and plastic straw campaigns around the world remains hidden the shocking truth: an industry that is literally killing our oceans. Seaspiracy now reveals a relentless look at the damage being done to our blue planet. It all starts with an investigation into whaling - but spirals into something much worse. And the longer Seaspiracy goes on, the more startling the truths become. We finally understand the connection between big industry and supposed non-profit organizations that serve as wolves in sheep's clothing. No one seems to be able to answer very simple questions. As the film progresses, however, the answers become clearer. Seaspiracy explores all forms of corruption in the sea. From shark fin markets in China to salmon farms in Scotland. Many of the scenes are shot with shaky spy cameras, highlighting the threat the creators faced while filming. At one point, the camera crew is even forced to step out of a building during filming because someone tipped off the police. It's a "fly on the wall" approach that is backed up with a variety of facts and comparisons. Many times before I had heard about the overfishing of the oceans. However, I had never imagined that exactly this overfishing is the biggest driving force of the climate catastrophe. A realization that no one wants to talk about. There is no other way to explain why none of the major organizations wants to talk to Ali Tabrizi and his team. What is happening to our oceans? The last 15 minutes seem like a swan song. A requiem. We witness a method of whaling called grind. The ocean water is blood red. If the whales die, the oceans die. According to one study, fish/seafood will be gone by 2048 - resulting in an ecological disaster like we've never experienced. A catastrophe like no other. The credits roll and I know I will never eat fish again.

Film List Independent Movies Pt. I incl. FREE STREAMS 

The good independent films from the USA meet the key of melancholic country songs. Basically they are created for the country and not the city. Indie is more than just financing a film. Indie is also the way it is told. How much reality can a film stand? Do you see true poverty and hardships? Are there morally questionable understatements? Does what is shown irritate or the way it is shown? The term Indie has been around since the 80s, it is closely connected to the Sundance Film Festival and the first successes of Jim Jarmusch, the Coen Brothers and Spike Lee. Steven Soderbergh's Sex, read and videotapes marks the breakthrough of how an independent film can be big marketed. Since the 90's the Hollywood Studos are also looking for their own "indie departments". Meanwhile the building blocks (Coming of age, drugs, suburbs etc.) are more important than the independent Produkton. Directors like Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson or Alexander Payne create movies that somehow still seem indie, but aren't anymore. Stars show up, the movies shine expensive and yet they are somehow still cranky. For those who want to get close to really independent films amidst the thicket, we recommend Winter´s bone, George Washington, Keane or Old joy - films as far away from Hollywood as they can possibly be.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Kevin Smith - Dogma 

Where does the fate of mankind decide? Kevin Smith from New Jersey doesn't have to think long in his fourth film: In New Jersey, where his other films also play. In Dogma there are angels in the flesh with wings, a demon with devil horns and a metatron (Alan Rickman) - the voice of God. Of course, God himself may also appear, as well as a mortal, destined to save humanity (she is the Great Grand-Niece of Jesus). Although Smith likes to push the boundaries of foolishness, he takes his quest for meaning seriously. Cardinal Glick (George Carlin) even tries to reform the Catholic Church because Jesus Crucified is too depressing. A good buddy would be better! In this cathedral all sins shall be forgiven from now on. The cast out angels Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck) take advantage of this. But if the church now breaks God's commandment and rehabilitates the two outcasts, God's law is no longer worth anything. The end of the world. Since God has disappeared, the Metatron is trying to save people. Helpful here are such bizarre guys as our old acquaintances Silent Bob and Jay as well as Serendipity (Salma Hayek), a heavenly muse with writer's block. But who is God? A woman who looks like Alanis Morisette? God, a Canadian? Incredibly Smith takes his subject seriously, deals with eternal questions, but occupies his comedy with broken types of today. Almost a little stroke of genius!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Francois Trauffaut - The Story Of Adele H 

Adele was the daughter of Victor Hugo. In the diaries she left behind, she described the story of her love. A damned love. In exile, where she lived with her father, she was seduced by the British Lieutenant Pinson. Adele fell in love with Pinson, and Pinson loved to be a little in love. Until he would conquer the next one. Pinson asked Adele to marry him, but of course he didn't mean it more serious than his personality would allow. But Adele reacts with such fierce love that it will destroy her whole life. Pinson is transferred to Harifax. Adele follows him. She spies on him, sends him a whore. Adele calls herself Mme. Pinson from now on and writes letters to her family that she is well. She lies about being pregnant. But at night in her dreams, she's drowning. Even before that, Francois Truffaut had devoted himself to dark women like Adele. They form a counterweight to his light heroes like "Antoine Doinel". Often these women of Truffaut's go mad, have a sick idea of sexuality and their relationships end deadly. Their men try to manipulate and destroy them. You can now think for yourself about Truffaut's attitude towards women. Are there any normally developed women at all with him? At least that's something you won't find in many Truffaut films. Isabelle Adjani plays Adele. Adjani is dark-haired and pale and very beautiful. She slowly loses all sense of reality. At the end she walks around in rags with an empty gaze. She no longer even recognizes the love of her life. The merit of Adjani is to give this figure something like nobility nevertheless. She would cross the sea for her love, writes this so determined woman. But Adele loves far too much to a far too daring degree. In a way, Adele is not of this world. P.S. Later, Adjani declared she would never again shoot with Truffaut. You can read how she rejected the director as a lover. Then Truffaut wrote: "It would be too easy to say she is difficult, she is not. She is different from all the women in this profession and since she isn't even 20, add to all this (to her genius, let's not be afraid of words), an unawareness of others and their vulnerability, which creates an unbelievable tension." I think Adjani was angry that Truffaut patronized her as a genius.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Wish You Were Here 

Her mother is dead, her father is a drunk, but deep down inside she has a feeling that is sincere and full of freedom! But we are in 1951, somewhere in a small English town, surrounded by a neighborhood called "working class". A girl like Lynda is expected to know her place there. But Lynda does not correspond to this picture at all. In the cinema, the boys hang on Betty_Grable's thighs when she crosses her legs. Lynda tries the same thing on the beach. What is there to lose? Wish You Were Here is a Coming Of Age story and Lynda is perceived as a "Bad Girl". Nobody in town understands that she's a wonderful person who just wants to live differently. Except for a little elderly lady who plays the piano in a tea room. A comedy with angry undertones! It shows how a free girl can be broken by the same mix of sexism and conventions. Should we laugh or cry - the film itself doesn't know the answer and slowly develops into a tragedy. David Leland wrote and directed Wish You Were Here based on the memories of Cynthia Payne. In Cynthia's childhood, sex was something you didn't talk about. Her attitude, on the other hand, had to be understood as immoral: But if all men want sex and she has a lot to give, what's the problem? The answer: There is not only one problem! What happens to a girl who is as innocent as Lynda in the film? She becomes the victim of her boss or a self-proclaimed Don-Juan. How much is the human worth? Under these circumstances, Lynda finds it hard to keep smiling, pretending to. Maybe she considers herself worthless? Or do they still exist; the real romantics? It seemed to me as if the film had an idea of it towards the end and spread a little optimism. The key to the film is the 16 year old Emily Lloyd as Lynda. She radiates so much joie de vivre and seems so wild that her personality alone is enough to bring us closer to this difficult role. Her future as an actress back in the UK: Rosy! Quite different from Lynda's.

Filmliste Deutschland 1919-29 incl. FREE STREAMS 

After the First World War, German films experienced a boom. The devaluation of the mark made it possible for German films to be offered unrivaled cheaply abroad; conversely, foreign producers were given an incentive to export to Germany. The period was characterized by the coexistence of large corporations and small distributors. The strongest distributor was UFA, founded in 1917. In 1922, 74 feature-length films were produced in Germany; a number that was otherwise matched only by Hollywood. In the following years, the value of the Deutschmark normalized and the film companies suffered, especially UFA. The Hugenburg Group eventually took a stake in UFA and led it straight into National Socialism. It was confirmed that times of crisis offer more opportunities for artistic development than times of consolidation. Until about 1923, favorable production conditions and the open-mindedness of producers like Erich Pommer allowed artistic experimentation without great risk. After the stabilization of the Mark, more and more representative films that were worth watching prevailed. The artistically ambitious works were produced by small distributors in the second half of the 1920s. During the heyday, it was common to look to Germany to understand the true use of the cinematic medium (Paul Rotha). Even early films show a tendency to depict "inner-soul" predecessors, such as Der Golem. The actor Paul Wegener, a member of the Reinhard Ensemble like Lubitsch or Murnau, transferred fairy-tale motifs of Romanticism to the screen (Der Student von Prag, 1913). In many films, identity splitting became a theme that was treated almost obsessively. The "classic" period, however, began with the appearance of an author: Carl Mayer. He wrote the screenplays for Das Cabinett des Doktor Caligari (1920), Genuine (1920), Hintertreppe (1921) as well as the drafts for Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Der letzte Mann (1924), Tartuffe (1925) or Sunrise (1927). Mayer's expressionist screenplays were already written as precise directorial drafts. He thought in terms of film language and had never written anything but screenplays. Most of the achievements of the camera were due to Mayer. After seeing Battleship Potiemkin, Mayer saw the future in Russian montage techniques, so the idea of Berlin Symphony of a Big City also went back to him. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was to become a model never achieved. Wegener's Waxworks Cabinet (1924) and Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler are the best-known attempts, but the expressionist forms degenerated into ornamentation, and the naturalistic actors stamped the décor into scenery. The German film's fascination with the superman, however, continued even after Caligari. The most successful films of the time created nightmares of tyranny and terror. None of the films, however, focused on social and political realities; the horror always remained internal. Mayer himself finally initiated the departure from the Caligari style. Films like Hintertreppe, Scherben, Sylvester or Der letzte Mann have the character of chamber plays and are petit-bourgeois dramas. No hope points beyond the narrowly drawn boundaries of place, time and plot. The successor to the Kammerspiele were the "street films" such as Karl Grune's Die Strasse (1923). The street with its neon sign became a negative utopia. The stylistic code of Expressionism allowed even less talented directors to make films. Auteurs in the full sense of the word were only Fritz Lang, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Ernst Lubitsch. Murnau's The Last Man is considered the consummation of German film classicism, and his Nosferatu was far more influential than Caligari. Fritz Lang took film beyond its models in painting and literature. Tired Death differs from Caligari in that architectural rather than graphic structures dominate. Dr. Mabuse, the gambler also still belongs in the Caligari environment; in Metropolis, after all, the world congealed into ornamentation. Lang was fascinated by chaos, to which he saw no alternative but dictatorship. Murnau, Lang, and most of the directors of the 1920s devoted themselves to the commercialism of "big-budget" films as the decade progressed. Ernst Lubitsch occupied a special position at Babelsberg. He created films with extras, comedy films, and fantastic films. His mockery always hit the rulers, the tyrant as petty bourgeois cuckold. After he left Germany in 1922, Lubitsch found no imitators, and even in Hollywood he remained unique. Georg Wilhelm Pabst became representative for the second half of the 20s. His departure from Expressionism began with Die freudlose Gasse (1925), although his last silent films, such as Die Büchse der Pandora (1929), still featured dark alleys and sloping house walls. On the threshold of talkies, Pabst specialized in mountain films such as The White Hell of Piz Palü (1929). The "Neue Sachlichkeit" expressed itself primarily in "cross-section films" without emotional partisanship. Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a Big City (1927) is the prototype. A thematic counterpart was People on Sunday, a "professional amateur film" by Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmark, Fred Zinnemann and Edgar Ulmer. The few attempts at social criticism were found in films such as Mother Krausen's Ride to Happiness or Kuhle Wampe, but gradually any sense of artistic responsibility dwindled, especially in the productions of UFA...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Sound And Fury  

In this case, it's worth noting that if "La Haine" interested you, then.... Bruno (Vincent Gasperitsch) is violent because his father is angry and Bruno's father is violent because he was in the war. And the war broke out because violent fathers sent their children there. That's what this banlieue drama is about, in which 13-year-old Bruno is accepted into a circle of kids, into their world of mopeds, guns and blow jobs. In French cinema, such coming-of-age dramas have a tradition. Jean Vigo or Francois Truffaut told stories of kids who went off the rails. Jean-Claude Brisseau now expands the genre in a wild, eccentric mix of avant-garde and exploitation. The concrete landscapes of the banlieue take on apocalyptic overtones, cars burst into flames and Molotov cocktails smash from the top floors. Bruno experiences softerotic daydreams in which an angel appears to him as a mother substitute. Everything is heightened and alienated - almost as compulsively as Bruno's rage. Sound And Fury thus evolves from banlieue drama to surrealist comedy. Nothing is more terrible than childhood! 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Border 

A romantic fantasy movie from Sweden with two difficult characters: Can we follow the attraction of Tina (Eva Melander) to the Byronic stranger Vore (Eero Milonoff)? Can we identify with them? Soon they realize that they are both of the same kind. Their pronounced eyebrows, their swollen cheeks, their fissured teeth. I find it easier to identify with some glupe-eyed monsters! It's hard to like Tina and Vore, as monstrous as they look. "Border" is Tina's story. We see the ugly everyday world through her eyes. Unsightly things like shame, guilt or anger she can even smell (or actually sniff). This has advantages: Tina can track down smugglers or child pornographers at the border. That's her job: border policeman. But where do these skills come from? Are they supernatural? It remains a mystery, because Tina doesn't know where she comes from. All she can think about is her own unattractive appearance. That only changes when she meets Vore. He confuses her incorruptible nose. We can understand Vore as Tina's counterpart. He doesn't care how he affects others. He knows that he is not a human being. And despite some disgusting escapades, he also does Tina good. At least more than Roland (Jörgen Thorsson), the dog trainer who moves into Tina's flat to scrounge. Tina and Vore are SUPER attractive to each other. An inhumanly increased attraction! Caution: This leads to disgusting kisses and disgusting sex in the forest! You don't have to reveal too much of it, but a warning might be appropriate. In any case, the two do not only look ugly, but also behave like that. Like wild animals. But what does "normal" mean? Tina and Vore live in a depressing world full of child pornographers. We know this desolation from other Scandinavian films. In a world full of monsters, the eccentricity of Tina and Vore is supposed to appear "normal". But I stick to it: they seem creepy to me. I wish I could just like them! But it's not easy for me.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Maria Full Of Grace 

I'm still quite impressed by Maria who works on the assembly line in Colombia: Maria is young and already and has fire! After she finds out that she is pregnant, the attitude of her loser friend Juan doesn't impress her at all. She throws her job away and goes to Bogota. There she meets a man who tells Maria that she could earn a lot of money as a "mule", as a drug courier with dozens of small packets of cocaine in her stomach... Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is exploited by the drug business, but she herself sees this as an opportunity. Her best friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega) wants to accompany her. They get valuable tips from Lucy (Giulied Lopez), who has already done the job before. Lucy wants to come along to visit her sister in New York. At Kennedy Airport the girls immediately arouse suspicion, but Maria must not be x-rayed because she is pregnant. But Lucy feels sick; one of the packages bursts and she dies of an overdose. Two drug dealers "take care" of the girls and remove the dead body. For them this is nothing more than a business issue. Maria, who is a victim of economic poverty, does not feel at all as such. She has guts and is intelligent! Fortunately, the film saves us from the usual clichés about drug cartels and during Maria's operation we don't experience the deepest evil, but a group of rather incompetent guys. A drug movie without machine guns and chases, but with a development story. In the center: Catalina Sandino Moreno, an actress with glowing eyes and a lot of charisma! Maria Full Of Grace was made by the US debutant Joshua Marston with little means. He discovered the non-actress and cast her alongside other non-professionals. His film radiates this freshness and urgency, which wants to say: Life happens here and now! Maria simply takes the world as it is and tries to survive in it. Her most important decision: she sets off in search of the sister of the dead Lucy... Marston made a film that understands people's poverty without succumbing to the temptation to romanticize it. He points out that the "bad" things arise through the system of economy - not because they are the responsibility of "villains". It is not enough to kill the "villain" and everything becomes "good" again - because this villain does not exist. Maria Full Of Grace is extraordinary in several ways: On the one hand, because the film dares to show whole ordinary circumstances. What we see here is simply everyday life with plausible motives and understandable decisions. We experience characters at the subsistence level. The two middlemen who receive the girls: Basically they are also quite normal. They act corruptly and cruelly, which doesn't mean that we are dealing with "villains" here. Secondly, Maria Full Of Grace (unlike most drug movies) dares to do without glamorous stars and expensive effects. This is a world that exists below the radar and in which it's all about girls like Maria or Lucy hopefully surviving their flight!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE John Waters - Cry Baby 

A little like the'50s. I suppose. Of course, the humanity of the 80s had become even more greedy, but all in all they thought back to a conservative way of life. The Germans suffered from Helmut Kohl for sixteen years, the Americans had Reagan. And they wore lard stollen with leather jackets again. (I never wore black leather, because it took a certain image.) Anyway, I saw Cry-Baby at the movies and enjoyed it! The cast alone: Iggy Pop, Joe Dallesandro, Joey Heatherton, Willem Dafoe, Ricki Lake, Traci Lords (...). John Waters himself once said that he had now worked with everyone he had ever dreamed of. Cry-Baby plays in Baltimore in 1954. It's the time Rock'n Roll was born. Teenies can be divided into two groups: The drapes with their gelled hair and leather jackets as well as the squares with their short hair cuts. In focus: Cry-Baby aka Johnny Depp when he was a teen idol in 1990. Cry-Baby is built close to the water and it is his trademark to shed single tears. All his life he can't forget a teen romance; a tragedy! Then Allison (Amy Locane) steps into his life and immediately falls in love with Cry-Baby, because after all he has the reputation of a "bad boy". The bad guy in Cry-Baby is the "good boy" - Baldwin, who loves Allison so lying that you don't want to talk about love per se. Cry-Baby's family includes the wonderful cast from Iggy Pop to Tracy Lords - and all live on the wrong side of town. They're musicians and they're inventing rock'n'roll. All types, even all references of the 50s are installed around Cry-Baby. If there is a constant in social life, it is to long for the past. Nostalgia against the fear of here & now. The teenagers in each generation find a new way to express themselves and thus to annoy the "adults"! Cry-Baby is a film that reminds us exactly of that.

Film List Northern Europe incl. FREE STREAMS 

In Northern Europe, Swedish and Danish films are known, while Norway is incognito. This is changed by the "Norwave", a whole series of films from Norway that have been coming to the cinema for some time. The creative dawn begins at the turn of the millennium with authors such as Jens Lien (Anderland), Joachim Trier (Reprise) and Bent Hamer. Norwegian cinema loves image metaphors, such as Bobby Peer's short film Sniffer: a deodorant is tested on a group of boys who are actually much too fat but have a special ability; they can float. The message is simple: we want to smell good and we can fly.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Thomas Arslan - Gold 

From our former colleague Thomas Groh: No Emphase: The Nugget, torn from the river, lies on one hand, admired by a group of pioneers. No and therefore not this word - gold. There lies, in the north of America of the late 19th century, also a promise: The prospect of escaping the most cramped and miserable conditions (an accommodation in New York is once described: four people, a room, dark, moisture and cold gnaw at health) - provided one masters the strains that lurk between the young urban centers and the gold deposits in inhospitable area. Thus, Thomas Arslan's Post-Berlin School Western is also home to a group of German migrants who follow the call of gold, more precisely: the advertisement of a windy travel guide, which offers the prospect of a less strenuous passage to new wealth at a low price. No emphasis: The nugget, torn from the stream, lies on one hand, admired by a group of pioneers. No and therefore not this word - gold. There lies, in the north of America of the late 19th century, also a promise: The prospect of escaping the most cramped and miserable conditions (an accommodation in New York is once described: four people, a room, dark, moisture and cold gnaw at health) - provided one masters the strains that lurk between the young urban centers and the gold deposits in inhospitable area. Thus, Thomas Arslan's Post-Berlin School Western is also home to a group of German migrants who follow the call of gold, more precisely: the advertisement of a windy travel guide, which offers the prospect of a less strenuous passage to new wealth at a low price. Basically: A history of migrants, a story of how people, despite all the risks to life and limb, set out for a foreign country, put themselves in the hands of an opaque smuggler who offers a security for his route for which he cannot guarantee. Only that this time the migrants are Germans - from Bremen and Hanover, snarling and snaringly snaring and old Prussian arrogant in the appearance of journalist Müller (Uwe Bohm), North German brittle - as always - Nina Hoss as a maid, who - under the sharp eyes of an old cook - sets out for the far north without a male companion. I remember Thomas Arslan's documentary "From afar", which was shown at the Berlinale Forum in 2006, especially the breathtakingly massive landscape shots from the interior of Turkey. In "Gold" an echo sounds from the same distance when Arslan lets his visibly decimated ensemble of figures ride through vast, sparse landscapes that are not at all pathetic in their threatening nature. In addition, border-psychedelic guitar playing - Neil Young's soundtrack is not completely dissimilar to "Dead Man". The magic of demarcation - 1500 kilometres of wilderness to cross. The aesthetically deficient, the meager, especially the gestelzte in dialogue usually associated with the "Berlin School" labelled films, enters into a dialogue with American film history: Arslan does not avoid the standard situations of the genre - even a bounty hunter with a black coat appears. The skeleton of the genre is exposed in front of a bombastic backdrop - filmed on location in Canada: The obligatory showdown on the main street of a settlement in the middle of nowhere literally takes place in a few shots. In its best moments, the film frees itself from the obligation to tell and approaches a brittle psychedelic: Marko Mandic (who has finally become the most exciting face among the young German film actors with this film) and Nina Hoss ride for minutes in complete exhaustion through a landscape as magical as people-rejecting. Once a black wanderer walks through the camp of the migrant group, looking after him with open mouths, and was no longer seen. Again and again, out of nowhere, Indians show the way for some money. In the German 19th century, what has not been invented by magical beings, moonlit magic landscapes, natural beauty and world spirits - on the threshold of the 20th century these German migrants travel through such landscapes and perish in them. (Source: https://www.perlentaucher.de/berlinale-blog/317_post-berliner-schule-we…)

Film List Dogma 95 

Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg or Soren Kragh-Jacobsen presented the Dogma 95 manifesto in the Odeon Theatre in Paris to mark the 100th birthday of film, with great media impact. The Feast and Idiots are the first feature films to be staged according to the established dogmas. The manifesto is directed (once again) against the alienation of cinema from reality. In fact, technical frippery is increasing rapidly in the 90s. Dogma is against many things and propagates a number of ingredients: Original locations without props brought in, no film music as background, the use of hand-held cameras, no effects or filters, no violence, no murders, no genre films, lastly the director's name must not appear anywhere either. The Dogma Manifesto can thus be interpreted as a kind of vow of chastity. After all, the demand to use "no stage directions" insinuates shameless indecency to the auteur theory! But in the course of development, let's call it post-Dogma, the rigid rules were softened. Dogma films were even allowed to be funny and seemed less and less dogmatic. Who knows, with a few ingredients like props, sets, lighting, music and style, the Dogma founding fathers will make really good films one day! 

Film List Neuer Deutscher Film Pt. II incl. FREE STREAMS  

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Ulrich Seidl - Hundstage 

 "Of all things, man is inhuman." (Thomas Bernhard). Anna is a very unpleasant hitchhiker. She lectures about her personal top 10 pets, most erotic TV presenters (...), rummages through handbags, inquires about sexual habits and after ten minutes she is back at the roadside. Around Anna a sterile landscape with supermarkets and parking lots. Change of scene. In a licked row house, a divorced couple with a dead child stalk each other. They provoke each other, hurt each other, tear each other apart. Enter Erwin, who weighs every can of dog food and, if necessary, complains at the supermarket. For those who haven't noticed, we're already immersed in the depraved world of Ulrich Seidl. Seidl, a native of Vienna, may be considered the inventor of Austrian cinema of impositions (influenced, of course, by literary figures like Thomas Bernhard and painters like Manfred Deix). Therefore, Seidl introduces us to withered flesh, sweating bodies, subtle cruelty and escalating violence. His protagonists are lonely and speechless. They act cruelly and violently. Often they are played by amateurs who just don't want to be noticed as actors. This does not fit with the documentary style, which exposes everything so ruthlessly. The evil in Seidl's world is quite banal. It lives right next door and is omnipresent. Its sources are isolation and fear. Seidl's characters always strive for redemption, but that - we may assume - seems completely hopeless. It is much more likely that one of Anna's top 10 diseases will strike you: 1. allergies, 2. migraine, 3. gastritis, 4. polyathritis, 5. diabetes, 6. asthma, 7. cancer, 8. heart attack, 9. cirrhosis of the liver, 10. stroke. And if you watch more Seidl films, you'll notice that his worldview gets more and more negative with each passing year....

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Goddbye First Love 

It's Camille's (Lola Creton) first big love, Sullivans (Sebastian Urzendowsky) probably not. She gives herself completely to her feelings, this first love relationship! Sullivan is 19 and also he loves very much, but there is also this other side in him. It would be too easy to write now that he didn't really want the connection with her. He simply has problems understanding what he is really looking for. Her parents know about love and also accept it. After all, this is also an important part of growing up. Only Camille's parents are a little worried about their obsession - and obsessive, that's Camille! They now spend a little vacation in their parents' house, where the sun reflects in the water and the trees rustle in the wind. A love idyll. But it's disturbing for Camille that Sullivan doesn't intend to go back to school after the holidays and wants to emigrate to South America instead. This is not discussed, it is a fact. Camille is devastated - of course! I think that the film is a bit too lenient with Sullivan, who is a selfish pig for me! At least he's young and thinks the world is all about him. While he is still preaching to Camille about a future together, he already knows that he will leave. Un amour de jeunesse is the third film by Mia Hanen-love, who herself was only 31 years old when the work premiered. The focus is on Camille over a period of eight years. Sullivan's journey through South America, on the other hand, we experience only through rice nails that Camille pinns on a map on her wall. At some point his letters are missing completely. Camille pulls the pins out of the map again and puts everything back into a box. She applies to the School of Architecture. Her professor Lorenz (Magne-Havard Brekke) becomes both mentor and lover, he is already a little older and more stable. But his thinning hair falls a little strangely over his face. And Sullivan? After we figure out what's happening to him, we react just as furiously as Camille does. In fact, Sullivan doesn't deserve it at all, but now demands forgiveness and understanding! Un amour de jeunesse is a nice and interesting movie. I even held back a lot of information from you! I just wish the movie would be more angry with Sullivan (at least instead of Camille). Her first love has at times almost psychopathic traits and I would understand that Sullivan reacts cautiously. But he has completely different reasons. I don't think he ever felt the depth of Camille. We think of first love as something wonderful and sweet. Hansen Love's film, however, digs much deeper. Here the first love is a tragedy.

Film List Neuer Deutscher Film incl. FREE STREAMS 

"The old film is dead. We believe in the new," was read out on blue cardboard during the film festival in Oberhausen in 1962. Papa's Cinema is Dead is considered the zero hour of German film. A drumbeat, although the rebels of the Oberhausen Manifesto had almost nothing to show up to that point. There were only three of them who had already made longer films. Hansjürgen Pohland had directed Toby in 1961, Ferdinand Khittl was working on Die Parallelstrasse and Herbert Vesely on Das Brot der frühen Jahre. Still, 26 filmmakers tried to do what had happened in Italy after the war and in France a few years earlier. Just like the French, the young Germans wanted to get away from the quality cinema of a Helmut Käutner. It was not about big careful films, but about small personal fantasies, about breaks, mistakes, deviations and ambiguities. When the first feature films were released, however, some of them made poor and ponderous films right from the start, which soon ended up on TV. Others had potential: Volker Schlöndorff was strongly influenced by themes, as were later Reinhard Hauff, Peter Lilienthal, Michael Verhoeven and Margarethe von Trotta. Then there were those who reflected on images and forms, such as Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz - always careful to keep their distance in order to emphasize the symbolic nature of their images. They were followed by Ulrike Oettinger, Helke Sander, Werner Schroeter and Hans Jürgen Syberberg. Then there were those with a great euphoria for pure forms of cinema, oriented to models and genres: Roland Klick, Klaus Lemke, Rudolf Thome and Will Tremper. These beginnings were deepened in the 70s by the stars of the New German Cinema: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders. Today, themes and motifs that have been varied can be discerned beyond the individual films. As in Neo Realism and the Nouvelle Vague, there were first precursors (The Bread of Early Years, Two Among Millions), the first films after the Manifesto (Young Törless, Tattoo, Farewell to Yesterday), the high points (Beer Fight, Hitler, The Marriage of Maria Braun, David, Palermo or Wolfsburg, Frank Orlando, Fitzcarraldo, The State of Things) and finally fatigue. All of them were united by the attempt to operate with completely different images, to open up a new view of unusual figures in an ordinary world. The new cameramen for the discoveries of a Werner Herzog or the artificiality of a Werner Schroeter also played a large part in this. Jost Vacano for Klick or Schlöndorff, Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein for Herzog and Gerard Vandeberg for Lilienthal and Schamoni, most recently the stars Michael Ballhaus for Fassbinder and Robby Müller for Wenders. Ballhaus gave Fassbinder's cinema a new opulence and Müller revolutionized the genre of road movies with Wenders. One merit of all filmmakers after Oberhausen was the will to deal with the past. National Socialism was finally dealt with, for example in Straub/Huillet's Nicht versöhnt (1964). Die Ehre der Maria Braun (The Honor of Maria Braun), Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn), and Deutschland bleiche Mutter (Germany's Pale Mother) are all also confrontations with the Nazi era. The second major theme was the struggle for identity without recourse to father and mother. In Shamoni's Closed Season for Foxes, a journalist swings between the upper- and lower-middle-class worlds and ultimately chooses not to. In Wenders' Alice in the Cities, In the Course of Time, and Paris Texas, being on the road becomes a space for self-discovery. Another theme was women in West German society. Helke Sander-Brahms (Shirin's Wedding) and Margarethe von Trotta (The Second Awakening of Christa Klages) characterize their figures artfully and excitingly, Rudolf Thome in Red Sun takes a radical approach to the subject: A women's shared apartment that kills every man after three days. Since the Nouvelle Vague, genres were no longer fixed in order to always retell the same thing, but were playgrounds and reservoirs for new things. The New German Cinema quickly adopted this attitude in Heimatfilm: Peter Fleischmann's Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern, Reinhard Hauff's Mathias Kneisel, Volker Vogeler's Jaider, Der einsame Jäger or Uwe Brandner's Ich liebe dich, ich töte dich turn the genre on its head. They do not transfigure the homely, but enlighten it. The theme of coming of age set special accents. Unlike New Hollywood, these were mostly films of failure. Schaaf's Tattoo, Click's Supermarket and Hark Bohm's Nordsee ist Mordsee show that happiness only exists elsewhere. The political cinema of Peter Lilienthal represented an important footnote: Malatesta and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land do not sharpen the scandalous through their story, but make it transparent. Fassbinder, Schroeter and van Ackeren also presented individual melodramas, there were very isolated romances (Thome's Berlin Chamissoplatz), even thrillers (Lemke's Negresco, Vadim Glowna's Desperado city) and comedies (May Spil's Zur Sache Schätzchen, Bernhard Sinkel's Lina Braake, Edgar Reitz's Die Reise nach Wien). More important, however, were road movies, the genre of departure: Kluge's Farewell to Yesterday, Lemke's 48 Hours to Acapulco, Roald Koller's Johnny West with Rio Reiser, and the films of Wim Wenders in which landscapes are mythically exaggerated. Unlike the Nouvelle Vague, the New German Cinema did not feel the great desire to expand cinema through genres, but the Germans did enjoy discovering new facets. The New German Cinema loved outsiders and eccentrics; rebels, bohemians and oddballs like Herzog's Kinski. In Thome's Rote Sonne there is a confused duel at Lake Starnberg. In Fassbinder's Merchants of the Four Seasons, people drink themselves to death, and in Wender's Paris Texas, they wander aimlessly through the desert. Lemke and Klick's Rebels rushed through the world, taking one hit after another (Rocker and Supermarket). The high point of New German Cinema came in the early '80s. Fassbinder's BRD trilogy, Schlöndorff's Die Blechtrommel, Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Wender's Paris Texas were celebrated. With Fassbinder's death, Kohl's intellectual moral turn, the movement eroded. In the 80s/90s came the late revenge of "normal" film: it looked again like the West German cinema of the 50s.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE La Belle Personne  

Who doesn't miss it, the Nouvelle Vague? In our video store, the French new wave is more popular than any other film direction! Nouvelle Vague, that's what we associate with beautiful women and cool guys who always smoke in chic Parisian street cafes. Most of the time they are gangsters. Quite dilettantish gangsters. There isn't much time for business anyway, because Nouvelle Vague films are primarily about love. And they look like pop art and that's why you still like them so much! Christophe Honoré seems determined to continue the tradition of the first generation of the Nouvelle Vague. For this he has chosen an original descendant: Louis Garrel, son of Philippe-Garrel and even godson of Jean-Pierre-Léaud! Garrel is Honore's alter ego. Together with him, Honore is happily expanding the possibilities of cinema - right up to the Nouvelle Vague Musical. La Belle Personne is something like a summary of his work. Best of all, La Belle Personne really looks like he was filmed in the early 60s! Nouvelle Vague Retro! The colors are so subtle as if we were in a black and white film. The plot also seems cloned: Two young men + a beautiful woman. Copy & paste of "Jules Et Jim" or "Bande A Part". Turtleneck sweaters, trousers and flats; Honore's heroes could just as well be accommodated in a Rivette movie. And doesn't Lea Seydoux look like Anna-Karina with her sad eyes under a big pony? She acts passively with a promise full of lips. And so the camera lingers and languishes on her face. Just like Jean-Luc-Godard used to do. Her name is Junie and she is not only beautiful but also good. She is loved by bland Otto and covets the charming Nemours (Garrel), who turns out to be an air act. Junie in any case remains abstinent and therefore can't develop something like a "plot". But it doesn't matter! In the Original Nouvelle Vague the plot is only secondary. 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Mila From Mars 

Here's a secret tip from our video store! Mila From Mars is a kind of punk orphan. She lives somewhere in the country in Bulgaria. And she is unintentionally pregnant! So goes the debut of Zornitsa Sophia. Anyway, the whore Mila (Vessela Kazakova) with her mini doesn't really fit into the surroundings. How did she get to this village? Mila escaped her brutal pimp, drove in the truck and finally ended up where people don't think so fast. And there Mila is loved by everyone! The secret of the place: The old people grow marijuana. This may explain why they think so slowly. But at some point Mila feels a bit lonely. And at that very moment a muscular guy appears... Oh yes, and if you can't follow some of the movie's capers - that has to be traced back to postmodernism. This is the time of hectic cuts. And where is the border? And what did the two Mila lovers experience together? And who can translate all the political references? But all this does not have to be answered. Mila From Mars is still a cute movie!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Louis Malle - My Dinner With Andre 

No other movie is like Louis Malle's My Dinner With Andre. There is nothing like it! My Dinner With Andre is completely free of filmic formulas and clichés! What is the plot? Exactly as the title announces. The playwright Wallace Shawn is on his way to dinner with a man he has not seen in years. Perhaps he's been avoiding him a bit? The man is a renowned New York theater director named Andre Gregory. For a long time he had been off the screen. Andre remembers talking to a friend in front of a cinema. The conversation between people who only exist in their art, but not in their lives. Then Wally and Andre meet. They talk. Mostly Andre talks while Wally listens. Wally is a domestic type. He likes it homely. He's a little stocky and cross-eyed. He looks like an intellectual. In one of his greatest movies he was described as a little "homunculus". Remember? Wally's father was editor of a famous newspaper. In the old days, according to Wally, when he was young and rich, all he thought about was art and music. Today, at 36, all he cares about is money. Unlike Wally, Andre is big and square. Returned from distant lands with stories he tells with sparkling zeal. Andre lived in Tibet and in the Sahara. He tells of an experience from Poland. How a creature appeared to him in a church and violets grew from its eyes. Wally tries to change the subject. He inquires whether Andre had ever seen the play "Violets Are Blue"? The attempt to describe My Dinner With Andre with: Two men eating and talking - but would be negligent! Louis Malle pays the greatest attention to detail. Obviously this conversation was staged with great care. WHAT is said is less important than the tone, HOW it is said. This is the opposite of real time! Maybe I can imagine it like our bar film that is currently being made. The directors of our bar film record a mass of conversations and try to make a script out of them. Again and again the conversations in My Dinner With Andre sound almost like satire. Were the people really wiped out after their last flourishing during the 60s? Andre glows with enthusiasm about the modern age. Wally seems desperate. What Wally demands from life is simple: a cup of coffee in the morning, his pieces and payment. In the evening he enjoys himself. Wally appreciates comfort. Like when the Times is on your doorstep in the morning. He believes neither in fate nor destiny. The only thing Wally believes in is science. Andre, however, does not question the scientific method - he simply does not find it helpful. The search for transcendence, however, is the future. Meanwhile, an almost ghostly apparition serves them food... One can read a lot about the visible reflections in mirrors or the camera in Louis Malle's film, which is calculated with millimeter precision. But what interests me most of all is the quality as an audience favorite! Twice we screened My Dinner With Andre in our crowded mini-cinema. And for years the DVD has been borrowed magnificently in our video store! The question most asked by the audience Do Wally and Andre actually play themselves? There's a funny remark by Wallace Shawn. At the next My Dinner With Andre they would simply change roles. 

Film List Film Noir incl. FREE STREAMS  

As similarly only in the Depression years, American film flourished in the 1940s. The social upheavals of the banking crash and the outbreak of war allowed for freer treatment of themes, but were halted by the "Hays Code" and McCarthy's "witch hunt." A distrust of social order prevailed, which favored crime themes. Milieus were necessarily drawn authentically during the period, and the films of the '40s were pessimistic and shaped by the war. No new supertypes like Little Caesar were in sight, but impotent individuals, poorly paid detectives, alcoholics, corrupt cops and unfaithful wives. There were three tendencies during the 40s, the film noir as a black series, the documentary crime films and the socially critical films. Each group had its own pure specimens, but there were also overlaps between the three tendencies. The black series was until then the most radical rejection of the American way of life as well as the optimism of Hollywood. Unlike the gangster films of the 1930s, on which film noir was based, there was no longer good and evil, but total amoralism. Moral ambiguity and complex situations gave the viewer a sense of insecurity and unease.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De tHE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Rudolf Thome - Rote Sonne 

A completely wrong approach to the Red Sun would be a discussion of why the four beautiful women in Rudolf Thome's film kill men? They just do it because "they deserve it". The riffraff. Every man who stays longer than five days in their flat is killed. Shot, drowned or run over. The Red Sun came to the cinema in 1970 and it would now be appropriate to regard the work as a feminist film. But I think that Rudolf Thome has dealt with Greek antiquity and enjoys watching Hollywood action films. As in the Greek tragedy, a young man (Thomas, who is played by Marquard Bohm and looks like a mod) appears and starts a love affair with the leader of the girls' troupe, Peggy, of all people (communicator Uschi Obermeier). Recovered for this cross between failure and macho, Peggy has a weakness. But that doesn't help either, because before the red sun rises at Lake Starnberg, the couple will have shot each other. Because it looks so beautiful like Hollywood. Or after a Greek tragedy. Bohm and Obermeier also played together in Thome's first film. In Red Sun they are definitely the most glamorous German cinema couple - a shame that there are no more films with the two of them! Probably no one but Bohm could present the abstruse dialogue lines from the Red Sun like this: "Work that contradicts one's own rhythm of life can have devastating consequences for the entire organism". She said: "You are lazy". Anyone who has seen the film as often as I have can also take a look at what happens behind the scenes. Rote Sonne was shot in Munich in 1969 and during the outdoor shoots you hardly see any cars other than VW Beetles. The apartment in which the killer women live could simply be taken over. The colorful walls, they were already like that. In the shared flat there is also a lively exchange of beds: everyone sleeps where there is free space. Rudolf Thome is a talkative man and there is a lot to report, especially about the shooting of Rote Sonne. He has illustrated this in the Tilsitter Lichtspiele. Uschi Obermeier was never allowed to leave the commune for more than three days and therefore had to be constantly transported from Munich to West Berlin. Marquard Bohm actually lived his role; his suit tells its own story in the film. The red sun was filmed chronologically and with every scene his suit becomes more and more dingy. Bohm also wore it privately after the shooting and went to parties with it. As early as the end of the 60s, a distinction was made in Germany between the "worthy" films of the film publisher Filmverlag der Autoren and those that don't get any money. Red sun belonged to the latter kind. Thome belonged to the so-called "Munich Group", which signed their own Oberhausen Manifesto to distinguish themselves from the former. Rote Sonne loves the role models from Hollywood and France, gunfights and chases. German "reality" is not so important to the film. So here comes one of the rare German movies in which the actors seem like stars, everything seems artificial and above all really sexy! So real!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Louise Hires A Contract Killer  

Finally; with a day's delay, I have found the ideal film for International Women's Day. Because a woman like Louise-Michel can't be celebrated. She fights. A mountain of a woman: The hair hangs greasily around the head and we take care that the owner, Louise-Michel, does not feel disturbed by it herself. Louise wears a trench coat, in which her bent-over gait with ruddering arms is particularly unholy. Her expression is petrified, but at rare moments she surprises us with her gaze: Louise has the innocent eyes of a child. She cannot read or write. In the evening, she watches a pigeon pluck itself as a roast. Yolande Moreau plays Louise; it is her art to make us sympathize with this character. For Louise is also shy and insecure. But above all, she is poor. She works in a shabby factory where the boss always wins. This is already evident in the children's game of "Rock, Scissors, Paper". That's why he's the boss. But the factory's machines have long since been sold to China. One morning, Louise and her colleagues enter the empty hall. Together they think about what they can do together with their ridiculously small relief. Produce a nude calendar? Open a snack bar? Louise, who otherwise barely speaks, comes forward with the most sensible suggestion: hire a hit man to kill the boss. After some deliberation, the ladies nod and agree. Louise sets out to find him when a man with a strange girl's haircut drops a homemade gun from his coat: Michel (Bouli Lanners) is a contractor for a security company. His mobile number is no longer valid, his email address is out of date, and he can't immediately find the container where he lives and maintains something like an office. Michel, however, explains to Louise that he is a professional. To fulfill his mission, he sneaks into the hospital where his cousin, suffering from leukemia, is spending her last days. He supports her, so that the terminally ill appears stumbling before the boss and pulls the trigger.... Gustave de Kervern and Benoît Delépine have turned their attention to a topic that is topical on a daily basis: International finance. Who is the "real" boss of a modern company anyway? Who is in charge? The revenge story of Louise-Michel is wrapped in scenes that could also come from the surrealism of the twenties - but are much more anarchistic. At that time, the surrealists were accused of attacking the bourgeoisie, but without professing political edge. This is exactly what the Belgians De Kervern and Delépine do! The horrors of society, human dismantling, loneliness and death - Yolande Moreau as Louise expresses all this with her sad eyes (when was the last time there was a character in cinema that moved me so?). The story of Louise begins with social injustice. But it ends in the search for happiness - and Louise finds it in anarchy. "Energy, born of despair, is never defeated," wrote Louise Michel, the great anarchist of the 19th century, and the film is dedicated to her. Anarchist, that is also Michel, who after his work is done, is allowed to prove himself as a tap dancer. A nonsense with a lot of sense.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Frances Ha 

Who makes a film in black and white these days? Noah Baumbach dedicates a painting to his Brooklyn, his New York, like a certain urban neurotic did more than thirty years ago - also in black and white. Does anyone feel a certain obligation here? Baumbach and his leading actress, co-writer and girlfriend also let themselves be carried away by the French Nouvelle Vague. Frances Ha is quoted with joy, up to classical scores by Georges Delerue. So much self-confidence; maybe even bravado? Frances Ha also reveals something of the romance between Baumbach and Gerwig, it seems so fresh and charming! The film depicts a certain phase in life. Frances Halliday (Greta Gerwig) is 27 and is in the process of graduating, but has not yet arrived in life episode. Part of her wants to go back, but another wants to start an adult life in New York. We get to know her while she is stuck between these two poles and is trying a promising career in a dance school. With her best friend and roommate Sofie (Mickey Sumner) Frances plays all sorts of games and they both repeat the words "I love you" for each other far too often - as often as lovers would never do. It is a friendship to escape reality that only lasts supposedly forever - until one of them strives forward. Sofie does exactly that and Frances is lost. For a while Frances lives together with Lev (Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), two hipsters who are mainly interested in affairs and lots of beer in life. Baumbach's New York between Brooklyn and Manhattan seems almost anthropological - it's both: funny and enchanting. Thanks to the characters Lev and Benji, the first half of the movie is much stronger than the second. Sofie moves to Japan with her Goldman & Sachs lover, while Frances somehow drifts away. Greta Gerwig plays this captivatingly, but Frances character simply stagnates. Frances drifts off and the film drifts like this. Baumbach's and Gerwig's script seems unplanned and it remains the feeling that Frances Ha could have been much better! Maybe a little more independent and without all the reminiscences of past cinema heroes?

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Michelangelo Antonioni - L'Avventura (engl. subt.) 

No one loves no one. In L'Avventura there is talk about love. But only as a pastime. As an attempt to survive time. Just as well you could play a round of cards. There is not even the slightest possibility that the characters love/love/like each other. They are flat, ordinary characters. They can't feel lonely at all. The predominant feeling of these people is boredom. In the early 60s and still today Antonioni's L'Avventura was and is regarded as THE cinematic masterpiece at all! One would think that films that deal primarily with sensual pleasures are no longer of interest. But that's not true. In our video library Antonioni is still considered THE Italian master director! L'Avventura is about general mental illness. We see rich, inactive and decadent people for whom pleasure means everything. Pleasure is the only thing that sometimes prevents them from the hopeless boredom of their existence. Love does not exist, only sex. L'Avventura became famous because nothing happens. Someone disappears - no resolution. A search - without result. A group of well having friends goes with the yacht to Sicily. They anchor off an island, swim ashore. Anna (Lea Massari) argues with her "lover" Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti). They are accompanied by Claudia (Monica Vitti) and a group of "friends". Then Anna disappears. The group searches the whole island. There are hardly any hiding places, only bushes, yet Anna disappears. She is never seen again. Did I "spoil" now? No. It is generally known that Anna remains missing. That's not what L'Avventura is about, which translates as "the adventure". The lives of all those involved seem so unreal that one might think that they have all disappeared. At least one can hardly speak of existence, the relationships of these friends are so thin. Then a shocking scene: Sandro grabs Claudia, kisses her. Claudia withdraws. What does she think about Sandro betraying Anna so quickly? We don't find out. Later Sandro will tell Claudia that he "loves" her. Claudia accepts that. Anna is forgotten. Claudia takes over Anna's function. The function of the lover. What remains? Since Anna has disappeared, Claudia has to take over her function. Is Claudia afraid that Anna will return? Then she catches Sandro with a hooker. Claudia runs out. Sandro throws bills on the hooker's body. Welcome to the existential limbo! After the film, thoughts went through my mind. Antonioni's style, called "Antonioniennui", naturally found imitators. And yet L'Avventura is a film of its time. With hip pictures, without narration. My father once told me that it wasn't about being entertained. It almost sounded like a punishment to look at this Antonioni or that Luis-Bunuel. It had to be! Basically, we have nothing at all in common with the people of L'Avventura. Their lifestyle goes far beyond our wildest dreams here in Kreuzberg. L'Avventura is constructed through and through. More an idea than a film. The idea of a silent cry of despair banished to celluloid. We observe parasites whose money allows them to constantly distract themselves. Diversion from work and responsibility. Goal: To conceal one's own emptiness. L'Avventura plays in the moral wasteland. Such films no longer exist. Films that put the meaning of life into perspective. We no longer face the meaning of life. Instead, we decide on a certain "lifestyle". 

film Noir Wordl Cinema incl. FREE STREAMS 

Originally, the film noir - or black series or films of the night - was inspired by cheap penny novels. Crime stories translated from the American and especially popular in France. Very important: at no point is a happy ending foreseeable. That's why these films are set at night, in dark, smelly alleys or crummy bars with back exits. To top it all off, there is ALWAYS smoking in film noir. As if life wasn't bad enough already. Sometimes the noir protagonists even smoke at each other in anger. Women in film noir are called femme fatales. You'd rather kill them than love them (and vice versa, because femme fatales like to be armed). The femme fatales wear a lot of makeup, hat, lipstick - and they always call the doormen of cheap hotels by their first names. The basic equipment also includes: high heels, red dresses. They are skilled at mixing drinks and they have a weakness for alcoholic private detectives. When they die, they lie dead, artfully arranged, on the floor. Every hair is in place. As for the men (=private detectives): they live in hotels, always wear suits and ties, love house bars and cars with running boards. Classic film noir is black and white, and the modern spin-offs at least feel that way. No other genre ever created a world so full of doom, doom and betrayal.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Submarine 

Craig Roberts, who plays Oliver Tate, the hero from Submarine, looks like a young poet: Curious and self-important. But he is also a young teenager, still virginal and insecure. Oliver fits like a glove to the film, which strikes a typical British note. It was shot in Swansea, Wales. Sometimes I thought Oliver himself was the author of his own biopic (the film and the leading actor fit together so well!). Oliver's beloved is called Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige). Jordana knows that very few teenagers have what it takes to be a self-confident leader, while all the others doubt themselves for the rest of their lives. Jordana is not particularly beautiful, and she has as little sexual experience as Oliver. In contrast to him, however, she is self-confident. Oliver also supervises his parents. His father (Noah Taylor) looks like an aging hippie, his mother (Sally Hawkins) like a housewife in search of meaning. Oliver knows everything about her sex life because he inspects the light buttons in the house: Bright light: No sex. Matt light: Sex. Usually the light is bright. The mother meets the self-proclaimed mystic Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine), who makes spiritual speeches in a kind of village disco. Oliver suspects his mother of having a relationship with the weirdo. He also wants to have sex with Jordana! Fortunately, Submarine is not a bland teen sex comedy. Debutante Richard Ayoade filmed the whole thing in this egocentric style, which likes to play around with intertitles or such tricks, just to freeze the picture. However, you have to give him credit for the fact that he doesn't desperately try to be especially clever. Submarine captures exactly those delicate moments in life when idealism and trust flourish for the first timid experiments. When Jordana and Oliver kiss, it actually seems as if they are doing it for the first time. Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige are really adorable in their roles, so you almost forget how tasteless many teen movies are! Submarine looks fresh and real, as if it were made by real teenagers! Not by the blunted perspective of an adult trying to remember - Submarine is adolescent in the best sense of the word!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Dario Argento - Suspiria 

"The Only Thing More Terrifying Than The Last 12 Minutes Of This Film Are The First 92"; announced the movie poster by Dario Argentos Suspiria. When we founded our video store, Suspiria was not available on DVD in Germany. Still not today. In the wish box, which I had screwed on before the shop, I found disproportionately often wish lists, which Dario Argento - Suspiria demanded. And rightly so! The high expectations that such a cinema poster arouses are even exceeded by Suspiria! We experience an outburst of sound, and IMAGES and rage and anger! Suspiria combines horror, developed from the gut with avant-garde. Never again did a horror movie look so fantastic! Meanwhile Argento can unfortunately be considered as one of the filmmakers, who run after her old form for decades; but we can probably all agree on Suspiria! During the 1970s and into the 1980s Argento was able to gather behind him a community of geeks with the traits of a sect. Every one of his latest films was expected like a miracle! All over the world Argento was mentioned in the same breath as the greatest Italian directors - but not in Germany. None of his classics were accessible to us, so we Berliners went to the Videodrom to borrow imported VHS. To see Argento too! Just in time, on my 18th birthday, I stood in the Videodrom (and not in school) to have a membership card made. Like so many before him, Argento began as a critic and screenwriter (he wrote the script for Once_Upon_A_Time_In_The_West). From 1970 he established himself with his own films in the Giallo area. Argento's career began with an uncanny success, which was surpassed by two others. Like any good auteur, he tried foreign genres, made a comedy to return to his nerve-shattering shocks. In the mid-1970s he decided to expand his style. Argento dedicated himself to the supernatural, discovered Suspiria de Profundis by Thomas De Quincey from 1845 and wrote based on the novel Suspiria. By the way, together with his girlfriend, the actress Daria Nicolodi. Suspiria opens with a ballet student coming out of the dark night. She studies at the German Dance Academy in Freiburg, a place where schoolgirls are haunted by murderers at night. A series of bizarre incidents culminates in the realization that the founder of the school was a witch. Are we even dealing with a dance school? Or are we in a witches' Sabbath? Argento had traditionally told his Giallo films before Suspiria. Here he decided to sacrifice everything we are used to in conventional structures. Suspiria is a sensation! Suspiria seems like an extremely dark adult version of the fairy tales we feared as children. A film like a nightmare that also follows the logic of a dream. A work of art that gets out of control! Visually, Suspiria appears like a baroque painting, although here too all borders are crossed. I think Argento used everything that was on the market in terms of filters, visual concepts, mirrors and light effects, chases after what's happening with the camera, doesn't give us a break. Which film was so far ahead of its time? Famous are the pictures of the murders, which seem like decadent arrangements. Right at the beginning, the camera moves into the body of a murdered girl to the heart that was punctured. In general, Argento staged the series of murders at the ballet school like a ballet. Splatter becomes art here, the most eerie moments are also the most enchanting. Argento has therefore been accused of being an enemy of women: beautiful women are stabbed in breathtaking sets. However, in Suspiria it is almost exclusively women who play with such charismatic stars as Jessica Harper, Jon Bennett and Alida Valli, who had long since made film history. The stylistic excess with which Suspiria ends in the apocalypse finally makes us realize that Argento had sounded out his style in its entirety. Was there any more? I don't think so! After all, Suspiria is the first part of a trilogy that ended in 1980 with Inferno and in 2007 with Mother Of Tears. Of course, the successor is even more exaggerated and even less interested in action or logic. We also understand a little bit Argentos decline, because basically nobody wanted to see Mother Of Tears anymore. But Suspiria is a unique cinematic experiment that has been passed down from generation to generation. One of the great classics in the history of cinema!