FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Sophia Coppola - The Virgin Suicides 

Why were the nurses locked up, anyway? But that is the wrong question. They are. More important is the question of how they see the pubescent boys from the neighbourhood. Every teenage girl sees the world pink at some point. She feels like a princess in front of a shining sky. But The Virgin Suicides is told by an adult. He looks back 25 years to Michigan. And he says "we". He speaks for all the boys who also lived in the suburb and looked up to the imprisoned sisters. The title tells us that the girls killed each other. That may be why the customers who rent the DVD from our video store always talk about the girls. But what about the other awkward sex? The "we"? I think The Virgin Suicides is about the "we" - the boys. Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett) is the leader and he is blinded by the most beautiful sister Lux (Kirsten Dunst). Who still remembers the seventh grade: There was always the one couple who already had sex. Here it's Lux and Trip. The next morning she wakes up alone. She's lying on the football field. The end of puberty, the beginning of life. The platonic ideal gives way to the exchange of bodily fluids. Life means disillusionment. Trip does not leave Lux because he is such a pig. He leaves her because his ideal of her had to break. Lux is now real. That's why the girls kill each other. Not because of their horrible parents, but because their dream has fallen apart. Before sex and after sex. The idealism of inexperience. Like in the seventh grade. We were not in love with girls, but with love itself. Of course the mother (Kathleen Turner) is hysterical and makes her beautiful daughters dresses that look like sacks. The father (James Woods), a scientist who prefers to talk about photosynthesis, plays no role. They are bad parents, but not the trigger for suicide. With this, her debut, Sofia Coppola follows the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. She has the courage not to fill the blanks of the original! There is enough room for us in The Virgin Suicides. The girls who live imprisoned at home are adored by the neighbor boys. Then the sex comes along and reveals something brutal and animal. Before, neither the sisters nor the boys existed. Only in their minds. Then they become "adults" = they look for happiness that does not exist.

Coming Of Age incl. FREE STREAMS 

Not fully grown, unfinished, the hero of the coming-of-age film orients himself in the world. He experiences his first love, friendship or despairs of his parents' house. New Hollywood classics like The Graduate, The Last Picture Show or American Graffiti are the models of a search for meaning that is often characterised by laconic humour. Coming of Age films are by no means an American phenomenon, they exist all over the world. They result from the fact of a rapid coming of age to early maturity, although everyday life with work, marriage and children is pushed further and further back. 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya 

Teona Strugar Mitevskas film is about violence against women. The weapons: Words and gestures. This is how the conversation between Petrunya (Zorica Nusheva) and her boss works: That her study of history is useless and that she can't even fuck. That's why Petrunya jumps into the water on Epiphany Day and pulls out the holy cross. And only men are allowed to do that! Actually. It should be the beginning of her martyrdom. The film is based on a true event from the north of Macedonia. In fact, a woman grabbed the cross and was chased by a mob mob, as you can read in the Berlinale text on the film. The film doesn't want to portray this incident quietly and subtly, but as a confrontation. Underlaid with heavy metal. We experience a patriarchal society on the level of the Middle Ages. The state is not secular, men and women are unequal. Therefore Petrunya is brought to the police. There they discuss with the priest what should happen now. Hate strikes against her. At the precinct, from her own mother. Petrunya is constantly expected to be attacked. Zorica Nusheva plays this woman as a true heroine, who is not mistakenly heroized here. She does nothing but simply stand up for herself. And what will happen to her in the future? Maybe she will experience a year of happiness like the catcher of the cross is entitled to.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Berlin Mumblecore: Philipp Eichholtz - Liebe Mich 

Eventually I had bar shift in our Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo and a nice man with some beard came in. Philip Eichholz, Berlin Mumblecore director. With her, a girl who seemed kind of prolific. I thought, where did he get it? What does he want with her in a movie? Now I know it: Create a star of the street! How do you do that? Your picture must seem larger than life, as huge as a cinema screen. Sarah (Lilli Meinhardt) fills the whole canvas with her face. She's vulnerable, aggressive and sexual. Sometimes even threatening when she throws a laptop out her ex-boyfriend's closed window. He tried to break up decently or comfortably. Sarah needs drama, though, and that requires items to fly out. Sarah doesn't want to be abandoned, she wants to be loved. It was her own laptop, by the way, so she takes the junk and tries to get it repaired. The nice salesman reacts to Sarah just like I do in the store. In any case, her job as a graphic designer no longer turns into anything, because her data is in the piece of junk. Sarah always stands in her own way. Her father explains to her that this is probably "the solution of a brain amputee" and he is not completely wrong either. Fortunately, Eichholtz does not want to tell us a medical history, but that of a young Berlin woman with great feelings. Everything would be hers, she wants to have a lot of fun here and now! Because she's sexy and young, she always meets new men and destroys everything that's about to happen. Over and over again. Sarah feels lonely, alone or with others. When Eichholtz and his team shot a new film with Lilli Meinhardt in our shop, I noticed that instead of a script only a few sheets of paper were flying around. Meinhardt lay sunken with his head on the bar. Maybe she was asleep, too. Then turn again. Suddenly she seemed present. The camera loves her face. Your story touches us. She touches us. Thanks from here!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Herr Lehmann 

Mr. Lehmann, whose real name is Frank, sleeps little and drinks a lot. He is a bartender at the "Einfall" (the "Einfall", that is the "Madonna" in the Wiener Strasse, which today adorns the postal code 10999 and formerly Kreuzberg 36). Mr. Lehmann is often asked what he does for a living. Mr Lehmann does not understand this. He is a bartender. Yes, but OWNLY; if you ask him again. Barkeeper, actually. I find that very realistic, because many people have completely forgotten the equation from the Tom Cruise film "Cocktail": "A bartender is the aristocrat of the working class." Compared to "Cocktail" the film "Herr Lehmann" knows a lot about bars and also about alcohol. To the outside, the "Einfall" or "Madonna" looks like a run-down drinking hall - but the inmates of the "Einfall" believe they are some kind of bourgeoisie. But at least Mr. Lehmann's best friend Karl (Detlev Buck) ends up in a mental hospital, because his nights became too long after all. For a bartender - the movie knows this, too - it's not easy to find love. Mr. Lehmann falls in love with the beautiful cook Katrin (Katja Danowski), but... Sometime the wall falls. "They're all coming over now", says a drunkard. Mr Lehmann remains unmoved as always: "First drink up". That really happened. All of Berlin was on its feet in 1989, just not Kreuzberg. A few autonomous people went over to occupy a few houses in Mainzer Strasse. But most stay west of the border. And for a few years you could rent apartments here in Reichenberger Str. Actually Kreuzberg has always been a village and what the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't want to know. The most amazing thing about the film (which is based on the novel of the same name by Element Of Crime singer Sven Regener) is the art of turning Kreuzberg 2003 back into Kreuzberg 1989. Many facades had long since been renovated! Kreuzberg 1989 looked no different from the GDR. With coal stoves in the apartments. Kreuzberg 2003 was already a mum's district, where there was even latte macchiato. But I had privately boycotted the film for a long time anyway, because I didn't want the MTV presenter (!!!) Christian Ulmen to play Mr. Lehmann. Today I like him. Even if you see a few beautiful houses with facades in the background...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Robert Bresson - Au Hasard Balthasar 

The donkey Balthasar will have many more owners, but the first one is called Marie (Anne Wiazemsky). And we are already in the middle of the work of a real cinema saint and his most heart-rending film is called Au Hasard Balthazar: Robert Bresson. It follows the life of Balthazar from birth to death. Balthasar lives in the dignity of being himself: a mute animal, noble, accepting a life over which he has no control. But he is not a humanized animal, he cannot speak or sing. He is a donkey. That's how it is. As a newborn, he takes his first steps. Three children splash water on his head and baptize him. Can only humans go to heaven? No, all creatures. From now on, Belthazor will have many owners. Some good, but all flawed. In memory of the drunkard in the village. He's very good to Belthazor. He takes his name from Marie. Unfortunately, there is a gang of boys who torture the donkey, and Marie does nothing about it. Marie's father is a proud man. Too proud. He never writes receipts, and in the end, it drives him to bankruptcy. Balthasar goes into the possession of the baker and the baker boy (the head of the gang) tortures and maltreats the animal cruelly. He ties a piece of newspaper to the tail of the donkey, which finally collapses. But the drunkard Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert) saves Balthasar, straightens him up again. He is hired out as a circus animal, a donkey that can count. Then he becomes the property of a hermit and even finds Marie again. But Marie is weak. She will not marry the boy who truly loves her, but the cruel baker's boy. And we experience all this through the eyes of Balthazar. What WE see through his eyes: A small village, full of flawed people. In their world, love is unusual, but cruelty is easily obtained. And what does Belthazor see? There's not a single moment in time that will tell us. Other movie animals may roll their eyes, but Balthasar sees things like a beast of burden. His life is all about carrying things. He may or may not feel pain. Everything else is out of his control. Sometimes he screams harshly, like a donkey roars. Is that a complaint or just the sound of an animal? Belthazor never reacts with his cries either. He's not a cartoon animal. The donkey has no way to reveal itself. Nevertheless, we look into his big eyes and feel compassion for every experience the donkey makes. As in all his films, Robert Bresson invites us to draw conclusions about his characters. Conclusions that are our own. His cinema is pure empathy! To this end, he applies extremely strict stylistic restrictions to avoid artificially amplifying our emotions. He forbids the actors to act. Whoever reads more about him (for example, the fantastic book by Paul Schrader) learns that Bresson repeated his settings so often that all acting disappeared from them. The actors were simply supposed to perform certain actions and speak their words. Everything is simplified to the action and the word. There's no inflection, no style. This is how Bresson achieves a cinema of purity. He does not tell us what we want to feel - and therefore we only feel all the more. There are much stronger feelings than if the actors would feel them for us!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Luis Bunel - Belle De Jour 

Belle De Jour, a film that haunted me over and over again. It's the story of a well-off young woman prostituting herself two or three days a week in a brothel. It's probably the most famous erotic film of the modern age and probably the best! This is because Belle De Jour understands eroticism from the inside. Not just as a sight of naked skin and sweat, but as an imagination. We see the film through the perspective of Severine, a respectable 23-year-old wife, played by Catherine Deneuve. Luis Bunuel spent his entire life making cunning films about the mystery of human nature. He was aware of one essential thing that most other directors would never find out: For a woman like Severine, the erotic aspect doesn't result from who is waiting for her in the room, but simply from her entering the room. Sex, that's what she does with herself. Love is something else. The subject of Severine's passion is always Severine herself. She has a few productive marriages with a young, handsome doctor named Pierre (Jean Sorel). Then there is another friend of the family, the gloomy Henri (Michel Piccoli, who was born to look as if he was suggesting something specific). Henri also feels attracted to Severine; to her blonde perfection, her reserve and cold contempt for his person. Once she rebukes Henri to keep his compliments to himself. Severine's secret is her second life, that she leads in the world of her fantasy. There is a gap between her mysterious smile and what she actually thinks. Bunuel himself also has some room in Belle De Jour for his fetish of feet and shoes - he understands that a fetish is nothing more than a fetish! Severine is a masochist and likes to be treated raw. Some of what excites her is not shown in the film, because it belongs to her alone. Furthermore, we experience the famous fantasy sequences of the film, in which Severine lives out her sexuality. The turning point in her life comes when she hears about a brothel where housewives work in the afternoon. She gets the address from Henri. Severine knocks and an older business woman named Madame Anais (Genevieve Page) opens. At first Severine is insecure, runs away, but she returns. Madame Anais has enough experience to recognize Severine's needs. She knows Severine needs a strong hand. There are no explicit sex scenes in Belle De Jour. Most of all I remember the sequence in which a customer opens a box and shows the content to the ladies. We don't see it and we don't really understand it. We only hear a humming voice... The first prostitute refuses the wish of the customer, Severine also. Cut. What was in the box? What was in the box? Bunuel is not interested in the truth. It's about the symbol: It must have been something extremely important for the customer. Something that had an erotic meaning for him. Then two gangsters come into Madame Anais' brothel. With the younger Severine begins an affair that ironically leads us to the melodramatic finale. Severine feels attracted to the gangster's raw street manners. He belongs to her fantasy world - otherwise he cares little for her. The gangster himself cannot understand that such a woman is interested in him. All the more so for us! Luis Bunuel is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. A surrealist as a young man who views human nature with deep cynicism - not angry, but amused. He was fascinated by the fact that our obsessions have a stronger effect than free will. In many of his films we experience how the characters seem to act freely - but not in reality. Bunuel believed that many people commit themselves early to their sexual ideas and then hold on to them for a lifetime. Severine is such a person. At one point she emphasizes that she doesn't know how to help herself. Severine is lost. She knows that she cheated on her husband with a gangster and regrets it. But she just can't get out of her skin. Her fate seems predestined, like that of her husband, who is not up to his wife's desires. Everything seems inevitable. Once Severine rejects the special practices of a customer. Madame Anais takes her to the next room to look through a peephole and learn. It's disgusting, Severine repels. Then she looks through the hole again.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Kenji Mizoguchi - Ugetsu 

Two brothers, one greedy, the other envious. During a time when the land was devastated by vagabond soldiers, they risk the welfare of their families, risking their lives by pursuing their interests. Kenji Mizoguchi tells her story in this great film - one of the best ever! Although his heroes are rough and uncouth, Ugetsu is a work of elegance and mystery. Even before it becomes clear, we feel that Ugetsu is a work of elegance and mystery: Ugetsu is also a ghost story. Ugetsu is opened by the landscape passing us by, even being rolled up - like a Japanese drawing or a scroll. We see a village. Heavy branches lie on the roofs of the houses so that the wind does not carry the roofs away. We get to know Genjuro (Masayuki Mori), a potter and Tobei (Eitaro Ozawa), a farmer. Shots fired from afar, the army approaches. Genjuro's wife begs him not to ride into town. Not in these times! She asks him to protect her and her son. But with the excitement of a fool, Genjuro insists on the ride. Tobei, just as crazy, insists on accompanying him. Genjuro returns with gold coins. He has captured a factory in the city. His wife, on the other hand, tries to make it clear to him that new clothes could never outweigh her love for him. But Genjuro has only one thing in mind: money, money and even more money. Almost furiously he gets back to work. Tobei meets a great samurai. He would like to ride along, but is chased away as a stupid farmer without armour. Soon the two men decide to go into town again - out of fear for their possessions. This time they want to cross the lake in a boat because it seems safer to them. The scene at the lake, it's the most wonderful one in the whole movie! In front of us a world full of haze and fog. The lonely boatman gives a warning of pirates. Genjuro leaves his wife and child behind at the coast, Tobei accompanies him. In the city Genjuro's work quickly pays off and so he is invited to the castle of the beautiful Lady Wakasa. She is impersonated by Machiko Kyo, one of the greatest Japanese stars ever! Meanwhile Tobei also leaves his family alone. Stupid and clumsy as he is, he kills a samurai and steals a skull. Thanks to this trophy he is honored by the top samurai with a following. The troop's way leads to the house of the Geishas, where Tobei finds out that his wife was raped and abducted by soldiers. She now works as a geisha. Meanwhile Genjuro is spellbound by Lady Wakasa's appearance. Her beauty, which, he says, is unparalleled in the world! Lady Wakasa praises the simplicity and perhaps he should have felt warned because he hears the voice of her dead father. He is whispered to leave his village and marry the beautiful one... Mizoguchi held the theory that a scene should be filmed in a shot. We know this view from great Japanese films of the time with the difference that Mizoguchi's camera never stays. It seems to float, moving through space, which is as beguiling as it is poetic. Morbidly the scenes in Lady Wakasa's castle as a priest sees Genjuro's face. Frightened, he stammers, one would see death in it! Something is there on his skin! They are symbols of an exorcism! Of course Lady Wakasa is a ghost, which we never doubted. Finally we also realize that her castle is in truth a ruin. In Ugetsu, however, there is a second spirit that appears quite unexpectedly. Just at the moment when both men return to their village and hope for forgiveness from their wives for their male blindness... The characters in Ugetsu are down-to-earth. But I would understand it as a comic character. However, the story itself seems to be taken from the old days of Japanese ghost theatre. Unlike western horror movies, Mizoguchi never tries to scare us. It's something else that drives him. Something very kind! At the end we saw a fable, but we also witnessed the ordinary life.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Michael Cimino - Year Of The Dragon 

Sometimes when I watch another lackluster netflix film, I wish the controversial Michael Cimino was back! Remember, he became a Hollywood star with his second film, the Vietnam epic The Deer Hunter in 1978, only to mutate into Hollywood's ultimate pariah with his third film, the late Western Heaven's Gate. Paramount let him have his way during the filming of Heaven's Gate, Cimino enjoyed absolute fool's freedom. The result outraged and angered audiences and critics; from then on, all financial backers kept their distance. Cimino was now more in charge of the most shameful box office flop ever. That was 1980, but of course Heaven's Gate is much grander and more insane than what is cheaply produced on the lackluster streaming services. Cimino made a full seven films and his career resembled one of decline. After all, Heaven's Gate was such a disaster that it was pulled from the schedule after just one week! a $36 million disaster! In the end, the studio itself went under and was bought out by MGM. Heaven's Gate is therefore also considered the end point of the New Hollywood auteur movement, in which the director claimed full control over his work. It wasn't until five years later that Cimino was allowed to make another film. Year Of The Dragon based on a screenplay he wrote with Oliver Stone. Mickey Rourke plays the policeman Stanley White, who has made it his personal mission to break up organized crime in New York's Chinatown. In particular, the organization of the outwardly charming triad leader Joey Tai (John Lone). The conflict escalates and many people die (including White's wife and his mistress, a reporter). Everything they ever owned White and Tai destroy until they turn on each other on a railroad bridge in the finale. Two primordial machos firing MPs at each other. Cimino completed Year Of The Dragon on time and on budget. And yet there were accusations that he was portraying the Asian community in a racist way (an accusation he may also be accused of in The Deer Hunter). It's true; Cimino's Asians seem lifted from age-old reactionary Hollywood films. Although Year Of The Dragon received fairly good reviews, it was shut down and pulled from the schedule because of the accusation. Stupidly, the controversy wasn't enough to draw viewers to the cinema either. Those who see it again today may admire the ingenious balance of action and quiet moments. Some shootouts are so grotesquely exaggerated that you rub your eyes. Other passages showcase life in Chinatown. And Mickey rourke goes so all out in his performance that you can't help but find his villainous character White fascinating nonetheless. Unfortunately, Year Of The Dragon was to be Cimino's last major directorial effort. Works follow, all of which I cannot recommend. Not even on DVD. It can almost be called Cimino's signature to mercilessly overload his films and make them too ornate. He throws all the individual parts up in the air, only to put them back together again illogically. Watch Rourke's hair, which keeps changing color. His White sometimes speaks of Chinese, then again of Vietnamese as if that were interchangeable. A John Wayne statue is enthroned in his room. Year Of The Dragon is as poor in emotion as it is in reason. Instead, everything appears here in a huge extravagant mass-staff! Michael Cimino simply could not make a normal film. 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Lola 

At the very beginning we see a black and white picture of Adenauer. This is accompanied by the awful music of Freddy Quinn. Adenauer was chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 63. We see him half lying there on a couch while he listens to a tape recorder. Perhaps he is listening to Mozart or Bach? But certainly not the truth of what was happening out there in the young Federal Republic during the 1950s. Out there, where the new free market system is establishing itself. At that time, when the cities were disfigured with evil new buildings, bribes flowed, cheated and possibly murdered. It was shortly before his death in 1981 that Fassbinder completed Lola from his BRD trilogy. Similar to Maria Braun, Lola became a bitter satire in garish art colors. It deals with the West German economic miracle. In retrospect, Fassbinder's film is even sadder than I remembered. This must have been during the 90s when I unconditionally watched ALL Fassbinder films. This is not the coming-of-age work of an already burned-out genius. It is the work of the most important German filmmaker at the zenith of his skills! He had refined his methods, which were known from earlier films, and at the same time developed new ones. Fassbinder could have continued to work like this for decades! Of course, The Blue Angel serves as a model. The uptight elderly teacher who falls in love with the nightclub singer Lola. But the similarities remain superficial. Fassbinder's Lola is set in 1955 in a small German town, where developers and politicians profitably develop all sorts of resources. Then newly appointed construction commissioner Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl) steps into their midst. Well-born, attractive with elegant manners. Above all, Bohm amazes with his idealism. Meanwhile, the construction entrepreneur Schuckert (Mario Adorf) consorts with Lola (Barbara Sukowa) in the town's whorehouse. Lola is Schluckert's mistress and the mother of an illegitimate child. But she is just as ambitious as everyone else in town. Lola is amused by the way Schluckert - the pig - allows himself to be intimidated by Bohm. And she is annoyed that Schluckert claims that she, the whore, could never attract the interest of an aristocrat like Bohm. Therefore, over champagne, Lola bets that Bohm will kiss her hand in public.... Fassbinder shows more interest in analyzing the rotten political system than his characters. Lola is nevertheless rich in emotional detail! Especially Lola herself, who never reveals her profession or the fact that her mother is Bohm's housekeeper, offers quite a lot of drama. Lola is genuinely attracted to Bohm. Yet she never loses sight of her goal of becoming one of "them." A part of the bourgeoisie. And how she achieves that is one of the film's greatest surprises! 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jacques Rivette - Duelle 

Does cinema still seem like a dream? No, it has long since died out. And the attempt to reconstruct the dreamlike usually fails miserably. In the past, people used forms from other narrative forms or completely reinvented them. Nostalgia, memory, legend, dream. This is the universal drive of cinema: To experience a mystery unadulterated. In surrealism, characters often symbolize the desire to impose something like order on the general chaos. A pattern. So there is a kind of other film, an unreal one, that takes place while seeing real ones. We see more than what appears on the screen. This is precisely why many view cinephelie with suspicion, because in this discipline cinema seems like a remnant of times long past, like the last vestige of mysticism. In Jacques Rivette's work, the characters are often in a state of absolute euphoria or mania. They experience the world like prehistoric beings. Every experience is shattered. Duels has no center. There are a variety of recurring themes and life seems like a game. Those who are freaked out enter this round dance. Rivette's game is littered with paradoxes, doublings. Again and again, the game becomes reality. Subliminally. It seems a bit like a continuation of Celine and Julie. Here, too, young and beautiful women meet by chance, take on the role of amateur detectives in a case with a possibly metaphysical dimension. It all begins as a play in a seedy hotel lobby. The second girl shows up and inspires the first girl to do detective work. Only after a while does it dawn on them that this game was serious all along.... At the same time, every shot seems like a dream. Rivette uses codes and everything points back to something bigger. You think Duelle is pointing at the theater curtain to hide it at the same time. Or something like that. In any case, everything in Duelle seems enchanted and at some point you wonder if Paris is the most haunted city.