FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Tom Tykwer - 3 

In another vulgar genre, Tom Tykwer's 3 would be called a "Threesome" - but this is the Arthaus treatment of the same theme. In Tykwer's film there are also a number of sex scenes, but in his case the orgasms turn out sad and desperate. Less ecstatic. The focus is on a couple from Berlin who are about 40 years old and live in a committed relationship. Hanna (Sophie Rois) presents on TV and Simon (Sebastian Schipper) does business with art. They are not married, but who is? After 20 years they understand each other blindly, but the excitement of first love is gone. One evening Hanna goes out for a drink and Simon learns that he has testicular cancer. But he can't reach Hanna and time is running out, because Simon now has to have an operation. He refuses a general anaesthetic. In the meantime Hanna has met Adam (Devid Striesow). One thing leads to another; they end up in bed together. Soon afterwards, Simon meets Adam at the swimming pool. Unwittingly. The men talk about testicular cancer and have sex. Adam, by the way, is not a guy who could have come out of a Pasolini film, but a friendly man with a warm smile. Adam is not bisexual, more of an accommodating man. We learn more about Hanna and Simon's life through the flashbacks that Tykwer loves so much. In this way he can visualize ideas and possibilities as he did in his best films. Above all Tykwer can show how two parallel love affairs develop. And aren't all Tykwer films mainly about the medium FILM itself? What is decisive is that Adam has not the slightest idea that Hanna and Simon are a couple. He likes both and both like him. All three of them don't want to hurt anyone. They got themselves into a situation in the middle of their lives... Three is about affection, not lust. Because the one you are with, you love even more when you are NOT with him.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Gaspar Noe - Climax 

Gaspar Noe, full-time provocateur, has made a new film that will split his audience. As always. Climax is of course not a "real" horror movie (contrary to the imdb genre definition) and also not as horrible as earlier works of Noes. Nevertheless, it's a movie you should watch at night. As a video retailer I advise: Climax is not a film you experience in daylight. I am and I have never been a friend of Gaspar Noes, but I was all the more surprised to enjoy Climax! Here we try to translate the uninterrupted energy of the protagonists through imagery. The music fits to this: very restless. The plot is simple: During a party a dance group mixes sangria with LSD and chaos develops. The pre-LSD half of the film is even stronger, thanks to the incredible dance sequences. Who knows, maybe Noe should direct a teen dance film? In Climax at least, he follows the dramaturgy of such films, divides the action into a series of dance numbers. In between, there are "solos" and interview sequences of the individual dancers (who are probably also "real" dancers). Here we learn more about their passions and fears. Then LSD is swallowed and Climax develops into a group number. Some will have noticed that Climax is less ambitious than earlier Gaspar Noe movies. But very effective! At least for those who wouldn't mind being trapped for a limited time in a house with stumbling young people.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Pieces Of April 

Here comes a Thanksgiving movie! It's about loving each other in the family and getting together again. In spite of everything. Pieces Of April was the role model for a whole indie direction that is about dysfunctional families. They argue, but in the end they reconcile - somehow. In the end it goes well for everyone. Only not for the turkey. - Two and a half parallel stories are told. The first is about how the Burns family travels from the suburbs to New York. At Thanksgiving they want to visit their daughter April. She lives as a punk in N.Y. Story two is about how April, who has never cooked anything in her life, tries to do just that. Story Three sends her boyfriend on an almost hopeless mission. Katie Holms plays the tattooed April, the shame of her family. Derek Luke gives her boyfriend - one of a kind with whom nothing ever works. The parents are Jim Burns (Oliver Platt) and Joy (Patricia Clarkson), but the film focuses entirely on the mother and daughter relationship. Joy suffers from breast cancer and in all probability this will be her last Thanksgiving. But her own mortality is a nice opportunity for Joy to spread her own humor. After the punk rock rebellion, April's apartment looks like a dump, but her boyfriend convinces her that it's enough for Thanksgiving Dinner. It's just stupid that April's oven is broken, which leads to a mission through the broken neighborhood. Whose stove still works? A nice and funny odyssey, which reminds us that in America everyone is an immigrant (whether Chinese or "American"). But then the movie ends abruptly, just as if the money had run out. Maybe it was like that? on wikipedia you can read that Pieces Of April only cost 300.000 Dollars and Holmes renounced her fee. The pictures also seem as if the cameraman didn't have time. Apart from that, however, it became a lively and likeable comedy that even conveys human insights! I think Pieces Of April was a matter close to the heart of director Peter Hedges. He (who also wrote the script) wrote something about his liver. Beautiful!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Jim Jarmusch - Down By Law 

Down By Law is about cheap whiskey and black coffee. About taking any dirty job and living the life of a complete loser. Only girls offer some variety. Together: a pimp, an unemployed DJ and a confused tourist from Italy. They escape from prison, make their way through the swamps of Louisiana and search for a breakfast place. Filmed by copy & past from blues songs, prison movies and old thrillers. "It's a sad and beautiful world," someone noticed. Right. Can you choose not to be a loser? Can you buy the American dream? Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni will explore these questions. They will meet in a prison cell and become victims of a whole chain of misfortunes. Two of them hate each other. But what is hatred against this all over happy and satisfied Italian? In any case, they escape together, drag themselves through the swamps and encounter every single cliché that seems possible. They may be there in Louisiana, but in reality they're in an art world borrowed from "pulp novels" and "film noir" classics. A grim film, but infused with serenity. Are we even supposed to take all this seriously? Like every Jim Jarmusch film, Down By Law sometimes suffers from lengths. And by being too busy with its hip surface instead of actually trying to have some real conversations. But Down By Law is an original and probably gets better with every run!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Charles Burnett - Killer Of Sheep 

Nothing is more difficult than the depiction of normal life in a movie. Especially because we are used to "storytelling" from so many other works: ...patterns of narration and certain actions that come up again and again. Or do film characters behave like real people? Charles Burnett, however, shows the normal everyday routine. He demonstrates a life in poverty that leaves people no freedom of choice. He shows the life of a family from Watts, which is bound by strong values but without opportunities. The life of this family ends in nowhere. Just like the movie. Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) works in the slaughterhouse. He works to the point of exhaustion. In the evening, at home, he repairs the sink and the like. His wife (Kaycee Moore) is beautiful but tired. When Stan comes home, she freshens up her make-up for him (which he doesn't even notice). In a casual sequence of episodes we get to know her children, her neighbours, her life. We see nothing and everything at the same time. Filmed in black and white, which gives us a feeling of resignation. This is how Killer Of Sheep became a classic - which hardly anyone knows. Take a test and enter it on Netflix. Of course no hit. Our colleague Thomas Groh, however, created the DVD version in a cardboard cover for our video store. As a USA import with a regional code 1, which you can see with a code free player (for example a very cheap DVD player) or by getting instructions on DVD-sucht.de. Burnett's movie was made as a graduation film. For no money. That's why you could hardly see it already in 1978. You can find the whole story of its creation on www.killerofsheep.com. Now when you watch our DVD, you should be prepared. Relaxed. One scene follows the other with no apparent pattern. In addition, the music of the great Dinah Washington is played, because on a deeper level Killer Of Sheep also wants to be a film about African-American music. Music by and about Afro-Americans. Again and again the life of the adults is interrupted by the playing children. But they are playing in a wasteland full of garbage! A child is beaten and bleeds. Stan's work is also bloody, because he kills sheep in the slaughterhouse. A terrible job. Stan slits their throats and watches the blood flow out. Then two strangers come and try to implicate Stan in a crime. They are sent away. Charles Burnett himself grew up in Watts. He's one of America's greatest filmmakers, but not one who ever made a hit. Like no other, he is able to capture the empty hot summer days in Mississippi. When the windows are open and the dust settles in. A life in the ghetto, but not the ghetto with guns and drugs that we know from other films. The ghetto is a place for good, hard-working people who try to make ends meet, raise their children and get some sleep.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Amelie 

Amelie Poulain, a cheerful fantasy about a girl with a sad childhood, who grew up to be a shy woman, to cheer up the needy and give herself the greatest joy. It's one of those movies that makes you smile, you think about it afterwards. Amelie Poulain, this is Audrey Tautou. She looks like someone who knows a secret (but can't keep it). As a girl, she hungers for love because her father never kisses or caresses her. As a doctor, he only touches her when he examines her daughter, which in turn makes her tremble with happiness. Her mother committed suicide in Notre Dame (but that doesn't reveal as much about the plot as we would expect from this symbolism). Anyway, Amelie grew up lonely and alone. She works as a waitress in a bistro. It was the death of Princess Diana that changed her whole life. Amelie is shocked to drop a teapot and knock a hole in the floor. She finds a boy's box that traces his whole life. Amelie decides at this moment to make other people happy. And in every respect! That in turn would give her a life full of joy. Who still remembers how Amelie wasn't allowed to run in Cannes (too little serious, according to the serious explanation), but then the audience was enraptured at festivals and rated number 54 of the best films on imdb. That says a lot about Amelie, who gives people so much pleasure and kindness. Virtuously staged in a Paris that is not the "real" modern one, but one we know from fairy tales. A clean, colourful, luminous Paris as it was designed in Hollywood in the 50s and never existed. So Amelie gives the owner of the box his happiness and decides to do it with other people. Then she meets Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz), who works in a porn shop. Nino has a strange hobby: he collects the pictures of photo machines that have been thrown away and makes missed collages from them. Nino sees Amelie in her cafe and she literally dissolves (in the true sense!). She is in love with Nino, but much too shy to talk to him (Amelie instead becomes a true stalker). Amelie Poulain, a masterpiece full of ideas. For example the picture Amelies on Montmartre. She wonders how many Parisians have an orgasm at the same time? Then we see them all in an amusing montage. Of course, as a video store I don't produce films myself, I just watch them. Nevertheless, I can imagine that there is nothing more difficult than to make such an agile and charming comedy! A tightrope act full of kitsch and quirks and Jean-Pierre Jeunet manages everything! Amelie Poulin becomes our girlfriend, the film becomes a single invitation. 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Yorgos Lanthimos - The Killing of A Sacred Deer 

Yesterday my Cinegeek partner called me just to let me know that the new Lanthimos movie is not as good as the previous ones. The time has come: Yorgos Lanthimos, the most original auteur of recent years, is now being sawed! Wrongly, of course. My Cinegeek partner should polish his glasses and look at The Killing Of A Sacred Deer again. It's about a man who plays God and a boy who decides to give the devil. Everything is metaphorical here. Lanthimos creates an impossible situation to make human fears perceptible, even clear. The result is a hypnotic horror film that asks questions we simply can't think of any good answers. Is something like a happy ending possible in this bizarre situation? Lanthimos unites really great actors in front of the camera and proves once again his love for detail. Not as good as his previous movies? Nonsense, the best movie of the year! Colin Farrell, a little gray, plays Dr. Steven Murphy, a respectable surgeon. Murphy's side, his gorgeous wife Anna (Nicole Kidman). He has two children too. Murphy is friends with Martin (Barry Keoghan), a 16-year-old boy whose father died years ago on Murphy's operating table. Now Murphy feels like the boy's fatherly friend. Their relationship becomes clear right at the beginning. Both seem strangely distant, then Murphy gives the boy an expensive watch. We don't know anything about either of them at this point, we think it might be about sexual services. But it's even worse... We don't know exactly how Martin's father died. Lanthimos also leaves open how Murphy and Martin got "closer". Murphy introduces the boy as his daughter's friend, but he's not. It is true that Martin makes friends with Murphy's children and probably also has feelings for his daughter. But here too we feel a dark undertone. Something in Dr. Murphy's household just doesn't seem right. One morning Murphy's son tries to get up, but his legs don't work anymore. He refuses to eat. Martin enlightens the doctor: Justice prevails. Murphy took his father, now a member of the doctor's family has to die in return. The doctor may choose: Either he kills one member of his family or a curse hits the rest. They will refuse food and even bleed from their eyes. It almost seems as if a balance is being created here between science and the supernatural. Murphy plays God. He creates and he takes life. His world is black and white. Martin destroys this controlled world and demands something that is rarely demanded of gods: A personal sacrifice. The Killing of a Sacred Deer plays in a world of clear lines and white spaces. In a hospital world. Later, the title of the film is also revealed when one of the protagonists writes an essay on Iphigenia. Who else knows it from school? Well, we are almost a Greek bar, so many Greek colleagues work for us. All keen on Greek mythology and ready to help out briefly: It was Artemis, the god of hunting, who imposed Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. It is said to be Agamemnon's "Sacred Deer". Agamemnon was the ruler of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks against Troy. In fact, he enjoyed a similar status to Murphy within his family. Does that make Martin Artemis? But even here clear lines are missing. Lanthimos plays with the Greek myth and uses his black humor for his psycho-horror. What remains in the end? I think if you choose to play God, you have to be willing to take the consequences.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Krzysztof Kieslowski - A Short film About Killing 

It was in the late 80s that Krzysztof Kieslowski, together with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, created one of the greatest works in film history: The Decalogue, including A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing. Structured like a TV series in one-hour episodes, but undeniably in the visual language of cinema, The Decalogue transcends the boring debate about whether cinema or television (and today streaming) is better. In our box set, you now get all the episodes and get to decide for yourself whether it's big screen or small screen. Even harder: try to put the Decalogue into words. A ten-part series based on the 10 Commandments but going far beyond its structure. Some episodes deal with several commandments and it is never explicitly explained which one exactly. Commandment No. 5 "Thou shalt not kill" forms the basis for episode 5 "A Short Film About Killing". A harrowing episode that questions the death penalty as well as murder. But is it even possible to make films about individual commandments in an increasingly complex world? Won't everything be connected to everything else? It is. Kieslowski films like a good teacher. Like a good father. A decent man who takes care of all of us as if we were his children. And so we too feel something like parental affection! He creates just such a character in the Decalogue; a kindly professor who programmes together with his son. Is he playing God? But Kieslowski would never turn his own characters into villains. He always shows compassion. We feel this compassion for all his characters. He never wants to show us something like sin in the modern world. All of Kieslowski's characters are deeply flawed, but always traceable to something greater than themselves. Kieslowski is interested in general human experience, not in any kind of denigration of the godless. Try watching several episodes in a row. An act of almost overwhelming power! All the episodes take place in the same apartment complex. So sometimes we meet the characters from episode 4 again in episode 2. Then you start to notice thematic lines.... Those who, just like me, are exhausted by films that don't really like their characters deserve to enjoy Kieslowski's cinema! It's always about kindness and compassion! A togetherness! Kieslowski gets involved with the people in his films. And so we are also allowed to discover something of ourselves in his characters. And what we see changes us. Even more: The Decalogue changes with us as we grow older. Look at the work again in ten years and you will see it from a completely new perspective. You discover something new! Dekalog was indispensable in the 80s, just as it was in the 00s and just as it is today. Dekalog will always be indispensable!