FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Robert Rodriguez - Once Upon A Time In Mexico 

I think it was Quentin Tarantino who praised his protégé Robert Rodriguez that El Mariachi and Desperado were the equivalent of Sergio Leone's first two dollar films. That is why the conclusion of the Once Upon A Time In Mexico trilogy proudly refers to the model. And just like Leone, Rodriguez had a bigger budget at his disposal for the third part. And just like Leone, Rodriguez is more interested in the moment than the epic. He loves surprising twists and sweaty faces, but he doesn't care about the story. What matters is the plaintive music that makes heroes into heroes in the first place! Oh yes, and just like the original, Once Upon A Time thrives on sensational kills. At one point, Salma Hayek takes out four men with four knives, throwing them all at once. Since Rodriguez never learned to tell a story, he has to borrow set pieces from other films - so we can even understand what's going on. Because we've already seen it a hundred times. In return, he offers strong faces: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Johnny Depp, Eva Mendes, Willem Dafoe and Mickey Rourke or Cheech Marin (one half of the Cheech & Chong duo). At least technically, the plot works as a sequel. Enter the El Mariachi, who lives in exile with his daughter after the death of his wife. Or something like that. A CIA agent (Johnny Depp) tracks him down to stop a plot being hatched by a drug lord (Willem Dafoe). Meanwhile, Mickey Rourke gets to carry a small dog and recite much better dialogue than we're usually used to in Rodriguez films. If you bother to study the credits, you'll notice that Rodriguez is responsible for everything. Script, editing, sound etc. A total filmmaker! He also directed the camera himself. Yet everything seems so simple and improvised that one wonders if Rodriguez will ever feel like telling a real story? 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE La Piscine 

The couple is apparently happy. They live in a villa (which is not theirs) near St Tropez. They smoke cigarettes, make love and bathe in the bluest water in film history. A sunny idyll, right? But then another man shows up - supposedly a friend of the two - with his beautiful 18-year-old daughter. Old resentments erupt, cracks open up in the couple's relationship. -Groll turns to hostility and hostility turns to violence.... So simple the premise for Jacques Deray's famous thriller. Everything here seems cliché! But instead we get to see the beautiful Romy Schneider and the handsome Alain Delon as Marianne and Jean-Paul! And when old friend Harry (Maurice Ronet) and his daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin) show up, the sex appeal goes through the roof (and I'm not even taking Harry's new Maserati into account). For an hour, La Piscine is basically enough to show Schneider, Delon and Birkin from this angle and that. Water beads over tanned skin, eyes full of lust (and inertia). Perfect bodies glide through the ultra blue water and loll at the edge of the pool. Anyone driving through Berlin Hermsdorf or Frohnau today will notice these pop-up pools. A real pool, however, is recessed into the ground. Like La Piscine. Only a pool recessed into the ground is luxury, not a pop-up paddling pool. Only in a luxury pool will you meet Romy Schneider! While we, as voyeurs, are drawn in by the film's visual charms, we don't notice the pitfalls of the script at first. Passively aggressive observations, ambiguous compliments and quite incidentally we learn that both Marianne and Jean-Paul are writers. He can't make a living from it, though. Irony of fate; Schneider and Delon were actually a couple. For a year THE it-couple of the film world were engaged, until Delon wrote a one-liner to say goodbye. "Gone to Mexico with Nathalie". And yet the chemistry of the two stars still works five years after their separation. Incidentally, the role of Marianne also meant a breakthrough for Schneider, and NOT as Sissi! In fact, La Piscine is a much better thriller than many think! 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Gus Van Sant - My Own Private Idaho 

A person suffering from narcolepsy is dependent on the help of his environment. If he stays asleep somewhere on the street, someone has to carry him away. River Phoenix plays Mike Waters the narcoleptic in Gus van Sant's drama. It's hard for him to really get involved, because sleep can overpower him at any time. Needless to say, the illness is not conducive to Mike's work as a prostitute. Mike lives in an unreal world, his own. We have to imagine it like he's on drugs. He exists outside the calendar that applies to us - within his own conditions. Phoenix embodies him as a fool, as a clownish figure. His only attention is to Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves), another hustler. One comes from a rich family, the other from poor backgrounds. The origin of both, however, is irrelevant for the time they now spend together: Letting themselves drift through strange cars and hotel rooms, taking on fantasy roles, chatting for hours in coffee shops... They are something like sex outlaws of life on the periphery. If we look for literary role models (and that's what Gus van Sant's film is all about), we find them in the classics, not in psychedelic pop literature. Is the essence of the film even too human comedy? Is it about loneliness and deep sadness, but with the knowledge how ridiculous every human feeling is in the end? Isn't what we perceive as deadly serious basically absurd? How many of the director's films does My Own Private Idaho play in the northwest, in Portland? There it's the outsiders who exist on the street that Van Sant pays attention to. There are no big plans for them, only a bed overnight and some change to survive. Mike and Scott meet a wide variety of customers, including the man who keeps his apartment neurotically clean. At one point it almost seems as if they are no longer in Idaho, but in Italy... Although the two main characters are hustlers, My Own Private Idaho is less about sex. I think sex doesn't interest the two prostitutes at all, it's work. Mike is looking for love, but if he is honest, he needs someone to protect him, to hold him. He suffered a lot of mental damage during his childhood, now he's looking for a guardian - whether a man or a woman. We don't get a classic Hollywood plot. The film - just like the life of both of them - does not drift towards a fixed point.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Ken Loach - Land And Freedom 

The Spanish Civil War is essential for every socialist and for the entire history of socialism. Ken Loach pays tribute to this and has made nothing less than one of the best films of its time with Land And Freedom! The story begins in Liverpool in 1994. It begins with the death of Dave Carne. Dave had reached the age of 80, living alone in a tower block. A member of the working class. His granddaughter Kim, a 20-year-old woman, opens a box of memorabilia. They are newspaper cuttings and letters from the time of the workers' movement until the Spanish Civil War. Among the souvenirs is even a handful of Spanish soil, wrapped in red cloth (of course). Dave (Ian Hart), latterly unemployed and a member of the Communist Party went to Spain at the time to fight loyalists. In Barcelona he joined a Marxist revolutionary group fighting with guns. So we feel ourselves part of this group, fighting side by side with Dave - thanks to Ken Loach's realistic style. The hero even has an affair with a beautiful fighter (Rosana Pastor) and we inevitably think of Hemingway. Dave, however, is not a radiantly beautiful Hollywood hero, but a Ken Loach hero. He has to watch his democratic militia being destroyed by Stalin's henchmen and we learn a lot about Stalin's realpolitik. It should be noted that this is only ever from Dave's perspective, so we don't have to deal with the whole war. The story is told exclusively in flashbacks, so that we perceive the learning process of Dave as well as his granddaughter Kim. Dave's painful lessons never made him a cynic. Until his death, he believes in the basic decency of working people. He believes in their right to control their own destiny. Both individually and collectively. So it is Kim, in a moving scene, who throws the Spanish soil on Dave's grave and raises the red bandana in salute. That is Land And Freedom!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Stephen Frears - The Grifters  

I don't like normal burglars who constantly break into my shop, or those who take my money because they are stronger or more dangerous than me. But I like tricksters, because they steal my money because they are smarter. And there is no trickster who is not likeable, because how else would she get our money? That's why con artist films are so seductive: they ask us a fundamental question of a moral nature. Of course we want justice to prevail - but at the same time we are fascinated by the audacity of the con artist! Con artists are sweet and gentle - and yet harm their victims. In Stephen Frear's The Grifters, however, there are no victims at all, because all those involved are con artists and impostors. Frears has translated the novel from the 1950s into the present day. This works because the underlying story is universal. It's about a love triangle. Here come: Lover + lover + authority figure who wants to separate the lovers. The lover is a con man named Roy Dillon (John Cusack). The lover's name is Myra Langtry (Annette Bening); she is young and sexy (and presumably older than she lets on). She is certainly more dangerous than Roy suspects! The authority figure is Roy's mother Lily (Anjelica Huston), who has been cheating since early childhood. She sees everyone as a potential victim, including her son, of course. Myra has been around a lot, worked as a decoy for many big con men. Lily works mainly at the racetrack - of course. Roy is not in Lily's league and spends his time on petty stuff. At one point we see him trying to change a $20 note in a bar and.... Anyway, the bartender catches him and beats up Roy. At the hospital, Myra and Lily meet for the first time. extend their claws. At that moment, Roy doesn't know he's doomed. Myra and Lily, however, care more about winning than loving (if they know the concept of love at all). And Roy? Perhaps he lives all too easily? The Grifters was the first American production by Stephen Frears, who was part of the new wave in England during the 80s. Have a look in our director section in the basement: My Beautiful Laundrette (DVD9349), Prick Up Your Ears (DVD10550) and and and... Frears' films are about the labyrinth of passion in which characters deceive others about the true nature of their love. The world of The Grifters is also one of cynicism and despair, in which the characters put up an outer façade but are inwardly plagued by guilt and doubt. It is the world of film noir. In it acts Roy, a boy with burning ambition but no talent. Lily never accepted that THIS should be her son! And Myra is somewhere between sexy, vulnerable and dangerous - a femme fatale. Around this Frears spins a plot in which everything falls into place, no questions left unanswered. This is a plot film! Why do impostors do what they do? Why do they need to win our love, our trust, only to betray us? In The Grifters, it's pretty clear that they're caught up in a pattern that goes back to childhood. They're trying to get revenge. Poor Roy. He thinks he's a big con man when all he wants to do is find a person to love. A person who won't cheat on him.