FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Dardenne Brothers - La Promesse  

Belgians Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have found a way to turn human weaknesses and emotions into art. They never judge. There is neither "good" nor "evil". Instead, they show how complex life really is. Often their characters have to choose between maintaining relative social stability or risking disaster. This is at the expense of their own ability to compromise. Ultimately, it is about the struggle for morality. La Promesse is about the effort to keep a promise. A teenager promises a dying man to ensure the safety of his wife and baby. They are illegal immigrants who are exploited by the teenager's father. So the dying man is buried at the construction site without calling a doctor (while the wife desperately searches for him). Normally this would be the stuff of melodrama, but not with the Dardenne brothers. The Dardennes are much more interested in examining the milieu they present here. A study of local exploiters who employ West African workers (and get most of their wages back through overpriced rooms they provide them). La Promesse is about a son who gradually realises that his father is a monster. The portrait of an abusive father-son relationship. In 1996, the Dardennes found international attention with La Promesse and have since presented their very own cinema without pathos, but with the realisation that the act of making a painful decision is not an external show or a cinema moment. The world that influences this decision is the world of the Dardennes.

90s on netflix - Filmlist on CINEGEEK.DE 

Wanted in the netflix range: films with that definite 90's feeling and those that absolutely take us back. In nostalgia! (many more films from the 90's and around 4000 of them in our video library). Found on netflix in November 2022.

Film List 80s on netflix 

netflix is not entirely without responsibility for the 80s boom of our time (through Stranger Things, of course). That's why I looked for original 80s films in the Netflix range and found some in the netflix catalogue (if you need more, there are n the 4000 titles of the time in our video store). Here is the overview for November 2022.

netflix best Romantic Comedies on CINEGEEK.DE 

Here comes our new netflix service to make your choice a little easier. This film list shows you the most beautiful romantic comedies now in November 2022. 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Todd Haynes - Far From Heaven 

Todd Haynes Far From Heaven looks like a film from the 50s and deals with the themes of the 50s - only much bolder and much better than a real Hollywood film of the 50s would have been able to do! It all begins in the suburban idyll of Connecticut, where Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech act like a team. Like a marriage business. Until Mr Magnatech thinks the black gardener is the most beautiful (and desirable) person he has ever seen. In the same way, the Whitakers, Cathy and Frank (Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid), live in the perfect counterpart, the perfect street and the perfect home. In autumn, the leaves shine like pure gold and if their son utters a scolding expression in his mouth, he is reprimanded. The Whitakers are so perfect that even the local newspaper writes an article about how perfect they are. But then dark clouds gather. While Cathy is being interviewed by the paper, she sees the black gardener outside. The son of her late gardener. She enquires if he needs anything, reaches out. It will then be printed in the newspaper as follows: Cathy; "friend to Negroes". Then one day Cathy catches Frank kissing a man in the office. Far From Heaven plays exactly the values of the 50s, which is why Frank feels despicable after this incident. He desperately needs to get a grip on this problem. This is the key to Todd Haynes' film: he never pretends to be ironic. Never does he know more than a film from the 50s knew. Far From Heaven is indeed a work of that time, in which not only the clothes, the décor have been recreated, but simply everything. Right down to the mindset. Cathy and Frank don't have a sex life. She hardly knows what to say to him. At one point Cathy says to the gardener's son; "Mr. Whitaker and I support equal rights for the Negro.". People start talking in public about her being seen with the black gardener (who, by the way, has an academic degree). So they get the same frosty reception together in a "black" establishment as would probably have happened in a "white" establishment. Frank, the hypocrite, yells at them about what he wouldn't have done for the family's reputation. Of course, his homosexuality remains deeply hidden. And Cathy's feelings change.... Craft-wise, Haynes's film is as superbly made as an original Douglas Sirk melodrama. In Sirk's melodramas, one often had the impression that the plot had been scrambled - indeed, that the film was not sincere at all! Yet everything is filtered in Haynes' film. Every shot resembles the set design of the 50s, every feeling the zeitgeist of the 50s. At that time, the civil rights movement was already an issue, but not homosexual liberation. So the film is allowed to regret bittersweetly that Cathy's feelings will probably have no future. Frank's homosexuality, on the other hand, may not even be mentioned by name. Far From Heaven, as described, gets by without irony (unlike the original Douglas Sirk melodramas) - and seems all the more powerful for it! We care about Haynes' characters as if they were the audience of the 50s! We think like the 50s! So we regret that a white woman could never love a black man. And we don't even dare to imagine how Frank could live... 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Christian Petzold - Undine 

Christian Petzold's films often looked out of this world - but Undine is his first excursion into the fantasy genre. Undine begins with a separation. The camera lingers on the face of Paula Beer. Thus we experience the separation just as she did. It is not a normal goodbye. Undine is also not a normal woman as the name suggests. This is not about a jilted lover. Undine, by definition, comes from the realm of mythological creatures. "If you leave me, I'll have to kill you"; she promises her lover Johannes (Jacob Matschenz), whom she has invited to a café near the Berlin Historical Museum. Undine works there as a historian. For us she looks as human and attractive as Paula Beer, but... Basically she belongs to the species of watermen and women. Her human form - we conclude from this - she received through the love of John. If John leaves her, he must die. Infidelity is death. Christian Petzold omits the romantic moments that we know from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. He concentrates on the question of fate: Does Undine really have to kill Johannes to fulfill her destiny? Or is there a way out? Anyone who has seen a few Christian Petzold films knows that his heroines always strive for a life of freedom, independence and self-determination. Just as little does Undine want to return to the lake from which she once came. Like a fish, she no longer seems to be standing in the middle of life. Undine has a respectable job, lives in a Berlin apartment that we would all like to have and is exploring the city. Then she is betrayed by Johannes. Exactly in this moment - a real turning point - Undine meets Christoph (Franz Rogowski). Very different from Johannes, Christoph is sweet and affectionate. The ideal partner for Undine! Christoph works as a diver near Wuppertal, where he catches a huge catfish in the lake. A good sign, how open-minded he seems to be to aquatic life! Somewhere on an ancient document he discovered Undine's name. One of the most important rules for Undine: The moment she has contact with the water again after her marriage, she has to return there. A rule she has already broken. But maybe Christoph serves as a loophole? Normally, Petzold never defines his heroines by their relationship to men. They are always strong and full of ingenuity. And Christoph adores Undine's intelligence! Johannes, on the other hand, is an unfaithful scoundrel and at some point he will of course reappear. Undine has to stand up against the whole burden of mythology. I strongly advise to read this mythology before the movie! because Christian Petzold's movie misses that. So you need an introduction: A) The fairy tale or B) Neil Jordan's Ondine (DVD1970). 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Claire Denis - Trouble Every Day  

Yesterday the editorial staff of the "Fireflies" joined us in the video store to present their new edition. A magazine about Claire Denis. I brought up all our DVDs and I noticed Trouble Every Day. A film that was terribly missed in Cannes in 2002. A real scandal that nobody liked! Let's watch Trouble Every Day a second time! Trouble Every Day starts with the arrival of the young couple Shane and June Brown (Vincent Gallo and Tricia Vessey) in Paris. Shane, a young American doctor, is haunted by morbid, bloody sex fantasies, which he can only suppress by medication. At the same time, we experience the fate of a scientist (Alex Descas) who locks up his wife Core (Béatrice Dalle), who suffers from the same uncanny disease, at home. While Shane lives sexually abstinent, Core repeatedly breaks out to kill men by biting them while orgasm. Soon it becomes clear that Shane and Core have a common past... It's hard to summarize the content, because everything is told in a fragmentary way, none of the characters is more detailed and the dialogues remain sparse. Some horror elements, underlaid with the music of the Tindersticks, make Trouble Every Day seem like a cruel love story. A modern vampire fairy tale, whose roots lie in Guinea. Denis was born in French West-Africa and may have worked something like a private culture clash into it. When Core bites a truck driver to pieces, she looks like a creature from the jungle. Shane, with his rigid gaze, looks like a doctor who could frighten an entire neighborhood. But that's not enough for Denis to try an exploitation film. She believes she can explore the deep secrets of cinema: Desire and moving fear. Her film gets out of hand and seems like an unfinished mix of pretentious sex philosophy and necrophiliac romanticism. Without intellectual harshness or exciting eroticism.