Film List "Simultan" incl. FREE STREAMS
Simultaneity in cinema is a characteristic of postmodernism, that a film is more than just a continuously told story. In the films of this collection, the action happens simultaneously interlaced. The viewer has a bird's eye view of the action, and can try to untangle and puzzle together the storylines.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Walter Hill - The Warriors
Walter Hills The Warriors doesn't look real, but like an artificial ballet. The Warriors from 1979 (the year in which all the big gang movies saw the light of day) is a speciality! This work about the street war in New York turns into a single stylistic exercise of mannerism. Hardly a moment when we want to believe that the Warriors, their enemies, even the streets where they fight, are real. I don't think it was Walter Hill's intention to accept that. That's why The Warriors is so unusual, because we get a "Male Rampage" action movie presented as a ballet, as an opera piece in different acts. A typical Walter Hill, because even his first movies were far away from reality. Here everything is myth, legend, even a living statue. Hill stylizes so much that every life is kept out of its tableaux. There are great choreographed scenes and a lot of energy, but when the Warriors talk to each other, you think you have a fairy tale in front of you. Before the fight, they position themselves in a row. Then the leader speaks, then his deputy, finally the third in the row. Only then is the fight started. And the police? Just as exaggerated! Here they fight in symbolic places, not in Brooklyn or anywhere else. I was astonished by the cast, because only a few gang members seem to be able to hit it at all. Most of them just look wonderfully disguised. All this was sold by Paramount in 1979 as an action movie. Seriously? How about that? How about that? The Warriors, a masterpiece of the avant-garde by Walter Hill (with a lot of scraping).
Film List Generation X incl. FREE STREAMS
The 90s were not only marked by the beginning of the digital age or the breakthrough of indie film. There were also these so-called Generation X movies... Douglas Coupland's novel of the same name coined the term for the generation that was born in the late 60s or early 70s and grew up with more wealth than their parents. The decade produced four ultimate cult films: Reality bites, Singles, Slackers and Before sunrise. Reality bites and singles show the 90s with grunge music from Seattle and unsettled school leavers looking back. Reality bites presents Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder, both not really beautiful and therefore all the more interesting as the faces of their generation. Richard Linklater is the most productive director of Generation X films. Slacker and Dazed and confused are ensemble films that function loosely without action, Before sunrise and Before sunset are two person films that also entertain exclusively through their real dialogues. But the theme Generation X is only supposedly new. Already the renewal phase of the American film at the end of the 60s developed very similar portraits with the atmosphere of old country ballads. The best generation portraits of the New Hollywood era are The last picture Show by Peter Bogdanovich and American Graffiti by George Lucas. Bogdanovich's film is epic, looks like a western by John Ford and shows a small American town with all its boredom. A perfectly told New Hollywood classic! Lucas' film is the wistful look back, a bittersweet ballad with beautiful music and a lot of heartache. Generation X films were already nostalgic and lived from the look back.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE The Song Of Sparrows
The first and last images of this spiritual fable show the ostrich - in the course of the plot the ostrich, majestic and mysterious, becomes the symbol of this world. Enter Karim (Reza Naji), an impoverished farmer with three children who lives somewhere in rural Iran. He is desperately trying to recover his soul after spending years in hell, in the material world. The Song Of Sparrows may seem like a naturalistic drama, but in reality it is an Islamic sermon, subdivided into strict moral lessons. Karim is dogged by bad luck. He loses his job at the ostrich farm after one of the birds escapes into the wild. To recapture the bird, he even dons an ostrich costume and performs a mating dance. However: all in vain. As if that were not enough, shortly afterwards his daughter Haniyeh (Shabnam Akhlaghi) loses her hearing aid in the village well. It lands in the mud, defective. Karim gets on his moped, rides to Tehran to have the hearing aid repaired - and loses his mental footing along the way.... Life in the city is atrocious; Tehran looks like hell on earth. A single junkyard, adjacent to a chaotic construction site. Karim collects the junk, carting it home to his garden. And the trash in his yard grows. But after an accident with his new "possessions," Karim is to regain his faith. Quite blunt and wonderfully sentimental! The Song Of Sparrow is about a righteous man, his faith, his family, his community. In his happiest moment, he sings, surrounded by children: The world is a lie, the world is a dream.
Film List Real Time incl. FREE STREAMS
Real time is a cinematic experience that, although it is easy to film, it has rarely been attempted: The duration of the film and the duration of the narrative coincide. Who looks closely at how difficult it is to stage a change of scenery? Real time seems to stand in contrast to the cinema's claim to concentrate action. Before sunrise and Before sunset by Richard Linklater work quite differently. The director is much more interested in the charming chatter, the innocent flirting, the everyday philosophy of his characters than in the plot. A couple gets to know each other (and gets to know each other again), the viewer experiences in real time how this happens. Cleo de 5 a 7 by Varda resists a stringent narrative plot. Time code by Mike Figgis divides the canvas into fields to create parallel actions in real time. Lola runs by Tom Tykwer plays with the possibilities of life: What if? His Lola only bridges a short period of time, but is allowed to run again from the beginning. Lola between disaster and happy ending. Real time is also a stylistic means of Kubrick's end-time satire Dr. Strangelove and Sidney Lumet's very similar film Fail safe on the same subject of nuclear war. Since Hitchcock's Rope, the correspondence between film time and real time has been a special feature of thrillers. While Hitchcock's classics philosophize about murder as a legitimate means to showcase his superior intelligence, there is no cut. Lumet's 12 angry men is the second crime classic that almost looks like a play. 88 minutes and Crank are new thrillers that submit to the showdown in real time. They are overshadowed by high noon. Zinneman's real-time western has already become proverbial. His toothache-suffering leading actor Gary Cooper with a suffering face in close-up, the music and the clock again and again are the trademarks of his Western, who most effectively demonstrates how to build up tension with real time.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Garden State
What a huge success in our video store! How long and how often Garden State has been awarded over and over again! Andrew Largeman, the hero from Garden State, seems schizophrenic. He lies flat on his back in his bed in an almost unfurnished room. Only the answering machine is running. It's his father who tells Andrew that his mother drowned in the bathtub. Andrew stands up and takes a look into his medicine cabinet, where - perfectly arranged! - different doses of sedatives lined up. We learn that Andrew is a would-be actor who once appeared somewhere in a production for cable television. He works in a Vietnamese restaurant and hasn't been home in New Jersey in nine years. The moment he leaves his pills behind to board the plane home to New Jersey, his life starts moving again for the first time in nine years... Garden State was written and directed by Zach Braff. Braff also plays Andrew, whom I would describe as at least dubious. At home he meets his father Gideon (Ian Holm), extremely dry and distant. Gideon is a psychiatrist and is convinced that Andrew will only like himself again then, "until you forgive yourself for what you did to your mother." Gideon blames Andrew for pushing his mother, for falling over the dishwasher and being paralyzed ever since. Andrew finds that he was just a little boy when that happened. The dishwasher was loosely locked and that in turn is the fault of the father, who had not taken care of it! Andrew's new life begins when he recognizes the gravediggers at his mother's grave. They're old friends from school. Soon he will be full of amphetamines and spin the bottle at a party. And very soon he will fall in love with Sam (Natalie Portman), who is just as strange. Sam's a girl from New Jersey and one of those characters that just shows up at the movies, right? She is DA for Andrew - always and at any time! Full of desire and she really wants it. Sam looks as beautiful as Natalie Portman, but apart from a few kind qualities we don't learn much about her. Then there's Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), Andrew's schoolmate, who lives in the shallows of nature in New Jersey (and isn't that a world like Oz?) Mark is a stoner with funny friends like this couple living on a raise in the middle of a quarry. Andrew wakes slowly from a long, blunt nothing. He tries to talk to his father and to understand his feelings. A huge puzzle lies in front of him and nobody represents it better than Sam. What's he gonna do with her now? After all, Andrew has kept his romantic feelings to himself since his first girlfriend (when he was a boy)! I've always compared Garden State to The_Graduate, especially because both heroes are so passive. Compared to everything that penetrates them from the outside, they react almost motionless - and Garden State also offers a song by Simon & Garfunkel! But The_Graduate takes a critical look at the world in which Benjamin lives, while Garden State critically questions only Andrew's OWN world. Everyone Andrew meets is harassing him in one way or another. All except Andrew's father, whose hatred is so deep that he prefers to anaesthetise his son (because the pills in Andrew's cupboard were prescribed by Gideon). Garden State is a gentle comedy with great attention to detail. Like when Andrew finds out in L.A. that the faucet at the gas station is still in the tank hole in his car. If that doesn't say anything about the thought world of Andrew Largeman?
Film List Arthaus Deutschland incl. FREE STREAMS
The third generation of German film begins at the end of the 90s, when the desire to discover, the view of reality and the past become apparent again in the cinema. The chroniclers of social dismantling and general paralysis during the turn of the millennium follow the adapted West German films of the bad Kohl-era. People begin again to see themselves as a group and to reject common things: Film is not television production, film is not Hollywood copy. Hartz 4 and the reconquest of the political in Black Box BRD or Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei show a society that is not horrible. The German film also discovers an equally disturbing province for itself. Oskar Roehler's prefab housing estate in Die Unberührbare is the epitome of a cold homeland. Fassbinder's shadow floats over new German productions, not just Roehler's; love becomes a crisis in films like Sehnsucht or the drastic Der freie Wille. Alle andere sizziert two couples like Goethe once did in Die Wahlverwandtschaften. The GDR as a lost country and reunification have finally become a big cinema theme. The lives of the others show the mixture of political and private, Berlin is in Germany functions as a satire of a foreign world: the FRG. The Wende turns family films into tragic role reversals as in Netto. In the new German films, the family is a haven of loneliness; false confessions or ping-pong are oppressive testimonies. In Christian Petzold's Die innere Sicherheit the family is on the run from a dark political past of the 70s. Fatih Akin and Thomas Arslan have mastered a form of cinema that is most likely to be mastered in the future: films by Turks about Turks in Germany are against the wall or dealers. The tension of the culture clash as the topic of the future in a country that has so little to do with it and still doesn't want to be a "country of immigration".
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Legends Of The Fall
By my own empirical estimate, about 70% of our Generation X girls had a schoolyard crush on Brad Pitt in 1994, largely because of his performance in this late western. An epic western saga set in "Big Sky Country" about a beautiful Eastern woman and a rancher's three sons who love and fight for her. The First World War rages in the background. Classic Hollywood material, born from a cheap paperback edition, so that it can really unfold in the big cinema! Enter Anthony Hopkins as Col. Ludlow, who is so disgusted with the cavalry's treatment of Native Americans that he starts his own empire in Montana. His wife has retired to the East Coast, leaving Ludlow to fend for himself. The upbringing of his three sons now falls to him. The oldest and most responsible is Alfred (Aidan Quinn). Tristan (Brad Pitt), the middle one, on the other hand, is also busy waking bears from hibernation to cut out their hearts. And then there is the youngest; Samuel (Henry Thomas).... It all begins with an ominous tale from One Stab (Gordon Tootoosis), Ludlow's friend. As the Indian speaks in a steady, almost sing-song voice (this is how almost all native Americans in Hollywood films speak) we wait for the film title to be mentioned in his speech. Soon Samuel returns home, accompanied by Susannah (Julia Ormond), his fiancée. Susannah is strong and capable and spirited. She can ride and shoot. And when Tristan walks in, her looks express that she can do more than ride and shoot. Ludlow hates war. He wants his boys to live in Montana. Samuel, however, wants to go to Canada, volunteer for the war. What will happen then? Will Tristan also be forced to cut off his flowing locks for the war? A big role, not only in Tristan's life, will be played by Susannah... Legends Of The Fall is set at the cusp, as the West is changing. The old west is history, the cities are growing, prohibition is playing into the hands of the wealthy class in particular. If you feel like it, you will rediscover a few constellations and characters from classic westerns of the 50s. But Legends Of The Fall is not a serious film, even though it is full of profound emotions and a touch of irony. Legends Of The Fall is more like an operetta with pointed coincidences and heartbreaking soliloquies. A western reminiscent of the classic age of Hollywood when there was no need to apologise for passionate stories.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Tony Gatlif - Transylvania
An air of freedom carries Tony Gatlif's Transylvania, like a tale in the wind, drifting sometimes here, sometimes there. At least, to where Zingarina (Asia Argento) finds herself. She travels from France to Transylvania with her friend Marie (Amira Casar). But don't ask yourself what Zingarina was doing in France, because you would react disappointed. In Transylvania she searches for her beloved husband Milan (Marco Castoldi). We know that it was a poisoned relationship, because Milan sent Zingarina packing before he was deported. Zingarina finds him - but he spurns her. She collapses emotionally and follows Gypsie Tchangalo (Birol Ünel) on a journey of strange adventures: disguised as a Gypsie, she practices boxing and cleans herself with a jug of fresh milk. The landscape is barren and leaves a lot of space. It thrusts itself in front of the characters and makes their problems seem strangely secondary. All of this is accompanied by frenetic gypsie sounds that celebrate plump life. It is the music that drives Transylvania forward - not the narrative. Whimsical, troubled, celebratory, bleak.... And what is it like, the life of the Gypsies? Expectedly hard and full of hardship. Just like life in rural Romania, somewhere in the middle of nowhere...
Film List Nouvelle Vague 70's incl. FREE STREAMS
How is a good film made? "Jean-Luc Godard defines the essence of the Nouvelle Vague: "All you need is a gun and a girl. Well noted; the Nouvelle Vague of the 60s. When the renewal movement received a second boost in the 70s from auteurs like Marco Ferreri, Bertrand Blier, Barbet Schroeder, Andre Techine and Jean Eustache, one would have to add that a good film needs a lot of sex. The films of the decade seem above all controversial. We adopt the radically misogynistic perspective in Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses or the self-hatred in Marco Ferreri's The Big Feast. The Citizen as Pig. Of course, these films do not live from philosophical depth, but their images. Images that lead to a culture war. Obscene, decadent, cynical. And Godard? He staged video films about the victory of Maoism - or something like that.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Alejandro Jodorowsky - Montana Sacre (engl. subt.)
If he looks back today, I think he'll be able to say he did anything. His name is Alejandro Jodorowsky. He went around with a circus, drew comics, worked with the greatest surrealists and made movies. He's not organized, he makes the kind of movies that Hollywood shouldn't make anymore. Not because of the success, but because he has to! Jodorowsky is a driven one! Holy Mountain resembles an explosion of images, filmed with burning intensity, so they will be remembered forever! A thief climbs the high tower and meets the alchemist at the top of the rainbow room. The alchemist has gathered a kind of sect around him to set off for the holy mountain to become gods there. It was John_Lennon who convinced his manager Allen Klein to support Jodorovsky's film financially. It was a fatal deal because Jodorowsky lost control of his work. But Jodorowsky used only half of the budget and returned the second part! It is said that he had lived with the crew in a commune, taken LSD and been looked after by a Zen master. The film begins in a white room that looks like a mosaic. The alchemist (Jodorowsky himself) in a black coat and two women kneeling are present. He shaves their heads and the opening credits begin. Then we see a gang of little boys with green genitals throwing stones at a tied man (Jesus?). In the first part the characters are introduced episodically, while in the second part the journey to the holy mountain follows. The first part looks like a walk through a colorful, explosive labyrinth, the second part seems almost contemplative. Finally we are awakened from our dream by Jodorowsky. Unfortunately, because we would have liked to sleep even more!
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Lonesome Jim
When they used to film in Hollywood, they went to the big city to try their luck. Today, after the defeat, they return to the small town. Like in "Garden State" DVD1350 or "Beautiful Girls" DVD9866 or "Jersey Girl" DVD2915. All close relatives of Lonesome Jim. I will probably make a movie list out of it. All these movies tell us that the big city is crushing us. But your hometown can give you a new start, even though it's the center of all depression and madness. That's where the parents live. Risky, even if you're just visiting like in "Junebug" DVD2614. All these movies are about the decay of optimism. Jim (Casey Affleck) went to New York to write. Although the famous authors on the wall of his children's room were all soaring to death, he wanted to do it better. But it didn't work. He returns to Indiana. Who knows, maybe director and author Steve Buscemi even depicts Indiana somewhat unfairly. As a dirty hole full of losers. But that's where Jim landed again. He meets his brother Tim (Kevin Corrigan), who never left his parents' house. His parents are described in New German as "blatant": The father is bitter, the mother untiringly cheerful. She runs a craft business which her brother Evil (Mark Boone Junior) uses as a depot for drug deals. Tim, who deliberately set his car against a tree, still has to train fourteen-year-old girls in basketball. They never win. Tim's nurse is single mother Anika (Liv Tyler). Fortunately, there is a Liv Tyler in such homecoming movies that soothes the pain. Like in "Jersey Girl". And she's ready for One Night Stands, even though Jim as a human isn't exactly inviting. In all the small town movies a Natalie portman or Kirsten Dunst always appears to comfort the hero. But despite the fast sex Anika approaches Jim cautiously. Just right. Anyway, Jim seems to accept his defeat. He withdraws. That's why Lonesome Jim is a movie about being able to breathe again and not to mope anymore. Can someone like Jim accept the love of a woman like Anika? Can he even be happy? I think Indiana isn't so different from the Berlin suburb where I grew up. I would think YES, he can be happy there. It's his decision.
Film List Iran incl. fREE STREAMS
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Boyz N The Hood
Few experiences hurt you more than when a parent looks at their own child and fears for their future. In some neighbourhoods of American cities, where a certain percentage of young people die by the guns of other young people, mostly young men, it is also no longer a question of whether the child is good or bad at school. Or whether he or she can have a career. It's about whether the child lives or dies. In Boyz N the Hood, when the mother observes her bright boy, on the cusp of adulthood, starting to listen to his annoying friends instead of HER - she decides to send the son to live with the father. The father works as a mortgage broker in an office on the outskirts of town. A smart and angry man. A disciplinarian who sets rules for his son. But then, out on the streets of South Central, Los Angeles, the son learns different rules.... He matures into a teenager. His best friends are half-brothers. One is a sportsman who slowly drifts away and starts taking drugs. Until then, the friends stayed away from the street gangs. Until then, they went their own way. But everywhere there is the possibility that words become insults and insults lead to the need to prove one's "manliness". With weapons. In general, someone is shot everywhere. These are the most blatant choices in John Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood", one of the best films of the 90s. The film serves as a thoughtful, realistic look at the life of a young man. It is a human drama of rare power! Singleton finds his own subject (those who read more about it know it is autobiographical) and his own style. The hero's name is Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.), his father Furious Styles (Larry Fishburne), who himself grew up in the neighbourhood. He survived in two ways: 1. the gangs of his youth. 2. the prevailing gentrification as a realtor. He also names the dangers for his son: gangs, drugs, false friends. Furious sets strict rules, but can't be everywhere. Over the course of two summer weeks, everything comes together in Tre's life. Everything is put to the test: His first love, his relationship with his father, his friendships and the street gangs. Always we understand all the characters, know what they are thinking and feeling. An inferior film would probably have worked with good and evil and built up a showdown at the end. Not so Singleton's film. He is concerned with understanding what is happening and why.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Winter's Bone
The screen heroes who touch me the most are not extroverted. They don't strut up and down vainly in front of us, they don't make great speeches, they don't lead armies. They don't have superpowers. They are ordinary people who have to face a certain situation. Ree Dolly is such a hero. She must be 17 and acts as a kind of maid for her younger sister and her little brother. You're like a mother. We are in the hinterland of the Ozarks. Her mother is mentally blacked out and just sitting around all day. Father cooked chrystal meth and got arrested for it. Anyway, he disappeared without a trace. Now Ree takes care of her siblings, raises them and feeds them - always dependent on the neighbours, on support. The two children - like all children who are not beaten - are friendly and full of energy. They love to play! They have not yet realised that they grow up disadvantaged. This world in which Debra Granik's film takes place is presented in a desolate sobriety. We get to know a society that's lost. One that will never fit into a Hollywood movie! The question of how Ree could grow up and become so strong in this world remains unanswered. How did she become so independent, so proud? She can't have inherited it from her parents. The reason we immediately accept Ree as such is Jennifer Lawrence. Like all over the world, we experience an unprecedented Lawrence boom at the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo. The then 19-year-old acts as passionately and steadfastly as in her later expensive films. Lawrence, the quiet heroine, doesn't boast, doesn't dodge problems and seems to believe unshakably that people will do the right thing. Winter's Bone is also a film in which a star sees the light of day! "Don't ask for what ought to be offered"; teaches Ree to her little brother. Is that how she raised herself? Everyone around knows her father made amphetamines and sold them. Obviously, he couldn't even make money on meth! Now he is gone and Ree is looking for him, otherwise the house would be seized. She stays for a week... I think the model for Granik's film is the Odyssey. The endpoint is Ree's father, dead or alive. Ree struggles through a landscape as inhospitable as if we were in the middle of the apocalypse. A post disaster. Sometimes you think that the TV sets or cars don't even fit into the picture and are probably relics from earlier times. It is the houses of people who have reached the bottom. For them, there is no chance. Incidentally, Granik's film is not about these people, but plays UNDER them: Ree doesn't consider any of them inferior - after all, she herself belongs to them! I think for a girl like you, this life is normal. Heartlessness and disappointments are commonplace for Ree. In their father's world, everyone is a criminal, has contacts with a criminal or is subject to one. Everyone suspects everyone. In older "Badlands" films, these people would distrust such films from the outside. In Winter's Bone you don't trust your friends, even your own family. Every encounter with Rees brings us closer to one of these people and every time we realize how damaged his humanity is. Is it so that they see a girl in need of help in Ree? No, they perceive them as a danger to take something away from them, since they themselves are in need of help. A story like that, full of hate and amorality, could easily become unbearable. But real courage and hope can compensate for this. We are born optimistic and in every horrible situation, there are few people who will help (at least that's how Ree would judge it).
The story of Sandra Laing was all over the South African newspapers. It begins in Cape Town in 1965. Sandra was the daughter of white Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch settlers. There was no question that they were her parents. Yet Sandra was not white. Her parents were proud of her, protected her. Sandra was a bright child. But when the parents enrolled her in school, there was trouble: the other parents wanted to prevent their white children from being taught together with a black girl. In the face of the insane apartheid regime, no one wanted to believe that wise parents could have a black child. The parents reassured them. Of course Sandra is white. Now you can slowly find your way around the world of Skin: The parents run a small local store. Sannie Laing (Alice Krige) is always friendly to the customers. Her husband Abraham (Sam Neill) cautions her not to be too nice. Customers are to be served, not adopted. Liberal Abraham is not; he reacts indignantly to any suggestion of "black" blood in his family. But Sandra obviously does not look "white." Abraham fights his way to the supreme court. He wants to have his daughter classified as "white". A geneticist explains that many South Africans do not have "white" in their blood. A sensitive issue in South Africa. A country where the so-called pencil test is used to determine whether one is "white." If the pencil falls out of the hair - positive. If it gets stuck, it can only be "black" hair. In such an environment, the cheerful child Sandra (Sophie Okonedo) becomes a disturbed teenager. The parents arrange disastrous dates with white teenagers. Sandra, however, falls in love with the black gardener, whom her father chases away with a rifle. Officially, it is considered a crime in the apartheid regime for a white woman to date a black man. And wasn't Sandra white? Pregnant, she runs away from home... The real story behind this took place until the 70s. Apparently, it fascinated South Africans! A cut in the fiction that the races were separate and could never meet. The Dutch, however, landed in Cape Town 400 years earlier and Sandra may be considered living proof that the races did meet. Seemingly effortlessly, Sophie Okonedo here embodies the youthful Sandra into young adulthood. She chimed in on this society where race dictated who you could love, where you lived, what you worked or studied. Society defined who you were. The greatest scene: Sandra is finally to receive her white card, but demands a black one. Her very existence is no longer based on a piece of paper! Skin tells all this through the eyes of a happy girl who becomes an outsider. Not a predictable story, even if I reveal that Skin begins when Nelson Mandela is appointed president. It's also the day a television crew corners Sandra. She answers their questions only briefly, "It comes too late for me."
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE M. Night Shyamalan - Split
Another surprise from M. Night Shyamalan! A masterful shock twist! Hitchcock influences, horror and therapy session alike. Just like his last work, Split was created on a low budget and is aimed at his sworn horror fan base. In focus: A perpetrator with dissociative personality disorder - why James McAvoy is performed in half a dozen roles. A multiple identity, split into 23 personalities: Brian, the couturier, Hedwig, a lisping nine-year-old or Dennis, the control freak. They all struggle with other rival egos for mental supremacy. Two of them kidnapped three young girls. One of them, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), has experiences of abuse that enable her to decipher the psyche of her tormentor... It's important to emphasize that Split doesn't just stick to his twist. If you could spot Split earlier, you'd still have a solid horror film between exploitation and seriousness. Some will delight Split to a high degree, others will overtax him. A work for many personalities.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Kim-Ki Duk - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring
Rarely has such a simple film moved me so much! Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter is Buddhist, but basically universal. It plays on a house that is fastened on a raft. You think the raft is static, but that's not true. It floats in a secluded lake and symbolizes life, faith, growth, love, jealousy, hatred, cruelty and redemption. And nature. There is also a dog, a cat, a bird, a snake, a turtle and a frog. The small house with only one room is made for a hermit. There lives a monk (Oh Young Soo) with a boy (Seo Jae Kyung) who wants to become a monk. The monk raises the boy, watches over him. He worships a Buddha statue and strikes against a sacred singing bowl. We notice that this daily routine hardly changes. The lake is surrounded by a forest. At one mouth there are two painted wooden gates that open whenever a new season begins. They are gates that do not exclude anyone, anyone can pass them simply by walking around them. The house is exactly the same. The master and his disciple sleep on pallets left and right. At the foot of each sleeping place there are two doors. Anyone can pass these too. You can just walk past them. The monk, when he wakes the boy, uses the door. Other figures in the film, however, will simply run past them. What do we learn? I don't think these doors are symbols. They are lessons. They teach the entrant to respect customs and traditions. Just imagine a person from the western world living on the lake: How would that be for us? We who idealize the customs of the Far East and perhaps even dream of the meditative power of such a life. In truth, however, it would be unhealthy for us. While I was watching Kim Ki-duk's film, I didn't get such thoughts. I got completely involved in the world of film. I was moved by this story, which is so timeless. The Transcendence of Eternity! But in reality it would be quite cold to live on this lake in winter! Kim Ki-duk's film, however, is so beautiful that we accept this lake as the center of all existence. Cruelty is also part of it: Often the master sends his boy to look for herbs. Once the boy ties a string around a fish, on which a stone hangs, so that the fish has trouble swimming. He later repeats this trick with a frog and a snake. He does not know that the master is following him. We don't even know how the master managed to follow the boy (without rowing boat). It is one of the little secrets of the film. One that doesn't really catch the eye at first. When the boy wakes up the next morning, he himself finds a stone tied around his back. The master orders him to go back and free the fish, the snake and the frog. He warns; should one of the animals have died, he must carry the stone in his heart forever. Spring is coming to an end. I don't want to betray any more at this point; only so much that a girl comes to the lake. The boy, who is now a man, falls in love with her. The monk believes that sex is a remedy. But he also warns that lust can promote the pursuit of power, which in turn leads to murder. The monk himself lives in company, because there are always animals around him. A dog, right at the beginning of the film and a cat. The monk feeds the animals. The lake, the forest, the house, they are there for the monk and the boy. And they will still be there after them... Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter was staged by the Korean Kim Ki Duk, who for me belongs to the film art bar Fitzcarraldo. That's because during our opening thirteen years ago the "Korean Wave" was in full bloom. Everyone asked about this director, who makes films as violent as they are poetic: Kim Ki-duk. My colleague at the time was so fascinated by him that he obtained the rights for the Korean's first two films! Something that could be called flowing isolation has to fascinate Kim Ki Duk. In one of his earlier masterpieces it is a fisherman who practices his craft on a lake. Kim Ki Duk isn't a director who has to deliver his message explicitly. In his best movies little, sometimes not at all, is spoken. There are hardly any dialogues or explanations. Kim Ki Duk concentrates on lives that have been going on for so long - until there is a conflict. A misery happens! The main character in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter is life itself. The opponents are called time and change. To live means to accept these conditions.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Ingmar Bergman - Wild Strawberries
When Ingmar Bergman died a few years ago, customers came to the video store for the first time and increasingly asked about his films. Before that Bergman was one of those who lay on the shelf like lead. There's probably so much truth in his films that it's hard to find sympathy? After all, in Bergman's work we saw God floating down as a spider... The film by him I remember again and again is Smultronstället, who even dares to laugh anxiously and reveals an optimistic view of life - as is possible in Bergman's humanism. At the centre is a 76 year old professor named Isak Borg (played by the great old man of Swedish cinema, the director Victor Sjöström). Together with his daughter-in-law he travels from Stockholm to Lund to receive a doctorate. While driving, the old man remembers his past: his lover who married his brother and his own unhappy marriage. Away from his outward success, he feels something distant and lifeless inside. Smultronstället opens with a dream sequence that already belongs to the canon of cinema: A building in Stockholm with sly windows, a clock without hands, an approaching hearse. Borg tries to draw in the outstretched hand of a dead body. There are other expressionist dream images, influenced by Freud, that show the old man how he sees himself. These scenes have been copied so often that it almost seems artificial to deal with them. However, the film is able to arouse so many emotions that something "science" doesn't hurt at all. The embodiment of the professor by Victor Sjöström can only be described as transcendent. Sjöström was Sweden's most important director during the silent film era. He died at the age of 80, not long after the film was finished. Sjöström's work can probably be described as Bergman's greatest influence (Bergman has never seriously sought a modern visual language that is not in the tradition of Swedish models). Bergman himself described the end of his film as follows: Sjöström's face in splendour. It radiates light, as if from another reality. His whole appearance is gentle and sensitive; his gaze is joyful and loving. Much like a riddle. Later, Bergman admitted to having designed the character as a justification for himself in front of his own parents. But Sjöström had made him his own. Nevertheless: Above all the character expresses Borg's forgiveness between children and parents as well as the lost possibilities of youth. Another facet of Smultronstället is the journey across the Swedish country - a world of nature. In a way, it is the beauty of nature that guides Borg. How could life become so stunted, so sterile? Basically, none of the characters in Bergman's film has any idea what happened to her. Borg's mother as an example became hard and mean over time. Borg himself only begins to backfire after his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) speaks openly to him. Smultronstället was always so close to me as a film because he expresses the thoughts of reconciliation and reparation without religious metaphors. By the way, Bergman Film is now often and gladly awarded!
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Olivier Assayas - Irma Vep
Olivier Assayas has always tried not to belong to a fixed style. He has always changed, and yet I am tempted to consider Irma Vep as his magnum opus. And most of all, I like to give it a direction as well, because that's what we video librarians love! He follows the lead here of Wong Kar Wai's early films, and he in turn loves the lead of the Nouvelle Vague. Irma Vep must have been made in a creative frenzy, improvised and striving to focus on the medium of FILM itself. Just as the authors of the Nouvelle Vague liked to do. The setting is a hectic shoot in Paris. The formerly legendary Rene Vida (the original Jean-Pierre Leaud as a greeting from the 60s), now a bit confused, is directing a remake of Louis Feuillade's series Les Vampires (for those who don't know them; it's a series from the early days of cinema in 1915, in our rental store as DVD4690, DVD4696 and DVD4697). Immediately we notice that Vidal's production is just about to implode. Flown in specially; Maggie Cheung (borrowed from the films of Wong Kar Wai) as an international star who doesn't quite know what to do with the role of Irma Vep. "You must respect the silence"; is Vidal's directorial instruction. Then he takes a sip from a giant Coke bottle. Assayas, for his part, may be considered a scholar of cinema. A cinephile par excellence. For us, that means; we may look for references. Not only Jean-Pierre Leaud as a star of the Nouvelle Vague, but also Lou Castel, a Fassbinder actor from Beware Of The Holy Whore (with us on DVD1364 with English subtitles). Oh yes, and the score features a cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie & Clyde." When Irma Vep hit theaters, in 1996, it felt like movies were under some kind of postmodern compulsion. It HAD to be quoted! That's why a manifesto from the heyday of the Nouvelle Vague is casually inserted: "Cinema is not magic. It's a technique and a science." But it will always survive, because there are enthusiasts like Assayas in every generation who give themselves completely to their passion and create such small, cheap films as Irma Vep. Like back in the nouvelle vague.
According to calculations by the Data Science Lab of the Central Institute for Health Care in Germany (https://www.zidatasciencelab.de/about/), 80% of Berlin's women may have received their first vaccination by the end of June and their second vaccination by the end of July. Thus more than one herd immunity is reached. For us in the Feierei and Gastro scene a reason to breathe a sigh of relief! A look inside our Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo: Our colleagues still in Sleeping Beauty sleep and I constantly organizing how to keep the place alive despite everything. Like so many in our industry, which was already the heart of Berlin when we couldn't even afford to clear the snow in winter. That's why we're all waiting for the golden 20s! The best time that rewards us for the long wait!
Film List Independent Movies Pt. III
Welcome To The Dollhouse reminds us of our school days with brutal accuracy. Many films treat this time as a kind of paradise of growing up. This film, on the other hand, seems like a shock, because we see how cruel children can be against each other - and how deep these wounds are! Probably everyone still has the faces of the students who tortured us back then. Would we meet them on the street today - could we forgive them? On the other hand, how many children have we humiliated and humiliated ourselves? I think this hatred continues to this day. Heather Matarazzo plays Dawn Wiener. She is extremely unpopular, her glasses are crooked, her hairstyle, face colour and clothes are crooked: Nothing fits. Dawn is a hopeless geek. We experience her during a painful ritual in the cafeteria with a loaded tray: she looks for a table where she is not rejected, far away from everyone, unnoticed. Her nickname: "Wiener Dog", sometimes also "Lesbo" or simply "Stupid". When asked why a classmate hates her, Dawn gets a direct answer: "You're ugly." Dawn is not ugly, but she has the charisma of a victim. She is the target for sadists. Her only friend in school is a boy, much smaller than herself, whose nickname is "faggot". Lesbo and Faggot are not necessarily homosexual. For the other students, they simply represent everything you don't want to be under any circumstances. They are what everyone is afraid of! Welcome to The Dollhouse is not a sociological study, but a comedy. We are confronted with Dawn's suffering, but we also experience the funny sides of her person. Dawn's older brother is a nerd, her younger sister Ballerina. Her brother Mark (Matthew Faber) wants to attend a good college and founds a garage band. For this project he even wins the popular Steve (Eric Mabius) as a singer. Steve is already grown up and handsome - and Dawn gets soft knees when he is around. He's the guy who just likes to break women's hearts, but doesn't even notice Dawn. Dawn doesn't know much about sex, she's pretty unenlightened, but ready to learn. For Steve she would do anything! Meanwhile she is haunted by Brandon (Brendan Sexton Jr.). Dawn is smart enough to know that boys her age like to show feelings by appearing hostile. In one of the most beautiful scenes Brandon arranges a date with her to "rape" her (which of course doesn't happen). Scene by scene, Solondz's film reenacts the torment at school for a teenager like Dawn and proves her resilience. We hope that one day she will take revenge by being successful and popular, while the cheerleaders may lead a miserable life! Welcome to The Dollhouse is the debut of Todd Solondz, who won Sundance in 1996. He gives every detail his ruthless attention and that is the key to Solondz satire. The little things are: how Dawn looks in the mirror every day, how her dress sits and if there are any tiny signs of hope? If you can see Welcome To The Dollhouse without having bad memories of your own - be happy! Because then you were happier than Dawn is at that moment.
FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Silver Linings Playbook
Pat (Bradley Cooper) is surprisingly confident that he has just been released from a mental hospital and is not allowed to approach his ex-wife (because of whom he was admitted). His motto: "Even higher! Therefore, repairing his marriage is at the top of his self-imposed list of priorities. He may have beaten up her new partner, but that's a long time ago for Pat. A nice point in David O. Russell's screwball comedy is the fact that Pat's father Dolores (Robert De Niro) also has no more access to the football stadium because he rioted there. Since then, he has watched football at home and combines it with his strange superstitions, whether victory or defeat. Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) is a young widow from the neighbourhood who almost everyone would call a slut (although she's just injured). Lawrence plays the role with all its rough edges: Tiffany understands Pat, because she is crazy herself. To get closer to Pat, she pretends to have contact to the ex-wife and forces him to take part in a dance competition with her (in return she promises to forward his letters...) The dialogues, the rapprochement between Pat and Tiffany seem so real, that you might almost forget how exaggerated the characters actually are. Just like in the great Hollywood classics (which will also become Silver Linings Playground!). The relationship between Pat and his father, who follows an obsession with the Eagles or the joint dance competition Pat and Tiffany have to endure - it's all so funny and tenderly filmed that you can watch this movie again and again. In Silver Linings Playbook Pat, Tiffany, but also Dolores always find a way that makes a good ending possible. That's why Pat's "Excelsior" isn't that absurd at first. Maybe there really is always a silver stripe on the horizon?
