FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Larry Clark - Bully 

Isn't it a contradiction that films about murder are produced for entertainment purposes? Many films are morally indignant about murder - but nevertheless they try to entertain us. Larry Clark's Bully is different. It takes place in a sad and shabby world. A world of boundless stupidity and cruelty. Based on a true story, Bully is about a high school sadist who bullies the other kids - and a group of teenagers who kill him for it. But it's not about the evil sadist or the subsequent revenge campaign. It's about how the kids as a group do something that none of them are capable of doing individually. It's about the moral vacuum in which they live. Bully plays in the suburbs full of prefabricated houses, shopping malls and boredom. There are amusement arcades, fast food chains and cars that are the only things that promise freedom. One might object that most of us come from the suburbs and grow up happy. But not here. Larry Clark shows a suburban hell with drugs, sex and booze. The kids in it are stupid and violent. Their parents aren't portrayed as evil, by the way. They simply don't exist in the world of these kids. Their names are Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro) and Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl). Since Marty can think, he was tormented by Bobby. Bobby is bad through and through. He rapes two girls in the back seat of his car and we quickly realize that something in his life must have gone very wrong. Marty and Bobby are part of a larger clique that drifts aimlessly through shopping malls or coffee shops. In endless loop. At some point they get the idea that Bobby deserves to die. Just like that. The murder is ruthlessly planned. They hire a contract killer who is a child himself (we know them from Clark's debut Kids). Killing somebody is a hard job, which is done in an extremely chaotic way here. The body has to be disposed of and then the blame begins to be assigned. Remorse, even grief comes into play. And the urge to tell outsiders grows stronger and stronger. In the end Bobby doesn't die for his sins, but because his killers are so bored with life. Clark has been immersed in this world as an artist. Some of his sex scenes may seem too voyeuristic, but at least Clark is believed to know his way around this strange world at every moment. I think that Bully is an important film about children that no one cares about. These teenagers lack the courage and imagination to break out of suburban hell. They're stuck there. Marty and Bobby deserve each other.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE The Syrian Bride 

It is a deeply human conflict between two peoples who live in the same area and have suffered more than any other people in the world. In order to resolve it, it would require the ability to put oneself humanly into the suffering of the other. Here in Berlin Kreuzberg, however, people like to politicise and talk about Israel as an "apartheid state" etc. etc. This is ugly. That is ugly. We therefore recommend The Syrian Bride. We know Clara Khoury from "Rana's Wedding" (DVD1003) and in it she had a lot of trouble crossing the border from Ramallah to Jerusalem. In The Syrian Bride she is supposed to marry a Syrian soap opera star whom she never met. A romantic comedy without romance. The opening scene is correspondingly gloomy. Mona (Khoury) has defected to Syria and can never return to Israel. She will never see her family again. Mona gets her passport stamped in Israel and then goes over to the Syrian checkpoint. They in turn refuse to accept her passport. At least it has an Israeli stamp! Does the stamp have to be? It has to be. Without it, she cannot emigrate from Israel.