Cinema

[eMTe]

Forgive them, it is really good series, they had taste!

[Pater Alf]

Auf der Suche
A mother and an ex-lover in search for a young homosexual man who suddenly disappeared. Pretty good movie mainly because of the cold atmosphere that always makes clear that there will neither be a spectacular turning point nor a happy end.



Submarine
A great coming-of-age story. The cast is magnificent and there are lots of weird and unique ideas. Very often funny and sad at the same time (but isn't that how youth really feels?).



Dreiviertelmond
A grumpy old taxi driver (who was left by his wife) suddenly has to take care of a young Turkish girl. Not a very original idea, but one of the best German movies I saw this year. Mainly because of Elmar Wepper in the leading role (who was mostly known for very mediocre tv movies and series in Germany) who suddenly gets interesting roles and can proove that he is a great actor now he is "old".



The Muppet Christmas Carol
My usual ritual to get myself into christmas mood (thanks to my local cinema that shows the movie every year). Great as always!

[eMTe]

Ive finished watching "Michael Clayton". Id watch another movie, but I run out of strength. So good n

[Pater Alf]

Last movies in 2011:

Balada Triste deTrompeta (The Last Circus)
The tale of two circus clowns at the end of the Franco regime in Spain. Both are in love with the same girl and both suffer from severe psychic and emotional problems. It's pretty clear that they will kill each other before the story is over. Bizarre, grotesque, bloody, disturbing, entertaining and visualy stunning!



This Must Be the Place
Sean Penn as aging Goth musician who hides from the world after two kids killed themselves after one of his concerts. Movie starts as a portrait of a likeable outsider, then turns into a weird road movie when his father dies and he starts a journey through the USA to find and kill an old nazi war criminal. Definitely worth seeing!

[Pater Alf]

The year is over, so it's time to create senseless lists. Here are the 10 best movies I watched in 2011. Included are only movies I saw in cinema and for the first time (not all of them are necessarily from 2011):

1. Incendies
2. Jodaeiye Nader az Simin
3. Svinalängorna
4. Blue Valentine
5. Haevnen
6. Kauas pilvet karkaavat
7. Le nom de gens
8. Melancholia
9. Black Swan
10. Winter's Bone

Best mainstream/blockbuster movie: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Best family movie: Knerten

[eMTe]

Ive watched Saving Private Ryan (took me only 13 years to finally do it!) and as I expected from Spielberg the movie is disappointing. Battle scenes might belong to the best the cinema ever seen (I think there's too much spurting blood and flying limbs though, it looks like they deeply tried to appeal to teen audience, raised on fps games), but the usual Spielbergish sentimentalism and lack of characters depth ruins the movie. It's an entertaining flick, but empty inside. You watch it, get fascinated with depiction of combat, wait for the outcome of the mission, but after the end you just forget about the whole movie.

[Chroelle]

I actually loved Saving private ryan when it came out. And I think it was also due to the fact that it was the first movie where the violence of war was shown so explicitly. I didn't see it as an attempt to please FPS-gamers, more to actually revolt (in lack of better word) - and move the movie-watchers. The movie gave me a picture of war that wasn't John Wayne-ish (I mean compare Saving Private Ryan to The longest Day (in Denmark - D-Day), and I liked that. I liked how you didn't just feel for one side - good guys vs bad guys style - but also felt for the Germans in the movie. Everyone was in a place they didn't want to be, doing stuff they didn't want to do. So I came out of the movie with a totally different picture that you did. I wonder if the movie just didn't age well, and that could be why we have so different views on it.

[eMTe]

This appears to be funny:

http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2009/ ... backwards/

[Chroelle]

Loved that! Especially Memento, The excorsist and Rambo.

[Pater Alf]

Carnage
Two middle-class couples meet in an apartment to talk about a fight their ten-year-old boys had (with one of them loosing two teeth). At first everything is fine, but after a short while the thin ice of civilisation starts to break and all their frustration and bad feelings come to the surface.
Regarding the story and the great dialogues, you could as well watch the theatre play by Yasmina Reza. But of cours you would miss a brilliant cast. Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet haven't been that good for years and Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly are great as ever.



Tom Sawyer
I'm sure I don't have to say anything about the story as you probably all read the novel by Mark Twain or watched one of the many movie adaptions before. This one was surprisingly good. Excellent when it comes to costumes, design and settings (they used the ones from Cold Mountain). I also liked that some of the well-known characters (Aunt Polly, Indian Joe) are much more ambivalent as they are normally shown.
Maybe the movie is a little to dark and scary for younger kids in some scenes (e.g. there was a dream scene that reminds me a lot of the first appearance of Bob in David Lynch's "Twin Peaks") and a little too polished in some other scenes, but after all it was pretty good and quite enjoyable.

[eMTe]

Carnage is good, but it's not "the work of genius", so if you find such opinions dont treat them seriously. Plot is full of twists created just to push the action further and things go too fast, but the strong point is acting - all four actors do a magnificent job, so Carnage is worth watching just for them.

[eMTe]

I watched "My Neighbour Totoro" (Tonari no Totoro) and I think it's a perfect family movie (a nod to Chrolle). It's a bit hard to review a movie which should be watched by the whole family and reviewed by the whole family, but I think that's what its creators wanted to achieve. To gather both kids and parents in front of the screen. It's one of these movies which is really infantile when you want to review it plot-wise etc., but it's really deep when you want to watch it with kids.

Recommended.

[Pater Alf]

Tambien la Lluvia
A film crew goes to Bolivia to make an independent movie about the real story of Columbus and especially the way he treated the native inhabitants. They are enthusiastic and have good ideas, but in a certain way they start to treat their Bolivian actors in the same way Columbus did with the native Americans.
At the same time a riot starts, because the water in the town was sold to an international company and the citizens shall pay thrice of the former price and can't afford it. Very soon the situation in the town and within the film crew starts to escalate.

Pretty good movie with interesting thoughts about colonialism, imperialism and globalisation.



Un Cuonto Chino
A grumpy, neurotic hardware dealer helps a young robbed Chinese. Unfortunately they can't understand each other.

Nice movie with some very charming scenes and a fine sense of humour.

[Zyx]

I finally had time to watch Drive, but I'm not entirely sure how to feel about the film. One on hand, it's sleek and atmospheric, but on the other hand, it's exactly the kind of film that everyone will say is great. Little dialog, slow takes, slow tempo, boobs... all the marks of "I don't entirely understand this so this must be art".

The beginning of the film has certain Grand Theft Auto feel to it, especially because the main character is mostly silent. It's entirely anti-Transporter though, which is kind of ironic given that the Transporter was French so it should be the "artsier" one.

There's a certain Tarantino feel there, as the movie has thematic elements from many other movies. There are some twists and turns in the plot, but once it's revealed the main reason for everything to happen is pretty normal story. I think it's best to think as a pulp fiction, film noir short story.

[Scythe]

There's a certain Tarantino feel there, as the movie has thematic elements from many other movies. There are some twists and turns in the plot, but once it's revealed the main reason for everything to happen is pretty normal story. I think it's best to think as a pulp fiction, film noir short story.

Tarantino's comment on Drive was "Nice try" - exactly how I felt about one of his latest movies, Death Proof.

[Pater Alf]

Jane Eyre
What would you do if you were a young director and just debuted with an acclaimed gang drama/road movie ("Sin Nombre")? You would certainly not make the hundreth adaption of the classic novel "Jane Eyre". But that's exactly what Cary Fukunaga decided to do and the result shows that he might become a great director in the future. He strips down the well-known plot to the essential and still relevant stuff, takes away the garrulity of the novel and relies pretty much on the images he creates (and he shows that he is a director with a strong visual handwriting) and his great cast (including Mia Wasikowska, Judi Dench and Sally Hawkins). Well done!



Soeur Sourire
A movie about the singing nun Jeanine Deckers who suddenly became popular for her song "Dominique", left the convent, went broke and finally commited suicide (together with her girlfriend) at the age of 52.
The movie isn't anything special, but it isn't bad if you are interested in biopics.

[eMTe]

If you like David Cronenberg, but for some reason missed some of his older movies I recommend "Dead Ringers". Aesthetically sublime with slow narration and best role of Jeremy Irons Ive ever seen.

[Pater Alf]

Hugo Cabret
Martin Scorsese radically changed his "normal" subject and created a wonderful film about the wonder of cinematography, the magic of movies and the power of imagination.

The young orphan Hugo Cabret lives in a gigantic clock on a Parisien train station in the 1930s. The only thing left from his dead father is a broken human automaton (kind of a "Metropolis-machine") and he believes that if he can repair it, he will get a last final message from his dad. Then, without knowing, he meets the great pioneer of movie-making George Méliès, who is broken as well. So Hugo starts to fix everything, man and machine and his own life as well.

Simply beautiful and adorable and by far the best movie I saw this year (which is of course still young). And Martin Scorsese is the first director who doesn't use 3D just for the fun of it, but because he has to tell a story with it.

[Pater Alf]

Oh, and I saw another movie:

De Vrais Mensonges
A pretty average romantic-comedy. But at least it is a pretty average romantic-comedy with Audrey Tautou in it. Probably a nice date movie.

[Chroelle]

Finally I went to the movies the other day, and it was with Anna... So I watched Alvin and the chipmunks 3... :/
Well it is an ok movie for her, and I was mildly entertained mostly through the reactions of Anna.
I am gonna spare you guys of a Youtube trailer. I am guessing you know which movie I am talking about, and the style of it.