hanskauf

The dramatic pattern of various loosely connected stories of different people has given us a few remarkable films lately, like the Mexican AMORES PERROS or LICHTER (lights) from Germany. September can be compared to them, although here the stories are related to a common background, which is September 11th 2001. So we see a lot of TV-screens with news and statements, occasionally taken 1:1 on the movie screen.

Germany, September 2001. Among the portrayed people we have a broker who deals on a daily basis with colleagues in the WTC, his wife leading an unfulfilled life in their luxury home. He wants divorce. – A policeman of the anti-terrorist force wants to sell his 1967 Corvette, materialized American dream to him. He sort of takes personal the terrorist assault. – A mixed couple, he Pakistani, she German, both working in a Pizzeria. When the crash happens, the woman cannot stand her husband not expressing his feelings – she doubts, if he as a Muslim feels for the victims.

Humour is scarce but intelligently employed in the movie. The funny part belongs to a journalist fighting to write his article on the terrible events. When his girlfriend bursts in, she gives him an intellectual statement, which makes him change his mind and his article. You'll have to wait a bit for the point.

All these couples have their own relationship-conflicts. The film is on the impact of media suffering, placing it against the personal problems of the characters. The heaviest statement comes from the broker, who tells his wife: "You have no right in their suffering, it's their own." Do we maintain too much distance to unknown people's hardships, or too little? How do we deal with media realities?

These are justified and topical questions, and September accomplishes some reflection about them. The script works well, although it is far from the brilliance of LICHTER. Acting is immaculate. What I didn't like is the stylish camera, with close-ups that expose the protagonists and resemble certain TV-techniques. More distance would have been better. Anyway it is worth watching, I give it a 7.

I do not agree at all with the enthusiastic comments listed before. Knockin' on heaven's door maybe conceived as the ultimate new German comedy (actor Til Schweiger participates as producer) - what came out is in my eyes a quite embarrassing product.

The fulfilment of adolescent dreams of uninhibited consume (cars, girls, champagne - highly original) forms the base of the plot. Inserted are all types of clichés (from respected actor Moritz Bleibtreu as a dumb Arab mumbling in bad German, to the sentimental ending in the North-Sea-sunset). What really annoyed me is the dull kind of humor blank of every subtlety, which the movie celebrates from the beginning to the end. To say something positive, the camera word is fresh and at times inventive. As an example for a well-done and funny German comedy, see "Frau Rettich, die Czerni und ich" from 1998. Or else, stick to Laurel and Hardy.

This is the first time I have seen a movie set in the extraordinary Spreewald, a wood-and-water landscape south-east of Berlin. In this remote and picturesque surroundings, a man of about 60 is living alone, doing some fishing, and - you can guess it - hiding from his past. Of course, the past crawls up to him in the shape of a young girl, and so step by step, we get to know what happened. Seems that as a young man, Boran has done a stupidity and without knowing it, spoiled the lives of several persons. Apart from the worn-off and quite predictable plot, the movie has some qualities. Wonderful actor Mathias Habich for example, strange but credible characters and the beautiful and unique setting - largely exploited by the camera. All in all a watchable little film.

This is a lightweight movie, which doesn´t take itself too serious. I saw it at the Guadalajara festival "muestra", where it was well received.

As a more serious intention, it gives a portrait of an insecure and inexperienced young man, who works as a "Zivi" in the social service, delivering food too senior citizens. He meets a girl he can't really catch up with. Simple-minded as he is, he feels he has to protect her, so in the end we see a gun go off.

From the point of view of filmmaking, a problem is that the lead character is quite shallow, so the movie does not work very well as a psychological study. Neither could the actor convince me totally of his dark sides as a nice boy loosing contact with reality.

On the other hand, the film depicts quite well some scenes of everyday life in Germany, and it deals with a fine sense of humour intoducing some very funny contemporanean citizens, so that in the end you might like it.

As the movie is called STRANGE, one could expect to take some queer or at least funny looks at whatever. Strange enough, the movie feeds no expectation at all. We see an unemployed surgeon in Argentina who deliberately hangs around killing time in a bar, taking a walk or just staring in the air. The director forces us to pass through this bore in almost realtime, and it is not very funny. His relations to his sister, her little sons and a pregnant young woman he meets show us that the main character is medically speaking well, he is not depressed, but completely self-sufficient in his emptiness. Various scenes of the sort "Did you say something?" - "No." caused a mild laughter in the audience (the Guadalajara film festival). The audience could not understand this lack of interest in communication, and I wonder if anyone can. Don't get me wrong - nothing indicates a critical attitude to Argentina's actual economical and social crisis, perhaps one could detect a kind of shallow existencialism, especially in the "beautiful" photographic shots which underline the bore - grass moving in the wind and so on. Maybe I don't get it, maybe this is exactly how someone in Argentina might feel, useless, empty - to me, this movie doesn't say or explain anything.

Since I last saw this movie (on TV), some years have gone by. While other people in other places tried to set up a student´s revolution, May Spils and Werner Enke decided to make a little movie in the summer-lit Munich. There, a sympathetic good-for-nothing is hanging about and constantly producing one-line jokes. Of course, a girl passes by as well... Not much of a story, but this film seems to have been made at the right time to catch some weightless moments in the sixties. The characters move about aimlessly, but with the certainty that life is precisely here and now. A not-at-all typical german movie, I like this one very much, especially for its complete lack of ambition and the ease it radiates, which now has a touch of nostalgia. Sometimes, fortunately, film can catch and preserve the taste of a moment. In German, "zur Sache, Schätzchen" has become a saying.

Poor Jack Nicholson, here as a recently retired insurance executive, struggling to find some meaning in life - without result. The movie works in the beginning, as long as you expect something to happen, supported by the music, but then

lets you down. I cannot recommend this film to anyone who is planning to get old - the script has not many options as to what a 66 year old widower could do: annoy his daughter just before her wedding or go on a solo-trip to places where nobody takes notice of him. The letters to his little foster-son Ndugu serve as a trick of the script to make the lonely man talk, and in the end turn sentimental. A dull attitude reigns the film, and so the few funny scenes and the good acting are in vain.