professortiki

This film is brillant in so many ways, starts like a dystopian nightmare and ends as an absurd surrealistic disappointment, due to the weakness of the story, as others have also pointed out in their reviews of "Beau". On the plus-side the fabulous theater/animation sequence in the middle and Joaquin Phoenix's performance should be mentioned.

A serious warning: Like this director's other well-known movie "Midsommar", this one can be deeply traumatizing, so I definitely do not recommend it to people without emotional resilience or who are currently themselves stuck in difficult everyday circumstances.

Much has been said about this unique film in other reviews, so I do not need to repeat a summery of the story. Let me just add three more aspects:

This film contains beautiful pictures of the mediteranean landscape on a remote lonely island. Lina Wertmüller dips her images into all kinds of different magical colors. You want to be there forever and that's exactly what adds to the story of an outer-worldly romance.

Secondly the film has great music. The exact funky easy type that has been reissued on so many lounge compilation CDs during the 1990s.

And last not least this film reminds us of the fact that feminism once was all but about protection zones and a new puritanism. Women embraced freedom, wildness and radical romanticism over a boring protective conventional social construct. And feminist filmmakers, which Lina Wertmüller surely is one of, preferred to tell stories of real life over predictable gender-political statements. This film does not judge, it simply shows, merciless, but also with a lot of love and an incredible sense of beauty. It may not be easy to swallow for many, but it should rather make them aware of their own inner prisons.

My girlfriend said it is the worst film she ever saw. I wouldn't go that far, but the film is really lame. There is no excitement whatsoever, not even in the music, although the entire plot centers around it. Everything goes VERY slow. At every moment you can easily guess the next step of the story and the end is predictable to every detail. Even when all of a sudden some unexpected drama evolves out of nothing in the middle of the film, nothing really happens and you are left with guessing what's going on. The worst thing about this film are the helpless unoriginal dialogues full of cliché emotions and lack of ideas. The film is neither real nor a firework of phantasy. I only give the second star for the beauty of the Spanish landscape and the picturesque group of ex-friends of the main actor's father at the funeral at the very beginning of the film.

It's not romantic, it's not funny and despite some self-proclaimed smart people's opinion it's not a parody either. It's just a badly written film with an inconsistant story, bad music and unreal characters. You ask yourself all the time, where for chrissake is this going? The saddest part comes at the end, when you realize you are bound to recieve a stereotyped message of feminist self-sufficiency. The only thing about this corny film, that is entertaining in a weird way, is when you shake your head in disbelief about the silliness you are watching.

The film can't quite decide wether it wants to be silly, romantic or seriously. However it's quite entertaining. After all the confusion going on there would have been a unique chance for a surprise ending: What if, instead of Jamie, Chris would have got Samantha for the happy end? She had been built up during the story from a total jerk to a rather sympathetic woman. Nice twist, no? Oh well... chance was missed anyway.

The entertaining film is about a little village in Western Pomeria, Germany, before WW1. It is based on a novel by Ehm Welk, who wrote it in 1937, despite living under occupational ban by the Nazi government. The story gives a fond insight in the way people lived in the "good old days", when Germany still was a monarchy under Kaiser Wilhelm. However big politics never reach the remote world of the people in this story. Instead they solve their problems with their own rural politics. The picture of an old tripartite society is painted with a whimsical smile and a dash of anarchism, that adds to the lightness of the subject. Although never leaving the layer of a family movie, that can be watched well during the christmas days, the film accomplishes remarkable depth. It's emotions range from laughter to crying, presented in an unsentimental brash way. The overall acting is superb, which includes about a dozen children. This film is an underestimated jewel. The older it gets, the more it shows what we lost today: emotions based on real life, instead of the shallow sensations of modern media entetainment.

I couldn't say how realistic a movie about relationships is, that is casted with some of the most attractive actors in the show business, but that may even be a minor reason to enjoy this film. Based on serious story lines around a wedding, the viewer is carried through different emotions of singles, who are all looking for the right partner in their lives or couples questioning their existing relations and marriages. The way the film is made it offers a lot of possibilities to feel empathy with the protagonists, but you also want to pick one that you would fall in love with yourself. I ended up crying like a baby with my breath getting out of control. I'm sure the ladies will love this even more. Hollywood cinema in the best sense.

This was surprisingly disappointing. There's hardly any new idea in this episode. Old characters appear, looking really old now. There's the Millennium Falcon again. There is a new Death Star, blowing up planets again. And again the Rebels blow it up by flying into its energy center and damaging it. There is a father and son story, just like the one between Darth Vader and Luke, only this time it's between Han Solo and his son. And like before they meet for a father-and-son-showdown on a bridge within the death star. There is the old hierarchic structure of the Empire, now called First Order with a virtually present "imperator" and his executive evil guy. There is the desert planet with funny alien races and garbage trading. There is the bar with sinister alien characters and an alien band playing alien music. There is all kinds of war battles and conveniently both the "empire" and the rebels still use their old ships and uniforms. They still aim and fire manually in the 23rd century, otherwise those battle scenes would be really short. There are all kinds of non-plausible things going on. Like, the top rebel prisoner of the First Order is brought to his prison cell by just one storm trooper, and out of thousands it happens to be the "traitor", who consequently helps the prisoner to escape. And so on. Maybe children dig this. As an adult, who has seen the other episodes of Star Wars, it is simply ridiculous.

This must be one of the most old-fashioned and conservative films I have ever seen. A couple of well-set friends lie to each others for one and a half hours until the leading lady gets her unattractive object of desire at last. That may say something about the stratum the story plays in, but as a film it's a disaster. Fought hard against falling asleep. The problem with the "mistakes" everybody, except for the gay friend of Rachel, is constantly making in the film, is that they are so bloody obvious. And not only that: Ethan, who mysteriously falls in love with Rachel, although he is gay, constantly tells her, what she's doing wrong, to no effect. So when the audience is already biting their lips, Rachel still acts like an idiot over and over again. This is simply unbearable.

This documentary about the massacre of the Israelian army in Jenin lets eye-witnesses from the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin have their say. Their testimonies offer a shocking insight into the constant war in the middle-east region, that all-too-often is covered up by the western media. The Israelian authorities did not only refuse access of journalists, they also banned the film. Delegates of the Knesset publicly called the people to boycott the theater plays of the director of this film, who is a Palestinian living in Israel. In my understanding of freedom of opinion every side must have the right to advance an opinion, so everybody can decide what to think of it.

Much has been talked about the pros and cons of contemporary German film. While most of them still suffer from bad acting, bad directing, bad music and bad scripts, this one outdoes them all. As the previous comment is already outlining: this film shows reality much in the sense of the new realistic cinema of the 70s, that Germany never much contributed to, with one great exception: the now almost unknown, but then quite successful director Klaus Lemke. He thought of his works as "anti-intellectual" films, which means nothing more and nothing less, than getting to the nucleus of a reality shown, leaving out any moral obligations "society" may demand from an artist in his rightful attempt to simply fascinate, a point that especially in German cinema cannot be emphasized strongly enough. It may not always be in favor of brutal realism, it can even be fun. So, what is it that Sylke Enders does right? Deducting from her biography, she is a writer herself, she even does script-doctoring for others. She does this part in her own film with an admirable subtlety; only at the very end of the film, last scene, last picture, the main blonde Kroko shows one real happy smile on her face, and Enders allows the viewer to project any hope for a better world we all need into this smile. It's simply enough and by doing so she takes the viewer seriously . While other directors hammer their moral message into the audiences brains as if they are all children or imbeciles, Enders offers something much more valuable: trust. The second thing she does with vertiginous greatness: leading of the actors. It has been my suspicion for a long time that the bad acting I find in most of todays German films rather owes to the directors and the bad scripts they try to film, and not so much to the actors themselves. In the case of Kroko Franziska Jünger isn't even an educated actress. Yes, she is talented, but I think it takes a director like Sylke Enders to discover this talent, make it blossom and bring it to the screen.

Even if you do not dig the rather conservative atmosphere the story of the first part of Bridget Jones was based on, you could go with the flow and enjoy it quite much, because the characters were drawn quite believably. Not so in the second part, suspiciously titled "The Edge Of Reason". It must be the worst film of the year, at least of the films I have seen. Nothing fits. The story cracks up several times, the string of events does not follow any apparent logical path until it completely falls apart. Even the best actors would break down under the pressure of such a weak book, and even the best director couldn't make you believe what's going on. One example out of many many may illustrate this: Pretty much in the beginning, Bridget and Mark are still totally in love with each other. During a dinner party a slight irritation among them occurs, not even an argument, let alone a fight. The result however is, they split up. Come on! I heard people in the audience groaning with pain about the evident stupidity of the character's behavior. Even if Bridget Jones is presented as a pretty awkward figure, nobody will excuse if she obviously acts less intelligent than even the densest viewer all the time. That never works in a film!

In my estimate the film isn't as bad as the comment of Jan Onderwater suggests. It has some great moments and colorful details, for instance the set decorations. The crazy director of the mental hospital, cracking matches all the time to get his nervousness under control, is sitting in front of a painting, that instantly makes you laugh: a big red splash like blood on a white canvas. The hallways and rooms of the hospital are equipped with psychedelic and op-art paintings and you ask yourself, whether they decorate the interior of the institution or rather create the madness going on inside it. All in all the film is about the eternal question, who is crazier, the lunatic or the society he lives in. The performances of the actors is not consistent. Sometimes the two stars of the film, Heinz Rühmann and Charles Régnier, act quite brilliantly, sometimes they look kind of misplaced, but obviously owing to a weak director's leading rather than to their own abilities. The weak sides of the film include severe mistakes of timing, for instance in many of the hunt scenes, and a lack of sense for the increase and decrease of dramatic suspense. Still the film is a child of its time in the best sense and therefore has its true value, although it is far from perfect.

Together with "The Outsiders" Coppola has made two of the most defining movies about youth, violence and relationships among young men ever within only a few months. Only "Tex" and "River's Edge", both by Tim Hunter, can compete with these exceptional examples of a genre of the early 80s. What strikes me is the almost psychedelic realism of these films, although they follow a clear story line. Many later famous actors had been gaining a wider public attention here, people like Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Nicholas Cage, to mention only a few. Also seen Tom Waits and Dennis Hopper. Another great aspect of both of these two Coppola films is the music. I could not tell many other directors except Stanley Kubrick and much later the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, who developed such great skills for the use of music in film.