Reviews

One of my all-time favourites, this movie is refreshing, because of the carthasis it offers, and I have never experienced carthasis as intensely as here. As the young widow Krista is setting out to exact revenge for her husband's death on Hans, the rather juvenile German soldier, both of them discover forgiveness and innocence in the most unlikely place and time and constellation, in the middle of the turmoil of the final days of WW2 between two people who have every reason to be mortal enemies. Acting, cinematography and music are superb. And on another note, I also highly recommend reading the novel by the same name, that Jan Procházka has written based on his film skript, first of all it gives more detail about Krista's background and secondly it adds a whole dimension to the film's ending. Apart from the Czech original, there is at least a Dutch translation entitled "Koets naar Wenen".

The thing that intrigued me about this movie was the character of Clint Brenner and Lex Barker's portrayal of him. Of course there are the usual Western clichés like a range war, the loner coming to town, one man facing a whole gang of hired guns or even the gunslinger fight at the end. Though this one has a nice twist, in that it is an annual prize fight leaving one contestant dead held by the obviously sensationalist, voyeuristic and bloodthirsty population of the town of Glory.

Back to Clint Brenner, one of the gunslingers: He is the essential loner who in a rather funny dialogue verbatim expresses that he chooses not to get involved with other people. Nevertheless he is no sociopath, he has got humour and he gets along with people, he even helps them if it cannot be avoided. What might be a deficit, the fact that it is never explained how and why he got to dislike human company, (there are some hints though) is rather an advantage because the focus is now on how opens up again. In the end there is one, maybe two or three relationships he has got. Two scenes are really outstanding in this context. The first is when the wounded Jade tries to ask him to abandon the fight and Lex Barker's facial expression, especially his eyes, grows suddenly very hard and unforgiving when only the moment before he was very soft. His whole demeanor is saying that he won't discuss this with anybody. The second scene is him lying on the bed just before the fight staring at the ceiling and giving the impression that he is pretty well aware of the fact, that this whole business will boil down on either him killing somebody or him being killed, with every implication this might hold. I also love how this is contrasted with Reese', his opponents, preparations. He is almost carelessly easy and light-hearted about it.

Like Gordon or rather Peter says: "There was only one fiend after all." - and it's almost too late when he discovers the truth. In retrospect it feels like she's been setting this up from the very first moment she meets him and executes it with cold precision. Definitely a wonderful little thriller even with some satirical barbs against teetotalers.

Though this movie is categorized as fantasy, surreal would be more appropriate. The main plot device is the transmigration of the soul, in fact Ristol's, an actor's, soul and his lover Ana looking for it or rather him. Ana has gathered a rather motley group to assist her. There is the clumsy detective, who serves to have some slapstick moments in the movie; or a crazy woman, who gets somehow involved with the detective. There are two lovers, who also join the pursuit. And Constantino, a naive servant, who unwittingly delays Ristol's soul because he takes away the doll that is possessed by his soul. And there is a woman and her murderer, whom they also encounter.

This sounds like a pretty odd movie and yet it isn't. To me it was a wonderful journey of love and maybe the only way to show such a deep emotion. The way Ana is searching high and low, the narrow places she is getting herself into. Or my favourite scene, when Ristol, who in the meantime inhabits the murdered woman's body, meets and recognizes Ana, only to lose her yet again and how, in his final manifestation as a stone handed by Ana to the woman, he is calling out her name.

Last but not least I'd like to mention the cinematography, which displays some stunningly beautiful pictures of the Asturian seaside.

Judging from other reviews this must be a quite racist movie, when in fact it isn't.

First of all the Native Americans, here represented by the Hurons, do not carry the main conflict. In fact they are quite civilized, for they agree to let their sworn enemy, Hutter, go free in return for the scalps of the people Hutter has killed.

The actual conflicting parties are Old Hutter and Harry March on the one side and mainly Deerslayer and Chingachook on the other. The main mystery for Deerslayer to solve - and it is no McGuffin - is why the Hurons are attacking and it really is something despicable and dark: Old Hutter has been hunting for Native Americans and with the help of Harry March been selling their scalps. Old Hutter does it to revenge his wife and March is in it for the money, which in fact will bring Deerslayer and Chingachook in pretty bad trouble. Something that Deerslayer decidedly is horrified by.

Even though one might argue about the happy ending, it is the movie's merit to explicitly show this horrible practice of putting a price on Native Americans' scalps.

"Christian Wolff" suffering from Asperger is exposed to two kinds of abuse. First his father who is unable to cope with his son's affliction and deals with it the only way he can by exposing him to the Spartan rule of what doesn't kill you just makes you stronger because he feel that is the only way to protect his son. Then after a funeral that went terribly wrong "Christian" gets arrested and the state discovering his mathematical skills uses him to go after terrorists. So again abused as a tool "Christian" learns the skills to make him a brilliant accountant and assuming the state should be a father two fathers have failed him so far.

In prison he gets to know Francis Silverberg, who introduces him into the criminal world of accounting for the mob, who also from the little glimpses we get of their relationship acts like a father to him. Once he learns that Silverberg was brutally tortured to death his path is set and he takes revenge. Yet and this is important he meets yet another father J.K. Simmons' Ray King. And there will be another "father" John Lithgow's Lamar Black, who will go to any length to protect his "child".

And this is only one aspect under which to watch this movie because it also deals with for example art. I certainly enjoyed it and will most probably watch it a second time.

What I really liked and didn't expect is that the conflict suggested by the title was the central one, but that the roles were different than I had expected.

This is really a major spoiler, so don't go ahead if you haven't yet watched the movie!

It is actually Batman who wins and he wins because his wrath and hatred has left him void of almost any human emotion. Lex Luthor really knew which note to strike to push his irascibility. Technically defeated - which I did not expect - Superman was only lucky to hit Batman's only soft spot.

A more than honourable mention of Jeremy Iron's Alfred, whose wry sense of humour and eloquence only leave him once. I'd really, really love to see more of this Alfred and Batman.

Interesting how people rather would comment on their expectations that have apparently not been met by this movie than on the actual movie. Obviously many reviewers expected just a hilarious comedy and their anticipation at least in their view was disappointed. Well, the odd thing is that The World's Greatest Lover is a hilarious comedy offering very funny scenes, but it is also much more than this, it's a brilliant satire. As such it is a comment on Hollywood and not a very pleasant one, though it is set in an era that had at least according to this portrayal not yet succumbed to the mere business side of filmmaking. What one can see - if one chooses to - is a city completely revolving around make-believe. Everybody is a movie star, everybody behaves like one, may it be Rudy on his arrival at the hotel or Uncle Harry and his family. After all this is the dream factory, which btw is an oxymoron. Yet despite of the absolute irreality of movies, there is a craving for reality and truth at its heart. When Rudy finally wakes up and comes to terms with himself realising his love for Annie, the mostly female audience gets hysterical for this is what they are longing for. Thus this movie can also be viewed as a romantic comedy of a man finally waking up from the dreams and expectations imposed on him, which also runs in his most private, sexual life forcing him to use and apply a manual, to the reality of his own dreams, which he can and will make real.

Being German I was especially impressed by the passage set in Bavaria, because at that point it became obvious to me that it was not just Lola's story Ophüls was telling but he sort of identified with her.

There is this storyline when the king and Lola are still focusing on art while the self-righteous revolution is breaking out, and though I did not know at the time, I realised that it must have been the same for Ophüls when he was a director in Germany and the Nazis were gaining power. The king's longing look out of the window at all that was lost haunted me. Then there is this scene where Lola gets saved by the students, fleeing Munich in the middle of the night, just like Ophüls left Berlin at the last moment. When I was at the Parc de Bercy in Paris to watch the restored version, I sensed the great silence in the audience. Maybe like me they were thinking of all these people, who had not been so lucky.

I'm so sorry that this masterpiece was not regarded as such when it was first released and even more at the fact that it was butchered subsequently. Sorry also that Ophüls himself witnessed this, but yet again grateful for the effort displayed in restoring it to its original beauty.

I almost watched this one with him, but since we were in for a calm evening I rather refrained from it.

This movie makes your adrenalin rush, for the camera and action is almost moving constantly. As other reviewers have already pointed out this is a movie shot in one continuous flow, making it feel like one shot though technically speaking it was edited. Because of this it also plays in real time and it is an awfully packed and complex story for its running time of ca 65 minutes. Whole life stories are condensed in it. At least the ones of the main character Carl and his girlfriend lost and recovered, Janie.

First at all though I'd love to talk about the cinematography and its effects on the audience, which must be me. Since there is this constant move and since the camera has to be positioned inbetween the interacting actors, I got the feeling of being much more immediately involved in the whole story than usually. I became a sort of silent, close witness of it all. And to push this effect even beyond this, at times the camera angle would change drawing me really into the character's standpoint, especially after Carl is shot and his dizziness gets reflected by the camera's constantly tumbling around.

Back to the story, basically it's about a well planned heist that goes horribly wrong. The main character is Carl who is being released from prison when the movie begins. During the ensuing 65 minutes the audience witnesses the heist, learns about Carl's relationship to Patrick, an old pal, who helped him organize the heist, a former girlfriend, Janie, gets shagged and then recaptured and maybe lost again, wrongs dating back from schooldays get resolved, even the question why Carl and Patrick ended up as criminals gets touched. The underlying current is a theme of reunion and reconciliation. In this whole scheme Carl undergoes the greatest evolution, from the hard-boiled ex-con to the sincere and responsible lover.

Sometimes when the lights go up I imagine what would happen after the movie's ending and in this case, though in reality they wouldn't stand a chance, I imagine that Janie and Carl would be happy because both of them discovered something precious, something to give them hope.

If you've got a taste for the absurd this movie is surely it. The characters are absurdly exaggerated, they are like caricatures of the clichés they represent. The American businessman is THE ugly American businessman, the scientist is weird, his gofer is inapt, the communist is the communist.

And yet this movie manages to put absolute sincerity into one of the weirdest love scenes I've ever seen: a sort of Frankenstein's monster declaring his eternal love to a robot. It's got to be true that at the very heart of it this is actually a love story. And in a more daring approach I can even see it as a sort of love-hate story between William and Yegor, after all they have to learn to live with one another if they want to survive. Live, learn and above all communicate.

Though the movie definitely is a low budget production and hence suffers a lot from this, it still offers some good cinematography, like the final fight between Tatoya and William/Yegor.

During the course of this movie nothing remains like it appeared to be at the beginning. And I am not just talking the question who is truly suffering from Alzheimer's disease, but rather the relationship between the two brothers and their individual characters. Whereas at the beginning and the first half of the film Jakob is portrayed as being in every aspect the more capable of the two - this is especially stressed by flashbacks to their childhood -, in the course of events it becomes clearer that it is in fact Lorenz, the ne'er-do-well, who knows so much more about life. He is the one being able to call things by their proper name and when there is a life-threatening emergency he is the one to know the remedy. When at the very end it dawned on me with how much courage and acceptance of life he performed what must have been his ultimate aim, to re-unite his family again, this totally blew my mind. A movie that left me torn between crying and secretly, pretty warmly smiling at its main character, Jakob's brother. Thanks a lot, it's been a unique pleasure.

Let me start by telling that I'm not actually a fan of gory horror movies and that the movies that scare me the most are those in which the horror is not graphic but rather happening in your head. Like the most scary movies to me are "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925) and especially the scene when the phantom is described and one can see the horror on the face of the person who is describing him, or The Haunting where the horror is also only conveyed by the reactions of those exposed to it.

The other preliminary is that the first thing I learned about this movie is that it was banned in Germany for being too brutal and yet I watched it and am glad I did for I was pleasantly surprised - if one can talk of pleasant in the context of a horror movie. For what I found was a movie that takes its brutality and gore and the effect on its protagonists seriously.

For me the conflict became evident in Ash's exclamation: "Why are you torturing me like this?". First of all I took it as being directed against the demons who are of course threatening him, but then I discovered some other deeper meaning here. For he is the only one who actually knows the remedy against them, which is dismemberment, but he is also shown as being very reluctant to actually apply it. So what is tormenting Ash is also this knowledge and the effects it does or would have on his soul. Which according to Peter Brook also happens to be the central one in Hamlet. Hamlet is ordered to revenge his father's death, but at the same time the ghost also demands him not to taint his soul. In both cases the choices are horrible and both are quite classic.

I can imagine that some people might be put off by the film's ironic attitude towards the media and gangster movies. Maybe it takes a spitefully uncommon sense of humour to go along with the teasing and (self-) depreciative mood that at times is exposed. The opening scene already dwells on this attitude, when exactly those things are performed that the lead character, a scriptwriter and would be writer, tells us he would never do in a movie. All the while you will get off comments that either give a deeper "truth" to or foil what you are seeing, and almost every aspect of modern culture is made fun of: TV, modern art (I believe Velibor Topic's character is not French like some reviewer said, but rather ex-Yugoslavian - hence his comment that it would be easy for him to get corpses in his home country, I simply cannot imagine that of France ;)), the close relations between the USA and the UK, religion, Batman, French movies etc.

The real highlight of the movie is the wonderful soundtrack, music you are not likely to hear in other movies and I must admit that it incited me to look for at least digital copies.

BTW Danny Dyer and Martin Freeman do get a scene together but one of them is no longer able to talk.

Midway through this movie exactly this phrase came to my mind. There are some really lovely moments where (t)his potential shines, something like Hepburn-Grant, wow - oh and the chemistry between the leads should be a little bit better. Yet of course this movie isn't a screwball and if you expect a lot of swinging, you'd be disappointed as well. The gags were foreseeable and all I felt was an air of compulsiveness, as regards marriage, sex etc. When Peter (Jonathan Silverman) mentions that he misses the fighting and nagging, this subsumed exactly my feelings about the script.

So please, please, if anybody reads this do me a favour and have Martin Freeman do a real screwball comedy, for I fear he would be excellent - just the right timing. The 6 out of ten is for the acting!

My vote is somehow better than I would give if it were not for the acting.

The story, I'm afraid is sort of a letdown and in the days of virtual reality seems far too dated. Somebody getting absorbed by his dreams feels so obsolete in these days when there are so much more real and effective ways to dilute your mind.

The final catch does not really come as a surprise, it's something like "the perfect kiss is the kiss of death", Gary finally ends his quest - or was it Mel's - and ends up in the perfect dream.

I've not yet made up my mind if this movie is a satire, mocking its characters, or if it is a more serious drama. In the best case it would be both, in the worst none actually and just talky I'm afraid. My personal view on dreams, which gets also touched in the course of the story, is that they do encourage you to make them real.

Force is the subject of Richie's, Nonne's and Paule's life. They all practice the sport parkour, where they train to overcome obstacles in the most efficient way, only employing their bodies. A high scale of concentration and equilibrium of body and mind is necessary for the successful performance. This equilibrium gets disturbed when Richie begins developing a jealous attitude towards his girlfriend Hannah and her aim to better her position in life. Slowly but distinctively this jealousy grows pathological and alienates him from his friends, to what degree is only revealed at the end of the movie, when it becomes obvious that Richie needs medical treatment. Yet he and his friends face their athletic masterpiece at the end of the movie. Nonne and Paule succeed but Richie's body and physical health have been wrecked by his pathological state and the medication The movie has an open end, though there are hints that Richie at least has overcome his morbid jealousy. Truly a great physical and emotional effort by the young cast, especially by Christoph Letkowski,whose calm and controlled yet forceful performance very convincingly portrays Richie's drifting away into a split personality. Ingeniously Rensing avoids all showing off of actual physical violence directed against other beings or oneself, though he definitely highlights the consequences.