Bilan cinématographique trimestriel

• Le Concert***
  First movie of the year; funny, sad, moving, great.
• Up*
  Nice and not bad but below Pixar’s usual level of entertainment.
• Avatar***
  Those images…
• Mr. Nobody**
  Weird, long, not bad. How many different lives fit in one and why we are not always masters of our destiny. Or shall we say, hardly ever?
• The Third Man**
  A classic; Orson Welles, no happy end.
• Invictus***
  Not a Clint Eastwood master piece but a true story about how sport can bring people together, even blacks and whites in South Africa.
• A Single Man**
  By all means not an action movie. A calm, beautifully shot film. A bit less of the music would have been more but all together a good moment.

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A part from that

Le petit Nicolas is a chouette French movie. Not overwhelming but an acceptably pleasent comedy. That the guy next to me was laughing all the time before the actual joke wasn’t making it better but…

Trash

Went to see Inglourious Bastards with a friend last night. The critics I had heard reached from “have to see it” to “no way” and our opinions didn’t match either. “Worst deception ever” and “Trash” were the comments of my friend. Admittedly, it is trash – totally exaggerated, political and historical incorrect, bloody Tarantino fairy tale trash…

I had a good evening.

Psychodelic

I went to see “Terribly happy” mainly because of “Adam’s apples”. “Adam’s apples” is a Danish movie I watched in 2006 in Berlin and an extraordinary examples of black, politically incorrect humour. I loved it. When I read the review of the Danish movie “Terribly happy” describing it as a mix of horror, western and black, politically incorrect humour, I knew what I had to do.

It is a weird story of a young cop which is relocated in the middle of nowhere in Denmark where cows and cars miraculously disappear in the marécages and where people don’t like it at all when you meddle with their business. The cop doesn’t get on well with the local bully but very well with the wife of his. Which, obviously, is not going to help and makes things going as wrong as they possibly could.

I don’t know what kind of grass they smoke up there but it has some powerful effects.

WALL-E meets…

A Magnet

WALL-E is one of those movies where you just feel how much fun the people making it had while doing so. It’s the only 90 minutes movie I know having less then a approximate 500 words, at least spoken by humans. And, the WALL-E meets … serie on youtube is one of the best teasers ever.

If you think about it, the movie works in a quite predictable way: the lonely hero cleaning up a place everybody else deserted, meeting unexpectingly his heroine who first is very reluctant to his advances but finally falls in love with him when he saves the planet/humankind/etc. Nevertheless, it works and you come out of the cinema with a big smile and a feeling of happiness.

Angel of Death

And suddenly I understood what I hadn’t understood before: I know who, or better what Anton Chigurh is. In “No country for old men”, he is the angel of death. All those who recognise him as what he is have to die. Some very few are lucky enough to escape him – they don’t recognise him so he either flips a coin (the dumb gas station operator) or lets them walk away (the two kids at the end of the movie).

The sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, never looks into the eyes of this angel of death – he survives. The angel kills indifferently, good guys, bad guys, complete strangers having the bad luck of crossing his way. He is not interested in money or drugs, nor in justice. He is not corruptible and he laughs when his victims in their last minute say the sentence “You don’t have to do this”, as by his nature he does not have the choice but killing them.

Not a very pleasant character after all but for me the explanation why there is no end, why it doesn’t make sense. He goes beyond our understanding, beyond the reasonable, the rational; and there is nothing, at least nothing human, which is able to stop him.

Questions – answers

1. Name a movie you have seen more than 10 times
Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel, certainly. Every Christmas again. And of course, even if it is not a film “Dinner for One”

2. Name a movie you’ve seen multiple times in the theatre
Memory research result: Lord of the Rings

3. Name an actor who would make you more inclined to see a movie
Denzel Washington, Jack Nickelson, Bully, Paul Newman, Jodie Foster, Robin Williams, Clive Owen, since Kill Bill: Uma Thurman

4. Name an actor who would make you less likely to see a movie
To many names coming to my mind; small selection: Nicolas Cage, Jessica Alba, Sandra Bullock, Steve Martins, most German TV actors

5. Name a movie you can and do quote from.
The Ring must be destroyed (If my memory is right, you cannot find this in the book)

6. Name a movie musical in which you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs
I can’t stand musicals. But the only film in which I probably now most of the lyrics for most of the songs is Walk the Line. But for the songs I know the lyrics for I also know the chords for… Does this count?

7. Name a movie you have been known to sing along with
”Walk the line”, Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel

8. Name a movie you would recommend everyone see
Everyone? Difficult. Ok, because it is really heard warming: Drei Haselnüsse for Aschenbrödel.

9. Name a movie you own
For the last time Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel and several films I own together with my sister like Sister Act

10. Name an actor who launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops
Uma Thurman, and what could I not stand this woman at the beginning…

11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in?
I have not even been in an open-air theatre…

12. Ever made out in a movie?
First love, first date, no place to go (parents), no privacy… Guess!

13. Name a movie you keep meaning to see but you just haven’t gotten around to yet
I have not been in the cinema since December last year. I still want and have to see Das Leben der Anderen and probably a lot of other films I missed too.

14. Ever walked out of a movie?
NO! I have paid for watching! Walking out is even worse than not finishing a meal in a restaurant. At least in a restaurant you can tell the cook that your meal was awful, disgusting or nauseating but in a cinema, whom would you tell? I continue watching most on the films on TV even if I do not like them. My problem is that I always want to know the end. One exception I can remember was Chicago. Hell, was this boring.

15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theatre
In einem Land vor unserer Zeit when the dinosaur mum died. That is sooo sad!

16. Popcorn?
YES, but only fresh. Basically this means that the only cinema where I would eat sweet popcorn is the Woki in Bonn. Salted, when I am hungry, but it is better than I always thought before tasting it.

17. How often do you go to the movies
In good movie years, I would say around 10 to 15 times. This year is going to be a bad one, at least it seems so… No movie since January

18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theatre?
Children of Men. In Cape Town, South Africa. One and only film I saw there, I enjoyed it very much.

19. What’s your favourite/preferred genre of movie?
Action, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Animated films, small production films advertised by critical newspapers (Le petit bulletin), Drama and horror only when I am in the mood, films with favourite actors…

20. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theatre?
I am not sure. I remember a Russian film (Hase und Wolf) we watched at school when I was ? years old. Does this count?

21. What movie do you wish you had never seen?
X-Men III. I only went to see it because I saw the two others and because I am a sequel freak. But that one was bad, really bad. The thin but still recognisable thread leading through the first and second part was completely cut, the special effects were awful and ahhhhhhhh just forget about it.

22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed?
Adams Äpfel – Adam’s apples. What a nice weird film seen at the Fantasy Film festival in Berlin last year. The story tells basically the classical fight of the forces of evil against the power of Go(o)d. Only that the evil is the normal while Go(o)d is completely crazy. Best film of black humour and political incorrectness in a very long time.

23. What is the scariest movie you’ve seen?
Scary like being afraid afterward? Well, then it was I know what you did last summer. After the film, I checked the car boot for at least two weeks every time before taking the car. But I also looked for several weeks under my bed after reading The red death from Poe (for my excuse: I was 14 or something like this)

24. What is the funniest film you have ever seen?
Funny like laughing every time I see it? Like hilarious? I guess that it would be animated films like Chicken Run or Shrek (one of the very few films where the sequel is at least as good as the first one, I am waiting for the three)

Stolen here. Links will come tomorrow. I am too tired now.