I'd never have thought that a German, well it's actually more a Bavarian movie, could be this exceptional anymore. But it continues the line of rare Bavarian films that capture life in all its facets, in the great tradition of Franz Xaver Bogner's "Irgendwie & Sowieso" from the 1980s. It's true and funny, sad and heartwarming, telling a grand story with an outstandingly authentic cast, an exceptionally good soundtrack in beautiful pictures. If you want to be entertained well for an evening and you want more than just a cheap laugh, go see this movie (despite its strange title, meaning something like "The sooner you die, the longer you'll be dead") and see Bavaria beyond all kitsch!
Reviews
14 Reviews
The Brothers Grimm
(2005)
A visual joyride
10 September 2005
Warning: Spoilers
I had seen the trailer and my expectations were accordingly high. They were fully met by an awesome, well and less well known cast, a rather unconventional approach to the whole Grimm Brothers universe and stunning visuals; Some of the CGI though I have to admit, struck me as sort of amateurish in a few scenes, compared to Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. The overall impression though is really stunning with beautiful set decoration and lavish costumes. The story itself is somewhat old fashioned but entertaining and it's even more fun when you know about the Grimm's fairy tales beyond the usual Disney-stuff, since you'll be able to better appreciate all the tiny details woven into the movie's story. It's a mixture of "Sleepy Hollow" meets "Signs" meets "Twelve Monkeys", so if you liked those, go and enjoy this one!
Wicker Park
(2004)
nice little Winter movie
28 August 2004
It reminded me a bit of "Lost in Translation" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind": quiet, enjoyable, romantic, intelligent, one of those films that keeps you thinking for some time after having left the theater. I liked Josh Hartnett's shy performance of a guy helplessly in love with a girl and even Diane Krueger was okay, since she actually had to play and not just display her beautiful face on a huge screen as she had to do in "Troy". Matthew Lillard in particular is honest fun to watch as he plays his character with such light wholeheartedness and so obviously enjoying himself, it really is a rare pleasure (since he often tends to lapse into behaving like a goof ball). If you look for something entertaining on a higher level, maybe on a cold Winter's evening, that's your movie.
The Matrix Revolutions
(2003)
I knew there had to be a reason ...
6 November 2003
.... why the Wachowskis didn't give any interviews.
I wish I had only seen the first movie, the two sequels spoilt the entire idea for me. Minute long scenes of the fight men against machines when it becomes clear the second the machines reach Zion that it can only be the machines that will survive... This entire battle left me with the bitter taste of the display of American post-September 11th trauma that has become so common in American movies containing any sort of "war". The new Oracle and the insufficient explanation why there even is a new one are disappointing as well as the half told story of this Indian girl/program and the final purpose of the Trainman. Character evolvement doesn't take place anymore, what so hopefully began in part one stopped right between end of part one and beginning of part two. And finally not even the action sequences will save "Revolutions", what is it with this Harry Potter-like Agent Smith vs. Neo flying around?
But it was dead Neo's Jesus posture at the end of "Revolutions" that finally killed this film for me. Make the right choice ... don't waste either time or money...
I wish I had only seen the first movie, the two sequels spoilt the entire idea for me. Minute long scenes of the fight men against machines when it becomes clear the second the machines reach Zion that it can only be the machines that will survive... This entire battle left me with the bitter taste of the display of American post-September 11th trauma that has become so common in American movies containing any sort of "war". The new Oracle and the insufficient explanation why there even is a new one are disappointing as well as the half told story of this Indian girl/program and the final purpose of the Trainman. Character evolvement doesn't take place anymore, what so hopefully began in part one stopped right between end of part one and beginning of part two. And finally not even the action sequences will save "Revolutions", what is it with this Harry Potter-like Agent Smith vs. Neo flying around?
But it was dead Neo's Jesus posture at the end of "Revolutions" that finally killed this film for me. Make the right choice ... don't waste either time or money...
Bulletproof Monk
(2003)
uninspired and uninspiring
16 May 2003
A quite conventional story made into a somewhat entertaining, but uneventful movie. Something like "Indiana Jones" without Harrison Ford meets "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". You get an evil German Nazi (whoever else could illustrate evil so well known and coherent for even the last American movie goer to grasp immediately ...), the old national treasure to gain control over the world with (for good or ill) which needs to be protected against Nazis and even some sort of a Dr. Elsa Schneider ;) Sean William Scott was a certain surprise, to me, since I didn't know he could actually play anything beyond this Stifler-like characters he impersonated thus far. Though there's little chemistry on the screen between Chow Yun Fat and Sean William Scott. Plus Chow Yun Fat's heavy accent made him somewhat difficult to decrypt, for my humble self. If you ask me, you won't miss anything if you skip this one on the big screen but if you go or have to see it for whatever reasons, it's at least not really boring!
Phone Booth
(2002)
4 square meters of adrenaline
19 April 2003
I very seldomly saw a movie set on so limited a stage that kept me so entirely focused.
First I was sceptic about it because there is only so much you can do with a single phone booth, even if it's set up in New York. To my big surprise, I found myself glued to the screen, the work of Colin Farrell and the mere voice of Kiefer Sutherland demanding my full attention for those 80 minutes.
If you liked "Speed", "Phone Booth" is the film for you to see!
First I was sceptic about it because there is only so much you can do with a single phone booth, even if it's set up in New York. To my big surprise, I found myself glued to the screen, the work of Colin Farrell and the mere voice of Kiefer Sutherland demanding my full attention for those 80 minutes.
If you liked "Speed", "Phone Booth" is the film for you to see!
Elves at Helm's Deep?
18 December 2002
I kept asking me during the entire movie what happened to Peter Jackson's way of adapting the Lord of the Rings? As good a job as he did with the first book as badly adapted is the second one! It exists barely one scene that is not in some way either extended or totally changed which gave me the strange feeling of watching something familiar that wasn't familiar at all. Why did he have to send elves to Helm's Deep and what happened to the Ents? And Arwen again, Jesus, Liv Tyler is beautiful, we know it by now but did she really have to have that amount of screen time (esp. since I don't remember her in part two of the book at all ...)? And why has Gimli changed to such an incapable fool? The very few good scenes don't make a good movie ...
The Four Feathers
(2002)
Von Einem der auszog, das Fuerchten zu (ver-)lernen
4 November 2002
About friendship, about duty, about truth and it's consequences, about true loyalty among friends, about parental expectation and it's disappointment.
When I saw the "Four Feathers" I noticed the immense similarity to another film I had seen but days ago, "Black Hawk Down". That quote from Plato "Only the dead know the end of war", that the audience is given at the very beginning of the latest Ridley Scott film applies to the "Four Feathers" as well as it does to "Black Hawk Down".
Although the incidents which inspired those films are almost exactly one hundred years apart, the essence of the two plots is quite the same. Only the man next to you, most likely your friend one way or the other, counts. Nothing else. Both stories are surprisingly similar, though the motivation in "Four Feathers" is somewhat more personal than in "Black Hawk Down", the late twentieth century being more marked by conflicts that stir the world's elaborate common conscience, something that didn't exist that way in 1898. Although war itself has lost nothing of its disgusting and useless violence in those one hundred years.
A game of Rugby, young men, two fighting teams, the camera following these men, enabling the spectator to get a first impression of the protagonists and their relations to each other as well as the splendour and camaraderie of the British army at the end of the 19th century, before the real story sets in.
"Four Feathers" tells the story of one man who acts upon his feelings when he exits the British Army, whose friends interpret his honesty towards himself as mere cowardice and present him each with a white feather for his resignation. Only when he alone stays behind after having forsaken the war, he realises that he cannot and does not want to live with the fact that his friends and his beloved think of him as a coward and he acts. Alone in the Sudan, he leaves all his fear behind without question, driven by the worries for the fate of the friends he desperately tries to save.
It's an interesting combination, the Indian director who seems to just have a knack for thorough British history ("Elizabeth" too dealt with an almost mythical part of British History), and this historical era, again bringing it magically to life in his very own particular style. The photography is truly beautiful, the desert with it's wide spread dunes, the sparse vegetation as a threat to life itself but also a friend for those who understand its rules and live by it. The story of the film sometimes fails the attempt to bring the inner turmoil of the main protagonist creditably to the big screen. And it is maybe this discrepancy between the book, dealing with a single mind, and the movie, attempting to stay close to the book as well as entertain an audience, that explains why the story sometimes disintegrates and leaves the spectator quite alone.
The cast though is a real jewel what young Hollywood is concerned, Heath Ledger giving one hell of a performance, the inner turmoil of his character visible at all times on screen, carefully acted, seldom too much. The chemistry with Kate Hudson is certainly there, still Miss Hudson just doesn't look like a 19th century girl (but maybe the impression she left as "Penny Lane" is still too strong). Wes Bentley manages to simply be that Jack, the guilt-ridden and in the end sickly friend who is saved by the one person he gave a white feather for cowardice to. And Djimoun Hounsou who is always a real pleasure to watch. He evaporates the magic as well as the menace of his role towards his audience and his fellow actors and manages to keep the story together on more than one occasion.
The film is worth seeing it for the theme itself has lost nothing of it's explosiveness!
When I saw the "Four Feathers" I noticed the immense similarity to another film I had seen but days ago, "Black Hawk Down". That quote from Plato "Only the dead know the end of war", that the audience is given at the very beginning of the latest Ridley Scott film applies to the "Four Feathers" as well as it does to "Black Hawk Down".
Although the incidents which inspired those films are almost exactly one hundred years apart, the essence of the two plots is quite the same. Only the man next to you, most likely your friend one way or the other, counts. Nothing else. Both stories are surprisingly similar, though the motivation in "Four Feathers" is somewhat more personal than in "Black Hawk Down", the late twentieth century being more marked by conflicts that stir the world's elaborate common conscience, something that didn't exist that way in 1898. Although war itself has lost nothing of its disgusting and useless violence in those one hundred years.
A game of Rugby, young men, two fighting teams, the camera following these men, enabling the spectator to get a first impression of the protagonists and their relations to each other as well as the splendour and camaraderie of the British army at the end of the 19th century, before the real story sets in.
"Four Feathers" tells the story of one man who acts upon his feelings when he exits the British Army, whose friends interpret his honesty towards himself as mere cowardice and present him each with a white feather for his resignation. Only when he alone stays behind after having forsaken the war, he realises that he cannot and does not want to live with the fact that his friends and his beloved think of him as a coward and he acts. Alone in the Sudan, he leaves all his fear behind without question, driven by the worries for the fate of the friends he desperately tries to save.
It's an interesting combination, the Indian director who seems to just have a knack for thorough British history ("Elizabeth" too dealt with an almost mythical part of British History), and this historical era, again bringing it magically to life in his very own particular style. The photography is truly beautiful, the desert with it's wide spread dunes, the sparse vegetation as a threat to life itself but also a friend for those who understand its rules and live by it. The story of the film sometimes fails the attempt to bring the inner turmoil of the main protagonist creditably to the big screen. And it is maybe this discrepancy between the book, dealing with a single mind, and the movie, attempting to stay close to the book as well as entertain an audience, that explains why the story sometimes disintegrates and leaves the spectator quite alone.
The cast though is a real jewel what young Hollywood is concerned, Heath Ledger giving one hell of a performance, the inner turmoil of his character visible at all times on screen, carefully acted, seldom too much. The chemistry with Kate Hudson is certainly there, still Miss Hudson just doesn't look like a 19th century girl (but maybe the impression she left as "Penny Lane" is still too strong). Wes Bentley manages to simply be that Jack, the guilt-ridden and in the end sickly friend who is saved by the one person he gave a white feather for cowardice to. And Djimoun Hounsou who is always a real pleasure to watch. He evaporates the magic as well as the menace of his role towards his audience and his fellow actors and manages to keep the story together on more than one occasion.
The film is worth seeing it for the theme itself has lost nothing of it's explosiveness!
We Were Soldiers
(2002)
You got to ge kidding me ...
11 May 2002
Cliché followed cliché and platitude followed platitude and not even the sometimes nice cinematography could reimburse for lack of story and bad actors, including Mel Gibson. What was Randall Wallace thinking when he made this movie, I'd really like to ask him that.
There have been quite a few films about the Vietnam war and it's consequences not only for the US government but for every single soldier who was involved in that conflict over the years. So, why another conventional one?
Maybe if that film would have had the bravery to tell that particular story from a more creative, a more daring perspective. But sadly, the director decided to follow old fashioned, beaten paths. The enemy remained colorless and characters flat, the choreography of battles was pitiful and sometimes killingly funny, as well as the little bit of dialogue there was.
It's an uninspired film that never needed to see the light of day, in my humble opinion ...
There have been quite a few films about the Vietnam war and it's consequences not only for the US government but for every single soldier who was involved in that conflict over the years. So, why another conventional one?
Maybe if that film would have had the bravery to tell that particular story from a more creative, a more daring perspective. But sadly, the director decided to follow old fashioned, beaten paths. The enemy remained colorless and characters flat, the choreography of battles was pitiful and sometimes killingly funny, as well as the little bit of dialogue there was.
It's an uninspired film that never needed to see the light of day, in my humble opinion ...
Black Hawk Down
(2001)
brutally realistic battle
2 March 2002
Ridley Scott once more shows that he is the ultimate director to stage-manage a battle of this scale. Don't expect an elaborate story, the few story telling elements are limited to the usual war movie sapiences such as : "war is a bad thing", "don't mess with things you don't understand" and "we leave no man behind". Don't expect either any critical reflection about the motifs or the moral side of this conflict and the dealing with it, you will simply be disappointed. You will get two hours of impressive, brutal, bloody, funny, messy, (in the end unnerving), loud, stupid, nerve-racking battle-, war - and fight sequences that make "Saving Private Ryan" look like a Disney-film.
Behind Enemy Lines
(2001)
a sequence of stereotypes aka Owen Wilson running around in circles
12 January 2002
You think Gene Hackman and you think that the film can't be that bad, because you can always concentrate on him, if the film should really fail. But this time I really got disappointed. In the end, the movie feels like an advertisement film for the American military; you get a sequence of stereotypes and a maybe interesting story is spoilt between American heroism and movie action. Not even the action scenes reward you for officious score, silly dialogues and the various plot holes. I could have saved my money on this one!
The Man Who Wasn't There
(2001)
never been so bored ever before
20 October 2001
I've seen the film in a sneak preview, I don't like Coen Brothers movies very much but when you're sitting in the middle of the row you don't want to stumble over all the people's feet, so you stay. I thought, okay "O Brother ..." was sort of okay, let's see. I almost fell asleep because it was so boring ... Nothing happens in it, there's always this one little piece of score playing ( Carter Burwell, brilliant as ever ) and my ears were almost talked off with nonsense, imho at least.
Cast Away
(2000)
Best film since The Insider
17 December 2000
I read some really bad reviews before I had the opportunity to see the film myself; This is not only a good story that makes you think about the way you live your life at the moment but also takes its time to develop real characters and has btw. the most realistic airplane crash I've ever seen;
nobody's talking your ears off ( not much dialogue when you're alone on an island ...), you only get the actor's physical reaction expressing his inner state of mind and Tom Hanks is just doing a terrific job !!! No other movie this year - except The Insider and perhaps Gladiator - had me leaving the theater still thinking about what I had just seen.
nobody's talking your ears off ( not much dialogue when you're alone on an island ...), you only get the actor's physical reaction expressing his inner state of mind and Tom Hanks is just doing a terrific job !!! No other movie this year - except The Insider and perhaps Gladiator - had me leaving the theater still thinking about what I had just seen.
American Psycho
(2000)
where's the story?
27 May 2000
Okay, I admit it, I didn't plan to see this movie in a theater, but it happened that I had to see it in a sneak-preview, so... this film was absolutely meaningless to me, without a decent story and without a real good actor, and I mean actor; Reese Witherspoon is always wonderful to watch. You have this successful guy with money, a nice girlfriend, lots of friends and lots of pressure he can't bear and for compensation he just walks around, killing homeless people, prostitutes and friends. This was the one movie in a long time I was really upset about; don't get me wrong, I love films like the Scream-Trilogy or The Matrix, films with a lot of blood and violence, but "American Psycho" uses violence only for the sake of violence itself, to satisfy the audience's voyeuristic bloodlust. And, who would really believe one could shot a couple of policemen, an old lady and several other people in one night without further notice? Sounds more like some kind of tasteless comedy than a movie that wants to be taken seriously.
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