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salieri78
Reviews
Die Luftbrücke - Nur der Himmel war frei (2005)
Cliché Mania!
The idea of making a miniseries about the Berlin airlift seemed to me as one of the more interesting German (post)war movies. It is a theme that has not been explored much as yet. However, the makers of this series stuffed it with clichés. It starts already with the DVD cover of the movie, which is a direct copy of the cover of 'Pearl Harbor'.
Luise Kielberg (Bettina Zimmermann) gets to hear that her husband, who is a doctor, (Ulrich Noethen) has died in Russia and after the war she's struggling to survive. She finds a job at the American base, gets to work for the coolest and highest ranking officer (Heino Ferch) in town, falls in love with 'm, gets pregnant, and all of a sudden her husband turns up again. Come on!!! We've seen this once too often. Heino Ferch and Ulrich Noethen play their role quite well; Bettina Zimmermann however never really seems to convince. For some reason it always seems she's somewhat too late in giving the right emotional reaction to the scenes. It just didn't work for me.
The action scenes with the planes and the air lift, we're sometimes exciting, more often not. Nasty things always seemed to happen to the same pilot.
Unless you're a big fan of WWII movies, I suggest you spend your money on something else: chocolate ice-cream brings a lot more satisfaction!
4 out 10!
Tour des légendes (2003)
Legendary Tour de France of 1948, the last Tour without television.
Beautiful documentary on the Tour de France of 1948, the last cycling tour without the presence of television camera's. Director Erik van Empel tries to reconstruct those legendary days. He interviews the few people that still remember how it was back in those days. He goes through news paper archives to find the few photo's on glass plates that are left. He digs up very rare footage to give an artistic as well as an accurate view of how the Tour of 1948 had its way. Sunshine, snow, mud, rain, paradise, hell and apocalypse. Lone cyclists right after the war, fighting on their own against the elements. 4907 kilometres through France. Featuring Bartoli, Bobic, and Bobet as the cycling legends of 1948. Wow, this documentary really makes you want to be part of those days!
Les victimes de l'alcoolisme (1902)
Don´t do booze!
A good old classic. As in the early days, a moral story on what happens to a man if he starts to drink and gamble. Yes! Drinking and gambling are bad for you! :) Anyways, I enjoyed watching it, since it so well reflects one of the popular themes of cinema of the early days: the moral story. This movie also reminds you of, how it was like in those days, especially what it was like to be poor. Movies of this era are always worth seeing!
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Original and entertaining but no real answers
This documentary is an original and entertaining way of showing the evil of guns, but i've seen it done better if it comes to clearity and giving some real answers. I would say, although it sounds weird, it's the typical Hollywood kind of way of saying things: shout hard, maybe they hear you! The biggest problem is that mr. Moore doesn't give any real answers. He sometimes gives his cynical commentary to show how bad guns are, that's about it. The thing that bothered me the most is that it just took too long. After the first 3/4 of an hour or so the documentary just drags on and only at the near end it starts to get good again. I would definitely not give this documentary a 10. A 7 or an 8 is a nice grade for this one.
Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977)
Neither Holly nor Bollywood!
This movie was one of the first to move away from the Bollywood path. It is not about singing and dancing which is o so common in Indian movies but it puts the stress on the political situation between Great Britain and Oudh, a province of India in the year 1856. Two men do nothing but play chess, even when the UK takes over.
I found this movie to be refreshing, because it is also not the standard Hollywood kind of thing. Views of India, Indian dance, Indian (historical) clothing, a nice chess board, Indian ways of eating and so on. So even if you theoretically hypothetically wouldn't like the story, you would still enjoy a different culture.
I gave it an 8.