Category: Movies

So yeah, I watched 15 movies, read 3 books and did not finish a single TV show last year. How did that happen? Well, I spent most of that year watching operas, and boy that is time-consuming. Somehow it was the medium that was easiest for me to motivate myself for, and there were so many interesting titles for me to discover. But now I am stuck at opera no. 159 and that motivation is strangely gone, maybe because anything new I would be watching would precisely not meet the expectations of greatness I encountered with the first, say 50 titles. Of course every once in awhile something amazing pops up, but I don’t feel inclined to search for those anymore. But now that I have neglected everything else (movies, TV shows, anime, books and – especially! – manga) I feel like there is so much great material for me to catch up with, so perhaps I will get back into those.

I complained that I barely watched anything in 2015, but this year looks much worse. Without the Berlinale, I only watched occasionally films with Pip, saw a few films at the PIFF and another few on airplanes. (The lack of subtitles makes it impossible to watch any actually good movies, and that was pretty painful because they had “Love & Friendship”!) So this is the meager ranking for this year:

1. The Lobster
2. Hail, Caesar!
3. Zootopia
4. L’ombre des femmes
5. Paddington
6. Finding Dory
7. Carol

All the movies I saw were great (though I found “Carol” a little lackluster), and I have naturally high expectations for seeing more of them next year. There are so many films from last year I haven’t seen – aforementioned “Love & Friendship”, “Paterson”, “Toni Erdmann” (which everybody seems to have seen), “La La Land”, Hong Sang-soo’s “Right now, wrong then”, Makoto Shinkai’s “Your name” (though I am a little suspicious of that one), Almodovar’s “Julieta”, “Arrival”, “Elle” and Park Chan-wook’s “The Handmaiden”. I also want to see Joachim Trier’s “Louder than Bombs” whose existence I only heard of literally right now. 2016 was a great for movies and I missed most of it despite having watched a few titles.

My New Year resolutions this year don’t only limit to films from 2016. While I drank some milk out of one of these plastic souvenir butterbeer cups from the Orlando Harry Potter World (I am obsessed with it, and I want one!), it reminded me of how I have only seen the first 3 films (before this blog was established even!) and am craving to re-read the books after I enjoyed those placement quizzes on the Pottermore website. I got Ravenclaw and a manx cat… rather fitting actually.

So let’s see what the new year will bring!

Serial Mom

I have hundreds of unwatched movies on my hard drive and even more of them in my Netflix to-watch list. There is always a reason for why these films are on it. Rarely, it is because the film is not in its original language or it’s not complete, but most of the times, it’s simply because I am usually in the mood for brainy films. When I have to decide what to see, these films are basically “leftovers” in my mind and I have trouble deciding for them. This happened to me recently when we finally had the time to watch a film again… and the only viable film on the entire HD was “Serial Mom”. I have absolutely no good excuse for why I haven’t seen it. I know that Shii gave it to me years ago, perhaps it was during our Lisbon trip, perhaps it was even before that, but most importantly, he has been telling me to see the film many many times and yet I failed to see it.

This great mistake has been rectified now, and of course we thought it was brilliant. In fact, the clever plot and its super black humor won over Pip’s heart instantly, even before I started getting into the film. Black humor sometimes takes awhile for me to get into, and chances are I never saw the film because I was in a phase where I wasn’t particularly interested in humorous films, especially when the humor is just a little bit too sophisticated to fall into my comfort zone. “Serial Mom” is not actually that sophisticated, but while it is brilliantly written and well executed, I still think its humor is a hit or miss depending on whether you are into this kind of absurd humor or not. (I certainly am.) Speaking of well executed, Pip pointed out during the film that the camera work underlines the menacing nature of Serial Mom and the eternal question of the film “Who and how is she going to kill next?”, and I agree that the camera shots make her evilness creep up on you like it does on all the other characters. I have never seen a John Waters film before (and perhaps I never will again), but I definitely agree that this is the work of someone who knows what he is doing.

Without a doubt, Beverly is the star of the film, but I was also very much in love with her family, whose ditziness makes me even more reminiscent of the 90s than Beverly herself, who looks more like a 50s-60s wife. (Especially that son and his Winona-Ryder-like girlfriend!) Gone are the days when the name Misty does not automatically conjure images of Pokemon in front of my eyes. I think everybody in the film got a silly name on purpose and many aspects of the film make no sense (why would Serial Mom only start killing now?), but I am happy enough.

Apparently the movie didn’t get very many good reviews, but 2 times out of 3, I don’t agree with Roger Ebert’s opinion anyways. For me, “Serial Mom” is the perfect film for a relaxed and, as morbid as it may sound, I find it to be a real mood-lifter.

Zootopia

I cannot wait for O to be old enough to see feature-length films, and then I will go through a million of those with him, like every single day. (OK, maybe not every day, but perhaps every 2 days?) It’s been a few years since I last watched a Disney movie (I think it was “Brave” and I hated it), and it will be so fun to go through like 80 years of movies again and relive my childhood, during which “The Little Mermaid” and “Mulan” were my favorites. On a side note, I was also deeply disturbed at “Pocahontas” because at the time I could not fathom why Disney would make a sad story, and similarly, my youthful heart was crushed when I learned that the little mermaid dies in the original Anderson tale. (Gasp!)

“Zootopia” is also the kind of film that I doubt young children will like. Disney movies used to be less fast-paced and include more, uh, cuter animals? The ones in Zootopia look like they were clearly designed for adults and the troubles the characters go through are also definitely much more adult than, say, in “Up”. (In fact, I don’t think that children can only relate to children, but I suspect children can relate better to old people than they do to characters whose motivations are political.) If most children watch the bulk of their Disney movies between ages 5 and 8, then “Zootopia” may be enjoyable for them, but they will miss out on so much, such as the “Godfather” references.

As a result, I don’t think I will watch “Zootopia” again in the next 5 years, and afterwards I think it would be a lovely movie to teach all the things that went wrong with society in the last few years. Disney has been trying to modern, uplifting messages into their movies – I am thinking of “Mulan” and “Up” here, though in the case of “Alice in Wonderland”, I was rather disturbed by how the main character becomes emancipated by setting sail to foreign lands in order to colonize them. With “Zootopia”, I think they completely nailed it. I was positively impressed by movie’s openly political theme about the struggle of different people (allegorically as different animal species) living together, especially in 2016 when nationalism and xenophobia is rising to a scary level. Even if Clinton becomes president, it is undeniable that the political atmosphere world is more hostile that it was 10 years ago.

So now we got this feel-good-movie in which a prey and a predator become best friends, of course only after the privileged one (the prey) realizes its mistakes and its prejudices against his friend. It’s such a cliché idea yet its execution was so beautiful it drove me to tears. (Is that silly? Perhaps, but I am not afraid to admit it.) Moreover, the movie does absolutely everything right: It’s funny on many levels (both with ha-ha humor and its lovely references to “Frozen” and the aforementioned “Godfather), it has a suspenseful crime plot with a few sweet twists and most importantly, it has absolutely great characters including a weak-looking female rabbit whose dream it is to pwn them all – heck they even saved her from the Mulan love pitfall where a great woman’s main motivation must be the love for her family and ultimate success must still be the marriage proposal of a man.

OK actually I want to watch “Zootopia” again pretty soon, because it is such a densely written film that I probably missed out on a lot of details the first time I saw it, because I was so mesmerized by the story.

Whiplash

It’s been 10 years since I saw “Three Colors: White”, so let me tell you the experience I made with the movie, bringing back some nostalgic memories of VHS recording. As it was typical for arthouse films, “White” was shown in the middle of the night so I recorded it to watch on the next day. Unfortunately I got the timing wrong and I was able to watch the movie up to the point where Karol Karol enters the prison building where his wife is staying. I had no idea how much more of the movie was left, and I really wanted to know how the movie ended. It was only awhile later that I got ahold of the entire film, only to realize that I missed merely a minute or so of the end, in which he walks in, sees her and she waves at him. That’s it. As you can see from my old posting (or rather, don’t read it), I had no idea what that ending was supposed to mean and until today I feel the dissatisfaction of that super open ending.

I can’t believe this happened to me again. We were on the flight back from Tokyo and the screens shut off 10 minutes before “Whiplash” ended. This time it took me less time to catch up on the end, but I couldn’t believe my eyes when I realized that what I missed was going to be 10 minutes of wanking followed by the main characters meaningfully looking at each other. Wow. I am fully in the camp of those who think the movie was amazing, and that the ending was crap. This rarely happens to me in movies (I did not think so of “White”, I was disappointed in the end but did not think it was bad) and I was especially shocked at how much I felt I was watching a different movie. To be honest, I have no idea what we are supposed to take from the film – are they trying to glorify or demonize this kind of abusive teacher-student relationship?

Ending aside, I was deeply impressed by the film which did not involve a single person I knew beforehand. Shii said he really liked the movie (I think he said so before he started dating a musician hehe), and so I chose the film without even knowing what it was about. Somewhere in my mind, I probably confused it with “Birdman” and thought it was a comedy, so you can imagine my utter surprise when I learned what the actual premise of the film was. I thought it was brilliant.
The internet seems pretty stuck on discussing how realistic the depiction of music and music schools are, but I think they are besides the point. I don’t care that the protagonist is a drummer or that he is in music school. The movie could be set in the ad business (think Peggy/Don), in middle management of a big company, or in academia with a young scientist/researcher and his advisor. The combination old mentor and young ambitious student is so, so old and so utterly human. Apart from Richard Linklater and his slacker companions, I think anybody who has ever had any desire to be ‘great’ will see themselves in this film, and that is where aforementioned brilliance lies.

Of course the whole film is also a huge hyperbola. Nobody breaks up with their girlfriend like this, but the way it is done, even if it’s unrealistic, was so utterly honest that I loved it. I think people are pathetic when they put something else before their loved ones, but in many instances I can see where they are coming from and most likely I would have done the same in their situation.

I am glad that Hollywood can still produce movies like “Whiplash” (and “The Lobster”) even if I didn’t like the end, and I am now even more curious about “Birdman”.

The Lobster

Ever since I am (yet again) living in an English-speaking country and the only German-speaking friend I have here is leaving, I have been contemplating blogging in German, but I am not fully convinced about the idea. I am not confident that I will ever feel as comfortable blogging in German as I am in English, and I am a little afraid of such a huge change for this blog that I have been kind of running for almost 10 years now. Does anybody non-German speaking even read this blog still?

As always, it takes me awhile to finally write a review of a film. In this case, we are leaving for a trip to Hokkaido tomorrow (actually in a few hours since we get up at 5am), and it seems prudent to write this posting before my thoughts on the film are completely overtaken by impressions from our 2 week long trip. We watched “The Lobster” a couple weeks ago, after Joanna Goddard mentioned it on her infamous blog (my current favorite which now makes me even more girlish than I ever was). Pip and I liked the premise so much that we started watching the film a day later. It was surprisingly fortuitous, and now that I always choose to watch an opera over a movie, it is necessary for a strong force of inspiration to make me watch a film. Typically, it’s pure curiosity and the promise of discovering something completely radical and new. I don’t get excited enough about the idea of watching another film by some director I already know well, or more films of actors I like (there aren’t that many of them anymore, and Gael Garcia Bernal’s new great project is a TV show after all). Half of 2016 is over and I watched an amazing total of two movies, “L’ombre des femmes” and “The Lobster”, and for both cases it was this kind of completely random choice of film.

In fact, I have never seen “Dogtooth” or anything else by Lanthimos, heck I didn’t even know his name and that it was associated with “Dogtooth”. As a result, I have never seen anything like “The Lobster”, though the parallel society with drastic consequences on humanity reminded me a little of “Never let me go”. The intriguing premise can be summarized quite shortly: Single people are not allowed in this society, so if you are single you end up in a hotel with 45 days given to you to find a new mate. If you don’t manage to do so, you get turned into an animal of your choosing. The best aspect of the film is its humorous world-building, in which we get to meet our protagonist, the other guests, the hotel managers and workers through the lens of hilarious absurdity. Pip also noticed very quickly that the film is meticulously shot; there are a lot of Wes-Anderson-like symmetrical views, though the comparison is really unfair to Lanthimos because it’s not like he has any reason to copy Anderson. More importantly, when the big breakpoint towards the middle of the film happens (David’s attempt to flee the hotel), the symmetry is broken and the asymmetrical shots are purposefully set to create a sort of unease within the viewer when the protagonist finally decides to break with the system, an strict system which seems so absurd in our eyes that black humor seems to naturally arise from it. I typically tend to say that I find it difficult to laugh at black humor, especially the Scandinavian type. It’s cool and often funny but it does not make me laugh out loud (nor it is supposed to, I guess). In this film, I thought the humorous parts in the first half were absolutely brilliant, and a part of me wishes the film could have forgone its main plotline and just be about the shenanigans of the hotel. We get a lot of glimpses into the lives of the people in the hotel, but I think the concept is enough for an entire TV series, that is for sure.

This is definitely one of these science fiction stories that make you wonder about our own lives as well. Everybody in the film waxes poetic on the beauty of love (or rather “coupledom”) not too unlike some members of our society, and the film offers multiple ways to criticize the idolization of romantic relationships, both in the world of “The Lobster” and in ours. On one side, we have the absurd fixation of the city people on being part of a couple; and on the other side, there is the Loners’s hatred for any form of romantic relationship. Most absurdly, perhaps, is the notion that a couple must have something in common. It’s the first thing we hear in the film (“Is he short-sighted too?”) and while the protagonist comes a long way resisting every system he is in (first the hotel and then the loners), this is a doctrine that absolutely nobody in the entire film ever questions. For everybody in that world, either relationships are everything or relationships suck and are an abomination, but it is always absolutely clear what they are based on: common ground. I thought that was fascinating on so many levels, because in our world the lofty ideals of romantic love are not supposed to be based on some common characteristics, but something like, uh, irrational infatuation. It’s actually reality that teaches us that a couple should have a lot in common to function, though the similarities should be a little deeper than “we both have nosebleeds often” or “we both like biscuits” or “we both have beautiful voices”, and it’s this absurdity that makes me believe that Lanthimos is very deliberately using such a view on relationships to question our own.

So if you were forced to be turned into an animal, which animal would you choose? For me, it’s a tie between a house cat and a bonobo.

L’ombre des femmes

Welcome to the new year! In my attempt to revive my movie-watching, I realized that there is one single very effective strategy, even more effective than making a list according to some theme (like Inarritu’s latest movies) and trying to check off that list: discover a film I have never heard about before and watch it immediately. I read about “L’ombre des femmes” in a Spiegel review, and it caught my attention instantly because of Philippe Garrel (whose “Amants Réguliers” I started but never continued), its classic storyline, wonderful visuals (b/w 35mm cinemascope is absolutely amazing) and, most of all, Stanislas Merhar. When I was a young girl, I was really into that 4 episode Monte Cristo miniseries where Merhar played Mercédès’s kinda effeminate son.

I watched my only Chantal Akerman film “La Captive” because of Merhar too. There is just something curiously odd about him that draws me into him; I don’t even think he is good-looking even though he has a near perfect body at age 45 which Garrel is totally showing off in this film. Back in the day, my father hated the way Merhar walked, but while he shed his milky face with progressing age, he still has that weird shoulder-shaking walk – hahaha! Both in “La Captive” and in this film, he plays a douche terrorizing the woman he loves, and somehow he manages to remain relatable at the same time. I don’t know if he has been in more mainstream films, but the intellectual French hypocrite lover roles à la Jean-Pierre Léaud suit him. For me, it’s a joy to watch him navigate the feelings he has towards the women in his life.

Another surprise for me was Clotilde Courau whom I find quite amazing. I think she does a great job at showing all the pain her husband makes her go through, and I am absolutely enamored with her Julie-Delpy-like face. In fact, I am impressed by how good both of them look with all their wrinkles and frowns. I don’t think either of them could have done this at age 20 when they couldn’t convincibly show these kinds of marks of life. I find their chemistry just perfect, making them something like my new favorite French couple now.

Sadly I don’t watch all that many French movies anymore, even though I love the French flavor of love stories. There are so many convincing affairs in them, and not in the Woody Allen kind of way. Sometimes I find them too paternalistic, but “L’ombre des femmes” is paternalistic enough to feel realistic and not too much to annoy me. I think the last French love story I saw was “Arrete ou je continue”, and I find it interesting to compare these two films. Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos are just a little bit older (they were basically the same age in the film because “Arrete ou je continue” is 2 years older than “L’ombre des femmes”), but they are much bigger stars despite being less attractive in classical way. They, too, work as a couple, especially as one that is getting into a sort of mid-life-crisis doubting their relationship as a whole. As a relationship story, I thought that “Arrete ou je continue” wins hands down. Its characters are more interesting, the premise is less typical, the execution is funny in a great way and their relationship lives on even shakier grounds, but it’s the subtlety of what is going wrong that makes the film interesting. They also lead a much more modern relationship.

Even though “L’ombre des femmes” did not generate all that many emotions in me, I thought about the film a lot, especially its lovely ending in which we see the characters with the kind of happiness that you didn’t think the film (or the actors!) had in them. In fact, I thought the ending twists (both of them) were rather clever considering that I found the rest of the film pretty standard in terms of storytelling. Just like how something draws me to Stanislas Merhar, I am similarly drawn to “L’ombre des femmes” itself, maybe because it looks so pretty, maybe because I like its protagonists, maybe because I have been craving a movie just like that.

I watched what feels like a million operas last year, and I read some books (13, which is more than I expected) but saw very few films. 6451 told me recently that he relies upon the Munich film festival for his yearly movie fix, and apparently I did so too with the Berlinale. Besides the 20 or so films from the Berlinale, I saw another 27 films (some of which were seen during the PIFF, and a bunch of them were short films). From what I can tell this is comparable to my movie intake from 2007, which has been steadily rising ever since to almost 200 in 2011, then dropped to a bit over 100 in the following two years, and during my Berlin years (2014 and 2015), films became significantly less important. As a result, this year’s ranking is even less impressive than last year’s.

1. Ida
2. Leviathan *
3. Koza *
4. Under Electric Clouds *
5. Nuclear Nation 2 *
6. Aferim! *
7. Ode to my Father *
8. Spectre *
9. Love, Theft and other Entanglements *
10. You’re ugly too *
11. The Diary of a Teenage Girl *
12. End of winter *
13. St. Vincent *
14. Ten no Chasuke *
15. Der Geldkomplex *

Yes, besides “Ida”, I have seen all of these films in movie theaters, either at the Berlinale and/or with somebody (which means that it was primarily a social outing in the broad sense). Interestingly enough, “Ida” still trumps them all, even though I thought that a lot of them were amazing films. In fact, I would say that 1-6 were amazing, 7-12 were very good and the last 3 were meh. Also, somehow the region one could vaguely describe as “Europe east of Germany” seems to be claiming the “amazing” category except for “Nuclear Nation 2”. All of this means that I really need to get back into films, and perhaps this posting and my anticipation for the 2016 list on “They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?” will help.

Revolutionary Road

I feel bad that my review for “Revolutionary Road” may end up shorter than for “Spectre”, because ultimately, “Revolutionary Road” is a million times better. To be fair, you can’t really compare those two films because they aim at completely different things and are literally more different than apples and pears could ever be, but if I had the choice, I would choose the character drama of “Revolutionary Road” any day.

It feels ironic to me that I am seeing this film now, because I have had an interest in it ever since it came out. Now, some 7 years later, my life is completely different and in more than one way I am able to relate to the characters in the story. In these years, I made decisions for my life – and it is not only mine now – and sometimes, I am second-guessing these decisions. However, after years of fearing that watching “Revolutionary Road” would be depressing (for the same reason I never watched “Lilja 4-ever” either), I am now strangely feeling a certain comfort in thinking about the film. For the first few hours after my viewing I did have those “oh man, we turned out just like them!” kind of feelings, but the truth is, I have never been as dissatisfied as the Wheelers in the story have been, not even remotely. There are similar feelings sometimes, but I am lucky to have accomplished more than they have (I pride myself in my memories of inspiring travels in the past) while feeling less of a need to lead some sort of extraordinary life. Of course, people in movies are always more dramatic than in real life and the ending in “Revolutionary Road” is a perfect example for that. (Just like how in every controversial film or soap opera in China seems to have an abortion going on.) Nevertheless, in this case the slightly exaggerated drama was surprisingly comforting to me.

Apart from that, I remember that I described the film as “Mad Men but better”. It gives off the vibe of that time, perhaps less so than “Far from Heaven”, but I think it wonderfully captures the struggle people might have in the superficial idyll of suburbia and the strict expectations of society which results in April’s perpetually impeccable hair, even on the last day. It’s like “Far from Heaven” and “Revolutionary Road” paved the way for “Mad Men”‘s success (though to be fair, “Mad Men” actually started airing in 2007), but there is definitely a heightened interest in all things vintage, and I am definitely taking part of in that enthusiasm, though I much prefer the darkness of “Revolutionary Road” and “Man Men” than the shiny magazines propagating a distorted and politically rather questionable vintage lifestyle. I know that “Breaking Bad”, “Mad Men” and “House of Cards” are trying to teach you not to be like Walter White, Don Draper and Frank Underwood, yet people dream of it anyways. This is how contradictory we are, because I too am actually quite drawn towards April’s outwardly perfect styling. What makes the film great, besides the dark setting, is its dialogue in which Frank and April play out every gender cliché possible, including the one where she cannot get over her dissatisfaction with life and he proposes that she should see a shrink.

Finally, the ending actually felt strangely peaceful. April died peacefully, at least that is how it looks like on screen, and instead of Frank going all crazy, he becomes a loving family man whose kids seem to adore him.

Surprisingly, I have seen every single Sam Mendes movie except for “Away we go”. Without ever having paid much attention to him, I actually like a good chunk of his work, so perhaps he should actually be added to my directors list.

Spectre

Besides the Berlinale and “Leviathan”, I have not actually been to any movie theaters this year. As I already mentioned, my life has been shifting. Instead of watching movies, I watch operas in the evening, instead of watching anime I have been watching TV shows, and instead of going to movie theaters I have been going to the opera. All of this is actually because this is my last year in Berlin, and it will change next year: perhaps more books, but also more anime, more movie theaters and generally more movies. Nevertheless, there are always some films which I love to catch in theaters, namely more action-focused franchises I like, such as the Hobbit series. Those kinds of films are much less enjoyable on a small screen, in fact, I doubt I would even watch them on a small screen.

The 007 series is a special one. When I was a child, I saw all of the Pierce Brosnan ones when they came out on TV, and I caught a lot of the old ones too whenever they were on TV. My dad was a fan (though much unlike the rest of the world, he didn’t like Sean Connery), and I liked them too as a child. When I grew older, the Bond movies stuck in my mind as “mindless action” (much like the Indiana Jones series, which I never liked), and I thought of myself as better than the Bond films. When I started watching movies with more interest (around the time I started with this blog), I never took an interest in the Bond franchise even though I read articles about “Casino Royale”, how it changed the franchise and, well, that it had Eva Green in the story as Bond’s true love. All of that was not enticing enough for me until Pip and I got into this phase (around 2012) where we loved seeing action films on screen and went to the Downtown Crossing cinema so often that we had a loyalty card and regularly used it. That was when we saw “Skyfall” and I was blown away by its greatness.

Unsurprisingly, “Spectre” is comparably less great. As Pixelmatsch accurately pointed out, it’s a funnier film, it has a lovely Bond girl (even though she is being played by Léa Seydoux who always has these somewhat tired looking eyes) and its less ridiculously misogynist as “Skyfall” was with Sévérine’s silly death scene. Not even Judi Dench’s interesting and complex role in the story could have saved that. Nevertheless, “Spectre” is more action, it’s much more formulaic than “Skyfall” and its main antagonist pales against all the other evil guys in which Christoph Waltz was able to shine lately. Most importantly, “Spectre” lacked the depth that “Skyfall” surprisingly had (and I guess it is also unusual that it did), whereas Blofeld’s characterization never really went beyond a petty, jealous little boy. Despite my general sympathies for Seydoux’ character, she is a little bit too perfect: Extremely smart, young but sexy, can shoot a gun and say some tough things, she is pretty much every Bond fan’s female dream,

Speaking of lack of depth, I am so so giddily in love with Q and was happy to see that he got to do a little more than pounding away frantically on his keyboard. I thought Ben Whishaw was cute ever since “Cloud Atlas”, and the nerdiness aspect in Q amplifies that. Hah!

Overall, “Spectre” was much fun, and I feel lucky that we were able to catch it in theaters again. Despite the weaknesses I thought the film had, I am very much into the franchise now and would like to revisit all the old films too, even if only to revive those childhood memories.