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Anonyma – A Woman in Berlin (Eine Frau in Berlin)
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The director Max Färberböck has taken the real diary of Anonyma – Eine Frau in Berlin and made it into a quite impressive film.
It deals with the last days of the Second World War in 1945. The Red Army has invaded Berlin and is now waiting for the end of the war. Most men of the city have gone away to fight for Germany, so who’s left are the women.
The film is about their horrible fate: being raped (over and over again) by the Russian soldiers. Anonyma is one of these women. Before this time she was a journalist, living with her husband in Berlin. Now she is staying with a few others in an apartment house where the women are regularly being raped. She decides to take charge of her life and goes to the highest Russian commander she can find to beg for help. Even though he is reluctant at first, he starts coming to the flat that Anonyma is sharing with others and becomes her lover – therefore giving her security and bringing food for the people in the flat.
A lot of German films deal with World War II but this one has a completely new perspective. The women who got raped during that time have not often shared their experiences with others and therefore there are not many recorded stories. When I went to see the movie, the director Max Färberböck was present and talked about how hard it was to get information about the women at the time. Even today very few were willing to talk about it.
What I liked about the film was that neither the Germans nor the Russians are the ‘bad guys’. The film is a documentation of what happened, it is not judging either side. Nina Hoss (Anonyma) and the other women are great in the film but the ones who really impressed me most were the Russian actors. Especially the main Russian commander was absolutely believable.
It is a very well made film. I absolutely recommend it. The story is well told, the actors are great, the costumes and sets are very realistic. But I have to say, although it has a different topic to most of the others, I am getting really tired of World War II films. It is definitely one of the better ones though!
(photo:http://www.anonyma.film.de/)
BBC ShakespeaRe-Told
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The BBC has revisited four Shakespeare plays and set them in modern times.
Much Ado About Nothing is set in a TV studio. Beatrice (Sarah Parish) and Benedick (Damian Lewis) are hosting a local news show. The two of them are fighting, hating and teasing each other non-stop. Meanwhile the pretty weather girl Hero (Billie Piper) is preparing for her wedding to Claude. It all goes wrong at first, only to turn out just right in the end.
The setting works really well in this story. Beatrice and Benedick are great leading characters, the story of Hero and Claude doesn’t really work though.
Macbeth doesn’t translate well into this setting. Joe Macbeth (James McAvoy) is the head chef of a kitchen and is working hard to make Duncan Docherty’s restaurant a success. Ella Macbeth (Keeley Hawes) is persuading Joe to kill Duncan to take over the restaurant. Although James McAvoy is absolutely great, this episode did not impress me. I didn’t like the performance of the actress who played Ella Macbeth and lost interest somewhere in the middle of the episode even though the original Macbeth is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. What I really liked about it was that the three witches were three garbage men. Great idea!
The Taming of the Shrew is absolutely wonderful. The extremely bad-tempered politician Katherine Minola (Shirley Henderson) marries the quirky Petruchio (Rufus Sewell) for his title a very short time after meeting him. At their wedding he turns up dressed in woman’s clothes. Minola fears that her reputation will be ruined. On the honeymoon Petruchio has set out to tame the overly aggressive Minola and treats her like dirt. When his best friend comes to join them, he manages to bring peace to the couple and make them realize that they are both in love.
This is by far my favourite episode. The actors are great. Especially the tiny Shirley Henderson is marvellous.
The setting of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is great. It is at a holiday resort (similar to Center Parks) where Hermia’s engagement to James is celebrated with her parents and close friends. On the first evening Hermia’s true love Zander shows up to take her away. I am not a big fan of the original play, as it is somehow too much like a soap opera for my taste. But they do it here fairly well. Puck is a fun character, the King and Queen of the Fairies are great, but the lead actors are quite boring.
Update
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Unfortunately I have been too busy to write on this blog in the past few weeks, so here are a few films I have seen during that time:
Enchanted
To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed watching this rather silly film. A Disney cartoon Wanna-Be-Princess gets pushed into a fountain by the evil stepmother of her Prince, bringing her into the Real World. Here the Princess meets a grumpy lawyer and turns his world upside down. When her Prince (her true love) comes to take her back home she starts to doubt where her home really is.
It is a cute story with fun characters. Nice Disney entertainment.
Liberty Heights
A group of young Jews are struggling against prejudices in Baltimore, 1954. Against their parents’ will, high school senior Ben strikes up a friendship with a black girl from his class. She introduces him to James Brown and other black artists from the time. Ben’s older brother falls in love with a blonde débutante at a party. This, of course, gets him into all sorts of trouble. Rock’n’Roll, nice cars and growing up in the 50’s (oh, and my favourite: the gorgeous Adrien Brody). Liberty Heights is a wonderful movie and absolutely worth watching.
Hellboy
We watched the first Hellboy on DVD in preparation of the upcoming Hellboy II. It has great characters and a good setting, but I have to say: It’s absolute rubbish. The story is just plain boring.
The Other Boleyn Girl
This is the story of Mary and Anne, the two Boleyn sisters who are presented to King Henry to become his mistresses (one after the other). Obviously, they start fighting over the king. Anne finally succeeds in seducing him to marry her. In order to do this he first needs to break with the Pope, set up the Church of England and then divorce his wife.
This is a fascinating story (although I’ve read that it is very inaccurate) with two beautiful lead actresses (Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson) and gorgeous costumes, but something’s lacking in the film. The characters are not very complex, Anne is very headstrong, Mary weak and Henry easily manipulated. It seems like the king had nothing to do other than entertain his mistresses, the affairs of politics are only mentioned on the side. It was still entertaining to watch.
Burn after Reading
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The latest Coen Brothers movie is the complete opposite of their last film No Country for Old Men. It is almost a slap-stick comedy.
Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) quits his job at the CIA after being demoted for what he calls ‘political reasons’. His wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with George Clooney’s character Harry, and now that Osbourne is not bringing any more money home she decides she wants to divorce him. Her lawyer tells her to get as much information about her husband’s income as possible. She therefore burns a disc of top secret stuff (or ‘shit’ as it is referred to in the movie) to give to her lawyer.
The lawyer’s secretary loses the disc at her gym. This is where the second story begins. Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Francis McDormand), who are working at the gym, think they can get a reward if they return the disc to its rightful owner.
There are several stories that all come together in very strange ways (mostly through Harry’s affairs). The film has an absolute star cast which, I guess, will get the audience to the cinemas. Burn after Reading is funny but falls short of being great. It is a light-hearted comedy with a few twists (nothing really unexpected though, oh, apart from a rather dodgy chair that Harry builds for his wife) and a couple of strange and unnecessary deaths.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt seem to enjoy playing the clowns (similar to the Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen films) which is fun, but especially Pitt is not very believable.
There is no real point or moral to the story (apart from: don’t get involved in things you know nothing about) which makes it peculiar enough, in my eyes, to watch. Why not watch a film just to be entertained for once?! But wait until it is out on DVD and rent it.
(Photo: flickr/Michael Heilemann)
Swing Time
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If you want to watch a swell old Hollywood classic, this is the film for you! It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s swingin’.
Fred Astaire is ‘Lucky’, a dancer and gambler who is going to New York City to make $25,000 in order to marry his sweetheart Mabel. Once he is in the city, through a coincidence, he meets the dancing instructor Penny (Ginger Rogers) and forms a dancing partnership with her. On the side he gambles his way towards his money-goal.
Of course things don’t go the way Lucky wants them to go, he falls in love with Penny. Now he has the task of telling Mabel that he won’t marry her after all and of snatching Penny out of the fingers of her new fiancé.
The two side characters, Penny’s friend Margret and Lucky’s gambling partner Pop, are absolutely hilarious. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this film. Swing Time is great entertainment for a Sunday brunch.
WALL – E
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The new Pixar/Walt Disney film is about a love story between two robots.
The earth is completely full of rubbish and robots are cleaning it all up while mankind has fled to big ships in space, supposedly for five years. 700 years later WALL-E seems to be the last robot on earth still cleaning. The humans have not yet returned to earth. The clumsy little robot is living in a broken truck with his pet cockroach and meanwhile has a huge collection of things he has found in the piles of trash he’s been cleaning up all this time (similar to Ariel’s collection in The Little Mermaid).
One day a big space rocket lands and the beautiful robot EVE is left on earth to see if any plants have started growing again. WALL-E immediately falls in love with EVE, who shows no particular desire to get to know him. In fact, she tries to blow him up.
When EVE gets collected again by the space rocket, WALL-E follows her and the story continues among the humans on a big spaceship.
Even though this is an animation film, it seems to be aimed more at adults that at children. The love between the two robots is a very grown-up love and the film has a political message. The people on the spaceship are what we are heading for at the moment: Everyone is living on a floating chair, with a screen right in front of their faces and food in a shake. They are unbelievably fat, stupid and ignorant.
Of course, WALL-E and EVE change everything and people begin to realize what they are doing and will hopefully now mend their ways.
The film is very cute and even though there is hardly any dialogue it is thoroughly entertaining. I really loved it and recommend it to everyone!
Adoration
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In the framework of the Filmfest Hamburg the Canadian director Atom Egoyan was awarded the Douglas Sirk prize. Wim Wenders held the laudatio.
He told the audience the story of how he met Atom Egoyan for the first time twenty years ago at the Montréal Film Festival. It was a festival for young directors and Wenders won the Jury prize with a cheque for $5000 dollars. He felt quite guilty about receiving the prize because he was already over forty and was presenting his 15th film. As he was being handed the cheque his mind was racing and then he saw the runner up – the 27-year-old Atom Egoyan who was presenting his second film, “Family Viewing”. Wenders handed the cheque to the young man and dedicated the prize to him.
One year later Atom Egoyan won the prize at the same festival, this time it was a cheque for $10,000, at a time when he urgently needed the money. But when he saw Wim Wenders in the audience he acted quickly and handed the cheque to the runner up of that year. What a beautiful gesture!
After the long and very nervously delivered speech by Wim Wenders, Atom Egoyan came up to the stage. He was witty and confident and the first thing he said was, “Thank you, Wim, but what I never told you was this: When I got back home after receiving the cheque from you, I went to the bank to cash it. The person at the bank asked me ‘Are you Wim Wenders?’. When I said that I wasn’t but Wim had given me the cheque, he said that I couldn’t get the money. So the cheque was utterly useless.”
The film that was shown was the German premiere of Adoration.
Adoration is a very moving film about a teenager, Simon, who, inspired by his teacher as part of a drama project, makes up a story about his parents and tells it to his classmates as if it was real. The whole class starts discussing the events related by their friend on-line in a chat room. Even the parents have a chat room of their own where they are discussing the same issues. The protagonist refuses to tell his classmates that it was in fact a fake story.
There are several other strings – the real story about Simon’s parents, his life as it is at the moment, living with his uncle and the story of his teacher.
I liked that it was such a contemporary story, people are communicating via web-cam and Simon records his grandfather on his mobile phone. Although I have to say, being in a modern world, people could have googled Simon’s father and would have found out that it was a fake story.
Adoration is a great film and I will try to watch some other films by Atom Egoyan in the future.
(foto: Filmfest Hamburg)
What’s New Pussycat?
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This film is absolutely hilarious. A very young and potent Peter O’Toole is having trouble with the ladies. Every girl he meets wants him. Poor fellow. He goes to see Dr. Fritz Fassbender (Peter Sellers) to help him, for he believes himself to be in love with his neighbour Carole (Romy Schneider).
Carole wants the two of them to get married, but O’Toole’s character Michael James wants to have some more fun before he settles down. He goes out every night to meet women (such as Bond girl Ursula Andress and the gorgeous Capucine), which is making Carole rather angry. She turns to Michael’s friend Victor (Woody Allen) because she knows that he loves her.
What’s New Pussycat is crazy and confusing, but a lot of fun. The characters are wildly overdrawn (for example, Peter Sellers speaks with a sort of Austrian accent and is wearing what is obviously a wig) and the dialogues are mad (Michael: “Pussycat from the sky. I can’t resist you!” Girl: “Don’t resist. Capitulate!”). It is Woody Allen’s feature film début (writing and acting in it) – a really impressive start to his long career!
The film inspired me to draw this little cartoon. 😉
The Dark Knight
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Another film in the Batman series, the second one starring Christian Bale as Batman. He is great in this role, convincing as the sleazy millionaire Bruce Wayne and almost frightening as the Dark Knight.
Although I didn’t think the film was as dark as the papers claimed, it is indeed fairly gruesome. The story is quite weak: there is a predictable twist in the end and it doesn’t differ much from the other Batman films. But it is still fun to watch. As in all Batman films, the gadgets are the best thing about it. I would love to drive the Batmobile (which turns itself into a futuristic motorcycle).
The actors are great. The late Heath Ledger gives a daunting performance as the evil Joker (played by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 Batman), and Michael Caine and Gary Oldman are just as entertaining as in Batman Begins.
You should definitely watch Batman Begins again before taking in this one. I was a bit lost at the beginning as to what was going on because I couldn’t remember much from the prequel.
The world according to Ness 