The People vs. Fritz Bauer made me angry. I think it is supposed to. Fritz Bauer was the man in charge of bringing former Nazi key criminals to justice. He worked for the courts in Frankfurt am Main as a district attorney and was put in charge by the German department of justice in the late 50s at his own request when the majority of lawmen there were either former Nazis themselves or at least sympathizers. His task was close to impossible: he was a Jew, a Socialist and a homosexual. It’s entirely possible that his superiors thought that he would be inefficient. In this movie, his department ridicules him, his legal team is utterly useless, unable to locate Bormann or Mengele for many years. His health is failing. In fact, the movie starts with him almost dying. Continue reading
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A boy on his way home
Midnight Special is a sci-fi movie for those moviegoers who wouldn’t dream of going to see a sci-fi movie. It avoids many plot points that the genre might bring: no space wars, no dark against light, no dogfights, no exploding planets, no time travel. There isn’t even a spaceship in sight. It trusts its characters enough to drive the story forward and keeps a moderate pace so that we have a chance to think about how those three characters, two men and a boy, repeatedly find themselves in a boarded-up motel room.
All these worlds can be yours (but will you want them?)
Last week we went to see the latest of the new Star Trek films, the one whose title is certain to trigger a Pavlovian response in any fan of the English ska band Madness. I’d greatly enjoyed the first of the reboot movies back in 2009, though Star Trek Into Darkness hadn’t done much for me, but I hadn’t given up on the franchise yet. Star Trek Beyond, though… It’s a competent enough film in some ways, the main cast is still the best reason to watch the reboot – but I simply didn’t feel it. Most of the time it wasn’t the plot that kept me engaged; instead I found myself distracted, not least by remembering the recent death of Anton Yelchin and thinking, wistfully, that he should have had his final appearance as Pavel Chekov in a better film.
VVitching hour and a half
Robert Eggers’ The VVitch: A New-England Folktale works both ways: if you think there is a witch in this movie, then there is one, and we’re in the realm of the supernatural. You can also explain the whole horror by claiming that these people are driving themselves and each other insane. Either way, it’s a pretty good horror flick. It features a Puritan family who are thrown out of their community and build a new home in the wilderness, next to some woods. In 1630, that might well be a death sentence. We are never told why exactly they get banished, but it has something to do with putting God’s law above that of men. They are almost glad about being banished, because to them, it is God’s will. Continue reading
Donuts and Depression
While watching Olive Kitteridge, the 2014 four-part HBO miniseries, I kept thinking back to Six Feet Under more than once. Both are HBO, both feature Richard Jenkins, and while SFU has a lot to say about death and dying, OK deals with depression and suicide. Before you quit reading: it is surprisingly upbeat and wise about it. All right, upbeat is probably the wrong word, but it is not as dark and… well, as depressing as you might think. It’s a well-told story about a Maine family, so there is also good reason to think of John Irving’s stories. The series never goes for broke with guns and gore, but skates over thin ice while hinting at the dark waters underneath. Continue reading
Beauty, Confusion, Assassination
The Assassin is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. It is also one with the most difficult storytelling. That sounds like the obscurity of the story somehow sabotages the beauty of the movie. It doesn’t. Since you have to really pay attention in order to guess what exactly is happening, you get the occasional breather when the movie shows you a pond at sunrise, with two birds chasing each other across the water. It’s not that the story is complex, it’s just that the way of telling it is unconventional. Characters are introduced by simply being put on screen. Flashbacks don’t come when you expect them. The female protagonist has no more than three or four lines of dialogue. There are two long monologues by two different characters providing a lot of back story; they pause between sentences, and you are never sure if their words are all they are actually saying, or if they are telling all, or telling the truth.
A home movie
This post is about me and my childhood at first, but I promise that it will lead to a movie – a proper feature, by a director you have heard of, with an interesting cast. Just bear with me. I grew up in Switzerland, in a small rural town called B. We once did a semi-serious census at school and came up with some 350 inhabitants. That sounds small, but it was just big enough to grow up in. The only two claims to fame are that 1979 movie and a H. R. Giger exhibition in 1986. Both caused a small scandal.
In the Green Room, the neo-Nazis come and go…
Green Room (directed by Jeremy Saulnier, whose Blue Ruin I liked a lot), may just be the most effective slice of siege thriller this side of early John Carpenter. After introducing us to the film’s protagonists, a punk rock band down on their luck, it quickly sets up the situation that drives the rest of the action: after a last-minute gig at a backwaters dive populated by white supremacists, one of the band members accidentally comes across a murder scene in the titular green room. The band is locked in the room with one of the bouncers, while the neo-Nazis consult with the bar’s owner and their leader, the commanding Darcy (played to pragmatic, evil perfection by Patrick Stewart), who concludes that the only way to resolve the situation is to kill the witnesses.
Four days of fun, then un-saved by the bell
I am trying to come up with a more versatile director than Richard Linklater, but I am drawing a blank. Linklater might be best known for Boyhood, or for his Sunrise trilogy, featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. All four movies follow a handful of characters, visiting and re-visiting them at certain points their lives. Then there’s the Linklater who made a well-mannered con-man drama called Bernie, slightly overlooked, featuring a surprisingly smarmy Jack Black who is after Shirley McLaine’s wealth. Then School of Rock, a comedy again featuring Jack Black, and almost too formulaic for a Linklater movie. A Scanner Darkly, based on a Philip K. Dick short story, shot with a real-life cast and then re-designed afterwards to make it look animated. And finally there is the Linklater of such philosophical essays as Waking Life that seem to work best if you are drunk and stoned and sitting around a campfire on a summer night with friends or strangers or both and discuss really deep concepts like art, or life, or beer. Continue reading
So sharp a dagger, and yet still blunt
Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth is a good movie, but it falls short of being great. Which is weird because the ingredients all seem to be there. That shortcoming is also a nuisance because at times, the movie looks so damn good and well-made, only to trip and fall over technical details. Let me grind my dagger of the mind and have at it.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 