NUREMBERG**

James Vanderbilt, screenwriter on iconic films such as David Fincher's ZODIAC, stages his directorial debut with NUREMBERG, a film about the trial of the infamous Nazi leader Hermann Goering.  

While trying hard to hue close to the historical record, Vanderbilt's script has two fatal flaws - it is patronising and it is far too pleased with itself.  The former manifests in endless passages of ham-fisted exposition, assuming that the viewer knows nothing and it is too stupid to figure it out.  This extends both to the historic events AND their contemporary resonance. 

The latter manifests in clever-clever cuts between lines of dialogue that flatly contradict each other for comic effect.  We get dumb action movie lines like "Welcome to Nuremberg" (insert mike drop), from dumb caricature characters like John Slattery's military prison guard. We get the same character anachronistically referring to two psychiatrists as "mental health professionals".  We get a desperately harrowing courtroom scene of real Holocaust footage shown and then a smash-cut to a cool jazz club and our protagonist flirting with a pretty journalist. Just no.

So this is a tonally jarring, condescending and obvious film containing a central bad performance from Rami Malek as US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelly. Why might it still be worth your time? A star each for Russell Crowe and Leo Woodall as Goering and Sergeant Howie Triest respectively. Crowe is absolutely magnificent as Goering - capturing his slippery charm, bonhomie, narcissism and at core his complete fanaticism.  It's a shame such a performance - Crowe's best in years - is wasted on this film.  And kudos to Leo Woodall, who recently impressed as the lead actor in TUNER.  As Howie, Woodall is the very moral and emotional heart of this film, far moreso than Malek's gurning shrink. Otherwise Shannon and poor Richard E Grant are mediocre in roles ill-written and under-serving their real life counterparts.

NUREMBERG is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 148 minutes. It played Toronto and San Sebastian. It was released in the USA last Friday and in the UK next Friday.

SEPTEMBER 5*****

SEPTEMBER 5 is a stunning film depicting the horrific and murderous attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. Where Kevin Macdonald's superb and comprehensive documentary ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER gives us all the angles and the whole story, this new film tells the story from the perspective of the ABC sports journalists who were in the Olympic Village.  As it happened, this was the first Olympics that took advantage of satellite broadcasting to bring live coverage to the world.  As a result, this was the first terrorist attack broadcast live to the world - well before Mumbai or 9-11.  And it created both iconic images which are used as live in this film - but also deep moral questions about how far live coverage enables and recruits for terrorists.

As the film opens we are in the dark, claustrophobic ABC sports-room recreated by director Tim Fehlbaum in precise detail.  The journalists hear shots fired and suddenly realise they are in the midst of an attack.  They have to figure out how to wheel heavy camera equipment out to the village to shoot footage of the apartments where the Olympians are being held.  And they have to wrestle satellite slots to broadcast what they have.  In a powerful and pivotal performance, Leonie Benesch (THE WHITE RIBBON) plays a young German journalist who has to become an impromptu translator, listening in to police radio and local news reports.  Meanwhile, the always brilliant Peter Sarsgaard plays the Sports-journo boss who has to wrestle with his home news team who argue that mere sports reporters are out of their depth, and retain control of "his" story.  

There are two iconic and notorious moments. The first is when the journalists realise that the terrorists are actually watching their footage, and can see German cops attempting a rescue operation, because no-one switched off the TV feed to the apartment block. It's then that we get that iconic image of the hooded terrorist looking out of the apartment window and straight down the barrel of the TV camera.  The second iconic and notorious moment is when an ABC journalist (played brilliantly here by John Magaro) chooses to relay an unconfirmed report that all the sportsmen have been released alive and well. He wants the scoop. Simple as. 

Kudos to Fehlbaum, his production team and in particular his editor Hansjoerg Weissbrich, for creating a film of such taut, spare, suspense and high stakes.  The look and feel of it take you right into 1972 and into the fast-paced need for judgment.  It gives you sympathy for real people making tough choices in uncharted territory. Most of all, I loved the way in which the real footage of on-air broadcasts was seamlessly woven into the fictional recreation. So you can see Magaro's character speaking apparently to an on-air presenter and that presenter relaying the information he has been given. It's a masterclass of editorial brilliance.

SEPTEMBER 5 is rated R and has a running time of 95 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and Telluride 2024. It was released in the USA on January 17th and in the UK on February 6th.

AFIRE*

Man, I just did not get AFIRE. Is it an environmental satire about how we are all obsessed with our own mundanity while the world - literally - burns down on the edge of our peripheral vision?  Is it a satire on the narcissism of so-called creatives who underestimate the intellectual capacity of those around them?  Is it meant to be a deep and meaningful character and relationship study? Or is it meant to be a dark comedy? After an hour and forty minutes I neither know nor care. I found this film to be slow, dull, containing no characters that I found empathetic nor any plot "twists" that were compelling.  My mind drifted. I wanted to eat a blue smurf-flavoured ice cream.

The film centres on Leon (Thomas Schubert), a schlubby self-important author struggling with his second book. His friend Felix (Langston Uibel) invites him to his mum's seaside vacation house but the car breaks down en route and when they get there they find another couple also in residence. For the first thirty minutes of the film we see them from a distance but hear them loudly fucking in the next door bedroom, much to the voyeuristic Leon's frustration.  After that, Nadja (Paula Beer) comes more clearly into focus, firstly as an ice-cream seller and then as someone who is more than an intellectual and emotional match for Leon. But the character is really short-changed in this pisspoor film - a mere plot device to show up Leon's vacuity.

AFIRE has a running time of 102 minutes and is rated 12A. It played Berlin where it won the Silver Bear. It was released in the USA last month and in the UK last Friday.

THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ - UK Jewish Film Festival

THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ is an urgent and tightly drawn documentary from Matthew Shoychet about the recent trial of Oskar Groening, a nonagenarian ex-SS officer living an ostensibly nondescript life in Germany until prosecuted for accessory to mass murder.  Featuring commentary from luminaries such as Alan Dershowitz - a most fascinating interview with the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, the man who ran Auschwitz -  as well as interviews with the holocaust survivors who became co-plaintiffs, the doc takes us efficiently through the process of the trial, while also facing head on the difficult philosophical issues it raised. First and foremost is the question of whether there is a statute of limitations on criminal guilt. The second is whether someone who did not literally put the gas into the chamber can be accused of murder.  The third is whether, in terms of moral guilt, it is possible or desirable to forgive. 

On the first question, the documentary takes us through the shameful way in which much of Europe tried to conveniently forget the Holocaust in the decades after the way, and reintegrated former Nazis into civilian life. In that sense, THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ is the logical sequel to THE WALDHEIM WALTZ, also playing at the UK Jewish Film Festival.  As one of the plaintiffs says, he is all we have - if we have to establish legal guilt through Groening, then we'll take that.  On the second question, the historical attitude has again been quite slippery, but the doc makes the convincing argument that although only a cog in the machine, that killing machine could not have operated without its cogs. Not everyone can claim to just have been doing their job, or involved with the slave labour part of the camp, or too scared to say no. On the third question, the doc shows both sides of the argument. We have the compelling argument from a survivor and plaintiff that the only true way to triumph over an enemy is to forgive.  But you have the evident disgust of others.  These are not simple or easy questions to deal with.

Perhaps the most powerful message of the doc is just how relevant how we treat the perpetrators of the Holocaust is today.  This is not simply a matter of writing historic injustices - although that is also of paramount importance. How we treat murderers also sends a signal to those who would perpetrate genocide today. And perhaps the fact that justice will seek you out, no matter how long it takes, will do something to prevent the ongoing mass murders of people based on race or religion.  It's also important to get the facts on the record to defang deniers and to remind the younger generations of what happened so that they can be alert when they see anti-Semitism rise again. To that end, this documentary is utterly timely, and does not shy away from showing the anti-Semitic chants of the neo-nazis in Charlottesville.    

THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ has a running time of 78 minutes.  It does not yet have a commercial release date in the UK but is playing the UK Jewish Film Festival.

The 22nd UK International Jewish Film Festival takes place between 8th-22nd November 2018 at cinemas across London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow http://ukjewishfilm.org/

THE CAKEMAKER - BFI London Film Festival 2017 Preview

Ofir Raul Graizer's THE CAKEMAKER is an anaemic relationship drama that never recovers from Tim Kalkof's opaque central performance as the eponymous baker.  His character, Thomas, is in a loving relationship with a married Israeli man, Orun, who dies in a car crash.  This prompts our almost silent hero to go to Jerusalem and insinuate himself into the life of his ex-lover's widow Anat (Sarah Adler).  His baking is so good it draws crowds, but puts Anat's Kosher license at risk.  And soon she finds herself falling in love with him. 

When the film works best it's in its ambiguities.  Does Thomas return her advances because he was always bisexual and is actually attracted to her, or is he gay but somehow wants to feel close to his ex-lover?  How much does Orun's mother know about his and Thomas' relationship? And just how will Anat and Thomas' relationship resolve itself.  I love that the writer-director doesn't feel the need to overburden us with clear-cut answers. But there's also a criticism to be made in this cool detachment. First, that the love affair between Orun and Thomas is shown in such a bland way - as if the director is embarrassed at showing a homosexual relationship on screen.  Second, that the protagonist remains so unknowable that one's left leaving the cinema frustrated at the lack of emotional entry point to his story.

This film reminded me a lot of Hong Khaou's LILTING.  That film starred Ben Whishaw as the grieving lover of a closeted man. Except this time, instead of befriending his ex-wife, he befriends his prejudiced mother. The contrast is striking - both films were sensitive and delicate, but Whishaw's exceptional performance took us right into the heart of grief.  This is what THE CAKEMAKER so clearly missed. 

THE CAKEMAKER has a running time of 104 minutes. It played Berlin 2017. It is also playing the BFI London Film Festival 2017 where it's nominated for the Sutherland Award for First Feature.  There are tickets available for all three screenings. 

TONI ERDMANN - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 4

If the German tragicomedy TONI ERDMANN were a Hollywood film, a lovable old rogue of a father would melt the heart of his career-driven hard-ass daughter with his madcap japes and joie-de-vivre.  It would be like a parental version of the schmaltzy harmless banal comedy THE INTERN starring Anne Hathaway and Robert de Niro.  I am pleased to report that writer-director Maren Ade has created something far funnier, far weirder and far more brutally insightful portrait of a father-daughter relationship in crisis and the desperation of using humour to communicate.

The movie stars Sandra Hueller as Ine Conradi, as a successful management consultant working on a project in Bucharest.  We see her frustrated by casual misogyny at work, belligerent staff in the company she is trying to restructure, and the demands of flattering the client at all hours of the day and night in order to land a contract.  This all rang hugely true of modern corporate life.  Permanently exhausted and pissed off, the only moment where Ine seems to be in control of her life is when she makes demands of her workplace fuckbuddy, demanding sex on exactly her terms.  Otherwise, her life is one of frustration in pursuit of a promotion that is forever one year away.  Still, like most successful copers, Ine is desperate not to let any of this on to her co-workers or family, taking fake phone-calls to avoid difficult situations.  

BRIDGE OF SPIES

I begin with the proviso that I am not a fan of Steven Spielberg's films. Despite the high quality photography and acting, I always feel emotionally manipulated. Worse still, in his latter movies I have begun to feel bored as he constantly reworks the same themes - the search for a father figure, the need for a perfect hero, the idea that goodness must always win, even if the overarching time and tenor is bad.  He seemed to me to create movies that were high gloss schmaltz.  

Everything changes with BRIDGE OF SPIES, and I suspect that this has something profoundly to do with the fact that it was written by the Coen Brothers and stars Mark Rylance in a character of deeply ambivalent motives. The result is a film with a mordant wit, moral ambiguity, and one of the most convincing depictions of post-war Berlin that I have seen on screen. It is a movie of intelligence and nuance. Indeed, apart from the last five minutes where the Spielbergian schmaltz seeps back in, it's damn near perfect.

MY NAZI LEGACY - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Preview

David Evans' documentary is the most affecting I have seen in the festival previews to date.  It is devastating in its simplicity of concept and relentlessness of investigation. The narrator and key protagonist is Phillipe Sands, a famous human rights lawyer based in the UK who, in turns out, had family killed in the Holocaust and a grandfather who survived but was understandably reluctant to speak about his experiences. The power of the documentary is that is chronicles Sand's encounter with two sons of high ranking Nazi officials. The first, Niklas Frank, whose father Hans ran the General Government in Poland, has fully embraced his father's past to the point where he is almost obsessed with how much he despises him.  The second, Horst von Waechter, whose father was the Governor of Krakow and Galicia, steadfastly refuses to accept any evidence that his father had command responsibility for the mass murder of Jews, and welcomes anyone who will speak of him as a decent man, even if that man is wearing a swastika. 

SUNDANCE LONDON 2013 - Day 2 - PEACHES DOES HERSELF

I have to admit that I walked out of PEACHES DOES HERSELF an hour into its running time.  It's not because I was offended or not into the music.  It's just that I'd gotten the concept, was bored by it, and was thinking to myself, "didn't Malcolm McLaren do all this in 1982?"  And then, over supper, I realised that he and Vivienne Westwood opened their SEX boutique in the mid 70s and that Sid Vicious was dead by 1982.  So adding some LCD Soundsystem angry synth to the balls out gender bending lyrics and teaming it up with some Lady Gaga like performance art isn't really rocking my boat.   I mean, kudos to any creative kid who breaks out of a bourgeois Canadian upbringing and makes it to the performance spaces of Berlin.  And you cannot deny that Peaches is a ferocious singer and stage presence.  There are occasional flashes of visual brilliance.  Her guitarist playing light rays like synths, for instance.  But in general, unless you're a mad passionate devotee of the artiste, this is, at best, all very teenage rebellion. At worst, the film could be accused of cruelty.  Peaches might preach equal opportunities sexual gratification and respect for people of all ages, races, genders and predelictions, but the audience at Sundance London was laughing at the old withered stripper not with her.  Peaches had unwittingly created a rather nasty freak show.

PEACHES DOES HERSELF played Toronto 2012 and Sundance London 2013.   It does not yet have a commercial release date.  The movie has a 80 minute runtime.

London Film Fest 2012 Day 5 - BEYOND THE HILLS

Today I have seen two films that both deal with three related problems.  First, what happens when good, faithful people put too much trust and respect in the religious hierarchy.  Second, what is the proper dividing line between the civil and church sphere of influence. Third, what happens when the basics of Christianity - love, charity, compassion - are transmitted through the ossified structures of an hierarchical organisation.    Both films are sophisticated, disturbing and beautifully constructed.   One is Alex Gibney's documentary, examining the crime and cover up of systematic child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUE OF GOD.  The other is BEYOND THE HILLS, Romanian director Cristian Mungu's follow-up to his critically acclaimed masterpiece, FOUR MONTHS, THREE WEEKS, TWO DAYS.

The movie is based upon a real story that was investigated by journalist Tatiana Nicolescu Bran, who then adapted that investigation into a play and now this screenplay. A young girl went to visit her friend, a novice in a remote Russian Orthodox monastery.  Somehow events transpired that she was the subject of an exorcism and tragically died.  The case blew up in the media and the priest was jailed.  All of this sounds highly sensational, but the genius of this film is to slow down the events and focus on the emotional heart of the tale, as well as the cultural tropes that allowed such a tragedy to happen.  Mungu shows that modern Romania is a place of overstretched public services and overcrowded rooms.  A place of deep-seated respect for the Church, and of old superstitions.  In a society so burdened, a young girl's distress at her former lover taking religious orders can quickly descend into a misdiagnosis of depression, medicalisation, and finally suspected possession.  

The tragedy of this tale is that all the people involved are well-meaning. The doctor thinks the young girl will get more peace in the monastery and trusts the priest. The nuns all act on good intentions, albeit whipping themselves up into a panic, divining portents in logs and poultry.  The priest also believes he is acting for the best - he sends the poor girl away - it is she who returns, desperate to be with her lover even at the cost of faking a vocation.  He even chastises the nuns for their superstitions and the girl for her faith in healing Icons. But ultimately, he too allows his faith to over-ride common sense.  BEYOND THE HILLS thus shows what happens when good but uncritical people apply their faith in a kind of narrow and dangerous manner, and the lack of responsibility taken by both the civil and church authorities.  There is also an ambiguous hint that this poor girl was sexually abused by the man who sent her to work in Germany, and she is certainly defrauded by her foster parents - showing that it is not just the church, or the doctors, but the whole of this dysfunctional society that has failed this parentless girl.

The style of direction is the same as in Mungu's previous film: a masterful use of carefully constructed tableaux showing woman clucking in cluttered rooms.  Oleg Mutu's beautiful cinematography and lighting, capturing the bleak, hard rural life so that we can almost feel the cold damp air.  I love the ear for how people speak in banality when they are together, the subtlety of how the relationship between the two girls is depicted and the scrupulous balance of the story-telling. This is, if you like, a non-judgemental film that makes judgements - it tells us that their was gross incompetence and culpability here, but also genuinely good intentions.  It shows the dangers that the uneducated will fall prey to, without being patronising about their pre-enlightenment beliefs. That is an impressive feat to have performed.

BEYOND THE HILLS played Cannes, where Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan won Best Actress, and Cristian Mungiu won Best Screenplay, and London 2012. It is on release in Russia, opens in Greece on Nov 8 and in Belgium, France and the Netherlands on Nov 21.

London Film Fest 2012 Day 3 - LORE

After the endless and high-pitched melodrama of LAURENCE ANYWAYS, it was like a cool drink of water to watch Australian director Cate Shortland's delicate, impressionist and impressive movie, LORE.  Based on the Booker short-listed short story by Rachel Seifferts, which is itself based on her own mother's memories of wartime Germany, the movie has an intimacy and fragility and moral delicacy that is profoundly affecting.  

"Lore" is Hannelore, the teengage daughter or Nazi parents who, when they are arrested in the final days of the war, but take her four young siblings on a march from Bavaria to her grandmother's house in Hamburg.  This was a 380 mile trek in a land where the trains were not running, the roads were unsafe, food was scarce, and one had to traverse the different zone of control - American, English, French, Russian - all without the requisite papers.    It is also a world of women.  Women abandoned by the men who are fighting; women reduces to victims of rape; women whose bodies are something to barter for safe passage; women who try to maintain control over their meagre possessions and intellectual lives.  The men are either absent or represent risk.

Lore, a privileged young girl, is unprepared for such hardship, and more importantly, has to cope with all this while her indoctrinated worldview comes into question, and while she is in the midst of puberty.  Both of these two intellectual and emotional shocks are personified in a teenage boy called Thomas who joins up with the family.  He is useful - he has papers and can provide some kind of protection and street-smarts - but Lore is painfully aware that he is a Jew, and that she is attracted to him.  They speak very little, but the tension is palpable and drives the movie forward.

Cate Shortland handles this material with integrity, sensitivity and balance. Moreover, she manages to maintan the sense that this is ultimately the story of a family, and of a young girl's emotional, intellectual and sexual awakening.  The political trauma infuses everything, but never overwhelms the heart of the movie.  To that end, Shortland is aided by strong performances from her child cast, and particularly by Adam Arkapaw’s (SNOWTOWN) beautiful landscape photography and Max Richter's score.  

LORE played Toronto and London 2012 and is on release in Australia. It opens in Germany on Nov 1st. The running time is 109 minutes.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 3 - I, ANNA

I, ANNA is a beautifully made, unnerving psychological thriller from writer-director Barnaby Southcombe.  Set in contemporary London, the movie has a style and control and slow-building tension that is utterly breathtaking.  It's one of the best films I've seen at the Festival so far, and an utter surprise!

The movie stars Charlotte Rampling as Anna, an apparently divorced woman living with her single-parent daughter, nervously entering the speed-dating scene.  She has a certain eery quality from the start.  Maybe it's her anachronistic use of phone boxes, or that we see her wandering apparently aimlessly through a  windswept Barbican at odd hours of the morning, moments after a brutal murder has been committed.  Similarly lonely, aimless and eery is Gabriel Byrne's cop. I love that he's not that clichéd hard boiled-lives-for-his-job cop of low-rent TV series.  Rather he has a melancholy, soulful air, and even when he starts stalking Anna there's something almost gentle about him.

I guess it isn't the most original plot device to find that the woman the cop is stalking turns out to be involved in the crime, but the movie deals with that quickly (within the first 30 minutes), rather than teasing us with obvious red herrings.   This is a grown-up film more worried about the psychology of an event and the emotional ramifications of a crisis, than with "whodunnit".  And the screenplay still has enough tricks up its sleeve to genuinely surprise us in the third act and build to an unbearably tense denouement.

The two lead performances are convincing and compelling, particularly Gabriel Byrne in, perhaps, a softer and more ambiguous role than we've seen in some time.  It was also a pleasure to see Eddie Marsan play a straightforward jovial decent cop rather than the rather shifty characters he normally gets landed with.  Behind the camera, particular praise has to go to Ben Smithard whose cinematography beautifully recasts banal urban architecture into unreal, empty backdrops echoing the protagonists interior moods. The smooth, modern, hard-lit surfaces created a feeling of alienation that was perfectly complemented by K.I.D's electronic score. 

Overall, I, ANNA is a sophisticated, compelling modern noir thriller with enough nods to the history of the  genre to satisfy cinephiles and one genuinely superb plot twist to give us something new to be dazzled by.  This has to be a strong contender for the Festival's First Feature prize,  and I hope that it gets the audience it deserves.

I, ANNA played Berlin, Sydney and London 2012.  It was released in Sweden earlier this year and is released in the UK on December 7th. It will be released in Germany on April 18th 2013. The running time is 93 minutes. 

London Film Fest 2010 Day 8 - WOMB

WOMB is a beautifully photographed, beautifully acted, deeply painful movie about an unboundaried relationship between a mother and son. Its entire run-time is basically a wince-inducingly uncomfortable exploration of unconventional emotional relationships - and you emerge from the cinema desperate to breathe. Writer-director Benedek Fliegauf creates - with just a few subtle strokes - a world like our own but with one sci-fi touch - cloning is possible. This is a key idea, but is introduced only after half an hour, and while its ramifications are hinted at, this is not really a sci-fi movie at all. What the concept does is allow an exploration of psycho-sexual transgression. Eva Green - Queen of independent cinema's messed up young women - plays Rebecca. She is reunited with her childhood sweetheart Tommy (Matt Smith - TV's latest Doctor Who). When a car accident robs them of a future together she decides, against his mother's wishes, to birth his clone and raise him as her son - all the while keeping him ignorant of this fact so as not to open him up to prejudice against "copies". So follows a brutal tale of closely observed suppressed emotions. Eva Green is superb - as usual - in portraying the single-minded madness of the thwarted women who comes to confront her guilt - expressing all this complexity with a remarkable stillness. Lesley Manville and Peter White - as Tommy's mother and father - are also superb in small roles.  The atmosphere is morose, oppressive and sinister without relief.  The result is a superb film marred only by one directorial choice - not to have Eva Green age - something that bugged me and brought me out of the movie throughout the second half of the film.

WOMB played Toronto and London 2010. It was released earlier this year in Russia, Germany and Hungary. It goes on release in Singapore on August 11th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 5 - PICCO

German writer-director Philip Koch's debut feature is a closely observed prison drama loosely based on Alan Clarke's acclaimed BBC Play for Today, SCUM. Picco translates as lackey, and the protagonist is a quiet, diffident teenage boy landed in a prison cell with three other kids. The prison is claustrophobic, dull and full of sinister threat. The pivotal moment comes when the protagonist witnesses a rape, but is persuaded not to stick his head up above the parapet and report it. From then we see a subtle shift from bullied to bully, as he realises that there is no sustainable middle ground.

Koch portrays this with a fairly straightforward narrative style, and some impressive steady-cam work within the cell. The performances and production design all add up to an authentic feel. I guess my problem with the film is that it doesn't feel fresh or dangerous enough. The director warned the audience at the LIFF screening that it was going to be uncomfortable to watch, but actually it really wasn't. Certainly there was nothing to match the razor-blade scene in similarly themed UN PROPHET, and for those of us who'd watched LEAP YEAR earlier in the day, PICCO seemed like pretty bland fare by comparison.

I guess my overall reaction was that this was a coming-of-age prison drama like many others - quiet inmate turns bully to survive. It is well-told and well-acted, but ultimately, what does it add to the genre? Not much.

PICCO played Cannes 2010 and will be released in Germany on 25th November.

GOOD - compelling study of moral corruption

Cinema sells stories of monsters and angels - Hitler and Schindler. Rarely do we find a movie that shows us the unpalatable truth: most people are, when nudged by a little flattery, likely to take the easy path of self-interest. We are callow creatures, but as Ripley put it, "Well, whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful, it all makes sense, doesn't it, in your head. You never meet anybody that thinks they're a bad person."

GOOD is a facile title for a movie that deals with precisely this complicated, unpalatable truth, in the most savage of circumstance, Germany in the 1930s. Handsomely shot and beautifully acted, the movie deftly shows us the moral deterioration of a well-meaning but ultimately easily corruptible academic, played by Viggo Mortensen. As the movie opens, he's an uncomplaining, but frustrated middle-aged man, struggling to please a depressed wife, care for a chronically ill mother and manage his children. His personal struggle is reflected in a novel he writes about euthanasia for the chronically ill.

Years later, and this good man is seduced, first by an adoring young student (Jodie Whitaker) and second, by a clever Nazi official who, with a few charming words and reassurances, persuades the academic to write a paper advocating euthanasia of mentally and physically handicapped. After all, isn't it better to be inside, influencing policy, rather than carping on the sidelines? Mark Strong, in a cameo role, is petrifyingly efficient as the recruiting officer. Even more interesting is the character played by Steven Mackintosh - a brutal SS thug who will organise "spontaneous" anti-Semitic riots with a boyish charm and vulnerability that challenges us to with-hold our sympathy.

What makes this film compelling is that it treads the fine line between empathy and sympathy. I don't sympathise with the "good Nazis" but I do empathise. It's all too plausible to see "good men do nothing", or rather think that they are doing nothing when really they are actively enabling a regime they know to be evil. The only truly sympathetic character is that of the Jewish psychologist, played by Jason Isaacs. It's a brilliant performance in a memorable role.

GOOD played Toronto 2008 and opened in Hungary, the US and Brazil in 2008. It is currently on release in the UK and in Australia. It opens in Spain on May 22nd; in New Zealand on June 4th and in Argentina on October 1st.

London Film Festival Day 14 - THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX

THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX is a straight-forward, unexciting re-telling of the history of the Red Army Faction - a group of German left-wing militants active in the 1970s, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. Directed by Uli Edel (LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN), the film is more easily recognisable as another of producer Bernd Eichinger's historic German epics. Following on from DER UNTERGANG, it seeks to put Germany's recent past under the microscope. In terms of subject matter, the social unrest of the late 60s and early 70s is a logical follow-up to Hitler's suicide. So much of what the students were protesting against was a direct result of World War Two - the feeling that their parent's generation had no moral (and therefore legal) authority - the feeling that denazification had not gone far enough - the resentment of US policies that seemed to ape the imperial aims of Nazism in Vietnam and the Middle East - the tangible presence of US army bases on German soil.

Of course, most students only went as far as demonstrating. Political extremism was just another cause - along with feminism and environmentalism. And the middle-class liberals were similarly pursuing legitimate lines of protest. The Red Army Faction decided that talk meant nothing without action, influenced by figures such as Che Guevera. A key flaw of this film is that it never really shows us why these people went beyond talk to violent direct action. Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtrau) seems to fire guns because he thinks it's cool. Is that really all it was? Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) supports direct action because....I'm no clearer after this movie. The more interesting character is Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck). Meinhof was older and an influential journalist with a real reputation. She could've affected change through legitimate protest. According to Uli Edel's interpretation she opts for violence because she's goaded into it, which seems rather pathetic, and hard to believe of such an intelligent woman. Still, maybe that's the point? Maybe the RAF was violent for no other reason than that it was bored and it seemed exhillerating?

Over the first hour of the film, the Baader-Meinhof gang succeed in their aims of causing general mayhem. They also succeed in aligning themselves with some particularly nasty people, and the film is very clear in showing them to be feckless and petulant to a degree that is shocking and basically evil. It's ironic that these guys are protesting against "fascist tendencies" and yet they employ the same language as the Nazis. They regard the police as "not human" and that to kill a policeman is "not murder" just as the Nazis dehumanised the Jews before killing them. One of the most disturbing moments - and one too little explored in this movie - is when the Black September terrorists holding Israeli athletes hostage during the 1972 Munich Olympics ask for fellow terrorists to be released. Among the names are those of the imprisoned RAF members.

In the final hour, the film changes focus. The founder members of the RAF are in prison and the second generation of terrorists continue their work, escalating methods and targets. They collude with the PLO to hijack an airplane and assassinate a prominent businessman. There is less talk of ideology - it's just simple revenge. Meanwhile, in Stammheim prison, the first generation prisoners look banal and pathetic. Martina Gedeck gives a convincing portrayal of Meinhof as an ideological purist driven mad by solitary confinement and guilt. Ensslin and Baader commit suicide rather than dance to the tune of the court. But they don't seem to show any real remorse or understanding.

THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX is technically good. The film-makers recreate the look and feel of Germany in the 1970s and pack a lot of material into the two and half hour run time. The problem is that they don't have an over-arching point that they are trying to make. And as a result of the "...and then this happened, and then that happened, and then this other thing happened...." approach to history, THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX, doesn't tell us anything we wouldn't know from reading a Wikipedia entry. In dealing with Irish republican terrorism in HUNGER, Steve McQueen took a radical approach. He decided that we could all look up the narrative of the campaign. He was going to cut straight to the real question: how can people murder other people in all good conscience? He did this by focusing his gaze on Bobby Sands, and on a single conversation that Sands has with a priest. I was looking for similar insight in THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX, and I never found it. So for all its superficial attention to detail and marquee actors, this film is ultimately a failure.

THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX played London 2008. It was released earlier this year in Germany, Austria, and Finland. It opens in Italy and Norway this weekend. It opens in the Netherlands on November 6th; in France on November 12th; in the UK on November 14th and in South Africa on March 20th 2009.

DIE WELLE / THE WAVE - doesn't ever quite convince

Confronted with a class of German schoolchildren sick of hearing about the Holocaust and convinced it could never happen again, ("we've moved passed it"), schoolteacher Rainer Wenger decides to make an experiment. In "project week", he reintroduces traditional seating plans, uniforms, and respect for the teacher. The bored, pampered schoolchildren are energised and excited by the feeling of solidarity and belonging. Coming from broken homes, or parents so liberal they create no boundaries, the kids respond to a repectable authority figure. Soon, they take the project and run with it, introducing a hand signal, a graffiti tag and a rather menacing attitude toward those that don't fit in. Before they know it, they have enthusiastically become a gang with fascist over-tones.

The movie is well-acted and manages to capture the infectious energy of teenagers and the way in which teenage relationships work. Juergen Vogel also does a good job as the charismatic teacher who runs the project to teach the kids a lesson, but is as susceptible to the feeling of power as they are. However, I think that writer-director Dennis Gansel makes a mis-step in forcing the transformation of the kids into a "Project Week" rather than, say, into a term. The pace of the transformation seems forced, especially with the few kids who are fired up but then become disillusioned, all within a week.

Still, I can't deny that this is a powerful movie, provocative and engaging, and desperately relevant.

DIE WELLE played Sundance 2008. It opened earlier this year in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Turkey. It is currently on release in the UK and Russia and goes on release in Poland next week. DIE WELLE opens in October in Hungary abd Belgium and opens in November in Greece, the Netherlands, and Taiwan. It opens in France on January 28th.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS - an immaculately-made, disturbing film (*spoilers*)

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is, deep breath, a film about the Holocaust for children, based upon a book that is now being taught in British schools. The fact that it may be on your child's book list shouldn't make you complacent about taking them to see it. It's a disturbing picture and seeing things on the big screen can be more horrific than reading them on a page. It's important to teach this history but please be aware that the film-makers do not pander to their audience in the final ten minutes. If you need further information you can check out the PBBFC information here.

Ok. Public Service Announcement over, we can get back to the review. THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is a deeply affecting, well-made drama aimed at children, but worth watching as an adult. The movie is told from the point of view of an eight-year old boy called Bruno, and the film-makers are careful to introduce the details of the Holocaust very slowly. The first time we see Bruno's father he isn't in uniform. He just looks like a normal dad. And it helps that the mostly British cast choose not to play it with caricature German accents. Still, Bruno is an observant child and he can tell that his grandma isn't happy with his father's decision to move the family to the countryside. Once in the new house, Bruno is frustrated and lonely. He manages to sneak out of the house and stumbles upon the electric fence of a "farm" where everyone wears "striped pyjamas".

The clever thing is that none of the adults lie to Bruno. The assumptions that he makes about the prisoners and the nature of the camp are all logical and plausible when viewed from the perspective of an innocent young boy who falls back on the presumption that his dad is a good man. Even when Bruno starts speaking to Schmuel, an 8-year old prisoner, he is slow to catch on. So long as you can grant the film-makers the initial conceit that these two boys could have met, the rest of the movie flows naturally. Their conversations, rationalisations, mistakes and reconciliation have an air of authenticity.

The denouement comes swiftly and, for adults, with a grim sense of what the end will be. The grim inevitability and sheer horror is enhanced by James Horner's tremendous orchestral score which builds to a literal scream. I was surprised by just how straightforward the film was and just how affecting the end was. This is surely as it should be. This is the sort of film that you don't leave the cinema talking about with your friends. You walk home in silence, considering what you've seen.

Kudos to novelist John Boyne and screen-writer, director Mark Herman for having the judgement to bring this to the screen. Herman in particular deserves praise for getting good performances from the two young boys, Asa Butterfield and Jack Scanlon. David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga are typically good as the parents, but we also get a very powerful cameo from Sheila Hancock as the grandmother. I also thought this was the first film in which Rupert Friend gave a very convincing and nuanced performance.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is on release in the UK. It opens on September 26th in Spain; on October 3rd in Ireland; on November 7th in the USA; on January 23rd in Norway; on February 12th in Argentina; and on April 2nd in Germany.

FOUR MINUTES/VIER MINUTEN - provocative, affecting, but finally mis-judged

For about the first seventy minutes, VIER MINUTEN is a refreshingly complicated, provocative movie. Writer-director Chris Kraus puts us in a contemporary German prison where a pernickety old piano teacher is giving lessons to an astonishingly talented, but murderous, young woman. As their relationship develops, we learn about their thwarted past lives.

Unlike a conventional Hollywood movie, Monica Bleibtrau's withered teacher is not a wise, comforting figure with angelic patience. This movie is about as far away from FINDING FORRESTER or GOOD WILL HUNTING as you could get. Frau Krueger emphatically does not believe that delinquent Jenny will be "saved" by her art or become a "better person". Indeed, Frau Krueger's motives and methods are both rather suspect, as is her categorisation of jazz as abominable "negro music". Even the prison guards and governor are compromised, and therefore more credible. For example, a kindly guard called Muetze - one of those solid good men - is capable of viciousness when provoked.

And what of Jenny? There is no doubt that Hannah Herzsprung gives a raw and convincing performance as this deeply traumatised girl. Both her acting, and what I can only assume was her own piano playing, are affecting and, in the final scene, quite remarkable. But I do feel that she was rather under-mined by some of the screen-writer's choices regarding her character's motivations and past life. What's worse, the whole movie was seriously thrown off its balance by a misjudged, sentimental, final act.

If only Chris Kraus had shown more restraint, this could have been a true pantheon movie. As it is, he has made a memorable and promising movie. Solid characterisation and deft handling of the music aside, I would also like to praise DP Judith Kaufmann's fluid camera movements that follow Frau Krueger even when that takes us away from the action or the conversation. The way she shoots the concert scene, and indeed the way the whole movie is edited to show elipses in time, are also remarkable.

FOUR MINUTES played Toronto 2006 and Berlin 2007. It was released in Germany, Italy, Australia, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan and Belgium in 2007. It opened in France earlier this year and is currently on release in the UK.

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN/AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE - contrived cultural drama

AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE is not a poor film by any means, but I don't think it lives up to the art-house hype. Certainly, in a year of 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS; NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, I find it hard to believe that Fatih Akin won Best Screenplay at Cannes 2007.

The movie is set in contemporary Germany and Turkey. An old Turkish man in Bremen offers a Turkish prostitute a place in his house in return for exclusive services. At first, it seems a rather naive, romantic gesture. She is being harassed by religious fundamentalists so she accepts. We have been forewarned by a surtitle that the woman will be killed but I love how writer-director Fatih Akin still manages to take the audience by surprise. Sadly, credible surprise soon turns to contrived implausible events. It starts when the old man's grown son goes back to Turkey to find the dead woman's daughter. Rather improbably, he gives up his job as a German professor and impetuously buys a book shop in Istanbul.

The second segment centres on the dead women's daughter, a radical political agitator on the lam from the Turkish police. She hops a plane to Hamburg and is taken in by a sweet German languages student, much to her conservative mother's disgust. The two girls begin an affair, but the radical is soon deported and the German follows her to Istanbul. She remains in Istanbul for months, trying to fight her lover's incarceration. Improbably, she finds herself lodging with the old Turkish man's son.

The third segment of the movie sees all the story-lines come together in a manner that was so contrived as to be alienating. I left the cinema admiring Fatih Akin's ability to portray modern Turkish life, but less convinced that he had said anything particularly meaningful about racial and nationalist politics. The story, which had begun so promisingly, had disappeared into a small, trite, neatly-packaged box. Still, the movie is almost, but not quite, worth seeing for Patrycia Ziolkowska's heart-wrenching performance as the love-lorn German girl, Lotte, and the brilliant sound-track.

AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE/THE EDGE OF HEAVEN played Cannes 2007 where Fatih Akin won Best Screenplay. It also played Toronto 2007 and Berlin 2008. It opened in 2007 in Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Italy, Belgium and France. It opened earlier in 2008 in Norway, Greece, Jong Kong, Portugal and the Netherlands. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in March in Finland, Spain and Israel. Finally, it opens in the US on May 21st.