Reviews
Ferien vom Leben (2017)
charming German road movie
Not much to say. It is a charming movie, with good to excellent performances; Hannelore Elsner as Lilo who is terminally ill who decides on the spur of the moment to take a lift from Persian truck driver Sami (Navid Navid) and gathers some old Persian wisdom. Daughter Caro and grandson Vicent catch up with her by way of GPS and join her and Sami. Even rather estranged husband of Caro joins them somewhere along the way to Hamburg (not clear how) and in the end Lilo dies rather happily and certain issues between all of them seem to get solved. However, whatever happened to cat Camus?
Falling Down (1993)
borderline personality? No way!
The description on the IMDb page for this movie starts with "A borderline personality disordered (hello?) defense worker". Wrong, wrong, wrong. A quite normal average man is simply totally fed up with the hassles we undergo and see every day. F.i. the insane traffic in which we have to move every day. Or being cheated by your employer or shopkeepers. Or the very bad service at a diner. And also being intimidated by some no good hoodlums, the man simply doesn't take it anymore. I think that many, many "normal" people would like once to react to all these abuses, grievances, infringements and what have you, And once, only once would love to take a baseball bat and do exactly what Michael Douglas does in this delightful and sometimes very funny "black" movie. For now we live with these frustrations and enjoy this movie.
Einfach Rosa: Die zweite Chance (2016)
amusing and well acted German comedy
Rosa Winter and Mark are looking for a new apartment in Berlin as they are being evicted from their current one. The judge Johannes Brun who confirmed the eviction order asks Rosa as a wedding planner to help him propose to his beloved. She accepts on the condition that she can arrange the wedding after his beloved Anja says yes. However, it seems that Anja has a dark past. Also the landlord, Mr. Schmidbauer who had refused their application for an ideal apartment, comes to Rosa some time later and asks her to find him a partner and if she succeeds the apartment will be hers. Now her fiancé Mark steps in and tries to couple Schmidbauer with Rosa's mother Ruth, which leads to complications indeed.
Einfach Rosa: Wolken über Kapstadt (2015)
a rather entertaining German love story in South Africa
Mark and Nandi, living in Berlin have decided to get married at the estate of her mother Jamila in Capetown, South Africa. Rosa and Meral have been asked to organize their wedding and have 4 days to do it. Mark and Rosa have known each other since their teens and during the four days prior the the wedding they (re)discover their feelings for each other. Mark's parents, Inge and Johann visit the estate and Mark's father is getting more and more on everybody's nerves. Nandi is in the meantime offered a job as a doctor in a township's hospital, while Mark's business is in Berlin. More complications seem to lead to the annulment of the wedding, other to the going through on with the wedding.
Die Insassen (2015)
excellent and very funny and moving movie
Wolfgang Stumph has proved many times to be an actor with a great sense of humour. In this movie he plays a top manager who is admitted to a mental hospital after a nervous breakdown. From the beginning he meddles with the management. During one of the therapeutic sessions he meets Keith Winter a wonder boy in business land also a patient. After that he more or less takes over the management of the super luxurious clinic with a few other "patients". But on the day of the going public of the clinic he realizes the importance of his marriage and leaves the business to his two patient friends. Here again he shows his enormous talent. Compliments also to the rest of the wonderful cast and the director Franziska M eyer Price. This is a movie I hope to see many times and not only on an off-day. Reminded me a bit of the book Being there by Jerzy Kosinsky, although I have never seen the movie.
Last Chance Harvey (2008)
a totally incomprehensible movie
I am a big, big fan of Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson but after twice seen 30 to 35 minutes of this movie I really wondered 'what the hell am I looking at'. What possessed the producers to cut this movie, which had potential, into bits and leaving the audience wondering again 'what on earth is this movie about'? Great actors, always a pleasure to see them on screen but -and maybe it is me- this movie has head nor tail, although I confess I could not wait to see the tail. What a waste of talent. As I am required to write a minimum of 10 lines reviewing this movie, here we go. Wonderful acting, as always. Dramatically badly cutting. Rather nice music. Outstanding performances, as expected. Towards the end (and I had to see more in order to write this review) the movie gets funnier, I must confess. Still, I wish that the producers would have listened to the actors and thus made it a better movie. And in doing so the movie would have been distributed better than it has now. Shame on the producers.
Donna Leon: Feine Freunde (2003)
Sooo very Venetian
I have lived in Venice, San Marco and visit my friends regularly. I enjoy Donna Leon immensely and I have read all her books. She has been living in Venice over 25 years, speaks fluent Italian, but she requested her books not to be translated into Italian. Whenever I am lucky enough to catch the Brunetti episodes on the German television I get over the German (speaking it fluently, like Italian and being Dutch). I think the protagonists are very well chosen and could easily be Venetians. I do think a lot of joy goes into the filming and one sees it. The scenery of course is breathtaking but then I am prejudiced. You may or may not like the plots, that's up to you; but the walks, the Vaporetto journeys or the cruising on the police launch through Venice are absolutely wonderful. One feels him-/herself really physically in Venice.
Eine Sennerin zum Verlieben (2010)
A lovely, funny comedy
Günther Maria Halmer is priceless as a narrow minded, deadly serious tax inspector Bernhard Maiwald with an allergy to dust and hay, whose stamp collection is his true passion apart from his job. He comes to Bavaria to check upon a poor woman farmer Ariane Ostler (May) with a cheese-making farm on an alm and who according to the government is guilty of tax evasion. He soon finds himself in many an unexpected situation, like sleeping among the cows of frau Ostler and waking up (hilarious). Her catastrophic administration of her small business leads almost to her ruin and the forced sale of her land and farm. In the meantime the mayor of the small town Georg Ametsrieder, with whom she long ago had a brief affair, makes again advances to her in order to obtain her land. But fortunately Bernhard is after all a human being and a man and decides to help Ariane. A very pleasant comedy set in beautiful Upper-Bavaria.
Insomnia (2002)
Why???
Why was Dormer sent to Alaska from Los Angeles? Why didn't he use a sleeping mask (or anything else) to get some sleep. Why didn't he ask the hotel owner for something to darken his bedroom? Why did he shoot in the fog. Did he think it was the murderer? Did he see it was his partner? Then why did he kill his partner, on purpose, by accident? One could guess, but that wasn't satisfying. Despite the wonderful performances there remained too many whys for me to rate it a very good movie. Instead I sometimes found the plot rather laughable. Wonder, what Pacino and Williams themselves thought of the film after it left the cutting room.
Tim (1979)
Tim, a moving tale
I found it a moving story of love and innocence on the one hand and ignorance, prejudice and bigotry on the other. All the actors from Piper Laurie and Mel Gibson to the Australian actors who played the deeply loving parents and the bigot sister and husband were simply great. I have rarely seen Mel Gibson acting better after this movie. Compliments for the director. The most wonderful but also saddest thing about this movie was that Gibson grew from an almost tabula rasa mind to a person with more grasp of what the world is about. Thanks to the loving guidance of Laurie he learned to read and appreciate art and music. But it also lead him to understand more of the complexity and sometimes ugliness of people. I would love to see it again. Even though I have seen it twice . Of course looking at a young and beautiful Mel Gibson does not hurt.