DasGlasperlenspiel

The initial situation of the film is unique. An honorable Soviet militia officer tries to solve a triple murder in Moscow in the early 1980s. His opponents are the KGB, shady black market traders and smooth foreign businessmen. But in Moscow it is deep winter. And people rush through the streets, metro stations and squares in thick coats and deeply wrapped up against the cold. Solely motivated by the thought of crossing the gray dreariness of these public squares on the way home as quickly as possible. A perfect background for a thriller, with chases in the dark and action scenes in shabby stairwells, don't you think? And of course that's how it happens. The finale alone is a bit flat and doesn't do the film justice. Overall, however, highly recommended.

In my opinion this is Brian de Palma's best mafia movie. I rank it above 'Scarface'. The film is excellently cast, right down to the many supporting roles. I only now noticed that Viggo Mortensen, who was relatively unknown at the time, was also there. And Sean Penn perhaps plays his best role as a coke-smoking, errant Jewish lawyer. But it's actually the story of Al Pacino as a former gangster who tries almost desperately to get away from his criminal past and yet the deeper he becomes entangled, the more he tries to become honest. While the narrative pace is moderate in the first half, it becomes more and more turbulent in the second and builds to a truly magnificent finale. And what would a good mafia film be without multiple betrayals? This is simply well told and staged.

Yes, this one is close to the original films here. There's a lot of fan service. A spaceship made entirely of heavy metal, very analog looking computers, perforated grides, automatic doors, flickering and rotating lights, countless controls, deep elevator shafts et ceterea, etc. And there is little new with the opponents either, all the characters were already familiar to me. And it also looks the way people imagined the future in the 1980s. And dealing with artificial intelligence is a daily topic that is well implemented. The only thing that bothers me is that they added another part after the actual finale. Anyone who wants to see how the Golem of Prague fits into the alien universe will be served here. Still, it's all really well done. In contrast to many other sequels, this is a lot of cinematic fun and I enjoyed watching it.

Yes, the scenes in the desert and the black and white Harkonnen home planet are visually brilliant. You can't criticize the fantastic camera work. And Zendaya also does a very good job.

BUT: The story of the outcast prince, who rises like a phoenix from the ashes and becomes the new ruler in a very short time, could also come from a Stallone film from the 1980s. And I have little sympathy for a main character, who uses, or rather abuses, mythology and religion for his rise.

In contrast, we are presented with the clumsiest villains in film history. Ugly, infinitely evil, sexually perverted. Is that really serious? A good villain should have motivation that is understandable to the viewer.

The score is incredibly intrusive. Sometimes you sense a few seconds earlier that a roaring and pounding noise is about to flood the cinema. This is too much.

The film actually has an excellent cast. However, Christopher Walken seems like a foreign body and doesn't take place even when he fills the entire screen.

This could be so much better.

First of all, I love Stefan Zweig's literary source. And Oliver Masucci does a great job as the psychologically tortured protagonist Dr Bartok. The escape of an oppressed spirit into a parallel world of chess in order to withstand the torture of isolation is still brilliant. Unfortunately, all changes to the template lead in the wrong direction. However, the film sets, which are supposed to represent the saloon of an ocean liner, look like a film studio from start to finish. Sorry, that looks cheap. The discussion of the origins and socialization of the world chess champion would be essential, but is very short. Too short. It's a pity. The film is good, but it could have been so much better.

The 1980s have called and want their storyline back. After the death of his fiancée, an ex-drug addict fights as a one-man army against a drug cartel. Why Malkovich and de Niro embarked on this B-movie will forever remain a mystery. The story is predictable, silly and very cheaply staged. Better action than in this movie can now regularly seen in many television series. To make it worse, the movie wasn't filmed in Georgia, but mostly in Puerto Rico. And unfortunately you can see that.

Is there anything positive? I liked the slowly told love story of the two drug addicts at the beginning. If only the second part of the film were taken into account, the rating would be even worse. Very disappointing.

An unusual relationship comedy that puts the city of Leipzig in a colorful and bright light at the beginning of the 1970s. Rarely has a GDR-city been so beautifully presented. And there was rarely so little GDR in a film from the GDR film studios DEFA. The whole film is decidedly bourgeois - quotes from Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are sprinkled in so regularly that you really don't think you're witnessing a socialist society. The story of the attractive young Angelika, who is desired by many men and is hardly aware of it, is of course not entirely new. But it is told in a lively and charming way. So that the audience really notices everything, the main actors explain the events as off-camera voices, which also works well. All in all, the film is a small but positive surprise.

The documentary follows three Berlin bouncers, including Sven Marquardt, the bouncer of the world-famous 'Berghain', and tells about their lives and work. First of all, the bouncers don't seem unsympathetic. Rather, it appears that if they had not become bouncers, they would have been creative in some way. This creates a portrait of the Berlin scene itself, i.e. The progressive, alternative Berlin. But spending 86 minutes watching people decide whether or not to let the drunk into a club doesn't work, unfortunately. Even if this activity is somehow ideologically and philosophically overbuilt, it is and remains trivial. Unfortunately, in the long run it became boring.

A very well made documentary about the history of three cities and the invention of modern capitalism. This should actually be a mandatory program because everyone has an opinion about capitalism, but there is little knowledge about it. Even if you don't like capitalism it is the undisputed most important economic order globally. That's why it's important to know where capitalism comes from and why it is so successful. The combination of animations, interviews and the inside into the buildings from the early days of capitalism that still exist today make the appeal of this three-part miniseries.

I'm really a fan of Steve McQueen's films. Unfortunately, this biographical reappraisal of his life failed. Again and again the film tries to depict Steve's oversized coolness in elegiac images. Maybe Quentin Tarantino could have done that? The scene with the Cuban dictator Batista even seems unintentionally funny to me. The black and white look and the dialogues of this interrogation scene seem like something out of a very bad and cheap mafia movie. The numerous flashbacks and individual sequences are cut together incoherently. There is no magic and no suspense. That's really a shame, but the film is unfortunately bad!

The story of Hamburg's red light district in the late 1970s and early 1980s is worth telling. The struggles of various pimp gangs, the misery of the prostitutes, how broken all the people who work in this industry become. I really like the main actor Aaron Hilmer, who in the original convinces with a brash North German accent. Despite all his really questionable practices and crimes, with which he persuades dozens of women into prostitution, there remains some sympathy for this character.

But there is also a lot that is not consistent. Unfortunately, you don't believe for a second that it really takes place in Hamburg St. Pauli in the 80s. Costumes, wigs and make-up look like a bad techno club in Berlin 2020. The original images from that time, which can be seen in the credits, promise more than the series can deliver. A pity.

Interview sequences with prison inmates on the one hand and employees of the East German secret service (Stasi) on the other are cut against each other. This is still very enlightening today, because the conditions in the political prisons run by the Stasi were much worse than in other prisons in the GDR or in West Germany. The systematic dismantling work with which the prisoners were broken and ultimately tortured is shown. In contrast, the attempts by the perpetrators to present their work as 'legal within the laws of the GDR' do make me angry today. I would have preferred the short running time of 30 minutes to be longer and the whole thing more detailed. In any case, a well made documentary.

Actually, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the struggle for survival of its crew, including decades of legal aftermath, has a lot of potential for a film adaptation. With Nicolas Cage there is a real star on board and the budget may not have been really big either, but in some places you can already see that the production cost money. And yet there is no tension, the viewer doesn't really want to empathize with the characters. And Nicolas Cage plays like a log. How can a story based on true events seem so contrived? It's certainly not just because the special effects look really cheap. I can actually only explain such a bad film with an extremely weak script and a less careful production.

Thanks to the excellent template by the Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt, this crime film is atmospherically dense and thrilling to the end. Heinz Rühmann was already an established star and this is one of his best movies. The unknown Gert Fröbe made his breakthrough and earned rightfully the role of James Bond villain Cedric Goldfinger. Anyone who sees, knows why. The supporting roles are also very well cast, and the film music is almost a classic. On top of that, the film is quite critical for the 1950s and deals with false accusations against marginalized groups and discrimination against children of divorced parents. The film feels modern and fresh to this day, it's a classic!

The name of the Czechoslovakian communist Rudolf Slansky is hardly known outside of the Czech Republic. He was the second man in the state of CSSR and was quite complicit in the elimination of democratic structures. But his high position was of no use to him. Along with a dozen other high-ranking party officials, he was sentenced to death in Prague in a hideous show trial in 1952. Shortly before, Stalin had set the hideous example with his anti-Semitic doctors' conspiracy in the Soviet Union. The Prague communists implemented this in the CSSR with this Slansky tribunal. Almost all of the accused were Jews. And all were innocent. This excellent documentation rightly ensures that this injustice is not forgotten. The methods of torture used to force the accused to publicly admit their guilt are particularly perfidious. The mixture of interviews with contemporary witnesses and real film material that was only recently rediscovered is exciting and informative.

The German poet Friedrich Hölderlin is unique. He had no scholars or followers. But nobody disputes his brilliance today. This movie gives an insight into the middle years of Hölderlin's life. His unfulfilled and forbidden love for a rich merchant's wife, his struggle for poetic and political truth. The Napoleonic Wars form the background for this scenery. The film takes its time and develops its story slowly and carefully. Excerpts from Hölderlin's works and contemporary classical music are skilfully incorporated again and again. The actors are terrific, especially Ulrich Mühe as Hölderlin, the poet that lived the second half of his live in mental illness. A recommendation!

The four-part miniseries follows the story of a British drug courier who is sentenced to a long prison term in Peru. What is the special feature? The protagonist is the attractive young woman Michaella! You see a mixture of original recordings and interviews with the actual stakeholders on the one hand and stuff shot afterwards with actors. In the interview sequences, the mistakes the woman made are admitted honestly and openly, which I noticed positively. However, the fact that a convicted criminal now plays the leading role in a netflix series, and was probably well paid for it, is problematic. Sometimes the impression arises that it was just a kind of self-awareness course. In the best moments, viewers wonder if they might have made similar mistakes when they were 20. Those who are interested in this type of material will not be disappointed.

The theme of the series is the music industry's fight for survival and the rise of the streaming platform Spotify. To keep the series exciting, each episode is told from the perspective of a different participant. In this way, a really complex topic is not reduced to a simple scheme of good and evil. Otherwise, the transformation of an 'IT nerd' into a 'tech billionaire' might not have been a storyline for six episodes and 4,5 hours screentime. But now this mini series is really brilliant and a really outstanding implementation of a current topic, namely how the digital revolution is changing all of our lives. Excellent!

You have to keep in mind that criminals can spread their stories here and may even have been paid to tell them in this series. The story of young people who broke into the homes of Hollywood stars and stole very expensive things should be well known by now. But it's also undeniable that the urge to become famous in and around Hollywood gives this whole story a special twist. The injected lips and lifted faces of the interviewees give clear indications of the mindset of those involved. It's easy to think of Hollywood and the entire entertainment industry as a precursor of hell when you look at it. That's why this little series is worth it.

Shot in 1988 and released the following year, 1989, this DEFA movie gives a final insight into conditions and life in the GDR.

The young lovers, who follow in the footsteps of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, found each other already at the beginning of the film. But their dreams and aspirations are quickly overshadowed by the realities of a ruthless bureaucracy, the stress of young parents and the lack of support from their families and friends. The difficulties young people had to find an apartment in the GDR at that time are impressively described. Otherwise, the flight of people into the private sphere is shown, political things only take place on the sidelines.

All this is told very slowly and carefully. Everything develops into a deep and sad melancholy. As hard as the characters try, everything seems to have a bad ending. But it's a lot of fun to watch the young actors doing it.

The story of a secret agent betrayed by his own service has been told many times. However, not yet with a female agent of the GDR secret service, who started a revenge campaign after the 'Wende' in 1989/1990. This is visually appealing, exciting and entertaining. Jella Haase is an excellent choice as the leading actress.

But it is annoying that the representation of this time is partially incorrect. Hardly any actor has the courage to wear a hairstyle typical of the time. Exception Jella Haase. In addition, the GDR state party SED is said to have announced an amnesty in May 1990, i.e. At a time when SED was no longer in power? That shouldn't happen.

Action comedy on the Japanese Shinkansen train. Countless fight scenes of professional killers battling each other. Unfortunately very little authentic Japan, but a lot of cheap looking CGI. Pretty bad.

The spy movie looks good and is well produced. Unfortunately, that's about the best you can say about it. Unfortunately, there isn't a single new idea, just rebrandings from the 80s and 90s. But despite the absolute star cast, I don't care about the fate of any of the characters. And that means: it's a bad movie.

A world-famous flooded cave rescue story, although the details only became clear to me through this movie. Great actors, well told and performed. And in a time full of crises, something like a spark of hope.

Visually it is still opulent. But the story is full of the dumbest silliness imaginable. The scenes with 'Zeus' are downright annoying. Thor (and the MCU) are apparently told to the end.