Run Lola Run/Lola Rennt (1998) - Tykwer's zeitgeist amuck run

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Chopped up, manipulated images of the two stars make up this poster for Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run

Lola is a fiery red-haired young woman, whose boyfriend is a dopey drug dealer, who loses a lot of money, which he now reckons that she must get back for him. - In 20 minutes!

 

Run Lola Run is written and directed by great German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Friday Afternoon (1986)). The original title translates to, 'Lola runs'.

As a film it impresses for a while with its equilibristic changes in style and the momentum of movement that it creates, but once it becomes clear that its plot rests on us going through more or less the same scenario three times (each with variations of decisions, chance, fate, behavior etc.), Run Lola Run becomes repetitive for me and loses its freshness. Furthermore Moritz Bleibtreu's (Angel of Evil/Vallanzasca - Gli Angeli del Male (2010)) boyfriend character is a dope, and Franka Potente's (Eichmann (2007)) Lola also isn't sympathetic: She lives as if the entire universe revolves around her, (in fact I was most on the side of her beleaguered step-father, which almost certainly wasn't Tykwer's intention.)

This drama plays out as a young, rave-punked work of new-age mysticism, a minor ride, which imagines that it says something deep and profound, which it actually doesn't.

 

Related post:

 

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 1.75 mil. $

Box office: 22.8 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned 13.02 times its cost)

[Run Lola Run was released 20 August (Germany) and runs 80 minutes. Shooting took place in Berlin, Germany from June - July 1997. The film opened #34 to a 123k $ first weekend in 12 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #19 and in 172 theaters (different weeks), grossing 7.2 mil. $ (31.6 % of the total gross). In production country Germany the film was the highest-grossing of the year with 13.8 mil. $ (60.5 %). The film was nominated for a BAFTA, a European Film award, won 7/7 German Film award nominations, a National Board of Review award,  and a prize at Sundance, among several other honors. It was Germany's official entry to the Best Foreign Film Oscar category of the year but went without a nomination. Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. Tykwer returned with The Princess and the Warrior/Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (2000). Potente returned in Am I Beautiful?/¿Bin Ich Schön? (1998); Bleibtreu in Love Your Neighbor!/Liebe Deine Nächste! (1998). Run Lola Run is certified fresh at 93 % with a 7.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Run Lola Run?

Grand Hotel (1932) - Loose star vehicle with some charm and two magnificent dames

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The stars align in this splashy poster for Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel

At Berlin's Grand Hotel several exciting people reside; the presumptuous diva dancer, the free stenographer, the baron, who has lost everything and steals from everybody; the stupid factory owner, and the dying worker, Kringelein.

Grand Hotel is written by William Absalom Drake (Strange Justice (1932)), adapting his own same-titled 1930 play, which in turn was based on Vicki Baum's (Die Welt ohne Sünde (1923)) novel Menschen im Hotel (1929). It is directed by Edmund Goulding (Sun-Up (1925)).

Written as an ensemble star vehicle, and a spearhead for this particular discipline in films, Grand Hotel is without a larger, unifying plot. It can seem to be splashing a bit in different directions. There is for instance rather a lot of talk about a merger, which seems highly unimportant for the stories. There is a good amount of drama tied to death, but the perishing accountant character Kringelein is somehow too thinly sketched as a character; has the man no family, friends, and no apparent history?

Grand Hotel still retains a good deal of irrefutable charm as the major production it was. It especially lives on due to the fascinating, vivid portraits drawn by its two big female stars as two very opposite-directed characters: Greta Garbo (Eros (1926)) as the tempestuous diva, and Joan Crawford (Today We Live (1933)) as the romantic 'dove' stenographer.

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 750k $

Box office: 2.5 mil. $ 

= Box office success (returned 3.33 times its cost)

[Grand Hotel premiered 12 April (New York) and runs 112 minutes. Producer Irving Thalberg had bought the rights to the novel for 13k $, and contracted Drake again after success on the stage for a film version. Shooting took place in MGM's Culver City studio in California. The film won the Best Picture Oscar, the first and only film to date to win the award without getting nominated in any of the other categories. The ledger of producer and 'fixer' Eddie Mannix details that the film made 1.2 mil. $ domestically and 1.3 mil. $ elsewhere for a 2.5 mil. $ gross. It was remade as the successful Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). Goulding returned with Blondie of the Follies (1932). Garbo returned in As You Desire Me (1932); Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932); and John Barrymore (Counsellor at Law (1933)) in State's Attorney (1932). Grand Hotel is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.58/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Grand Hotel?

The Counterfeiters/Die Fälscher (2007) - German-Austrian film relates an incredible true WWII story with depth

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+ Best Austrian Movie of the Year + Best War Movie of the Year

A man sits on a beach with a box and some unknown thoughts, staring at the sea, on this appealing poster for Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters

Nazis capture one of the world's best counterfeiters in Berlin, and during the horrors of WWII they see opportunities in him; his artistic talent and later knack for counterfeiting is put to use.

The Counterfeiters is written and directed by great Austrian filmmaker Stefan Ruzowitzky (Cold Hell/Die Hölle (2017)), based on the memoir by Adolf Burger, The Devils Workshop (1983). The film tells an incredible true story, which shows another side to Holocaust, the concentration camps and the Nazis: The hero (Karl Markovics (The Crown Prince/Kronprinz Rudolf (2006, TV movie))) is a Jew as we have often been conditioned to regard them: He is criminal, an opportunist, and good with money.
Good, layered characters raise the film's evocative moral question of idealism and martyrdom vs. one's right or possibly even obligation to do everything to preserve one's life in the face of war. There is good acting in the leads, even with German representation of Nazis, which isn't one-sided but has depth.
The Counterfeiters is shot on sometimes a bit grainy film, and at my screening there was a bit of confusion about a woman who appears in the beginning and ending of the film. It also has camp prisoners that sometimes don't look like 'the real deal'. SPOILER And what happened to those many millions of pounds that were created? The film left me curious as to their effect.
Still these are minor sidenotes to a terrific film. 

Related post:

2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 6.25 mil. $
Box office: 18.8 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.00 times its cost)
[The Counterfeiters premiered 10 February (Berlin International Film Festival, Germany) and runs 98 minutes. Shooting took place in France, Germany, Monaco and in Vienna, Austria from March - May 2006. Ruzowitzky reportedly consulted closely with Burger to attain authenticity for the film. It opened #46 to an 87k $ first weekend in 8 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #21 and in 170 theaters (different weeks), grossing 5.4 mil. $ (28.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 3.8 mil. $ (20.2 %) and main production country Austria with 1.8 mil. $ (9.6 %). The film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for Austria. It also won 1/7 nominations for German Film awards, a National Board of Review award and other honors. Ruzowitzky returned with Arabic action TV movie Almahabba Awards Festival TV Commercial (2008) and theatrically with Lilly the Witch: The Dragon and the Magic Book/Hexe Lilli: Der Drache und das Magische Buch (2009). Markovics returned in 3 TV movies and a short film anthology before he returned in a conventional film, which also was Lilly the Witch: The Dragon and the Magic Book. The Counterfeiters is certified fresh at 94 % with a 7.76/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Counterfeiters?

The Debt (2010) - The Nazi war criminal thriller is back in a welcome return

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The slick but not very informative poster for John Madden's The Debt

QUICK REVIEW:

In 1965 the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad sent three agents to East-Berlin to assassinate an infamous Nazi war criminal, the Surgeon of Nuremberg, who was then a practicing gynecologist.

The Debt lifts the rich inheritance from Nazi war criminal thrillers like The Marathon Man (1976) and The Boys from Brazil (1978) without the elements of diamonds, clones or wild car chases from those films, but instead with a sober and intense story, SPOILER which ends as an uncompromising defense for truth in all contexts.
The film could have benefited from an opening text about East-Berlin and that Mossad had just localized the Surgeon there, and there are also some difficulties in seeing all the well-known actors as Jews, - but, more importantly, they all do well. Particularly Helen Mirren (The Last Station (2009)), who simply becomes her character here, but also Jessica Chastain (The Martian (2015)) and Jesper Christensen (Spectre (2015)), who is icy as the Nazi war criminal, mixing psychopathic diabolism with rationality and sympathetic qualities.
The Debt is a remake of the Israeli The Debt/Ha-Hov (2007), written by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass (2010)), Jane Goldman (Stardust (2007)) and Peter Straughan (The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)), and directed by great English filmmaker John Madden (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)). It is an attractive, good film.

Related review:

John Madden: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) - Elderly Brits me in India in Madden's delightful film

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 45.6 mil. $
= Flop
[The film premiered at the Deauville American Film Festival in France September 4 and runs 113 minutes. The Debt was finished and ready for release in July 2010, but due to the sale of distributor Miramax, the North American release was delayed until August 31 2011. The film opened #2 to 9.9 mil. $ in North America, where it grossed 31.1 mil. $ (68.2 % of the total gross.) The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 4.6 mil. $ (10.1 %) and the UK with 2.3 mil. $ (5 %). The Debt is certified fresh at 76 % with a 6.5 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Debt?

Cabaret (1972) - Liza Minnelli steals (nearly) the whole great show in Fosse's classic musical

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The classic poster for Bob Fosse's Cabaret

QUICK REVIEW:

Berlin, 1931: In the Kit Kat Club, American Sally Bowles performs in the burlesque show with her daring song and dance acts. She and Brian, the bisexual from Cambridge, develop a close relationship.

Liza Minnelli (New York, New York (1977)) is wonderful (and quite often "desperate"), and Michael York (The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)) probably has the best character of his entire career here in Bob Fosse's (All That Jazz (1979)) classic, erotic, romantic, dramatic musical.
Nazism is haunting Weimar-republic Germany in this period, and the way it creeps into the decadent bohemian lifestyle in Berlin is portrayed piercingly to an often bloodcurdling effect.
Some of Cabaret's wilder impulses and its somewhat loose ending aren't necessarily that successful, and Sally Bowles and the motto of the film, (that life is nothing but a cabaret), are, evaluated soberly, amoral and bordering on twaddle. And yet ...
Cabaret is an undeniable classic. With glorious pictures by English cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth (2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)), authentic period atmosphere, (the film was shot in Germany), and magnificent performances.

Expressionist-style poster for Bob Fosse's Cabaret

Watch the trailer here

Cost: Est. 2.2 - 6 mil. $
Box office: 42.7 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Cabaret was a smash hit critically and commercially; it won 8 Oscars, making it historically the film that has earned most Oscars without getting Best Picture, (it lost that and Best Adapted Screenplay to The Godfather (1972). Among others Fosse, Minnelli and Unsworth were honored with Oscars, as well as Joel Grey (Kafka (1991)), who plays the vivacious emcee.]

What do you think of Cabaret?
What's your favorite musical and why?

The Reader (2008) or, Guilt, Words and Love

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+ Best Adaptation of the Year

Simple, elegant poster for Stephen Daldry's The Reader

The Reader is an adaptation of a bestselling novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink (Self's Murder (2001)).
Michael is a German, who is remembering times decades ago, when he was a teenager in post-war Berlin 1958 and had an affair with an older woman, Hanna. An affair with an intimate, romantic connection and a physical one that was also centered on another activity; his reading novels aloud to her.
The affair profoundly changes Michael, as he learns later on that SPOILER Hanna was an SS camp officer in Auschwitz, the worst of the Nazi concentration camps.
The question of guilt is an issue in The Reader, as Michael is harrowed by an indistinct sense of guilt, and Hanna is prosecuted for the murder of 300 Jews that burned under her supervision in a church no less. Her sense of guilt is never explicit or very obvious, but it is there, especially developing out of Michael's gift to her, the gift of literacy. Michael is a very different, more sensitive individual, who has to process and find peace within himself for having a passionate affair with that woman in the course of the film. 
I found the ending, in which SPOILER he decides to drive his daughter to Hanna's grave and tell her of their relation, profoundly moving and really, really good. Sometimes wounds are simply healed by letting the truth come out.
The Reader decides against mainstream dramatic solutions, e.g. said ending, and the fact that none of Hanna's crimes are shown. It is a romantic period drama for thinking audiences, and acquaintance with some of the literary classics used by Michael in the film will only heighten the experience. Knowledge of the death camps and Holocaust is essential to understand the weight of Michael's burden in his life following Hanna's incarceration.

Kate Winslet and David Kross in Stephen Daldry's The Reader

Contrasting the intellectual side of The Reader, however, is its sensual scenes with young German actor David Kross (Tough Enough (2006)) and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road (2008)). This whole part of the film is beautifully achieved; The Reader seems to allow itself a human curiosity about sexuality and bodies, very much like a sexual novel often does, (and perhaps like Schlink's does.) Besides, both performers are extremely well-acting; Winslet won her first Oscar for her work, and Kross is actually as good as her, as the young man.
In other parts in the fine cast, we see great actors Ralph Fiennes, Lena Olin and Bruno Ganz.

David Kross, reading, and Kate Winslet, trying actively to understand what she is hearing, in Stephen Daldry's The Reader

The details:

Enjoyment of the film is heightened by general interest in its issues and Germany in the decades following WWII. The cast is comprised of Germans except for the few international stars already mentioned, and The Reader really 'nails' it in making its characters, though they speak English, seem very naturally German. Kross is naturally German, and Winslet, both in dress, physique, expressions and intonation, is so like a real, solid, German woman that she feels as though she could easily be Hanna Schmitz.
The film has a literary quality to it, beginning with a person's sickness and ending with that same person's confession many years later, and thus resounds its English writer David Hare and English director Stephen Daldry's previous masterpiece, The Hours (2002), which investigated English author Virginia Woolf and the impact of her novel Mrs. Dalloway in herself and other women in subsequent decades. The Reader is also a salute to the power of the written word and novels and has a complexity and depth to it that is intriguing and similar to what is often found in a good book.
The Hours is a very tough act to follow, and The Reader doesn't reach the searing, emotional heights and profundity of that film, but it remains a rock-solid narrative and a very fine film.
Daldry has since directed the interesting but (even) less good Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) and is now in post with his latest, Trash (2014), a really interesting-sounding film set in a Third World country with Martin Sheen and Rooney Mara. - Can't wait to see that!

Related posts:

2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  

2008 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2008 in films - according to Film Excess

Budget: 32 mil. $
Box office: 109.9 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of The Reader?

Fay Grim (2006) - Smarter-than-you indie atrocity

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The 3 picture-combo poster for Hal Harley's Fay Grim is both sparse and cluttered, featuring a life-weary Jeff Goldblum

Fay Grim, a promiscuous, attractive single mom whose 14 year-old son gets thrown out of high school, wishes her incarcerated brother back to help father the boy. But the CIA wants her to retrieve her dead husband's old journals from Paris, as they contain US state secrets. 

SPOILER She bargains to get her brother out; then her full-bearded publisher boyfriend gets shot, and later, in Istanbul, upon almost getting involved in terrorism, she learns that her husband is alive and is kept as a hostage in Afghanistan, (by a mass-murdering terrorist who seems fairly reasonable.)
This debacle unsurprisingly does not make a thrilling 2-hour film.
It is possible that writer-director Hal Hartley's (No Such Thing (2001)) script was great reading for his dialog is extremely dense, and the plot is full of elaborate jumps and mysteries that get unveiled bit by bit kind of like a Dan Brown novel. But, as you will realize at least after the first hour, Fay Grim may have an excessively complex narrative, but it offers nothing in terms of themes that would make it worth our while to get engaged in how it is going to end. - It has no real substance; it says nothing.
Now what makes Brown's chase-mysteries infinitely more entertaining is that, at least, they have exciting locations and deal with known works of art, religion etc., sometimes even in an interesting, fresh perspective. Fay Grim deals only with its own contrived, cul-de-sac plot. 
Furthermore, it is an independent production that clearly didn't have money for chases, exotic locations, or action, so unless you are a major Parker Posey (Price Check (2012)) fan and find every second you spend 'with' her invaluable, then you are going to have a hard time not getting bored with Fay Grim.

But, hey, Jeff Goldblum (Morning GLory (2010)) is also in it, you might object; and I'm a Goldblum fan! (Aren't we all?) Goldblum has never in my experience given a less enthusiastic performance than here: Playing a ridiculously suave CIA-agent, he has incredibly long lines that he manages to say very, very fast, while walking around with tired morning hair looking like he's just dying for a coffee. So don't count on 'the Blum' to save Fay Grim for you.

The most tiring thing about Fay Grim is its visuals, its look, its photography: Filmed almost entirely in Dutch (slanted) angles (see trailer pic below), in close framings of unassuming localities. It is so unattractive to look at and poses a layer between audience and story throughout the film, almost making you angry at it. Every time a new shot is revealed, you are reminded that this is Hal Hartley's film, and that Hal Hartley has decided on this purposeless Dutch-angled concept, I guess, just because he can. I have not found any internal justification for it, but I have found that Hartley at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival told the audience that the only two shots in the film that were not Dutch/slanted were a mistake, as he and his crew forgot to tilt the camera. Why he would admit that to his audience, I have no idea. Why that is the single point I can read about this visual concept online, is an even bigger problem.

Fay Grim goes from single-mom home drama to literarily obsessed word-feud, and then spirals into a semi-political terrorist story in Europe, without ever amounting to much consequentially. On the other hand, you'll have to stay fiercely attentive to not get thrown off its unsympathetically character-heavy, twisting and turning narrative. The few action scenes are done in thoroughly anticlimactic still images. - New takes on how to do action scenes are certainly welcomed, and Steven Soderbergh succeeded in doing something of the kind in his great Haywire (2011), but this is just. Pffffhh.

Related post:

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 193k $

= Uncertain (likely a box office disaster)
[Fay Grim premiered 11 September (Toronto International Film Festival, Ontario) and runs 118 minutes. The film is the second in Hartley's trilogy about recurring characters, which began with Henry Fool (1997) and ended with Ned Rifle (2014). Shooting took place in Berlin, Germany, Istanbul, Turkey, Paris, France and in New York from January - March 2006. The film opened #46 to a 61k $ first weekend in 28 cinemas in North America, where it only decreased from there, only playing for 4 weeks, grossing 126k $ (65.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 22k $ (11.4 %) and Brazil with 17k $ (8.8 %). The film was mostly screened as a festival presentation. If it was made on an extremely tight 1 mil. $ budget, the film would still count as a box office disaster. Hartley returned with 5 video shorts and eventually theatrically with Meanwhile (2011). Posey returned in Boston Legal (2006, TV-series), Superman Returns (2006, video game, voice) and theatrically in Broken English (2007). Fay Grim is rotten at 46 % with a 5.4/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Fay Grim?