mikyle Reviews

Brinkmanns Zorn (2006)

Confusing and Challenging: A Masterpiece

[9/10 · 5 April 2007]

Rolf Dieter Brinkmann was a German poet and writer. He lived mostly in Cologne and died in a car accident in London in 1975.

The new filmed material of actors playing Brinkmann and his family is dubbed over by original spoken recordings of the author and his surroundings. Fascinating material and very convincing acting combine to bring to life this extraordinary icon of German 70s-culture with his own voice: vibrant, radical, obsessive, sometimes desperate, detailed descriptions and accusations of everything and everyone.

Alternatingly touching and funny, the film was for me a great eye-opener to an important personality of German pre-MTV popular culture.

9/10

Willenbrock (2005)

An East German Mike Leigh?

[8/10 · 19 March 2005]

Andreas Dresen's precise touch for achingly realistic East German drama doesn't fail in "Willenbrock". Magdeburg's urban scenery is modern and cold, the characters are hopelessly human, the situations and dialogs are sadly comic at times, and suspense is everywhere.

Axel Prahl (again!) and Inka Friedrich shine effortlessly as the well adapted well-off couple, with all their little and not so little troubles and secrets. Lovely, if it weren't a bit depressing.

After the touching "Halbe Treppe", "Willenbrock" is another hint that Andreas Dresen might just become an East German Mike Leigh. Concerned with small town real people, not always consistent in story and quality, but true to reality and always trusting his actors, which he chooses wisely.

The Net (2003)

An provocative way to ask fascinating questions (8/10)

[8/10 · 16 February 2005]

Where does technology lead us? Ted Kaczynski, the ex-Mathematician who lived a secluded life in the woods until he was arrested and convicted as the "Unabomber", believes that it will be our doom.

Lutz Dammbeck confronts us with a puzzle, looking for connections between technological positivism, mind control experiments and the hippie movement, all traced back to state power interests developing as results of World War II. However, the links are weak, and instead of presenting us with a final conclusion resulting from his research (as other documentarists would eagerly do), Dammbeck simply leaves us to solve the puzzle by ourselves, strengthen or break the links as we find appropriate, raising interesting questions on science, technology and human's role in society along the way.

Thus the movie's subject reaches far deeper than the "Unabomber's" biography, which is, in Kaczynski's own words, irrelevant. The movie provides a platform for Kaczynski's critique on technological positivism, which Dammbeck seems to at least partially sympathize with. However, the final decision is left to the viewer, who is aided by additional background and research material on the movie's website.

Dammbeck is coming from an artistic point of view, consciously and deliberately breaking the limits between what is art and what is "real life", creating a disturbing, thought-provoking documentary. It is admirable and a sign of true plurality that publicly financed institutions such as SWR and arte stand behind an unconventional project that handles such a provocative subject seriously.

John Q (2002)

it's the health care system, stupid

[9/10 · 20 October 2003]

In my opinion, whoever judges this movie by standard criteria misses the point entirely. John Q was made to open people's eyes to the misery that is the US Health Care System, a shame on any industrial nation, and possibly the most urgent tragedy of the U.S. .

Here in Chile, 17 years of neo-liberal dictatorship left a similar system that leaves 80 percent of the population with no decent health care and money as the main factor of your health options.

While the US is spending billions of dollars on getting distant countries to submit, millions of US-citizens are excluded from basic health services. On the other hand, countries such as Sweden show that the "SICK - HELP" solidarity principle propagated by John Q is a workable option.

Although the movie suffers from many cliches and the story is only so-so, the message it sends makes it far too important and relevant to be ignored.

9/10.

Tolerance (2000)

a bad ad for condoms and digital cameras

[2/10 · 3 July 2003]

Tolerancia is a movie so bad, you cannot help laughing most of the time. Like one of those trash movies, the acting is so bad, the storyline so stupid, the sex scenes so pathetic, that you ask yourself - what's wrong with these people?

To add insult to injury, the movie seems to be some kind of a promotional for a) using condoms, showed prominently before any sex-scenes (I remember in Germany they used to have these anti-aids spots in the 90s, but they lasted 30 seconds, not two hours, and they were much more entertaining), and b) the digital world. We're talking 2000 in Brazil, and this guy is working all day with his digital camera (!). Give me a break.

The most pathetic part is when a guy comes up to the main character and says "my speciality is the Internet. I'm really good at it. I also know a lot about digital cameras". This reminded me of movie disasters like "the net", which pathetically tried to be hip, showing an embarrassing lack of understanding for anything digital.

2/10 (two, not one, because the movie is in brazilian portuguese, possibly the most beautiful language on earth).

Sex with Love (2003)

Explicit soap

[6/10 · 8 May 2003]

Sexo Con Amor was much anticipated and became an immediate box office hit in its origin country Chile. Being an explicit sex-comedy in an uptight country this was understandable. But that's about everything positive that can be said about it. The storyline is foreseeable, the characters schematic and the humour childish. Kind of an uncensored 90-minutes Chilean soap comedy.

Go see any Argentinian movie instead.

Winter Land (1997)

a depressing refreshment

[7/10 · 10 April 2001]

This film is a classical road movie. The hero is an aimless, jobless loser in a dead-end town in the vast Patagonian Hinterland. Though the no-hope atmosphere of the deserted settlements in southern Argentina is (I guess) faithfully represented, it succeeds in being emotionally comic in an unconventional way.

The good acting and movingly human characters make up for the somewhat inconsistent story, and the movie is worth seeing just for the atmosphere and the landscapes alone.

a refreshing experience.