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Minari (2020)
One of the rare long movies which merits it's length
This 115 minute film is about a Korean immigrant family, starting a life in Arkansas, ie back country America. Many problems come their way, but are narrated in a non-sensational way. Even so, the director keeps your eyes glued to the screen at every wonderfull shot, in combination with the excellent Korean actors and background music. Anothers strong point: most conversations are in Korean (with subtitles).
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018)
Untold STORY?
There is no story: impossible to discern any thread, or connexion between a dazzling mass of facts/events thrown on screen during almost 2 hours.
Makes it very difficult for the unprepared watcher to realise what is really going on.
A pity the hard work of digging up all these dates and events in the life of the first female movie director in the Western hemisphere are not presented in a way more meaningfull to the public.
La grande illusion (1937)
The Great DElusion
That seems to me, the appropriate translation for the french title. MOst reviewers appear to think, that the depicted life in a German prison camp for officers shows the real thing. Of course not! Therefore, the film seems to me more of a fairy tale -depicting, on purpose, the romanticized view of the general public in the 1930 's of such a place. An ironic fairy tale, that is. Hence the title: La Grande Illusion.
The horrors of the First World War seem too heavy to be treated as a feel good comedy, with only a title as a reference to something else. Maybe this review is influenced by the viewing of WEstfront 1918 by WG Pabst, one week earlier. That film depicts the real war, in the trenches.
Disko ja tuumasõda (2009)
cape and dagger story of the Estonian TV-viewers in the 1950 's and -' 60 's, against the communist bureaucracy
VEry funny and inspiring comedy-fairy tale: Film shows The adventures of a TAlinn-teenager who starts watching TV programs when Finland TV starts to reach Estonia. The never ending attempts of the communist regimes in TAllinn and Moscow to stop citizens from viewing these programs, result in a heroic struggle of the people, supported by their most whizzkid electronic engineers. The technical barriers, thought out by the bureaucrats are outsmarted after every move, by making use of simple household appliances, for which demand then all of a sudden rises to the sky. Forbidden fruits most popular : "DAllas"(the Texan oil-saga) and .... the advertisements of a butcher, showing all the various meats freely available in the Finish market. Go see this David-Goliath saga, you will not regret it!
Amerikas geheimer Krieg in Laos - Die größte Militäroperation der CIA (2009)
fact-finding documentary of the secret war in Laos, during the Vietnam war.
Film pictures the establishment of a large and secret airbase, Long Chen, by the American CIA in LAos, near the Plane of JArs, in the period 1960 -1975. Officially, there were no American soldiers in Laos, but American pilots dropped staggering loads of bombs in the North-EAstern part of Laos, along the so called Ho Chi Min trail, used by the Norht Vietnamese, into South Vietnam and Cambodia. The CIA also set up an army of local hill people, the Hmong, led by their general Vang PAo. These hill tribes were the real victims in this secret war. Pictures on the scene in LAos, are cut with interviews of pilots and journalists who where present at the time, or tried to find out what was really happening there, since the US-government has always denied its involvement, until very recently. The area of Xiengkhong in NE Laos is up to the present day, considered unsafe because of pirating/fighting descendants of the local army of the past. The documentary was shown on German TV (ARTE) last week, unfortunately voiced over by a German translation of the interviews in English. I lived in Vientiane, LAos, in 1970/1971. Film seems an accurate account of what I saw and heard myself at the time.
Project Kashmir (2008)
Will Muslims and Hindus live ever united in India's Kashmir?
Two US-women with Indian roots, one Muslim, one Hindu, set off to KAshmir, India, to discover and film how things are, over there, since they know the controversy between the two groups from their relatives back home, in the USA. They meet and interview all sorts of people and are witness of the very cruel suppression of the populace by the all-powerful Indian army. They meet non-prejudiced people from both sides, and accompany a Hindu lady friend to her home-village, which the family has left. The house is destroyed, but the former Muslim neighbours are still there and invite the party to tea. The Hindu girl first refuses but in the end accepts and seems to be able to cope with the situation. The message the viewer seems to get is, that it is the well-to-do Hindu community who are most bitter, having to have given up their former power and privileges, due to the actions of Muslim terrorist groups from Pakistan, right across the border. During their stay, the two filmers seem to more and more become party in the discussions and controversies between the two groups and start reflecting between themselves the same difficulties and tend to take sides, each for her own community. Not a very encouraging idea. Nevertheless a very courageous movie, since the two directors overcame their difficulties and produced the movie in the end. (seen at IDFA, Amsterdam, November 2008)
Beynelmilel (2006)
The Internationale, ideal music for a military band
What a wonderful movie, showing us many aspects of life in Eastern Turkey and the oppressing role of the army, in a very subtle,ironic way. One of the first scenes: A band of street musicians, are setting up their trade now forbidden by the army, in a truck, near the local graveyard in outer-Turkey. An army platoon, set on their trail, prepares to attack, rifles aimed at the back of the truck. Very slowly, the back flap is lifted and we see .... a young man, dressed up as a belly dancer and a band of musicians playing. Such ironic contrasts work through the whole movie: The band leader hears by coincidence the Internationale, thru the love of his daughter for a young die-hard communist and thinks it is THE music to be played for a military audience, not having a clue about it's origins. However, the real tone of the story is rather sad and moving: The hard life of the musicians, trying to make a living, the mother- and wife-less home of the band leader, who lost both in childbirth. And the abrupt end, which we cannot elaborate here, thanks to spoiler policy .... Every European and US-citizen should go see this movie, since it seems to give a realistic picture of Turkey even now. The army is still in power. I do hope this movie will have a wide distribution in Turkey proper. Will it?
Maboroshi no hikari (1995)
wonderful film, in the best Japanese tradition
We see the quiet life of a typical young Japanese mother, Yumiko and her family, first in the suburb of a large city (Osaka), then in a small fishing village, and the way she tries to cope with the sudden and mysterious death of her husband (it looks like suicide) and her remarriage and adaptation to her new family, in another town. The camera follows Yumiko in her daily occupations, preparing food, picking up her infant son at a neighbours, and shows us many details about her daily surroundings, the room she lives in with her family, the street, a quiet street off a railtrack and a noisy mainroad, only known to us by a light spot at the end of a tunnel under the railroad and the noise it produces. So thru many carefully chosen details and composed images, we become familiar with our heroine AND with life in Japan in general. With quiet cameramovements and a very powerful combination of sifnificant details in his images as well as sound, Koreeda weaves a rich tapestry about Japan and the way an individual copes with the very general human emotion of loss. One thing puzzled me though: in every detail I recognised life in japan, as I knew it in the early 1970 s. Has nothing changed there since, except the way the heroine is dressed? The film suggests showing daily life as it is now, but does it really?