Gaub Reviews

The Help (2011)

The ultimate chick flick

[7/10 · 20 January 2012]

Have I ever seen a movie in which males mattered less, apart from feminist/lesbian niche products like "Better Than Chocolate"? When I read Kathryn Stockett's book I thought that its description of an all-female world would thwart its straightforward conversion into a screenplay. I was mistaken. In fact, the males in the book were still slightly more prominent, especially Minnie's abusive husband Leroy. In the film, he is never seen at all, although to some extent he remains a menacing presence. And the senator in the book, an old Southerner who to the dismay of some of his guests suggests that the days of Jim Crow are over, is completely omitted.

Leroy's absence obviously softens the film. Same goes for the rewriting of the character of Mrs. Phelan; her "conversion" to post-segregation mores makes her more likable for today's audiences (Klansmen apart). These changes turn the film into a typical feel-good movie. I think it will stand the test of time, both in itself and as a adaptation of a novel; whether critics will come to like it one day is a different matter.

On a different note, if you are a foreign speaker and naturalized Midwesterner, you will have some trouble understanding the black slang and even the speech of some of the white characters.

Queen to Play (2009)

Where are the draws?

[6/10 · 25 November 2011]

I largely agree with what others have said here. But there is one flaw that nobody seems to have noticed: not one game of chess in this movie ends with a draw. As everybody with some knowledge of the game is aware of, draws are the rule among advanced players of chess, so a tournament such as the one shown in the movie that works by elimination (quarterfinals, semifinals, final), with only one game between a pair of contestants, is simply not realistic. (The tie could be broken through a game of fast chess, but this is not shown either.) It goes without saying that the whole dramaturgy of the movie would be significantly altered by the sheer possibility of draws. To sum it up, I consider chess a poor choice for communicating the message of this movie. Choose a game that does not permit draws and the problem is solved--although then the somewhat heavy handed symbolism of the queen as the strongest piece would have to be sacrificed.

500 Days of Summer (2009)

Los Angeles never looked that much like New York

[8/10 · 22 August 2009]

A great comedy with some minor flaws evenly distributed over the entire length of the film. What fascinated me more than the characters and the action, however, was the locale. Is that really Los Angeles? I wondered every other minute. I have seen downtown L.A., but I have never seen it like that in a movie. All clichés of Southern California are avoided, even in the wedding scene that probably takes place in Santa Barbara (given the train ride and its direction). No beaches, no athletic bodies in sexy outfits, no suntans, hardly any palm trees. Even the final scene, though representing the quintessential cliché happy ending and featuring the only female of outstanding beauty, looks unfamiliar because of its setting in that vintage office building. There is something New-Yorkish about this movie. Some have likened it to Woody Allen, maybe for a reason, but Tom is not really a Woody Allen character--he makes no reference to the Nazis, for instance, and if he is Jewish, it does not matter.

The Country Teacher (2008)

Almost an excellent movie, but...

[8/10 · 6 April 2009]

Atmospheric and likable and engaging. Non-standard characters and a rural environment strangely reminiscent of my childhood in 1970s West Germany. Are there still houses in the Czech Republic that have no indoor plumbing? The film makes us believe so. A few post- modernist monikers, such as cellphones, computers, and the PET bottle from which the peasant woman drinks her home-made cider cannot prevent the bad guy's convertible from looking just outlandish, like a UFO on wheels.

And yet there is one thing about the plot that worries me. What if the teacher were straight and the student he molested were a female? Would it still be acceptable by the (double) standards of 21st-century political correctness if the victim's mother insisted on her daughter to forgive the molester? I doubt it and imagine a public outcry not only from the feminist side. The gay rapist may be forgiven, the straight one may not. We have come a long way. The Czechs even more so.

Sweet Land (2005)

If only she spoke German....

[5/10 · 5 March 2007]

This would be a perfect movie if only Elizabeth Reaser really spoke German--in the movie, I mean. There are passages in the movie that are supposed to be in German. I am not strictly sure what dialect was spoken in the city of Osnabrück before 1920 but whatever is was, as a native speaker of German I should have been able to understand most of it. I did not. There is no coherent speech in German. Every now and then Inge utters a recognizable word but with a heavy accent betraying the foreign speaker. As to the scene where Inge yells at the two men, her utterances even sounded Norwegian to me. In turn, Inge's English has some accent but again it is not a German accent. Throughout the movie it is obvious that she knows English but it completely ignorant of German. The opposite should have been the case to make the character credible. It would have been so simple to bring in a German actress to play the part but... well, this is America, who cares?

Strangers with Candy (2005)

I could not laugh

[1/10 · 25 July 2006]

I do not know the TV series this film is linked to because I did not live in the U.S. at the time it was aired (and I have no TV set either), but I doubt whether such knowledge would have helped my to appreciate this film. Every critic with high-brow ambitions seems to have lauded it, with the notable exception of Kent Williams (Madison Isthmus), with whom I mostly disagree, so I went there. It was one of the greatest disappointments I ever had in a movie theater. If I go to a movie billed as a comedy, I want to laugh. The problem is that I could not. I admit I could not understand all of the dialog (quite a bit of American slang is still a riddle to me as a non-native speaker), but whatever I understood was hardly funny. Some people object to this movie because of its racist and sexist (mainly homophobic) punchlines. I don't. I have laughed at many racist, sexist, and otherwise politically incorrect jokes in my life. I did so, for instance, in "Thank You For Smoking" or "The Royal Tenenbaums". But not here. The scene with Sarah Jessica Parker as "Grief Counselor" was one of the few bright spots in a plot that substitutes ugliness and offense for content.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

A touching case of product placement

[7/10 · 1 May 2004]

I first saw this movie yesterday night on German TV. The first three three quarters are great; I especially liked the scene of the boy's abduction and the multi-lingual sequences with François Truffaut. Unfortunately towards the end the film became more and more cheesy. Already the idea that humans and aliens should be able to communicate aurally struck me as improbable, and the final manifestation of the aliens themselves added something ludicrous to the otherwise very serious movie. But I was strangely touched by one of the various cases of product placement: The camera used by Melinda Dillon to take shots of Dreyfuss's departure with the aliens is a Rollei 35 B, a model I have been using myself since 1979. I suppose Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the last Hollywood movie to display a camera that was nominally German (but in fact, like my own, made in Singapore).

The Matrix (1999)

If I were a machine using human beings as batteries

[6/10 · 19 April 2003]

I saw this movie last night on German TV, and there must be something to it, because after I went to bed I dreamt I myself was caught in the Matrix, trying to convince Morpheus that an unexpected intruder to his ship was benign and ending up as Morpheus's secretary. Possibly it is the dreamlike quality of the movie that makes it a classic. There are some scenes visually compelling, if not really beautiful (e.g. the green insect penetrating Neo's body). But the excessive martial arts sequences were at first annoying and then, as they became more frequent, I was just bored by them (just as in Charlie's Angels, if this comparison is politically correct). Obviously martial arts are fashionable, but I never cared for Bruce Lee either. In general, The Matrix forgot about its lofty aspirations as it drew towards its end, turning into a plain action movie with endless special effects, fireworks, shooting, and all, even with a helicopter. But what about the very idea of the Matrix? Isn't it just nonsense? After all, if machines took control of the world, using human beings as "batteries," these machines could easily put the poor humans into a perpetual coma, leaving them without consciousness, a state in which they would even spend less energy to sustain themselves, making the whole thing more efficient for the machines. Such human beings would not need any surrogate reality; the Matrix, which is not only a complex box of tricks, but also a waste of energy, would become obsolete.

Barbarella (1968)

Beyond imagination

[4/10 · 9 March 2003]

This is a movie you have to see, or you will not believe it. Categories like "good" or "bad" simply do not exist in the aesthetic limbo in which this film was made. I should mention I saw Barbarella in a movie theatre in Montreal, and there is no other city in the world where Barbarella's "parlez-vous français?" (uttered twice!) sounds more hilarious.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

The saving grace bears the name of Gollum

[3/10 · 21 January 2003]

Both in relation to the book and as a movie in its own right, The Fellowship of the Ring was far better. If The Two Towers is a must-see nevertheless, it is thanks to the computer-generated character of Gollum. He comes out incredibly life-like, which is even more remarkable as that creature does not resemble anything on earth, at least not in appearance. This is the one point where the movie actually surpasses the book. I am willing to forgive the addition of a loincloth to Gollum's body (naked in the book) because I understand that otherwise there would have been trouble, especially in the USA.

If for the sake of action Moria was overdone in The Fellowship of the Ring (a scene reminding me of Indiana Jones), here the same happens to the Battle of the Hornburg. Among the changes to the plot the one that annoyed me most was Faramir's taking the hobbits as far as Osgiliath and to release them without obvious reason. Boromir was Faramirized in The Fellowship of the Ring, recognizing Aragorn as his King ("king" being his last word - oh, how I loathed that!), and now Faramir is Boromirized. (I am afraid in The Return of the King Denethor will be Sarumanized.) Aragorn's fall from the cliff, leaving him presumed dead for some time, was an unnecessary addition; could it be that in Part III his ride on the Paths of the Dead will be omitted instead?

Train Birds (1998)

Weird story embedded in realist setting

[6/10 · 17 February 2001]

I definitely enjoyed viewing this film at one of its first showings at Filmfest Hamburg back in 1998. I especially admire the almost documentary-like realism with which the long train trip from Germany to Kemijärvi, Finland is depicted (seems that the ferry company Silja line sponsored the film - after all, its ship gets a lot of footage). As to the story, it seemed rather weird to me despite the fact that my own attitude towards trains and timetables is not so far removed from that of the film's protagonist. And isn't it awkward that this "International contest of train timetable experts" takes place, of all, in Inari, which was never reached by any railway, forcing the participants to take a bus for the last stage of their journey?

Für immer jung (1991 TV Movie)

A touching film about how dreams have to be abandoned in order to become an adult

[9/10 · 19 October 1999]

When this film was repeated on German TV in fall 1998 I had the experience of a major discovery. There aren't many films showing the necessary sacrifice of dreams by adults - and the confrontation of these adults with their abandoned youthful dreams - in such a convincing manner. The film seems perfectly realistic and natural in spite of its taut construction. A special blessing is the absence of political "teaching" in the style of the New German Film. A few moments are perhaps too melodramatic. The actors are no less superb than the book. There is no role that could be singled out for its eminence. Instead there are about 10 characters of equal importance. I saw the film as a fan of Barbara Rudnik and she certainly performs well but I am ready to admit that Heinrich Schafmeister, who also has some truly comic scenes, does the best job.