Film Reviews -- December 2004 Reviews by members of the AWC Film Group of films slated to open in Hamburg in December 2004
(Shauna K) Opening December 2, 2004 At long last Bridget Jones returns to the big screen. The Edge of Reason is pure Bridget, and more ridiculous than ever. The sequel picks up shortly after the place where the original Bridget Jones left off. The film opens with Bridget, played by Renee Zellweger, and her Prince Charming, human rights lawyer Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, enjoying the thrills of a new relationship. After only six weeks Bridget is already dreaming of receiving a ring. And this is where the ridiculousness begins. After an array of comic mishaps, Bridget starts to worry that Mark’s seemingly ever-present new col-league Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett) is after Mark. Add to that temptation when Bridget’s ex-boyfriend, sleazy but sexy Dan Cleaver, played by Hugh Grant, begins working for the same television station as Bridget as The Smooth Guide. When both Bridget and Dan are sent on assignment to Thailand together, the comedy unfolds. The Edge of Reason, like most other sequels, pales in comparison to the original. Nonetheless it is still an entertaining and enjoyable, albeit unrealistic, “chic flick”. What makes it so is that throughout the film there are moments in which we women identify with silly but sweet Bridget. We all have days we feel every bit as ridiculous as Bridget Jones. (Becky T) Opening December 9, 2004 “I didn’t want her to die: It was because of my hearing.” Thus starts this German film by Kurdish director Ayse Polat. Alice (Maria Kwistkowsky) lands in a Catholic home for girls after her airhead mother never even tries to fulfill her duty as a parent. Alice is awkward and silent and wants to fade into the woodwork. She suffers from hyperacuity, which means that all sounds are too loud, from the rustling of leaves outside the window to the breathing of sleeping roommates. Alice’s only friend is Berivan (Pinar Erincin), a refugee who has lost her parents and hopes for a residency permit. Her nickname is “baggy” because she carries her passport, family photos, letters, etc., with her in a plastic bag. The two girls alternate between being friends and disliking each other. There is a fire in the home; some of the girls terrorize Alice and she is no match for them. Clara, the adult in charge, struggles to keep order. An extra activity is fencing, which they learn to like because there are set rules and one can concentrate on just one thing for a while. It’s good for character development. Kwistkowsky is very convincing, even though this is her first film. Women (there is only one male in the film) will identify with the characters. Also, the suffering from over-sensitive hearing is palpable. En Garde won second prize at the Lucerne film festival. Ayse Polat received money from the FilmFörderung Hamburg, which has subsidized other successful Hamburg-Turkish directors such as Fatih Akin and, perhaps in the future, Özgür Yildirim.
(Kirsten G) Opening December 9, 2004 We all want a place where we can call home, but what really defines a home? This is the question posed by A Home at the End of the World, a film based on the novel of the same name by Michael Cunningham (also author of The Hours). It tells the story of Bobby, who endures several tragedies when very young and ends up living with his best friend Jonathan’s family. Even when Jonathan moves away to New York, Bobby stays with Jonathan’s family until they retire to Arizona, forcing Bobby to move on with his life. He moves to New York and stays with Jonathan and his roommate Clare. Once back together, Bobby and Jonathan must confront their feelings for each other, and the relationships get more complicated when Clare, who had been in love with Jonathan, falls for Bobby. A Home deals with a lot of weighty topics: relationships, the definition of family, our place in the world, the need for love, and how to move on with life after tragedy. There is not a lot of action, but there is a lot of emotion, portrayed brilliantly by all of the actors: Colin Farrell as the adult Bobby, Dallas Roberts as the adult Jonathan, Robin Wright Penn as Clare, and Sissy Spacek as Jonathan’s mother Alice. First-time film director Michael Mayer obviously used his extensive stage directing experience (his version of Thoroughly Modern Millie won six Tony awards in 2002) to get the most out of his cast. In the end, A Home doesn’t offer a lot of answers, but it does offer a glimpse into the life of characters trying to find the answers – just like us – and struggling through a lot of ups and downs along the way.
(Kirstan B) Opening December 9, 2004 OOH, another goodie from Pixar! This newest release is a retro-styled, sleek action adventure with creativity, wit and a very humorous script. It spoofs itself often. We begin in the thirties (or sometime when comic book superheroes were abundant in big city locales) with Mr. Incredible ending a particularly fateful crime-fighting day by marrying fellow do-gooder Elastigirl. Fighting crime may be noble, but, as we see in a flurry of newspaper headlines, the Incredibles and their altruistic peers are slowly forced to retire by a wave of lawsuits that basically put superheroes out of business and into hiding as “normal” citizens. Relocated to the suburbs as the Parr family, Bob and Helen (Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl) put away their stretch suits in exchange for mundane normalcy and try to fit in, as do their super-powered children. After 15 years of boring insurance work Bob is covertly enticed back into action by a secretive new boss, and the lure of helping society is so strong that his desire pulls the whole family into service against their better judgment. In that framework lie many individual gems. Enjoy Edna Mode (the fashion diva who is an uncanny blend of Elsa Klensch, Anna Sui, and many others perfectly fused together), a hero costume designer with a great sequence about cape faux pas. Mirage is your silken-haired Bond Girl à la a Gwyneth Paltrow/Paris Hilton fusion, and Buddy Pine (aka Syndrome) is an over-enthusiastic, freckled fan club president who turns to the dark side as a result of a reprimand from Mr. Incredible. The truly fantastic aspect of all mentioned here is that it is, of course, computer rendered. I am amazed at the fast-paced chase scenes that move at 200 mph (think Ewok forest in Return of the Jedi), and the ever more realistic hair swings and foliage rustles on the trees. Pixar claims that they raise the computer bar on each production, and The Incredibles is no exception. I was particularly impressed with the mood conveyed by the styling – from retro, nostalgic city skylines to early sixties suburbs to Bond-genre sets of tropical island evil hideaways tweaked with “futuristic” technology in white and chrome – all seamlessly fused with an impressive 007-meets-Superman score. Simply incredible. Save some time over the holidays to catch this one. If you can swing it in English, you will enjoy the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee, Samuel L. Jackson and Pixar cornerstone John Ratzenberger. As it is rated for 6 and over, I would recommend that the younger ones stay at home. There are bullets and explosions, which they may be better prepared for by the time the DVD comes out next year. (Kirsten G) Opening December 16, 2004 In 2001, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, a remake of the 1960 Brat Pack film, burst on the scene. With its A-list stars and hip feel, it became a box office smash, earning over $450 million worldwide. While doing PR for Eleven in Rome in 2002, Soderbergh fell in love with the city and decided it would be a great place to set a sequel to Eleven – and thus, Ocean’s Twelve was born. Twelve picks up the action three years after Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and company’s successful heist of casino owner Terry Benedict’s (Andy Garcia) casinos. Danny and his ten cohorts have been lying low, but when someone tips off Benedict, he delivers an ultimatum to each of them: pay back the stolen money, with interest, or pay with their lives. As the group is too well-known to pull any jobs in the U.S., they go to Europe … and everything starts to fall apart. They get on the wrong side of both the law – in the form of Interpol agent Isabel Lahiri (Catherine Zeta-Jones), also a former flame of Ocean’s right-hand man Rusty (Brad Pitt) – and the notorious criminal The Night Fox (Vincent Cassel). This time, they may even need Danny’s wife Tess (Julia Roberts) to escape with the loot … Twelve assumes the audience is familiar with Eleven and offers little or no back story. The whole original cast is back, with the addition of Zeta-Jones (who does a fine job) and French actor Cassel. The film has many clever references to Eleven and deftly incorporates the high stature of its stars (and all the press their lives receive) into both the screenplay and the feel of the film itself. Anyone who followed the media frenzy during the shooting of Twelve in Amsterdam and Italy knows how much fun the stars had, and it shows in the final film. Twelve has a more of an emphasis on the relationships between the characters and less emphasis on setting up the heists themselves, but it never takes itself too seriously. If you enjoyed Eleven, going for Twelve should be a sure thing.
(Kirsten G) Opening December 16, 2004 If you have never had the opportunity to experience the music of the night live, Joel Schumacher’s (Veronica Guerin, Phone Booth) new film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera is almost as good as seeing it on stage. Like the musical, the film tells the story of Christine (The Day after Tomorrow’s Emmy Rossum), a young singer in the Paris Opera who is loved by two men: the Opera’s new young patron Raoul (Patrick Wilson), and Christine’s mysterious catacomb-dwelling vocal coach, the Phantom (Gerard Butler). The Phantom, who exerts a strange power over Christine, will do anything to make her a star – letting nothing and no one stand in his way. Phantom is absolutely gorgeous to look at, with a filming style reminiscent of Moulin Rouge (though with none of the schizophrenic editing) and stunning costumes and sets. I found the film’s story better than the stage version; one of my chief complaints about the original was the lack of credibility of the love story between the Phantom and Christine – that has been improved here. The singing is also very good, which is especially impressive given that all the actors sing their own songs (but only do varying degrees of believable lip synching). Yet, unlike recent film musicals Moulin Rouge and Chicago, Phantom is not particularly innovative; it is a relatively straight retelling of the musical, overtures and all. But if you liked the musical (or have always wanted to see it), you will find plenty to enjoy here – and the scenes involving the infamous chandelier still gave me plenty of goose bumps!
(Becky T) Opening December 16, 2004 This is a film noir reminiscent of a Philip Marlow detective story, but it’s not that straightforward. Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a crime novelist confined to a hospital bed due to a debilitating skin disease. To pass time he writes a story in his head about a private detective investigating the murder of a prostitute in Los Angeles in the 1950s. He is also a singer in a band. The threads of this imaginary story are interwoven among Dan’s real life with nurses, doctor’s visits and treatments; he has flashbacks of his childhood. Both the real and imaginary characters suddenly break out in song, much like the characters in 8 Women. What sounds confusing is not, at least not to anyone who enjoyed Memento or Being John Malkovich. Robin Wright Penn has a double role; Mel Gibson is a doctor and Jeremy Northam and Adrien Brody have small parts. Directed by Keith Gordon, the screenplay was written by Dennis Potter who wrote the original British TV series of the same name. (This appeared on German TV ten years ago.) People acquainted with the original TV version have naturally compared the two and found the movie version to be Americanized and too general, a “skeleton of its former self.” I enjoyed the film without having to make comparisons, since I’ve never seen the TV series. I was very impressed, not only with the intricate screenplay but with Robert Downey Jr. and also the 1950s music. (Nancy T) Opening December 23, 2004 Wealthy, handsome and gifted businessman Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) is kidnapped by an unremarkable, unemployed ex-employee Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe). Both are family men, but their lifestyles and personalities could not be more different. Mack drives Wayne into a forest, saying they will hike to a hut to meet his partners in the crime. When Wayne does not return home for their dinner date, after the guests leave his strong wife Eileen (Helen Mirren) calls the police. FBI agents (Kathleen Duggan and Ray Fuller) move into her home along with her grown children, a son (Alessandro Nivola) and daughter (Sarah Koskoff). Messages from the kidnapper (-s, it is never clear) demand the ransom be delivered by her alone. In the middle of all this upheaval, she discovers Wayne had deceived her by continuing to see Louise (Wendy Crewson), an affair he’d promised to sever. The story, based on an actual incident that happened in Holland, is simple, without the twists or turns we’ve come to expect in films: so much so that I was a bit disturbed at the end. This simple story, Helen Mirren’s performance, and the interaction between Redford and Dafoe on their lonely journey through the woods make this a very memorable film.
(Mary W) Opening December 23, 2004 Wealthy, handsome and gifted businessman Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) is kidnapped by an unremarkable, unemployed ex-employee Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe). Both are family men, but their lifestyles and personalities could not be more different. Mack drives Wayne into a forest, saying they will hike to a hut to meet his partners in the crime. When Wayne does not return home for their dinner date, after the guests leave his strong wife Eileen (Helen Mirren) calls the police. FBI agents (Kathleen Duggan and Ray Fuller) move into her home along with her grown children, a son (Alessandro Nivola) and daughter (Sarah Koskoff). Messages from the kidnapper (-s, it is never clear) demand the ransom be delivered by her alone. In the middle of all this upheaval, she discovers Wayne had deceived her by continuing to see Louise (Wendy Crewson), an affair he’d promised to sever. The story, based on an actual incident that happened in Holland, is simple, without the twists or turns we’ve come to expect in films: so much so that I was a bit disturbed at the end. This simple story, Helen Mirren’s performance, and the interaction between Redford and Dafoe on their lonely journey through the woods make this a very memorable film. (Adele R) Opening December 30, 2004 When Charlie Chaplin made his anti-Nazi masterpiece in 1940, he did not have any idea of the extent of Hitler’s pogrom against the Jews. He said later that if he had known of the Holocaust he could never have made the film. As it is, the film’s wonderfully creative episodes of comedy are offset by scenes of Nazi-like soldiers (the party is called the “Double Cross”) harassing and mistreating Jews and one scene in which a soldier pulls out a pistol and shoots a Jewish man for not complying with his orders. It is possible to imagine that at the time the scenes were shot, they seemed almost exaggerated. Yet seeing the film today those scenes are chilling, and it is hard to sit in the theater and reconcile the humor with the grim reality of history. Chaplin plays dual roles in the film: a Jewish barber who returns to his beloved barber shop in the Jewish ghetto after years of amnesia through a plane accident in World War I, and the Great Dictator of Tomania, Adenoid Hynkel, who bears a not accidental resemblance to Hitler. The little barber learns of the persecution of the Jews from the beautiful Hannah (Paulette Godard, Chaplin’s second wife). Meanwhile, the dictator (Chaplin) struts about his office, giving speeches, posing for statues and consulting with his Goebbels-like advisor, Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) on his plans to invade “Osterlich” and the fate of the Jews. “First we get the Jews and then the brunettes,” says Hynkel. As Hynkel, Chaplin is often hilarious and the anti-fascist sarcasm is wonderful. As the Jewish Barber (the Little Tramp in another costume) he is funny, charming, heartbreaking. After the Jewish Barber is arrested and thrown into a concentration camp (which Chaplin visualized in 1940 would be a place where one would be expected to goosestep all day and fall into a bunk bed at night), he escapes. By a particularly fortuitous turn of events, he is mistaken for Hynkel and in the last scene rises to the podium to give a speech – Chaplin’s own plea for brotherhood, peace and for the dignity and equality of all men: themes which eventually contributed to Chaplin’s designation as a “communist” by McCarthy and led to his banishment from America (Chaplin was British). Chaplin’s genius as an actor, a comedian of extraordinary wit and mime talent, his deep hatred of fascism in any form and anti-Semitism in particular, is clearly in evidence throughout this great film, but be prepared to for your laughter to stick in your throat.
(Becky T) Opening December 30, 2004 Some lucky people saw this “romantic comedy with zombies” on Halloween, which could provide the only excuse for sitting through a lot of nonsense about stiff creatures with empty eyes and mouths bloody from biting victims. This could be called one day in the lives of five British 29-year-olds. One is Shaun (Simon Pegg), a loser who must cope with complaints from his girl friend Liz (Kate Ashfield) that he is boring, from his stepfather that he is neglecting his mother, from his mother that he doesn’t respect the stepfather, and from roommate Pete that the third roommate, Ed, is a worthless slob. His co-workers in an electronics store resist his authority in spite of his rousing pep talks (There is no “I” in team.) Such frustrations would cause anyone to run amok with a cricket bat, and he does, too, but not like Michael Douglas in Falling Down. No, he is a shining knight, because normal people have turned into aggressive zombies and Shaun must protect his friends and family from an awful fate. He develops skills in leadership, debate, bat banging, and marksmanship (with the namesake from The Winchester Pub, which is conveniently hanging over the bar, where they retreat for safety). In the end all the naggers are gone and he’s a hero. Liz respects him as the little woman should, and Ed is still his mate with whom he shares a hobby: sitting on the sofa and taking photos of scenes on TV. But before we reach this point we have to listen to repetitious asinine dialogue in an incomprehensible British dialect (where are the German subtitles when you need them?) as well as watch a hundred extras sleepwalk, moan, tear off limbs, pound on windows, die and rise up from the dead, all because an environmental chemical imbalance set them off. Director Edgar Wright’s film grew out of a successful British TV series called Spaced. He wrote the script together with Pegg, who also contributes a song on the soundtrack.
(Osanna V) Opening December 30, 2004 Team America is out to save the world from the bad guys. The film’s opening mission takes place in Paris where terrorists are threatening the city with a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). The team saves the day, though ...oooops... they destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre in the process. Unfortunately, they celebrate too soon. The terrorist problem has not been solved, because North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has created a whole network around the world and, during a peace event he is organising to which he has invited all world leaders and pro-peace members of the Film Actor’s Guild (FAG), he plans to have the whole lot of WMDs detonated simultaneously. Team America infiltrates the network in Cairo, though ...oooops... they destroy a few wonders of the ancient world while they’re about it. In the end, however, they uncover the plot which leads to a final show-down between Team America, the FAG and Kim Jong Il. Team America is brought to us by the guys who created South Park, but this time they are working with puppets – and it is pretty well done. However, as you may have guessed, there are no limits to the black humour of the piece. Of course, we’re talking puppets here, which might be why the extreme graphic violence, sexual scenes and disgusting incidents are in no way curtailed. I suppose the thinking is, everything goes if it’s not the real world and it’s not real people. I admit, I found myself shocked into laughter in some moments – go figure. The problem is that the story just isn’t clever, nor in the slightest bit inspiring. Though others disagree about the political message, or not, it seemed to me that the film simply slams everybody, and there are no glimpses of subtle or even genius in sight, which would be the only saving grace. However, and unfortunately, it wouldn’t surprise me if it becomes a cult movie among certain members of the public.
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Bridget
Jones: The Edge of Reason (Bridget Jones: Am Rande des Wahnsinns)
En
Garde 
A
Home at the End of the World (Ein Zuhause am Ende der Welt)
The
Incredibles (Die Unglaublichen) 
Ocean's
Twelve 
The
Phantom of the Opera (Das Phantom der Oper) 
The
Singing Detective 
The
Clearing (Anatomie Einer Entführung) 
Oh
Happy Day 
The
Great Dictator (Der Große Diktator)
Shaun
of the Dead 
Team
America: World Police