AWCH Film Reviews -- November 2004

(Becky T) Opening November 4, 2004

Here it is: your ultimate holiday animated film for children. Frenchman Jacques-Rémy Girerd has made something so funny, visually interesting, and delightfully politically incorrect, that I’ll be happy to take any of your kids and go see it again. Ferdinand is an old retired sailor who lives with his young African wife Juliette and their adopted son Tom on a farm. The neighbor’s daughter Lili comes to visit while her parents are away. One night, contrary to common practice, the frogs reveal a prophecy to a human being. They tell Tom that it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights. There you have it: the old Noah’s ark story, except that in this case there are four people, as well as farm and zoo animals (from Lili’s parents’ zoo) afloat in a barn. Ferdinand takes command and rations the 28 tons of potatoes from the loft. Problems occur when the meat eaters imagine pork chops instead of French fries, when Ferdinand and Juliette leave the children alone, or when a turtle seeks shelter from the crocodiles. This traitorous turtle initiates a mutiny on board. There are lessons about cooperation for the common good, taking responsibility, overcoming fear and saving the environment.

To produce this beautifully illustrated film, 200 employees of the Folimage Company made about 8-10 seconds of film a day for six years. The voices are dubbed in German by well-known German actors. Especially good is Nina Hagen, and no matter how bad you thought she was in 7 Zwerge, Männer in Wald, which opened a week earlier, her proclamation of the turtle’s revolt is show-stopping. The ending is positive, but not logical (for some reason the flood was only regional), but no matter. If your German is poor, your kids can rehash it to you over refreshments afterwards for a time well spent. Educational material which accompanies the film is available on www.geheimnis-der-froesche.de.

(Kirsten G) Opening November 4, 2004

Finding a passion you never knew you had is the theme of Shall We Dance?, a wonderful new film from director Peter Chelsom (Town and Country, Serendipity). Richard Gere stars as a successful Chicago lawyer married to a beautiful woman (Susan Sarandon) with two great kids. His life is going fine, but one day going home on the train he notices a beautiful woman (Jennifer Lopez) gazing from the window of a dance studio. After a few more nights passing her, he spontaneously gets off the train and signs up for dance lessons at the studio. Just like that, his life changes.

This is one of the few films where the characters are upper-middle class and not dysfunctional, just stuck in a rut, which I found quite refreshing. This is a tale of people who are basically happy, but don’t realize that they’re missing something in life until they find a creative passion, and that passion changes them and everyone around them. Dance is a remake of a hit 1996 Japanese film of the same name, although this Dance is retooled to fit American life and culture. The acting is excellent and the dancing spectacular (the actors worked for months to master ballroom dance). The film is funny (especially Stanley Tucci’s turn as a closet dancer), touching, heartwarming, and inspirational, and it will make you want to take ballroom dance lessons. This is one Dance class you won’t want to miss.

(Becky T) Opening November 4, 2004

Photographer Thomas Riedelsheimer accompanied percussionist Evelyn Glennie for one year to New York; Fiji City, Japan; Santa Cruz, California; and Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In Cologne she rents an old factory in order to record jam sessions with musician Fred Frith. The result of this documentary film, besides beautiful photography, is a clear picture of a Scottish genius whose favorite instrument is the snare drum and who changes her hair color with each new city. Riedelsheimer, who impressed us with his Rivers and Tides, incorporates ordinary sounds such as suitcase wheels on the floor of an airport or air conditioners.

But there is more to it than that, because Evelyn Glennie is deaf. When she was eight years old, her teachers recommended that she be moved to classes for the hearing impaired. Her parents refused, and at age 11 she got her first hearing aid. She became the world’s first solo classical percussionist. She now gives 100 concerts a year with renowned orchestras and her first CD (of 19 total) Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussions won a Grammy in 1988. Her autobiography Good Vibrations was a best-seller. She explains that, “hearing is a form of touch…you feel it through your body and sometimes it almost hits your face. “

Still her talent to play very softly with other musicians who are also playing softly is a mystery to me. She says, “Silence is probably one of the loudest and heaviest sounds that you‘re ever likely to experience.” Glennie is certainly inspirational in the film, which can be counted among other inspirational films about music such as Rhythm Is It or The Children of Monsieur Mathieu or School of Rock. Any person interested in music, education, the learning impaired, or Stomp, Gumboots or maybe Riverdance should let the sound touch them in this highly recommended film experience in English with German subtitles.

(Becky T) Opening November 11, 2004

Casim (Atta Yabub), the only son of a Muslim Pakistani family in Glasgow, is soon to be married off to his cousin. This conflicts with his own wishes, namely to date Scottish Roisin (Eva Birthistle). His older sister’s wedding to the man of everyone’s choice is endangered if Casim should dishonour the family. Roisin teaches according to church dogma in a parochial school, but loses this job after she argues with a bigoted Catholic priest. In the end, British director Ken Loach sends his multicultural couple off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Experience tells me this is too optimistic. Think of Romeo and Juliet, who, if alive today, would be arguing over the TV controls. This is a wonderfully made, humorous film with human interest about a serious problem. Not surprisingly it won a prize from the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin film festival. Loach himself is a pleasant director who has been in the film business for 40 years with such successes as KES, Raining Stones, Ladybird, My Name is Joe, Bread and Roses and Sweet Sixteen.

(Jenny M) Opening November 11, 2004

This movie is so silly that if I were you I wouldn’t bother to read this review if you can find something better to do. Telly Paretta is played by Julianne Moore. I last saw her as a picture of inertia, lying in bed in The Hours, but she’s nothing if not versatile and spends her time in this movie rushing about and driving cars much too fast. Her husband Jim is played by that nice doctor from E.R. (Anthony Edwards) and her psychiatrist, Dr. Munce, is played by Gary Sinise, the sergeant in Forrest Gump who lost his legs in Vietnam. Telly’s partner in all the running around is Ash Correll (Dominic West, fresh from Mona Lisa Smile). All four actors try very hard to take a sensible approach to their lines.

They are joined by a New York cop, Ann Pope (Alfre Woodard), and Linus Roache, who plays one of those sinister creatures who appear to be human but whose bodies are impervious to the bullets fired at them by terrified policeman. Throw in those visual effects where people are sucked heavenwards by tornadoes just as they’re about to unravel the plot; leaves rustling eerily in misty playgrounds as in ghost stories; and a background of the sort of music an amateur teenage filmmaker would be ashamed of, and you have the measure of this movie.

Film director Joseph Ruben, who made Sleeping with the Enemy with a young Julia Roberts, had clearly forgotten his common sense when he decided to film The Forgotten.

(Kirsten G) Opening November 11, 2004

An update of the original 1962 classic, The Manchurian Candidate is director Jonathan Demme’s (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) take on political manipulation in the current world of mega corporations and regular terrorist alerts. Denzel Washington plays U. S. Army Major Ben Marco, leader of a Gulf War unit that was ambushed and saved through the heroics of second-in-command Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) – or was it? Marco keeps having vivid dreams about the events that contradict what he initially remembered, and Marco starts to think that his dreams may be the real reality. This would mean that Shaw, who has used his hero status to launch a career in Congress and a vice presidential nomination, isn’t what everyone thinks he is. But the more Marco tries to uncover what really happened, the more his world starts closing in around him.

The original Candidate focused on the fear of communism and centered on brainwashing that took place in the Chinese region of Manchuria; here, “Manchurian” refers to a Halliburton-like global corporation, and the focus is on manipulating politics for profits. Demme effectively projects Marco’s feelings of disorientation and dread with layered sound and odd camera angles, and the plot really keeps you guessing. The acting is excellent: Washington and Schreiber are dead-on, and Meryl Streep as Shaw’s manipulative Senator mother almost steals the show. Having never seen the original Candidate, I can’t compare this update with the original, but the thing from this film that made the biggest impact on me is that in our post-9/11 world and this current U.S. election season, Candidate’s content, which four years ago might have seemed completely far-fetched, suddenly doesn’t seem so unbelievable.

(Adrian and Shelly S) Opening November 11, 2004

Hamburg’s second Children’s Film festival opened with an exciting and lovable comedy by Peter Timm. The ten-year-old Marietta’s (Maria Ehrich) biggest dream is to have a dog. In fact it is an obsession which has taken over her entire room. Unfortunately, she isn’t allowed to have one due to her brother’s allergies. Her brother’s dream is to be on television but he is too small. For her birthday she gets a picture of a dog, a stuffed animal dog and a magic stone from her sponsored brother in Africa. When her parents go on a long overdue holiday which is badly needed to save their marriage, she decides to give the magic stone a try. Her brother turns into a dog and ends up being a movie star. Marietta spends most of the time protecting her brother dog from the not-so-nice grandmother (Irm Hermann) and the T.V. director who need him for a show. The story line is quite complicated but even the youngest children seem to be able to follow it with no problem. At the film festival the children also found it exciting to have the chance to see live the teenage group The Lollipops do the title song from the movie, and two children won a ride in the cool ecomobil which was used as a prop in the movie. So all in all this movie is a winner!

(Becky T) Opening November 11, 2004

Catholic priest Henri Kremer is granted a nine-day vacation from imprisonment in Dachau concentration camp. Such a “vacation” is an anomaly in itself. Nazi officer Gebhardt facilitates this leave of absence with an ulterior motive: Kremer should convince the city’s Catholic bishop to give up his passive resistance and work with them. He arrives in occupied Luxemburg into the arms of his strong sister, weak brother-in-law and wealthy influential brother on business from Paris. His family pleads with him to escape to Switzerland. The local priest tries to use him for his own purposes. Kremer wrestles with his conscience and his Catholic beliefs in serious conversations with Gebhardt about the role of Judas and religion. He dare not flee because his fellow priests back at the camp will pay with their lives. And the days go by, one through nine.

Based on the true story of Father Jean Bernard as written in his diary Pfarrerblock 25487, we see the ambivalent role played by the church during World War II. Similar to the film Amen with Ulrich Tukur which showed at the 2002 Berlinale, it reveals human weaknesses and profit-making among the big church bosses, as well as extraordinary strengths among God’s foot soldiers who cope alone with only their true Christian belief for guidance. About 3000 priests and other church people inhabited the so-called Pfarrerblock in Dachau. The suffering in the camp is vivid in the film as the priests divide one sausage 20 ways, are hung on a cross, made to sing hymns, and are sadistically mocked. Father Bernard, born in 1907, survived Dachau and returned to live in Luxemburg where he was editor of a newspaper. He died in 1994. This is a chance to see two fine German actors, Ulrich Matthes as Kremer and young August Diehl as Gebhardt. The film showed at the Toronto Film Festival. Material for use in German classes is available free under www.bpb.de/publikationen/filmhefte. Film agency representative Dieter Pille said it in a nutshell, “Finally a solid film from Volker Schlöndorff.”

(Jenny M) Opening November 18, 2004

Here’s a Santa movie that you can’t possibly take your children to see. It’s not even terribly sentimental, thank goodness, and it’s full of the dark humour which the Coen Brothers are famous for. They are the co-producers, along with Harvey Weinstein, but the movie is directed by Terry Zwigoff – lovely name – who was nominated for two Golden Globe awards in 2000 for Ghost World.

Billy Bob Thornton is the department store Santa whom every mother dreads her child will meet. Mr Thornton is made for this part, as indeed is his elf, Marcus (Tony Cox), and the child he kind of befriends, Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly). The child might as well have “loser” printed on his forehead as he’s a child only a mother could love. Santa and his elf get up to the sort of after-hours activities which you’d expect them to in a Coen brothers movie; they work well together over the years, travelling from one department store to another and from one state to the next. Then one Christmas a store manager (John Ritter) smells a rat, alerts the store detective and their cosy little venture begins to unravel.

Because Santa doesn’t utter a sentence without half a dozen swear words in it, you might find yourself wondering how the scenes with children were made. Were the swear words added afterwards, perhaps? Were the children told not to look shocked when Santa spoke to them? Are there really people who talk like that? Life is skewed when viewed through the eyes of the Coens, but life is usually funny too, as it is in this movie.

(Becky T) Opening November 18, 2004

The inhabitants of two mountain villages, Gschaid and Millsdorf, dislike each other intensely. Undeterred like Romeo and Juliet, Sebastian and Susanne experience love as something stronger than century-old animosity, and they marry. Full of optimism Susanne moves to Sebastian’s village and they raise two children, Conrad and Sanna. Their happiness is sorely tried as they become outcasts, shunned by all others. As a result Susanne returns to her parents, and the children, now 11 and 13, often make the long trip over the mountain to visit her, while still living with their father. They hear the story about a mysterious piece of crystal (Bergkristall) which can reunite lovers. According to legend, the crystal belongs to the mountain, and one must exchange one’s heart for it. On Christmas Eve the children become lost in a snow storm.

Director Joseph Vilsmaier has made a holiday fairy tale based on Adalbert Stifter’s story of the same name from 1853. Like all fairy tales, there is a moral, and the ending is no surprise. Many good German actors play the parts; the old-fashioned village and fashions are interesting. Still, it doesn’t work; it seems wooden and plodding. Perhaps this should have been an animated film where the magic would glow and we would accept the kitsch.

(Kirsten G) Opening November 18, 2004

Charlize Theron once again lights up the screen in Head in the Clouds, an epic love story set against the backdrop of Europe before and during World War II. Theron plays Gilda, a wealthy half-French, half-American socialite who stumbles into the life of working class Irishman Guy (Stuart Townsend). Guy is irresistibly drawn to Gilda and eventually finds himself living in Paris with her and Mia (Penélope Cruz), a Spanish woman who has come to Paris to learn nursing. But when civil war erupts in Spain, Guy and Mia feel compelled to join the resistance while Gilda stays in Paris, forever altering their friendships and the course of their lives.

Clouds is written and directed by John Duigan, an Englishman who had always had a fascination with this time period. He does a good job recreating the streets of Paris (using the streets of Montreal instead) except for a few very obvious matte paintings used as backdrops. The cinematography is also well done, with many scenes beautifully framed and lit like Degas paintings. The plot revolves around the character of Gilda, and Theron is up to the task; she shines in every scene. Cruz and Townsend are also good, and the chemistry between real-life couple Theron and Townsend is electric. Overall, though the film feels long and drags a bit at times, Clouds and its themes of love, loyalty, and fate will stay in your head well after the final credits role.

(Becky T) Opening November 18, 2004

Lolita takes singing lessons with plans to perform in a village church. Her teacher Sylvia admires the writer Etienne for his talent. Etienne is the father of Lolita and encourages fledgling writer Pierre who is the husband of Sylvia who is the teacher of Lolita. And so we come full circle. In the end everyone, including Etiennes’ young second wife and Lolita’s long-suffering boyfriend, are assembled in Etiennes’s summer house. How many films have you seen where, once in a summer house, everyone lets it all hang out? For 110 minutes these people discuss their weaknesses, dreams, failures, animosities, which I always find to be typically French. They are all striving for recognition and praise from other people without taking the trouble to change anything about themselves. Possibly the best part is the beautiful classical music which sets in at all the appropriate places. Director Agnès Jaoui plays Sylvia, and her partner in real life, Jean-Pierre Bacri (a French-Algerian immigrant) plays Etienne. Together they wrote the script which won best screenplay at the Cannes film festival this year. Jaoui burst on the film scene with Le Gout de Autres (Other People’s Taste) in 2000 for which she won the French Oscar and was nominated for a U.S. Oscar. She’s definitely worth watching, as perhaps a worthy successor to Woody Allen.

Second Opinion by Adele R

Culture is of paramount importance in France. Literature, philosophy, and music especially are accorded the highest respect and the big players are featured on talk shows and recognized everywhere like Hollywood celebrities.

Etienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri) is one of those players, an overbearing, conceited, self-centered author whose egoism causes constant suffering among friends and family. But no one bears the brunt more keenly than his older daughter from a previous marriage, Lolita (Marilou Berry). Lolita is a nice-looking woman with a full-sized figure, not the model size or beauty she is sure would be interesting for her father, who is besotted with his pretty (thin) young wife, and their eight-year-old daughter. Etienne has little time and no interest whatsoever in Lolita, or in her career as a singer. Lolita, however, is not above manipulating her father’s fame. Thus when it becomes apparent that her singing teacher, Sylvia (played by the director, Agnès Jaoui) will give her more attention because of who her father is, she uses it to her advantage. Sylvia is married to an author, Pierre (Laurent Greville) who is suddenly “discovered” on his fourth novel by Etienne and propelled into a celebrity world virtually overnight.

Meanwhile, Lolita has a suitor to whom she pays little attention because she is mesmerized by another handsomer young man who uses her casually and disposes of her like Kleenex. It is a film with humor, depth and flavor and is enhanced by wonderful music and a background of enticing book-filled Paris apartments, a beautiful country house, and an enchanting medieval church.

(Kirsten G) Opening November 18, 2004

An interesting mix of retro and futuristic designs, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow shows us a world that might have been. Reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is hot on the trail of the enigmatic Dr. Totenkopf, who is rumored to have created a doomsday device. Enlisting the help of ace pilot and former flame Sky Captain (Jude Law, who is also one of the film’s producers), she travels the world, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery before it’s too late for humankind.

Sky Captain, by first-time director and screenwriter Kerry Conran, is the realization of a dream ten years in the making. From 1994-1998, Conran spent every spare moment on a six-minute computer-generated film which became the basis of Sky Captain. The feature-length film has the distinction of being the first film to be shot entirely against blue screen with all backgrounds supplied by computers. But while you have to admire Conran’s determination, the finished film is one of extremes. The computer-generated imagery is truly amazing, credibly inserting live actors into a world with the look and feel of 40s films like Citizen Kane. However, the acting, even with dependable actors like Law, Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, is uninspired, probably due in part to the silly things they are given to say. The story also has no depth (and at times is just plain silly), nor do the characters. So while Sky Captain may take us into a visually-stunning “world of tomorrow”, I doubt its director will have much of a future.

(Coppelia HB) Opening November 25, 2004

“El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!” (The people, united, will never be defeated!) Thousands of people shouting this slogan of the Unidad Popular, the socialist party of Salvador Allende, starts off this documentary. The director, Michael Trabitzsch, has concentrated on the last days of Allende, the first democratically-elected socialist president of Chile. Trabaitzsch researched the theme thoroughly and has used archival material and the personal testimony of survivors who accompanied Allende during his last days. The events that occurred on Sep. 11 (meaningful coincidence?), 1973, are vividly portrayed using real footage of the actual bombing of La Moneda, the Presidential palace. It also presents the personal account of people who knew Allende and accompanied him during his last stand at La Moneda. After the bombing the building was in flames, and he convinced his people to surrender and leave the site, himself being the last. Yet, instead of leaving as the others did, he retreated to the inner sanctum and said, “Salvador Allende will never surrender” and proceeded to blow his head off with his Kalashnikov.

Although there is wonderful footage – such as Allende’s speech to the United Nations where he received a standing ovation from the developing nations as the representatives from the developed nations stayed seated, and his last radio speech delivered to the people – the movie was lacking in its overall presentation. There were cuts from actual footage of spoken interviews that did not quite fit to scenes that left one wondering “what was that?” The subject had much more to offer. The film tells the story of the hope of the people and the great treason that occurred in Chile when General Pinochet, who days before had sworn loyalty to the President, staged a military coup heavily backed by the U.S. government of Nixon. Many people lost their lives in the bloody aftermath and during the initial years of Pinochet‘s dictatorship.

It is fascinating to find out what a man of courage, in both character and endurance, Allende was, and how much public support he had amongst the people. There was the hope of freedom from oppression, and the seduction of freedom is very powerful. In the end, however, the cause was lost. Allende died defending his beliefs and deeply rooted convictions. This period in Chile’s history is described as a Greek tragedy where each one played their part, although unwillingly. History repeats itself. Behind every drama there is a traitor – in this case, Pinochet. Even Allende knew beforehand that there would be a military coup, but there was nothing he could do to change the course of history. Nevertheless, “As long as there is history, there will be Allende.”

(Adele R) Opening November 25, 2004

Clearly, the riches of this world are not evenly distributed. We have all bemoaned and lamented and pro-tested this truth in one way or another, especially in our youth. Some of us, depending on the degree of anger and frustration, have protested violently – think of 1968 and the decade which followed. Today, however, protesters take part in demonstrations at global gatherings with little result. The Greens have joined the government, and most young people seem willingly caught in the web of capitalism and materialism from a young age.

But not Jan and Peter (Daniel Brühl, charismatic star of Goodbye Lenin, and Stipe Erceg). They have invented a form of protest all their own. They break into the villas of the rich, but not to steal or to trash them. Instead they rearrange the furniture – the stereo in the refrigerator, the sofa in the swimming pool, and more – and leave a note: “The good years are over” or “You are too rich,” signed, “The Guardians”. Peter has been dating Jule (Julia Jentsch, who is wonderful in this film), but she and Jan fall in love while Peter is away on a trip. And Jule, who has just been fired from her job, lost her apartment and is deeply in debt because of an auto accident in which she totalled a EUR 100,000 Mercedes she now has to pay for, convinces Jan to break into the villa of the “fat cat” who owned the car in question. This time they get caught by the owner of the villa, Hardenberg (Burghart Klaussner), and with Peter, whom they call for help, inadvertently become kidnappers.

I won’t reveal how the movie develops, but it is a tight, sometimes funny, script with food for thought and some big surprises. And, interestingly, no matter what side of the equation you may find yourself on (confession: I was admiring those gorgeous villas and finding the youthful idealism extremely irritating in the beginning), there are some potent arguments. But this is not a depressing sociological film. Despite the loaded subject matter, a potentially volatile thesis is dealt a light hand. A thoroughly entertaining film from Hans Weingartner.

(Osanna V) Opening November 25, 2004

Starring Nicolas Cage (The Rock, Con Air), Diane Kruger (Troy), Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings), Jon Voight (Anaconda, Tomb Raider) and more, this treasure hunt adventure is directed by Jon Turteltaub (Cool Runnings, While You Were Sleeping) and brought to us by Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures.

Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) has inherited a family legend and the first clue to finding a treasure of immense value: the treasure discovered under Solomon’s Temple by the Knights Templar, and centuries later transferred to the United States. The search has obsessed him all his life and finally it seems to be paying off. Accompanied by financier Ian Howe (Bean), Gates has located a galleon named the Charlotte buried in the artic ice, where they find the second clue, which leads to the third, which leads to the fourth… However, it becomes clear that Benjamin and Ian’s motivations for the hunt are incompatible, and the two part ways rather dramatically. From that moment on it’s a passionate fight against time and each other…

As a gallivanting movie, where one mysterious clue leads to the next and, ultimately, to the grand finale, National Treasure is an entertaining way to pass a couple of hours. It seems unfortunate, however, that the intriguing "wealth"’ purportedly discovered by the Knights Templar – which these days seems less likely to have been gold artefacts than an incredible wealth of knowledge (after all, they were credited as being the architects of the major gothic cathedrals among other things) – should have been reduced to mere "material things"’, and that the location of that wealth should now be the United States and consequently called a "national" treasure. The movie could have potentially been so much more interesting.

(Kirstan B) Opening November 25, 2004

OK, maybe I am on a generous roll, but this going to be a good Christmas for family cinema. The Polar Express, adapted from the book by the same name from Chris Van Allsburg, is a really special trip. The award-winning story begins with a boy of the age when most kids start to ponder the feasibility of a real Santa Claus. As we watch this "doubter" going to bed on Christmas Eve, the probability that he wakes up a non-believer is heavy. Awakened at 11:55 pm by a thunderous shaking, the boy is welcomed to step aboard a huge steam engine that has stopped in the middle of his street. As the conductor explains, it is your choice to board or not, destination being the North Pole. Our boy hops on at the last second, still full of questions that he is afraid to ask. What unfolds is a mysterious and exciting adventure that answers all of the boy's unspoken questions, in a unique and subtle way.

The magical aspects of The Polar Express are numerous and grand. Tom Hanks is portrayed in five roles, including the boy's father, the conductor, and even Santa himself. The beauty is that the film is 100% computer-rendered over the original actor's shots, in the same hand as the exceptional artistry of the book: clear but muted, soft yet detailed, light but shadowy, with a touch of mystery and a aura of 1950s nostalgia. As an artist, I can fully guarantee that the book and film are of the same styling and both are worth viewing. The roller-coaster track scene is thrilling and the frozen lake crossing is spectacular. The elves are a bit quirky, but the North Pole is definitely equipped to blanket the world with gifts, as we view a factory style set-up that makes the scale of Santa’s job seem actually possible. The story is simple but complete, and the additional scenes added for the movie are appropriate and help to define a larger but similar message...you must believe. With hokey takes on this Christmas cliché abounding, especially in children's productions, The Polar Express handles this theme with delicacy and reaches every age... (husband tear factor = 20 minutes). I will see this again, hopefully in English to fully enjoy the voice(s) of Tom Hanks. This is one train ride that you will treasure, especially if you are feeling homesick for an American Christmas.

(Becky T) Opening November 25, 2004

Alfred Dorfer is one of Austria’s best known cabaret artists. Ravioli originated from his show heim.at (Heimat = home). Dorfer plays Heinz Hoschek, an unemployed 30-year-old man who moves into his parents’ apartment after his mother’s death. The father lives in a home. Heinz sleeps in his old room, talks to himself, warms up cans of ravioli, and slowly deteriorates through loneliness, alcohol, and his mother’s left-over sleeping pills. He sees real and fantasy people. For example, his buddy who runs a Chinese billiard gameroom and the former girlfriend, who visits her old father in the same apartment house, are real. A man representing death, a friend from the 70s, opera singers and his deceased mother are visions. In flashbacks of his youth, held on super 8 film, we learn about his low-middle class background, former job as lifeguard, broken marriage, small son and affinity for water. Bits of cabaret come through in his soliloquies such as, “A person should not talk to me and know why, rather than talk to me and not know why.” “I like foreign things as long as they are far enough away.” “What men and women have in common is that they know nothing about each other.” “God is sitting at his computer looking at my life.” The apartment is a work of art in the most awful and negative sense of the 70s, terrible wallpaper and full of his mother’s stuff, including her stockings still hanging over the tub to dry. There is a continuous sound of a frog croaking behind the sofa, or perhaps it’s the clock. You know that he is going downhill when you realize that renovation is not on his agenda. He doesn’t have an agenda; he is a lost and pessimistic version of Herr Lehmann. The value of the film is the opportunity to experience Alfred Dorfer, who will probably never come to Hamburg live. The film is in German, a hard-to-understand Viennese dialect.