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Reviews
Spring Breakers (2012)
Chrystallized time through stunning montage
Not many films split the audience in enthusiasts and haters like "Spring Breakers" does. And you may of course ask, why this movie provokes extreme reactions on both ends. Is it a mirror to the ambiguity of American morale or the explicit display of sex and violence? In the end, there are people who see beneath the loud and flashy surface and people who don't. In order to close this discussion and go on to something really remarkable about Korine's work, I just want to point out that it is a movie worth watching in many ways, because it is entertaining, ambitious and brave.
The story of Spring Breakers is simple and a one dimensional tour to excess. But the way Korine narrates the story with a unique montage concept is remarkable. Looking closer at the plot, we see various fermatas interrupting the plot, e.g. Alien playing the white grand piano, his bloody finger tipping the key, the threesome in the pool and so on. These scenes work like interruptions changing the course of the story like joints. And for the montage these scenes work like a prism, projecting the following events in achronological inserts. In this way, Spring Breakers works brilliantly as a composition of music, sound and light. And in the end, it leaves the audience dazzled and thinking.
Muxmäuschenstill (2004)
The German soul today
This movie might only work for German speaking people. Although it is visually interesting , with a lot of hand-held camera and video opticts, its story digs deep into the state of German society and ethics. Like Kracauer once interpreted the films of the Weimar republic as symbolizations of the German soul and as the
dawn of Hitler and the Third Reich, one is tempted so see "Muxmäuschenstill"
as a Portrait of Germany today. Summary: Mux is a kind of lawyer, who has an exaggerated feeling of justice and of
individual responsibility for common welfare. He walks around the streets of
Berlin and the area around, equipped with a digital camcorder for proof and a gun for self-protection, chasing people who ignore the law. It starts with fare dodgers, speed merchants, Graffiti sprayers, people who let their dog s*** on the street or students urinating in a public swimming pool. All of them have to pay money to avoid an indictment or get punished by Mux. Soon Mux spreads his
activities on more serial crimes like sexual abuse, shop lifting, armed robbery, concealment of stolen goods and so on. He also employs a personal assistant
(Gerd) and builds the "Gesellschaft für Gemeinsinnpflege" (society for nurture of common welfare), founding settlements in all big cities.
Sure we get to know his true motivation. Behaving like a blimpish and also
romantic idealist towards women, he is unable to develop a healthy sexual life. He represses his desire with his "work" and falls into a platonic relationship with a young waitress from the country. When she dismisses him in favour of a young and cool guy and he secretly watches them in a blow job scene, things fall
completely apart. Mux looses his grip over his life completely and everything ends up in disaster. In the beginning the movie is a true satire and in a way remains it, but the further the story goes on, it turn into a drama forbidding any laughter. This movie brings up a discourse on morality, the responsibility for the society, the German
"culture" of denunciation and the thin line between crime and justice. I can only hope that Marcus Mittermeier gets the international attention he deserves for this movie. A must see and therefor 10 points.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
iced flowers
I have never seen a movie of Cuarón before, but it was definitely a good choice to let him direct the third movie. What Columbus did was a boring and annoyingly long illustration of the books, not noticing that the passionate Harry Potter readers had grown older, so the audience expected more than a nice and sweet Disney-like entertainment. Cuarón changed the whole look of the set and gave the characters a chance to play. He also used a lot of nice shots full of metaphoric quality. There are a lot of detail shots with huge parts of the picture out of focus, e.g freezing flowers. One of the best and innovative things he did, was to give symbolic materiality to a camera, that doesn't exist with respect to digital image generation. There is a viewing view (Sobchack) that flies through windows, the gigantic clockwork, ... . It is the best Harry Potter picture so far and I hope Newell will follow this path.
Original Sin (2001)
ambitious aesthetics, poor plot
There is one sequence in the film, that I liked a lot, because it a good and enjoyable example for the kinaesthetic movement of the picture. It is the take, when Antonio Banderas is looking for his girlfriend in the brothel by night. The camera chases his look around the quadrangle with a wide-angle shot, that makes you dizzy. There are a few other takes, that impressed me (i.e the wedding), but in general, the film suffers a lot from the predictable story and the disappointing ending.
Die tödliche Maria (1993)
Stunning debut!
Director Tom Tykwer has made a film, that shows the fateful powers, that are to emerge, when a woman is suppressed by men all her life. Maria lives in a dream-land, that exudes violently into real life. Tykwer managed to show the magic of common things in a gray and sorrowful existence.