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Reviews
Aus Liebe zum Volk (2004)
Out of love for the people: Stasi from the eyes of the Stasi
Not all Stasi officers spent their last days trying to burn evidence, find a safe hiding place or empty a bottle of Schnapps. At least one, credited as major S., wrote his memoirs of 40 years of Stasi service, all out of love for the people. That sounds like the all-too-well known excuse of many war criminals, but this documentary gives much credence to S.'s uprightness, justified or not. S. seems to be born in or shortly after the war, and joins the infamous border police of the young DDR as an electrician. For reasons not explained in the film, he gets accused of desertion only few days after he starts his job there, and this seems to make him an easy target for the Stasi to be recruited as an informant. The involuntary bit soon disappears as S. gets to like the job, and proceeds on a career path ending with his demise in 1990, together with the Stasi, as a major ranking officer.
The picture we get of the Stasi is not so much that of an instrument of terror and torture (like the Gestapo), than that of a bureaucratic surveillance instrument, trying to know everything about everyone at every time and, as the events in 1990 show, ultimately failing to do so. The people storming the Stasi headquarters expected to find a computer at every desk, but were merely confronted with huge amounts of paper and cardfiles (as S. puts it, the western security services were probably able to watch more citizens with less effort). S. was brought up in a socialist context and defends the system to the end, although he explains surprisingly little about what this socialist state was supposed to bring about. The only thing we can safely conclude is, that to S. it meant stability and security of the citizens even if it had to come at the expense of liberty, the freedom to move around, shout it out loud or rebel in general. S.'s idea of safety encompasses mediocrity and ultimate boredom, pretty much the reputation the DDR got itself. He speaks of political dissidents as 'agitators' in the same calm way a perfectly democratic English police officer would of a bunch of autonome punkers. He defends Stasi's sneaking into other people's homes without a warrant (in violation of even the DDR's constitution) with reference to all other known secret services doing the same. After all, they're all in the business of maintaining the status quo. By any means.
The huge amount of (obviously unsharp) archive footage combined with just S.'s story and taped Stasi recordings as the soundtrack make this documentary an interestingly deviating report of the feared (S. maintains they feared the people more than the people them...) secret service, but also a quite powerful statement on the revival of the surveillance state, version 2.0, in the 21st century, with a replenishment of fresh state enemies and much more eerily efficient means of control. Again in the words of S. (as a justification for locking the TV from his children), "Vertrauen ist gut, Kontroll ist besser", trust is good, but control is better.
The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)
Why don't they just... shoot?
Warning: bit of a spoiler ahead.
Acknowledgedly, lions are 300 kilo of ferocious carnivorous claw and muscle- something to be reckoned with even if you're carrying a gun.
However, you've got to be of good ancestry to convince anyone that some twenty men armed with rifles would not be able to, like, hit it in the head after repeated tries. It takes some stretch of the imagination that, in fact, they get half a dozen opportunities to do so but just stand there paralysed- instead of bloody shooting the thing. Unless these are supernatural lions, of course.
Then, at a time when only the Real Men are left to do it, they finally manage to take out one of their adversaries. They engage in an alcoholic celebration, fall asleep and -here she comes- *forget altogether what we've all known for the last hour of the film, namely that there's a second lion*. How thick can you be?
Perhaps that wouldn't be too bad weren't it for the completely whackily shot lion attacks. Admittedly, it won't be easy to make a convincing scene of a lion plunging down on a human- but even Jumanji, a contemporary film, seems to have better CGI.
The average Geographic Channel documentary on predators is more credible and worthy of an R rating.
Candyman (1992)
In the same ranks as Friday the 13th and Halloween
I just saw Candyman for the second time (since 1995 or so) and can now positively say it ends in my personal top-10 of scary movies. That is thanks to its approach of the Supreme Horror character gradually, but determinedly driving his destined Victim to where he wants her. And it's thanks to the rather uncommon type of (beautiful) background music, which perhaps makes it somewhat more of a psychological horror film than a slasher. The end is slightly predictable, but that doesn't hurt too much because at the same time it's cynical enough to be funny. Whether it survives the ages remains to be seen (Friday and Halloween didn't) but it's a nicely uncomfortable horror movie.