Reviews

Twisting the facts of a historical event, the filmmakers try to win the audience's sympathy for a couple of German terrorists who hijack a plane and keep the passengers in a filthy unused airport terminal in Entebbe, Uganda, until they are rescued by the Israeli army. The German terrorists' life and beliefs are well known today, as is their anti-Semitism that went beyond any solidarity with Palestine. They hijacked the plane together with Palestinian terrorists. The Palestinian terrorists are portrayed in the movie as making things difficult. The movie's weird mission to glorify the Germans is of course, ludicrous and destined to fail. The movie's narrative is so contradictory that it is implausible even from the moviemaker's own viewpoint. They try to win over our sympathy by showing the German terrorists as "confused do-gooders", not showing the historical reality of how they murder some of their Jewish victims in cold-blood (instead, this is only mentioned in passing after the film is over, right before the credits), and falsely showing one of the German terrorists holding the hand of a Holocaust survivor and letting her go (and not treating her like garbage and keeping her as hostage, as was the case in the historical event). But this is pointless, as no one on earth would be so stupid as to think that this is enough to make the terrorists seem like nice people who are only "looking for meaning in their lives", which is what the script writer offers as an explanation. This is not, however, all the ideological garbage the script writer has for us, as the other message is the parrot-like phrase, repeated over and over again, that it is important to negotiate with terrorists in oder to bring peace. This is absurd in the given context: The terrorists kidnap over a hundred people, force them to go to Uganda, to live on the floor of a filthy abandoned building and threaten to kill them if other terrorists who were lawfully convicted to prison sentences are not freed. So how does kidnapping people for the sake of liberating convicted mass murderers have anything to do with "peace"? Beats me, it makes no sense. And... if this was not all bad enough, add terrible robot-like actors saying their lines like pre-recorded messages and a ridiculous sub-plot of a dancer whose performance is blended into the movie's climax in a laughable attempt at being artistic. (The performance itself is weird in this context: imagine a bunch of dancers stripping to a children's song in Hebrew about God and religion...What is that all about???). The rescue operation is depicted as a deplorable political tactic. This is a tough sell: what on earth could be more humane than to save the lives of kidnapped civilians from the hands of terrorits? There are great movies and documentaries about the impressive rescue of innocent civilians from the hands of terrorits in Entebbe, no need to watch this rubbish if you are interested in the topic.

If you haven't watched this or the previous episode - beware: Spoilers below!!! A lot of suspense in this episode, but also some disappointment. I did not expect the turn of events that we were to find in "only you"... After the death of Amador, Stan's nudnik sideshow, I did expect some rage from the FBI, but I was shocked at the screenplay writers' choice of Gregory as the scapegoat. I really liked his character, and it added a different perspective to have an African-American in this Cold War drama... but then, they killed him! No way! One episode they kill the Latino-sidekick and then the African American? What the...? I was really disappointed. I haven't watched the next episodes, but I hope the series recovers. One of the reasons this series stands out is that it is not as stereotypical as others on air at the moment. I hope it doesn't become an all-white,upper-middle-class spy story.

I rented this movie because I like the actors who play the protagonists. However, the film is boring simply because it is edited in such a way that very early on the film shows you what happened to the missing woman. Why bother watching the rest?

***spoilers below*** So, the filmmakers genuinely expect us to watch how two policemen find a woman, who was presumed dead a few years back, but we know she is hidden in a tank by a psychopath. Great. The movie trots on, and when the policemen are about to find her, we see a "management summary" of how evil the guy is, who is keeping her in a tank (as if that were not enough). We see how he killed an old pal and abused someone in his orphanage, etc. But there is no clue as to why this guy is so crazy, why he hurt so many people, why he chose her for this form of torture. So in the end, I don't even freaking care about the whole plot. Yes, the policemen found a woman who was suffering and no one else would have found her, had they not been so stubborn... But, really? That is ALL the film has to offer? This has been done a hundred times with much more suspense and allure, why bother with this old bore? I wouldn't watch it again if I got paid for it! Note for parents: At the video store where I got the film, it was rated for children 6 years and up. I disagree entirely, this movie is not a children's movie.

This movie is about the Russian Moura Zakrevskaya aka Baroness Budberg. She was a wealthy aristocrat who later became Maxim Gorky's and other famous men's lovers. Additionally, she was suspected to be a spy for the Soviet secret service.

In this documentary, Moura's great nephew tries to find out if she was really a spy or if it was all a rumor. And, it turns out that ***SPOILERS*** she was a spy! She worked directly for the infamous Yagoda, who was the chief of the Soviet secret service in the 1930s, at the beginning of the brutal "Great Purge". The strange thing about this documentary is that the narrator completely tries to convince the audience that Moura could not have done anything wrong - although she DID work for Yagoda in the violent 1930s. He tries hard to present her as innocent, although she most likely contributed to the death of many. It is this carnal loyalty that makes the documentary seem like some sort of family propaganda, definitely nothing worth showing on TV. The story of Moura Budberg's affairs and secret trips between Russia, France, England, and Germany are mainly interesting in the light of her activities as a spy. But when the narrator tries to water down this aspect of her life, it is boring and indeed, annoying.

I really enjoyed the movie "the Secret Life of Bees" even if I never read the book. The movie is about the friendship of a young teenager (Lily) with her nanny and with a family whom she meets in a small town in South Carolina.

Lily is haunted by a troubled family past (and present) and the friendship and the appreciation she experiences help her overcome her pain.

The movie contains some emotional violence and some physical violence, but most of the physical violence is off-screen making the movie apt for teens.

Because of the content and the lyricism of the movie, I would recommend it for friends or family members watching it together. I think it would make a great watch at a "mother-daughter" evening or something like that.

~~~~Possible Spoilers

The story takes place in 1964, a time of racial tension and violence in the U.S. Some of this violence is part of the movie, but the movie also shows how regular folks overcame hate by just ignoring skin color. In one of my favorite scenes, Zach (Tristan Wilds)tells Lily (Dakota Fanning) that August (Queen Latifah) had not told him that Lily was white when she told him about Lily. Lily answers, "maybe she didn't notice." I think this kind of humanity is at the core of the movie, where people are just people and not stereotypes.Indeed, Zach and Lily end up becoming close friends.

I watched this movie on a plane, and I had hoped it would at least bring forth some mildly credible, sweet love story. But, no. The plot is really stupid, and the main character is unbearable. The movie is a complete waste of time.

~~~~Spoilers~~~~~ Here's what I didn't like about the movie...

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is such an unlikeable character. She is an immature young journalist/writer who has no interest in her fiancé's life and work, and somehow expects him to lavish her with attention anyway. Because he doesn't, she falls in love with another man, with whom she shares no interests, and whom she will probably cheat on pretty soon. Strangely enough, this character - who is completely unable to have a relationship of her own - is going around Verona telling people what love is and how they should behave... Hello? Is this supposed to be romantic? It is sooo dull!!! Another thing I think was absurd was how Sophie (Seyfried) is supposed to fall out of love from her fascinating, good looking fiancé Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal) and fall for the flat, and fully boring Charlie (Christopher Egan). I think that made Seyfried's character seem even more obnoxious.

I did not like Seyfried's "acting", but considering how bad the script was, I guess it is hard to expect anything good would come out of it. What I don't understand is why an excellent actress like Vanessa Redgrave agreed to play the role of Claire. By the way, the fact that Claire's husband is conveniently dead, and she ends up finding her teenage-beau in Italy, whose wife is ALSO conveniently dead is really beyond corny...

Honestly, I think that the script-writers could have been able to work out a better story out of the letters to Romeo's Julia left behind in the streets of Verona...

"Hello Goodbye" is a movie about a wealthy middle-aged French couple that suddenly experiences a storm of difficulties. Alain Gaash is Jewish and his family is surprised and somewhat taken aback when his son decides to marry a Christian woman in a church. Alain's wife Gisèle had converted to Judaism in order to marry him, but she realizes suddenly that his family still sees her as non-Jewish. Alain's Jewish friends don't see him as Jewish enough because he isn't circumcised, and the couple ends up having a late identity crisis. The main focus of the film though, is not so much on the search of Jewish identity, but on Gisèle's search for meaning: she was a housewife for years, who gave up her career to support her husband and raise their son. Now that the son has left home, her life is empty. She does all sorts of crazy things, like destroying her expensive car, and convincing her husband to move to Israel, where they had no secure income or even a home. Gisèle seeks the "help" of a very suspicious drug-using "Rabbi" and falls for his good looks and "wisdom". Alain suspects that their bad love-life is due to the fact that he is not circumcised, even if they had had problems in this area before their identity crisis, so he gets a circumcision. This of course, changes nothing. In any case, the couple barely has anything to do with each other: Gisèle finds out where Alain is working by chance, Alain finds out by accident that Gisèle didn't tell him their furniture was thrown into the Meditarranean on the way to Israel... At some point, not only do the main characters lose contact with each other, the film loses all contact with it's audience. The ending is so ridiculous and shmalzig it's unbearable. My recommendation: Skip it.

"Podarok Stalinu" is a movie about a little Jewish boy, who has been deported together with his grandfather to a far off destination. His grandfather dies on the train. The other deportees decide to let the boy fake his death in order to be brought out of the train. After he is taken out, a kind hearted Kazakh man takes the little boy under his wing. The Kazakh man, Kasym, is Muslim and lives in a village together with other Kazakhs and some deportees from other places. Vera, a Russian Christian, is very beautiful and suffers from the pain and humiliation of being raped by any man wearing a uniform. Despite all that happens to her, she is very kind-hearted and she also takes care of little Sashka, the Jewish boy. In the village there is also a band of street children, who are apparently children of deported or executed parents. They are united in their hate for the police and the Soviet establishment and they get into all sorts of mischief. After a tragic incident in Vera's wedding, one of the children kills a policeman. Before all children are taken away, Kasym sends Sashka away on a train - thus saving his life from brutal collective punishment. The movie begins and ends with images of the elderly Sashka, now living in Israel. He looks back at the events of his childhood in this Kazakh village, which was very close to the testing site of the first Soviet nuclear bomb. The plot unity of the "contemporary" images of Sashka and his look on the past is not very well achieved, but other than that, the film is very well made. The film is aesthetically very beautiful, the images are poignant and impressive. Many scenes are really memorable. The mention of all the different nationalities that were deported to Kazakhstan in the Stalin era at the end of the movie makes a subtle connection of the fictional story in the film and the brutal reality of Soviet history. In fact, the problems that deportees faced in the Soviet Union are more realistically dealt with in this film than in any other ex-Soviet film I have seen up until now. Specially the horrible fate of women in the Gulag is a subject that has rarely been dealt with, even in history books. The suffering these people went through makes their humanity in the film narrative even more impressive. The topic of peaceful interfaith coexistence might seem naive or even unrealistic to some viewers, but for those who have been to Kazakhstan, the coexistence portrayed in the film is not surprising.

This movie is very special in many ways. It is a good movie in cinematic terms because it is aesthetically very impressive and has a good plot structure. On the other hand, this film touches subjects that were taboo in the Soviet Union of the time, and bravely shows parts of the history of the war that had not been part of public discourse at the time. It is also unusual because many Soviet films about WWII ended with an upbeat note, unlike this one.

"Fate of a Man", as the title of the film translates, is a movie about a Soviet man (Sokolov) who experiences many of the horrors of the war against the Soviet Union. The movie tells his story in a flashback, showing how he is very broken after the war and what led to this. He had lost his family in the war, and had fought in it, he witnessed how his Jewish comrades were singled out and killed, and then he was taken to Germany to do forced labor. There, he suffered all sorts of abuse and barely survived. After the war ends, he goes back home, distressed and unable to find comfort for his emotional and physical pain. The film is very subtle in its depiction of the horrors of war, even though it does not white-wash what happened. As it was the first Soviet film to touch the subject of slave labor during the war, and of the murder of the Soviet Jews, it does this carefully, emphasizing the humanity of the victims of these cruel crimes without focusing on the gore. Together with "The Cranes are Flying" and "Ivan's Childhood" this is one of the first Soviet films about WWII that do not have a happy "we won"-type of ending. These three films were a form of dealing with the suppressed pain of Soviet citizens, after having lost one quarter of their population (27mio.) through the brutal attack by the Nazis.

This movie is very impressive and very touching as well. I highly recommend it.

"La vida perra de Juanita Narboni" is a film about a woman in Tangier, Morocco, who is very unhappy. She was born into a rich family, to an alcoholic father and a very controlling catholic mother. Her sister is basically a slut, as Juanita, the main character, constantly mentions. Juanita's own misfortunes with men start with her engagement to a gay man, who eventually leaves her for another man. She is afraid of meeting someone afterwords - not just because of her catastrophic engagement, but also because her mother's strict rules about prudence and chastity bind her very tightly. So Juanita ends up staying single. She lives to see both her parents pass on, and her sister eloping with one of her beaus. Her best friends die, or leave the country, and no one is left to share her life except her faithful servant Hamouch - who eventually disappears as well.

"La vida perra de Juanita Narboni" is a film about one woman's lifelong solitude, it portrays her inner struggles with a very high dose of irony. Mariola Fuentes, who plays Juanita, is a remarkable actress. Her monologues and soliloquies are very enjoyable - she really captures the character's self irony and humor, but also her pain. Other actors are unfortunately by far not as good as Fuentes, which is really a shame. Another weak point in the movie is that the narrative, which is set in a very interesting place (Tangier) in a very interesting time (1938-1965), does not actually exploit all the possibilities available through this setting. Important historical and cultural aspects could have made the narrative richer and more satisfying, in my opinion. Because these aspects are only in the very vague background, the movie gives the viewer the feeling of having missed something.

All in all, and foremost because of Fuentes wonderful acting skills, I would say this film is entertaining, but not quite fulfilling.

The film "Austeria" is a horrible film smacking of the most common forms of anti-Semitism. From the very first scene, which focuses at the noses of a group of Jews, you get the impression that they chose their cast on account of the actors' noses. It is sickening to see the stereotype of "big Jewish noses" in a film, and even worse to see how they emphasize this constantly. The different characters seem to reflect common anti-Semitic prejudice, for example Bum, Tag and Asia's mother - play "the lascivious Jews." Bum tries to seduce a Asia in the forest while people shoot each other around them, she tries to escape him and gets shot in the process. Tag, the inn-keeper, has an affair with a Christian Polish "Shiksa" who parades half-naked in his inn throughout the film. Asia's mother cries for her daughter, who has just been killed, and finds herself laying in the hay with a Hungarian Hussar just minutes later... Well, so much for the "lascivious Jews", the "frum" ones, the Hasidim who withhold from such sinning, are not any better in this film. They get everyone in danger by singing and dancing as the Cossacks are nearby and could find them any minute. They don't care that there are people mourning around them, or that they all could get killed for their imprudence. They sing and dance to their deaths - naked. The absurdities go on with a Tsaddik who rarely speaks, and when he does he only says platitudes or things that don't make sense. Then there are, of course, the Christian Poles who constantly try to save the Jews - only to be rejected. This is a ridiculous and shameful film. I felt nauseous after watching it. The whole narrative is brainless and, as I said, reflects prejudice and anti-Semitism.

I really like Eddie Murphy, which is why I rented this film, but I was very disappointed. The film is very boring, the plot doesn't ever seem to "take off" and the characters lack, well, character. The film storyline could have perhaps brought in many more comical situations, but one had the impression that the filmmakers were afraid of making their "guru" or their other heroes look bad. So the film drags on and on, with some weirdo who is neither too good nor too bad, some hero who is also neither heroic nor anti-heroic and a "romantic interest", who never gets interesting... Strangely enough, although this is supposed to be a comedy, one rarely has the impression the movie is even "trying" to be funny. At the same time, it is not serious or dramatic enough to be something other than a comedy. Well, maybe you get the point, the film is "bah". I wouldn't watch it again or recommend it to anyone.

This documentary shows life in a camp led by Mikhail Morozov. He claims "God" has given him authority to lead the people in this camp. He teaches them blind obedience and destroys all form of initiative in them. The people in this camp are not allowed to have a mobile phone or to have direct contact with the outside world, they have to listen to lectures and do physical work. They learn to hate democracy and "the West", and to despise foreigners living in Russia. Morozov believes in the geographical expansion of Russia's territory and in a strong authoritarian type of state. The film follows Morozov as he meets with politicians, church leaders and members of Russia's military. There is no voice over comment, the director thus allows the viewer to listen and assess for him/herself. Nevertheless the camera speaks through poignant images of the contrast in Morozov's own life and the life of those under him. The deep inequality and horrifying authoritarianism in "Durakovo", as well as the appalling racism and anti-Semitism haunt the viewer hours and days after watching this film. As a researcher on Eastern Europe, I highly recommend this film. What it shows is not representative for all of Russia, but it does show a mentality that has been growing under President/ Prime Minister Putin.