Reviews

The film has two parallel storylines which are sort of intertwined. The one is that of an ageing assassin and his wife. The other one is that of an unlucky writer (!) who decides to take his life but every time he tries it fails. At one of these failed attempts the assassin shows up and offers his help to kill him so they sign a contract: dead in a week. Then of course the writer receives a call from an agent that his book will be published. Of course the agent turns out to be am attractive and sassy woman and they both fall in love. The assassin however, has other problems namely that his business is no longer striving because all the Eastern European assassins take his jobs. In fact at his assassin-cooperative all the other colleagues are grim looking Eastern Europeans. I think his antagonist speaks about 2 words in the film and stays a stereotype. Of course at the end one of the Eastern European gets the job to kill our aspiring writer. Of course at the end the suicidal writer won't be killed and they kill the Eastern European instead. Then they return to their homes and the English life has been restored. The film has very strong similarities to "A Practical Guide to a Spectacular Suicide (2014)" and while this one deals with depression and suicide in a much more realistic way the Dead in a week uses this rather as a trope for laughs. These come mainly from the clumsy unsuccessful attempts of the assassin to kill our hero and the body count rises and rises. In between the story is moved forward by numerous coincidences holding up murders, for example numerous phone calls the assassin gets always just when he tries to kill him. The major problem with this film is its message. It's making fun of at least two serious issues which need to be dealt with: depression and xenophobia. Depression is used here for comical effect. It should have taken seriously but could be done in a bitter-sweet way as done in other films about depression. Half of Woddy Allen films could be seen as about depression. They are still funny. The other issue is xenophobia. I was in particular offended by the message at the end: we just need to kill the Eastern Europeans and then our assassin can go back to his perfect English home / wife and it's all back to normal. As an EU citizen in the UK I just live through the nightmare of being accused of being one of these foreigners. To have a completely un-ironical straight message in the film that EU citizen need to go to restore the English peace I find completely unacceptable.

This is a film about a middle aged man who looks back on his life and (surprise) has deep regrets and feels empty. He left his girlfriend 10 years ago and the started a new life which is utterly boring and meaningless. Then he returns to the city where he left his real love where he first meets her which doesn't go well and then chats up another woman with whom he has a one night stand. Then next day he has a nervous breakdown at a motivational speech and he returns to his normal boring life and to his safe marriage.

This is well trodden territory and has been dealt many times. The film has nothing do add to it except that there is a long drawn very awkward sex scene which gave the film an R rating. The general theme has been set by the Death of a Salesman many years ago and the feel is pretty much the same. That he is a motivational speaker reminds very much of Up In The Air which has a very similar theme. Again, there the main protagonist gives a speech in front of an audience, fails and it feels strangely familiar. Films such as The Great Beauty are much more inventive and reflect on our times much better. There the protagonist admits it's been empty but it's been fun, for example. Even the flawed Youth with a similar theme deals with middle age, looking back on your life and regret in a much, much deeper way than this very formulaic film.

It's a very generic art-house film about the crisis of a middle aged man. His motivations and what he does are as predictable as it can get.

Victoria has recently moved to Berlin, works in a coffee shop and then one night is chatted up by a gang of petty criminals which she slowly gets to know better and a romance with one of the gang members develops. This then spirals out of control when she's suddenly drawn into a serious crime which she decides to take part in.

On the surface it is this thriller aspect which keeps one on the edge of the seat for the whole film. However, many deeper issues are covered, sometimes in a funny and sometimes in a serious way: Victoria's dream of becoming a pianist has been shattered recently and she works in a coffee shop in Berlin. She has not much to lose. She feels lonely, her German is still not very good but she sees Berlin as an opportunity. A gang of (homeless?) petty criminals are a welcome change in her humdrum life. Like many people who move to other places they need to make friends and this can lead to odd alliances.

The characterisations of both the lead and the criminals are very bang on. Petty criminals of these type can be also found all over the place in Glasgow where I live (positive, soft macho, pushy, charming, chatty, ...).

Given this background it's then an edge on the seat watch which decisions she takes while the playfulness slowly turns into a full blown heist with deadly consequences.

What I like personally about the film is that it covers the issues of immigration, languages, shattered dreams and how to deal with it in a thriller like environment. It's easy to turn this into one of the many stylised depressing social realism films which dominate the festival circuit worldwide. Victoria could have been also one of these gritty realist films but it keeps a perfect balance of being very funny and having nail-biting tension. I personally believe (and made some) that's the way films should be made by using an engaging genre (e.g. thriller) to show contemporary issues. In this way these films have a much wider appeal beyond the festival circuit which is badly needed.

It's one of the best films I've seen for a while and certainly the best German film for years. It will stay in my mind for a long time.

I went into the film with mixed feelings having read some of the comments on social media which all didn't like the film. I was positively surprised that this film exceeded my expectations -- a lot. It deals with very serious issues but it never crosses the line making fun out of mental illness. I've worked with people having mental illnesses and I'm also doing research on it. This film manages to dramatise these issues in a pretty accurate way but at the same time keeping the tone just right so that it won't offend. I understand that people might be offended though given the quite edgy content. There are not many other films which succeed on this matter and only Greenberg and Away for the Weekend spring to mind. The latter one deals with it in the classical dramatic downward spiral, though also in a very moving way. However taking on this topic as a dark comedy is far more difficult and the film does a great job. It leaves you on the edge of the seat because the jeopardy is there from the outset but I'm glad it didn't go down the route of a classical downward drama but had a real feel-good moment at the end without assuming that this from of "therapy" has cured the protagonist but that she's battling on with her illness.

'Frank' is a great movie about the creative process. It's great at the beginning and end. It is different to other band films like "Walk the line" not only because of Frank but also because it won't follow the classical dramatic curves of many other more conventional music films. Frank as a character and his flaws made me guessing what's happening at the end and to characterise Frank as a real person with real problems kept me going to the end.

However the film left a bad aftertaste with me how stupid the 20-something keyboarder was characterised. If I were that age I would see that film as a slap in my face. Just because I tweet and am on YouTube I'm not completely brain dead. I found especially the scenes at SXSW hard to watch. It was unnecessary to create the main character as such an idiot and ultimately he stands for his generation in this film. Also the lesson he learns at the end perpetuates what the establishment wants to hammer home to the youth which brings me to the next paragraph.

In more general terms the films conveys a 70s nostalgia against the YouTube / Facebook generation. In this respect it is just a bit more sophisticated than recent clips on social media (!) that in the old days everything was better because we talked to each other. In this film it was a band recording avantgarde music on analogue tape with loads of retro equipment from the "good old" times while the 20 something was posting videos on YouTube, tweeted it to the world -- and this was of course evil. To emphasise the other band members' goodness they had no idea about social media at all and not even noticed that they were filmed. Overall a cheap division to make a point which is as old as the established class: new media is evil and the youth needs to learn to stay away from it.

This film is about a gang of black youths in Gothenburg who use elaborate psychological tricks to steal from Swedish boys of the same age, such as their mobiles, designer cloths and essentially everything what they have. The reason why this film is painful to watch is the total psychological control this gang has over the Swedish boys. This is not achieved through violence but through elaborate psychological tricks. Part of this is a complete lack of respect for the victims. However, this film is far from generic but is a detailed study of the Swedish mentality and how this can be exploited. In terms of style the film has written Michael Haneke all over it which is not a bad thing. The use of wide shots makes is often impossible to see facial expressions which is a bit of a shame but on the other hand leaves room for interpretations. The bullying on the tram reminded me of a scene in Haneke's "Code unknown". Overall this film is hard to watch because of the relentless bullying but this makes it even more essential watching. It's a brave film portraying this gang in a very negative light but it is honest by doing so and not trying to create artificially a "balanced" view.

Sexy girls (+ the alibi loser) break into celebrity villas, steal from them, get caught, go to jail. Most of the film I was just waiting that they would be eventually get caught. Instantly Harmony Korine's Spring breakers springs to mind. His film was much more innovative and riskier. The hedonistic lifestyle needs a bold approach and in The Bling ring it was not a roar but rather a meow. Korine's approach had quite a similar storyline but because probably because of the boldness of his film it was much more engaging. Also the characters in The Bling Ring stayed one-dimensional: super-confident and defining themselves through sex, clothes, looks, tattoos etc. The problem with such a one dimensional characterisation is that that they all become too predictable and the story becomes boring. We had the doubting boy and then super-confident girls and that dynamics played out exactly the same through the whole film. I see the point of the film showing the girls empowered through their superficial qualities and driving the break ins. Girl power gone in the wrong direction. No doubt it's an important development in society but using these cardboard characterisations creates a pretty boring film. Harmonie Korine's film was much better by taking the hedonism and multiplying it by 100 and having a story which turns more and more absurd to the end (girl power multiplied by 100). Overall the Bling Ring did everything wrong what Spring Breakers did bang on.

I saw it yesterday at the Edinburgh International Festival and loved it from the first to the last frame. The film follows a couple of people who work or have some connection to the local telecommunications company Unicom. They all struggle at work and at home (except of the devil-ish IT guys in the basement). The company is threatened by poor sales figures and a group of environmental activists who threaten to sabotage their new 4G system. So far so standard. However, the fun arises from the myriads of surreal, funny and humiliating moments these people go through life. What works so beautifully in this film is the risk taking things into the absurd with even very silly costumes but not turning it into slapstick. It's still all relevant and we are all reminded of our worst day at work or at home. The story could have easily told in a doom and gloom fashion or completely bonkers but the director manages this fine line where we still can connect to the characters. The film is clearly inspired by Roy Anderssons jokes and also his surreal way of storytelling but this is much lighter and hugely entertaining. Also, there are no tableau style shots but instead clever camera movements. In general the film feels very energetic and it never loses its momentum right to the end.

I saw this film at the Glasgow film festival today. Both screenings were sold out. Anna moves with the 8 year old son into a shabby apartment, having escaped from a violent husband. She is scared that he might find them but also scared of herself because she knows that she blends her troubled memory with the present. The film feels like a mix of "Dead Man's Shoes" and "Martha Marcy May Marlene". The former also has an "imaginary" brother whereas the latter deals with memory and present. While in "Martha Marcy May Marlene" the transition between imagination and present worked effortlessly, in Babycall it felt like a cheat to me. It felt just as a device to keep me confused right up to the end. Mainly because it's just filmed in a very plain way like in "Dead Man's shoes". I wish they had more visual ideas, for example in "Let's talk about Kevin" or in "Martha...". The ending I found pretty disappointing because it's basically the typical art-house dramatic curve -- namely going downhill. Death is always the easy way out whereas an open ending with two troubled people would have worked better.