Lost in This Film

USA, 2003

Lost in Translation

Directed and written by Sofia Coppola

★ Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson

        

Two people meet and spend a short time together, feeling they have known each other for life. And after that time is over, the two part and carry on with their respective lives, perhaps never to meet again.

Climbing to the Tops: Fight Club (1999) in 10 Thoughts

1. I think I like this. The narration is cool, Edward Norton has the perfect voice and face for this seemingly frustrated middle-aged guy-next-door. I like the IKEA-animation-scene too. 

Oh, and there's Helena Bonham Carter. Everyone says this is their favourite performance of hers... might be true, I mean, look at her hair. Hair like that is a sure indicator of a great role. 

2. Although this is starting out pretty well, I'm kind of scared that it won't be as good as everyone says. I mean, sure it's good, but great, amazing - fantastic? But it would be nice for a change, to see something definitely and univocally mind-blowing. Most things I've seen lately are good but you know... somewhere in the 8-area. I want to be able to say "THIS IS A 10!" (or almost a ten) right after a movie has finished.

3. Okay, maybe this is the movie I've been waiting for. I feel... newborn, in a way. I want to fight somebody. Hey, anyone here to fight? Oh, I'm just alone in my room...

SO WHAT? I'll just fight an imaginary friend... huah... HAH... HAYA! Nice shot! WOOOHOO!

... Ah, that felt good. So now, what's going on in the movie...?

4. You know, the worst thing about borrowing DVDs at the library (I know, it can't match with the fact that it's free), is when it F***ing doesn't work. Or if one scene doesn't work, and you have to jump over to the next one. I HATE THAT!

5. My initial assumption was that Brad Pitt was going to be the eye-candy of this movie, but actually Edward Norton develops a strange attraction too, especially in those fight scenes. I mean, he's quite different from Pitt, but there's something about him. At least in this movie. And of course his character is awesomely written, but I don't want to spoil things for the people who haven't seen this yet. (I know you're out there, I saw you when I was out there myself, until yesterday night!).

6. Is David Fincher a God or something? I didn't realize until I saw this one, how amazing a director he actually is! Although I liked The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo a lot, and truly love The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I was never completely convinced by his greatness. His immense greatness!

7. Oh, twists... the best thing about good movies, the worst thing about bad ones. It's all about finding the right balance between unexpected/ awesome and unrealistic/weird. Guess what, this one belongs to the first kind.

8. When this movie came out, I was four years old. I wish I had seen it on the big screen! But you know, I really thought it was newer. It doesn't look old. Not at all, actually - it looks AWESOME!

9. This film shouldn't be my current treasure. It should be my... current reason to live. Current life philosophy. Current... current source of awesomeness!

10. This isn't the most well-written or insightful article I've ever written, so I can just stop pretending and really tell you what I have to say: I don't have anything to say. Fight Club is awesome, and people have said that before. It's one of the best films I've ever seen, and people have said that before. It maybe changed my life, at least a little, my view on life. And people have said that before. 

So let's celebrate and say it again: LET'S TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB - TELL EVERYBODY ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!

The Final Word:

(Introducing the new ratings system - for more, have a look at the sidebar).

It's not just about the costumes.

Denmark, 2012

En kongelig affære

(Int. title: „A Royal Affair“)

           

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

Written by Rasmus Heisterberg, Nikolaj Arcel

★ Mads Mikkelsen, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Alicia Vikander

        

Who would have thought that the co-writer of the Danish slapstick-animation Rejsen til Saturn would turn out to be such a great director? Arcel, who is also to be applauded for his screenplay for the original first Millennium film Män som hatar kvinnor, clearly waisted his talent on that annoying movie we just recently saw in class. But as I go on looking through his filmography, I find that he has written the screenplay of one of my favourite films as a child, Klatretøsen (Catch That Kid), so I guess Rejsen til Saturn was one of those bloopers everyone has to experience once in a while.

A Royal Affair revolves around the Danish King Christian VII, who is known to be mentally ill, while the politics are mainly controlled by a council. Christian VII marries the English princess Caroline Mathilde, who becomes immensely disappointed by her marriage to the partying and straying king. However, everything changes when Christian hires the German Joseph Struensee as his private physician. Struensee brings the heretic ideas of the reconnaissance to the Danish court and a tragic love story develops between him and Queen Caroline.

A Film the World Has Been Waiting For

Norway, 2011

Få meg på, for faen 

(Int. Title: „Turn Me On, Dammit")

Directed and written by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen

★ Helene Bergsholm, Malin Bjørhovde, Henriette Steenstrup, Matias Myren

      

Since its showing at several festivals last year, this little norwegian gem of a film has been making its rounds through the societies of film gourmets, of course including the filmic blogosphere. I was instantly hooked when I first heard of it, because it was almost too good to be true: a film that revolves around the confusing thing that is (female) teenage sexuality, and that in a realistic and non-vulgar way!

What makes Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara a perfect summer movie

For the record: I'm perfectly aware of the fact that 1) perfection is subjective, and 2) I don't have a clue what makes a good movie. A film with similar ingredients as Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara might not have worked anywhere near as good, and maybe there are people somewhere in this world, who didn't fall in love head over heels with this film.
But as we continue, I want you to forget all these thoughts and look at Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara from the viewpoint of a summer-craving, adventure-seeking, latinophilic (there's no such word, is there?) fan, and just sense the love...

Success factor #1: Setting

Against the System

A Wednesday!

India, 2008

Directed and written by Neeraj Pandey

★ Naseeruddin Shah, Anupam Kher, Jimmy Shergill

 The first half of A Wednesday seems like a mixture of the most basic, well-known, mainstream terrorism thriller elements; a police officer receives a call from a stranger telling that he has planted bombs in various places of a big city (Mumbai). The police officer wants a proof, he gets it. The stranger wants some terrorists with muslim names to be released.
And that's where the film gets interesting. I don't want to say much about the plot from that point on, except that this is not your typical Indian terrorism film at all.

Innocence. Desire. Suicide.

USA, 1999

Directed and written by Sofia Coppola

★ Kirsten Dunst, A.J. Cook, Hanna Hall, Leslie Hayman, Chelse Swain

      

Much has been said about Sofia Coppola's directorial debut, and what I have heard has in particular been full of praise - even love - for The Virgin Suicides. If you want to read some more of that, stay tuned.

My Movie Year: 2009

LIST OF ALL ENTRIES

My movie year is a grand blog meme hosted by Andy, the Fandango Groover.
As a participant, I am supposed to present to you my personal favourite year of movies and present my Top 5 movies of that year.
It hasn't been an easy choice, though I knew I'd choose a year after 1995 (my birth year). Many cinema enthusiasts praise the good old times when everything was better, but I like to focus on cinema itself and not the decades. You may ask, why I watch a lot of newer films then, and the answer is - this is my time. This is my youth and my life, and of course I find sometimes find it easier and more interesting to watch newer films.
I do love old films, and lately I've been watching a lot of black and white, even silent films - but many of them still aren't able to match with colour talkies, in my opinion.

The way I chose my year wasn't too hard though - I "just" (took some time) looked out which year was most frequent in my 100 Favourite Films list, and the result was... 2009.

Why

I watched a lot of good movies in 2009, and I went to the cinema much more than in the previous years. I don't know if I became more interested in cinema because of this, or if I did this because I became more interested in cinema - all I know is that 2009 was the year when cinema started not just being entertainment for me, but also an art form that I came to appreciate more than most other art forms.

I also saw many good films of 2009 in the years after that, and this is why I chose 2009 to be MY MOVIE YEAR. All of these films are in the Top 50 of my upcoming updated 100 Favourite Films list, and you can read about them in the current list.

The Films

in alphabetic order

A SINGLE MAN

by Tom Ford

BRIGTH STAR

by Jane Campion

DEV.D

by Anurag Kashyap

SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT

by Detlev Buck

UP

by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson

---

Blood. Music. Ryan.

USA, 2011

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

Written by Hossein Amini

★ Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston

        

Even though DRIVE has only been a moderate success at the box office, it's already considered a cult classic by its fans. Once they saw Ryan Gosling driving around in L.A. at night time to the blooming electronic beats of Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx, they were hooked. So was I.

While few films truly live out their ideas, DRIVE has its own spirit that shines through in every single scene. The extreme brutality may seem arty to some viewers, to me it was just perfect. A little shocking at times, but nevertheless perfectly right.
The complete contrast to the brutality is existent in many calm and slow scenes, and both sides are connected in the character of the Driver, who is a quiet yet two-fisted person. If you haven't been falling for Ryan Gosling yet, this movie will certainly make you. Ryan is the greatest star of the movie, taking the spotlight from every single one of the excellent supporting actors and actresses. His character is best described in the lyrics of one of the hyper-cool songs of the soundtrack: „A real human being, and a real hero“.
Though he shows traces of humanity by falling in love with Carey Mulligan's character and being wounded a few times, the Driver is an invincible hero. Maybe it's this utterly cool hero that I've been missing in many films of the recent times, at least he's one of the main reasons why I loved DRIVE. The way his silver jacket with the golden scorpion shines in the light, the dark sunglasses that hide his beautiful blue eyes, and his calm smile... absolutely everything about him is so perfect it hurts.

It is hard for me to write about a film I love, and therefore, this review isn't very long. I want to apologize for this, but the words just won't come... it's only emotions, sounds and images in my head. The pink letters, the short yet always perfectly fitting dialogue, the moment when me and my mum couldn't bear the absurd brutality anymore and were caught by a fit of laughter in the theater... which, in case you would like to know, was after one of the gangsters hit a fork into the eye of another gangster.

The haunting alternation of silence and slaughter, and the moment when everything was over and I realized how outstanding this movie is.

I always fear to be too impulsive rating movies, therefore the rating is a bit lower than I  would actually like it to be.

What I learned from Lone Scherfig's An Education

UK/ USA, 2009

Directed by Lone Scherfig

Written by Nick Hornby and Lynn Barber

★ Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard

   

Contains spoilers

The message of Lone Scherfig's acclaimed coming-of-age movie is neither surprising nor very eye-opening. Most of us female creatures have heard it at least a dozen times while growing up, from our parents, teachers, the magazines and so on.

We're fortunate. We take our possibilities for granted. We need to fight harder. We need to be able to survive without men's help.

When I hear the expression "early marriage", I think of it as negative thing, something I wish I would never hear again. A picture pops up in my head, showing a young woman, doomed to stay in the house and prepare dinner while two of the five babies are screaming in the background. The highlight of her day is meeting the other housewives at the playground and talking about the latest episode of some soap opera.

But what if early marriage and being a housewife is equal to „listening to Jazz music and going to Paris!“? Now that sounds a lot more fun than sticking your nose into books for years and then working 9-5 while trying to sustain your friend- and other relationships.

What AN EDUCATION managed to do was make me relate to an intelligent girl who wants to abandon her studies in favor of the fun-seeming idea of marriage. And the fact that the film succeeded in doing that is by itself pretty amazing.

Of course, sitting in your cosy armchair, you are forced to question the happiness and bright-looking future of this young girl. Something has to be wrong, life is never as easy as it seems. Which is the reason why most people wouldn't have chosen to abandon their studies in real life, but if the filmic protagonist hadn't chosen to abandon her studies, there'd be one great movie less in the world.

And let's be honest: who has never dreamed of throwing all those school books into the garbage? Who has never dreamed of  taking the easy way, thinking it'd be different in your case, it'd work out in your case? I have.

Without stories like AN EDUCATION, a lot of people might think that way, and a lot of people would take a decision they would be happy about for one moment, but regret later.

You might say now, that Jenny (the protagonist) could have continued her wonderful life full of fun, if only she had ignored the fact that her fiancé was already married. 

Indeed, she could have done this - but it would have made her a cold, heartless shell.
"Your heart can be broken", the film seems to be telling us, "so don't ever rely on the things it holds dear".
Be independent, you can still find love and give away your heart. Just keep your shell safe, so that your heart doesn't become homeless once it's broken. 

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the one of the least romantic and most inspiring lessons I have learned from the movies.