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Reviews
Am Ende kommen Touristen (2007)
An amazing piece of (hi)story-telling
"Am Ende kommen Touristen" (literally: "In the end it's tourists coming") is more than a film about Auschwitz today. Actually, it is not even a film about Auschwitz. It is a film about how the abyss of the past transcends into the problems of the present. It is a story of trans-generation and trans-national relations that gain extra-dynamics by the presence of the historical weight of the concentration camp of Auschwitz.
In this sense, the film is an amazing piece of story-telling because it catches the hesitations and irritations that we all - especially in my generation - have when dealing with our past knowing that in fact we are handling the questions and relations of today. Additionally, "Am Ende kommen Touristen" has a very subtle way of mixing irony and cynicism, attention and ignorance, anger and joy, closeness and distance without making it feel constructed or misleading. It is not very innovative in terms of film-making or cinematic narrative (therefore 9/10) but it is a very honest story with fondly drawn characters, respect for past and present, and an appropriate ending that is really worth seeing - even more than once!
Les enracinés (2005)
Age doesn't need words
By chance I saw this amazing little piece tonight. Calling it a "documentary" would be to much of a word for this fine painting in the costume of a film. It didn't even last an hour, but it took me away in this time like it was much more. The 5 old people shown there are left as they are, uncommented and filmed with a camera that hardly moves as do the old people. Having spent years where they are, in their old houses, alone or not, they don't talk much and it seems as if this wasn't even necessary. Only little pieces of their history are revealed by what they say and between scarce lines you can read that living at the same place, working at the same place, thinking about the same things for decades can be positive or negative, happy or sad, lonely or not lonely - nothing is predefined. We follow two old women, on old man and an old couple through moments of their life, cooking, sitting, walking, working, smiling. And we learn nothing but that they are and how they spend and spent their time.
Through this film, we do not profit from complexity and interpretations. We profit from simplicity and silence. It is a film about aged humans, entrenched into their place and life. It is a film about the worthiness of silent observation. And it is definitely worth watching.
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
They did everything wrong they could.
"They did everything wrong they could", is really the only thing to say about the film.
All old characters have been reduced. No new character is really build up. No relationship between characters is drawn in a clear way. Most of the dialogs are trashy. A consistent story is not told, no climax produced, it is just a number of moments that somehow belong together without forming a whole. Some of the powers you can see do not seem very clear, their strength looks more like being a matter of chance than of constance. The film is much less artful than the films before. The camera is used nicely on some shots but misses the focus and perspectives that make the difference between art and craft. Some nice graphical tricks to render the mutant powers are also there, but they are also not focused and so not able to impress the viewer as they could in X1 and X2.
Dissatisfaction is left after leaving the film. We were three in the film and after we had left we all said the same. Knowing the original comic or not, we all felt that the story had been killed
The only thing you shouldn't do, even dissatisfied, is to leave the film before the end. And when I say end, I mean end.