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Ash vs Evil Dead (2015)
First Episode
I just saw the premiere episode of Ash vs Evil Dead and to sum it all up there's just one thing to say: Groovy .
Without getting into spoiler territory you will be treated with a lot of handmade special effects, just a little CGI, the main character we're all used to, great camera work and an interesting plot. My thanks to Sam Raimi. Every minute of the first episode was a thrill, mixed with a lot of fan service and enough new material to be interested in more. And it just had the right amount of madness the movie trilogy had.
Even with Raimi not returning for other episodes in this season I have high hopes for a fun series with a lot of action 80's style. Now I'm somehow not willing to return to The Walking Dead - no chainsaws.
My recommendation: 9 out of 10. Time to dance.
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
The better future of our childhood since 21st October 2015...
Finally we are Back To The Future. And Part II of the movie franchise is still the better version of our childhoods future. Four years after the great success of the first "Back to the Future" film, Director Robert Zemeckis released the first of the two sequels in 1989 - just titled "Back to the Future Part II".
After Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) correct the time-line by traveling to 1955 in the first film, "Back To The Future Part II" starts immediately where the first movie left off. Marty McFly, along with his girlfriend Jennifer and Dr Emmett Brown, travel to 2015 to correct a few glitches in the McFly family's future. They think they've fixed things, but when they return home to the year 1985, they discover the present has changed and not for the better. So, it's off to 1955 for another set of adventures and the chance to put things right. Like the first part the end of the flick sets the plot for the next part.
A throwaway line provided at the end of the first Back to the Future provides the basis of the plot for "Back to the Future Part II". It's intended to be far darker than its predecessor and serves as a bleak middle part to the franchise - like "The Empire Strikes Back" was to "Star Wars".
Robert Zemeckis pioneered a few production tricks during the filming, including the notion of filming two concurrent sequels to keep productions costs lowered and using motion control technology to have the same actors interact with each other. Part III was released just a few months later in 1990.
The movie itself has a ton of plot holes, differences from its predecessor in terms of continuity and a lot of other flaws. But what makes it special, for me and a lot of other people who grew up in the 80s, is its nostalgic factor. The general tone along with weird ideas like the Hoverboard, clever dialogs and the great performances by Christopher Lloyd or Michael J. Fox provide an amusing comedy. Not more but also not less. It's not like the first film but it had a well earned impact on pop culture and it was one of the first movies I remember seeing in theaters - like "Ghostbusters 2" or "Indiana Jones 3" the movie just resembles childhood for me. I even had a radio-play version on cassette tape.
After we reached the future on October 21st 2015 one can still realize the creative potential it had commenting on pop culture of the 80s. Some things were a little optimistic, such as flying cars oder the self tying shoes, but the movie got one thing completely right: the future will always have a fascination of certain decades such as the 80s. Call it "retro".
My final verdict is 8 out of 10 - but only when viewed with holographic glasses and a Pepsi Perfect.
Meine Tochter Anne Frank (2015)
Sad, dead and empty...
The attempt to reimagine the fate of "Anne Frank" in a movie quickly degenerates to a demo reel of actress Mala Emde, full of artificial emotion and watchable only for the sake of the historic character.
What is the point of this movie presented in the fashion of a cheap History-Channel production? The actors give solid bad performances, expectable, but not at all comparable to the praise the movie got before its release all over the media. Character development does not take place in any scene - without knowing the historical characters it is impossible for the audience to care what's happening. It is not enough just to mention the horrible things that happen to Anne in real life, a movie has to build up an emotional relation between characters and the viewer. The narrative structure is non-linear, nice idea, but also nothing innovative. The camera nicely follows the characters around, relying on a semi-total perspective the whole time - one begs for falling asleep. An example: Every time the movie wants to show Anne is thinking about a boy she is falling in love with the director uses a cheesy-romanticized recourse to the visual aesthetics of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And the most important rule of an awful movie is of course to use sad music when it wants to make the viewer emotionally invested. That's possible but used way to often here.
You always feel like you've already seen this movie. All sinks into monotony, the name and the fate of Anne are merely a vehicle for self-expression of the production team, from the director, the main cast up to the sound editor. Before the premiere of the movie the media praised the movie because it would show the father of Anne as a greater plot point than he ever was in any other movie. After watching it that really makes me ask the question, if anyone of the critics ever saw another screen adaptation. Even the rather conventional version "The Diary of Anne Frank" from 1959 and its remake from 1980, show the character of the father in detail. And lead actress Emde as Anne Frank is not even comparable to the performances of Millie Perkins or Melissa Gilbert, no matter how touched and moved she shows herself during numerous marketing interviews. No, being 18 is not a qualification for an actress, a try is not enough, not on this important topic, poor dramatic performance and type casting are all that stays in this case. And the sleazy plot, who ultimately betrayed the hiding place is as uninteresting as the fact what Hitler has said to his dog on the afternoon of 04/13/1937. Anyone who focuses on such details does not understand the topic at all - why people betray people in need. But that's too much abstraction for a bad movie like this.
Who was the target audience of this film? Those who have not heard the name Anne Frank? There are too few facts and it loses itself completely in his narrative dilettantism. People who already have some knowledge? The story makes the viewer actually lower his head in sadness, but the dramatic presentation of the scenes destroys any emotional attachment - the very important eye witnesses are carelessly inserted between the scenes, the cut nearly implies they are a disturbing element. Since the director quickly wants to show the young and attractive main actress in the bathtub.
Topic 10/10 Movie 1/10
Anyone who wants to see a cinematic acceptable implementation of the topic, watch to the mentioned version of "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959, directed by George Stevens).
Better Call Saul (2015)
Better Call Saul surprises early...
An absolute recommendation for the new series "Better Call Saul" from AMC. The spin-off to the award winning series "Breaking Bad" has me absolutely hooked with creative camera work, a visually interesting style and a perfect fitting soundtrack. That's to be expected from the team around creator Vince Gilligan - but from the first few minutes the series manages to give us a likable main character, portrayed perfectly by Bob Odenkirk, presented as much deeper and more credible than he ever was in Breaking Bad. Saul Goodman is a minor character in the predecessor, almost a comic relief, but in "Better Call Saul" he offers real development opportunities for the plot. And although the audience knows that he will develop from James Morgan McGill to the known Saul Goodman during the series, the authors succeed in making the viewer curious how it will happen. In Germany you'll probably will again have to wait for a long time in vain to watch it in any form - Netflix initially remains the only option. At Berlinale 2015 film festival, the series was presented with great success to a live audience.
Night Will Fall (2014)
A view on the Holocaust touched by Hitchcock
'German Concentration Camp Factual Survey' was a powerful Holocaust documentary that spent decades in limbo for very dubious reasons. Filmed at the end of World War II, it was only recently completed in a full-length restoration by London's Imperial War Museum. The project has long been part of forgotten movie history, partly because directing legends Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder were both involved in creating it.
The completed documentary adds Brett Ratner and Stephen Frears as producers. The director is André Singer, whose own production credits include multiple Werner Herzog projects and 'The Act of Killing'.
In the spring of 1945, with victory in sight, Allied forces encountered the full horror of the Nazi concentration camps as gained more and more ground. The liberation of slave labor and extermination camps including Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Buchenwald were recorded by traumatized military film crews from the UK, the US and Russia. The horrifying images they collected of corpses and mass graves shocked the world.
Under the command of British director Sidney Bernstein, the footage was shipped back to London as raw material for a film designed to inform about the cruelty of the Nazi regime, especially among ordinary Germans who still claimed ignorance of mass murder next door. Bernstein assembled a team including writer and future government minister Richard Crossman. Hitchcock also took a break from his Hollywood career to offer suggestions on style of the film. Billy Wilder edited some of the footage into a 22-minute newsreel-style short for U.S. audiences, called 'Death Mills'. But by the fall of 1945, as the political situation changed in the eyes of the British government, Bernstein's work-in-progress was quietly shelved by the UK government. Though clips from Bernstein's incomplete documentary were permitted to be shown during the Nuremberg trials, it remained unfinished for almost 70 years.
The documentation 'Night Will Fall' fills in the back story of the film, from its battlefield origins to its restoration process. Singer and his team blend archive footage and contemporary interviews with elderly military veterans, members of the original film crews, historians and Holocaust survivors, including Branko Lustig, producer of Schindler's List. Wilder appears briefly in library clips. Hitchcock makes does his to be expected cameo. The documentary was already part of Berlinales' 2014 "Work in progress" - section.
As an important historical and educational document, 'Night Will Fall' is unquestionably a must see. A little more investigation into the backstage machinations that forced the shelving of the original footage would also have been welcome but nevertheless the film is filled with shocking truth that always is in danger to be ignored.