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patagundo
Reviews
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
What nature is.
This film contains a lot of interesting details, but in this commentary I want to focus on the main impact it had on me:
I think that in western civilizations, nature is seemingly tamed and dominated by man. What we understand by the word "nature" often refers to nothing more than a small domesticated forest outside of the city or a meadow with cows grazing. It is an environment where man has put his order, his reason upon.
By watching this movie and hearing one of the interviewed scientists talk about Antarctica as being a living, change-producing organism, I envisioned what nature must have been for us once, and still is: a huge, overwhelming live form, following a reason which, to me, seems superior to our own.
I am glad I watched this movie for the short glimpse it gave me at something that is bigger and more reasonable than ourselves.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
No new ideas in this movie
I can't say I enjoyed this movie. From the first second on, it seemed to me as if I had seen all of this far too many times. Super-smart FBI/CIA/NSA/whatever agents standing in front of big screen monitors, assisted by computer specialists, busy in their hight-tech control center and saying things like "Find me his last known address and cell phone number NOW, go, go!". Then, a completely superior rogue agent who knows every step of his enemies in advance. Who can handle every enemy, no matter their numbers.
The faces of all these protagonists stay mostly emotionless, even in the toughest of situations - this is probably supposed to cast a light of professionalism on them, while it only gave me the feeling of watching a bunch of robots doing their work. I think there is a lot of hype about "Supremacy" and "Ultimatum", while "Identity" was okay to watch.
I like this genre of movies, but it needs new ideas and approaches.
Kurz und schmerzlos (1998)
Unseen in German cinema
I was living in St. Pauli, Hamburg at the end of 1998 when this movie came to a cinema on the Reeperbahn. Then, one evening, I met Faith Akin and the main characters of the movie on this very street, and I congratulated them. I told them I had watched the movie three times already, which was not true, since I had only seen it twice, but decided to go and watch it for a third time, which I did, even though I had little money. But I had to watch this movie over and over again, because I had not expected to ever see anything similar from a Germany-born director. The direct, vital, unpretentious acting and the authenticity of the settings and the language were something that I could't get enough of. Ralph Herforth has never been so convincing. It is one of these movies that reveal new details every time you watch them. At times, the movie seems to become very "turkish" and even over-sentimental, at other times, it is just world-class, as for an example in the post-office scene with Costa and his "awakening". To me, this is maybe THE best movie of Faith Akin so far.