MOVIE REVIEW
North Face (2008)
Majestic Filmverleih
"North Face" can pass as a horror film. It takes place over a short mountain climbing expedition, which doesn't much sound like fun. There is something tall you can fall off of. There is no easy way to get up without nearly slipping and falling to your death. There are things like rocks and avalanches which can drop on you. Your ropes can cut your hands, your gloves can get lost so you get frostbite, you rest where you can without hot food or a place to lie down and you can't fall asleep so you don't freeze. Some vacation! So the drama of "North Face" is there just in the premise. But the 1936 setting means the climbers are working in the same type of clothes we all have laying around at home – one of them wears a flatcap, for pity's sake – and there is no high-tech solution to their basic problems.
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MOVIE REVIEW
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)
Constantin Film
Bloody hell – that about sums up the life of a terrorist on the run, whether today or in post-war Germany. The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, orchestrated a reign of terror from the early 1970s to really not very long ago. Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtrau, the boyfriend in "Run Lola Run") liked to smash things up, while Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck, the heroine in "The Lives of Others") was the respected lefty journalist who crossed over into terrorism under the thrall of Baader and his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek, the sensible friend in the under-appreciated "Aimee & Jaguar"), who provided the theoretical justification. These three very real people gave up their children and any semblance of a normal life so they could – and I find myself unable to sum up what they wanted to achieve in a polite little sentence. What they really wanted to do, under a whole heap of fancy justifications, was fuck shit up.
Continue reading “New German Film Picks at Yet Another Old National Scab” »
