Movies I've recently seen

• Asterix und das Geheimnis des Zaubertranks
• An Asterix adventure that is not based on one of the comics, the graphics remind me of Pixar movies - not really 3D, more like 2½D, and lovingly done. No boars are being (visibly) hunted, and a girl plays a major role - like in the later books, the story adapts to the changing times.

• Death on the Nile
• Kenneth Branagh takes a lot of liberties with the characters of the Agatha Christie novels he directs, so anyone who is well familiar with the book (or the 1978 movie) will be a bit confused by this one. Luckily, here Poirot does not have to run like he had to in Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express, and it's not a remake of the old movie, either. What would be the point?

• The Hateful 8
• If 90% of all characters in a movie are dead at the end, it's a Tarantino movie. A Western makes this just about believable, and the way the penny drops on some of the protagonists, and how the pre-story is told afher that, still make it interesting to watch.

• Sophia, der Tod und ich
• A personified Death has 3 minutes to claim a live; after that, the rules become unstuck. And if Death then comes to enjoy the company of the living, all bets are off. But when 24 hours later another Death is dispatched to finish the work, and can't do it either, a fight to the death (of the living, naturally) ensues that only one Death can win. But arch angel Michaela and the big guy G have their backs, and finally everything is resolved to the satisfaction of everybody (the newly departed may quibble with that, but that's the breaks).

• A Haunting in Venice
• While Kenneth Branagh's take on Murder on the Orient Express was both unnecessary (the original is perfectly fine, thank you very much) and strange (Poirot does not run and climb), this extremely free adaptation of WikiPedia:Hallowe'en_Party fares better. Just don't expect a lot of Venetian backdrops: the film is set almost entirely inside a house.

• Girl on the Train
• Lots of books employ interlocking timelines that hop back and forth these days; GOTT was one of the first ones to use an unreliable narrator (an impressionable drunk). The movie adaptation captures well how her memory improves over time as she dives deeper into the story, and gets herself and others accused of murder due to her changing stories. This is a book adaptation that actually works well.

• Wir sind die Neuen
• Three 50-somethings reprise their student day flat sharing when one of them gets priced out of her apartment. To their surprise, some students doing the same in another flat have a very different idea of what that means these days. But longtime life experience, as well as learning on both sides, helps overcome the difficulties. Not quite hilarious, but especially the young people are so overdone that it's a lot of fun to watch.

• Rehragout Rendezvous
• The latest in a series of movies about a cop in a small village, this is decidedly low-brow humor. While entertaining, I don't think I'll want to see the other ones. Ah, the things you do when your plans fall through, and you're stuck in a place where nothing much else is happening during the summer season...

• Blackfish
• Having read about the death of WikiPedia:Dawn_Brancheau some time ago, I was eager to see this documentary. It's not as polished as documentaries generally are these days; it has a point to make (about the cruelty of keeping orcas in captivity, and the dangers of humans working with them under such circumstances), and does so by focusing on one particular specimen, WikiPedia:Tilikum_(orca), that was involved in several fatalities and the WikiPedia:SeaWorld show built around their group of orcas. It's an interesting watch, although parts of it are disputed as being tendentious.

• Despicable Me 2
• Even though Gru changes from being a world class villain to being a world class father, he can occasionally show off his darker side, battle minion idiocy, and rescue the world... all the while turning even further away from villainy by falling in love. I keep forgetting that these films are for kids, not adults.

• Mein fabelhaftes Verbrechen
• A struggling actress takes responsibility for a murder she did not commit and manages -with the help of her lawyer roommate- to get exonerated on grounds of self defence. Subsequently, she finds fame and fortune. That works so well that the actual killer -an once famous actress now struggling to get back into rotation- wants to do the same and demands her crime back. Very much over the top, and hilarious to watch in its twists and turns.

• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
• After 40 years, the series comes to an end with Indiana Jones retiring, but not before having to battle some leftover Nazis in the Sixties and discovering that time travel is possible (hint: Archimedes and the WikiPedia:Antikythera_mechanism are involved). This one is right up there with the 1st and 3rd parts of the series, and a worthy conclusion. Chapeau and goodbye, Dr Jones!

• Asteroid City
• Wes Anderson movies are often on the strange side, and this one pushes the envelope even further. While there is a plot, it doesn't seem to matter as much the depiction of the events and the set along the way. Those are delightful, as is the star-studded cast Anderson movies are known for.

• The Men Who Stare at Goats
• A satire loosely based on a book that purports to investigate actual events (resulting in the WikiPedia:First_Earth_Battalion manual) the film falls short on the comedy, except on a rather shallow level. The actual events do not seem to have measured up to much of anything, either. So on the whole it was a bit pointless.

• Living
• Bill Nighy seems to have stepped straight out of The Bookshop into this movie, as a man realizing that even in old age there's still more to life than not caring about anyone else. Set in Fifties London, the story is well told, and weaves in bureaucratic inertia and British customs at the time.

• Loriots große Trickfilmrevue
• A lot of Loriot's animated cartoons have been well-know for decades, but this collection unearths various early works that I hadn't known. For that reason alone, as well as for the memories of all the classics, is the film worthwhile watching. I particularly liked the one he did for Deutsche Post, introducing the new 5 digit postal code scheme in 1993

• Air
• The story of how Nike got to sign 18 year old WikiPedia:Michael_Jordan to a shoe contract when he came out of high school, created the Air Jordan brand, and went on to make a lot of money for everyone involved, while Converse and Adidas -both initially more favored to sign Jordan- bit the dust. Fast-paced and fun to watch, with lots of recognizable Eighties backdrops.

• Der Pfau
• This one is somewhere between a comedy and a satire of modern business, making fun of team building exercises, the corporate rat race, distraught people who don't have reception on their phones and much else, all set within the wider mystery of a murdered peacock and a missing goose in a remote Scottish castle.

• Ocean's Thirteen
• In this sequel we're back to dealing with one casino, but not robbing it, but making sure it fails quickly after opening. But as in Twelve, it's too over the top - too much is done, and too little of it is credible to make it truly enjoyable.

• Ocean's Twelve
• This one feels a bit rushed, as multiple break-ins need to be carried out and explained instead of everything building up to one big heist. It's amazing how the group gets their information, and is able to act on it -including getting all necessary equipment, for example, for lifting an entire house- in a very short time frame. You get the feeling that it isn't actually a documentary about entering and stealing.

• Limbo (Berlinale)
• A white cop investigates a 20 year old murder of an aboriginal girl in a mining community living on scraps of its former boom times. The unsolved murder left the community in limbo, as did the long ago mining rush. The black and white colors nicely do the subject and the community justice. I liked it, but an aboriginal subject alone is not nearly enough to win anything at the Berlinale these days.

• Bis ans Ende der Nacht (Berlinale)
• Nice take on the pressures heaped upon convicts hoping to secure a lighter sentence by becoming undercover police informers. Being a trans woman who otherwise would have to serve time in a mens' prison doesn't make it easier. And having your former lover -who still has conflicted feelings about you- as your police intermediary makes it harder still. So it's perfect Berlinale material, where Thea Ehre's performance won a well-deserved Silver Bear for acting. And it's good to see the pressured and abused informer triumphant at the end.

• Triangle of Sadness
• A yacht full of super rich people sinks, and the surviors -stranded on an island- depend on the survival skills of their former toilet cleaner. It's easy to satirize the super rich, as well as the reversal of fortunes after the disaster, and this film does so with gusto. It's not for the squeamish, it's not above cheap jokes, it's not above farce, but somehow it brings the various strands together in a capitalism critique that bites.

• Emil und die Detektive
• The original 1931 movie version of Erich Kästners's famous children's book features a thoroughly evil-looking thief, and a bunch of well-behaved kids whose worst trait is making fun of the local policeman. Various Berlin landmarks serve as backdrops as they looked back then - a city now lost in time.

• A League of Their Own
• The fictionalized history of the beginnings of the WikiPedia:All-American_Girls_Professional_Baseball_League, the first women's baseball league, which was founded in 1943 when many male players were at war. It touches on numerous themes like how women fit into society, how they view themselves, how society views them, and what they want from life - all from the viewpoint of 1943.

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Movies I've seen in the past: MoviesIn2022 - MoviesIn2021 - MoviesIn2020 - MoviesIn2019 - MoviesIn2018 - MoviesIn2017 - MoviesIn2016 - MoviesIn2015 - MoviesIn2014 - MoviesIn2013 - MoviesIn2012 - MoviesIn2011 - MoviesIn2010 - MoviesIn2009 - MoviesIn2008 - MoviesIn2007 - MoviesIn2006 - MoviesIn2005 - MoviesIn2004