Toni Erdmann blends comedy and pathos, and is surreal in circumstance, yet realist in performance. Inventive filmmaking that sets out to confound expectations, and works most of the time.
Tag Archives: German films
Phoenix movie review
Featuring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf
Director: Christian Petzold
Screenwriters: Christian Petzold, Harun Farocki; adapted from Hubert Monteilhet’s novel Le Retour des Cendres
Movie Website: www.phoenix-der-film.de/
2014-15 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Somerville: 30 March-5 April, 7.30pm
Joondalup Pines: 7-12 April, 7.30pm
Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: Some obvious credibility issues, but the film amounts to much more than the narrative, culminating in an emotional and dramatic powerhouse of a conclusion.
Review:
Phoenix director Christian Petzold’s previous film Barbara, set in pre-unification East Germany, was one of the best movies of the 2013-14 Perth International Film Festival. Phoenix is atmospherically and thematically similar, featuring a grim setting – in this case, a decimated post-war Berlin – and a female lead character (again played by the superb Nina Hoss) who finds a way to transcend her bleak circumstances by reclaiming her dignity and humanity against oppressive odds. Continue reading Phoenix movie review
More Than Honey Movie Review
Featuring: Fred Jaggi, John Miller, Heidrun Singer, Liane Singer, Randolf Menzel
Director: Markus Imhoof
Directors of Photography: Attila Boa, Jörg Jeshel
Website: www.ciber.science.uwa.edu.au/blog/
Reviewer: rolanstein
One-word summation: enthralling
Review:
More Than Honey was one of the most popular films featured at Cinema Paradiso’s recent German Film Festival, and for good reason. This is an extraordinary documentary from Oscar-nominated director Markus Imhoof that drops the viewer into the bee universe via some truly spectacular micro-photography, revealing some astonishing and sometimes profoundly disturbing details about these intriguing and vitally important insects. Continue reading More Than Honey Movie Review