Tag: German

Final Account was directed by Luke Holland, a man who likely have never heard of before. He has directed two documentaries before this one, in the 1993 and in 2000, and this one he finished production in the first half of 2020, after a decade of work and interviews. And then he passed away in June, soon after, before the documentary would premier anywhere.

That is very sad of course, but not the first time this has happened. Just sure hope it is good, you know?

Final Account actually has a very cheery subject matter. Nazis! A relic of the past and yet something so modern and relevant, yay.

Specifically, this documentary features interviews from German citizens who were part of Hitler’s Third Reich movement in Germany. Most of the people involved are dead now, it being 80 years ago roughly at this point. So the people who are still alive and who were involved tend to be the youth who were caught up in the movement, with their Hitler Youth camps and so on. I am sure their memories of World War II and all of that will be just swell.

Those are some weak ass Hitler salutes. What are you, kids?

There isn’t a lot to say when it comes to the plot of this documentary of course. Here are people who did some Nazi stuff, and here are their stories. Their reasoning behind getting involved. What they believed, or at least, what today they will say they believe. You aren’t going to get a lot of old people in here saying “Oh yeah, Hitler was the best, we should have won the war!” or anything like that. Instead we have people who have lived long lives since then, dealing with guilt, regret, sadness, and hopefully, growth.

Although some of their stories are quite powerful, and they are stories that should have been recorded down and preserved, it still doesn’t necessarily make a great documentary.

Documentaries should teach and put a spotlight on something happening or that happened in the world. It should feature people involved. And this one definitely does these things. But is the type of thing that makes a worth while watch for an hour and a half?

Really, this type of documentary is the type that you have to know you are getting in to. If this sounds like a good watch, you will likely enjoy it. If you couldn’t care any less about what these people have to say, then watching it won’t change your mind either.

I can think something is important, but not necessarily worth while documentary material. It could just be videos on YouTube. Or a collection of interviews in a book. But not really a theatrical experience one would worry about.

Never Look Away is a foreign film I would have never noticed if it wasn’t nominated for Oscars. Not only one Oscar, Foreign Film, but also Cinematography.

So I decided to watch this one in theaters instead of Happy Death Day 2U (which is getting good reviews?). I pulled into the lobby a good 30 minutes before showtime, not really sure what to expect, and then after I pulled out my phone to see the rough plot outline, I was shocked. Aghast. The run time of this movie is 3 hours and 6 minutes.

There is nothing wrong with a long run time. It is just something that you should know about before going into it. I was prepared for The Wolf of Wall Street, and Lincoln. I had napped ahead of time. But this is a time when I had nothing to help me keep myself awake or get going.

So instead I just ran around for 30 minutes hyping myself up. A film about art and Nazis does not usually seem like one that you would “hype” up about. And that explains why I went into the film like a strange excited little man.

Art! Paintings! Nazis! Annnnd MURDER!

When Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling) was a young lad, he lived with his extended family outside of the city of Dresden. It is the 1940’s, art is shunned if it isn’t realistic, and he wants to draw. He takes a liking to his free spirited aunt, Elisabeth May (Saskia Rosendahl) who teaches him to look for the truth in things, to live, to see the injustices around him.

And then she is eventually killed in a gas chamber. Not for being Jewish, but for having bad genes, schizophrenia they say, and they can’t let that pass on. Sucks!

Eventually Kurt grew up, still into art, and now Germany having lost the war. Germany is also split up, with him on the Eastern side, not yet a physical barrier to separate them. He gets into art school, learns to make murals and perfect realistic portraits and hates his life. This isn’t art. This isn’t important.

He needs to get to the west, to find out love, and truth, and beauty. Then he can maybe unlock his real potential.

Also starring Paula Beer, Sebastian Koch, Oliver Masucci, and Hanno Koffler.

Sure is a lot of pictures in this movie of a guy doing art. What a surprise!

This film is supposed to be a biography, except there is no artist named Kurt Barnert who fits the story. How can that be!?

It it actually based on the life of Gerhard Richter, who has similarities with the plot and the major paintings by the end, but it seems like Richter didn’t want this story to happen. Here is a really long article about it. It didn’t come out as inspired by a true story, but it is better to put this as a fictional story and just pretend it is all made up. Inspired by World War II, then we don’t have to worry about accuracy.

And this is a story that goes hard in a lot of ways. They show a lot, death, nakedness, and the struggles of art. It is a film about finding your true passions, and made with a lot of passion. I ended up having to run out to pee at some point (its long, remember), and was surprised it had already been over 2 hours. It didn’t drag in the slightest. A film about not the most exciting topics ended up being really entertaining.

It was about love. Achieving success. And not necessarily about revenge, but overcoming demons certainly.

A really strong film, but one I definitely won’t see again, for the obvious reasons.

The idea of Krampus, coming from a humble American, is fascinating. An evil Santa Clause? A beast that steals away naughty kids? Why worry about coal when your goddamn life can be on the line?

That is about as much as I really know about the idea. It was flirted with a bit in Rare Exports, we recently had the horror-comedy Krampus as well. It seems Krampus fever is hitting America stronger than ever, and we are eating it up.

Needless to say, I was very excited to be watching Greetings From Krampus, a documentary from the Austrian area, an actual source on their customs and belief of Krampus. How it has grown through the tiny villages and the national phenomenon that has grown for many to have a worthwhile sort of career in it as well.

Horny little buggers they are.

It turns out there is a lot I didn’t know about Krampus. Exciting! Did you know there were a lot of creatures like Krampus, that are not Krampus, but come out at the same time as Krampus? Krampus is basically a demonic pet of St. Nicholas. But they also have the Perchten, which are other humanoid esque creatures. And basically, they get weeks of celebration after the Krampus.

But for the most part, these things are celebrated with Krampus Run events. First of all, to get rid of all the past shenanigans where people would dress up and cause problems, the Krampus ideas were outlawed for some time. Only the ruralist villages still did it. But they had official troops who would get together, have rules, to dress up and do appropriate mischief for the holidays, and not just any weirdo in a mask. That way they have some form of checks and balance!

Anyways, basically each villages has a troupe, with some amount of members, to dress up, make their own costumes and masks and rules and funds as a part time job. They travel to these different Runs, where there could be 60-80 different troupes going through a special path while onlookers cheer and get spanked and whatever.

A huge event, many of them all in a few week span, while the rest of the time is spent making sure Krampus awareness happens. Like teaching kids that Krampus isn’t real and to know its a person in there and NOT use it as a tool to frighten kids into behaving.

Overall, there is a lot of useful information in this movie. However, what it lacks on is the lore itself. It does talk about it some, but I thought it would go a lot more into the lore aspects of it. This is basically Krampus Run, the movie. We see so many clips of them, and groups talking about them and their traditions. It is extremely repetitive, especially when it goes back to topics they covered 40 minutes prior.

Cool information, very unique, just not diverse enough and easily boring in the last half hour as you wonder how much longer it will be until finished.

[Editor’s Note: Apparently I watched a German version of the movie, and the movie is actually French. Whoops. Oh well, not changing all of my language specific references. Actually French!]

So, I had no idea that they were dubbing Ernest & Celestine, or else I might have waited a few weeks. But sure enough, end of February, there will be a dubbed version with a lot of big names playing key parts. Forest Whitaker, Paul Giamatti, William H. Macy, and Nick Offerman to name a few. I know those men!

Not personally, but I have heard of them. But I am left with a bunch of German speaking people. Mannn.

Oh well, the reason of course I am even watching this random animated movie, is that it happened to be nominated for Best Animated Film in the Oscars. To me, this was the one real shocker, because I had never heard of it before. But hey, why not give it a shot, it could be surprisingly awesome.

Shit, it has a bear that can play several instruments at once? Sign me up!

The cool thing about the German language, is at least 20% of it makes a little bit sense when hearing it, if you know English. A lot of cross over words, yo.

This story is about Eine kleine Maus, Celestine, und der grosse Bear, Ernest. I guess the only one you might not know there is grosse, which is big/large.

Celestine was an orphan Mouse, who wanted to draw and be an artist. They were told stories of the big scary bears, but she didn’t believe in them. Ernest is poor, and broke, living on the streets, barely enough food to survive.

Eventually, Celestine leaves her home, and gets a job in the bear city as a dentist intern. When a mouse loses one of their two main teeth, it will mean certain death, and they have started to steal teeth from bear cubs when they put them under their pillows, to help replace them.

Well, she gets punished for not getting a lot of teeth, and now she can’t return until she gets at least fifty teeth! She runs into Ernest, who of course, tries to eat her, but she is able to help him break into a candy shop in order to eat til he is full. They continue to run into each other, helping each other out with favors, until both of their respective communities see their cooperation and are disgusted.

HOW CAN A MOUSE AND A BEAR BE FRIENDS? HOW CAN THEY INTERACT? IT IS DANGEROUS, IT IS WRONG!

Read: Racism metaphors.

But clearly their friendship is a beautiful thing that should be celebrated! Oh, poor Celestine and Ernest, whatever will you do, with the cops coming after you, and a bunch of assholes trying to persecute you for doing no wrong?

Of course he will listen to her, if she sweet talks candy in his ear like that.

I ended up really liking the animation style here. Sure, it looks like a glorified Charmin commercial, and having bears doesn’t help that fact, but it was still very unique and interesting to watch.

The story itself was cute, but also really really straight forward. It had amusing moments, and a couple tense ones, but it is a simple story for kids.

You aren’t going to get Wall-E level storylines here. It is a nice story, a good story, and well done. It just doesn’t take any risks.

Ernest & Celstine is a story that will keep the family entertained for sure, just one that isn’t Best Animated Film of the year material.

Oooh. A foreign film. Not just any foreign film. A film from Switzerland, and spoken in German! This is a nice change up, given that all my other foreign films (but 1, Spanish) have been in an Asian language, and I actually know some German to better my experience. I especially liked that some of the subtitles weren’t translated, like when it popped up with the date, or how much time has passed. But since I understood it, I was like “OH MAN! I CAN READ MONTHS!”

Because of that, here is a non-relevant picture from the movie, that actually might not have happened.

Cargo is a sci-fi film, which means you know there might be some philosophical crazy stuff going on. It is in the 2200s, Earth is now inhabitable. Rhea is found as perfect new place to live, you know, before they can live, but it is expensive to get there. Anna-Katharina Schwabroh, who plays Laura Portmann, wants to go to Rhea. Her sister went there a few years ago and loves it. So she signs up to be a doctor on a cargo ship that is going to a random satellite station. The trip is 8 years, four years there and back, and after it she will have enough to go to Rhea!

Also it is pretty cool, that the ship of like, 5 crew members only are awake for 8.5 months. Only needs one person to run it, its pretty much on auto-pilot. So the rest of the time they sleep and don’t age, wicked cool. But there is also a space police dude on board named Samuel Decker, played by Martin Rapold, due to the higher number of space pirates out there, and he wakes up on a more frequent basis, for whatever reason.

During the last leg of the trip, Portmann is in charge and thinks she is hearing weird noises in the cargo, and think someone else is there. She wakes up the captain before the rest, to help investigate with Decker the disturbance. But then the captain dies. Shit. What is going on!?

So then in the last 2~ months of their journey they have to find out who is on their ship extra, if anyone? Why is their cargo weird? Where are they actually going? WILL PORTMANN EVER SEE HER SISTER AGAIN?

“It is awfully lonely on this ship…”

The movie was interesting, definitely. But nothing really surprised me that much. A lot of it seemed obvious. There were moments when weird stuff went on, that I wasn’t afraid of just because I didn’t know how the ship worked. When the cargo bays started moving, a couple people freaked out, but like Portmann, I was like “okay? just move a bit. and safe!”. So a bit of thrill of the thriller was left out for me. I think there also could have been more in it. I was confused by some of the characters motivations, so maybe a bit back story on some of the people would have been nice.

It is a decent sci-fi thriller, but not the best.