What Are You Watching? is a weekly space for The A.V Club’s film critics and readers to share their thoughts, observations, and opinions on movies new and old.
My crush on Michael Ballhaus’ camerawork started with the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I love their fucked-up aesthetics: the funky typefaces and hairdos; the ugly German housing; the warbled theme songs; the mirror-window obsession; the severe, theatrical blocking; the physiognomies of his makeshift family of regular actors, who all look a little off in memorable ways, their faces painted over with too much make-up. Ballhaus was one of three Fassbinder cinematographers, the others being Dietrich Lohmann and Xavier Schwarzenberger. Really, the two didn’t have a lot in common. Fassbinder was a wunderkind—all of 25 and already on his 10th feature when he met Ballhaus—with a miserable postwar upbringing, two facts that seemed to have inspired both ...
My crush on Michael Ballhaus’ camerawork started with the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I love their fucked-up aesthetics: the funky typefaces and hairdos; the ugly German housing; the warbled theme songs; the mirror-window obsession; the severe, theatrical blocking; the physiognomies of his makeshift family of regular actors, who all look a little off in memorable ways, their faces painted over with too much make-up. Ballhaus was one of three Fassbinder cinematographers, the others being Dietrich Lohmann and Xavier Schwarzenberger. Really, the two didn’t have a lot in common. Fassbinder was a wunderkind—all of 25 and already on his 10th feature when he met Ballhaus—with a miserable postwar upbringing, two facts that seemed to have inspired both ...
- 4/14/2017
- by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
- avclub.com
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) is showing March 28 - April 27, 2017 in the United Kingdom in the series Fassbinder: The Exploitability of Feelings.By now many will have encountered Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (German: Angst essen Seele auf, 1974) even if they are not hardcore devotees of the director’s oeuvre. Along with his Brd trilogy, Ali stands as one of Fassbinder’s most acclaimed and viewed works. The film follows 60-year-old cleaning woman Emmi (Brigitte Mira) who becomes involved with much younger Moroccan mechanic Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) after one of his friends dares him to dance with her when she walks alone into the bar one rainy evening. Ali has been frequently praised for the moving performances of its leads and for how it so effectively portrays...
- 3/23/2017
- MUBI
The Merchant of Four Seasons
Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Germany, 1971
Rainer Werner Fassbinder had a true talent for probing insights into the deep despair and disenchantment of the human condition. His characters were doomed people, ones fellow German New Waver Wim Wenders speaks of as helpless and hopeless. Such descriptions perfectly suit those in Fassbinder’s 1971 film, The Merchant of Four Seasons, which is out now on a new Criterion Collection Blu-ray. Here, Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmüller) has just returned from duty with the French Foreign Legion. Home in Munich after being gone about a year, he is first greeted with a less than enthusiastic reception from his mother (Gusti Kreissl). As he tells of friends lost in the fighting, she counters with, “The best are left behind while people like you come home.” This is just the tip of the iceberg for what Wenders says is...
Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Germany, 1971
Rainer Werner Fassbinder had a true talent for probing insights into the deep despair and disenchantment of the human condition. His characters were doomed people, ones fellow German New Waver Wim Wenders speaks of as helpless and hopeless. Such descriptions perfectly suit those in Fassbinder’s 1971 film, The Merchant of Four Seasons, which is out now on a new Criterion Collection Blu-ray. Here, Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmüller) has just returned from duty with the French Foreign Legion. Home in Munich after being gone about a year, he is first greeted with a less than enthusiastic reception from his mother (Gusti Kreissl). As he tells of friends lost in the fighting, she counters with, “The best are left behind while people like you come home.” This is just the tip of the iceberg for what Wenders says is...
- 6/9/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
“We’re all pigs,” remarks a character late in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1971 classic The Merchant of Four Seasons, on observation one could apply to most of the desperate and disparate characters littered throughout the German New Wave master’s oeuvre. In this instance, the comment is made by the protagonist’s familial successor. Fassbinder’s flaccid fruit vendor shrinks into the shadows of his own periphery, a failed patriarch reduced to the general fate of mediocre men in times of societal resurgence, (here specifically in the 1950s, the post-war period of the German economic miracle) marked for replacement by a trusted friend, stepping in to pinch-hit. Regarded as one of Fassbinder’s best early titles, it is one of his most accessible Sirkian inspired melodramas earning notable critical applause during an impressively fruitful period, imbued with the director’s favorite themes concerning dwindling personas of those foolish enough to...
- 6/2/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Last year, it was volcanoes; this year, comets seem to be on the disaster movie horizon.
The summer season unofficially launches Friday with "Deep Impact" from Paramount and DreamWorks. It's a visually stunning movie with a bevy of personal stories undercoating it, but "Deep Impact" is a pretty slow-moving object. It drags considerably, and mainstream action audiences are likely to find it tedious and undeniably old-fashioned.
While it will win a substantial domestic and international take, this tale about a comet headed toward Earth is unlikely to reach the boxoffice stratosphere.
In this scenario, the sense of urgency that devastation is on the way is, perhaps, the film's strongest emotional component. Unlike other natural perils such as twisters, hurricanes and volcanoes, the sense of impending doom here is more substantial. The public has a significant amount of time to learn of the comet and react -- in essence, there is panic in the streets. What is most intriguing about "Deep Impact" is its respectful wisdom that mankind will survive despite such an awesome calamity.
The story itself is rich, centering around an attempt by an ambitious journalist (Tea Leoni) to find the truth about a massive comet heading directly toward Earth. Not that she's any sort of scientist; she initially learns of the comet while ostensibly covering a mysterious woman named Ellie. That's the code name for the comet.
Screenwriters Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin have sagely created a human tale about the perilous grasp we have on life. The story is full of characters that are more deeply revealed than in the standard, five central members of a film of this nature. In addition, it's a smartly executed encapsulation of a plausible scientific fact -- we could be struck by a comet or asteroid and suffer immediate, incendiary extinction.
In short, though, this is a production whose sum is less than its parts.
The performances, though, are moving. Indeed, the producers have assembled an all-star team of players: Morgan Freeman as a compassionate and noble president, Robert Duvall as a tenacious and heroic former astronaut, and Elijah Wood as a 14-year-old who unwittingly discovers the comet's existence.
As the dedicated journalist who has to weed out the facts, Leoni conveys a deep sense of propriety as well as the dedication of a woman on the trail of something earth-shattering.
As one would expect from the company that released "Titanic" domestically and another team headed by the ultimate summer director, Steven Spielberg, "Deep Impact" is, well, impacted by a terrific technical team.
While Mimi Leder ("The Peacemaker") has a talent for directing actors and a solid visual sense, her sense of pacing is lacking. Even some of the big effects scenes seem dull. The cinematography captures a vast scope, a tribute to director of photography Dietrich Lohmann, and production designer Leslie Dilley's sets capture a sense of character and panorama. As usual, the ILM team has heightened the film with mesmerizing images.
DEEP IMPACT
Paramount Pictures
Paramount and DreamWorks Pictures present
a Zanuck/Brown production
A Mimi Leder film
Producers: Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown
Director: Mimi Leder
Screenwriters: Bruce Joel Rubin, Michael Tolkin
Director of photography: Dietrich Lohmann
Production designer: Leslie Dilley
Editor: David Rosenbloom
Visual effects supervisor: Scott Farrar
Music: James Horner
Casting: Allison Jones
ILM visual effects producer: Bill George
Sound mixer: Mark Hopkins McNabb
Color/stereo
Cast:
Spurgeon Tanner: Robert Duvall
Jenny Lerner: Tea Leoni
Leo Biederman: Elijah Wood
Robin Lerner: Vanessa Redgrave
President Beck: Morgan Freeman
Jason Lerner: Maximilian Schell
Alan Rittenhouse: James Cromwell
Oren Monash: Ron Eldard
Gus Partenza: Jon Favreau
Beth Stanley: Laura Innes
Andrea Baker: Mary McCormack
Running time -- 123 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
The summer season unofficially launches Friday with "Deep Impact" from Paramount and DreamWorks. It's a visually stunning movie with a bevy of personal stories undercoating it, but "Deep Impact" is a pretty slow-moving object. It drags considerably, and mainstream action audiences are likely to find it tedious and undeniably old-fashioned.
While it will win a substantial domestic and international take, this tale about a comet headed toward Earth is unlikely to reach the boxoffice stratosphere.
In this scenario, the sense of urgency that devastation is on the way is, perhaps, the film's strongest emotional component. Unlike other natural perils such as twisters, hurricanes and volcanoes, the sense of impending doom here is more substantial. The public has a significant amount of time to learn of the comet and react -- in essence, there is panic in the streets. What is most intriguing about "Deep Impact" is its respectful wisdom that mankind will survive despite such an awesome calamity.
The story itself is rich, centering around an attempt by an ambitious journalist (Tea Leoni) to find the truth about a massive comet heading directly toward Earth. Not that she's any sort of scientist; she initially learns of the comet while ostensibly covering a mysterious woman named Ellie. That's the code name for the comet.
Screenwriters Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin have sagely created a human tale about the perilous grasp we have on life. The story is full of characters that are more deeply revealed than in the standard, five central members of a film of this nature. In addition, it's a smartly executed encapsulation of a plausible scientific fact -- we could be struck by a comet or asteroid and suffer immediate, incendiary extinction.
In short, though, this is a production whose sum is less than its parts.
The performances, though, are moving. Indeed, the producers have assembled an all-star team of players: Morgan Freeman as a compassionate and noble president, Robert Duvall as a tenacious and heroic former astronaut, and Elijah Wood as a 14-year-old who unwittingly discovers the comet's existence.
As the dedicated journalist who has to weed out the facts, Leoni conveys a deep sense of propriety as well as the dedication of a woman on the trail of something earth-shattering.
As one would expect from the company that released "Titanic" domestically and another team headed by the ultimate summer director, Steven Spielberg, "Deep Impact" is, well, impacted by a terrific technical team.
While Mimi Leder ("The Peacemaker") has a talent for directing actors and a solid visual sense, her sense of pacing is lacking. Even some of the big effects scenes seem dull. The cinematography captures a vast scope, a tribute to director of photography Dietrich Lohmann, and production designer Leslie Dilley's sets capture a sense of character and panorama. As usual, the ILM team has heightened the film with mesmerizing images.
DEEP IMPACT
Paramount Pictures
Paramount and DreamWorks Pictures present
a Zanuck/Brown production
A Mimi Leder film
Producers: Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown
Director: Mimi Leder
Screenwriters: Bruce Joel Rubin, Michael Tolkin
Director of photography: Dietrich Lohmann
Production designer: Leslie Dilley
Editor: David Rosenbloom
Visual effects supervisor: Scott Farrar
Music: James Horner
Casting: Allison Jones
ILM visual effects producer: Bill George
Sound mixer: Mark Hopkins McNabb
Color/stereo
Cast:
Spurgeon Tanner: Robert Duvall
Jenny Lerner: Tea Leoni
Leo Biederman: Elijah Wood
Robin Lerner: Vanessa Redgrave
President Beck: Morgan Freeman
Jason Lerner: Maximilian Schell
Alan Rittenhouse: James Cromwell
Oren Monash: Ron Eldard
Gus Partenza: Jon Favreau
Beth Stanley: Laura Innes
Andrea Baker: Mary McCormack
Running time -- 123 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
The wait has been worth it. DreamWorks Pictures has finally launched its first movie, and it's a smartly calibrated, mainstream entertainment.
Starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman as a perfectly mismatched duo fighting world terrorism, "The Peacemaker" will certainly be a big moneymaker this fall on the domestic front, and down the line it should score winning international numbers and counter this country's sorry trade deficits.
Wired around the current, post-Cold War hot plot -- renegade terrorists hijack nuclear missiles within a dysfunctional Russia -- "The Peacemaker" is the cineplex equivalent of the airport paperback novel, Robert Ludlum's side of the rack. It's a crafty pasting of front-page reality, including the horrors in Bosnia, on top of well-proven story formulas. And it's torqued by the battling banter between Clooney and Kidman.
In screenwriter Michael Schiffer's complex but tightly compacted scenario, Clooney and Kidman step out in a variation of the battling-buddy movie. Except for the fact that they aren't exactly buddies: she's Dr. Julia Kelly, a straight-laced nuclear scientist and acting head of the White House Nuclear Smuggling Group, and he's Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe, an Army Special Intelligence officer. When a trainload of nuclear warheads is hijacked by terrorists in the Russian boonies, they're paired up to track down the terrorists before they can, say, deliver the nukes to Iran or, for instance, blow up the U.N. building. And, the clock is not just ticking, it's going fast-forward.
Although it may not beat out "L.A. Confidential" for the most subplots in a movie award, "The Peacemaker" is crammed with a heavy story-load, from geopolitics to the psychology of blue-collar women who have risen to the top of a male-dominated profession. Fortunately, Schiffer and director Mimi Leder don't allow the story to jam up, or for that matter, even slow down. Unfortunately, this full-throttle surge is somewhat akin to the traveler who doesn't stop to smell the roses along the way.
The best stuff is off the beaten plot: It's the human stuff, not the braininess of the narrative or the gadgetry of the effects, that's the highlight. In short, the movie's most refreshing and memorable moments involve the interplay between the loosey-goosey intelligence officer and the by-the-book nuclear scientist.
To be sure, even a movie as professionally scoped and intricately blueprinted as this one would fall flat if the chemistry between the leads wasn't there. And, Clooney, with his salt-and-pepper flair and seat-of-his-pants daring, is a believable and wonderfully appealing action hero.
Studio executives who are familiar with films before 1985 might recall a chap named Cary Grant who outwitted and outscrambled the bad guys in such winners as "North by Northwest" and didn't need a membership at Gold's Gym to do it.
Although his constant head tilting has become somewhat of a distraction, Clooney's suave edginess brings a welcome verve to a genre in need of tone rather than bulk. Similarly, Kidman's intelligent and appealing performance as, essentially, Clooney's brainy straightwoman, is refreshingly strong-spirited. She has the presence and confidence that makes one recall the best of strong-woman performers -- Rosalind Russell types who could dish it out and take it, no punches pulled.
Overall, Clooney and Kidman make an excellent pairing and could generate a franchise for DreamWorks, particularly if their battling banter is not shackled by overly busy plotting. Think William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Supporting players are well-selected and generally personalize some standard-issue roles. Armin Mueller-Stahl is particularly outstanding as an old-school Cold Warrior, and Marcel Iures remarkably manages to convey his terrorist character's psychology not in simplistic black-and-white tones but rather in the cracks of credible human frailties.
Technically, the film's Byzantine plotting is complemented by an appropriately murky look; credit cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann for the threatening tones. Editor David Rosenbloom's kinetic cuts bring thrust to the loaded story, while Hans Zimmer's stentorian music is a terrific blast in the great full-horned tradition of "The Guns of Navarone".
THE PEACEMAKER
DreamWorks Pictures
A Mimi Leder film
Producers:Walter Parkes, Branko Lustig
Director:Mimi Leder
Screenwriter:Michael Schiffer
Executive producers:Michael Grillo, Laurie MacDonald
Director of photography:Dietrich Lohmann
Production designer:Leslie Dilley
Editor:David Rosenbloom
Co-executive producer:John Wells
Costume designer:Shelley Komarov
Music:Hans Zimmer
Co-producers :Pat Kehoe, Leslie Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn
Casting:Risa Bramon Garcia, Randi Hiller
Visual effects supervisor:Michael Backes
Second unit director:Conrad E. Palmisano
Color/stereo
Cast:
Thomas Devoe:George Clooney
Julia Kelly:Nicole Kidman
Dusan Gavrich:Marcel Iures
Alexander Kodoroff:Alexander Baluev
Vlado Mirich:Rene Medvesek
Hamilton:Gary Werntz
Ken:Randall Batinkoff
General Garnett:Jim Haynie
Shummaker:Alexander Strobele
Appleton:Holt McCallany
CPN Beach:Michael Boatman
Senator Bevens:Joan Copeland
Santiago:Carlos Gomez
Dimitri Vertikoff:Armin Mueller-Stahl
Running time -- 122 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman as a perfectly mismatched duo fighting world terrorism, "The Peacemaker" will certainly be a big moneymaker this fall on the domestic front, and down the line it should score winning international numbers and counter this country's sorry trade deficits.
Wired around the current, post-Cold War hot plot -- renegade terrorists hijack nuclear missiles within a dysfunctional Russia -- "The Peacemaker" is the cineplex equivalent of the airport paperback novel, Robert Ludlum's side of the rack. It's a crafty pasting of front-page reality, including the horrors in Bosnia, on top of well-proven story formulas. And it's torqued by the battling banter between Clooney and Kidman.
In screenwriter Michael Schiffer's complex but tightly compacted scenario, Clooney and Kidman step out in a variation of the battling-buddy movie. Except for the fact that they aren't exactly buddies: she's Dr. Julia Kelly, a straight-laced nuclear scientist and acting head of the White House Nuclear Smuggling Group, and he's Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe, an Army Special Intelligence officer. When a trainload of nuclear warheads is hijacked by terrorists in the Russian boonies, they're paired up to track down the terrorists before they can, say, deliver the nukes to Iran or, for instance, blow up the U.N. building. And, the clock is not just ticking, it's going fast-forward.
Although it may not beat out "L.A. Confidential" for the most subplots in a movie award, "The Peacemaker" is crammed with a heavy story-load, from geopolitics to the psychology of blue-collar women who have risen to the top of a male-dominated profession. Fortunately, Schiffer and director Mimi Leder don't allow the story to jam up, or for that matter, even slow down. Unfortunately, this full-throttle surge is somewhat akin to the traveler who doesn't stop to smell the roses along the way.
The best stuff is off the beaten plot: It's the human stuff, not the braininess of the narrative or the gadgetry of the effects, that's the highlight. In short, the movie's most refreshing and memorable moments involve the interplay between the loosey-goosey intelligence officer and the by-the-book nuclear scientist.
To be sure, even a movie as professionally scoped and intricately blueprinted as this one would fall flat if the chemistry between the leads wasn't there. And, Clooney, with his salt-and-pepper flair and seat-of-his-pants daring, is a believable and wonderfully appealing action hero.
Studio executives who are familiar with films before 1985 might recall a chap named Cary Grant who outwitted and outscrambled the bad guys in such winners as "North by Northwest" and didn't need a membership at Gold's Gym to do it.
Although his constant head tilting has become somewhat of a distraction, Clooney's suave edginess brings a welcome verve to a genre in need of tone rather than bulk. Similarly, Kidman's intelligent and appealing performance as, essentially, Clooney's brainy straightwoman, is refreshingly strong-spirited. She has the presence and confidence that makes one recall the best of strong-woman performers -- Rosalind Russell types who could dish it out and take it, no punches pulled.
Overall, Clooney and Kidman make an excellent pairing and could generate a franchise for DreamWorks, particularly if their battling banter is not shackled by overly busy plotting. Think William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Supporting players are well-selected and generally personalize some standard-issue roles. Armin Mueller-Stahl is particularly outstanding as an old-school Cold Warrior, and Marcel Iures remarkably manages to convey his terrorist character's psychology not in simplistic black-and-white tones but rather in the cracks of credible human frailties.
Technically, the film's Byzantine plotting is complemented by an appropriately murky look; credit cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann for the threatening tones. Editor David Rosenbloom's kinetic cuts bring thrust to the loaded story, while Hans Zimmer's stentorian music is a terrific blast in the great full-horned tradition of "The Guns of Navarone".
THE PEACEMAKER
DreamWorks Pictures
A Mimi Leder film
Producers:Walter Parkes, Branko Lustig
Director:Mimi Leder
Screenwriter:Michael Schiffer
Executive producers:Michael Grillo, Laurie MacDonald
Director of photography:Dietrich Lohmann
Production designer:Leslie Dilley
Editor:David Rosenbloom
Co-executive producer:John Wells
Costume designer:Shelley Komarov
Music:Hans Zimmer
Co-producers :Pat Kehoe, Leslie Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn
Casting:Risa Bramon Garcia, Randi Hiller
Visual effects supervisor:Michael Backes
Second unit director:Conrad E. Palmisano
Color/stereo
Cast:
Thomas Devoe:George Clooney
Julia Kelly:Nicole Kidman
Dusan Gavrich:Marcel Iures
Alexander Kodoroff:Alexander Baluev
Vlado Mirich:Rene Medvesek
Hamilton:Gary Werntz
Ken:Randall Batinkoff
General Garnett:Jim Haynie
Shummaker:Alexander Strobele
Appleton:Holt McCallany
CPN Beach:Michael Boatman
Senator Bevens:Joan Copeland
Santiago:Carlos Gomez
Dimitri Vertikoff:Armin Mueller-Stahl
Running time -- 122 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/22/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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