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Reviews
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
The better one of the two
"Reloaded" and "Revolutions" are much alike, which one you prefer depends on whether you're a Kung-fu aficionado or rather into science fiction battles like me. The city of Zion and its machinery is definitely worth seeing in action, and I confirm that about 250.000 sentinels are on screen ;-). Another good thing: Neo is about to reach his destiny - at last! One has to wait throughout a pointless encounter with the crooked-toothed guy who played the crazy helicopter pilot in "Mad Max 2" - any of you remember that one tenderly? -, but after that it's Full Metal Knit Jacket. An APU is something I definitely wouldn't want to compete with for parking space - how do all those guys get around without hitting each other?
About the rest I won't say much, it's a solution to a complex Trilogy. Is Neo dead, is he waiting to be recycled? It leaves one to wonder about a world where machines have the upper hand and war or extinction is always around the corner - would it be bearable for man to tolerate such a situation? So one may speculate how long "this peace is going to last" - "As long as it can."
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Lots of action, weak story
This was one of the most anticipated sequels of recent years. No doubt it is bigger, faster and more stylish - 'faster' is to say, the story is anxiously pirouetting along and the main characters make iconic dress-puppets. All actors have earned a Sports Oscar for their performance. Yet in comparison it pales to the classic "The Matrix" deservedly has become. It's a Down-to-Earth for all who have wondered how such geniuses as the Wachowskis could have emerged overnight - I suspect both Matrix sequels were really faked by the matrix, or hastily scribbled by two guys completely thrown by their success.
The story would maybe work if they had either decided to make 8 sequels or stick to the red string - Neo - and make it really interesting. His love affair with Trinity is very touching, but doesn't make the day. I waited for the story to draw me in like it did in the original, but in vain. The Merowingian is an interesting character, but interchangeable like almost everything else. Neo's encounter with the Architect should be the high point of the film, but stands out as a rather over-sophisticated two minutes in two hours of random Kung fu ballet. Hugo Weaving as Smith is a 'survivor' from the old crew and I always enjoy his great sarcastic performance, but the fact he is built up to be Neo's Nemesis spells out the lack of new ideas. The philosophical side of the film is more satisfying than it first seems, though. I doubt many will appreciate it, it's too overblown and alien in contrast to the action. So while both sequels added up don't come anywhere near "The Matrix", the action is fun to watch - the speedway chase is really breathtaking.
Looking close at the cast I noticed some entries for "Thomas Anderson age ..." - as a Matrix fan I would like to see those deleted scenes. Both Matrix sequels are stumps - so much is left out that it would be interesting to compare the finished product to what the directors originally intended.
Planet Earth (2006)
An eye-opener in HD
You don't have to be a nature film-buff to love this series. That's what all the HD hype is about - striking BIG, sharp images with beautiful music and unobtrusive narration by David Attenborough make this an experience worth repeating. From sharp close-up the camera zooms out, out... Every detail of the landscape is carved out. Patterns in large animal migrations otherwise unnoticeable reveal themselves, demonstrating the perspective of the individual amidst the immensity of its environment like never before.
It is the first documentary shot entirely in High Definition, and comparisons to you-know-who are inevitable. The influence of the IMAX pioneers is evident in the slow, careful camera pans. The "British" approach is less bombastic and much more informative. Each episode explores one habitat and its inhabitants. The themes don't need super-elevation beyond the accompanying images, and the background info explains just enough - due to play times of just under 50 minutes per episode. But the zig-zagging across the planet to the next highlight has its advantages - not a minute of boredom. While we follow some animals' journey over several key stations, most feature in just one event, but it's always a memorable one. Only the Making-of ("Diaries") reveal how unique and difficult many of these seemingly effortless shots were, and what technical achievements it took - like the gyroscopic camera filming these rock-steady zooms hanging beneath a pounding helicopter!
The success of the series will surely break new ground for follow-ups and strengthen demand for "native" HDTV filming, with images as clear and exciting as never before.
Leni Riefenstahl im Sudan (2003)
Worth watching
In 2000, Riefenstahl returned to East Africa to revisit the Nuba she photographed in the late 70s, whose pictures restarted her career. Of course, this was not as simple as it sounds in war-torn Sudan and might easily have been her last trip. Her helicopter crashed and she was briefly reported dead. This is the story of her voyage and what she found there. The film maker also takes a closer look at her private life. It features many of Riefenstahl's well-known Nuba photos and some Nuba film explained by Leni, all of it in contrast to the realities of modern Sudan.
I've only seen a 48-minute version of this on RAI television, unfortunately with voice overs for Riefenstahl and too short. It is undoubtedly a gentle film. Müller again gives her the opportunity to talk about herself and shows different aspects of her life. Again it contains a revealing and a bit dubious scene which illustrates that for Leni Riefenstahl doing a good job with film always came first, even before genuine grief over a dead friend.
Another solid documentary about a great subject, though not particularly exciting.
Die Macht der Bilder: Leni Riefenstahl (1993)
The power of prejudice
If you really want to know about her work, this is definitely the best piece of information to get started. About 3 hours long, it covers her extraordinary life from early beginnings as a dancer to growing fame as actress, film director and photographer - and along the way, of course, meeting Hitler and becoming "his" infamous cinematographer. After the Second World War she was vilified as Hitler's mistress and icon of obstinacy for more than 50 years. While some of the myths surrounding her are only recently being - audibly - refuted, can we now step forward and take Leni Riefenstahl for who she was - especially Germans?
This film was the first to try. It is careful to create a continuing dialog with its subject, something all other portraits I've seen so far are lacking. While its approach focuses on film-making techniques, the political side of things is never out of the broader picture. The filmmaker doesn't avoid confrontation, but in all fairness - you see the response immediately on screen, sometimes in off-camera moments that are quite funny to watch. You get to know the less pleasant sides of Riefenstahl's personality as well - clearly she's often uncomfortable with prying questions, but her occasional outbursts are a display of honesty and make the film more interesting to watch. Especially "Olympia" 1936 and "Triumph of the Will" are extensively featured, but also the first images of her 2002 documentary "Underwater Impressions".
This film deserves 10 stars out of 10. It is unique in its fairness and will likely never be surpassed in depth because of Leni Riefenstahl's death in 2003, at the age of 101. The controversy around her will surely last. Quite believably she never was a Nazi or a Jew-hater, but that didn't prevent her from promoting the champion of Antisemitism (who only showed the best of his faces in her films). There has been a lot of reevaluation going on around her, sparked not in the least by this documentary - too much, some critics fear. Riefenstahl belonged to those who didn't sign a blank confession and go on with their lives, or weren't allowed to. All these years she didn't apologize enough - that is the reason for her reprobation, but maybe it is honest to say that letting "Hitler's" filmmaker get back to business in the sight of the world would have been too embarrassing for Germany, which is still being judged by the Second World War. Her guilt is that of the wartime generation, with added sentence for her willingness to play along rather than emigrate - which she might have done at any time.
So while she is not entirely a martyr of German guilty conscience, she deserves to be cleared from the heaps of dirt flung upon her by paparazzi, and she deserves to speak for herself.
Queen of the Damned (2002)
Great entertainment
This movie sits between all chairs: Too careless to please die-hard Anne Rice fans towards her epic novels, confusing all others who don't know them - even if you have seen the predecessor "Interview with the Vampire" to which Rice herself wrote the script.
Starting but not stopping with Lestat, it mistreats characters who have become icons to fans: The mysterious Marius, Lestat's powerful maker, finds a rather sober incarnation in the short-cropped not-too-beautiful Vincent Perez (the haircut is okay for a classical Roman, but not in the all-out vain Rice universe!) Akasha, mother of all vampires played by the sexy Aaliyah, is not the least bit rusty in her ancient bones and could have been born yesterday - and what happened to her dark-feminist (book) plot to kill or enslave every male on the planet to stop humanity from destroying itself? Pandora and Armand are not even recognizable, but most of all the great Maharet (and her entirely left-out sister Mekare) whose story made up the red string of the novel is not a fraction as impressive as she could be. But then it would be a different film (one to which Rice would have written the script, supposing she didn't because of the above), and maybe one as dark and fraught with tragedy as its predecessor.
Instead, this is thrilling, funny and sexy entertainment, and you won't leave the theater feeling depressed. I bought the soundtrack right away, but the music surely isn't to everyone's taste. The story focuses on Jessie of the Talamasca who tracks down Lestat and in the end is made a vampire by him (and they live together happily ever after). The prince of darkness appears more human than ever - bored by immortality, lonely and desperately reckless, this Lestat is dead only on the outside. He plunges into the remote-public guise of a rock star to draw out other vampires - "better dead than alone" is his motto. Their human-vampiric love affair starts out as mutual fascination with each other's boldness. While all back-row vampires in the movie are over-made-up caricatures, Aaliyah-Akasha is truly frightening - and very believable as a powerful, spoiled half-goddess that rips apart anyone she likes to, though not an old-Egyptian one (as far as we know, ancient queens didn't try to always act in the most sexy way).
The end of the movie is the disappointing part - Maharet's ragged band of involuntarily funny creatures sucks beautiful Akasha dry, after traitorous Lestat has drained her enough for them to overpower her. She disperses in a cloud of golden dust, a special effects feast - but seems like it didn't take that much to get rid of her after all. More like a storm in a teacup, compared with Anne Rice's mountainous final struggle. So, 9 out of the 10 it would otherwise have been.
I love Anne Rice's books, and I like the first film adaptation, but I think this movie has been treated unfairly in judging it by "Lord of the Rings" standards. The authors apparently thought that one and a half hours are not enough to deliver more than a snapshot of the "Queen of the Damned" epic, and they're right. So they based their version loosely on it and made up a new core of their own. Oddly enough this Lestat resembles the one in the novels very much, and Steward Townsend plays him with a funny snobby style full of self-irony that truly brings the voice from the pages to life.
Constantine (2005)
Nice images, good performance - stupid religious backdrop
This is exactly the kind of (pseudo-)christian dementia I find Baaaah - crosses and holy water again, and the common knowledge of the middle ages re-elevated to its deserved height as universal truth. Let's burn a few witches, folks! But if you want to appreciate the drama, you have to stuff the garbage at least once.
Rachel Weisz and Keanu Reeves both deserve credit for their performances, but I can't help wondering why they signed on to this in the first place. The camera work is beautiful, so are the special effects, so once you manage to ignore half the religious crap, you can enjoy a good bit of light-weight horror show with a psycho-dramatic touch.
I particularly like the character of Gabriel. Tilda Swinton plays her with glorious well-meaning arrogance, and her show of ignorance towards humanity is important to understand Constantine's self-pitying indifference and apparent cruelty. Weisz and Reeves make a nice pair. The plot isn't boring, though on second watch I would have wished for some real punches in the stomach that I was always waiting for, but that never came.