filmbuff924 Reviews

Falling Into Place (2023)

Postcard Landscapes and Shallow Dialogues

[13 April 2024]

I'm sorry I don't like to give negative reviews, but this movie was really so boring and pointless. Better watch paint dry on the wall than this mediocre film. Why was it even made? It has some good looking actors and nice decorative scenery, but I get that every day on TV. I see those pictures of Scotland on the wall in the waiting room of my dentist. Exactly the same in those movies they show on a sunday night on free TV for housewives.

All in all, a typical german film that has nothing to say and avoids any statement on society. It was probably also financed by a german TV network.

The plot is completely predictable. The actors don't have much chemistry. The guy is very handsome, which was probably why Aylin Tezel as the directress chose him, but lacks charisma. Both actors have these wooden faces, with not more than two or three expressions to fall into.

It's also overly long. I am wondering how this film even found financing. I heard that Tezel is a famous actress in Germany, that could have played a role. The film has totally failed in german box office. There is just no reason to buy a ticket. I couldn't tell you why you should. I just wouldn't be able to tell you a reason why to go see this movie. So apparently, it hasn't built up any word of mouth.

If some of this reads a little too simply, it is unfortunately because "Falling Into Place" really is an incredibly shallow movie. Grief, trauma, loss, all of this is actually only conjured up in order to stage an overly decorative sadness - first in front of a picturesque Scottish island landscape, and then in a more or less hip urban art scene. There is no real feeling anywhere in sight, and there is no room for a deeper thought either.

Instead, a handful of sayings about the "dating app generation" and its superficiality are thrown in for free by motherly friends. And the art discourse at the end, when Kira opens an exhibition as a painter with a series of portraits of her sad-looking lover, is so shallow that you can't help but think of the pictures on the walls of your local solarium.

The supposed dream couple in "Falling Into Place" doesn't really have anything to say to each other right from the start - let alone to us. The dialog is simple at best and, to put it less charitably, cliché-drunk, and the cinematic emphasis of the alleged romance is provided by a soundtrack plastered with soulful piano strumming and indie guitar pop alongside postcard landscapes bathed in warm light.

Paradise (I) (2023)

Lacks profundity

[27 July 2023]

A rather dull approach to an interesting subject.

Unfortunately, neither of the characters emerge as multi-faceted human beings, they simply pop out of the script like two-dimensional caricatures, and while the cast does its best to bring these personae to life, their hard work can only go so far in carrying a piece that doesn't hold its ground.

With a few plot twists, the movie tries to gain our attention, but they appear predictable by the time we've finished watching the film.

Despite introducing us to a formidable antagonist, the CEO of the evil AEON corporation, who's capable of eliminating innocent lives for her own profits and interest, we don't get to know much about her either, and the whole characterisation falls flat. Neither does her character design present her as a grey shadowed presence, nor does it do much to make the viewer hate her.

Even the opposing fraction ADAM fighting against AEON is led by a woman with firm beliefs, but that side of the story doesn't contribute anything except bodies dropping left and right. It ultimately leaves us with a question - what really was the point of it all, if neither the negative forces leading the controversial ageist agenda had anything to speak for themselves, nor the resistance party trying to reinstate the status quo.

Although classism and ageism are the obvious themes being dealt by the movie, the social commentary in that arena also feels very thin, resulting in merely a crumbling down of the whole idea that could've created a larger than life image, but never does.

Personally, I was looking forward to this release owing to my own cravings of a good science fiction thriller, but again that ship has sailed without leaving me with much to remember in the end.

Unfortunately, Boris Kunz's feature has only resulted in a run-of-the-mill forgettable viewing experience. As much as I wanted to like this one, it didn't really hand out a significantly building up narrative, nor did it lay out worthy character developments. Its sole dark vision of a society falling apart with a classist billion-dollar company set up at the centre only brings out the obvious view of a dystopian setting, but nothing more than that.

Initially, the German film pushes a great deal to cement its foregrounding issues about the socio-economic divide between different classes of society, ageism, relationships, technological advancements overtaking emotional human ground and more.

But in the end, it reels out a dystopian concept merely on the surface, as a selling point. It lacks profundity and fails to ask the right questions.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

A very german movie

[23 February 2023]

Germans hate art. I have lived in this country for a long time. The want nothing to do with art. They want control. Predictability. Logics. Rational behaviour.

That's what their movies mostly suck.

This one is quite good though. Because it's a film about what they are good at: the mechanics of death. A giant machine, wasting up and grinding millions of hopeful freshfaced young people. A meat grinder. A war machine. Very german.

Yes, war movies they can. Do what you love, and you'll do a good job, right?

The film shows soldiers beeing killed and destroyed in all possible ways in the first world war. Methodically, mechanically. A lot of steel and fire and metal and dirt. A showcase of useless senseless death.

Has an almost mechanical, cold, unempathical feel to it. Like a giant hammer the war machines just squashes the soldiers, bam bam bam, stubbornly, mercilessly, unstoppable. The soldiers run into death like lemmings, never resisting, never really questioning, never really complaining, having resigned to their death. Noone ever has a thought of resistance or uprising. Also a good match to german culture, actually. Very german, so to say. Follow the orders, even into death.

Feels quite unrealistic, eery, still. Hard to believe.

Not one of them hesitated to storm into certain death, not one of them ever questioned the orders?

This obvious lack of interpersonal conflict makes the movie a little dull and flat. Like a 1st world war computer game as a movie. The characters are more or less robots without a will of their own, who do as they told. Go die? Ok I go die.

It's a little bizarre. Sure they get scared and cry and fear, but they never doubt or scrutinize the whole operation. I highly doubt that this was the case! Even cows in the slaughterhouse are not as dumb. It doesn't correspond to the main character of the book at all, he develops larger and larger doubts about the whole war.

Film has nothing to do with the book, apart from the title, did I mention that? Zero.

The soldiers in the movie act more or less like ants who run into their doom, brainless, until their bodies pile up high enough that the others can walk on them.

Of course you pity them, but at the end they're just ... ants.

The aestethics are stylish. The beauty of death and destruction are being celebrated. A lot of magic hour light, sundowns, desaturated grey and green colors. The old coarse-grained stonewashed war look that you know from the covers of all those world war computer game dvd covers, decorated with those deep red blood spills.

So the technical aspects are all top notch. It's a well done hardcore war movie. But it's also empty and soulless.

Like war, I know. But this simple equation - for me it's extremely blunt. Because - what's the point?

I can tell that in 5 minutes. I have seen it a hundred times. War is bad has been the excuse to make gory war movies since the invention of film.

You need a soul to create something with a soul.

And you need to take a stand to make a point.

This film doesn't make any. It's loud but ... empty.

Restless (2022)

Real life cops

[1 March 2022]

Fun tough action flick.

A little over the top at times, but that doesn't bother me, I find that entertaining.

I like that all cops in this movie are corrupt to the bones. Selling drugs, taking bribes, teaming up with criminals, forging evidence, hit and run, killing each other, their lockers full of drug money and coke - like in real life !

I loved it.