denial-638-119600 Reviews

Combat Girls (2011)

Deeply touching and painfully authentic

[10/10 · 19 January 2012]

I'm certain this is going to be Germany's nominee for the Oscars.

The auteur, David Wnendt, seems to have collected a lot of true stories and pieced them together into a fast-paced, very violent, often harrowing and quite unpredictable plot.

Most of you don't know the East German neo-nazi scene. You'll ask yourself if this is really how these people live and talk. Believe me, it is. This movie is so close to reality it often feels like a documentary. I expected to sit in the cinema nitpicking, counting mistakes. I found just one. (A license plate with an "88" in it. The German license plate office doesn't allow that.) All the actors are unknowns and few of them get to shine. All the adults in this story are wooden and almost all the teenagers are idiots. Their main job is to convey total ignorance about the extent of their ignorance. They do that well. Jella Haase is very good.

But Alina Levshin is the one who's superstar material. This is her movie, and it will be remembered as her breakthrough. Two of the movie's most memorable scenes are long uncut closeups of her face, not speaking, and they're some of the best acting I've seen, ever.

Do see it. Just don't expect to sleep easily the night after.

Zen Noir (2004)

Fails to be more than a series of in-jokes

[3/10 · 18 January 2010]

This movie is marketed as funny, noir, artsy and about zen. It very quickly ceases to be funny. It then takes too long to admit that: 1) all its pretenses at plot are leading nowhere, 2) it will give you a (zen) buddhist lesson instead and 3) it thinks this lesson is worth your attention.

A (zen) buddhist might think this is a good idea, and might go on to comment on whether this lesson was well given. To a non-buddhist, however, the movie fails to explain what it thinks is so interesting about zen to merit making a movie about it. It makes zen look like an oddly dysfunctional state of mind, perhaps a state of heightened readiness to regard anything as deeply profound.

This movie is attempting to be more than a series of zen buddhist in-jokes, but it is too drunk on those to make a good attempt. It fails to connect the Detective's problem with any real person's problem, let alone the viewer's. It rudely refuses to be comprehended ands seems to be content with making sense on its own terms. As a lesson, or sermon, the movie fails.

It can still make sense to those "in the know", and I gather that it does. However, those people tend to be the ones that can find sense in anything, so that's not a recommendation for the movie either.

I give it 3 out of 10. One because that is the minimum. One because the movie evidently did make me care enough to write this review. And one for the very last scene of the movie, which was nicely done and worth remembering. I won't recommend the full movie, but I might show this final scene to a few people.