Awards screeners are starting to come in hard & fast now, so here’s a hectic (and almost certainly incomplete) roundup of movies I’ve watched these last few weeks. In order of preference! My Mother, My Bride, and I/Die Zweite Frau Another cross-cultural love story from Europe, this time bridging Bavaria and Romania. Erwin Kobarek (Matthias [...]
Quantum of Black Speed Flash Gonzo Truth Strain Boogie Racer
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/11/22/quantum-of-black-speed-flash-gonzo-truth-strain-boogie-racer/
The Free Will
Hard-working German actor Jürgen Vogel plays the serial rapist Theo in Matthias Glasner’s almost unbearably grim The Free Will (Der Freie Wille). When we meet Theo, he’s heavy-set and angry, working at the cafeteria of a seaside youth hostel. Within minutes of the film’s beginning, he spots a potential victim, knocks her off a bicycle [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/03/08/the-free-will/
Redacted
More than with any film I’ve seen at the New York Film Festival so far, I’ve been struggling to find a way to talk about Brian De Palma’s Redacted, a movie that attempts to recreate the appalling images which have been systematically removed from the “news” about Iraq. The devastating reconstruction of the rape and [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/09/28/redacted/
Slither
What’s better than Snakes on a Plane? Of course: worms in the brain. Another gleeful B-picture, a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers, either Blob, and any number of zombie movies. There are the usual wisecracks (most of them delivered by Firefly’s Nathan Fillion), a cursing mayor, a teenage girl whose painted fingernails come [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/02/13/slither/
Mouchette
A new disc from the Criterion Collection can feel a little bit like trying a new vegetarian dish. Sometimes it’s juicy and delicious, sometimes you feel like you ought to like it just because it’s oh-so-healthy (and then you’re glad you did), and sometimes it’s broccoli rabe. Robert Bresson’s final black-and-white film, an adaptation of [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/01/15/mouchette/








Free Willy
It’s not that I can’t tell a killer whale from a serial rapist — it’s simply that the dumbest puns sometimes amuse most, especially when they offer mild relief for otherwise unbearibly grim tales of doomed love and ill-fated desires. Benten‘s fourth DVD release Der Freie Wille (The Free Will) streeted last week (yes, it’s [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/06/30/free-willy/