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It's bad news when the attempt to get to the cinema on time is more exciting than the thriller you've gone to see. The chap before my screening finished late and closed down the projector, so I was still on campus at 6.00 for a 6.50 start. Fortunately I got there on time with space to use the cashpoint.
Die Fälscher is a thriller set in a concentration camp, and such a thing is not without its risks of tastelessness. Sally Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is a master forger, arrested in Berlin and 1936 and sent to a camp. His artistry first allows him to map out a career as portrait painter of the Nazis and police, gaining him special privileges, then transportation to a special unit where he is given a challenge: help the Nazis discover how to forge the pound and the dollar, or die. In return he will be given a better bed and better food - relatively better - and not be killed.
He is not alone - among other printing experts is Communist anti-Nazi Burger (August Diehl), who sees that their efforts will prolong the war, and might even tip the balance. He keeps sabotaging the attempts, but Sorowitsch (clearly recognising a conscience) can't betray him. They can only postpone the forging for so long before there are consequences.
This is not a film to enjoy - rather to admire. Sorowitsch has an every man for himself attitude which is difficult to like, and he's no Schindler (nor, really, is Herzog (Devid Striesow), the policeman and Nazi officer who arrested and recruited him). He's a smug womaniser and gambler. Whilst the real horrors of the holocaust are mostly off stage, there is random violence and killing which is still disturbing. The three central performances are rivetting.
I wasn't sure about the framing device, which ends up revealing things better kept hidden in a thriller and makes the ending seem a little rushed.
Tarantino's Death Proof is less than half a movie - intended to be shown in a double bill with Robert Rodriguez' Planet Terror and a number of fake trailers which were to be treated like a seventies drive-in or flea-pit double feature with poor dubbing, bad acting, scratchy pictures and inadvertant cuts. Yes, Tarantino is still seven years old.
Allegedly most punters walked out after the first film, thinking it was all over. Me, I reckon that a) cinemas wanted double the money and b) the audiences decided that they'd had quite enough.
So we have a group of women talking dirty to each other in a bar and talking of going to a lakehouse for the weekend, who are chased by the sinister Stuntman Mike. Crash. Splat.
Fourteen months later we have another group of women talking dirty to each other, who are chased by the sinister Stuntman Mike. This time they fight back. Crash. Splat.
At least there isn't an embarrassing cameo from a bloated and balding Tarantino in the second half. It's definitional of the self-indulgence. There's a fight to get the characters into vintage cars, and the graphics and attitudes belong in the 1970s, most of the vehicles are modern and they use mobile phones. Me, I was shouting for Stuntman Mike.
There are flashes of the old brilliance - but overall it was more thrilling working out if I'd missed the last bus and last orders.
Die Fälscher is a thriller set in a concentration camp, and such a thing is not without its risks of tastelessness. Sally Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is a master forger, arrested in Berlin and 1936 and sent to a camp. His artistry first allows him to map out a career as portrait painter of the Nazis and police, gaining him special privileges, then transportation to a special unit where he is given a challenge: help the Nazis discover how to forge the pound and the dollar, or die. In return he will be given a better bed and better food - relatively better - and not be killed.
He is not alone - among other printing experts is Communist anti-Nazi Burger (August Diehl), who sees that their efforts will prolong the war, and might even tip the balance. He keeps sabotaging the attempts, but Sorowitsch (clearly recognising a conscience) can't betray him. They can only postpone the forging for so long before there are consequences.
This is not a film to enjoy - rather to admire. Sorowitsch has an every man for himself attitude which is difficult to like, and he's no Schindler (nor, really, is Herzog (Devid Striesow), the policeman and Nazi officer who arrested and recruited him). He's a smug womaniser and gambler. Whilst the real horrors of the holocaust are mostly off stage, there is random violence and killing which is still disturbing. The three central performances are rivetting.
I wasn't sure about the framing device, which ends up revealing things better kept hidden in a thriller and makes the ending seem a little rushed.
Tarantino's Death Proof is less than half a movie - intended to be shown in a double bill with Robert Rodriguez' Planet Terror and a number of fake trailers which were to be treated like a seventies drive-in or flea-pit double feature with poor dubbing, bad acting, scratchy pictures and inadvertant cuts. Yes, Tarantino is still seven years old.
Allegedly most punters walked out after the first film, thinking it was all over. Me, I reckon that a) cinemas wanted double the money and b) the audiences decided that they'd had quite enough.
So we have a group of women talking dirty to each other in a bar and talking of going to a lakehouse for the weekend, who are chased by the sinister Stuntman Mike. Crash. Splat.
Fourteen months later we have another group of women talking dirty to each other, who are chased by the sinister Stuntman Mike. This time they fight back. Crash. Splat.
At least there isn't an embarrassing cameo from a bloated and balding Tarantino in the second half. It's definitional of the self-indulgence. There's a fight to get the characters into vintage cars, and the graphics and attitudes belong in the 1970s, most of the vehicles are modern and they use mobile phones. Me, I was shouting for Stuntman Mike.
There are flashes of the old brilliance - but overall it was more thrilling working out if I'd missed the last bus and last orders.
