Change Your Image
MarkusBussmann
Reviews
The Making of 'American Psycho' (2000)
What a "Behind the scenes" documentation should do this one does
Did the movie appeal to you and you somehow did not always understand why? What is behind the characters, why were the characters played as they are? How much thought was put into developing each character? How do you put the 80s in scene and make it look and feel like the "Wall Street 80s"? All of these questions are answered in an exciting way by this documentary, therefore I can only recommend to watch (usually part of the DVD) it if you found the movie interesting. And also great to see how often certain scenes had to be played again and again and again to make you believe what many people say: Good movie making is indeed very, very hard work.
Komm, süsser Tod (2000)
High quality murder mystery with outstanding Josef Hader
Can you understand Austrians? Can you understand Germans? Well, I'm a German and I have problems to understand the Vienna dialect presented in this great murder mystery. But reading the subtitles you hopefully understand the all black humor behind it and the joy the actors take from it. And it's such a terribly suspenseful storyline! Well, I did not only laugh out loud many times, I really learned something of my neighbor country which I usually perceive to be so similar to us Germans, but indeed now I better understand that there are not only small differences, they are really originals themselves and this was a great lesson to learn.
Next to great actors I would like to point out that "Sofa Surfers" provided an extremely useful soundtrack to increase the suspense. This cooperation was used again for the new movie Silentium, the new murder mystery written by author Wolf Haas. This one is even darker than "Komm,süsser Tod" (translates something like "Come, sweet death" -J.S. Bach Choral) and I would warn the audience if they have problems to deal with the realism in this one already - it may not be a lot of fun for you then....it might be your next nightmare!
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
The book is great - unfortunately the movie is not as great
It is indeed very difficult to make a great movie from a great book, in this respect the crew has done quite OK, a lot of the visuals in my head were translated properly and made me remember the book again, which was simply genius when it came out for the first time. Nowadays the humor can be found in many different ways similar (Dilbert), always dealing with the complexity of systems and how bureaucracy can erase all the joy of life and many things else. So therefore sorry to say, but no actor can be as lovable as the originals characters I had in my mind before. They can try, but I think they will have a very difficult time. Therefore despite of all of the good efforts I prefer the book. But still I can say, the crew deserves respect. We are not a genius in writing as Douglas Adams was, so we shouldn't complain that we do not match with a genius in movie-making....maybe Blake Edwards should have done the job? But would he be interested as the chances of failing are so high?
Flight of the Phoenix (2004)
Cannot nearly match with the classic original
Comparing the original from 1965 to this re-release, two things to me become obvious: The actors are lousy compared to the all-stars of the 50s and 60s and the conflict surprisingly now is centered on an all-American crew and represents the conflicts that America has to deal with these days (cultural and racial salad bowl).
The original dealt with international conflicts and made it interesting for foreigners as well, this is therefore now only a movie with some interest for American issues, but it tells us little about how Americans view the rest of the world except that they do not think it is worthwhile mentioning? I think you can understand that I prefer to deal with the original masterpiece instead of a copy, that is not nearly as exciting as the original, who did not dare to bring a woman in the movie in real (just as illusion of arabic dancer) for good reason: Could you believe that men can really behave so well as they all do? I think mens flesh is still too weak for this kind of situation....
So for movie fanatics the real interest in this new version is to understand how the way of movie-making has changed in the last forty years, not only that stuntman are luckily replaced by CGI (unfortunately to the disadvantage of the audience interested in great, real pictures...but that is not worth the life of a man, is it!).
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)
Epic example of conflict resolution and mastering challenges - and a great movie!
This masterpiece is now 40 years old and has lost nothing of it's excitement due to it's fantastic, outstanding actors (Attenborough and Kruger have never done better from my point of view), director, scenery and the simplicity of the story itself. A plane lost in a desert, no help and a challenge to master by people, who never chose to master their destiny together in a hostile environment.
The way the conflict is layed out can serve as an example for organizational conflicts, cultural conflicts, simply: whenever humans have to solve a problem that jeopardizes their future under resource constraints. Or even mankind on earth in the hostile universe, who need to solve their very own conflicts? All actors are able to deliver fully convincing natural emotions in this kind of situation to make the audience understand why humans usually fail to solve these conflicts. How many actors can you name today that are superstars and can do it like them? It's becomes evident how difficult the first step to compromise or to accept leadership of another person is, especially for western individuals. Accept leadership and downgrade oneself in the hierarchy, despite the fact that there is usually one solution which suits the groups interest as a whole better? How many leaders or e.g. managers are able to do this? In the end, the collaborative approach is successful, staged behind a general struggle for power, influenced by the cold war environment, containing an explosive mix of historical facts and clichés on British imperialism/militarism, American heroism, German nazihodd/engineering rational and various other aspects. You could easily work out how difficult the situation would be, if nowadays a e.g. member of priest of a Christian church would crash land together with a Muslim mullah. How would they be able to work together to master the hostility of the desert? Would they be able to accept a compromise? You can spend months to identify all the clichés that are used to increase the tension between the characters they have to understand to manage their faith, unfortunately you need a lot of historical background knowledge on 19th century till cold war to understand all the details, but that is only another good reason to start studying this.
The movie also shows that every specific cultural background has it's advantages closely tied to its disadvantages, e.g. the heroism advantage of attack eaten up by a lack of rationality (for example due to alcoholism/boredom). Actually, this movie should be screened as an example for success for conflicts of international companies, global organizations or just humans between the frontiers of different cultures.
And if this is too educational for you: It is even great entertainment, if you are just watch it from a pure emotional point of view. Myself being a German I would wish that we still can show of some of the engineering mastership that Dorfner shows of - however I'm happy that no technocrats are now ruling my country.
In the end: What a masterpiece!