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nielsastrup
Reviews
La Yuma (2009)
More stories like this - PLEASE
I saw this movie yesterday in Berlin - and was truly and pleasantly surprised. Considering, that this is the first movie made in Nicaragua in 20 years, I was expecting this lack of experience and critical mass to show more. It did not.
The story is simple: Yuma, is a young Nicaraguan woman, living in one of Managua's gang-infested barrios, with her four siblings, a parasite step-father and a mother, who would never win a parent of the year award.
Yuma sees female boxing as a ticket out out for both her and her younger siblings..
When she falls in love with a journalism Student form the Catholic University of Managua, her life becomes, well, complicated.....
This movie is worth seeing for the description of life in a Central American slum, the humor, and a story full of real life.
El último tren (2002)
It works for children too
Some months ago we saw a trailer for this movie on TV. My five-year old son sat up, looked at the short film and proclaimed, that he wanted to see this movie.
Since then he has often asked, when the movie would be shown here in Berlin. Yesterday it was finally shown, as part of retrospective of Latin films.
The plot, that an old engine driver has to team up with a young boy to save a steam engine from being taken out of the country is such, that a child can understand it. He basically loved it - judging from his reactions and the amount he has talked about it since then.
I cannot add a lot to the very positive comments by other users. Just say that this is a good dad-son film.
Edit: Half a year later I finally managed to get the DVD, which son must have seen 20 times, at least. The film started him on two tracks: 1) He is interested in learning Spanish and asks what different words are called in Spanish.
2) More importantly, he has also wondered about legality and morals. We have had a few discussions about how some acts may be illegal, but still the right thing to do.
All in all - on the basis of the discussions we had about the movie - it is the best film we have seen together.
Good Bye Lenin! (2003)
Just to add
So many reviewers here have already given this movie its due. It IS funny, excellent, touching - and some more. I saw it twice - the second time I took my 13-year old daughter along. It was an excellent way of giving her a feel of what the division of Europe really felt like and what happened after the fall of the wall. She loved the movie, laughed, cried and sighed and afterwards we did actually talk quite a bit about this period of history: So - if you would like to stuff a little bit of history into your kids head, without the kid realizing that he or she is actually having a history lesson, this movie is highly recommended.
Rosenstrasse (2003)
A lifeless pamphlet
I went to see the movie for two reasons: 1) Katha Riemann was given a prize for her role in Venice and 2) The story - the rescue of hundreds of Berlin jews, who had been rounded up for deportation in the spring of 1943 - and were being kept by the Gestapo in Rosenstrasse (Rose Street) - is important. The deportation was halted by the non-jewish partners and friends who demonstrated in front of the detainment centre.
However, Trottas movie is extremely disappointing, a pamphlet put on celluloid. The movie is intended to be GOOD, the main characters are intended to be GOOD, the nazis are just EVIL, lustful or downright stupid. Maria Schrader is supposed to be a young jewish New Yorker, trying to understand the unspoken traumas of her German-born mother who survived Rosenstrasse - but never succeeds in convincing me, that she is American. (There is something about her body-language which is much too Continental). Extremely annoying is the use of German in the US scenes....spiced with a few choice english words or sentences which seem totally out of place.
Katja Riemann does add a bit more life to her character - a Preussian baroness and talented pianist, who rescues her jewish husband. (Does she really have to f*** propaganda minister Goebbels to get hubby away from Gestapo- and does Goebbels really have to be portrayed as a - cartoonish - lustful little salivating man, forever chasing a bit of tail, and so plainly disgusting).
We all know Goebbels was a war criminal - but it would have been so more interesting, if the characters were REAL people and the story not just a study in black and white with a stilted dialogue.