Phoenix Movie Review

There’s a current movement in German cinema. I’m not sure if it’s acquired a catchy name yet. “The Berlin School” is the closest I can find, but that’s not descriptive in the way that “film noir, “French New Wave,” or “Italian neo-realism” were. From my own observations it’s something like neo-German historical realism. But that’s a little clunky. At any rate, the movies, which tend to focus on post-war Germany or Communist Bloc East Germany, have been making their way stateside, illuminating the ways in which a new generation of German filmmakers and their audiences are responding to the important historical markers that shaped Gemany and its people today.

A Most Wanted Man Movie Review

Roadside Attractions

Master spy novelist John le Carré’s novels have been adapted into films several times. One, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was made twice, the more recent of which may go down as one of the great spy thrillers. Now comes A Most Wanted Man, based on his 2008 novel, which is on the same plane, if not as deeply intricate and taut as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The film, directed by Anton Corbijn and adapted by Andrew Bovell, is a brilliant exercise in restraint. Unlike Corbijn’s last film, The American, it has a great deal of forward momentum, generates real suspense, and is not nearly as opaque. And make no mistake about it – A Most Wanted Man is profoundly and subtly critical of American foreign policy with regard to the war on terror.

Barbara Movie Review

German director Christian Petzold’s movie Barbara is one of the most paranoid films of recent years. Not in a lunatic, they’re all out to get me way, but in the very real way that political dissidents lived in East Germany during the Cold War. This particular study, which could easily be considered a sister film of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s brilliant The Lives of Others, concerns a female physician forced to give up her prominent post at a hospital in Berlin for a life at a pediatric hospital in the countryside. I’m not sure the reasons for her exile are made explicit in the film, but Wikipedia (not necessarily renowned for its accuracy) says it was because she applied for a visa to leave for the West.