By Kai-Arne Zimny

It’s no sur­prise that the adver­tise­ment cam­paign done in late 2015 for a then upcom­ing Ama­zon Stu­dios’ series was con­sid­ered a provo­ca­tion and had to be end­ed pre­ma­ture­ly due to gen­er­al out­rage. Posters of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty with its right arm changed to a Hitler salute were hung in New York sub­way trains above seats changed to spot Nazi-inspired insignia. One may or may not con­sid­er that taste­less, but it does the trick by pulling view­ers into the uncan­ny world of The Man in the High Cas­tle.  Read more »

By Kai-Arne Zimny

Even though in folk­lore the term revenant stands for a being that has returned from the dead, the recent award-win­ning movie The Revenant (2015), direct­ed by Ale­jan­dro G. Iñár­ritu, is not about a ghost – at least not in a lit­er­al sense. The Revenant’s screen­play is part­ly based on Michael Punke’s nov­el of the same name as well as sev­er­al oth­er books and films of the past that recount a true sto­ry from the ear­ly 1820s: Trap­per Hugh Glass (Leonar­do DiCaprio) sets off on a fur-hunt­ing expe­di­tion in an unnamed and unde­vel­oped U.S. ter­ri­to­ry togeth­er with his half-Pawnee son Hawk (For­rest Good­luck) and a group of men from the Rocky Moun­tain Fur Com­pa­ny led by Cap­tain Andrew Hen­ry (Domh­nall Glee­son). After an attack from an Arikara war band brings the group close to anni­hi­la­tion, the sur­vivors flee and Glass gets wound­ed – seem­ing­ly beyond recov­ery. What unfolds from there is a jour­ney of adver­si­ty, betray­al, greed, loss, and a shim­mer of hope. Read more »

By Daria Radler

“What are you think­ing? How are you feel­ing? Who are you? What have we done to each oth­er? What will we do?”

Boy los­es girl — what starts with a clas­sic open­ing scene of a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller turns out to be much more than that. When his wife dis­ap­pears on the morn­ing of their fifth wed­ding anniver­sary, Nick Dunne’s small town life in Mis­souri is about to turn upside down. Not only do the police find a crime scene in the Dunne’s liv­ing room, they also have to deal with a hus­band who is nei­ther sur­prised nor griev­ing. While the public’s inter­est in Amy grows by the day, Nick soon los­es everyone’s sym­pa­thy. He smiles at all the wrong times; he lies and is far from being a good husband.

It seems like a clas­sic case of con­vict­ing the hus­band: While he des­per­ate­ly tries to explain him­self and fight the tight­en­ing noose around his neck, Amy’s diary only con­firms the grow­ing sus­pi­cion that Nick is a mean and misog­y­nist bul­ly: “I catch him look­ing at me with those watch­ful eyes, the eyes of an insect, pure cal­cu­la­tion, and I think: This man might kill me.”

Could he have done it? Could he have killed Amy?

Read more »

By Kai-Arne Zimny

Gil Pen­der (Owen Wil­son) is a suc­cess­ful Hol­ly­wood screen­writer, lives in Bev­er­ly Hills, and has a beau­ti­ful fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams). And yet, life feels a lit­tle unsat­is­fy­ing to him because he wants to be a nov­el­ist and feels deep down that “we both like pita-bread” may not be the best basis for a mar­riage. While vaca­tion­ing in Paris with his wife-to-be and her posh, con­ser­v­a­tive, and busi­ness-ori­ent­ed par­ents, Gil real­izes that he longs for some­place else and very lit­er­al­ly sometime else: Paris in the 1920s! Pal­pa­bly at odds with his present time and com­pa­ny, Gil seeks soli­tude one night in the streets of his beloved city. When the bells of Notre Dame strike mid­night, an old-fash­ioned lim­ou­sine sud­den­ly appears out of nowhere, and a bunch of good-humored peo­ple invite him on a trip beyond his wildest imag­i­na­tion.  Read more »

By Eric Lenier Ives

The Coen Broth­ers have made it their mis­sion to tell us an Amer­i­can sto­ry. Not the Amer­i­can sto­ry but rather a sin­gu­lar and some­times beau­ti­ful story.
In Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen Broth­ers orches­trate a spec­tac­u­lar sound­track to accom­pa­ny and to dri­ve the nar­ra­tive of the film.
Yet one almost hes­i­tates to cast the music of this film in a sup­port­ing role for the sound­track enjoys its own arc—its own story—that stands dis­tinct from the film it was pro­duced for and com­ple­ments so well.

Read more »

By Sabrina Völz

Direc­tor Ethan Bensinger’s Refuge: Sto­ries of the Self­help Home appeared in 2012. The next three years saw this 60-minute doc­u­men­tary on Holo­caust sur­vivors amass­ing one award after anoth­er. In April 2014, it was show­cased on pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tions across the Unit­ed States mark­ing Holo­caust Remem­brance Day, and the Deutsche Welle has pro­filed a num­ber of their web­sites deal­ing with Ger­man-Jew­ish émi­grés around the world.
I had the hon­or of view­ing this five-year project of labor and love at a film screen­ing, com­mem­o­rat­ing the 20-year anniver­sary of the part­ner­ship between sis­ter cities Chica­go and Ham­burg in the Hanseat­ic city’s town hall this past Decem­ber. And some­how I have the feel­ing that even after three years the film’s jour­ney is far from over.

Read more »