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To watch or not to watch? I will tour around Amsterdam’s cinemas and answer this crucial question every Friday. Without mercy, of course. Sucky movies will be slaughtered, cinematographic pearls will be appreciated as such. Or the other way around. After all, good taste is in the eye of the beholder.
Submarine
I had no idea what to expect. I hadn’t read anything about Submarine and heard no one talk about it. Until a few days ago. My sister, working in Kriterion, said it was a must see: “Anouk, it’s hilarious!” So I went. And yes, it truly was hilarious, this film about Oliver Tate. This teenager, played by Craig Roberts, is living the hard knock life in Wales: girlfriend problems, parents (fantastic Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins) with marital problems.. Tate has a great imagination, he often thinks about what people say about him when he dies. Or how life would look like if it was an exciting film. Great stuff, you’ll laugh.
Director Richard Ayoade directed Submarine as his first feature film, after getting some experience by making video clips for Vampire Weekend and The Artic Monkeys. The front man of the latter made the soundtrack of Submarine by the way. Go, watch, enjoy.
Watch this film in Cineville’s The Movies and Kriterion.
Almanya
This German film is a bit like Shouf Shouf Habibi, making the difficult issues of the multi-cultural society into something funny. But where Shouf found the right balance between humour and drama, Almanya – Wilkommen in Deutschland fails. At the beginning, it’s all quiet cute: the 6 year old Cenk not knowing whether he’s German or Turkish, the story of grandma and grandpa falling in love and going to Germany, the jokes about getting the German nationality (“now you have to watch Tatort every Sunday and go to Mallorca for holidays”). All very nice, but I think the directing sisters Yasemin and Nesrin Şamdereli aimed for more than nice. Oh well, they shouldn’t have overwhelming their audience with clichés then! Apparently this is not a problem for the (Turkish) Germans, as Almanya was a huge hit in Deutschland.
Watch this film in Cineville from October 20th.
La Mirada Invisible
A rich kids school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s 1982 and the dictatorial regime has its spies everywhere. School teacher María Teresa (Julieta Zylberberg) has the task of ‘the invisible eye’ at the school, where the new elite of the country is being prepared. These students don’t know much about the anti-governmentel protests that just broke out. María, who’s only 20 years old, takes her job way too serious and gets in trouble. A sweltering and galling story. I wonder if princess Máxima will see it.
Watch this film in Cineville’s Rialto.
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