REVIEW: Night Train to Lisbon [2013]

“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty” Sometimes a well-written story is all you truly need to make a successful film and I believe author Pascal Mercier‘s novel Night Train to Lisbon provides one. Adapted by Greg Latter and Ulrich Herrmann with Bille August as director, the cinematic version of this look back at romance in a time of revolution unfolds with its melodic Annette Focks score as though we’re sitting over a cup of tea across from each character as they tell their part in the mystery…

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REVIEW: Die Wand [The Wall] [2012]

“There is no impulse more reasonable than love” There is something to be said about an allegory that doesn’t feel the need to beat you over the head with one “true” interpretation. Isn’t the point of such veiled metaphorical introspection that we experience it on our own terms and take what we will whether right, wrong, or conflicted? This is the type of journey director Julian Pölsler’s adaptation of Marlen Haushofer’s 1963 novel Die Wand [The Wall] takes us, one with deliberate questions devoid of the concrete answers necessary to…

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REVIEW: Das Leben der Anderen [The Lives of Others] [2006]

“The 40th Anniversary Play” Many people were startled by the fact that Pan’s Labyrinth lost the Best Foreign Film Oscar to its fellow nominee Das Leben der Anderen [The Lives of Others]. Granted, many hadn’t seen the German film yet, however, I think the push that the Spanish fantasy had, while also taking a few technical Oscars in the process, surprised a lot of people. The shock led to numerous movie folk on the internet describing the voting process for that award, how a select group, not the entire Academy,…

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