REVIEW: Oh Boy [A Coffee in Berlin] [2012]

“Are you still serving coffee?” German Academy Award-sweeping Oh Boy [A Coffee in Berlin] is a day in the life of a Berliner slacker named Niko Fischer (Tom Schilling). He’s a law school dropout that’s been living off the thousand-dollar-a-week allowance his father continuously supplies under the auspices that it’s being used for college. He ignores responsibility to the tune of losing his girlfriend, his license, and his drive to succeed as anything more than a thinker thinking for thinking’s sake because he has nothing better to do or the…

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REVIEW: Hannah Arendt [2013]

“Trying to understand is not the same as forgiveness” Author Mary McCarthy (Janet McTeer) describes the titular Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) best when berating an emotionally blinded detractor vehemently slandering the German-Jewish philosopher in absentia in response to her reporting on the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker. McCarthy dresses him down by saying his “being smarter” is easy while her courage is what sets her apart. No truer words are conjured while watching Margarethe von Trotta’s biographical depiction because Arendt’s internal struggle to reconcile feeling and…

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