Recommendations of the Editorial team
1. “A House Of Dynamite” (Kathryn Bigelow)
Kathryn Bigelow describes the same process from three perspectives: The USA is attacked with a nuclear missile. It is not possible to shoot down the missile. There are 19 minutes left before the impact in Chicago. We see the security room in the White House, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Department of Homeland Security, a base in Alaska, the nuclear force general, and finally the President playing basketball with girls at a school when he hears the news. They are connected through a video conference. The camera is in the middle of the action. And on the faces of Rebecca Ferguson and Idris Elba you can see the incomprehensible. (AW)
2. “One Battle After Another” (Paul Thomas Anderson)
“Boogie Nights” wasn’t actually about porn, “The Silk Thread” wasn’t about fashion – and in Paul Thomas Anderson’s second Pynchon adaptation, politics is just the hook for a fun genre melange, at the center of which is the left-wing extremist terrorist group “French 75”. The director choreographs his broken characters (wonderful: DiCaprio, Infiniti, Penn) through a turbulent, enigmatic scenario that ends with the most impressive chase scene since “Bullitt”. (MV)
3. “The Brutalist” (Brady Corbet)
“The Brutalist” is one of those films that you don’t get through so quickly. Adrien Brody plays the Holocaust survivor László Tóth, who, after the Second World War, as a migrant in the USA, ends up working as an architect in the hands of a rich patron who drains him intellectually and morally like a vampire. A monumental drama shot in VistaVision as a cinematic journey through broken glass, which draws all its energy from the struggle between harsh coming to terms with the past and ambiguous longing for the future. (MV)
4. “A Complete Unknown” (James Mangold)
Perhaps this portrait of the genius as a young man is a bit too picturesque. Bob Dylan, a rather unsympathetic parvenu, comes to New York, visits the sick Woody Guthrie, meets Joan Baez, makes a name for himself, signs a record deal, carries a guitar case and smokes all the time. Later, Johnny Cash comes by and cheers Dylan up. The film ends with the performance at the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan plugs in the electric guitar despite the organizers’ resistance. You always look for physiognomic similarity, and Timothy Chalamet looks quite similar to Dylan. And he can sing pretty much like that too. (AW)
5. “Memoirs of a Snail” (Adam Elliot)
After “Mary & Max”, the Australian stop-motion artist Adam Elliot has once again made a funereal claymation block of an animated film. The heartbreaking family story of the poodles would be hard to bear if one absurd idea didn’t follow the next (adoption by a swinger couple, a fat admirer as a husband). There are also succinctly interjected bits of wisdom and poetic characters like the resolute Pinky, who you won’t find elsewhere in the cinema. (MV)
6. “Frankenstein” (Guillermo del Toro)
Guillermo del Toro is famous for his opulent furnishings and walk-in decor. “Frankenstein” is a sentimental fable from the realm of horror and adventure films in which Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz and Lars Mikkelsen use all their acting talent. The story of the sad creature of Dr. Frankenstein, conceived by Mary Shelley, is painted in all gruesome detail by del Toro. A great Victorian love also occurs. The costumes and sets look fake and grand. And the film has, well: humor. (AW)
7. “The Mastermind” (Kelly Reichardt)
Kelly Reichardt is the most important independent director in America, as her surprisingly casual new work, based on autumnal Seventies images and fast-paced jazz, proves. It’s only superficially a heist film, as the theft of avant-garde paintings by an unemployed carpenter (played by Josh O’Connor, who’s completely out of touch with the world) fails in the first half hour. We are then confronted, in a quietly ironic narrative style, with all the narrow-mindedness of a dreamer on a hopeless escape. (MV)
8. “Weapons” (Zach Cregger)
Stories about people disappearing are more common in horror films, but “Barbarian” director Zach Cregger unfolds a subtle horror in his mystery shocker, told laconically from multiple perspectives, about a school class that is blown away overnight and a teacher in trouble. Of course, the depiction of a city in a state of emergency is also a political commentary, although “Weapons” is primarily disturbing through its macabre humor and suggestive camera shots. (MV)
9. “Springsteen – Deliver Me From Nowhere” (Scott Cooper)
Not a triumphant bionic about an American hero, but a film about a single album, 1982’s Nebraska, and the nature of depression. The book that director Scott Cooper based on is called “Heart Of Darkness”. Bruce Springsteen recorded the dark, dragging songs of “Nebraska” on a four-track cassette player, and the film is about how his manager Jon Landau insisted to Columbia that these demos be released on record. Flashbacks to childhood tell of Sringsteen’s irascible and depressed father. Above all, “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is the love story of Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen and Jeremy Strong as Landau. (AW)
10. “Riefenstahl” (Andres Veiel)
Andres Veiel, who made “Blackbox BRD” and a section of the 24-hour documentary (namely the one about Kai Diekmann, then “Bild” editor-in-chief), dedicates this documentary to the film director and photographer Leni Riefenstahl. He edited the film together from talk show appearances, the photos and her works – “Triumph of the Will”, “Olympia”. She was just commissioned to do it. And from the telephone recordings that Riefenstahl made of conversations with Albert Speer, journalists and outraged citizens. She was a woman in eternal defense: “None of this is true!” She once says that she wants to be remembered for “The Blue Light,” her first film, as the “key to everything.” At one point she says, “I wish I had died at the height of my fame.” That was in 1937. She was 102 years old. In the 1960s she traveled to the Nuba in Sudan and would have preferred to stay there forever. “The children were given my name and a mountain was named after me.” In one photo you can see a large box of Persil: “With two whitening agents.” (AW)
Films/mini-series 2025 – further recommendations
Arne Willander
- “Faithless” (Arte): Fatal love triangle – based on a script by Ingmar Bergman
- “After The Hunt” (Prime Video): Julia Roberts as an insecure Cantonian in a rape case at Yale
- “The New Yorker” (Netflix): On the 100th anniversary of the best magazine in the world
- “Practice with a sea view” (ARD) Tanja Wedhorn as a brilliant doctor in the Krähwinkel
- “Dr. Nice” (ZDF): Patrick Kalupa as an untrained surgeon in Krähwinkel
- “The Beast In Me” (Netflix): Claire Danes as a traumatized writer who takes on a ruthless businessman
Marc Vetter
- “Heroine”: Leonie Benesch (also great in “September 5”) experiences a late shift as a nurse in a clinic that demands everything from her
- “Adolescence” (Netflix): Shocking commentary on toxic images of masculinity, staged without cuts
- “A Simple Accident” (soon MUBI): Jafar Panahi explores the nature of trauma and oppression in his politically charged revenge thriller
- “Sorry, Baby”: Dark comedy about a professor whose life slips away after she is sexually harassed
- “Silent Observers”: Bulgarian-German documentary that shows the daily goings-on in a mountain village from the perspective of animals
- “Silent Friend”: Three lives from different eras, connected by the same ginkgo tree – with a magnificent Luna Wedler