#florian henckel von donnersmarck

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[gritocontido]

[food-in-movies]

Werk ohne Autor (2018)

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Tourist (2010)

With names like Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, you’d expect a steamy romantic thriller from The Tourist. Unfortunately for anyone who gets suckered by the trailer, this is anything but. The stars are like two cold, dead fishes in a plastic bag hanging off the back of a garbage truck. They might be rubbing up real close but it’s not because they’re attracted to each other.

While under police surveillance, Elise Clifton-Ward (Angeine Jolie) is given instructions by her lover, Alexander Pearce. “Find a man about my height and build on the train to Venice, Italy. Convince them it’s me.” Pearce is wanted by Scotland Yard’s Inspector John Archeson (Paul Bettany) and the mobster he stole $2.3 billion from, Reginal Shaw (Steven Berkoff). Alexander's recently had cosmetic surgery so no one knows exactly what he looks and Elise goes along with his plan. On the train, Elise selects Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp). He’s smitten by the beautiful woman, unaware of what kind of adventure he’s about to embark upon.

You can see what the film wants to do. Elise is stringing along this man, this “regular guy” (we’ll get to that in a bit), keeping him out of harm’s way only so those in pursuit can become convinced that he’s Alexander Pearce. In the process, they fall in love. In theory, it would be romantic, exciting, and dangerous.

The first problem comes from the stars. Whenever Jolie and Depp kiss, you swear they’re about to wretch. They have no chemistry, whatsoever. It makes her sudden infatuation with him completely unbelievable. The casting's the problem. Depp has been named World’s Sexiest Man TWICE. It doesn’t matter how much he tries to bumble his way around stray bullets and cartoonish Russian mobsters, he’s unfit to play an everyman.

To compensate for the lack of sparks, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes the villains into cartoon supervillains. The idea is you'll hate them so much your brain will latch onto the “good guys” and cheer for them to succeed. It’s done with all of the subtlety of a grenade stuffed in your mouth. After Shaw finishes strangling one of his own minions for failing his mission, we’re told how he tracked down all the men who slept with his wife before they met, killed them, then killed his wife. Why stop there, movie? Have him kill their mothers and family doctors too! Oh, he says that he did? My mistake. The police are just as bad, with Inspector Archeson taking his obsession with Pearce to an inhuman extreme while the rest of the police fumble and stumble around this operation so poorly it’s a wonder they can manage to get their shirts buttoned all the way up.

Advertised as a travel romance (you bet it is, there are so many lavish shots of Venice here it’s like the city sponsored the movie) with thriller elements, what this is actually is a whole lotta nothing. Venice must the worst city to set an action movie. All of the boat chase scenes are slow, unengaging, and agonizingly long. The movie’s so dull you’ll be begging for it to end but it takes forever to get to its twisty conclusion: a surprise reveal so obvious its predictability is only surpassed by its convolutedness. So much of this film makes no sense or would’ve fallen apart completely if the characters hadn’t behaved in a very precise but illogical manner. You might think the movie is good but just kind of boring up until that moment. After the shocking conclusion, it’s pretty obvious this is little more than a vanity project gone way, way wrong. Can you believe this cinematic soporific cost $100 million dollars to shoot?

The funniest thing about The Tourist is that it was nominated for Best Musical or Comedy at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. Only the beautiful imagery throughout and the beautiful performers manage to elevate this picture above a 0-star rating. It’s that dull and fails that spectacularly. (May 15, 2021)

[positivexpectedvalue]

The Lives of Others (2006)

Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

[thelatelatelatelatedoublefeature]

[hayaomiyazaki]

as i mentioned last week, i have refreshed about 300gb of content on my public googledrive 😙

an overview of most of what i added...

features

Olivia (1951) dir. Jacqueline Audry 🇫🇷🏳️‍🌈

A Child Is Waiting (1963) dir. John Cassavetes 🇺🇸

Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) dir. George Roy Hill 🇺🇸

Personal Best (1982) dir. Robert Towne 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈

Threads (1984) dir. Mick Jackson 🇬🇧

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) dir. Bruce Robinson 🇬🇧

Salaam Bombay! (1988) dir. Mira Nair 🇮🇳

Romuald et Juliette (1989) dir. Coline Serreau 🇫🇷

And Life Goes On… /ㅤزندگی و دیگر هیچㅤ(1992) dir. Abbas Kiarostami 🇮🇷

Clean, Shaven (1993) dir. Lodge Kerrigan 🇺🇸

Wittgenstein (1993) dir. Derek Jarman 🇬🇧🏳️‍🌈

Butterfly Kiss (1995) dir. Michael Winterbottom 🇬🇧🏳️‍🌈

The Portrait of a Lady (1996) dir. Jane Campion 🇺🇸🇬🇧

Still Life / 三峡好人 (2006) dir. Jia Zhangke 🇨🇳

The Lives of Others / Das Leben der Anderen (2006) dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 🇩🇪

Syndromes and a Century / แสงศตวรรษ (2006) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul 🇹🇭

Lust, Caution / 色, 戒 (2007) dir. Ang Lee 🇺🇸🇨🇳🇹🇼

Liverpool (2008) dir. Lisandro Alonso 🇦🇷

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister (2010) dir. James Kent 🇬🇧🏳️‍🌈

Tabu (2012) dir. Miguel Gomes 🇵🇹

No (2012) dir. Pablo Larraín 🇨🇱

The Blue Room / La Chambre bleue (2014) dir. Mathieu Amalric 🇫🇷

P'tit Quinquin (2014) dir. Bruno Dumont 🇫🇷

Still the Water / 2つ目の窓 (2014) dir. Naomi Kawase 🇯🇵

Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo (2016) dir. Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau 🇫🇷🏳️‍🌈

The Breaking Ice / 燃冬 (2023) dir. Anthony Chen 🇨🇳🇸🇬

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World / Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii (2023) dir. Radu Jude 🇷🇴

Scrapper (2023) dir. Charlotte Regan 🇬🇧

Kneecap (2024) dir. Rich Peppiatt 🇮🇪

documentaries

Night and Fog / Nuit et brouillard (1956) dir. Alain Resnais 🇫🇷

Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un été (1961) dir. Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin 🇫🇷

In the Rearview / Skąd dokąd / Звідки куди (2023) dir. Maciek Hamela 🇵🇱🇺🇦

Christopher Eccleston Remembers… Jude (BBC, 2024)

Mick Jackson Remembers… Threads (BBC, 2024)

Joan Bakewell Remembers… Bette Davis at the NFT (BBC, 2024)

television

Love in the Big City / 대도시의 사랑법 (2024) 🇰🇷🏳️‍🌈

Wolf Hall (2024) 🇬🇧

books

William S. Burroughs – Queer (1985) 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈

Claire Keegan – Small Things Like These (2021) 🇮🇪

[guiltyasdave]

FAVORITE FIRST WATCHES OF NOVEMBER

Past Lives (2023) dir. Celine Song

Blue My Mind (2017) dir. Lisa Brühlmann

The Lives of Others (2006) dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) dir. Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton

The Substance (2024) dir. Coralie Fargeat

I, Tonya (2017) dir. Craig Gillespie

The Holdovers (2023) dir. Alexander Payne

Zodiac (2007) dir. David Fincher

Anatomy of a Fall (2023) dir. Justine Triet

npt for a few letterboxd friends: @always-andromeda @userparamore @pedropeach @agentmarcuspike @javier-pena @whocaresstillthelouvre @perotovar @ayo-edebiri @sceletaflores @joelsdagger @hellishjoel @moonlitbirdie @arcanefox207 @tonysopranosrobe and everyone else who wants to share! <3

[snowbairdd]

Angelina Jolie as Elise Clifton-Ward in THE TOURIST (2010) dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

[filministic]

Werk ohne Autor (2018) dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

[byneddiedingo]

Gene Hackman in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, Michael Higgins, Elizabeth MacRae, Teri Garr, Harrison Ford. Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola. Cinematography: Bill Butler. Production design: Dean Tavoularis. Film editing: Richard Chew. Music: David Shire.

The technology used in it may have dated, but The Conversation seems more relevant than ever. When it was made, the film was very much of the moment: the Watergate moment, which was long before email and cell phones. Julian Assange was only 3 years old. What has kept Coppola's film alive is that he had the good sense to make it a thriller about the consequences of knowledge. The real victim of Harry Caul's snooping is Harry Caul himself, the professional whose delight in what he can do with his microphones and tape recorders begins to fade when he realizes that technology is not an end in itself. It is one of the great Gene Hackman performances from a career crowded with great and varied performances. Ironically, the film that The Conversation most reminds me of today is The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2006 film about eavesdropping by the Stasi in East Germany, which was praised by conservatives like John Podhoretz and William F. Buckley and called one of "the best conservative movies of the last 25 years" by the National Review for its account of surveillance by a communist regime. But Harry Caul is a devout Roman Catholic and an entrepreneur, making his living with the same technology and the same techniques as the Stasi spy of Donnersmarck's film -- capitalism alive and well. The film is something of a technological marvel itself: The great sound designer and editor Walter Murch was responsible for completing it after Coppola was called away to work on The Godfather, Part II, and the texture of the film depends heavily on the way Murch was able to manipulate the complexities of sound that form the key scenes, especially the opening sequence in which Caul is conducting his surveillance of a couple in San Francisco's crowded and busy Union Square. It's true that Murch cheats a little at the ending, when the line, "He'd kill us if he got the chance," is repeated. Caul had extracted it from a distorted recording, and took it to mean that the couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest) were in danger from the man who commissioned the surveillance. But at the end, the line is heard again as "He'd kill us if he got the chance," an emphasis that reveals to Caul, too late, that they are the killers, not the victims. It's unfortunate that so much depends on the discrepancy between the way we originally hear the line and the later delivery of it. Still, I don't think it's a fatal flaw in a vital and gripping movie.

[o-druida-ebrio]

"A Vida dos Outros", (2006)

Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

[thingstol00kat]

2024 Watches

Maestro (2023) Bradley Cooper

Fallen Leaves (2023) Aki Kaurismäki

Paris is Burning (1990) Jennie Livingston

Asteroid City (2023) Wes Anderson

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) Julian Schnabel

Household Saints (1993) Nancy Savoca

Saltburn (2023) Emerald Fennell

Stories We Tell (2012) Sarah Polley

May December (2023) Todd Haynes

Hot girls Wanted (2015) Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus

Streetwise (1984) Martin Bell

Videodrome (1983) David Cronenberg

Poor Things (2023) Yorgos Lanthimos

All of Us Strangers (2023) Andrew Haigh

50 Minutes by Moyra Davey

Homage to Edvard Munch and all my Dead Children - Tracey Emin

Happy together (1997) Wong Kar Wai

Pipilotti Rist - I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much

The Thin Blue Line (1988) Errol Morris

“Theme Song” Vito Acconci

Window Water Baby Moving. Stan Brakhage. 1959

Scorpio Rising (1963) Kenneth Anger

Perfect Days (2023) Wim Wnders

Fuses (1967) by Carolee Schneemann

Oppenheimer (2023) Christopher Nolan

Promising Young Woman (2020) Emerald Fennell

Time (2020) Garrett Bradley

Problemista (2023) Julio Torres

La Chimera (2024) Alice Rohrwacher

Challengers (2024) Luca Guadagnino

Run Lola Run (1998) Tom Tykwer

Starstruck (1982) Gillian Armstrong

Tuesday (2024) Daina Oniunas-Pusic

Kind of Kindness (2024) Yorgos Lanthimos

Janet Planet (2024) Annie Baker

Funny Face (1957) Stanley Donen

The Lives of Others (2006) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Opening Night (1977) John Cassavetes

Fanny and Alexander (1982) Ingmar Bergman

Five Easy Pieces (1970) Bob Rafelson

Three Daughters (2024) Azazel Jacobs

Nyad (2023) Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Trainspotting (1996) Danny Boyle

We Live in Time (2024) John Crowley

Anora (2024) Sean Baker

Rendition (2007) Gavin Hood

Queer (2024) Luca Guadagnino

Strangers on a train (1951) Alfred Hitchcock

Oh Canada (2024) Paul Schrader

Invincible (short film) (2023) Vincent René-Lortie

Conclave (2024) Edward Berger

Parthenope (2024) Paolo Sorrentino

[havithreatendub4]

#2010 #NYC #premiere #The Tourist #Ziegfeld Theater #Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck #Director #December 6, 2010 #red carpet #photocall #cast #fans

[positivexpectedvalue]

The Lives of Others (2006)

Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck