Die Fremde. A very strong movie, with an equally strong Sibel Kekilli leading it. It depicts how traditionalism turns a young woman's family against her, ruining both the life of her and her family. As a character puts it: "God has nothing to do with it." It's all in the forced holding on to an outdated heritage and the inability of most individuals to break out of it. We'll be hearing from this as the German submission for the Best Foreign Oscar, I believe.
9/10
Miller's Crossing. It's different from most gangster movies and profits from that. Beneath the story of loyalty and ethics, there are wonderful moments satirizing the genre and the Coen brothers' customary use of subtle hints and symbolism, as well as their dark humour. I might be alone in this, but I dearly love Gabriel Byrne, and here I felt he carried the main role and thus the film once again. The other actors (and the single actress) are doing very fine (or, as in the case of Albert Finney, more than that), but he truly outshines them all.
10/10
Batman Begins. Big and bouncy and predictable. A fun movie, with plenty of great action, but nothing more. It attempts to give Batman a somewhat believable background, and thus sets up the franchise that also brought the better and less clichéd "Dark Knight" and hopefully more titles in the future.
7/10
Stalag 17. Some of the humour won't work anymore, but a lot of it still does. There's the big laughs, the more subtle ones, the not-laughs, based on (at times very) dark humour and the sharp irony of the lead character, excellently cast with William Holden. And underneath it, there are the slowly fading smiles and the forced reassurances about a home the prisoners are far away from. If there's anything that's wrong with it, it's that the identity of the spy could have been revealed in a better way.
9/10
Murder On The Orient Express. What a cast. We're talking Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and many others here. Unfortunately it doesn't translate into a great movie: the characters are overdone in their uniqueness and the overly contrived plot leads to a morally questionable ending. There's some good humour in here, but also very long sequences showing nothing but a moving train that make you wonder just what Lumet was thinking.
6/10
. I wish more parodies were like this instead of these stupid "hey look, it's the iconic scene from that movie but with weed! ololol" movies that have been coming out in spades over the last couple of years.
