DaViD´82

Snow Cake does honor to its name. Beautiful on the outside, a sparkling cast, but inside the atmosphere is cold and immediately the first mouthful confirms the expected. And that is that you can’t expect any particular taste from snow. Simply a forgettable movie about forgiveness and simple mutual understanding that we’ve seen thousands of and just during the time it took to write this review, a few more have been come into existence.

In the end it just doesn’t have what it takes for the legendary status enjoyed by milestones in intelligent sci-fi such as Space Odyssey or Blade Runner (the screenplay holds it together, but there are a couple of screaming lapses of logic), but a few times while I was watching it did occur to me that it isn’t that far off. Plus, Moon has huge potential to mature with time. And who knows, maybe there will come a time when I will have to change my comment at the beginning. P.S.: Lots of those lapses of logic may be solved by the theory about radiation sickness, but not all of them by far...

I know that Olivier Marchal only acts here, but still I believe that more than one viewer will be convinced that he was standing behind the camera too. The dismal atmosphere, the hard stares instead of empty blabbing, a vicious dog and suspense; it looks like it came out of his movies. And the chance he took hooking up the Lindon - Kruger duo paid off big time. With this movie Cavayé joins the ever-growing ranks of French filmmakers who have been successfully resuscitating the seemingly dead soul of the dark French crime/thriller wave of the sixties and seventies. Just too bad that we find out right at the start the truth about Lisa. Julien’s determination wouldn’t have wavered even if the opposite were true, and for the viewer the uncertainty (if the truth had remained unrevealed for the entire movie) would have been far more intriguing.

For Somalis a provocation, for anorexics a nightmare, for the consumer society a tease and for me, after a long time, finally an animated film that is properly swinging, has an imaginative style (even if technically it lags behind its counterparts) and is brimming with ideas. Basically, and Aardman film, but without Aardman.

The best movie of its kind? I wouldn’t say that. The second best? That I can say without a doubt.

National Socialist John Rabe is like the humanist counterpart to John Rambo. Above all, he is a man who should not be forgotten. And if nothing else, where else will you see Chinese people being rescued under and unfurling of a giant Nazi flag?

It is brimming with proper funny ideas and gags, but I couldn't get rid of the impression that if it was taken seriously (and the premise is there), I would have had more fun in the end.

Approximately 3650 reasons (based on the director's info that it's about ten years of Groundhog Day) to hate the song “I Got You Babe”, but at the same time the same 3650 reasons to love this movie. And to watch it again, and again, and again. And then once again. And then again, and again...

A horror which in purely screenplay terms has no weaknesses. Excellent actors. Atmosphere mostly powerful (when not spoiled by superfluousness like the contents of the “child’s" coffin). First-class music. But it fails in one fundamental respect. It’s not in the least funny. Which is a problem mainly because it’s trying much harder to be a comedy than a horror (a genre that suits this picture much more).

Unbalanced. If the creators hadn’t been afraid of cutting out all those dumb age-old wisecracks, completely ignoring the three dames and letting the aspects that work shine through, this could have been much better. It had the material for it. I expected improvisation, I got it. But I didn’t expect that the creators were going to have something to say. And they certainly do. It doesn’t work as a comedy even for a second, but as one big melancholic nostalgic sigh, it plays its role surprisingly well.