Reviews

To make it short: Lilli is the funniest, most entertaining taunt I've seen in a loooong time. Hey, no doubt: It is a hyper-low-budget trash movie, so do not expect super high quality images. Lilli is said to be shot in 1999 and you can see that. The editing and overall style follows the 1998 original "Lola Rennt", which was an international success and famed at that time for its unique storytelling, with fast cuts and hand-held camera, and given that Lilli probably had less than 1% of the budget of Lola, the results here are plainly awesome.

But - of course - it is not technical aspects that make Lilli more than worth watching. It's the pure fun seeing all the situations from Lola replayed, but now twisted, mocked, and ridiculed. The opening scene shows Lilli (played by Bernd Gleiter, a guy, and he didn't even try to play a girl) trying to have phone conversation with her boyfriend, wrapped up in telephone cables. The short flashbacks showing her using a vacuum to clean the lawn are CULT.

I've watched Lilli at the Hamburg Shortfilm Slam (where it was voted "best short") and can't believe that there is still no distributor for the DVD (by June '06), though the trivia section claims that Lilli will be released in summer '06. If I can buy stocks of that distributor, LET ME KNOW!

I had great expectations for Serenity.

They have not been met.

No doubt, the special effects are great. The dialogs are entertaining (and genuine).

But as much as I am sick of seeing super-cool-dudes swinging their fists and guns, I am sick of stories that do not go beyond the cliché "nice guy against rampaging man-eating villains" setting. Jesus, that is so boooring.

Read any Shakespeare play and it has more life, more passion, probably even more obscenities (if that's what you want) in it.

No doubt, Broken Flowers wouldn't work with an actor like Bill Murray. It just amazed me, how hard he made me laugh just by NOT making a face or saying something - just by sitting there and... well, doing his "inner" actions.

It's a masterpiece of acting, with a great, working story. I've seen Don't Come Knocking the same day and since it has a comparable story it is easy to see that this story works while the other has severe flaws.

It is difficult for me to see the extraordinary performance of Jarmusch - some images looked a little bit dull and videoish to me and kind of distracted me from the story. But then, this is the work of the DoP and not the director.

Al is a guy from Los Angeles and he has a problem. Al has a duck on his head. It is just a soft toy that sticks to his (almost) bald noddle, but apparently it is the source of Al's life-long torment. Now, for the first time, he shares his story with a strange, fossilized psychiatrist, who is as weird as the rest of this film.

His childhood - a misery, with his mum (played by a skinny black dude) and his dad (played by a teen) being nervous wrecks, because they try to protect their sun from the terrible truth. Yes, the duck.

I've seen this flic at the Underground film festival in Berlin quite a while ago and was perfectly entertained, really. But even more entertaining was to watch and hear the crowd debating. About the psychological background of the main character. About the relevance of suppressing your true being. About how to face reality.

Sorry, audience, this is all bulls**t. I have no idea what this film is actually about, it is incredibly hilarious and very entertaining, but I bet it has NOTHING to mean at all. It is all a big hoax, with the director pulling the audience's leg. I also bet he was around after the screening, among the audience, and laughed his butt off, what elderly woman had to say about the "rich structure of the underlying expression" (I've heard that!).

It is great fun. Just go and watch it, if you can get hold of it. And don't try to search for meaning.