Three New Reviews at The Cinematheque

Two Germans and an Italian walk into this blog.  No this isn't some strangely timecentric joke from a Tarantino film, it is a listing of my three latest reviews posted over at The Cinematheque.  

First up is the German film Cloud 9 (my review can be read here).  You know, the one about old people having sex.  This sexagenarian love triangle movie may set off a sort of ick factor in many viewers, especially in today's youth-driven market, but truth be told, it is a rather intensely tragic love story - no matter the age.  It is able to hold its own - and then some - against any of the so-called romances coming out of Hollywood lo these many years.

Second up is another German film but this time the praise isn't quite so high.  Well-meaning and quite controversial (and I usually love such a thing) is this new comedy about Hitler and the Holocaust.  Mein Fuhrer (my review can be read here), an audacious mineshaft of a movie, is the first German-born comedy on the subject.  It is not nearly as heinous as Roberto Begnini's reprehensible Life is Beautiful but that didn't stop it being denounced by many for its touchy subject matter.  As far as I am concerned, if anything, the film did not go far enough.  Director Dani Levy had a chance to push the envelope so to speak and create a groundbreaking film (the two leads are more than capable of pulling it off as well) but instead took the (semi) safe route and chickened out.

As for the Italian in our little threesome here, Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo (my review can be read here) is a Kubrickian anti-biopic about Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti - one of the most feared men in all of Italian political history.  Loud and brash, Il Divo plays as arrogant antithesis to the typical biopic clogging up the multiplex waves every Oscar season.  The film also acts as an orgasm of art in a way - exploding its political fable all over its audience in a cataclysmic eruption of cinematic chutzpah.  Take that!