Disney's Fantasia (1940) / Fantasia 2000 (1999)

I am a die-hard Walt Disney fan. The first movie I ever saw was The Jungle Book - I must have been around 4 years old - and my parents did a wonderful job of introducing my sister and me to the wonders of Disney's art. However, I had never even heard of Fantasia until 2009.

Fantasia is number three (!) in the row of Disney movies and surprisingly long (120 min). It consists of nine  animated sequences set to pieces of classical music such as Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, or Rite Of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. The adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night On A Bald Mountain might be a little scary for children.

It would be shameful to give away the content of each episode. What I can give away, however, is that you are going to see something so beautiful that it will make you gasp and think, how on earth can human beings create art like this?

When you look up Fantasia on wiki, you will see that not all of the reviews were positive. The movie has been described as "an overwhelmingly ambitious orgy of color, sound, and imagination", but also as "grotesquely kitschy". While I would agree that one or two sequences are at least bordering on being cheesy,  I think that the others are simply an ode to the magic you can create with pen and paper. As a Disney lover, Fantasia is a dream come true.

RATING: 5/5

Fantasia 2000

Fantasia 2000 is the sequel to the movie I just talked about.

This time, each sequence is introduced by celebrities such as Bette Midler or Quincy Jones. The highlights are the adaptation of George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, and the adaptation of Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Apart from these two, I would not consider this movie a must-see when comparing it to its older brother. Describing it as only mediocre would be wrong, though.

Fantasia 2000 is less cheesy than its predecessor, but at the same time lacks a great deal of the original's magic and charm. Fans of Fantasia should probably see this movie so they can say they know them both. As for people who only know the new movie, I would highly suggest they watch the first one.

RATING: 4/5

A Beautiful Mind (A Beautiful Mind - Genie und Wahnsinn; 2001)

Sometimes Hollywood makes unbelievably WRONG decisions. One of those was not giving Russel Crowe the Oscar for his performance in this movie (no, really, he did not win it). While many people might refer to gladiator Maximus as the role of his life, I think that he was even more brilliant  when he played the mathematician John Forbes Nash.

Not only is this movie full of great actors who do amazing jobs (besides Crowe, we find Ed Harris, Paul Bettany, Christopher Plummer, and, of course, the wonderful Jennifer Connelly). It also manages to interweave several types of movie (romantic comedy, drama, horror movie) with an absolutely captivating result where everything fits together.
It's not just the (true!) story of Nash who is trying to make the breakthrough as a scientist and develops a schizophrenic psychosis, or the part about how he meets his first girlfiriend Alicia (played by Jennifer Connelly) and how he tries to win her heart despite being very socially awkward. (I especially love this part: Russel Crowe is so adorable as the nerd who would do anything to make Alicia return his feelings.)
The soundtrack is just as brilliant - sometimes threatening and sinister, other times so sweet that it always makes me teary (opening scene!) -, and tops off what I consider one of my favorite movies of all time.

Some of you might have seen A Beautiful Mind already. If so, you know how beautiful it is. If you haven't seen it yet, you should. Prepare yourself with a box of tissues and a cushion to hold on to during the scary parts. You won't regret it.

RATING: 5/5

Secretary (Secretary - womit kann ich dienen?; 2002)

Forget 50 Shades Of Grey. Forget everything you have read about 50 Shades Of Grey. Also, forget the book’s thesis that people who enjoy getting spanked or using whips and chains in their sex life are brutal maniacs who don't give a f*** about the RACK principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RACK). It is sad that E. L. James seems to be mentally stuck in a time long before the 21^st century. (It is also sad that her book could easily be considered a rip-off which was “inspired” by this movie.)

Luckily, some people know it is possible to tell a story about a BDSM relationship without suggesting that everyone who is not (or not exclusively) into vanilla sex is in dire need of psychoanalysis and therapy. Secretary is very moving and impressive, and Maggie Gyllenhaal will knock your socks off. Director Steven Shainberg never makes fun of the characters and tries to simply tell the story of two people who fall in love.

The young woman Lee Holloway (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) comes home after spending a few months in a psychiatric hospital for attempting suicide. Lee insists that her being institutionalized was a misunderstanding because she never intended to kill herself (even though she has a tendency of cutting herself). She is portrayed as socially awkward, sensitive, and creative. After learning to type, she begins to work for the attorney E. Edward Grey (!!!; played by James Spader) who hires her despite her unprofessional appearance. Lee also starts to date Peter, an acquaintance from high school.

At first, Grey is very irritated by Lee’s grammar mistakes. But soon he finds himself aroused by her submissive behaviour. He openly confronts her with the problem of cutting herself and demands her not to do that again. They start a BDSM relationship in which Lee experiences a sexual and personal awakening. She stops cutting herself and falls in love with Grey. Grey, however, is concerned and ashamed about his feelings for her and eventually fires her.

Peter proposes to Lee and she reluctantly agrees to marry him. While she is trying on her wedding dress, she leaves and runs to Grey’s office to declare her love for him. 

Will the two get together?

RATING: 4.5/5

Requiem For A Dream (2000)

There are movies whose soundtrack is just as famous as the movie itself. Good examples are the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Psycho, or Jaws (Der weiße Hai). Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna is portentous, and scary, and at the same time incredibly catchy. Listening to it will likely make every single hair on your body stand on end and you might feel goosebumps even on your face. At least I did.

Once you have listened to it, chances are that it will linger somewhere in your memory for as long as you live because it is so very dark and poignant. It builds like a tidal wave and then crashes over you leaving you raw and shocked and vulnerable. It might make you cry your heart out. It is therefore likely that you won’t be able to stand listening to the whole piece. (here it is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKLpJtvzlEI )

These things also hold true for the movie that Lux Aeterna was composed for: Darren Aronofsky’s disturbing masterpiece Requiem For A Dream.

The main character is Sara Goldfarb (played by Ellen Burstyn) who suffers from her life as a lonely widow in her mid-fifties. She spends her time sitting outside the house gossiping with a group of other women, and watching a tv show in which the protagonist constantly claims that not eating meat, sugar, or having orgasms, changed her life. Her son Harry (played by Jared Leto) is a drug addict. He has his own apartment but comes home now and then to steal Sara’s TV and take it to the pawnbroker so he can buy new drugs. His friend Tyrone (played by Marlon Wayans), who helps him with drug dealing, and his girlfriend Marion (played by Jennifer Connelly) are addicts, too.

All four protagonists pursue the famous American Dream in the sense of trying to become rich and/or change their current lives into something better. Sara owns a red dress which is way too small for her by now and which reminds her of the “good old times”. Her husband loved for her to wear it, and she also wore it when Harry graduated from high school. When one day she receives a phone call which announces she will be invited to participate in a game show, she starts to become obsessed with losing enough weight to fit into the red dress again. Harry wants to become a rich business man so he can help Marion open a fashion store for her designs. Marion hopes to escape from her psychologist and her parents’ authority. Tyrone, as a child, promised his mother he would not spend his whole life on the streets.

As the movie proceeds, the protagonists’ lives fall victim to their dreams and we are pulled into a tornado of psychoses and prostitution and misery. This movie comes close to a very realistic nightmare and leaves us shocked and numb. It is absolutely worth seeing – not just for the fantastic performances of each actor (esp. Ellen Burstyn) but also for its plot and music – but you might not want to watch it by yourself. 

Considering that Darren Aronofsky also directed The Wrestler and Black Swan, we can see that he obviously has a thing for the dark side in human beings. He tells the story of four people who destroy their lives because they desperately hang on to an unrealizable dream – or is it really the dream which destroys their lives? 

RATING: 4.5/5

Love Me If You Dare (Liebe mich wenn du dich traust; 2003)

Close friends of mine might know how much I adore Marion Cotillard. I was never big on French actresses until I watched her incredible performance of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. At that time I wasn't too big on French movies, either, until I watched this movie: Love Me If You Dare. Voilá, my heart was drenched in wine (thanks for that one, Norah)...

French movies about love often come with little twists which makes them different from the usually predictable Hollywood stuff where everyone knows that the main actor is going to get together with the main actress at the end. Seriously, guys, people who go to the movies want to be entertained, not bored.
This wonderful movie now is full of surprising twists, and one could refer to it as "'Harry and Sally' gone amok". (Yes, it is romantic. I promise.)

Before turning into a matter of life and death, everything starts with the friendship between a little boy named Julien and a little girl named Sophie - and with a pretty tin box given to Julien by his fatally ill mother. Since Sophie is being bullied at school, Julien gives the box to her to cheer her up under the condition that she lends him the box from time to time. Sophie demands proof of how important it is to him. This is the beginning of a game in which the box changes its owner after a completed dare.
As they grow older, Julien (now played by Guillaume Canet) and Sophie (now played by Marion Cotillard) slowly begin to fall in love with each other but neither wants to admit it. Too afraid of being rejected, their dares become more extreme and the two continue their perverted game well into their thirties until...

The (of course, French) philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal said the famous words "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know" (in German usually translated as "das Herz hat Gründe, die der Verstand nicht kennt"). Love Me If You Dare shows just how true Pascal's statement is, and you will find yourself thinking about it for quite a while. Watching the two protagonists deliberately hurt each other so that neither has to confess their love can only be described as an emotional roller coaster from which we can't seem to escape. Yes, it is stupid. Yes, the two are their own worst enemies.
But isn't that what people in love do: silly things?

RATING: 5/5

Howl (Howl - Das Geheul; 2010)

The movie Howl (2010) is a monument to an artist and his most famous work of literature. 

James Franco brilliantly portrays the poet Allen Ginsberg as a fragile man who suffers under the circumstances he lives in and believes in his art as the only way of being true to himself as well as honest to the world. Not only does he resemble Ginsberg (who explains his working process and his reasons for writing Howl in taped interviews which make up a third of the movie). He also manages to convey the atmosphere of the poem and makes us feel its intensity in a scene where he reads it out to an audience at the Six Gallery in October 1955– an audience who hang onto his lips because both the poem and its writer seem to be what they had been looking for: Someone who shares their thoughts and inner conflicts. Someone who understands.

However, the main character can actually be considered the poem itself which is read by a man whose identity we do not know unless we fast forward to the credits at the end of the movie. His dark threatening voice coheres with animated sequences which underline the poem and enhance its meaning to the point where he might be saying a prayer instead of what might be the most controversial poem of the 20^th century. 

This brings us to the actual plot: the 1957 obscenity trial against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of City Lights Bookstore and the first person to publish the poem in “Howl and other poems”. David Strathairn plays the attorney Ralph McIntosh who represents the bigotry and prudery of the 1950s. His opponent Jake Ehrlich, played by John Hamm, believes in freedom of speech and artistic license. During the process where a few literary experts are asked to give their opinion of the poem, Ehrlich manages to reveal their double standards and poses the question if a piece of writing can only be considered art if it lives up to the reader’s expectations and society’s idea of what should be uttered in public. The result of the process, as groundbreaking as it might have been at that time, could have been portrayed in a much more spectacular way. People who were not familiar with the case before seeing the movie, like me, might be a little disappointed. 

However, the real Allen Ginsberg makes it clear that he never cared much about the public opinion. It is therefore only logical that the directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman put most emphasis on the poem itself in a way that makes us want to read it at once. Howl shows what a movie on a poem can and should do.

RATING: 4.5/5