The Good German
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Movie Reviews of The Good German
Movie Review: um... IT'S SODERBERGH?!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
seriously. Soderbergh directed (and did the cinematography) for this film... above and beyond all THIS IS A SODERBERGH FILM. He's up there with the likes of David Lynch and Cronenberg and various other experimentalists or avant-garde-ists. "The Good German" is beyond simply being a film noir, or having A-List actors in it (which he always does)- the film is to produce an effect and evoke something more than your average or even above average film can accomplish.
when you deal with a director with this much vision and true artistry, viewers are bound to be polarized (even the "thinking" ones). None of his films do particularly well at the box office and are usually very limited run and more often than not they will be sitting on your local Blockbuster's shelf waiting to be rented by YOU.
Solaris: based on a book AND a prior Russian film. lots of people "didn't get it", others hated it because they felt it was a bad 'adaptation'... simply, it's sodergergh's way of doing it.
Kafka: for those that think they didn't like "The Good German" or Kafka, try this one on, then put your critic's hat on (or live under it).
i could go on, but i'm really just trying to say that when you watch a Soderbergh film, that's exactly what you going to get- not your film and not anything else.
...and if your precious little Spider Man suddenly has a foul mouth, a scum-fk personality, and is abusive to women and it stopped you from enjoying the film, then i guess his character was conceived just right ;)
Movie Review: .....This is What Happens When a Country Like Nazi Germany Lost the WAR!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
.....I must credit...Stargazer...who critiqued this DVD perfectly...movies in the WW2 years were produced on 35mm celluloid/film just like this one...excellent art direction [wonderful]...slices of life in postwar Germany were with raw emotions leaving nothing to the imagination...Clooney and Cate portray their war/weary characters to the limit and like in real life, Clooney's character gets the crap beaten out of him by nefarious Russians, Germans and even Americans throughout this black/noir flick...best dramatic acting by the scarred up Clooney....the ending on Clooney's part was a letdown to me...Cate lived a horrendous life/existence just to survive in Nazi Germany...her portrayal showed how basically human one could be...all of us would have done the very same things she did to see her dawns...Tobey Maguire impressed me with his grasp of a capricious and double dealing SOB of an enlisted GI exploiting everyone he came in contact with...his was a grand performance with a poetic justice demise...this film ranks with any big WW2 movie...in any era, too...highly engrossing themes with the utter topical destruction wreaked on Berlin then and this DVD is well worth the sale price...Clooney at his very dramatic best!!....SSGT CHRIS SARNO-USMC FMFMovie Review: The Good German got better!
Summary: 5 Stars
George Clooney, to me and only to me, is not such a good actor (my apology to his millions of fans) but every now and then he surprises me. In "The Good German" Clooney is more than competent and reveals a side to his acting not usually seen, and produces a convincing performance as Captain Geismar, who tries to unravel a murder mystery and to come to grips with his own emotions. Is this a film for everyone? Not at all, but those who enjoy the reality of film noir and superb directing will revel in this film.Movie Review: A unique, outstanding noir
Summary: 5 Stars
Unless you are a serious noir buff, you have to be over 75 to appreciate this extraordinary movie. Sure, its a homage to the old black and white noirs of the 40's and its been criticised for not doing a perfect job of it. Who cares? Its the only movie combining post war Berlin, division of Europe, the coming cold war, and Nazi atrocities into a nostalgic noir package. Yes, its Casablanca and the third man combined. A noir gem.Movie Review: Visiting New Noir
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't think anyone, not even those who dislike him, can deny that Soderbergh is a knowledgeable film-maker. I would add that he might be the most intelligent one working in Hollywood now. Not that it in itself guarantees that he would create art that would possibly change our lives, but it does mean that we get the chance to submerge to experiments that tell us, always hungry for knowledge, this and that about the nature of cinema. Not only about techniques, but some really abstract stuff, too. For an example, if the pretty Ocean films aren't really your game, you can still appreciate them for their philosophy on editing and creating a rhythm both inside a scene, and a continuous one that lasts throughout the whole film. And after all, I would much rather see him do an Ocean for his commercial endeavours rather than a Solaris or an Erin Brockovich, two films that I really can't stand. And those are the only ones. Otherwise any new Soderbergh film gets my attention.
But this film is one of his experimental, smaller stuff, and not by the looks of at all a blend between the two, like Ocean, and what Solaris apparently tried to be. Instead, we get a rather thorough look at film-noir and what it stands for, and an uncompromising film at that.
The Oxford American dictionary defines film noir as "a style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace." So very true, and historically an apt definition. Much is included: the post-war darkness, the bleakness in the world view, but what is missing is the helplessness in narrative terms. The plot was always a story of murder and truth, played against a political backdrop.
This helplessness is embodied in a main character, often a detective or journalist, searching for truth in a corrupt environment. Of course as the plot develops, our man is being crushed under the political backdrop fo scheming. Then there is a mysterious woman, a center of his desires. Often she's a beautiful redhead. In general terms, film noir has to do with a whole mechanism of film cosmology working like cosmos, trapping a Kafkaesque man, often an introspective character like a writer, inside. It's about being trapped inside a world, not being in control; it's about being led by the wind, the cosmic fate.
Thus, film-noir demands a caricature of a leading man, someone who acts as a scapegoat to the audience. Nowadays no one would do this better than George Clooney; he is our man of noir, having basically done this kind of stuff since the late 1990s, after his first ventures with Soderbergh in Out of Sight. From that he has advanced to a bunch of Coen Brothers films, most notably O Brother, Where Art Thou?, has directed two films, each of these films using him as the kind of a noir guy. It's telling that Robert Altman, according to IMDb Trivia, considered Clooney to be the first choice to play Guy Noir in A Prairie Home Companion, a part that ultimately went to Kevin Kline. Syriana is another great example, by the way. So we could assume that he himself consciously endorses this. He has become a sort of icon for a man who's completely lost in the cosmos, the wheels of bureaucracy, and has added, thanks to his clever film decisions, a notch of irony to the mix. Robert Downey Jr. adds introspection to the mix, so he obviously doesn't make a good leading man for a film that seemingly abides the noir rules. But we do get an introspective character, unique in 1950s noir, we do get a femme fatale, someone who's both inside and outside the system, someone who knows more than we do (or in this case, Clooney's character). In such a case Soderbergh uses Cate Blanchett, and I guess it's the least polemic thing to say that she's perhaps the most amazing actress working today, with Kate Winslett and Julianne Moore. So Blanchett is the one who, in the abstract realm, switches between different films, as she does switch between the layers of knowledge in the story; now she seems to know nothing, again a new bend of our perspective and yet again she is the key to an unlocked secret.
So how do we label a film like this? It's not an important issue, but fun to ponder. This is basically film noir done extremely consciously, because it imitates noir technically, with the striking contrasts and low camera angles, but adds modern methods to places that amplify the introspection. Thus we get something like post-noir, if Sin City would be like neo-noir, overtly stylish. Yet this is a quiet film, and a recommendation for all fans of mystery, despite the word of mouth. Lots of references to the classics ensue. And fans of Soderbergh should know that they're in for a treat.
With best regards,
AK