The Good German
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Movie Reviews of The Good German
Movie Review: BLANCHETT WAS TERRIBLE
Summary: 3 Stars
Apparently there were not enough black and white films about WWII, so lets make another one. If you noticed they also kept the same bad "special effect" of showing a car in motion by moving the scenery around it. George Clooney, a reporter who doesn't write any stories or has any deadlines, returns to Berlin. His driver is Toby MaGuire who plays the bad Spiderman as a driver. He picks Clooney's pocket, works the black market, sells out his country, and just by co-incidence is the unlikeable boyfriend of Clooney's old German girlfriend, who happens to be the wife of a former Nazi. Her husband, who is dead, but both the Americans and Russians are still looking for him. Toby McGuire offers the "dead" German to the Russians for money. Toby turns up dead himself with only a million or so suspects. Now the story goes into a mild who-dun-it which doesn't last too long as Clooney investigates his death which leads to a twisting tale. Toby's killer confesses in an odd first person narration, something unique to this third person tale. This scene was out of place and not necessary as the murder is mentioned in the subsequent conversation. At this point the movie is no longer a who-dun-it, but has another plot twist (not totally unexpected). I suspect the real reason for the film, is the real life underlying political or philosophical aspects which questions committing an evil for the greater good. Blanchett's character has almost robotic. Clooney gets beat up 4 times by my count and spends much of the movie with a silly band-aid on his ear.Movie Review: A swing and a miss...
Summary: 3 Stars
The cast is great, the look is right, the story complex and full of intrigue...so what went wrong? Hard to pinpoint, but it was just flat. First off, the music score stunk. It was intrusive and, except in a few spots, it was mostly inappropriate. And the out-of-step music seemed to me to echo the slightly off-step pace and delivery of the film. Even though it looked great, it wasn't so much an homage as a film school exercise. It tried to re-do and update a look and sensibility that is locked forever in the romantic bubble of its own time. The addition of franker sex and language, while more suited to our times, presented a dissonance to the overall scheme of the film, illustrating the difficulty of trying to re-imagine the romance of the 40's wartime dramas for our own, more divisive and cynical age. It ended up an ungainly mix of Casablanca romance and Third Man disillusion.
That said, it was a worthy attempt, and I applaud the effort to try to do something different. It held my interest, and I very much liked the performances, especially Cate Blanchett and Robin Wiegert. Clooney and Maguire were okay, and it was an interesting story. But you never really felt a true connection between the characters. At any rate, this was director Soderbergh's showcase, and I hope he will continue his chance-taking efforts. This one didn't quite come off, but he took a healthy cut at it, and it is worth a look.
Movie Review: Champagne with big bubbles
Summary: 3 Stars
One of the characters in "The Good German" remarks that the best champagne has the smallest bubbles. The film unfortunately, has a few big bubbles that impress initially, but vaporize and leave a flat, bitter fluid later.
The big bubbles are the name actors and homage to film noir. The overweaning style, heightened by the best component of the film (Thomas Newman's music) is intriguing to lovers of the genre, but the actors, professional as they are, can't bring much to their roles, probably as a result of the direction. Clooney is likeable as always but doesn't project the necessary intensity of caring for Cate Blanchett that the action demands. Blanchett does create a character, but it's too Dietrich-like to stand in its own right. So, after the plot ends and the actors leave the screen, you're left with disappointment, even though your hopes were up and you were saying to yourself, "This film isn't as bad as they were claiming!"
The bottom line for me is: the real comparison film is Lars Von Trier's "Zentropa" (or "Europa") of 1991. That film has 10 times more noir techniques of interest, and a stronger symbolic element that makes the necessity of characterization less important. For me it is one of the greatest films ever made, something for which Soderberg was striving, but didn't have the talent to bring off.
"Zentropa" has trillions of little bubbles in the details. The best!
Movie Review: WWII glory in black and white
Summary: 3 Stars
Do not let stars like Clooney and Blanchet let you to think that this is a "must not miss movie". Neither is direcotr's futile attempt to make this film in black and white successful in its effort to make it more artisic or old-school like. Plot is so cumbersome to understand, make sure you had enough coffee and pay real close attntion to it, or else you might loose the slighest idea as of what is this movie all about. Clooney's character gets beat up by: Americans, Germans and Russians and we get confused as to why is he in Berlin after all since there are barely any sparks coming form his former pre-war German girl flame played by Blachett. This is no Casablanca by any means, and definitely not a love story. The film did get me thinking of what is it that people are capable of doing for the sake of self preservation and survival? And how much the institution of marriage is about loyalty to one another? How many times we made a choice to save a person not for their own sake, but for the sake of ourselves as a means of redeeming our own past bad moral choices? I expected so much more from this film and it just fails to deliver thru and thru.Movie Review: MODERN FILM NOIR
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a very daring movie to make, i really dont know how the producers tought this would make money, I mean we all love Clooney and Blanchette, but this a hard film to make work. It's shot and lite like an old movie from the forties and the stilted dialogue and acting plays homage to these movies...at times it works, but frankly, mostly it does not. The story is flimsy and the pay off seems trite, it just sort of ends. I really didnt know what to expect, but from the start I was like..a movie studio o.ked this? wow!..as always, I hated tobey mcguire, all bug eyes and fake ernestness, but frankly I dont like him in anything, so you can take my review of him with a grain of salt..I was like, Clooney would figure out this fawning clown in a second, he would fool noone...the best thing i can say about McGuire in this movie is that much to my pleasant surprised, he's dispatched fairly early. The look of the movie was very well done and i sort of liked the film noir and the black and white. Unusual movie to get made in this day and age..not sure id recommend it, but hardly the worst movie ive seen this year...high praise indeed.