I have much time on my hands in Berlin now so I’ve been to the movies. I watched two classics in a charming little theater in the Kastanienallee, Delicatessen and Taxi Driver and two current Hollywood blockbusters in the UCI Colosseum multiplex theater, WALL·E and Burn After Reading. I will not talk so much about the films themselves because that has already been done by people way more proficient than me. No, I will focus on my experiences around and inspired by the movies. With no spoilers, as usual.

Delicatessen

A French indie from 1991 I remember having seen almost ten years ago. I watched it together with Esther and Martina from my class in the cute little Lichtblick Kino in Prenzlauer Berg after an extended chat and update on everything in the Café St. Oberholz.

The theater is so small and lovely that I feel like describing it a little. The first thing you notice after entering the “Foyer” is its smallness. There’s a counter on the left, a table on the right and a bank covered with a blanked in front of you — who knows what’s underneath the blanket. Left of that is also a little door to the narrow screening room and an even narrower stairwell to the cellar, guarded by a street sign saying “Ende”.

Once we had persuaded the man behind the counter that all of us indeed were students (despite our expired student IDs) we got our tickets and I felt like buying a pack of TUC crackers for as little as 1 €. Then we went in.

After the blue door you walk past the den with the projector, past a black curtain on strings and descend into the theater, a lengthy room with about ten rows with four seats each. I found out that the second row from the front is the best, in the last row you should watch the movie on your cell phone because of its comparatively big screen. The walls are in a light blue with square-shaped lights in different colors scattered randomly along them. Right before the screen waits an old dusty upright piano to be played on along to a silent movie. Further, as Esther told us, you can hear the phone ringing in the apartment above the theater, or if somebody goes into the kitchen for a snack; still I didn’t experience any such nuisances when I was there. So all in all it is a charming little cinema with a lot of character and patina.

Then the movie starts. No commercials, no trailers, no nothing — just the film. That’s how it should be!

Rant

Delicatessen is a great piece of very entertaining art until the third act. The setting is placed well and all the characters are set up with so much love and detail, have their motivations and are entwined masterfully until the third act. Then, little by little everything loses substance and motivation and everything falls apart. You can’t tell who’s on whose side and the end is as random as the authors may have felt. My guess is that the three (!) of them (two of them directed the film as well) made a bet who would be the first one to finish the script within one night. I bet that any of you who only watches the first two thirds of the movie will produce a better ending than the filmmakers.

WALL·E

I went to see the film on Tuesday afternoon at 2:40pm so I didn’t expect many people and in total we were five in a big theater, the three children with their dad sitting right behind me, as usual — *sigh*. In fact in any show of the small indie Lichtblick Kino there were more people in the audience…

The first ad was for a xbox 360, the children cheering in my back. That was when I realized that it was going to be a tough time sitting through the children’s ad-reel but it wasn’t as bad as anticipated¹. It is shocking how receptive the little buggers are to commercials! There was a Ben & Jerry’s 60 second ad for cookie dough and the three children aged about 6 to 12 instantly asked their sorry dad if they could have ice cream after the show. He mumbled something about “it’s not the weather for ice cream today”, hoping the kids would forget about it in 90 minutes.

Another odd thing was the children’s proficiency with upcoming movies. After about three seconds of a new trailer they shouted in unison “Madagascar 2!“, “Ice Age 3!” or “Inkheart!” and were always right. They giggled along at the intended moments of blunt and uninspired slapstick and non-funny jokes. Hmm. It looks like I am getting too old for this. Or I am just a connoisseur when it comes to quality. And boy, alone from watching the trailer I can tell that I hate Madagascar 2 already for its lack of quality and intelligence. But I was waiting in the dark for a Pixar film to start after all and I wouldn’t be disappointed. Still, there are some very questionable movies coming up.

The tradition of the funny Pixar shorts lives on with Presto, that transported the atmosphere of 40’s and 50’s Warner Bros cartoons very well in the digital medium. I already felt my money well spent after this one.

If you want to know some background behind WALL·E, see my report from the fmx/08 where I talked to some folks from Pixar.

There were great little in-joke moments in WALL·E where only I laughed — I wish I had brought somebody along for sharing laughs about the sound WALL·E makes when being fully charged on solar power (listen below), when he reaches 2000 points at Pong! and at some point later in the movie you see a new-generation version of the same game for a second. And listen to the sound of the little cleaning robot: It’s an electric shaver. Or compare the stage where the BnL-CEO talks in the video message with this one. Creepy. And I bet there is way more to discover — can’t wait for the Blu-Ray!

WALL·E fully charged.

Rant

The movie was quite good but as somebody with close ties to film-making I have some points to resolve: When you are in the audience then turn your fucking cellphone off for Christ’s sake, even when you’re nearly alone. Because “nearly” does not mean “completely”. The dad behind me received three calls during the film and when he was having the third I advised him to turn off the phone or I would do it. That helped.

Further you should stay during the credits because there usually are a lot of people involved in making a movie and walking out on them is as rude as it is ignorant. Plus you miss some very good illustrative animation at the end of Pixar films. And with WALL·E also some funny pixel animations. So stay until the end. On the other hand it’s your money you throw out of the window…

Burn After Reading

My second film on that Tuesday, again for moderate 4.50 € so I threw in some more cash for some nachos with salsa. One word of advice: If anybody asks you about an extra helping of peperoni just say no otherwise your stomach is screaming “No! Nooo!” all the time.

I was prepared for another shitload of commercials and trailers, but I was not prepared to sitting next to two chatterboxes of middle-aged ladies who were gossiping like crazy during the commercials. Fortunately they turned their voices to a whisper when the movie started.

Funny: Again the ad-reel started of with the xbox 360 commercial and one of the ladies asked the other “So — what is it good for?”, the other replied “It’s for downloading movies”. I lol’d hard on the inside when I heard it and I wonder how the guys and gals who plotted the marketing campaign would react to that.

Another couple of trailers rolled along featuring Till Schweiger’s medieval satire twice, probably in the hope of stirring public interest for a mediocre movie by a not-so-good-actor/director.

Then, finally after 25 minutes of trailers, commercials and chinking bottles in the audience the movie started. And it was a good movie and in English it would’ve been even better. The opening scene is a home run for John Malkovich; Francis McDormand as Linda Litzke has the naïve charm of Marge Gunderson, her role in Fargo, Brad Pitt as dumb fitness trainer is as hilarious as George Clooney’s slightly paranoid role. All in all it is a very Coen movie with protagonists you pity for their lack of luck, a twisted story that doesn’t unravel completely (still satisfactory enough) with probably one of the funniest closing dialogues and a catchy tune for the credits. Stay seated. And if you like movies with people in cars stalking after other people in cars then this is your movie!

Rant

Nothing much to rant about this movie. But I just came home from it. Maybe I’ll develop some deep rooted hatred in the next couple of days, who knows?

Taxi Driver

It was Monday and it was close to 10pm as I realized that I own the DVD for a couple of years but have never seen this famous Scorsese movie. And when I have the chance to watch it on a big screen² I wouldn’t miss it for the world. So I abandoned my evening in the Café St. Oberholz and took the M1 to the theater. I bought another pack of TUC crackers and seated myself in the second row, right behind a pierced and very indie girl that sat right in front of me and coughed a little throughout the movie. But it was bearable.
During the movie I always caught myself in trying to analyze it like “This was the exposition, cleverly done!” or “So the water stands for Travis’ intentions to ‘wash away the grime’?”. It’s a good movie and it’s a very atmospheric movie. The New York of the 1970’s remembered me a little of today’s Berlin with its charming dirt and worn down sidewalks. But, I have to admit, I didn’t quite understand the movie and I don’t think watching it over and over again will be of any help. Maybe some of you can explain it to me very slow in very easy terms.

Rant

Like Delicatessen it was a subtitled movie which is always better than a dubbed version, still it becomes a little annoying when there are errors in the translation. For example they translated “Libra” as “Leo” which is not a typo but totally wrong.

Are you talking to me?

My conclusion is that one like me should avoid multiplex theaters because it only gives me stuff to rant about, they sell their snacks for prices that couldn’t be higher after a nuclear war and the massive amount of commercials they try to stuff into your head. On the plus side you can order the tickets online and choose your seat in advance (apart from any seat that’s exactly in the middle. They just won’t allow it. Bastards!) and have a very big screen with very good sound.

The small theater has a big bonus in flair and prices. They usually show only subtitled movies so you can listen to the live recordings which I always prefer to dubbed versions. That was also the reason why I welcomed the DVD so much back in the good old 1990’s. The audience is usually just as drunk as in the big theater but remains silent throughout the movie and most of them stay also for the credits. On the downside… well, it’s small and the sound is good but also a little low in volume. And if you miss a film once, you miss it for good.

A downside on both movie theaters is the low temperature that creeps up your trouser legs and into your sweater after half an hour. But in Berlin you have it like this any place you go — for me that’s terrible! The only place warm enough is the bathtub or inside the furnace. When I am back in Austria in two weeks I’ll heat up my apartment until it feels like Honolulu — muhahah!

1. I am very imaginative so there was a lot I anticipated such as children vomiting in my collar and so on. [back]
2. at least a little bigger than my 24″ screen [back]