Film Review With Agricola

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Agricola

Agricola

Senior Member
Dec 10, 2012
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I love films and watch at least 4 films a week, I also have aspirations to be a writer and often think that I would do a good job as a critic and reviewer. Therefore I thought I would like to start my own thread on film reviews, seeing as there is no film section.

If you have any films you would like me to watch to help you make your mind up then I will take requests, but can not promise anything, please feel to discuss films I have reviewed. Remember though we all have a different opinion!
 
Title : Die Wand – The Wall
Director: Julian Roman Pölsler
Starring Martina Gedeck.
Duration: 104 minutes.
Swearing : none I heard
Nudity : none
Violence : Shows a deer in death throws after being shot. Cow attacked with axe and Human shot but no gore impacts etc.
Fast Forward button hit . 45 minutes and skipped every 2 minutes for last half hour
Watched to end : Yes but only to see conclusion.
Watch with my mother and the Vicar : Yes.
Watch with kids : Yes if they are used to seeing animals hunted and do not cry if Bambi gets shot.
My Rating : 4 out of 10

Review:
If you are the kind of person who loves philosophical art house films and can stand for over an hour staring at a Mondrian or wax lyrical about the merits of an art installation consisting of a pile of bricks, then I am certain you will find plenty of merit to this film and if watched with like minded friends, be able to spend the rest of the evening into early hours discussing the meaning and symbolism behind it.
However if you like to be told a story which has a satisfactory conclusion, then you may be wasting your time, if you like entertainment and excitement the you will be wasting your time.


SPOILERS FOLLOW:
Starts off interesting, a woman sitting in cabin writing a report about events of years gone by, she begins by telling how she was driven by a couple of friends, an elderly couple to a hunting lodge in the mountains where she will spend a short holiday with them.

The couple go off to village but do not return and are still not back next morning. The woman, her name is never mentioned in the film, decided to find out if something is wrong so heads down the path to the village, only to come across an invisible wall.

This is where things start to get annoying, rather than explore if this wall continues down the embankment and across the river, after all the river is flowing freely, she just goes back to the lodge. We are then continually treated with a monologue telling the story of past few years, it is rather slow paced and meaningful in places.

This is broken with occasional exciting, well exciting for this film, scene where she attempts to break through barrier and observes the world outside the barrier, where people appear to be motionless, although the environment is moving normal time.

She eventually ends up with a cow and two cats, to accompany the dog which the elderly couple left behind when they decided to go to the village.

We are treated to a repetition of how she hates killing things and how she hates death, but has no choice in doing it, seeing a deer being shot and slowly dying and the nightmares killing things gives her. This is in a juxtaposition to of one of the cats falling prey to some unknown animal on account of it being pure white, she wants to take revenge on a fox, but reasons that animals are just animals and the only animal with a conscious morals is her.

This morality is again explored and challenged later on in film, when she comes across a crazy man killing a bull with an axe, you don’t see any gore as such, but its clear what is happening. The dog dies too. Ends badly with the woman having to shoot the man.

Well that is the only philosophical part you will get out of me for this review, as I said before there is plenty more of that kind of thing to keep the right people occupied all night long, but if you just want to know what this wall is, if she escapes, do other people know she is there and so on, then you will be extremely disappointed as none of those questions are dealt with, let alone answered.

The film even leaves us with more questions, along with a metaphorical hint that she may commit suicide, with her running out of paper for her report and not being able to carry on documenting her experiences. I remembered earlier in the film that she says that she is too old and grown up to think about suicide, like younger people do, but at the end we think is she or isn’t she, something else to spend a few hours debating.

Conclusion
So there we have it, bore fest for some and hitting the off switch after 20 minutes, or a work of art that gets the philosophical juices flowing.
 
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I was terribly confused about this review at first because it didnt make sense, but thats because I was confusing the german titles of die wand and die welle. Die welle is fantatic.
 
damombomb said:
"Captain Phillips" Tom Hanks main actor
Click to expand...
Well I had this one waiting in the wings so to speak, so no excuse to put watching it off any more. Watched it this evening and here are my thoughts.

Title : Captian Phillips
Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring Tom Hanks.
Duration: 134 minutes.
Swearing : Infrequent about 6 times in film, including Somali.
Nudity : None – but we see a topless Tom Hanks!
Violence : Some scenes of extreme violence and gore.
Fast Forward button hit : NO NEVER!
Watched to end : Most definitely YES.
Watch with my mother and the Vicar : Yes.
Watch with kids : Not really suitable for very young, could be distressing for others.
My Rating out of 10 : 9

Lets face it , we all know what most films are about before we even decide to watch them, everyone reads the blurb, so most people will know that this based on a true story of a Captain Richard Phillips who has his ship taken over by pirates, no not the Johnny Depp type, but Somali pirates hoping for a huge pay day in ransom. The leader of the pirates is played by Barkhad Abdi, who does a superb job which is recognised with his BAFTA as best supporting role, but he is no Johnny Depp in the swoon stakes which makes his character even more threatening and imposing.

As I stated before we all know what the film is going to be about, so thankfully this film does not drag the character building up and just gets on with telling the story we have read about on the cover. We spend a couple of minutes watching Captain Phillips preparing himself and traveling to the airport with his wife. We establish that he has 2 sons and lives a cosy middle class life in America, with usual concerns about the future of the children.

Ten minutes later we are on ship, a few minutes of getting to know the crew, usual shock horror of lack of security and sloppiness of crew, apparent discension in ranks and so on. Many films usually drag this usual standard generic story building over a good percentage of film time, but again thankfully, this film only devotes all of 10 minutes to this. Even when we see a drill take place, it is short lived and the story quickly moves on as two small boats are spotted heading towards the ship.

We are treated in similar fashion to the pirates story, all in Somali, so yes, you have to read subtitles, some people may hate this, but get over it! You could listen without subtitles, but you will benefit from reading what is exactly going on. IF the attention is to make us feel any sympathy with these people, then for me it fails, I could not wait to see them end up in a body bag.

In the end only four pirates make it onto the ship. Had the crew contained someone like John McClane, Chuck Norris or James Bond, then the outcome would have resulted in a very short film, after all they could get through 10 times as many villians single handedly, so picking off 4 who split up would be no problem what so ever.

However, it was rather disappointing, but on the other hand a refreshing change, to see mere mortal humans with next to no experience of combat or fighting make a complete pigs ear of trying to take out the pirates and regain control of the ship.

Looked like they would succeed in persuading pirates to leave with just money in safe, but again that did not go as planned and we have the rest of the film watching a rather tense situation with Phillips being held hostage on the lifeboat which the pirates escaped on. Some attempt to make the viewer feel sympathy for the pirates, but that soon disappears.

Navy Seals won the day in dramatic fashion. Very emotionally charged and even though we can guess the outcome, it still kept me glued to the screen and wondering what was going to happen next.

CONCLUSION:

Superb film with excellent acting, good pace and everything just right in telling this story, a couple of minor plot holes if you paid attnetion and only if you care about this type of thing, also remember this is no action hero film, but based on true story with mere civilians. Time flew by and did not seem like 2 hours, so yes well worth watching.
 
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