You Know How it is with April Movies

The Cat Returns (2002)

Netflix, English
The dialog is very funny in the English translation, and the cat is voiced by Cary Elwes. Go watch it.

Black Mercedes (2019)

Netflix, original Polish with English subtitles
A murder mystery in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Quite bleak, no survivors–but intriguing and was kept guessing until the end. Main character was a bit cliché: the Obvious Villain was an SS Officer from an aristocratic family, with a transvestite male lover. I’m not sure if the last bit was intended to round out the character or drop some 2019 Poland into the story, but it felt unnecessary, and did not shed any light on the murder.

I know the director did not intend the scene where the SS Officer is asked to show his papers allowing him to be in a restaurant to be as funny as I found it after six months of being forced to show my papers to enter a restaurant. But damn, that was funny.

The Bubble (2022)

Netflix, original English
Curse my weakness for Movies About Making Movies!

Otto – Der Neue Film (1987)

zdf_neo, original Deutsch
Otto is a comedian from Hamburg popular in Mr Radish’s youth. This is actually his second film–we missed the first–and it’s a standard “slacker tries to get the girl” 80s film. Nice clothes and music. Some of the parody content had to be explained to me, as I was unfamiliar with the source material (remind me to riff on television advertising humor sometime). Cat jokes I got on my own. It’s not bad, but it’s a time capsule, and not completely accessible to people outside the time and place.

Luther (2003)

3sat, Deutsch
Kind of trippy to see a movie from a Lutheran-American fraternal financial organization (I remember reading about the film in the newsletter) in Austrian television! There are many prominent German actors in this film, and most of them did their own voiceover work. Sir Peter Ustinov also re-recorded his lines for the this version. I am smug about enjoying this.

I was also excited to recognize Veste Coburg, because I have been there. Other locations, I have not–yet (Seßlach looks like somewhere I need to have a beer). I could definitely pick up “visiting film sites” as a hobby–it’s satisfying to see a door slam and think “I have been through that door!”

Ordet (1943)

Netflix, original Swedish with English subtitles
A second foray into Lutheranism over the Easter weekend. This is a Swedish version of a Danish play, filmed shortly before the Nazis murdered the Lutheran minister who wrote it. But because I do the research *after* I see the films, this information did not affect my selection or enjoyment.

And I did enjoy it, after acclimating myself to the slow pace and the unfamiliar social structure of rural early 20th-century Sweden. The lead actor, Victor Sjöström, is one of the big names in Swedish pre-war filmmaking; he plays a grumpy old farm owner with strong stubborn dogmatic beliefs with three sons who have different beliefs. The middle son is training to be a standard Swedish Lutheran minister, and after the accidental death of his fiancée, abandons his studies and becomes a wandering mystic with messianic beliefs. The younger son is in love with a girl whose father is the leader of a Pietist sect, and both fathers have forbidden the relationship on dogmatic grounds. The oldest son has no belief, but his wife is very pious and dutiful and annoyingly cheerful, and the farm wouldn’t function without her. These conflicts play out, his stubbornness ebbing gradually, until a dramatic final act.

There is a post-war Danish remake that won international acclaim. I haven’t seen it; but I probably won’t look for it, because this one was good.

(Wikipedia says Lutherans in North American honor Kaj Munk as a martyr for the faith, but the ELCA website doesn’t waste any pixels on him… Here’s an interesting devotional article with a family story about Munk.)

Metal Lords (2022)

Netflix, original English
It’s no Heavy Trip, but it’s a decent mainstream high-school flick.

I spotted a US Route 30 sign in one of the driving scenes…it was filmed in Portland, Oregon. I guess that explains why, when Hunter was pulled out of a classroom and viciously assaulted by a group of jocks, no one bothered to call law enforcement. Nothing’s changed much in thirty years, eh?

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

Cable, original English
I last saw this one in 1995, and I still cannot separate films from the people I saw them with. Fortunately, I was laughing too hard to be sad. “You melvined Death!” Brilliant. Easily the best comedy movie I saw this month.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Cable original English
After about five minutes of Faye Dunaway mincing about with her 60s hair and makeup I started looking forward to the hail of bullets. I hated all the characters; the scenery and cinematography were OK but not particularly memorable. Oscar-winner checked off.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (2015)

ZDF Mediathek, Deutsch
Anthony Hopkins in a true story about a beer tycoon kidnapped and held hostage for weeks in exchange for an historically large cash ransom. The story is told from the POV of the kidnappers, who hit on this as way to get some money after being denied a bank loan to improve their business. They are mostly sympathetic, minus the whole “abandoning the wife and kids because running from arrest” thing, and simultaneously clever about details and really, really stupid about the big picture. Enjoyable. Also nice 80s fashion, and filmed in a part of Amsterdam I recognized from the original Nosferatu, hey!