Watched in the Arte Media Library

In the 1990s, it was almost impossible to escape John Grisham. It wasn't just that his novels sold millions of copies and the author was constantly on bestseller lists. The films also ensured that his stories about court cases and legal battles were everywhere. With a star-studded cast, they were huge box office successes, at least at the beginning. With "The Firm", "The Pelican Brief", "The Client" and "The Jury", there were four hits…

Watched on Netflix

Long before Mike Myers shot himself into obscurity with "The Cat in the Hat" and especially "The Love Guru", he achieved greater fame with "Saturday Night Live", the two "Wayne's World" films and the "Austin Powers" series. Sure, he left the directing to Jay Roach and shared the production with others (e.g. Demi Moore), but he not only played the two leading roles, but also contributed the screenplay and got the project off the ground. His passion…

Watched on Amazon Prime Video

Following his great critical and commercial success with "Forrest Gump" in 1994, US director Robert Zemeckis made another foray into the science fiction genre just three years later with "Contact" after the "Back to the Future" series. The success of the previous works is clearly evident in the film, especially in areas such as effects and the top-class cast. Despite the sometimes very sentimental narrative, which identifies "Contact" as a typical Hollywood film in these…

Watched in the cinema (106th visit in 2024)

Richard Linklater naturally enjoys a great reputation as a director. Over the last three decades, the American has made many wonderful films, some of which have achieved cult status. Now, after a few forays into streaming, "Hit Man" is once again a feature film that actually has everything it takes to be a hit - at least in Germany, where the comedy is actually being released in cinemas instead of being buried…

Watched on Netflix

Every year - not only does the Christ child arrive, but the quality of in-house productions at streaming giant Netflix traditionally increases significantly towards the end of the year. At least in one or two obvious prestige projects, which can probably be interpreted as an apology for allowing audiences to waste their time with overpriced garbage films over the summer. Of course, this is merely a strategic calculation to sell the subscription as indispensable for the new…

Watched in the cinema (85th visit in 2023)

There is hardly a director who has such an unmistakable style as Wes Anderson. Often, all it takes is a single image and you already know that you are dealing with a work by the US filmmaker. With his mixture of whimsical stories and strict tableau settings, he quickly achieved cult status. With "Grand Budapest Hotel", he also seemed to have become part of the mainstream in 2014. Not only was his…

Watched on Netflix

Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is obsessed. Obsessed with punctuality, obsessed with time, everything in his life is governed by the tick and the tack. As an executive in the US company FedEx, he is sent around the world to teach the people in the logistics centres that we are all slaves to the clocks. Seconds can make the difference between life and death - and running out of time is the greatest sin of all. And now…

Schocktober 2021 #38 (Finale)

Watched on Blu-Ray

"With hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition" is what John Milton's "Paradise Lost" says. To bottomless perdition. The mere sound of these words sends an uncomfortable shiver down the spine. An effect that is only intensified by the work of David Fincher. In 1995, Fincher made a film that can be regarded with a clear conscience as one of the best crime thrillers and that can probably also serve as a…

Watched on Netflix

Actually, Martin McDonagh could have hung up his career after the overwhelming masterpiece "In Bruges" (fortunately he didn't), because topping this pretended quality once again is almost impossible, which is also proven by his hotly anticipated second feature film "Seven Psychopaths". If you take a closer look at his crook posse, you quickly realise that McDonagh has staged the exact opposite of his brilliant first film here. While the melancholic gangster ballad "In Bruges" continues to unfold…

Watched on Netflix

With "Spring Breakers", director Harmony Korine delivers a film that basically breaks with all the viewer's established viewing habits as well as most staging conventions to create a work that feels and looks like a one-and-a-half-hour drug trip or fever dream, including rapture, confusion, flashbacks and reverie. One notices quite quickly and clearly that Korine is primarily concerned with sensory impressions and feelings and not so much with the actual story, which soon fades more and more…

Watched on Amazon Prime

The commercial success story of the John Grisham adaptations are a coriosity of the 1990s and early 2000s: Like "The Firm" and "The Pelican Brief", "The Client" became a big box office hit. The concept always remains the same: the penny dreadfuls of their creator, spiced up by legal background knowledge, are equipped with a well-known cast and director and advertised in a glossy look as fat blockbuster cinema. This time (as two years later with…

Watched on Netflix

In the life of a superhero, there comes a point when he has to ask himself whether it is really the right thing to be Batman, Captain America, Spider-Man or Wolverine. Zohan, too, has been able to acquire superhero status in his homeland through his services for the Israeli Mossad: Equipped with superhuman abilities, Zohan is the model soldier in the fight against terror, stopping bullets with his nostrils, hurling his opponents through the air for metres…