Posts tagged Martin Wuttke
A Most Wanted Man “Just One Fault”
Aug 5th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
A MOST WANTED MAN is based on a John le Carre novel published in 2008, but it is most notable in that it’s the final major performance of Philip Seymour Hofman, who died in February 2014.
Hofman plays Gunther Bachmann, a German intelligence agent based in Hamburg, Germany, and the story involves Bachmann and his team in pursuit of Issa Karpov, a Russian Muslim who has entered the city illegally.
What does Karpov want? What is his story? Is he a terrorist, or is he just escaping Russian oppression and attempting to join the large Muslim community in Hamburg?
Gunther asks himself these questions, keeping in mind that Hamburg was where the 9/11 terrorists involved in the 2001 attack on the United States hatched their plan, as well as the fact that Gunther has the stain of a failed mission in Beirut, Lebanon, that haunts him.
So, when Karpov gets in touch with Annabel Richter, a civil liberties lawyer played by Rachel McAdams, Gunther questions her for information, and she tells him, “He asked me to find someone for him. A banker.”
The banker is Tommy Brue, played by Willem Dafoe, and Karpov has a letter that will identify him to Tommy and establish that Karpov has a legitimate claim to a large sum of money that Tommy’s bank is holding, upwards of 10 million Euros.
Gunther doesn’t want anyone to get to Karpov before he and his team can, and he is warned to watch his back, because the Americans are taking an interest in Karpov, as well.
Gunther is told by his authorities that he has 72 hours to handle the situation or else others will take over the case.
Gunther believes that Annabel is now in danger, and for a start, she must be saved from anything that might happen.
In addition, for some time now Gunther and his team have been tracking the Arabic head of an Islamic charity, because they believe that he has been using the charity to funnel money to terrorists, and Gunther must also deal with the problem that one of his informants has become frightened and wants out of the game, saying that he can’t do it anymore.
A MOST WANTED MAN is rich, deep, and complex, but you might find one fault in it as I did.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
A Most Wanted Man – Movie Trailer
Jul 30th
When a half-Chechen, half-Russian, brutally tortured immigrant turns up in Hamburg’s Islamic community, laying claim to his father’s ill-gotten fortune, both German and US security agencies take a close interest: as the clock ticks down and the stakes rise, the race is on to establish this most wanted man's true identity - oppressed victim or destruction-bent extremist?
“Inglourious Basterds” Ostentatious Self-Indulgence
Aug 27th
Ostentatious Self-Indulgence
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is intentionally misspelled, because writer-director Quentin Tarantino wanted that title for his latest movie, but also wanted to differentiate it from the 1978 Italian movie of the same name, which just shows how easily he could have given it a unique title.
I’ll tell you what that unique title could have been later on.
The film is divided into five chapters, which are identified at the beginning of each section, and Chapter 1 takes place in 1941 in Nazi-occupied France.
Col. Hans Landa, a German SS officer played brilliantly by Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, shows up with his men at a small dairy farm to question the owner in private.
Waltz has already won the Best Actor award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and he is sure to be nominated for and to win many more similar awards for this role.
Col. Landa is charged with finding and killing Jews in France, and he suspects that the farm owner he is questioning can provide him with information about the last Jewish family unaccounted for in the neighborhood.
Chapter 2 then shows the title characters, who are a squad of Jewish- American soldiers who have been dropped behind enemy lines in France and are led by Lt. Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt in a surprisingly comic role.
Lt. Raine tells his men, “We’re here to do one thing and one thing only: Killing Nazis.”
Well, that’s not entirely true, because they also scalp the German soldiers that they kill in order to send a message to whoever finds the soldiers’ bodies.
Chapter 3 then jumps to 1944 in Paris, and we meet Shosanna Dreyfus, a young Jewish woman who owns a movie theater, and here is where Tarantino really starts to show off his cinematic knowledge, so much so that the audience can get the impression that this is a lecture on the history of cinema instead of a movie itself.
Col. Landa shows up again, and then later Lt. Raine and the Inglourious Basterds show up, too, but by now this is no longer a war movie, but an elaborate hoax on the audience because of Tarantino’s rewriting of well-known history.
And remember how I said that Tarantino could have given it a unique title?
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS could easily have been called OSTENTATIOUS SELF-INDULGENCE.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”