A Toy Story: Everything listens to my command
Animation, Sat 1, Saturday, 8.15 p.m.
In the fourth adventure in the series, the living toys continue their double existences – as rigid things that children play with and as extremely vital types when they are among themselves. In these phases it is important to regulate things according to their own interests, in order not to be sorted out as boring, thrown away as broken or lost due to a clutter. Above all, however, the toys have a soul and a sense that there is more than the instantaneousness of the present, also more than the time span until the final material fatigue. With all the pace of the action sequences and all the situation comedy, it is also a philosophical film, with characters, most of whom are stuck in a crisis of meaning at some point in the course of the plot.
The other home – chronicle of a longing
Drama, RBB, Saturday, 11:30 p.m.
A project like there is no other in German film. In his mammoth trilogy “Heimat”, Edgar Reitz tells the German 20th century using the example of a manageable milieu in the fictional town of Schabbach – with references to the 19th century. This is where the third and, at just under four hours, clearly the shortest part of the saga can be found. During the pre-March period, in the 1840s, people in the Hunsrück were plagued by famine, and many decided to emigrate to Brazil in the hope of a better life. The focus is on the dreamy Jakob (Jan Dieter Schneider), whom at some point they only call the “Indian” because his head has long been living in the supposed new home and is even learning foreign languages. But his life path takes a different course.
Pan’s maze
Fantasy drama, Tele 5, Saturday, 8.15 p.m.
Guillermo del Toro has set two shadowy worlds against each other: There are scenes that are clearly located in Spain in the 1940s, when the fascist regime of Franco had established itself and had already had a lasting impact on society. There is also a parallel fantasy universe with fauns and monsters. In both worlds the beautiful lies next to the terrible, the defensive girl Ophélia is exposed to both. Del Toro tells a story of resistance through them. Anna (Karin Hanczewski) is also a woman in a losing position in a cynical world that she can hardly understand Kill Me Today, Tomorrow I’m Sick! Anna is supposed to help build democratic media in Kosovo around the turn of the millennium – and approaches this task very idealistically (Das Erste, Sunday, 11.35 p.m.).
Bohemian Rhapsody
Biopic, Pro Sieben, Sunday, 8.15 p.m.
A brilliant one-man-show about the singer of the band Queen, about Freddie Mercury, a social outsider who becomes an adored, monstrous stage diva. Central to this film is the cast of the leading role. Rami Malek is an almost ghostly powerful interpreter of Mercury. Thanks to him, the film is as powerful in the most magical moments as the best Queen concerts were. Jack Nicholson’s appearances are always characterized by a special dynamic. Like him the deeply hidden longing for love of a malicious author in comedy It couldn’t be better is simply great (ZDF Neo, Saturday, 8.15 p.m.). Toni Erdmann in turn, lives from the insidious obtrusiveness with which Peter Simonischek equips the figure (SWR, Sunday, 11 p.m.).