New in cinema & streaming: which films are worthwhile – and which are not – culture

The Alpinist

Doris Kuhn: Two years to follow Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen the mountaineer Marc-André Leclerc, the most unusual of the anyway unusual free solo alpinists: he goes the most daring routes without any aids, he refuses any accompaniment, he shies away from the public, which his colleagues appreciate. Accordingly, this documentation is not only a biography with breathtaking climbing pictures, but also a reflection on a personal, almost spiritual approach to nature.

end of season

Anne Sternenburg: While a cover version of Nena’s “99 Luftballons” is playing, the windows of a block of flats can be seen glowing in the night, every window is a life. One of them latches Elmar Imanoff in his feature film debut. A snapshot of a small family in Azerbaijan, a young couple and their adult son. A trip to the sea, during which the mother disappears without a trace, opens up fine cracks in the relationship and family structures that reflect the country’s social problems. The sketchy scenes and poetic impressions resist a coherent dramaturgy.

The girl with the golden hands

Sofia Glasl: Even ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the East German provinces are still stuck between the GDR past and the promises of reunification. While her daughter Lara has literally arrived in the West, Gudrun is clinging to memories shortly before her 60th birthday. When the children’s home in which she once grew up is about to be sold, old family wounds reopen and at the same time reflect clashing worldviews. The actress Catherine Marie Schubert In her directorial debut, she tells the dilemma between East and West in a gentle and cliché-free manner. Corinna Harfouch wrests a stubborn pragmatism from rough Gudrun that makes her unwieldy and convincing.

One more time, June

Josef Gruebl: Strangers live in her house, her company is going down the drain and the children don’t talk to each other anymore either: So pensioner June has a lot to do. She seems to have forgotten that she had a stroke, has dementia and has been living in a nursing home for five years. The New Zealander working in Australia JJ Winlove tells in his feature film debut of an unexpected awakening, as it is probably only possible in films. He largely ignores the bitter reality of illness and infirmity, this family reunification comes in the guise of a feel-good comedy.

The path

Nicola’s friend: Southern France, 1941. The north of the country is occupied by the Nazis, German intellectuals who have not yet managed to escape are gathering in Marseille. Your last chance is to cross the Pyrenees to Spain and then on to America. Also present: the journalist Ludwig (Volker Bruch), his son Rolf (Julius Weckauf) and Adi, the dog. Tobias Wiemann wants to retell the escape from the Nazis with all the sacrifices and hardships for a young audience with the film adaptation of Rüdiger Bertram’s youth book, which only partially succeeds. When Rolf rushes through Mediterranean landscapes on a stolen horse with his new girlfriend, it has little to do with a desperate escape from the Nazis.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Sofia Glasl: Almost fifty years and six reissues after Tobe Hooper’s slasher hit “Blood Court in Texas” hits the mark final girl from back then and the butcher Leatherface David Blue Garcia each other again. Back then he chopped up all her friends and served it to his hungry family, who was the only survivor and has been chasing him ever since as a police officer. Another group of youngsters turn up in the Texas pampas, but this time with business interests. The little real estate sharks want to revive a ghost town and dispossess Leatherface and his mother. Let’s be honest: who wouldn’t want to grab a chainsaw? Even. The serial killer accidentally becomes the pitiful social loser, and the film cannibalizes itself in the process.

Uncharted

Fritz Goettler: Today, after Schliemann and Indiana Jones, treasure hunters don’t have such a great reputation. So does Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg as Nate and Sully in the film by Ruben Fleischer. It’s based on one adventure games, which launched fifteen years ago and has been so popular and successful that fans are beginning to question whether the characters in the film version match those of the original. Nate and Sully are after Magellan’s Treasure, and they are followed by Antonio Banderas. The search in the catacombs of Barcelona is rather tedious, more game than cinema, but in the end a treasure ship is found that, as befits such a ship, sails into the sky.