Starts of the week: which films are worthwhile – and which are not – culture

Ammonites

Sofia Glasl: England in the 1840s. Mary Anning is a pioneer in the field of paleontology. Men adorn themselves with their discoveries while she lives in poverty. When an arrogant colleague brings his sickly wife to her for a cure, a secret and therefore all the more explosive romance develops between the two. filmmakers Francis Lee relies entirely on his two actresses in “Ammonite” Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. Above all, Winslet fills the gaps between minimal plot and tight dialogues with a whole world of inner conflict, years of frustration and loneliness: a stunner!

Bergman Island

Susan Vahabzadeh: Sleeping in bed together from “Scenes of a Marriage” is not a good omen, says Chris (Vicky Krieps) when she arrives at Faro with Tony (Tim Roth). A scholarship brought the two filmmakers to Ingmar Bergman’s island, now they want to be inspired to write the script. The narrowness and the constant presence of their various favorite films creates friction, suddenly reveals the completely different approaches of the two – and their different attitudes towards life. Leaves it wonderfully organic Mia Hansen-Løve the script that Chris is working on will become a film within a film that gradually shifts into the framework of the plot. Bergman is everywhere.

Eternals

Tobias Kniebe: Suppose there is no getting around producing new superhero films – what can you do to make them interesting? Marvel has chosen ten new characters that no one previously had on their radar. And for the current Oscar winner Chloé Zhao as a director who is celebrated for her poetic low-budget realism (“Nomadland”). Sounds interesting enough at first, but unfortunately the story of the immortal “Eternals”, who have accompanied human history for thousands of years as guardians from outer space, is surprisingly tough. Everything is more inclusive and diverse than ever, but wit and irony fall by the wayside. (Full review here.)

My wife’s story

Martina Knoben: You can’t with, but also not without, each other: Ildikó Enyedi brings a Dutch freighter captain together with a capricious French woman and studies the misunderstandings and distrust between the two and between the sexes. The title of the film is misleading – it tells the story of the husband from whose perspective his wife is seen. She remains a mystery to him – and who better to embody a captivating mystery than Léa Seydoux. In this historical film with its glamorous surfaces, everything is of the finest quality: equipment, photography, acting. However, three hours from the captain’s perspective are a bit dragging on.

The Harder They Fall

Fritz Göttler: A western with everything that goes with it, staged opulently: outlaws, marshals, dubious preachers, bank robbers, young hotheads, merciless avengers, women (very brutal) … and almost all of them are African-Americans – perfectly equipped with wide hats, golden guns, grim sayings. Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba and Regina King head the list of actors, and the musician directs Jeymes Samuel, Brother of Seal. It’s absurd and mannerist, more Tarantino than the classic wild (white) west, and shows us that the western, too, is a costume film at heart. And what a white American western town really looks like …

Children of hope

Philipp Stadelmaier: After “Yesterday’s Snow”, in which she reconstructs the story of her family after the Shoah, the Israeli director, who lives in Berlin, reflects Yael Reuveny in her new film about her generation’s complicated relationship with Israel. Again in the form of a subjective essay film, which through its form and the narrated microstories reveals a fatal inseparability of the personal and political of family and state. Compellingly clear.

Cosmetics of evil

Susan Vahabzadeh: Architect Jeremiasz (Tomasz Kot) takes a young woman with him in a taxi on the way to the airport in Paris, whom he cannot get rid of. She tells him pretty scary stories – and knows a little too much about his wife. Kike Maillos Horror film is nice and creepy, with a few pretty ideas – the protagonists in small form in the model of the airport where they are, for example, and the power struggle that Jeremiasz instigates with his own guilty conscience. Throwing all internal logic overboard is a pretty rotten thriller trick.

The Many Saints of Newark

David Steinitz: A movie about the prehistory of the “Sopranos”, the legendary TV show with which the modern age of series began. Set in the 1960s, Italian and African American gangsters battle it out for supremacy in New Jersey. Director Alan Taylor In this wild, brutal painting of morals, shows how little Anthony becomes great Tony Soprano – and America becomes the divided country it is today.

Moments Like This Never Last

Anke Sterneborg: A life that burned up early was captured as a total work of art on Super 8 and Polaroid. Even if he is not a musician, but a graffiti, performance and photo artist, Dash Snow joins the sad Club 27, because he too died of a heroin overdose in 2009 at this age. Cheryl Dunn, whom Snow knew and filmed personally in the 1990s, brings the sparkling and self-destructive charismatic back to life in her documentary collage. And like Todd Haynes in “The Velvet Underground”, it also opens a window into the New York attitude towards life, in this case in the nineties and noughties.

Rémi – His greatest adventure

Juliane Liebert: Antoine Blossiers The film is based on the novel “Sans famille” by Hector Malot. In warm colors, he tells the story of the foundling Rémi, who traveled through France with a traveling musician at the end of the 19th century in search of his true family. A family film suitable for Christmas with a particularly pretty cow in a supporting role.

Vicious fun

Doris Kuhn: An echo of the heyday of the horror genre, appropriately set in 1983: At a meeting of various serial killers, a reporter and an avenger sneak in to free the world from these killers. That leads to a lot of severed limbs and a lot of film historical quotes, because the Canadian director Cody Calahan demonstratively loots classics by John Carpenter, Quentin Tarantino and Stephen King for his splatter parody.