Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Lives of Others- Absolutely amazing piece of work. The film rings so much truth and tragedy that you want to bow down to the film's greatness. Yes, it's a bit long. Yes, it's kind of odd that the film has like three "2 years later" bits in the course of 10 minutes, but this is a really good German film well deserved of its praise. It's too bad that director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (try saying that 10 times as fast) really hit a low note with his next film (Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie's 'The Tourist'). This film shows much greater potential. One of my favorite bits is the interchanging of the characters of HGW and Georg Dreyman as they search Dreyman's apartment. The tension that Donnersmarck creates is fantastic. This movie has so many interesting angles going for it that you really are invested in all three leads for the entire 2 hours and 20 minutes. Trust me, it's worth having surveillance over.



- Jeff Bassin