plus 3, "Jew Suss" a striking study of Nazi movie star - Reuters

"Jew Suss" a striking study of Nazi movie star - Reuters
Scorsese's skillful 'Shutter Island' sates B-movie fans - Courier-Post
Movie version of 'Blood Done Sign My Name' opens - WRAL
Movie review: Scorsese borrows from the best in "Shutter Island" - Denver Post

"Jew Suss" a striking study of Nazi movie star - Reuters

Posted: 18 Feb 2010 05:51 PM PST

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

BERLIN (Hollywood Reporter) - "Jew Suss: Rise and Fall" is as fascinating as it is frustrating.

This is the remarkable story about the actor who starred in the Nazi's most infamous propaganda film, "Jud Suss," and the ruinous impact the anti-Semitic film had on his life, not to mention how it helped to inflame racists in their holocaust against European Jewry. In a sense, though, this film by German director Oskar Roehler also is a propaganda film, excoriating anyone remotely tinged by Nazism without examining the near absence of free will in Nazi Germany and lacking any real empathy for its central character.

Certain to achieve controversy, "Jew" will be a welcome guest at international festivals and could well wind up with distribution outside German-speaking territories. Indeed, its greatest attraction might be a supporting role: The film contains is fullest film portrait to date of Joseph Goebbels, who as the Reich minister of propaganda functioned as an old Hollywood studio chief, albeit with unlimited powers. Played by Germany's best-known actor, Moritz Bleibtreu, Goebbels is a wily, manipulative, domineering, charismatic force of nature, sweeping through rooms and unsettling everyone in his single-minded quest to spread the gospel of the Third Reich.

But the film is not about him. Rather it centers on Vienna-born actor Ferdinand Marian (1902-1946), whom Goebbels spotted playing Iago in Shakespeare's "Othello" in Berlin. Goebbels thought he would do well portraying bad guys (meaning Jews or English) in his propaganda films.

As played by Tobias Moretti, who does resemble the actor, Marian is a thoroughly shallow careerist and womanizer despite a loving wife and small daughter, but he's got a conscience. He hides a Jewish actor friend (Heribert Sasse) and turns down the lead role in "Jud Suss" when Goebbels offers it to him.

Indeed, according to sources, Marian turned it down for a year before acquiescing out of fear of humiliation and unemployment. However, the movie, written by the director and Klaus Richter, imagines that Marian gets caught up not only in the role but also the success the film apparently enjoyed at the Venice Film Festival in 1940.

His wife (Martina Gedeck) begs him to take advantage of his temporary fame to abandon Germany for America, but he insists on attending the Berlin premiere. Soon, alcoholism and philandering dominate his life as the realization sinks in that his participation in "Jud Suss" really is criminal.

Like Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol," he is shown the future his sins have enabled: His forced journey to a succession of premieres and screenings takes him conveniently through a Jewish ghetto being roughly emptied and the early construction of Auschwitz.

The movie makes a point of having Goebbels insist that "Jud Suss," which he considers vital to the war effort, not be a cheap propaganda film but rather a film of artistic merit. He wants the character of the conniving Jewish businessman to be played with subtlety and not as a caricature. Strangely, Roehler should have taken Goebbel's advice. All his Nazis are repellent and his hero so besmirched by collaboration, however unintentional, that he refuses to grant Marian any redemption.

Whatever complexity and depth Moretti shows in the early scenes, his character falls into a drunken stereotype midway through the movie. Indeed, Marian hardly takes a sober breath after Venice, forcing the actor to weave through repetitive scenes of disheveled self-loathing. So Bleibtreu's Goebbels takes over the film.

Despite a deformed right leg that causes a pronounced limp, the Nazi minister strides through the movie with oily charm and a sharp tongue. He listens to people only to refute them and brooks little opposition.

A scene where he dictates how journalists should frame their stories about "Jud Suss" tells you how things work in a totalitarian state. Bleibtreu commands the stage in his every scene only to slip quietly away when the war deteriorates for the Nazis.

The film shows more sympathy for its women. Gedeck sees what her husband does not but can't get through to the man. Erika Marozsan, as his Czech lover and later wife, ultimately can't compete with the bottle either.

Smaller roles tend toward exaggeration, except for Sasse's camp survivor, who exists primarily to damn Marian for doing what he had no real way to avoid.

The production is a strong one. Carl F. Koschnick's cinematography bleeds much color from the film, making some scenes look virtually black and white. Isidor Wimmer's sets ring true, and Thomas Olah's costumes catch the decadent glamour of Berlin early in the war years.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Scorsese's skillful 'Shutter Island' sates B-movie fans - Courier-Post

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 12:10 AM PST

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

I can't recall a movie in a long time in which I felt so totally immersed as in "Shutter Island."

It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached. But the care, love and astounding skill of director Martin Scorsese, along with the claustrophobic story, combine for a film that stays with you long after you've given up trying to figure out whether everything you've just seen really adds up.

It doesn't matter. For more than two hours, the audience is submerged in a world of increasing madness, shot and directed in such a way as to be almost tactile. A storm and hurricane figure into the story; at times you'll want to reach for a raincoat.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a federal marshal who arrives, seasick, at Shutter Island, an isolated hospital for the criminally insane, to try to find a missing woman institutionalized there after she drowned her three children. Teddy is accompanied by his new, deferential partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), of whom he knows practically nothing.

Once on the island, they're subjected to the rules of the place: No weapons and everyone defers to Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the psychiatrist who, more or less, runs the place. Teddy, like Cawley, is mystified as to how the woman could have gone missing, since the hospital is so tightly -- and creepily -- guarded.

To make matters more difficult, Cawley and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow) won't allow Teddy to look at patient information. Instead, he has to conduct interviews with the patients, which lead nowhere.

Or do they? It turns out that Teddy has other reasons for wanting this case. His wife (Michelle Williams, seen in flashback) was killed in a fire and he believes the man responsible is on the island, as well. He is beset by memories of his wife, as well as nightmares of his service in World War II, in which he helped liberate a death camp.

A storm rages outside and quickly is turning into a hurricane and the ferry back to the mainland is shut down. As the destructive storm rages, Teddy is blinded by migraines. His suspicions mount, as do ours.

The mystery here is not as compelling as Scorsese's telling of it. The terrible beauty of the storm, the creepiness of the surroundings, the unease intensified by the patients who, for the most part, lurk about the margins, make for an unsettling experience -- and a wholly enjoyable one, as well.

DiCaprio, who does his best work with Scorsese, is very good; to say how and why would give too much away. Kingsley is satisfyingly difficult to read. The same can be said of Ruffalo.

Ted Levine is fantastic in a brief scene as the warden, explaining to Teddy his theory of man's true nature.

For a while now, Scorsese has seemed more interested in making entertainments than searing personal statements. That's fine, as long as you make entertainments as well crafted as "Shutter Island." If it's not destined to be ranked among Scorsese's greatest films, it's certainly one of his more entertaining ones. And that's plenty good enough.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Movie version of 'Blood Done Sign My Name' opens - WRAL

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 01:00 AM PST

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

RALEIGH, N.C. — A movie about the killing of a black man in 1970 in North Carolina and the trial that resulted in the acquittals of white men is opening nationally.

"Blood Done Sign My Name" opens on Friday on screens in large cities, but also in several North Carolina cities, including Charlotte and Raleigh. The movie is based on the memoir of the same name by Tim Tyson, a Duke University professor who grew up in Oxford during the time of the shooting and trial.

Screenwriter Jeb Stuart, who directed "Blood," is best known for writing action films such as "Die Hard" and "The Fugitive." The movie was filmed in North Carolina, mostly in Monroe and Shelby, and stars Nate Parker and Rick Schroder.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Movie review: Scorsese borrows from the best in "Shutter Island" - Denver Post

Posted: 18 Feb 2010 11:56 PM PST

Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" is a vastly intelligent movie. A film historian par excellence, the director, along with screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis, crafts a heady thriller out of Dennis Lehane's best-selling mystery.

The film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a wounded, dogged federal marshal, mixes the psychological with the political, the personal trauma with historic angst. Violence is paired with its most common victims: women and children. But men suffer greatly as well.

As the film opens, a ferry breaches the mist as it heads toward a rocky island that houses Ashecliffe Hospital for the "criminally insane." The ship's horn blasts give way to more menacing bass notes of music supervisor Robbie Robertson's score.

The year is 1954. The world is dishing out its own versions of madness. The Cold War is turning icier. The House Un-American Activities Committee continues its poking and prodding.

Aboard ship, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) turns green, even though the boat hardly seems to pitch or roll as it plows its way toward its destination: a foreboding mass of stone, part of the Boston Harbor Islands. His new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), stands as steady as can be on the deck. DiCaprio portrays Teddy with a look of pinched determination and later an air of collapsed certainty.

They've been summoned to investigate the disappearance of an inmate. Like many a female killer, Rachel Solando turned her violence on her children. Now she's vanished. In a fortress as impressive as Al- catraz, poof!

Both Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson portray the missing killer, which should give you an idea of the doubling identities the movie entertains.

The twists are involving. But it's a shame "Shutter Island" never approaches being moving — a strange failing for a story propelled by personal and historical cataclyms.

Those two strains collide in Teddy. A war hero, he was one of the U.S. soldiers that liberated the Nazi concentration camp Dachau. He is also a widower, prone to post-traumatic stress flashbacks and cruel dreams.

Michelle Williams appears as dead wife Dolores. In one evocatively shot scene, she turns into a crumbling pillar of ash in his arms. She reappears again and again. She nudges him in visions. The man responsible for her death may also be housed at Ashecliffe.

Shutter Island's chief caretaker Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) describes the institution as "A moral fusion between law and order and clinical care."

Teddy's not having it. He continually calls the inhabitants "prisoners." Cawley corrects him. "Patients." He seems more prickly than the case requires. It's the tangle of Teddy's wounded psyche with the mystery that propels the drama.

Lightning slashes, thunder thrashes. A storm builds into a hurricane. There's no shortage of the symbolic.

"Shutter Island" is Gothic. It partakes of other cinematic traditions, too. For his cast and crew, Scorsese screened a number of touchstone films, including Robert Wise's "The Haunting," Otto Preminger's "Laura" and "Titicut Follies," Frederick Wiseman's shattering 1967 documentary about the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts.

Novelist Lehane is a master of uneasy endings. Revisit of the rough moral conclusions of "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone."

"Shutter Island" is different only in that it tempts us to reenter the conspiratorial fray, to once again engage our doubts about what we and Teddy have been through.

What is real? What is delusion? What is montrous? What is decent? "Shutter Island" may not shatter the heart but these are gnawing achievements for a movie about madness and paranoia.

Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@ denverpost.com; also blogs .denverpostcom/madmoviegoer

"SHUTTER ISLAND."

R for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity. 2 hours, 38 minutes. Directed by Martin Scorsese; written by Laeata Kalogridis; from the book by Dennis Lehane; photography by Robert Richardson; starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson and Max von Sydow. Opens today at area theaters.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.