Lifeforce (4 Stars)

I watched this film in February this year. I mentioned in my review that the Blu-ray disc contains a director's cut. Since then I've read that it probably isn't a director's cut at all, it's just a longer version; 14 minutes longer, to be precise. It's no longer possible to figure out exactly what happened in 1985, when the film was first released, but it seems like the longer version was in the cinemas first, and then it was replaced by the shorter version.

Knowing this, I was interested in seeing if the shorter version is in any way censored. That isn't the case. "Lifeforce" has a lot of nudity in both versions. Most of the changes are cosmetic, shortening conversations to make the film run faster. The only thing that stands out is that the kisses are shortened, which I find regrettable. They're relevant, because the female alien sucks the life force out of her victims by kissing them.

Just one more kiss?

Beautiful! The best kiss he's ever had.

But he regretted it afterwards.

The moral of the story is never kiss a naked alien.

If you want to know more about the film, click here to read my original review.

Success Rate:  - 2.2

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Hannie Caulder (4 Stars)

A British spaghetti western? Is that a contradiction? Let's put it differently: "Hannie Caulder" is a British western made in the style of spaghetti westerns. It was even filmed in the Spanish region of Almeria.

The film takes place on both sides of the border between the USA and Mexico. The date isn't stated, but in a cemetery we see a tombstone dated 1874, so I assume it's the late 19th Century. A gang of inept bank robbers, the Clemens Brothers, botch a bank robbery in Mexico, killing people but not taking any money. They flee across the border and arrive at the horse farm where Hannie Caulder lives. They shoot her husband, rape her and set her house on fire. She swears revenge, but how can she do anything by herself?

A bounty hunter called Thomas Price passes her farm, asking if his horse can have water from her well. She tells him what happened and asks him to teach her how to shoot. At first he refuses, but when he sees how determined she is he's worried that she'll get herself killed if she isn't trained.

Price travels with her to Mexico to visit a gunsmith called Bailey, played by Christopher Lee. He lives by the sea with a Mexican wife and his children. His only visitors are men who want to have their guns repaired. He makes a new gun specially adapted to Hannie's size and strength, a light gun that still has enough power to kill at close range.

When they return to America they find the Clemens Brothers in a small border town. Price wants to capture one of them to claim the reward. He kills him, but he's badly injured in the fight, so Hannie has to tackle the other two brothers by herself.

Most film critics don't like the film, but it has one big fan: Quentin Tarantino. He says that it was one of his main inspirations for "Kill Bill". The relationship between the Bride and Pai Mei is based on Hannie Caulder and the bounty hunter. There's also a parallel between the gunsmith and Hattori Hanzo.

But what do I think about the film? I have mixed feelings. It's a good story, but it's spoilt by the comic elements. The Clemens Brothers are stupid, and whenever we see them we have to laugh. The film would have been better if the Clemens Brothers had been efficient cold-blooded criminals. It would have made Hannie's victory over them more meaningful.

Raquel Welch is beautiful as Hannie Caulder, but she doesn't dress as sexily as she looks in the poster at the top of this post. She's always wearing tight leather trousers.

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Lux Aeterna (4 Stars)

"Lux Aeterna" is a French experimental short film that can't be slotted neatly into any genre. It's a film about a film. The cast and crew making a film about witches. Everyone in the film plays himself, or at least fictionalised versions of themselves.

The two main characters are Beatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg. They're both actresses, but Beatrice is directing her first film. The producer and the studio executives are plotting against her behind her back. They consider her incapable as a director, so they're looking for an excuse to fire her.

The two actresses discuss the film and witchcraft in general. They're constantly interrupted by others, for instance a reporter from a film magazine and a man who wants to make his first movie with Charlotte as the leading actress. The interruptions continue even as they're preparing to start filming.

When the filming begins there's a mutiny on the set. The cameraman refuses to take instructions from Beatrice. She shouts Cut, but he carries on filming. The films descend into chaos, by which I mean both films, "Lux Aeterna" and the film within the film.

The cinematography is unusual. It's experimental, to say the least. Most of the film takes place in split screens. Sometimes they're two scenes taking place simultaneously in different rooms, sometimes they're two different views of the same the same people in the same room. Today I watched the film in French with German subtitles, and I realised that was a mistake. The subtitles are shown in the screen to which they belong, but in many cases different dialogue is taking place in the two screens, so different subtitles are shown simultaneously on each side. My eyes were jumping from side to side, and I couldn't always keep up with the subtitles. I wanted to make a screenshot, but the software I use for watching Blu-rays on my computer, MPC-HC, isn't compatible with this subtitle format. All the subtitles are shown on the right side, wherever they belong.

Instead of a screenshot, I've taken a photo of the film on my television screen. The picture is poor quality, but it demonstrates the problem with the subtitles.

Left: "We're working here. I'm very sorry".

Right: "I'm financing the film with my advertisements".

It's impossible to follow unrelated conversations on two sides of the screen at once. Next time I watch "Lux Aeterna" I'll watch it dubbed into German. I expect that will make it easier to watch.

As I said above, this is a short film. It only lasts 49 minutes until the final credits roll. On the one hand, I wish it were longer. On the other hand, I can't think of any way to extend the film without unnecessarily bloating it. 49 minutes is a good length.

I enjoyed the film despite the chaos. Maybe because of the chaos. It hurt my eyes. For the last ten minutes the colours flicker at the full speed of 24 frames a minute.
Red-green-black-black, green-blue-black-black, blue-red-black-black. The colours continue to flicker throughout the two minutes of the final credits.

I think you can imagine how straining this is on the eyes.

At the moment the film is only available in Germany, but I've read that a Blu-ray release is planned in England later this year. Be patient.

The Fan (4 Stars)

This is a German horror film that was briefly shown in cinemas in 1982. After a few weeks it was banned, and it wasn't allowed to be released on video or DVD until 2003.

The film is about Simone, a 16-year-old girl from Ulm who has a crush on a German pop star called R. She writes to him every day, telling him she loves him, but she doesn't get a reply. Her whole life suffers. She sits daydreaming in school, and she hardly talks to her parents.

Finally she hitchhikes to Munich to see him. She goes to his house, but his secretary won't let her in. She knows he has an upcoming appearance on the television show Top Pop, so she waits for days outside the Munich television studio. She breaks into cars so she can sleep on the back seat at night.

When R arrives he's surrounded by female fans, but Simone attracts his attention. At first she's so shocked that she's unable to talk to him, and then she faints. He invites her into the studio to watch the show being recorded. Afterwards he takes her to a luxurious apartment that he's using while the owners are in America. They have sex, but afterwards he loses interest in her. He says he's going on holiday for two months, but she can stay in the apartment as long as she wants. He tells her to lock the door when she leaves.

At this point Simone becomes desperate. She does whatever she can to prevent him leaving. In typical films like this we'd see love turning into hate, but Simone never stops loving him. Whatever she does, however extreme it might seem, is for love.

The film is a slow burner. Very little happens until the last 20 minutes. If you hadn't already read a film review you'd think it's a love story.

The extra features on the Blu-ray include the lobby cards.

The film is currently out of print. I hope it will soon be available again.

The Foreigner (4 Stars)

This is the second time in three days that I've watched a random film on television. By random I mean that it was decided at short notice. It's a film that I'd watched before, so I knew it would be good.

The film shows a bombing in central London by a group calling itself the Authentic IRA. It takes place in 2017, nineteen years after the Good Friday Agreement that created a truce between the British government and the IRA. (I know that's a simplification, but it's all that's relevant to the film). The film shows how the ill feelings of the IRA are still simmering beneath the surface. Nineteen years is a short time, and many of the former fighters still want revenge. Pierce Brosnan plays Liam Hennessy, a former IRA leader who has now become the Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister. He's a respectable politician for Sinn Fein, but can a former terrorist ever change his ways? Hennessy still has contacts with his ex-colleagues, many of whom have extremist viewpoints. Hennessy might not know who the bombers are, but he has friends who know them.

Jackie Chan plays Ngoc Minh Quan, a Chinese restaurant owner whose daughter is killed in the bomb blast. He doesn't think the police are doing enough to find the culprits, so he starts his own investigations. As a former elite soldier, he's able to fight against the various factions of the IRA to solve the crime. This brings him into direct confrontation with Hennessy.

This is an exciting political action thriller. If anything, I appreciate it more after watching it a second time.

Success Rate:  + 1.0

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Rheingold (5 Stars)

When I wrote about the "Rheingold" CD three days ago I said that I would buy the concert DVD on Ebay. Thanks to the speedy service of the Ebay seller 1a-music in Burgthann I received the DVD this morning. I don't usually buy used copies of CDs or DVDs, due to bad experiences in the past, but this time I wasn't disappointed. The article description on Ebay said "like new", and that's the case, 100%. No marks on the case, no fingerprints on the disc, and most importantly, it plays perfectly.

I bought the DVD primarily for the documentary and interview on the second disc, but I'll write about the concert first.

The DVD contains the first five tracks of the album, in the same order. It's slightly longer than the album, because Klaus Schulze's words with the audience between the songs aren't edited out. I picked up a few details that weren't obvious from the CD.

The first song, "Alberich", should have been longer, but it was interrupted by the audience. Klaus was playing a quiet section, and the audience began to applaud because they thought the song was over. Klaus stopped playing, stood up and told them they'd made a mistake. Several times in the rest of the concert he made signs to the audience that they should remain quiet.

Klaus Schulze and Lisa Gerrard work together perfectly, adapting to one another's improvisations, but it's not obvious when you see them on stage. Klaus occasionally glanced at Lisa, but Lisa didn't look at Klaus while she was singing, not once. For most of the concert she was singing with her eyes shut. On the rare occasions when she opened her eyes she stared into the sky, over the heads of the audience. (It was an open air concert).

When I listened to the CD three days ago, I said that "Alberich" disappointed me. Listening to it again today, I've changed my mind. I should have given the album a five star rating, but I don't go back and change old reviews.

I have only a few music DVDs in my collection, and this is the first time I've ever bought a concert DVD of music I already had on CD. It's a welcome addition to my collection.

The second disc is divided into two halves, a documentary about the concert and an interview.

Objectively speaking, it's not a good documentary. With the exception of Tom Dams, the sound engineer, nobody is introduced. We see people talking to Klaus in the studio, but we have no idea who they are. In a normal documentary the names would flash on screen the first time they appear. Another problem is the dialogue. A mixture of German and English is spoken. There are subtitles for the German dialogue, but no subtitles for the English dialogue. When German is spoken the language is clear, but the English dialogue is often mumbled and difficult to follow, so I would have liked subtitles for the English dialogue as well. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the documentary a lot because of the subject matter. I'm biased.

Most of the documentary shows Klaus and the engineers around him working to prepare the DVD at the Real World Studios in the village of Box, near Bristol. The video footage is spliced together from three cameras used at the concert. The music is being remastered for surround sound. It's interesting to hear Klaus Schulze's attitude towards the music changes as the remastering progresses. Before it starts he says that he doesn't like concert recordings to be changed or edited, they should be left as they originally sounded. That's a strange statement, because many of his live albums were heavily edited in the studio. The most extreme example is "Dresden Performance" in 1990. But as the remastering continues, Klaus changes his mind. There's a section where two sequencers are playing together (I believe it's in the second song, "Loreley"), and Klaus says "It would sound better if the second sequencer is played backwards". The engineer proceeds to reverse the sound with his computer/mixer, and Klaus agrees with the change. I listened to the stereo track today, which I assume is unedited. If I had surround sound equipment I'd like to compare the differences.

About half of the "documentary" consists of Klaus leaning on a wall talking about Lisa Gerrard, who he calls Lieschen. He says some things about the "Farscape" album that weren't contained in the liner notes. She arrived in the evening with her friend (boyfriend?) Pete, flying in from Moscow, and she wanted to go out and drink some German beer. She went out with Pete, arranging to meet Klaus at 1 pm the next day, which Klaus considered an unholy time. He's a night person, like me . When she arrived, Klaus didn't play. He'd prepared pre-recorded tracks for her, and she sang over them. I'm curious whether the whole album was done this way, or just the first few tracks. Klaus didn't say. I would have asked a lot more questions.

They started at 11 the next day, even earlier! The following day she had to leave.

It was only supposed to be a one-off collaboration with Lisa. Klaus was scheduled to play the Loreley concert by himself, but he decided spontaneously to invite Lisa shortly before the concert. They enjoyed performing together so much that Klaus arranged another eight concerts with her over the following 12 months.

Klaus says that the Loreley concert was the first time that his sons had seem him perform live. The above photo is in a flashback to the concert during the documentary. I hope the two men really are his sons, because I've never seen them before. Klaus was a very private person. He lived in a remote village, and his family was never photographed for the public.

The second half of the second disc is an interview with Klaus Schulze, carried out by the English musician Steven Wilson. He was working with Klaus in the Real World Studios because he's an expert in remastering music for surround sound. The interview started with Steven talking about his own background. He was born in 1967 and he grew up in the 1980's. He said that the music in the 1980's was bad, so he had to look back to previous decades. When he was 13 his parents bought each other two LPs for Christmas: "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd and "Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer. These two albums were his primary influences as a young teenager. He found his way to the "progressive" rock of the early 1970's, then to Tangerine Dream, and finally to Klaus Schulze. He now considers Klaus Schulze to be his favourite musician.

For most of the interview Klaus spoke about his early years, the 1970's. I made a whole page of notes about what he said. I'll have to be selective, I can't write everything.

Klaus calls his album with Tangerine Dream, "Electronic Meditation", pure experimentation. None of the musicians knew what they wanted to do. None of them repeated music like this.

Klaus denies the frequent claim that Karl-Heinz Stockhausen influenced the German groups of the early 1970's. Stockhausen's music was so avant-garde that they ignored it.

Klaus says that "Blackdance" (his third album) is the only album he regrets making. Steven Wilson immediately contradicted him, saying that "Voices of Syn" (the third track) is a masterpiece. I agree.

Klaus talks at length about the Cosmic Jokers albums released in 1974. Dieter Dierks had a large studio in Berlin. He invited musicians to practise (Klaus Schulze, Manuel Göttsching, Jürgen Dollase and Harald Grosskopf). By the door there were strips with LSD (presumably blotting paper), and Dieter watched to make sure that everyone who entered took one. In the following months Dieter Dierks recorded the music and released five albums without informing the musicians. Klaus is still angry about it today, because he thinks that the music was too bad to be released. He doesn't understand why some people like it, especially in America.

Florian Fricke offered to sell Klaus his Big Moog for 20,000 Marks. That was a lot of money, and Klaus couldn't afford it, but he really wanted the instrument. He walked into his record company and gave the CEO an ultimatum: "I need 20,000 Marks for equipment. If you don't give me the money I shan't make any more records for you". The CEO agreed to give Klaus an advance payment of 20,000 Marks. Klaus immediately drove to Munich (where Florian lived), a 12 hour journey, and gave him the money. Klaus drove back to Berlin with the Big Moog in four cases in his small car, but it was snowing, so he needed 15 hours.

Steven Wilson asks why the first side of "Timewind" (his fifth album) ends so abruptly. Klaus replies that the music was too long for one side of an LP, so it was a choice between a fade-out and a loud final note. I know what Steven means by the abrupt ending, but it's never bothered me.

Klaus talks about being very poor in his early days. "Moondawn" (his sixth album) was his first commercial success. After that he could live comfortably. An advantage is that he kept more of his studio recordings. The tapes cost 30 Marks each, so before "Moondawn" he often erased them to be used again. This has led to Klaus having a large catalogue of unreleased music waiting to be released in later years.

One thing that's missing from the interview is that he never mentions his publisher, Klaus Dieter Müller, usually known as KDM. As I've often said, without KDM there would be no Klaus Schulze. Klaus makes music and moves on. He's an artist with no business sense. KDM took the trouble of gathering Klaus Schulze's old tapes and listening to them, deciding what was worthy of being released. Without KDM this music would have been lost forever.

This is a beautiful DVD set: I enjoy it all, even the documentary. If I'd known it's so good I would have bought it when it was first released, 14 years ago.

7500 (4 Stars)

Three films in one day? It almost makes up for me watching so few films since I came home from hospital. Almost.

It was actually an accident that I watched this film today. I wanted to go to bed early, and then I noticed it was on television. I remembered enjoying it when I watched it on Amazon Prime two years ago, so I couldn't resist watching it again.

I don't have anything to add to my original review. Please click here to read it.

"7500" (not to be confused with the horror film "Flight 7500") is exclusive to Amazon Prime, so it's not available on disc.

One of the worst things about being so weak after leaving hospital is that I can't go to the cinema. This month is the worst possible time to stay at home. I've already missed "Morbius". I haven't seen "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness", which I expect to be the year's best film. My only hope is that it will stay in the cinema for another few weeks. "Operation Mincemeat" has just started in German cinemas, which has received rave reviews, but I doubt it will stay in the cinema long. Then there's "The Lost City", which is already in its fifth week, so I don't have much hope of catching it. And to top it all off, there's "Die Kirche bleibt im Dorf", a brilliant Swabian comedy that's returned to the cinemas for its tenth anniversary. That makes a total of five films, one that I've already missed and four that I'll probably miss. These are sad days.

The last paragraph should really be in one of my hospital posts. I'll copy and paste it into my next hospital post, updating any films that have already left the cinema.

Cold Prey (3 Stars)

Back in 2017 I found this film in the bargain bin at Saturn, a big media shop opposite my cinema. I watched it once and didn't think I'd watch it again, but today my son Benjamin asked if he could watch it, so I sat with him. It was given away free with a Sony Playstation 4 as an example of a Blu-ray disc.

The advertising material calls this the best slasher movie ever made. Claims like that are common, and they're never true. If a film really is the best slasher movie ever made, or even in the top 10, it will speak for itself.

One thing I noticed today is that the film isn't very Norwegian. What I mean is, Scandinavian horror films usually have a very slow pace, relying on atmosphere rather than jump scares. That isn't the case with "Cold Prey". It's more like American horror films; or rather, it's more like low-budget American films.

The film has inspired two other films in the series, a sequel and a prequel, so it must have been successful. My son loved it, and he says I should give it five stars. I told him he should write his own blog. In my opinion, three stars is all it deserves.

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They call me Trinity (4 Stars)

I've watched this film a few times already, but today is the first time I've watched it with German dubbing. I have to say that I'm amazed at the quality of the dubbing. As I've said before, dubbing is a serious industry in Germany, and the actors who provide the voices ("Synchronsprecher") are mostly successful theatre actors, so the voice quality is outstanding. It can't be compared with the poor quality of English and American dubbing.

It's often said that there's nothing original in films or television. I can see the problem. The ideas in old films were so good that it would be a shame to abandon them. They're just repackaged and disguised as new ideas. The premise of "Banshee" is a good example. A jewel thief takes the place of a sheriff. A new idea? No. In "They call me Trinity" Bud Spencer plays a horse thief who shoots a sheriff and takes his place as a town's sheriff, pretending to be him.

Is this plagiarism? Technically, yes, but in films and television plagiarism is so common that I wouldn't call it a crime any more. Most directors hide it, but Quentin Tarantino unashamedly makes films that are a patchwork of scenes taken from previous films. He doesn't call it plagiarism, he calls it a homage.

Here are the original Italian lobby cards. I hope you like them as much as I do.

The film has been released in England and America, but I strongly recommend that you buy the far superior German Blu-ray release. It includes English dubbing.

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