End of the Game (4 Stars)

This is a German film, made in English in 1975. It's based on the novel "The Judge and his Hangman" ("Der Richter und sein Henker") by the Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It was the first of only five novels written by Dürrenmatt.

I discovered Dürrenmatt while I was at school. In the fifth form (tenth grade) I had to read "Suspicion" ("Der Verdacht"), Dürrenmatt's second novel, in the original German. I'd previously read short stories in German, but this was my first full length novel. I loved it straight away. It was a detective story that deliberately broke all the rules of detective stories. Inspector Bärlach was solving a crime while suffering from terminal cancer and unable to stand up. Many other details which I shan't name here were untypical for detective stories.

After reading this book I borrowed Dürrenmatt's first novel, "Der Richter und sein Henker", from my school library. It also featured Inspector Bärlach, already diagnosed with stomach cancer, but still on his feet. I enjoyed it so much that I began to read Dürrenmatt's plays. In the following summer holidays I read all of his plays that he'd written until then. (He was still alive and writing more). They were relatively short. I managed to read one play every day, lying on my deck chair in my parents' back garden. Those were the good old days.

After Dürrenmatt's death in 1990 I bought a collection of his complete works. I was older and had a tough job, so I had less time to read. I barely began to read it when it was thrown away by accident. My wife thought it was an old set of books that belonged to her parents, and when they said they didn't want them they were dumped in the trash. Stupid.

I saw "End of the Game" in a cinema while I was studying in Berlin. It was only a few years since I'd read the book, so I immediately noticed a few changes in the details. Luckily, the book's main premise has been retained in the film.

The story begins in Istanbul in 1948. Two young men, both from Switzerland, meet and become close friends. Hans Bärlach is a policeman, temporarily assigned to the Turkish police force. Richard Gastmann is a businessman. Gastmann makes a bet that he can kill someone in broad daylight and not be found guilty. Bärlach accepts the bet. Gastmann promptly knocks Bärlach's girlfriend unconscious and pushes her off a bridge. She drowns. In the following police investigations Bärlach is the main suspect, but her death is eventually ruled a suicide. Gastmann won the bet.

30 years later, Bärlach is a police inspector in Bern. Gastmann is a senior diplomat, above the law. He boasts to Bärlach that he's killed at least 50 people, and he'll never be caught. Bärlach's time is running out. He has cancer, and he's told he only has a year to live. He's determined to catch Gastmann before he dies. A local policeman is killed. Bärlach quickly deduces who the killer is, but he decides to frame Gastmann for the murder. If Gastmann is too clever to be found guilty of the murders he's committed, he should be found guilty of a murder he didn't commit.

This is a fascinating moral dilemma. Is Bärlach a good cop or a crooked cop? It depends on how you look at it. Gastmann isn't innocent. He's one of the biggest murderers in Switzerland, so Bärlach is doing everyone a favour by getting rid of him.

Inspector Bärlach is supported by an ambitious young detective, Walter Tschanz. He's close to solving the case, so Bärlach has to slow him down by planting false evidence.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt himself appears in the film as an eccentric old writer called Friedrich. That's amusing.

Is it a good film? I enjoy it as a fairly accurate adaptation of one of my favourite books, but I have a question to anyone who's never read the book: can you understand what's happening? I suspect it might be confusing to anyone who doesn't know the story already. Maybe.

The film has only been released on DVD and Blu-ray in Germany, but the discs include the original English dialogue.

Ad Astra (4 Stars)

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to see this film or not. My friends had differing opinions about the film. The trailers which I saw in the cinema made it look like a cross between "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Interstellar". This afternoon my daughter said she wanted to see "Ad Astra" with me, and I spontaneously agreed. I'm glad I did. To my great surprise, the film had more in common with "Heart of Darkness" than "2001". Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against "2001", but in my opinion there's only one Stanley Kubrick.

Brad Pitt plays Roy McBride, an emotionless, efficient astronaut in the near future. I emphasise the words "in the near future". Too many films make the mistake of naming an exact year five, ten or 20 years in the future, not planning for the eventuality that the films will still be popular after this date. "Ad Astra" will still take place in the near future, even if I watch it 20 years from now. In this near future there are large settlements on the Moon and smaller communities on Mars. Roy's father, Clifford McBride, was a great explorer who travelled as far as Neptune, but he never returned from this mission and is assumed dead.

There are repeated power surges that cause electrical malfunctions. Roy is selected for a top secret mission to solve the problem. The authorities believe that Clifford McBride is still alive and is somehow responsible for the power surges.

From here, Roy embarks on a meandering journey from the Earth to Neptune, via the Moon and Mars, encountering various problems on the way.

About halfway through the film I began to notice the similarities with "Heart of Darkness". I thought that it might just be coincidental, but when I got home I read that the director has told reporters that "Ad Astra" is based on "Heart of Darkness". Outer space is an appropriate place for the story to be relocated.

I can understand why not everyone likes the film. With the exception of a few action scenes it moves slowly, and Roy McBride's cold nature might not appeal to everyone. I find this is exactly what makes the film enjoyable. In Roy's character arc he slowly learns to accept and express his emotions. This is a powerful film with competent acting by Brad Pitt and all the minor actors.

A Time To Kill (4 Stars)

This is a courtroom drama made in 1996 by Joel Schumacher. That's a guarantee for quality in itself. As far as I know, he's never made a bad film. His films range from good to brilliant. It's based on a 1989 novel with the same name written by John Grisham.

Unlike most courtroom dramas, most of the action takes place outside of the courtroom. The film lasts two and a half hours, and there's nothing dull or uninteresting about it. It's not just men in suits shouting "Objection" and "Overruled", although that happens as well.

The film takes place in Canton, a small town in Mississippi. Two white supremacists rape a 10-year-old black girl. They hang her and leave her for dead, but the branch snaps and she manages to get home. She's able to identify the men, and one of her shoes is found in their truck, so they're arrested.

The girl's father, Carl Lee Hailey, visits the lawyer Jake Brigance and tells him that he doesn't expect justice to be done because it's a white man's world. In a similar case, when four white men had raped a black girl, the men were acquitted. Carl asks Jake to defend him if he deals with the matter himself, but Jake tells him not to do anything stupid. Carl doesn't take the advice. A few days later the rapists are in court requesting bail, and Carl bursts in, shooting them both dead.

Now Carl is on trial for murder, facing the death penalty. Jake says his normal fee would be $15,000 but he accepts $900, which is all of Carl's life savings. His defence strategy is based on claiming Carl was insane at the time of the murder. The Ku Klux Klan gets involved, burning down Jake's house and kidnapping his secretary. There are riots outside the court room, so the National Guard is called in. There are various other sub-plots, which I shan't go into here.

Parts of the film are very difficult for me to understand as a non-American. Is the Ku Klux Klan really allowed to march openly in the street the day after burning a cross in someone's lawn? Maybe it's because it can't be proved it was really them who burnt the cross? Can't the law deal with criminals like that?

I also find it difficult to understand the attitudes of the all-white members of the jury. Why does the colour of the accused person play a role? As I've already said elsewhere in this blog, I don't understand racism. I'm not saying that I'm against racism, what I'm saying is that to me racism is so ridiculously stupid that I don't understand how anyone can possibly be a racist. It doesn't make sense to me. I can argue with people about politics, and I can discuss religion and philosophy for hours on end, but if someone's a racist I don't know what to say to him. I can't credit him with enough intelligence to understand the words coming out of my mouth.

But the biggest problem I have with the film is the way the American legal system is portrayed. Carl was defended by pleading insanity. Was it really so insane? If someone raped my daughter and I expected the person to go unpunished, it's a natural reaction to want to get revenge. If Carl was insane, then I'm insane as well, and so are many other parents.

I'm not saying that vigilante justice is correct. Carl took the law into his own hands. He committed murder, so he's guilty. In a private conversation the judge said he would give Carl a 20 year prison sentence if he pleaded guilty. I would have accepted that sentence. Carl didn't regret what he did. It was a premeditated act, and if he'd failed to kill the rapists he would have tried again. Guilty is guilty, and it's unjust to use legal tricks to get him acquitted.

The film has a star studded cast. I could go through the actors one by one, praising their performances, starting with Samuel L. Jackson as Carl Lee Hailey. He's an uneducated man, but not unintelligent. He makes philosophical statements that dumbfound his lawyer.

Patrick McGoohan excels as Judge Noose. Is that name meant as a joke? He plays the role very subtly, displaying his motivation more through what he doesn't say than what he says. He presents himself as impartial, but we can see that his sympathies lie with the town's white people.

This is a film that I'd like to discuss with my friends. If you've seen it, please leave me a comment telling me what you think of it.

Success Rate:  + 1.8

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de

Don't look now (5 Stars)

When I watched "The Man who fell to Earth" in December I intended to watch this film within a few days. The problem is that my to-watch list is growing bigger all the time. At the moment the list has 164 films. Yes, one hundred and sixty-four films! That's ridiculous. There are a few films in the list that I haven't yet seen, but the vast majority are films that I've watched before and want to watch again soon, for one reason or another. Like "Don't look now", which I wanted to watch again because of Nicolas Roeg's death. And with a list that's 164 films long I can assure you that "soon" might mean many months from now. I'd like to trim my list down to zero by the end of the year, but the trouble is that I add new films as fast as I watch the old ones.

Maybe Donald Sutherland doesn't look like Charlie Chaplin, but he acts like him when he runs aimlessly through the narrow streets of Venice. From the beginning of the film he's a man cursed. He has the gift of second sight, but he's a sceptic who doesn't believe in the supernatural. That's a deadly combination. He sees things, but he doesn't believe what he sees. He sees warnings, but he ignores them. It's ironic that his wife is a believer, even though she has no gift.

Maybe it's wrong to say that Donald runs aimlessly. He's pursuing his own death.

Poor Donald has the face of a deer caught in the headlights. A few steps to the left or right could save his life, but he's transfixed. Like in a Greek (or Roman) tragedy, the fates are against him.

The Bishop tries to help him, but he isn't a man of great faith. He's one of the church bureaucrats who has risen through the ranks of the church hierarchy because he's good at what he does, not because he's a soldier of God. The Bishop believes in prophecies, but he doesn't heed them. The Bishop's father died in a fall, and after seeing Donald almost fall to his death he should have begged him to leave Venice.

Disaster also struck off screen. The musician Robert Wyatt fell out of a window while his girlfriend Alfreda Benge was working as an art designer on the film. He's been paralysed from the waist down ever since. The positive side is that he survived and he's made his greatest music since the accident. He survived because he's a believer.

Venice is a city of great beauty, but that's not what Donald saw. Wherever he looked he saw ugliness.

When you visit a church you can sit and admire the stained glass windows or you can kiss the gargoyles. Donald made his choice.

Love, happiness or death. What would you choose?

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de

JFK (4 Stars)

I was recently recommended this film by a friend. I'm thankful to him. It's 26 years since it was first released, and I'd vaguely heard about it, but for some reason I've never been inclined to watch it until now. When the film started I was a bit scared by the 3 hours 26 minutes running time, but I soon found it so fascinating that I couldn't tear myself away.

The film covers a controversial subject. On November 22nd 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Within hours Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as the prime suspect, but he was never put on trial because he was shot dead on live television two days later.

From the beginning there were doubts about the investigation. Lee Harvey Oswald swore he was innocent, but he was denied access to a lawyer. He was interrogated for 12 hours by the police, but no tapes were made.

Things remained calm, or rather swept under the rug, for the next three years. In 1966 Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, began to investigate the case. He was unable to name any one person as the shooter, but he was convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the killer. It was possible that he fired the first shot and missed, but the following five shots came from marksmen firing from three different angles. This is in contrast to the official Warren Report that claimed there were only three shots, all fired by Oswald. The evidence was arranged so neatly for the police to find that it looks like Oswald was set up. It's highly unlikely that he could have fired all three shots, even if there had only been three. His military record described him as a poor to medium marksman, and he was shooting from a difficult angle through foliage. Garrison asked three expert marksmen to hit a stationery target from the same room, and none of them succeeded. Lee Harvey Oswald was able to hit a person in a moving car.

Jim Garrison claimed that the assassination was orchestrated by the CIA, assisted by the FBI, the American military, the Mafia and anti-Castro Cuban immigrants. The motive was the dislike of Kennedy's pacifism and his intention to withdraw all American troops from Vietnam.

While it's not certain if Garrison was correct in all of his suppositions, there are too many suspicious circumstances surrounding the case. Many of the primary witnesses died soon after the assassination, some by accidental deaths and some by suicide. Somebody in a position of authority was doubtlessly trying to cover things up.

Do I have an explanation? No. I don't have access to enough information on the subject to form an informed opinion. The official documents on the subject were to be kept sealed until 2029, but their release was brought forward to 2017, with the exception of a small number of documents that President Trump decided should be withheld for a few more years. I expect no revelations from these documents. Anyone who wanted to act illegally made sure that nothing was written down.

The film is obviously one-sided, but it's a good film in its pacing and suspense. It's about as good as any legal drama can be.

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de

Uprising (4½ Stars)

"Can a moral man retain his moral code in an immoral world?"

This is the 13th film starring Leelee Sobieski, made in 2001 when she was 18. It was made for television in America, but it was released in cinemas in several other countries. It's one of the most powerful made-for-television films ever. It's all the more remarkable that Leelee Sobieski was able to carry the lead role at such a young age.

Approximately 400,000 Jews were forced to live in a 3.4 square kilometre area of Warsaw, hemmed in by a wall. This was a storage facility while the Germans were waiting for their concentration camps to become operational. Only 50 Jews escaped. The rest were either deported to Treblinka, killed by the Germans or died of starvation.

The film is based on biographies and other first person reports by survivors. It begins in the relative calm of 1939 when the Jews still had hopes that the Germans could be reasoned with. The mood changed drastically in 1942 when Jews were rounded up to be shipped to Treblinka to be killed. That's when the resistance started. Leelee Sobieski plays Tosia Altman, one of the leading resistance fighters. Due to her blonde hair she was able to pass for an Aryan, so she slipped in and out of the Ghetto. In the early years she smuggled food into the Ghetto, in the later years it was weapons.

The final battle, the uprising itself, began in January 1943. The resistance was fierce, and many Germans were killed in the fighting, but the outcome was inevitable. In April the Jews decided to give up the fight. There were plans to evacuate the last few thousand Jews via the sewers, but due to betrayal by an informant most of the escape routes were blocked and only 50 escaped. Tosia was one of the Jews who escaped, but her luck didn't last. A week later she was captured by the Germans and executed.

The Germans systematically destroyed all the houses in the Ghetto, especially houses in which they suspected Jews were hiding.

I feel tempted to say that this was one of the greatest performances of Leelee Sobieski's career, but her talent is so immense that she has had many greatest performances. No other actress could have portrayed Tosia Altman so well. The real Tosia was only a few years older than Leelee: 21 in 1939 and 25 at the time of her death.

Tosia had to crawl over piles of dead bodies on her journeys in and out of the Ghetto.

This is a photo of the wall surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto taken in 1941, before the final liquidation of the Jews began. As you can see, this was the inspiration for the Berlin Wall built 20 years later. The German Democratic Republic (DDR) claimed to be Communist, but it maintained the spirit of the Third Reich.

The Calling (3½ Stars)

Thank you, Amazon Prime. I wanted to see this film when it was in the cinema 18 months ago, but you know how it goes: I was busy and kept putting it off, and when I finally had time the film's run was over. "So many films, so little time". But tonight I found it listed among the films included with my Amazon Prime subscription.

Hazel Micallef is a police inspector in the small town Port Dundas in Ontario. She's called to investigate the murder of an old woman in her home. The unusual thing about the death is that the mouth has been forced into a position posthumously, as if saying something. By chance Hazel hears about a death under similar circumstances in a neighbouring area. Suspecting a serial killer, she rings other police districts and finds another seven similar murders, spread across Canada.

The investigations continue with more thorough autopsies, and it's discovered that the people weren't murdered at all. They all committed suicide in order, from west to east, and their bodies were cut with a knife after death to make the police suspect murder. Of course, Hazel wants to find the man present at all the suicides who mutilated the corpses. Then she discovers the existence of an ancient cult that believes Christ could only be resurrected after the suicide of 12 disciples, so she suspects that there will be another three deaths. But who will be resurrected this time?

This is a fascinating film with solid acting from Susan Sarendon as a whiskey drinking police inspector. Despite the supernatural background it's a murder mystery, even after the cause of the deaths is discovered to be suicide. Questions are left open, such as why the 12 suicides had to be stretched from the west to the east coast of Canada. The slow pace might not be pleasing to everyone, but it serves to intensify the atmosphere.

Don't look now (5 Stars)

I've waited a long time for this film to be remastered and released on Blu-ray. Too long. All the previous versions had sound that was so distorted that it was sometimes difficult to understand the dialogue.Even the (supposedly) remastered DVD in 2006 had the same poor sound quality. Now it's finally been put right. This has been one of my favourite films, ever since I first saw it more than 30 years ago, and now I can finally enjoy it.

John Baxter is an architect who specialises in the restoration of old buildings. He leads a comfortably wealthy life with his wife Laura, which is disrupted when their daughter Christine accidentally drowns. A few years later they travel to Venice, where John has to restore an old Catholic church that has been eroded by the damp air. We don't see Venice as the beautiful city that was shown in the more recent film, "The Tourist". It's a cold, ugly city, where the waterways are menacing rather than attractive. Moreover, it's a confusing maze of alleys and bridges.

While in Venice they meet two elderly sisters from England. One of them is blind, but she has psychic gifts. She says that she can see Christine sitting with them, and she even describes the coat she was wearing when she died. Laura clings to this as a comfort after her loss. John is sceptical, suspecting that the sisters are fraudsters, but then he sees Christine running round the city, always at a distance. He chases Christine, getting lost in the maze, despite warnings from the blind sister that his life is in danger.

This is a beautiful gothic ghost story. The film editing might seem chaotic at first, with the camera angle constantly changing, and even events that happen at different times being alternated, but it adds to the allure of the film. I wouldn't say that "Don't look now" qualifies as a horror film, but it gives the viewer an uneasy feeling of dread from beginning to end.

Uprising (5 Stars)

If anyone has the least doubts that Leelee Sobieski is the world's best actress he should watch this film. "Uprising" tells the story of the uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto against the Germans in 1943. We all know that the Jews were slaughtered by the much better armed German forces. While not denying the inevitable outcome, the film concentrates on the successes of the Jewish resistance fighters. Before they died they killed as many of the Germans as they could.

Leelee plays the role of Tosia Altman, a courier who smuggled messages out of the ghetto and brought weapon back in. The acting throughout is superb, but Donald Sutherland deserves special mention as the leader of the Jewish council, tragically pleading his countrymen to remain at peace with the Germans because he expected them to be reasonable.

Here is a photo actually taken in the ghetto at this time. It was intended as a pro-German propaganda photo to show the efficiency of the work of the German army. But what is your impression when you see it?

I feel like I should write something about the horrors of the German Nazi regime and what they did to the Jews, but I don't think I could do the subject justice. Not at this time, anyway. It's something I need to spend a whole day writing about, and I don't have the time. All I'll say for now is that the times may change, but the global hatred of the Jews doesn't. The Jewish people have returned to their land after centuries in exile, but the Moslems today present phony arguments to claim that Israel doesn't really belong to them. Some people in the west are foolish enough to support their anti-Jewish rhetoric, but they're just as naive as the westerners who thought that Hitler was sending the Jews to work camps for their own good. Islam is just as evil as National Socialism, and it has the ultimate goal of slaughtering all the Jews in Israel.