Oh, wow.
Huh.
I saw this movie back in the 80s, but… probably on VHS? I don’t recall seeing it in a movie theatre.
Columbo!
Heh, Tuxedomoon on the soundtrack. This really is the coolest movie of the 80s.
This 4K restoration really looks amazing — probably better than it looked in the theatres originally.
Commodore 64!
And now there’s Nick Cave.
I’m really enjoying (re-)watching this. It’s serious and portentous to the max, but really owning that; leaning into that.
There’s the “Oscar bait” term — movies that are designed to appeal to a typical Oscar voter (i.e., a famous actor playing a disabled person or something). This is kinda that, but for a different audience: It’s Cinematheque/film festival bait! It’s perfect: Mostly black and white, it’s all about life and death and all those serious subjects, it’s slow, it’s got Allan Falk, it’s about Germany and the war, and there’s even a film within the film! You couldn’t engineer a more perfect movie for that market if you try.
And I’m totally riveted.
Crime and the City Solution?
I love this movie — probably more now than I did back then. At the time, it seemed like just another European art movie, but now it seems like probably the last one of its kind: It’s a movie in the tradition of Bergman and De Sica — a serious movie done in a playful way. It’s an anachronism, really.
Der Himmel über Berlin. Wim Wenders. 1987. ⚅
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