9 August 2024.
By Neptune
PANDA BEAR IN AFRICA ***
Here’s a sweet, non-violent animated film for children that is fun, adventurous and an eye-opener for kids ignorant of geography.
Little Panda Bear is best friends with a dragon that gets kidnapped to Africa as a pet for a little lion prince whose overbearing uncle (shades of Lion King and Hamlet?!) seems to have some schemes up his paw. As a true buddy, Panda Bear decides to take this huge trip to another continent to save his best friend, and so start the adventures.
The many characters Panda meets on his voyage are a hoot, especially the little monkey that becomes his inadvertent guide. This is a fine family film with many pertinent lessons on acceptance, loyalty and courage. Charming!
IT ENDS WITH US (Jamais plus) *1/2
The one word that describes this ‘romantic thriller’ is corny. And predictable. It can’t decide if it’s a soft porn idyll or a sensitive feminist stand against domestic violence. The main problem is that actor/director Justin Baldoni is too insistent on showing his rippling abs rather than creating a plausible film. And the so obvious, stereotyped situations and dialogue are embarrassing, especially the lingering looks and when the music purrs as Baldoni gets into another round of unnecessary lovemaking.
It’s all quite beautifully filmed – the Boston postcard views, the cozy interiors, Lilly Bloom’s flower store – oh, such clichés! Including names such as Lilly Bloom, Ryle Kincaid and Atlas (argh…) Corrigan. But then, this is straight out of rose-coloured romance novels for wistful ladies. In fact it’s based on a best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover.
It’s a pity for the lovely Blake Lively who struggles to make this work, and the dishy Brandon Sklenar as the ‘good’ guy. The others just overact around Lively, while Baldoni keeps rippling those muscles – and he’s supposed to be a neurosurgeon! He must have had French actor/director Louis Garrel as a role model – the dark, smouldering, unwashed, unshaven look. Oh dear…
Forgive me, I am being very nasty here, and it’ll probably end up as a hit…
INGEBORG BACHMANN – Journey into the Desert ** (vo German)
Two exceptional writers, the famous Austrian author and poet Ingeborg Bachmann (Vicky Krieps) and the Swiss novelist and playwright Max Frisch (Ronald Zehrfeld), meet and fall in love in the late 1950s. Their attraction is immediate and passionate. He wants her to marry him, she has an independent streak and is not really the housewife type. Their turbulent relationship lasts five years.
This is what Margaretha von Trotta’s film is about – just their union, along with moments of Bachman’s life when she visits Egypt and its deserts with a younger man and her times in her home in Rome, with other men, away from Frisch. She is shown as elegant, intellectual, always searching for something else. Frisch is shown as a staid, jealous lover, wanting to possess this rebel of a woman.
Somehow neither come out as real people in this study of them as disparate scholars whose love could not surmount their different needs and lifestyles. Somehow the film feels hollow because it never quite grasps their full lives and their grand contributions to world literature.
Being only about those few years, the film completely ignores her addictions and sad demise in Rome at the early age of 47. All its intellectualism feels as barren as that desert.
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Miserable – no stars
By Neptune
Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
For more stories like this on Switzerland follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
