Die Schlüssel zur Freiheit (2025) The Keys to Freedom
Not on IMDb: runtime 5m.
Wim Wenders narrates a brief meditation of war and peace occasioned by the anniversary of the German surrender in a school room at Rheims France on 6 May 1945. It is thoughtful, moody, quiet, measured, and altogether a relief from contemporary insanity.
The film is on You Tube and elsewhere. An insightful review can be found in the NYT.
By the way that surrender was re-enacted a week later in Berlin with the Soviets presiding. That explains a scene I saw in a film awhile ago and questioned. Answered.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 40m, rated 6.4 by 38,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: Claim jumpers abound.
Gold rush among the stars. A teenage girl and her father prospect for rare minerals in the far reaches of the galaxy on a rainforest planet and encounter some unpleasant types wearing masks. Shoot-outs follow, and Randolph Scott does not ride to the rescue. More’s the pity. Also absent is a leathery old timer chewing tobacco in this space oater.
The twist is that, oops spoiler, the girl grows up quickly in this environment. Remember Kim Darby? I do.
The girl or her nemesis are in nearly every scene and carrying the film as far as it is carried. The second half becomes clichéd, some might say. Well, I did.
The setting is effective and the two principals are committed to their parts, unlike some of others who seem to find the whole thing boring. Oh, maybe that was me.
A few years earlier, It was preceded by a very short short of the same name on DUST as proof of concept to raise the money for this effort. Full marks for wit, energy, and initiative.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h 46m, rated 6.3 by 14,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Sweden.
Verdict: No exit!
Tagline: IKEA to the stars.
It is well thumbed script since When Worlds Collide (1951): Humanity is leaving the dying Earth for Mars, and here it is again. However, while previous manifestations of this theme have a handful of pioneers in pressure suits buckled into Qantas economy seats without saltine crumbs or even an inflight magazine, this version has a multitude of immigrants in a spaceship IKEA for the three week voyage to Mars. There are twenty restaurants, a dozen cinemas, gyms, libraries, the mandatory wellness centre, a shopping mall, spas and saunas, hair salons, and, yes, a holodeck. It is a gigantic cruise ship with thousands of passengers.
Of course, it is all too good to be true, and within a few minutes one of the front tyres blows — hit by a meteor — and the ship, Aniara, loses power. It will now drift, drift, and drift. The mean scriptwriter denies them any rescue, and they drift on and on. (Why Swedes would give this ship a Greek name is never explained within my attention span. Cul de Sac or Huis Clos would have been a better title.)
Tensions follow: the captain combines being dogmatically optimistic with terminal boredom, while the protagonist, a 360-degree Bill Clinton empath mind-melding with the computer and who feels everyone’s pain, except mine at the attenuated proceedings. At least there is no Greta preaching about our Earthly sins.
What follows for the bulk of the runtime is a study of individual reactions to shopping without end in the maze of this interplanetary IKEA store from which there is no exit. A few straws are grasped but no salvation occurs and years pass though none of the actors appear to age. Is that a result of the relativity of time? As the years roll by, the population of the spaceship re-enact the idiocy of Earth. There is sexual dalliance, irresponsibility, cults, gangs, litter, false prophets, destructive fashions, flared trouser legs, pointless conflicts, dumped share bikes, demagogues, and other instances of the decline of civilisation. The end. Solaris indeed.
Downbeat. Very Ingmar Bergman. Dreary.
* * *
It is based on a 1957 epic poem! That in turn was the basis for an opera in 1959 which was then filmed in 1960. Yes, it was a space opera; it was also dead boring. The poem runs to 160-pages and the Swedish Academy, of Nobel Prize fame, ruled it the second most important book published in Swedish in the Twentieth Century, later awarding the author a Nobel Prize. What was number one? Pippi Longstocking?
There are at least two other films on the IMDb with the same name, making four versions in all, two of which I have not been able thus far to locate. Tips welcomed about the 1986 and 2023 variants. The four are listed below for those who have to see to believe.
IMDb meta-data is 30m runtime, rated 7.0 by 83 cinemtiazens.
Genre: Docudrama Sy Fy.
DNA: Romania.
Verdict: curiouser and curiouser.
Tagline: Did she make it to retirement age?
Carpathian folklore has it that upon death souls migrate to the Moon and at the full moon they return to Earth briefly. Gulp! Undead indeed.
It starts on 19 June 1969 in a retrospective from 1998.
A top secret Soviet mission to beat the USA to the Moon went awry on that date, contrary to For All Mankind (2019). The timing of the Apollo mission was well publicised and to get there first the Soviets had to cut corners even with the low bid comrades. The only cosmonaut willing to volunteer to sit on the duct-taped rocket was Ulyana Markovskaya, the story goes. So off she went sitting on 45,000 kilonewtons of explosives. (Dunno what that means but it sounds big.)
It is her badly burned helmet that falls to the Earth (from the Moon shot) in the Carpathian Mountains, where a hiker, hearing a boom somewhere in the distance, chances upon it still smouldering.
Most of the film is a talking head narrating events in retrospect.
As the film ends we see Ulyana (sans helmet) descending on a parachute. Whew! What happened? She survived the big bang, but did she survive Transylvania? Did she meet a count? Vlad happened next? There is a contemporary Russian actress of that name. Is she a descendant from this descender? These and others questions await the sequel.
The footage of the mountain hike is marvellous and the interspersed Soviet cosmonaut poster art is inspirational. The posters reminded me of a retro 1960s restaurant where we once ate in Moscow that was replete with stirring Soviet propaganda posters of the period, including some celebrating cosmonauts.
***
What the point is of Ulyana’s story is anyone’s guess. The few reviews on the IMDb did not add to my comprehension. This one was hard to locate.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 2h and 1m, rated 6.4 by 14638 cinematizens.
Genre: Adventure
DNA: Fred Ward.
Verdict: More Fred.
Tagline: It’s Fred again.
Yep, it’s all about a revivicus Fred Ward aka Remo Williams and his vigilante rescue of Captain Janeway. The cast of stereotypes include a mystical Chinese (played by a European in the best tradition of Charlie Chan), a corrupt inheritor who reminded me of the current news, a bought off general who…ditto, and others. Wilfred Brimley elevates the tone, as always, from behind his moustache.
Remo’s training is most of the fun in the first half, thereafter it drags through the stereotypes: The corporate corruption is routine and most of the action then is limp, apart from the statue of Lady Liberty. WOW!
Captain Janeway has little to do but be a victim. But as always Fred nails it. You may not believe in Remo, viewer, but by Jupiter Fred does!
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 44m, rated 5.4 by 36,000 cinematizens.
Genre: Dystopia; Subspecies: Post Apocalyptic.
DNA: Comic book.
Verdict: Smaller doses, please.
Tagline: Shazam!
The title character injects energy, colour, and confusion into every scene she is in and she is in nearly every scene. On the few occasions when she takes a break, Malcolm McDowell plays… Malcolm McDowell. That sneer hasn’t changed since Clockwork Orange (1971).
While the story and characters are derived from a comic book series, the film lacks the subtlety and finesse of that original! It is all ‘Slam! Bam! Wham!’ and repeat for its runtime.
There is no story just action and reaction. There are no characters just a blur of movement. But there is plenty of that. I watched it with one eye while doing crossword puzzles. It didn’t distract me. Although I admit I enjoyed some of Tank Girl’s antics.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 18m, rated 6.5 by 754 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Cheapo.
DNA: Jordan.
Verdict: As static and wordy as a Mamet play.
Tagline: I knew it! She’s a machine.
Two people talk in a tatty Thistle hotel room during Black September civil war of 1970 in Amman Jordan while conflict rages outside (boom, crack, wham). The man is a cynical Scots journalist who, in the best tradition of the profession, makes up reports without leaving his room. The woman claims to be an ambassador from an alien civilisation whose astro-limo misfired and dropped her in there instead of the USA. A miss is as good as 10,000 miles. Her code name is ‘Friendship.’ No Gort in sight.
They talk and talk and talk, and talk some more. The talk is full of learned references without any momentum. It just goes around in circles. Off camera each does leave the room.
But mostly, they talk and talk…zzzzz….
At least she does not lecture the viewer, as is the preferred method of exposition by a considerable number of contemporary film makers, who in an earlier age would have gone to the priesthood to denounce our sins numerous: ecological, climatic, racial, social, technological, inequitable, venal, mortal, and more.
By the way, this alien did not travel light, sporting new clothes in nearly every scene with perfect makeup.
When Tilda says something like, ’I appear to be a human, but that’s a veneer; inside I am a machine.’ I said: ‘I knew it all along, Tilda, you are a machine!’
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 41m, rated 5.4 by 115 cinematizens.
Genre: Satire; Species: dramedy.
DNA: Czech.
Verdict: [Gasp!]
Tagline: The story must go on…and on.
Czech Radio correspondent from a civil war in the Middle East makes a surprise return to his home in Prague, fearing his wife’s infidelity during his long absence. She, too, is a journalist at Czech Radio.
His fevered imagination misinterprets everything and he goes ballistic, confirming his worst fears, but he has to keep up the pretence of reporting on the spot from a state of emergency in Arabia. Ingenuity and laughs follow, as does his wife’s incredulity, exasperation, (im)patience, and then enthusiasm for the project. The deception is a circle as the television news plagiarises the radio news which plagiarises the news services and the television which plagiarises both. And repeat.
Some of the humour is adult, and there is some gratuitous violence at the end, but the result is upbeat. If you have seen His Girl Friday (1940) you get the idea, and if you haven’t: why not?
There is side story with a school teacher about disinformation that seemed tacked on and not integrated, and the final shootout started as farce and ends up with cadavers.
Most of this dramedy takes places in the apartment so there was no Prague travelogue to remind us of our visit there.
***
Speaking of patience, mine was stretched. This was the finale of the Czech & Slovak film festival at the local Dendy, it began an hour late while we sheep sat and waited. Grumble, grumble.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 2h 11m, rated 8.1 by 1,600 cinematizens.
DNA: Czech & Slovak.
Genre: Docudrama.
Verdict: Remembered.
Tagline: 20 August 1968.
Mirroring the macro in the micro, the film covers the last days of the Post War Communist regime, the short-lived Prague Spring, and the Soviet repression. The microcosm centres on a technician employed by National Radio, who has tenuous custody of his younger brother after the accidental deaths of their parents. His aim is to keep younger brother out of a state orphanage in the workers’ paradise, which institutions are more like labour camps than schools.
Trying to protect his younger brother from his own foolishness, older brother gets enmeshed in spy-and-counter-spy. All the individuals are trying to survive in the whirlpool, or even to protect others, but, well, it just isn’t possible. (The only cardboard characters are the thugs, and, as always, there is never a shortage of such ‘willing executioners’ per Christopher Browning.)
To the regime, having a cookbook in French is suspicious, kind of like having a tattoo or writing a school newspaper op-ed. One hopes hours were spent trying to decode the recipes for proof of treachery. (In East Germany the Stasi did just that.)
The film integrates archival footage very well at several points. I caught glimpses of many places we visited in Prague a time ago. One of the sites was the Monument to the Victims of Communism, which is regularly defaced by those who lament the passing of that regime. That vandalism seems to emphasis the point of the memorial.
During the Cold War, Czechoslovakia had the reputation of being the most tolerant of the Warsaw Pact regimes. Even so between 1948 and 1968 there were 18 re-parenting wellness camps for tens of thousands of political prisoners who did forced labour, some in uranium mines free from nanny OHSA regulations to be sure. None of the camps were in El Salvador. The following data cover the 20-year period 1948-1968 by this lenient regime against a population of 9-millions. For political offences:
205,486 arrested,
170,938 forced into exile,
4,500 deaths in prison,
327 shot while trying to escape, and
248 executions for political crimes, including a defiant school teacher, a woman.
See Jana Rehab, Czech Political Prisoners (2012) for many more gruesome details.
It is worth remembering that this horror story followed on the heels of the Nazi occupation and dismemberment of the country with attendant genocide, slave labour, and forced relocations. No doubt some thought these to be the good old days, too.
I viewed the film in part in juxtaposition against the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal.
***
I made the acquaintance of some of these 1968 displaced persons while I was in grad school. What was curious was that the 1956 Hungarian refugees resident in the vicinity, were hostile to the 1968 Czechs for reasons only they knew. But the hostility was evident even to this outsider.
Now and again I try take advantage of the Dendy Cinema multiplex nearby until I review at the screenings. However this one was part of a Czech & Slovak Film Festival and not the usual Hollywood sound and colour pablum, so off I went. We are going to see another, lighter entry soon.
By the way, it was a full house in the largest theatre so the event was a success for the organisers. Well done.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2h and 9m, rated 7.0 by 20,000 cinemtaizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Verne.
Verdict: Fun.
Tagline: What waits below?
Pretty sure I saw this on the wide screen as a boy, and marvelled at it. The character studies stand the test of time even if the special effects don’t. James Mason is, well, James Mason. He can’t act but he doesn’t have to. Arlene Dahl can and does. Then there is Pat Boone in his underwear. Something for everyone. Though I thought the villain wouldn’t scare fourth graders.
Declaration: I have tried to read Jules Verne and found his prose impenetrable. So mannered, so stiff, so roundabout, so ponderous, so unyielding that I did not make it past page 10 in either 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or Five Weeks in a Balloon.
There is a genre of JCE films. I count more than dozen on the IMDb using that exact title, and many others with variants.
