Icon: enlarge
Sneaks up quietly, then pinches: The Swiss comedienne Hazel Brugger
Photo:
Manuel Weber / Sulupress / picture alliance
"Hazel Brugger: Tropical," Netflix
Time budget:
58 minutes
for fans of:
Felix Lobrecht
Hazel Brugger is a twinkle aunt.
Something that apparently innocently bends down to you, only to pinch your cheek a little too hard when no one is looking.
In »Tropical«, her current solo program, which, due to the Corona, did not get much stage time this year, the Swiss woman often leans towards her audience physically, strolls slowly and harmlessly into her initially everyday stories - and then lets them into nasty, sometimes tilting rough.
She channels the child abandonment fantasies of single mothers and explains why borrowed animals are perfect substitute guests for capricious jester colleagues who didn't want to be on their show: "Because the good thing is: animals have very few rights."
System criticism, she disclaims right at the beginning, is not to be expected from her, because you can do it yourself at home without much effort, you just have to read the newspaper.
Brugger is also strongest in this program when she lets unspectacular situations drift into the absurd with deliberate pleasure.
The memory of her hardly to be suppressed temptation to stroke her old gynecologist soothingly over the head during the examination will certainly haunt you at the most inopportune moments.
Anja Rützel
Icon: enlarge
"Sound of Metal": Riz Ahmed as a drummer who loses his hearing
Photo:
Amazon
"Sound of Metal," Amazon Prime Video
Time budget:
130 minutes
for fans of:
"Walk The Line", "Do you understand the Béliers?"
Sometimes it's an actor's eyes that save a movie.
The 38-year-old Briton Riz Ahmed can be seen in practically every scene of "Sound of Metal", and just with his intense looks he expresses what is going on inside his character: panic, tension, uncertainty, sadness.
For long stretches Ahmed has to do without language because he plays an ex-junkie and drummer who loses his hearing.
Ruben forms a hardcore duo with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke): like a berserk, he thrashes his drum set on stage, while Lou groans and roars to the ultimate distorted guitar riffs.
You travel through the USA with a huge motorhome and live the great freedom.
Until Ruben suddenly had a loud beeping sound in his ear and only heard voices as if they came from an old tape recording.
After a panic attack on stage, Ruben is supposed to relax in a shared apartment for the deaf and come to terms with his new life situation.
But he wants his old life back.
Filmmaker and author Darius Marder does not succeed in everything in his debut, and in some places his script turns seem too forced.
But stylistically, »Sound of Metal« is brave and inspired - rarely does a soundtrack develop so great emotional power.
But above all, this drama is a meditation on how people face situations that they have not chosen.
And how lucky it can be to accept drastic and unforeseen changes.
Does that sound familiar to us at the moment?
Oliver Kaever
Icon: enlarge
Puppy-soft do-gooder: Gösta (Vilhelm Blomgren)
Photo: ARD
»Gösta«, ARD media library
Time budget:
twelve episodes of 30 minutes each
for fans of:
"Idiots" and "Together!"
When a Romanian beggar in front of the supermarket holds up her hand for a few coins, he sympathetically gives her all of the shopping.
When a couple of bullies claw his bike, he leaves it to them with a smile and thinks about what traumatic events the boys went through.
Gösta believes in the good in people - but somehow the good doesn't believe in him.
He only gives but never gets.
In twelve episodes we accompany the youth psychologist with a pitying look (soft as a puppy: Vilhelm Blomgren) as he takes care of half the world and threatens to lose himself in the process.
It was thought up by the Swede Lukas Moodysson, who became famous 20 years ago with his terrific community comedy "Together!"
»Gösta« also roughly deals with the question: How much human can one bear?
With Gösta, who will soon have his whole house full of needy figures, the tolerance is high: the whole world groans, but Gösta remains, come what may, on reception for every sign of suffering.
The comedy series as a hymn to a hardcore humanist - gentle in the approach, nasty in the finish.
Christian Buß (on December 5th at 8:15 p.m. completely on ARD One, from December 6th in the ARD media library)
Icon: enlarge
"Spy City": A British agent (Dominic Cooper, left) investigates between the sector boundaries
Photo:
Dusan Martincek / Magenta TV
"Spy City," Magenta TV
Time budget:
six 45-minute episodes
for fans of:
»Finale in Berlin«, »The Lives of Others«
Since the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, the general political weather situation in Western Europe has been reliably read from the fate of Berlin.
They also reflected many Berlin films, especially of course in the decades of the divided city: from rubble crime thrillers like Jacques Tourneur's "Berlin Express" to classic espionage thrillers like "Finale in Berlin" with Michael Caine to the Stasi melodrama "Life the other. ”Perhaps it is because the idea for“ Spy City ”reads well on paper, but remains anemic on the screen: There are models from every era that, if in doubt, are closer to the zeitgeist and more exciting in style.
The six-part plays at the beginning of the sixties, shortly before the wall is built.
A British agent (Dominic Cooper) searches for a mole in his own ranks while unsolved murders happen around him and strange things happen along the border with the Soviet sector.
The far too clean images (shot in Prague) don't exactly help bring this old-fashioned agent story to life.
But at least those who stick with it will be surprised again and again by a twisting thriller that does one thing: to awaken a feeling for the absurdity and inhumanity that it meant when the Iron Curtain was erected in the middle of the German-German capital.
Oliver Kaever
This timetable is also available as a newsletter - you can subscribe here.
And the review of the current »crime scene« can be found here.
Icon: The mirror