Ghostbusters, Große Freiheit, The Trouble With Being Born

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Lena Watson in "To be Born of Disadvantage"

Photo: Panamafilm Timm Krˆger / Timm Kröger / ZDF

From November 18th in the cinema:

"Ghostbusters: Legacy"

Sequel films often follow the principle that everything should be similar to what it was before, only bigger. But how can you outbid the Marshmallow Man, a monster made of foamy sugar that is as high as a skyscraper and makes the streets of New York tremble with every step you take? In 1984 he showed the viewers of the very first "Ghostbusters" film how dangerous candy can be. The following two parts of the series 1989 and 2016 failed when trying to top this spectacle.

Ivan Reitman, who brought the story of a couple of shrill ghost hunters to the screen in 1984, and his son Jason, who has now

directed

, are making everything a few sizes smaller in the current re-edition. Instead of Manhattan, the story takes place in the provinces, marshmallows appear again, but only as mini monsters that you can put in your pocket.

Unfortunately, the humor has also been minimized.

The film, which was made before the pandemic and is now showing in the cinema, sometimes looks like a social drama.

It is about a family who flies their apartment because of rent debts and has to move into a dilapidated haunted house.

Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters" stars from the very beginning, make unoriginal short appearances.

So now more solemn pathos instead of shoddy jokes, but in the end that feels a lot stickier than the funny, exploding Marshmallow Man in the first film.

"Ghostbusters: Legacy" USA 2021. Director: Jason Reitman, book: Gil Kenan, Jason Reitman.

With: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Sigourney Weaver.

124 minutes

"Lot of freedom"

A film with a theme, but not a themed film: That seldom succeeds in German-speaking cinema.

by Sebastian Meise is the grandiose exception to the rule, the film tells of the criminalization of homosexuals by Section 175 of the German Criminal Code and at the same time gets to grips with a very delicate love story.

Still convicted under the Nazis, "the 175" Hans (Franz Rogowski, just nominated for the European Film Award for this role) has to go to prison again and again under the Allies and later in the FRG - simply because he is gay. During the years in jail he met the convicted murderer Viktor (Georg Friedrich). At first Viktor Hans also declines, but time breaks down prejudices and makes room for feelings that, despite all internal and external resistance, develop into something big - including big cinema.

"Große Freiheit" AT / D 2021. Direction: Sebastian Meise, script: Sebastian Meise, Thomas Reider. With: Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich, Anton von Lucke, Thomas Prenn. 116 minutes

Read our detailed report on "Great Freedom" and the history of Section 175 here.

"JFK Revisited"

Very soon one's head buzzes at the unbelievably many names with which director Oliver Stone confronts us in his film

: Witnesses, relatives of witnesses, colleagues of witnesses Experts almost step on each other's feet in front of the camera. So Stone demands considerable concentration in his new attempt to prove the many inconsistencies in the investigation of the assassination attempt on President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. But it is Stone's life theme that he packs into a maximally condensed, almost two-hour long documentary; 30 years ago he had made a feature film about it with Kevin Costner.

Now document after document is piled up to convince even the last viewer that the fatal headshot on Kennedy must have come from the front and that Lee Harvey Oswald cannot be the sole culprit. Over and over again you get to see the 75-year-old Oscar winner Stone in the course of the film, how he asks interview partners questions and, somewhat perplexed, visits places where things happened at the time - but he also draws on a number of documents that have only been released over the past few years shed a new light on the case.

At the end of this exhausting, but at the same time exciting film, the viewer has the feeling that the CIA must have been something like the Cosa Nostra in the early 1960s - only worse.

"JFK Revisited: The Truth About the Murder of John F. Kennedy" USA 2021. Written and directed by Oliver Stone based on the non-fiction book by James DiEugenio.

With: Donald Sutherland and Whoopie Goldberg as narrators.

115 minutes

From now on in streaming and in the media libraries:

"A Police Movie" (on Netflix)

On the patrol with a policewoman in Mexico City.

She has received an emergency call, a pregnant woman needs help with the birth, but, as is so often the case, no ambulance comes.

The officer not only has to face a situation for which she has no medical training, she also has to overcome the family's distrust of the police.

The viewer is part of the dramatic situation; the widescreen images seem exaggerated, like from a feature film.

But

soon changes its perspective dramatically: then two actors can be seen preparing for their roles as police officers.

And finally, the two officers have their own say, whose reflections on the service were previously spoken by the actors.

"A police film", which was shown at the Berlinale this year and which is now being shown by Netflix, not only deals with the challenging everyday life of law enforcement officers in a troubled metropolis.

The mixture of documentary and feature film is also a meditation on the mechanisms of cinematic narration itself, which in a compelling way breaks up the illusion of a self-contained work.

“A Police Film” Mexico 2020. Direction: Alonso Ruizpalacios, script: David Gaitán, Alonso Ruizpalacios.

With: Leonardo Alonso, Mónica Del Carmen, Raúl Briones.

107 minutes

»To be born from the disadvantage« (in the ZDF media library)

Under the title

, the second feature film by Austrian director Sandra Wollner ran an impressive run last year: Austrian film award for best feature film and best director, jury award at the Berlinale 2020, First Step Award, four diagonals -Prices. Only when the film was finally released in the cinemas in the summer did it unfortunately go under in comparison to Maria Schrader's thematically similar "I am your person".

Now one of the most remarkable German-language films of the recent past is ready for you to catch up in the ZDF media library - and in your own four walls, where you are surrounded by technology tailored to your individual needs, perhaps even more of its wonderfully disturbing charm unfolds.

In »To be Born of Disadvantage«, Wollner lets child-like androids appear, which are at their owners for every imaginable service.

Their waxen faces are not particularly expressive, but that only makes them more of a bizarre projection surface for violence and desire.

After this film, you don't know what to be more afraid of: people or machines.

»To be born from the disadvantage« AT / D 2020. Direction: Sandra Wollner, book: Roderick Warich, Sandra Wollner.

With: Dominik Warta, Ingrid Burkhard, Jana McKinnnon.

94 minutes