Quote: Rock ‘n’ roll comes to Germany just ahead of the Berlin Wall in “The Red Cockatoo.” Stylish period piece is weighed down by a too-familiar love triangle, generating nostalgia for a difficult time not nearly as successfully as clear predecessor “Good Bye Lenin!”
Unlike helmer Wolfgang Becker’s “Good Bye Lenin!,” “Cockatoo” will work best for those with some knowledge of the early days of the German Democratic Republic and tension generated by the Wall throughout the country.Read More »
“In this epic-scale saga of life on both sides of the law, Max Riemelt plays Marek Grosky, a Russian Jew who immigrated to Germany in the 1920s. Grosky is one of a large number of Russians who have fled their homeland and settled in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. While Marek has become a police officer in Berlin, his sister Stella (Marie Baumer) is married to a high-ranking crime chieftain, and the cop finds himself caught between two worlds, torn between his devotion to duty and his ties to his family. As a war rages between criminal factions in Charlottenburg, Marek witnesses the death of his brother and falls for a Ukrainian woman who has been brought to Germany to work as a prostitute. Im Angesicht des Verbrechens (aka In Face Of The Crime) was originally created as a ten-part series for German television; it was later re-edited into a pair of feature-length films which were screened as part of the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. “ by Mark DemingRead More »