New in cinema & streaming: which films are worthwhile – and which are not – culture

Cocaine Bear

Jacob Biazza: Yes, a bear. Yes, on cocaine. Lots of cocaine. And a few people in the forest. Most of the latter soon dead. “Jaws” basically, but in the undergrowth. And on coke. And with fur and without gills. The mad suspense until you see the beast properly for the first time is missing Elizabeth Banks. Otherwise identical. And otherwise a really great film. Not necessarily in terms of logic, character development, plot or motivations of the actors. But with animals. He’s always funny too.

The Fox

Anna Steinbauer: While the Second World War raged around him in all its brutality, the Austrian front-line soldier, Streitberger, was mainly busy taking care of a fox cub. Director Adrian Goinger After the autobiographical hit drama “The Best of All Worlds”, he once again finds his film material in his own family: he tells the remarkable story of his great-grandfather, who at the age of five was sold to a rich farmer as a farm hand because the family could not support him. A touching, amazingly apolitical drama about belonging, homeland and identity, which doesn’t shy away from drastic images and on whose soundtrack the strings are sometimes a little too thick.

The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan

David Steinitz: A classic cloak and sword film based on Alexandre Dumas in the best sense of the word. The French director Martin Bourboulon adapts the novel much more extensively and with more attention to detail than most other film adaptations, because he turns the book into two cinema films. Part one – “D’Artagnan” – starts now, part two – “Mylady” – will follow shortly before Christmas. A meritorious attempt at reviving the almost extinct adventure film genre.

In the taxi with Madeleine

Carlotta Wald: The last moments of an eventful night, a spectacular appointment or a dinner at friends’ house that went completely wrong end up in taxis, and their drivers often witness the beginnings and endings. They accompany the passengers on this journey. The frustrated Parisian taxi driver Charles (Dany Boon) has no idea what kind of path that would be when he picks up the 93-year-old lady Madeleine (Line Renaud). A bit pointed, yet charming, Madeleine engages him in a conversation and makes him her companion: Charles is supposed to take the lady to a retirement home where her free spirit neither wants nor belongs. She reviews her life at every corner. The trembling lady turns out to be a pioneer of her time, an idiosyncratic feminist. The view through the rear-view mirror then leads to a nicely rippling retrospective of an eventful life, the taxi ride to a road movie at 30 km/h.

Someday we will tell each other everything

Kathleen Hildebrand: Thuringia in the summer of 1990: 19-year-old Maria (Marlene Burow) begins an affair with the owner of the neighboring farm. Henner is 40, still smart, but also a grim, gruff guy who doesn’t know how things will continue after the great upheaval of reunification. It’s like the crickets are getting in Emily Atefs adaptation of the novel chirp so excitedly because they suspect that this will not end well. Atef tells in golden sunny Images of obsession, loss of orientation, but also of a sexually self-determined young woman. A captivating movie.

Mi país imaginario – The land of my dreams

Philip Stadelmaier: Patricio Guzman has already made many films about his native Chile and the Pinochet era, which made him an exile. Here he films the 2019 protests as the country stands up against patriarchy, poverty and the legacy of dictatorship. Only women are interviewed – the revolution is feminist. An inspiring film that ends with something that has become extremely rare: with optimism and hope for a better future.

suzume

Magdalena Pulz: An action-packed disaster movie, a must-see road trip through Japan and a romance where love can have multiple meanings: The new anime hit by Makoto Shinkai, who made an international name for himself with 2016’s “Your Name,” is all that and more: 17-year-old Suzume travels through Japan with her male sidekick, who has been transformed into a three-legged child’s chair. Together they fight against a giant worm that is trying to destroy the land. A spectacle that should not only inspire anime fans.

The Five Devils

Tobias Kniebe: With her bulky Afro hair, ten-year-old Vicky (Sally Dramé) is an exception in her town in the French Alps. But not only that: magical abilities allow her to immerse herself in the youth of her mother (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who was once a local beauty queen. This allows Vicky to travel through time and understand the hidden yearnings of the adults around her, shaped by a horrific event before her birth. The director Lea Mysius loves to combine the everyday and the fantastic, and she succeeds in doing so effortlessly and atmospherically in her second feature film.