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

Acropolis Bonjour – Monsieur Thierry is on vacation

Doris Kuhn: In the French marriage-rescue comedy, an annoying husband forces his wife and two grown children to take a trip to the Greek beaches. The aim is to awaken romantic memories in order to prevent the impending divorce. The expected happens: He learns humility, she learns forgiveness, perseverance wins. Francois Uzan doesn’t add anything new to the genre, and the old only offers laughs because the actors are devotedly trying to break out of feel-good prison through excessive slapstick.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Magdalena Pulz: This Marvel movie by director Peyton Reed even super-sympathetic Scott Lang, played by Paul Rudd, cannot save: Ant-Man and his family are involuntarily sucked into the quantum realm, “a universe beneath our universe”. Not only the craziest landscapes and creatures await them there, but also a war between “Kang the Conqueror” (the next “Avengers” final boss villain, solidly played by Jonathan Majors) and the inhabitants of this world. Of course, the insect hero family cannot stand by and watch. A Movie with nice little gags, but which ends up drowning in chaos.

Bigger Than Us

Lilian Koehler: Melati has been campaigning against plastic pollution in her native Indonesia since she was twelve. In the documentary by producer Marion Cotillard and director Flore Vasseur Melati is looking for like-minded people and meets six other young people who are fighting for the climate and for human rights. But as much as the activists’ achievements arouse amazement, they also drown out the actual appeal: finally start getting involved!

Final Cut of the Dead

Sofia Glasl: It’s almost touching the persistence with which the French filmmaker and Oscar winner Michel Hazanavicius worked on the film history. After spy and silent films, as well as the patron saint of French cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, it’s now the turn of a rather obscure genre: the Asian low-budget zombie film. His remake of the 2017 Japanese surprise hit “One Cut of the Dead” adds another meta layer to the story of a film crew who are attacked by real undead during a zombie shoot: a French director directing a remake – unfortunately a gag that struggles to survive the almost two hours running time.

Sharper

Tobias Kniebe: The pure soul in this film is a New York billionaire son who despises Dad’s business and would rather run a hip bookstore. As punishment, he and his father have to deal with professional fraudsters (Sebastian Stan, Julianne Moore and more) who take the money out of their victims’ pockets in elaborate stagings. You quickly understand that everything here is always different than you think, and Benjamin Caron knows how to stage it stylishly. But behind the many clever twists and turns, this high-gloss thriller for Apple TV+ seems pretty empty in the end.

bird’s eye views

Martina Knoben: Are all the birds already there? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. Largely unnoticed, more and more species are dying out, which shows what is being lost Jorg Adolph in his documentary: the beauty of animals (often in slow motion), their strangeness (being able to fly!). His film is not just a nature documentary, but above all a human documentary. Adolph accompanies Norbert Schäffer, chairman of the Bavarian Association for Bird and Nature Conservation (LBV), on his missions to save the birds, and he also visits former publisher and charismatic bird nerd Arnulf Conradi. The film sometimes seems a bit unfocused, it was just at Lummensprung (please google!) in Heligoland, then it followed the migratory birds to Africa. But he is held together by his fascination with birds, whose slow death must also be a warning to us.