The Film Analysis

The accusation is made again and again: Film reviews are completely subjective. What is meant by this is: "Why listen to film critics? - After all, I have my own opinions. Many people believe that taste is a purely personal matter. But there are indeed criteria. Wolfgang M. Schmitt Jr. explains the difference between subjective and subjectivist film criticism.

Help! Unfortunately, this series has no end! Vin Diesel as Dom Toretto must once again defend the family, he is supported by many colleagues who also can not act. "Fast & Furious 10" ("Fast X") is a makeshift continuation of the fifth part: Dante (Jason Momoa) is the son of drug lord Hernan Reyes, who was once treated badly by the Torettos. Dante now wants to avenge his father, who was humiliated in the fifth part of the franchise. He also fights for the family - but for his own. As gruesomely crude and poorly told as the film is, if you look at it as a symptom, you can easily derive a social diagnosis from it: In this film, we encounter people without a world, and in the cinema audiences sit without a film. For dismemberment and fragmentation determine the form and content of this series.More on this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the film analysis.

This time Denzel Washington as Robert McCall roams the alleys of an Italian coastal town to hunt down villains. The members of the Camorra seem like caricatures and at the same time like embodiments of absolute evil. Opposite them in Antoine Fuqua's "The Equalizer 3 - The Last Chapter" are the supposedly good people who have to be protected from the Mafia. Manicheism is not the only problem with this film; what is particularly bad is how much the camera loves to bathe in the blood of the perpetrators. Ostentatiously, the film shows McCall torturing his adversaries. Wolfgang M. Schmitt explains why we are dealing with an evil film.

Stanley Kubrick is a solitaire in film history. His works are enigmatic, they stand on their own and elude any current references. With "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Love the Bomb" (#DrStrangelove), however, things are a bit different. The film is a direct response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, albeit a very artificial and bitterly nasty one. Peter Sellers slips into three roles at once, including that of the title character, who wants to see the world burn and just can't keep his right hand still. But what does the film, which was released in 1964, still have to say to us today? After all, the Cold War is long over. But the nuclear threat is by no means - many countries continue to arm, and leading politicians still believe in the idea of #deterrence policy, which this classic blackly humorous exposes as an illusion.More on this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the film analysis!

Without a doubt, "Dirty Dancing" is one of the most popular films ever among a primarily female audience. But this success is based on a misconception. Even if female viewers hang languidly in front of the TV on girls' night out, only very few of them have really understood the radical nature of the film. For all its popularity, "Dirty Dancing" is at the same time a completely underestimated left-wing film whose class-struggle message has lost none of its topicality.More about this from Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the new film analysis!

The Barbenheimer phenomenon is amazing: in fact, the cinemas are better attended than they have been for a long time. This is good news! "Barbie" has also been eagerly awaited by many moviegoers who didn't used to play with Barbie. The prospect of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling was just too good. Greta Gerwig does everything right in the first 30 minutes of the film, showing us a brightly colored Barbie land of lovingly designed backdrops and painted-on horizons. After that, however, the film takes a turn when Barbie sets off into the real world and Ken accompanies her. Suddenly, "Barbie" becomes a strange culture war film that produces loud contradictions.Read more by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the new film analysis! 

Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" is not only one of the most important war films, it is also one of the most important films ever made. Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper and Harrison Ford shine in their roles - although the filming itself may have resembled a war, there is little sign of it in this clearly structured and formally rigorous masterpiece. Coppola has succeeded in making a philosophical film about war, Western civilization and evil.More on this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt Jr. in the film analysis! 

Lars von Trier is one of the great exceptional directors of our time. His works cause controversy time and again. His person stands for scandal made flesh. It almost seems as if this media (re)presentation has settled over the work like a dark shadow, blocking the actual access to him. The director's misogynistic statements can only be followed by a misogynistic film, this was a basic thesis in the reception of the masterpiece "Antichrist". But is this really the case? Are we dealing with a chauvinistic work here? Is this primarily about a failed therapy? "Antichrist" itself speaks a different language, one that is enormously emancipatory and ties into a tradition of feminism that goes back over a hundred years.More about this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the film analysis!

Gordon Gecko was not the first to establish neoliberal ideology in cinema. It was Joel Goodsen, the main character played by Tom Cruise in "Risky Business" by Paul Brickman. In this 1983 film, a teenager becomes an entrepreneur (of himself) and unceremoniously opens a brothel in his parents' house - with success. Today, the film is largely forgotten; the only thing that can be remembered is the rock'n'roll scene in which Tom Cruise dances through the living room. But it's time to rediscover "Risky Business".More about it from Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the film analysis! 

Two acting giants meet for the first time: Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino bring Michael Mann together on the screen in this neo-noir thriller - the first duel is talking, the second is shooting. "Heat" is one of the most important films of the 20th century, but it wasn't even nominated for an Oscar in 1995. The story is actually quite simple: a cop is chasing a gangster, but when the two look at each other, they are looking in a mirror image. In his almost three-hour film, Michael Mann shows a Los Angeles as we have never seen it before: this merciless city shimmers gray-blue and is characterized by total individualization. "Heat" is first and foremost a film about loneliness in the modern age, halting and obsessed with something they cannot name, the protagonists move through the streets. Both De Niro and Pacino have long since lost sight of their goal, but it is too late to turn back. What else could they do? Watch sports on TV and prepare barbecue in the evening? The cop and the gangster are afraid of boredom and ordinariness, but they pay a high price for it. Michael Mann not only draws multi-layered figures within a complex web of economy and crime, but he also shows a masculinity that many current discourses do not even want to perceive.Read more by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in der Filmanalyse!