Head over Heels, the newest film by director and screenwriter Andreas Schmied, author of, among others, the thrilling Chasing the Line, is the classic light comedy, lacking nothing to laugh at but where one knows exactly where it is getting at. An honest film for a classic rainy Sunday afternoon.
Rubikon is not a film that relies entirely on special effects or particular action scenes. What Leni Lauritsch has made is actually a successful and often adrenaline-fuelled Kammerspiel in which also important moral questions are raised. How are we responsible for the health of our planet? How important is it to think about safeguarding the common good? And, above all, what will happen to our children?
Chasing the Line focuses entirely on its charismatic protagonist – the legendary Austrian ski champion Franz Klammer – and, at the same time, provides an exhaustive portrait of the sport world and all its most controversial aspects.
Fast paced, impeccable editing, an apparent daily routine that opens the feature immediately give us the idea of a thrilling action film, given also – and above all – the particular setting chosen by the director. And, in fact, there is plenty of action in Cops. And yet, this feature film is not just that.
Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies gets us into the heart of the matter almost immediately, creating successful moments of suspense, alternating with deliberately demential scenes. A humour, this one, that is good for the spirit, never excessive or unnecessary and that also reveals a great love for the seventh art.
Dealing with love – and, above all, understanding its true meaning – is not at all easy for Charlie and her friends. The same applies to eroticism, which they consider almost an antidote against boredom, but which, in fact, pervades the entire Beautiful Girl with a pulsating, implicit tension.
The smart comedy What have we done to deserve this?, the second feature by actress and screenwriter Eva Spreitzhofer, which had its Italian premiere during the festival Sotto le Stelle dell’Austria 2019, aims to break up every cliché by focusing on a world with which we are in close contact, but of which we in fact know far too little.
Wild Mouse, written, directed and performed by Josef Hader, stages a (not too) soft critique of society and the world of work.