Peter Murmann

Anyone who feels particularly strong affection for animals, Dolphin Tale will love this film. The movie starts out unpromising but then manages to tell a new chapter the human-animal relationships. Even those who feel that it is pathetic that many people seem to value pets more than other human will find Dolphin Tale at heart-warming [Read More]

If you think you have an idiot brother, watch this film and you will realize that you brother is actually pretty smart. Ned (Paul Rudd) is the brother of three intelligent, good looking and charming sisters and a pretty dumb mother.  Paul is not intelligent my any definition of the world, apparently inheriting most genes [Read More]

Some have billed Easy Rider the mother of all road movies.  Until the end, it is very difficult to figure out where this journey is leading to and what the whole point of the film it. It starts out in the American West. Two bikers (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) set out to travel east [Read More]

There is a fine line between being a genius and being crazy,  so a popular saying goes. It is difficult to know whether Vincent Van Gogh, one of whose paintings is a key feature of my homepage design, became insane only later in life after contracting syphilis or whether the roots of his mental [Read More]

Nothing spreads like fear is a great subtitle. Unfortunately, the film is a disappointment. After living through September 11, SARS, and most recently the Fukushima nuclear disaster, we all have a pretty good sense that our world could suddenly be turned upside down. Many of us might die because of a natural or manmade disaster. [Read More]

To get in the spirit of Octoberfest, I watched the iconic romantic musical for a second time in my life. The mountains around Salzburg are still amazing but the film has aged less well than My Fair Lady. Too often you notice that the scene is shot in a Hollywood rather than on location in [Read More]

I had not seen the poster for the film because otherwise I would have noticed that Two Lovers is not about two people.  During the film you realize it is about at least 3, possible 4 people, who are trying to figure out who they want to be with. We all know that this is [Read More]

Pedro Almadovar surprises you again with Broken Embraces. Unlike Woody Allen who now makes the same movie over and over again, Almadovar in all his recent films has broken new ground in his quest to lay bare before our eyes the variety in the human experience.  During the first hour I wondered where the film [Read More]

When the economy took off in the 1950s, Germany experienced severe labor shortages.  So employer unions and politicians hatched the idea to import guest workers from Turkey and other southern European countries.  By the middle 1970s these “guest workers” were allowed to bring their families to Germany and settle there permanently. Today,  about 3.5 million [Read More]

I knew nothing about the plot of Boys Don’t Cry. But somehow the title was so familiar. It must be a famous movie. For the past year or so I have been participating in a video rental service that sends me in a new film from my wish list whenever I send the previous one [Read More]