Sarita Rafferty
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
ejamessnyder
This movie wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but still it was not terrible. It feels just like a typical low-budget romance film about two people in their twenties that we've seen a hundred times before. It's nothing new and nothing special, really.It's the type of film where a young man and woman go through the ups and downs of their relationship over the course of a few months while trying to navigate through their lives and their insignificant troubles and misplaced angst. It's the type of film where the climax consists of the main characters going on a camping trip, and to answer your next question: yes, there is a ukulele which makes an appearance at one point.It's the type of film in which not much happens, which isn't always a bad thing, but sometimes it can be. It's the type of film that someone would probably enjoy only if they had very recently experienced very similar relationship problems. And I hadn't, so I didn't.It actually plays out just like a collection of scenes featuring these two main characters. The order of the scenes doesn't always matter, and it often feels like they were placed in that order somewhat arbitrarily. The scenes are most definitely not in chronological order all the time, and it's difficult to tell when flashbacks occur, but it doesn't really matter either way. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but again, this film really has nothing great to offer.For some reason, almost every scene includes exactly one odd jump cut, which feels accidental at first, then awkward for a while, before finally feeling appropriate, once we've gotten used to it. But if you pause the film to go take a dump, for example, or to make tea, then the jump cuts will feel weird again when you return.A couple things I should add are that the acting seems good and realistic and also the two main actors aren't beautiful people, which is nice. I like it when they put regular-looking people in movies, because it feels more like real life. The main actress is only mildly attractive and feels like a real person with real problems, and the main actor is downright goofy-looking, if you ask me. But that doesn't mean they should make a movie about them. But at the same time I feel like: hey it was worth a try!One more thing I should add is that it feels quite a lot like many American films I've seen, but it's not an American film. It's German. So that's something kinda unique about it. Not exactly what I expected. I guess the director, who also wrote and starred in the film, was probably inspired by a lot of American films that are like this and wanted to make one of his own (or two or three, looking at his other credits). Maybe it was semiautobiographical, who knows! German people fall in love too, don't they?I don't know if there are a lot of other German films that are like this one, but this is the first one I've seen. It felt more like an American film than the German films I have seen, with two major exceptions: 1) the characters all speak in German; and 2) the main character often wears this ridiculous, loose-fitting shirt with a floral pattern that you would never see on a man in America, and certainly not a man with a girlfriend.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"Kaptn Oskar" is a German movie from 2013, so this one will have its 5th anniversary next year. It is possibly the most known work by director, co-writer and lead actor Tom Lass. This is a really short film actually at under 80 minutes and this already includes a couple minutes credits. But this is definitely not the main problem I had with this film. I will talk about that later. As for Lass here, I think he does a solid job overall, even if there was not a single moment that wowed me sadly. At its best moments, the film had a touch of Fassbinder to them. I also think Lass has that awkward thingey going with him like Fassbinder. It's debatable if his looks warrant dating the two women his character sees in the film, but that's just a little side note that kept coming to my mind. But the story is about a lot more than Lass' character only. It is also about another pretty fragile/broken(?) relationship and how it is intertwined with Lass' character's relationship. The film is a lot about affection, sexuality, belonging, making the tight decisions and about making the wrong decisions on the way to the latter. Like I said, there are good moments, but overall there are also some moments that did not work at all and do not deliver the atmosphere and aesthetics they were supposed to. The most interesting character for me was probably Martina Schöne-Radunski's. At times she may be on the verge of going over the top in her performance, but she played it nicely as a whole and is definitely among the bets components of the film. Eventually I must say that I did not like the ending either really and this was maybe also a negative deal-breaker which finally lets me give this film a thumbs-down. I don't recommend the watch.
