Hannah Swithinbank

I’m doing that thing you do when you realise you’re leaving a place soon – when you start noting that it’s probably going to be your last time at this place or that place, or eating here and drinking their, the last of this kind of Kölsch, and so on and so forth.  And I thought, well, I’m probably going to want to make up a photobook of my time here, so I should probably grab some snaps of a few things. Not, like, the local supermarket or the chemist’s, but the trams, and my blue gate that squeaks horrendously and so on.  So this is ‘my’ cinema.  There are a couple of cinemas that primarily show films in the original version, with or without subtitles (OV, OmU) – and this is the one I’ve been to most.  Aahhh, lovely Metropolis, where you accidentally started showing the German version of Where the Wild Things Are at the English showing, and couldn’t pull the curtains properly for the first 15 minutes of Shutter Island so the edges of Leo were all wrinkly, and where I had to sit in the same row as the whole of Team Jacob at New Moon and the whole row bounced at that moment where Jacob tries to kiss Bella but then the phone rings… (I know, I know, I just love how ludicrous and awful it is, ok).   OK, so I’m emphasising it’s flaws.  The truth is, that despite the fact I’ve had to wait a bit at times for films to arrive in Germany (A Single Man is *still* not here, and that makes me unhappy), Metropolis has showed a wider range of films that I’ve wanted to see, for longer periods of time than any other cinema that I’ve lived near.   (And they sell beer – I *wish* I’d taken that option during New Moon).

Tonight I went to see Green Zone, which I’ve been wanting to see, oh, ever since it was announced that Paul Greengrass was making an Iraq film – and, as I asked on twitter, has Paul Greengrass ever made a bad film? I’ve shamefully not seen any of his pre-Bourne work, unless you count the copy of Spycatcher that lay around our house when I was a kid.  Green Zone is just a cracking political thriller – incredibly well done, slighly simplified of course, but it is a movie and it’s an action thriller not a Syriana-like drama,  and so it coalesces the big messy debates and themes around certain characters in a fairly tidy manner.  Matt Damon is, well, Matt Damon, he’s great and solid, and sympathetic, although I think he may have reached his age limit on playing slightly idealistic soldiers who then end up questioning things (when Brendan Gleeson tells him not to be naive I thought that that might actually be the one thing I couldn’t believe Matt Damon being), Jason Isaacs has a killer ‘tache, Greg Kinnear is perfectly odious, and Brendan Gleeson is, well, awesome, even if it was odd to hear him not being Irish. Note to directors, if you can hire Brendon Gleeson for your movie, you should, it’ll improve it a good 5-10%.    The thriller element works – and the film’s ending wasn’t too predictable (it could have ended one of about three ways, without popping out of the reality that is the ongoing Iraq War), but, for me, the political stuff worked even better. I could just feel myself getting tense and scratchy and wanting to argue back at the characters, especially Greg Kinnear’s Poundstone.  If you’re fairly liberal and opposed the Iraq war and/or the way it ended up being fought/run then it’s going to make you gnash your teeth.  And if you’re Sarah Palin, well, it’s going to make you gnash your teeth for a whole other set of reasons.