Technically impressive, dreamy, quiet. I have to be in an Ozu-but-extra mood to watch his films, unless it’s RUN LOLA RUN, and then I’m probably in a club… in 1999. In all earnestness, LOLA RENNT is still a good film.
But, I like HEAVEN and THE PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR more.
“Tykwer” is also incredibly fun to say.
It really is! Heaven was great, so beautifully filmed.
loved run lola run, { have the one sheet hanging in my livingroom }, and while i enjoyed Heaven also i prefer Winter Sleepers. But the man
has never really let me down.
sorry double post
I still have to check that one out, although I have never come across the Region 1 DVD. Does one exist?
keagan, I ordered a copy thru Amazon a few years back. I believe it’s still available .
Great, I will check that out, thanks Chris!
Yes! Tom Tykwer is awesome. Very electric filmmaker, often overlooked here in america.
I think Perfume is brilliant, and really captures what it must have felt like living in that period. You can practically (no pun intended) smell that world, and it was a challenge to translate an unfilmable novel to the screen. He succeeded. I also saw Princess and Warrior and was a good story about fate and how people come together, overlooked gems.
I haven’t seen Heaven yet, but will come around it once. What I really like about his films is his sense of place, an internal rhythm akin to how a composer conducts an orchestra, no mystery since he scores all his films. His cameraman, Frank Giebre, is also of note. They collaborations are one of those great director – DP works. He will make his american debut with The International, starring Clive Owen.
None of the hallmarks of his european work are present on the trailer, but I’m sure he’ll inject some verve into any american international thriller.
I’m a big fan. I was knocked out by RUN, LOLA, RUN, liked PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR even better, and was swept away by HEAVEN. I was shocked Manola Dargis gave it such a bad review. It has a galvanizing opening, and the drama is beautifully sustained by the two great leads. I found the need to own all three. I missed PERUME and was curious that it received such glum notices. It looks like THE INTERNATIONAL, with its super international cast, comes out mid-February. I’m anxious to see this filmmaker mature, and I hope he has a long career.
Perfume is very underrated and underseen. Could never understand the mediocre reviews.
I agree, Perfume was perhaps underrated. It really surprised me, but I think its because of the trailer and the advertising the film got. It came across as a failry straightforward B movie, but it was far from that I found.
It doesn’t compare to his other works, but still good in its own way. I am looking forward to The International as well, it will be interesting to see how Tykwer breaks into the american scene.
With this ridiculous looking epic coming out soon, I plan on exploring the films of Tykwer. Having only seen Run Lola Run and just recently 3, he is not someone that I’m all too familiar with ore really ever cared to get familiar with.
But with that said, 3 was a film that I really liked, up until a certain point. I still gave it a pretty high rating of 4/5, but there was one point toward the end of the film (which I will not spoil, it needs to be seen) that really takes a somewhat possible scenario and really make it very silly. But the performances within the film and the time spent with them was very enjoyable for me and it’d be silly for me to let that one moment ruin the rest of the film.
I liked Run Lola Run, but Princess and the Warrior utterly baffled me. I haven’t seen 3.
What has turned me off of Run Lola Run, just like other films I had seen at the time (Donnie Darko, Boondock Saints and City of Lost Children), is that the people who had turned me onto this film and some others I mentioned still watch these films and consider them to be great films. Now for me, this was sometime in high school, I think my sophomore or junior year. I definitely didn’t know what I know about film now at that time, but I’m sure I had an above average breadth of film knowledge. I didn’t hate these films at the time. I thought they were ok and revisiting bits and pieces of them now I just really can’t get into them. Run Lola Run in particular. I guess where I’m going is that there was a point where I somewhat liked RLR, but now not so much.
I feel the same about “Run Lola Run”, it´s hard for me to take that film seriously as more than a mere gimmick nowadays. “Blind Chance” on the other hand (the film that Tykwer tried to imitate with “RLR”) has lost nothing of its starling power and immediacy for me.
I guess for me he would be roughly the German equivalent to Soderbergh. He knows his craft, seems to have a broad range of interests and makes somewhat interesting movies that generally fail to make me all that enthused, but don’t tend to overly annoy either. Seems like a fairly smart filmmaker, but not an especially profound one in that way.
@greg x – yes, exactly my thoughts. I was excited that he was going to film a Kieslowski script, but the result was…meh. He seems more limited than Sodergergh and I can’t quite figure out why. He’s not a bad first filmmaker to watch, but I think that will go away soon as you start to discover better directors and work that has more depth. I will say he does a good job on his music.
Keagan Brooks
As a fan of Tom Tykwer, especially The Princess and the Warrior, I was just wondering what people generally thought of his movies. They are very technically impressive, very original, and always interesting.
Anyone care to share their thoughts?