christidal's reviews

I watched kids when it came out, being a kid myself, when I was 16 years old. The movie itself was kinda weird, though watching these kids was impressive. The storyline was total nonsense, evem to a 16-year-old. What was much more memorable was when my friend and me got out of the cinema, we were attacked by two kids who had riled themselves up watching the movie. Not a nice experience. Now this documentary felt to me like the missing piece to Kids. We used to skate, too, and like the actors describe it here, it was indeed our only way to be productive and not get into trouble. Obviously, living in a small town in Germany, we weren't nearly growing up in such dire conditions as them, but skating did mean that much to us, too.

It was interesting and sad to see how "Kids" impacted qnd changed these kids' lives, kimnd of destroying the feeble "community" that they had built themselves around skating. Had a much more profound effect on me that watching Kids back in the day.

What this movie does really well is capture a feeling, the feeling of growing up in that specific time, as did I, even though in another part of the world. Skating because there was nothing better to do, the kind of communication between the kids... well done. The storyline is nothing special, sort of underdeveloped, a bit how a kid might write a movie. But that's maybe why the mood and inner dialogue of the protagonists transmits itself so well. Maybe this only works for you if you can identify or have experienced that era. But in my case, the movie loomed in a my mind for a while after watching.

I stumbled onto this movie on Prime and really enjoyed it. It reminded me of old Russian movies by the likes of Sokurov, with its slowly moving wide shots, lots of narrative elements in the excellent soundtrack and at times the camera being with the off-action instead of the on, while we only hear the on-action. Masterful camera work and a very good sound mix.

The futility escaping fate is transported credibly. Makes you feel sorry for the people of Mexico who often cannot rely on the authorities to protect them, one of the great scandals of our time that gets little attention in the world.

A very calm yet intense movie, I recommend it.

I rarely have regrets about the past but if I could go back in time I certainly would undo watching this doc! I don't what's actually worse, the festival this film is about, or the film itself. They're trying to make a case that this festival was the worst festival ever, and try to make this point with lots of typical festival footage old or new and interviews with attendees and band members, out of the latter of which they really only managed to squeeze out very soft criticism (like Jewel saying that the atmosphere was a bit strange and Mobdy complaining that his name wasn't written on some board all the bands were on). If you've ever been to a big festival you'll know that for many attendees (both male and female) it's all about partying, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, and sure, breaking stuff is always a welcome pastime too, especially towards the end, like day three. Obviously the sexual assaults that clearly happened there are terrible but unfortunately they do happen, not only on festivals but every time you have that many people in one place. They also happened in Woodstock 69, 94 and probably every other big festival. It has to be said though that in general festivals like that have a very low rate of violence given the amount of people that are there. I've never seen people fighting at a festival, but you can see it all the time at sports matches, bars, clubs etc. Of course Woodstock 99 (which I didn't even know existed prior to watching this) had a spectacularly shitty lineup, uniting some of the worst bands mainstream rock has ever had to offer, but it's kind of hard to turn this into a moral argument against the organizers (which by the way, one of them is a complete dick when he says it's the women's own fault that they got raped because they were walking around half or full naked. Douchebag. I'll give them that.) So in the end it seems like the makers of this film got a lot of footage from this shitty festival and decided to do a doc about it but didn't really know what their point could be, so they tried to scandalize it, and just lose steam pretty early on. Do yourself a favor and do not watch this!

The book was quite the scandal when it came out a few years ago. I personally found it a bit boring after a while so I didn't finish it. The movie however is very well done. It manages to be both serious and funny, which is rather the exception than the rule for German films: usually they're either very serious or slapsticky "funny". Visually this could be called a German version of Trainspotting, with some nice and unusual shots and angles, freaky dream sequences etc. The acting throughout the whole cast is amazing, not only the Helen, the lead role, but also her parents, the nurses, the drug dealer etc. I didn't get the feeling that I so often have when watching (and hearing!) German actors in films: that they are noticeably acting. So go watch this, especially if you don't think much of the book. It's a fine movie!