TWO GOOD FILMS (2)

We had two films on at the local cinema this week. Although neither was very popular, they were both very good.

Lore is a German-Australian adaptation of part of Rachel Seifferts novel "The Dark Room". Set just after the end of the second world war, it is about the children of a high-ranking Nazi officer, who has done nasty things on the Eastern Front. When he and his wife are imprisoned by the Allies, the eldest girl Hannelore must take her siblings across a ruined and dangerous country to their grandmother's house on the North Sea coast. Along the way they are helped by a young Jewish man, newly freed from Buchenwald, who represents both everything Lore has been brought up to despise, and their only hope of survival. Excellent.

Nordvest ("Northwest") is a Danish film about this part of Copenhagen, where young men engage in petty crime as a way of earning cash. Similar in many ways to the earlier Pusher films, the crime gets less and less petty, and more and more dangerous. Very realistic, and well-acted by the real-life brothers in the main roles.

Next week it's Silver Linings Playbook, for which Jennifer Lawrence won this year's Oscar for Best Actress. Then Iron Man 3 and Anna Karenina. Lots of good films at the local cinema.

Walter Blotscher