A Summer of Films in Berlin

Apart from festival time, I sit down about twice a year to take stock of all the new movies I want to watch in the upcoming season - which doesn't mean they're all the movies I'll ever watch in the coming months, there will surely be many I'll still go see, but it's nice to have a plan and a goal before you. So I have scanned my favorite horror sites, the fantasy film fest website and the websites of various movie theatres in Berlin that I'm fond of, open air and closed room, and I came up with a mini summer program that goes until fall. I will be traveling end of August and the first half of September but decided to return early to Berlin in order not to miss the Fantasy Film Festival, I hope it will be worth it, lol.

First of all, I updated my to-watch-list here on the blog and crossed out a few titles, the remaining ones are;

Insidious: The Red Door, which I of course don't want to miss. The problem is that I already forgot half the other Insidious movies, except that they almost gave me heart attacks with that ugly red-faced ballet dancer jumping around the corner whenever you don't expect him and ear-shattering sound effects, so I'm planning on doing a big re-watch of all the previous Insidious movies, I think there are four in total, and then go to the movies for the great finale. Nice plan!

Not being the biggest fan of the zombie apocalypse sub-genre, I pondered a lot whether or not to include Final Cut into my list, but it's French. French! Plus it's about an indie film crew which is making a zombie film and a horror comedy and all of this put together is just irresistibly endearing not only for me, I hope.

Speaking about indie horror movies - they make up about 75% of all horror movies I watch. It's one of my little pleasures in life to just type "horror movie" into YouTube and then watch whatever comes my way. There's a lot of trash, I reckon, but I do have so much fun most of the time, and I really love that amateur, indie feel to a movie and going in without any expectations at all, just to be delighted by how you can be positively surprised by small movies. Cabin Girl kind of gives me those vibes and although I'm not the biggest fan of found footage I'm curious about this one because of those reasons.

There are a few movies which are remnants from my backlist or I've been meaning to watch them for a long time, like Evil Dead Rise, Renfield, Mad Heidi, Last Voyage of the Demeter and the new A24, Talk to Me.

Well, let's begin with the last, Talk to Me. Most of you reading this blog probably know by now that my sister is a theatre costume designer, but she actually studied stage design in general. So during one of those long stretches of unemployment painfully familiar to many artists, she founded a company which consisted of her and a friend, to produce hands. Yes, hands. They started with papier-mâché figures, then made the passage to figures from more resistant materials. They produced them as door knobs, ashtrays, back scratchers, hand shakers during pandemic - of course no one bought them and her flat was full of them creepy creepy hands. When you visit her today you can still find one or two lurking around. I always hated those things. So imagine my shock and disgust when I saw that very hand in the trailer to Talk to Me! Which, I now realize, I should watch with my sister, she'll surely love it.

I get goosebumps, I am melting when I see the Dracula in the trailer to the Last Voyage of the Demeter, it's such a badass creature kind of thing, and in my opinion just the right way a vampire should be. Not some upper-class stud who gives you hand kisses (although I'd surely have an artificial hand to present to him just in case, because you know...) and charms you hopelessly, but a beast, a monster. I love it and can't wait for August.

Next up, I feel like I found my soul mate, my filmic counterpart in Mad Heidi. I first saw the trailer during the last fantasy film fest and I was left speechless from joy - it looks all kinds of crazy and gory but has heart. There is a showing on Tuesday, August 1st at 9.30 pm at the open air cinema hofkino and there is no way I'm not going to be there.

Keyword open air cinema - these are Berlin's summer pride and joy and this year I found again a few nice titles that I'd like to see on the big screen- Lars Eidinger being my favorite German actor, his documentary Sein oder Nicht Sein (Monday July 24th, 6.30 pm); B Movie - Lust und Sound in West Berlin 1979 - 1989 -featuring Blixa!- (Wednesday July 26th, 9.30 pm) both in Freiluftkino Hasenheide; Pearl (Wednesday August 2nd, 9.15 pm at Freiluftbühne Weißensee) and finally Bones and All (Wednesday August 9th, 9.15 pm at hofkino).

I'd also like to mention and everyone to take notice that Rollberg Kino has started a very amazing little ritual past winter, namely the Creepy Crypt, during which they show a horror movie every Saturday at 10.30 pm, in the original language - sometimes the movies are nostalgic, sometimes brand new, and in the winter months there were surprise films where you wouldn't know what movie will be shown. A shout-out to Yorck Kinos for doing this. Go to their website take a look, maybe you'll find something you'd like to see or see again.

And finally comes the reason I'll be (gladly) shortening my vacation for; The Fantasy Film Fest from September 13th to 20th. The titles that caught my eye were Mad Fate; God is a Bullet, Nightman and The Animal Kingdom. The program won't be complete until end of August, so there's probably more movies to come. I can't wait for this!

So don't worry if you're stuck in the city for the summer, it's actually better to be in Berlin during the hot months, the winter months are the ones which suck! Just choose a movie and go anywhere you want.