You don't want to watch a 2 hour movie with Tom Cruise talking german, trust me.
The way they handled the language transition here was done quite well, imo.
I liked Valkyrie as well, but one big misstep to me was that they filmed it as a suspense driven thriller instead of a straight up historical period drama. Now it was like watching a murder mystery where you already know who did it, and that killed the suspense. But apart from that it was really well made and looked the part.
I went to the Rotterdam Film Festival last friday and saw these:
Essential Killing ***
A story about an imprisoned Taliban warrior who gets transported to Eastern Europe, manages to escape and tries to get home. It's basically a one man show with the lead, played by an excellent Vincent Gallo (Buffalo 66, Arizona Dream), walking the earth and coming across various obstacles while being hunted by the authorities. The movie is flawed and a little slow but it's an interesting look into the psyche of a man who's completely lost. Looks pretty as well.
Black Swan *****
Dark ballet thriller by Darren Aranofsky (Requiem For A Dream, The Wrestler), Already the best movie of the year for me, but I'm a bit of an Aranofski fanboy so I was gonna like it no matter what. I can't really describe this movie objectively anymore so I'll just leave it at: really beautiful and tense movie with a never-better performance by Nathalie Portman as the dancer who has the skill but not the guts to pull off both the white
and the black swan part of the classic Swan Lake.
Never Let Me Go ****
The adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel by the same name, starring Keira Knightley (Domino, Pirates/Caribean), Carey Mulligan (Pride & Prejudice, Public Enemies) and Andrew Garfield (Social Network, the new Spiderman). I wasn't familiar with this writer until the friend I was with (and who picked the movie) told me that he also wrote Remains of the Day, which is one of my favorite movies. But I only learned about that afterwards.
Anyway, it is one of those movies that is best seen without knowing too much of the story already, so I'll just say it's set in an alternate version of a postwar Britain where man has found a way to cure the big diseases. It reminded me of Michael Marshall Smith's book "Spares" and the recent blockbuster "The Island", but with a kitchen sink feel to it. Well acted and a gripping story. Not to sound corny, but you can maybe describe it as a "thinking man's sci-fi movie", set in the rural British coutrnyside.