As an alternative to the living room and Christmas TV, you can go to the cinema today and watch an international film in its original glory – meaning not dubbed in German. Plus, it helps to get out of the house and get some fresh air and, if you celebrate the holiday, digest some of that sugary and fatty food you’ve indulged on.
That is, before you sit back down, in the cinema, to relax again… and maybe also eat popcorn. Just the right amount of moving and the right amount of lazy; relaxation and entertainment. Informative? Full of CGI, or of nostalgia? Experimental? There’s a variety of genres to match your mood.
Here are the showtimes, trailers, ratings, as well as plot and review blurbs, for the 6 movies “in the original” (mostly with German subtitles, “OmU”), listed for Leipzig theaters this Christmas Day.
TUESDAY (25/12)
Roma
Drama | Mexico/USA 2018
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Luru Kino: OmU – 19:15
Rating (Rotten Tomatoes): 96/100
Plot (IMDB): “A story that chronicles a year in the life of a middle-class family’s maid in Mexico City in the early 1970s.”
Review (NY Times): “Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece ‘Roma,’ an autobiographical movie set in Mexico City in the 1970s, uses both intimacy and monumentality to express the depths of ordinary life.”
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
Documentary, biography | UK 2018
Director: Lorna Tucker
Passage Kinos: OmU – 21:00
Rating (Rotten Tomatoes): 76/100
Plot (IMDB): “The first film to encompass the remarkable story of one of the true icons of our time, as she fights to maintain her brand’s integrity, her principles – and her legacy.”
Review (Variety): “Sharp-lined but entirely flattering, rather like one of Westwood’s showiest catwalk gowns, Tucker’s film initially sets up intriguing friction between camera and subject [but then] resists meeting her spikiness in kind.”
Bohemian Rhapsody
Biography, drama, music | UK/USA 2018
Director: Bryan Singer, Dexter Fletcher
Passage Kinos: OmU – 21:00
Rating (Rotten Tomatoes): 62/100
Plot (IMDB): “A chronicle of the years leading up to Queen’s legendary appearance at the Live Aid (1985) concert.”
Review (Washington Post): “Despite the myriad shortcomings of its parts, the sum of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ winds up being giddily entertaining, first as an exercise in so-bad-it’s-funny kitsch, and ultimately as something far more meaningful and thrilling. ”
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald [German title: Phantastische Tierwesen…]
Literature, fantasy | USA 2018
Director: David Yates
Passage Kinos: OmU – 21:05
Rating (Rotten Tomatoes): 38/100
Plot (IMDB): “The second installment of the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ series featuring the adventures of Magizoologist Newt Scamander.”
Review (The Guardian): “While the action set pieces and effects are dizzyingly immersive, the storytelling is fussy and somehow uncompelling.”
Climax
Drama, thriller | France 2018
Director: Gaspar Noé
Luru Kino: OmU – 21:30
Rating (Rotten Tomatoes): 87/100
Plot (IMDB): “French dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to rehearse on a wintry night. The all-night celebration morphs into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn their sangria is laced with LSD.”
Review (Empire): “This is often upsetting (though never to the levels of ‘Irréversible’) but as energetic and handsome as its cast. At times you’ll be watching in horror, but you’ll never look away.”
Aquaman
Action, fantasy, comics | USA 2018
Director: James Wan
Regina Palast: Im Original/3D – 22:45
Rating (Rotten Tomatoes): 69/100
Plot (IMDB): “Arthur Curry learns that he is the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, and must step forward to lead his people and be a hero to the world.”
Review (Rolling Stone): “A mess of clashing tones and shameless silliness, but a relief after all the franchise’s recent superhero gloom. Any budget-busting epic that finds time to show us an octopus playing bongos gets a pass in our book.”
