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Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fine Featured Film!
Review: There are some movies which you need to see more than once to really know how much you liked it. Sometimes there is so much going on that seeing it for the second time ties it together for you. Some of the movies that come to mind are Magnolia, the usual suspects, etc. Run Lola Run is also one of those movies. I cant believe any one would give it a bad review or say it was boring. Its a great fast paced movie and the plot is not that far fetched to understand. The repetitive scenes are forgivable and needed at the risk of loosing the reality of the movie and with such a good soundtrack, its not painstaking to sit through a few seconds of repetition. Every person I have turned on to this movie loved it! I suggest you see it twice at least.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Lola Redux: It takes 3 times for Lola to get it right!
Review: I read someone else's suggestion that this German film would inspire Hollywood to copy it. It would if it were that original. I have seen this idea done twice already in America. The first was a short film about a man who was unable to avoid repeating the same few moments in his life, for an entire day. The documentary-like film had no stars. The next thing I knew Bill Murray was starring in Ground Hogs Day, an almost complete replication of the short film I had seen earlier. The short film isn't particularly a comedy, the Murray film is.

Run Lola Run is not a comedy either. Its a film about a girl who has 20 minutes to save her boyfriend from robbing a store. Manni, Lola's boyfriend, needs 100,000 in 20 minutes to pay his bosses back for money he has left on the subway train. His life will be forfeit if he is unable to pay this money to the men he works for as a courier. Three times Lola runs in order to help her boyfriend. Each time the scenes are largely replicated but there are minor differences in timing. These differences result in major differences in what happens. I'm not going to tell you why the sequence repeats three times or how it comes out.

Suffice to say that the film technique here is extreme razzle- dazzle. I don't think there has ever been a German film with this much heavy production and effects. Mostly we see Lola traversing a German city, going from one building to another, across one scenic plaza after another, running at full speed. In each rerunning of 3 very similar scenarios, her encounters with people, places and objects are just slightly off. The minor changes in time make for major differences in what happens.

I have to tell you the film was an obvious formula with too few variations, to excite me much. Some might like it. I didn't think it was as much a story as it was a production. I wouldn't recommend it. Its wonderful filmmaking but very poor story-telling.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: ZZZZZ ZZZZZ ZZZZZ
Review: Wake me up when it's over! The only reason this movie gets two stars is for it's look and the excellent way the movie was shot. After that, it's just boring, repetitive dribble. I like the Hollywood movies better. "Groundhog's Day" is 15 times better than this unimaginative lump of crap.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An hour 20 minute WORKOUT!
Review: In today's world of big-budget, formula movies, it is refreshing to come across a movie that tries to be a little different. Run, Lola, Run starts with slow music and a quote from TS Eliot. Almost immediately, the beat kicks in and a techno soundtrack envelopes the viewer. And once the techno starts, so does the action. Lola receives a desperate phone call from her boyfriend, Manni, who is working on a shadowy business deal. All he has left to do is pay 100,000 marks to an associate, but he's lost the money. In a panic, he tells Lola that he has twenty minutes to pay or he's dead. Lola then panics and tells Manni to stay put. She doesn't know how, but she'll bring him the money. And thus, Lola begins running.

From this point on, the movie becomes three slightly different stories, each telling how Lola gets the money for Manni and each with a different ending. All three stories have many common elements, used to emphasize how a few moments difference can change an outcome. The first two stories are great and well executed; but the third story is a little far-fetched and somewhat slower in pace. Still, the energy of all three is overwhelming.

This movie has several great qualities: the directing, the visual appeal, the interesting story, the incredible music (which adds to the feeling of urgency) and Franka Potente (Lola). Franka is very convincing as Lola and pulls off the endless running scenes looking like she could have been in the Olympics. With these qualities, this movie is a knock-out.

The one major flaw of this movie (in my opinion) is that it doesn't quite tell you what the point is in telling the three different stories. Perhaps I'm not used to fine film-making and simply cannot figure out the theme of this one. The other thing I did not understand was Lola's screaming. On several occasions, Lola screams and shatters glass. Why or how is not clear to me. Perhaps you can figure it out. And even if you don't, you'll still love this movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: SIMPLY AMAZING
Review: Run Lola Run is perhaps one of the best films to come out of Germany. The film shows the audiance an endless world of possibilities, coincidence, and irony that can occur as Lola has twenty minutes to find 100,000 Deutsch Marks to save her boyfriend's life. Three different runs are shown, each with its own unique impact on the life of Lola and the characters who she encounters in the twenty minutes. Although very artisticly done, it can appeal to many audiences with its wonderful mix of humor, drama, and violence. I highly recommend the dvd over video since one has the option to watch the movie in German or English, with (or without) English and French subtitles.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Take the money and run
Review: Run Lola Run, a festival circuit smash hit from Germany, is deceptively simple in design: Lola (Franka Potente), a strangely beautiful, somber, post-modern punk with a shock of flaming crimson hair, receives a phone call from her panic-stricken boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreau), a money-runner for a trigger-happy thug, who has lost a 100,000 Deutsche mark delivery. If he can't produce the coin in 20 minutes, he will be dead. Lola is his only hope, but what can she do? She promises to be there with the money, but she doesn't know how.

The hardcore, techno-industrial soundtrack pounds as writer-director Tom Tykwer slips us inside Lola's mind. She flashes through a instantaneous catalog of dozens of faces -- who can help? Her father, the banker! Lola knows what she must do: Run. Tykwer follows her tightly, matching Lola's pace with hyperactive editing, but pausing for a moment each time she nearly plows someone over in the street to give the audience a flash forward of the rest of that stranger's life in a comedic three-second series of snapshots on the screen before resuming the pursuit of his heroine.

Lola gets to the bank, sweaty and determined, and finds something new to contend with -- catching her father with his mistress. She can't cope, she must stay focused. She begs for money. She lets out a glass-shattering scream and she finds herself on the street again, empty handed. It's now three minutes to go, and Manni, sensing doom, is about to rob a grocery store on the corner where he is to meet Lola and his boss. It's his last resort. Will Lola make it? Two seconds could mean all the difference in the world.

When this first 20 minutes comes to a tragic end, Tykwer pauses the story to show a quiet, intimate moment between Lola and Manni in bed, engaging in circular logic pillow talk about love and fate. They are clearly smitten. Then he rewinds the film to the end of Manni's phone call and does it all a second time, then a third time, examining how the smallest, split-second variations in circumstance can drastically change a person's whole life. Each segment visits the same territory but varies dramatically in the most minute ways -- even the strangers Lola encounters are the same, although their flash-forwards are not -- leading to wildly different outcomes for Lola's frantic rescue effort. Tom Tykwer's direction is relentless, creative and completely absorbing. He takes the kind of music video techniques that have become the tiresome hallmark of American action movies and reinvents them, continually cutting every scene with different camera angles, flashes of black-and-white and shots on low-grade video instead of film.

It sounds annoying, I know, and truth be told, if anyone tries to imitate this style, they'll bomb. But what seems like stream-of-consciousness filmmaking is, in fact, Tykwer tweaking every frame of film to perfection.

The DVD: Run Lola Run is a Columbia Tristar title, and the picture is living proof. The 1.85:1 anamorphic picture looks positively stunning. The audio comes in two different 5.1 soundtracks. There is the native German soundtrack, which I only listened to briefly, but it does sound a bit better than it's American counterpart. The surround effects are prevelant, and if you've never heard glass break, then you should hear this! All other audio sounds just as good as any other recent movie. Along with the two 5.1 soundtracks, you get a music video of some German band, and a trailer, but what is most interesting is the commentary by director, Tom Tykwer and Lola herself. It's a bit hard to understand them at times, but they offer a bit more insight into what this movie really meant.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Different masterpiece
Review: There's something about some of those European action movies. Instead of creating intensity by adding a lot of shooting, car chases and people dying like flies, they make it by original filming, use of colors, use of great fitting music, making frequent unexpected and twisting turns and coming up with things that just haven't been done before.

Run Lola Run or "Lola Rennt" is one of the best movies like that. Based on a dream the director had about a girl with bright red hair running, it is about just that. Lola (Franka Potente) is running for the life of her boyfriend and for their life together, to save everything she holds important in life.

By playing the story three times, with three different outcomes and with several different short side-track stories, the movie makes you realize how much our lives and faiths are controlled by those little details that happen every day.

If you want an alternative to the standard Hollywood action movie where the good guy has to kill several bad guys and the bad guys kill even more insignificant good guys, this definately is a movie for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "....I wish I was a heartbeat that never comes to rest!"
Review: Run Lola Run is a supercharged, ultra-kinetic roller-coaster ride that twists, turns, and boggles the mind with its remarkable profoundness! Lola is a shocking redheaded punk with a memorable scream, and the film all starts out with a really frantic phone call from Lola's boyfriend, Manni. He needs to deliver 100,000 German marks to his mobster boss Ronni in 20 minutes, or he will die a most definite death. From then on, Lola literally races time in three separate scenarios to save Manni's life, so the movie basically ends three times. Although this movie looks all rock-video, MTV-style from the outside, it actually has a profound message behind its unusual exterior. Plus it's got one of the most heart-racing soundtracks I've heard in a long time. This is probably my favorite movie--next to The Matrix, of course!

Rated R, but it doesn't deserve to be. It has a few profanities, some violence, and a couple non-explicit discussions about sex. But that's it. This movie will appeal most to people between the ages of 12 and 25. It also often looks or sounds too weird for people to be interested in it, or they just scoff at the fact that it's in German with English subtitles. But you have to look beyond that in order to appreciate this movie. If you rated it less than 5 stars, you only looked at the outside, and in the third scenario, you were just too dizzified or disappointed to really see what finally happened. But you can still believe whatever you want.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: *:)
Review: With shocking red hair,

An industrial soundtrack

Lola goes running

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Non-Stop Thrillride!
Review: Run Lola Run was recommeded to me when someone found out I was a German teacher. I rented it right away and was taken on a thrill ride! This movie is fast-paced, including a great soundtrack. Lola's character overcomes a lot in just twenty minutes and you get a sense of her life as you live out three different scenarios with her. As a German teacher I would love to show this movie to my students simply to point out countless aspects of German culture. The only downside for non-German speaking viewers is having to keep up with some quick subtitles from time to time when things get really fast paced! All in all, an excellent movie!


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