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Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run

List Price: $19.94
Your Price: $14.96
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You would regret watching it so Late
Review: I came across the movie when I saw it being featured in almost all of the foreign movie section In all the online movie stores. I got fascinated with the red haired girl in the poster and the name Run Lola Run itself. But I hate to read the sub titles so I never ordered it.
One day my friend told me that he had watched the movie in a class. He start telling me the story. Then I can not keep myself from ordering it.
The movie is simply one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is fast paced with the techno music to compliment its faced paced speech. The director uses quite amazing and unconventional techniques (at least in American cinema) of using the animation and photographs to tell the story. And believe this style adds the very interesting dimension to the movie than dragging it.
A must see movie so I would not give out much of the story. The main character Lola (of course the red head one) needs to save her boyfriend's life by giving a local gangster hundred thousand dollars in twenty minutes. See Lola and her boyfriend racing against time to do it. On the way, there some interesting folks and some interesting thing going on.
If you can, buy DVD instead of VHS. DVD can be viewed both in windscreen or am orphic versions. It can be watched either in German or English and it has music video to complement it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Superb
Review: Both cast and script were perfect. The movie kept you on the edge of your seat, not knowing what to expect-from any of the three separate endings. I have my favorite ending but wont spoil the movie by telling which.
Lola and Manni...two typical young people in a relationship, sucked into something bigger than the both of them. During the drama you watch their relationship change. Lola's glass-breaking shriek was the thing that drove me to the movie from the previews. I wanted to see what that was all about and I did. Stopping time and changing events. It was all good.
Great Sunday-go-to-the-movies flick.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fresh, invigorating, fascinating, musically hypnotic
Review: The details of Run Lola Run have been laid out by countless reviews, and since even the unfavorable ones (very few) still
seemed to like the movie I chose to rent it, then buy it, then
buy the CD soundtrack. For a week I've been stuck in a loop of
watching the DVD at home, listening to the CD in the car, etc.
To make matters worse, I've been promoting the film to all and sundry.Why all this fuss on my part about a movie with a thin story line and short running time? Because as pure entertainment
it works! Like a roller coaster ride that lasts only a short time, the viewing experience stays with you in snippets of music or flashes of video: delightful moments that won't go away but rerun in your mind. Franka Potente is wonderful as Lola, very different from actresses we're used to seeing (overseeing?)in the USA. This is definately not an art film, nor even a thriller,
yet seems to embody both characteristics-it's got a different look and direction that's very refreshing. The techno soundtrack
is not apart from this movie, but inextricably linked to it, to
every scene, to every nuance, and difficult to get out of your head; listening to the CD brings back the movie in full minds eye detail! So when I head downstairs with a quirky grin on my face and my wife asks me where I'm going, I respond: "to watch
Lola run" and perfectly understand her small exasperated sigh.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Blow Your Mind
Review: Run Lola Run completely blew my mind away. Every time I see it I get excited and taken to another level by watching it. Run Lola Run is a German flim put to a techno soundtrack.
Lola has 20 minutes to find 100,000 marks or her boyfriend is dead. Perhaps that may sound like a cheesy premise, but the script goes above and beyond that. It deals with life, love, the choices we make and most especially chance. One of the most interesting features of Run Lola Run is that whenever Lola interacts with another character, picture flashes are shown of their future because of their split-second encounter.
There is a connected flow to the movie. I don't want to give away the special set-up this movie has, so all I can say is that it blew my mind and will probably blow yours. Bring yourself to another level of awareness and SEE THIS MOVIE.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of my Top 10 of 1999
Review: I'll just cut to the chase. It's in German, it's subtitled, and you'll do yourself a disservice by not reading on. Run Lola Run is the hippest, most original thriller since The Matrix.

Remember how everyone, including myself, was so amazed by the fact that 1999's hit The Blair Witch Project cost so little to make? Here's another fact: Germans, like most Europeans, have never had the luxury of a big budget. Indeed, the reason they don't make films like The Matrix is because they can't afford to. The other side of the coin is that they have learned to be exceptionally inventive. It's a shame their movies don't have much of an audience here, and I generally believe that subtitles are a problem. Ironically, Hollywood makes half it's money overseas, and in all non-English speaking territories, our movies are dubbed. That's why you can listen to a DVD movie in French or Spanish, if you care to. These are simply the soundtracks from the foreign releases.

Luckily for us, Run Lola Run is almost entirely a visual experience, with a storyline so simple that complex dialog isn't necessary. The throbbing techno-industrial music is a key to the enjoyment of the movie, but these sounds are universal.

How's this for simple? Lola gets a phone call from her boyfriend, Manni. A drug deal has gone horribly wrong [I won't tell you how!], and if she doesn't get a large sum of money to him in twenty minutes, he's a dead man. So Lola runs - literally - to try and get the money. In a plot device so clever you will simply have to see it for yourself, Lola gets not one but three tries of twenty minutes each to successfully complete her task. Each attempt starts out in exactly the same way, but because of the way small things occur as she is running down the stairway of her apartment building, there are three different outcomes. All of them are startling and unexpected. It is left to each viewer to decide which outcome they prefer.

The acting is uniformly excellent, from the two leads down to the smallest roles. As Lola, Franica Potente has an intensity and an energy level that is almost exhausting. Of course, she must have run a thousand or so miles to prepare for this very physical role. Moritz Bleibtreu is perfect as Manni. He is utterly believable as a guy who gets himself in a situation which is at once scary, because if the consequences and hilarious, because it is caused by the silliest of mistakes.

Writer and director Tom Tykwer is a major new force behind the camera. Like many Europeans before him, the success of this movie may lure him to the bright lights and big budgets of Hollywood. Even if he refuses the call, which might be a wise decision, his is the kind of inventive moviemaking that will be copied over and over again anyway. And why not? Herr Tykwer's cinematic tricks are well worth repeating.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kinetic!
Review: That's really the only word for this film. Energy, action, running.

I bought the DVD because I had loved it when it first came out on video (foreign films don't usually make it to theaters in my area). I loved it again when I watched it after I bought it. Besides Lola being attractive enough to hold your attention while doing all that running, the story never lets you rest.

If you haven't seen it, Lola's (Franka Potente) boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), has just lost a bag of money meant for his mobster boss (the dope left it on the subway) so he needs 100,000 marks in the next twenty minutes. It is up to Lola to find the money and get it to him. If she doesn't arrive by noon, he is going to rob the nearby grocery store (which supposedly makes 200,000 marks a day, and so would have 100,000 by noon.)

She mentally goes through everyone she knows and decides on her father, who works at a bank. Her moped was stolen recently, so that's out. (She doesn't bother to ask anyone to borrow a car, but that's a small gripe.)

So she runs.

And what a runner she is! (One wonders how much training she did for this film as she seems barely to break a sweat. She simply shines.)

The story takes the path that, depending on luck, time, and actions, each decision you make leads to a different result. We are shown three possible outcomes of Lola's trip to her father's bank and her subsequent run to meet Manni. All three hinge on small changes in how she gets down the stairs of her apartment building. Everything from that point on is different in small enough ways to greatly affect the end result. Changes are even evident in how the action affects the people whose paths she crosses (we know because we see successions of snapshots depicting their lives after this incident).

All the while, there is this terrific electronic music playing in the background, not so that it's annoying, but enough to add to the feel of speed that the film has. (I also bought the soundtrack and keep it in my CD travel case.)

All in all, a superb film and one that I think anyone interested in avant-garde cinema with a high energy level would enjoy.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very good -- but slightly misleading
Review: "Run Lola Run" is an example of the sort of experimental storytelling you just can't get out of most American studios these days. In a nutshell, Lola (Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 marks or her boyfriend will be killed by his mob boss. This film follows three potential outcomes for this situation, and it does it in a smart, entertaining fashion.

The only problem I have comes with a lot of the promotional material and the hype -- before I saw this movie, everything I read about it said it was about how "choices" can affect the way your life unfolds. This isn't exactly what the movie is about.

While Lola certainly does make different choices in each of the three scenarios presented, the crux, the starting point, NEVER changes -- Lola makes the same FIRST decision and the metaphorical snowballs are sent in three different directions originally because of accidents of timing and fate rather than any choice she makes.

Still, this is a highly entertaining film and well worth picking up -- just don't be fooled.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: HORRIBLE
Review: This movie doesn't even deserve one star. The script was horribly written, and they kept on playing the SAME thing over and over and over again. Little parts changed while they replayed it, but I knew I couldn't stand to watch ANOTHER rerun again. I had to watch this movie for German and I'm certainly not watching it again.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A good movie.
Review: I liked the movie. It has a nice story which is a hearing girl is born to death parents and is a story of her life.

My sister-in-law, who signs, had a hard time following the subtitles and the signing. She can't watch two things at once. This is trivia but my sister-in-law says the German signing is slightly different than American, makes sense.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Spectacular spectacular
Review: It's such a treat when you see a film that does something different than mainstream movies! There's nothing predictable about this movie--if you prefer movies that telegraph from the very beginning how everything will turn out, this one is not for you. You'll never guess where it will take you, and you'll hope it never ends. This is such a clever movie, but not just for the sake of being clever (I don't like those). I guarantee you that you'll be stunned and in disbelief at least once.........

If you are a fan of really strong and unique women, then you'll love this movie, too. Franka Potente is absolutely awesome as Lola. It's a good thing the movie is so compelling, or you'd never be able to take your eyes off her. She is extremely charismatic; now I look for her movies and will automatically see anything she is in. Actually, all the casting is magnificent--not a miss in the bunch. Moritz Bleibtreu is just wonderful as Manni.

The great music, the insertion of animation for just the right reasons, the cleverness of the story structure, and the awesome power and magnificence of Franka/Lola make this a movie that you'll want to own. I heartily recommend it, without reservation.


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