 Welcome back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel. Now, this is the movie show. There are so many movies these days where George Kasin and I, we examine them. It's a flood of movies. This is a time where we have more movies available to us right at home. And it's a time when we have to evaluate them and learn from them. Some of them are more learning experiences than others. And today is a sort of geographical learning experience. It's also an experience in love. We're gonna review Berlin, I Love You. This is part of a city series of cities you could love. Let's see, there was Jutem, Paris Jutem, there was New York, I Love You, and there was Rio, I Love You, all made within the last couple of years. This one, Berlin, I Love You is 2019. And as all the other movies, there are many stories involved, old stories of love and sometimes tragedy done by different directors. Then we see various angles, various events and situations that take place in these cities. So Berlin, I Love You is somehow it's different than the others. So George, let's start out with saying, why is it different? What is special about Berlin, I Love You? Well, there are 10 vignettes showing different, different aspects of life in Berlin, current day Berlin, which is a reunited Berlin because it was once separated between East Germany and West Germany. And each of these vignettes is dealing with a different aspect of people living in Berlin. Many of them who have come emigrated to Berlin to find themselves or to start a new chapter in their life, right? And that's basically what this is all about. It's not like some things like the Woody Allen movie where there was comedy, which was vignettes in Rome. This is all pretty serious stuff. There's no comedy here, but it's a varied existence because you have people that are being depicted that have come from the United States, from other parts of Europe, from the Middle East. And each of those 10 shows some aspect of current day Berlin as Berlin is today. And I just know from personal experience that Europe has changed and it's become very Middle Easternized as well. So there's different aspects. There's two or three of these vignettes that are dealing with people from the Middle East and then other parts of Europe, United States. So that's pretty much it, not to repeat myself, but that's the basics. Okay, well, let's unpack that a little bit. Yeah, I think you've hit it in terms of trying to find the difference between this version of the I Love You series, Cities I Love, and the others. Because this is people from outside of Berlin coming to Berlin. It's not that many Berliners. It's an examination of what they find and how they react to it and how they are able to live their lives in it, even though they may not be all that familiar with it. Now, I went and looked at the reviews of this movie on the internet. And I found, as with the others, virtually thousands of reviews. So just to summarize that to still a little bit, a lot of them criticized the movie because there weren't a lot of Germans in the movie and they weren't speaking German. It's not like this is a movie in German where it was dubbed or translated into English. I mean, the titles are English, if you want titles, but the movie is English. And they criticized that because they said, well, I don't know if you love Berlin and don't have to be a Berliner. And the other point that I think was running right through all these criticisms was that Berlin isn't really like this. This is Berlin through the eyes of people who really don't know Berlin. This all takes place within a relatively small area of Berlin and there were Berliners that said, I live in that area. That's not what it's like. This is not what Berlin is like. You think you're learning something about Berlin, no. You're learning about people who visit Berlin and what their experience is in Berlin between the two of them or however many there are. But we have to remember that there are different segments, as you said, and they have different directors and completely different stories. Some of them are truly love stories. Others are stories of tragedy. Others are stories of learning hard lessons. And so what is appealing to me about this movie is not so much that it's about Berlin, but it's a series of very good short movies, really well done, high values, very high quality actors. And that's what makes it interesting. What did you find about it, George? I agree with you that each of the individual stories are pretty good and the actors and actresses doing a good job as well. And definitely what you were saying, these are not all love stories. Some of them are serious issues that people are dealing with in Berlin. So when it says Berlin, I love you, I think it means more that people come to Berlin because it sort of resurrected itself from when it was split and it's sort of a new city and people who want to resurrect themselves come to Berlin and start a new beginnings in Berlin from various places. So I totally agree with you that that's the just of it, that there's, it's not all love stories. And that sort of takes away when you have Berlin, I love you, and then I love you for what? To come to, like that. It's more like I love you in Berlin rather than I love you, Berlin. Like the first one with the speaking car, Vanessa, he came to Berlin to drink himself to death because his fiance's girlfriend fell in love with his brother and he's miserable so he's going to drink himself to death. And then luckily he finds a Charlotte LeBone who a beautiful actress, you know, and he finds a new love, you know, in Berlin. So sort of resurrected and the car, Vanessa, the car pretty much gets him right on the back track so he doesn't commit suicide from alcohol. But that's only one of the 10, but we can get into some of these others if you wish, you know. Absolutely do. And by the way, there's some really terrific actors here. There's Mickey O'Rourke, which is fabulous and Helen Merrin is in there. Although one piece of criticism said, Helen Merrin, she played Queen Elizabeth. Now this? You know, that's the mark of a good actor or actress is that you can play different, different roles and you don't get a pin pigeonholed into a certain kind of a role and then you have the flexibility. That's the mark of a super performer, you know, they can take on any role. But you know, I can go- And you can get to see them doing their thing. So I think one thing very interesting about this and the other movies in the series is that you're titillated with new stories every few minutes and you know, you make an almost an unconscious comparison between this story and the other story and they're coming at you so fast. And you know, you begin to be critical of how well they work together. And actually, as I recall in the end of this movie, it all comes together and you see these various characters, you know, actually on the same screen, even though they're from different segments of the movie. So George, let's talk about the segments. You were gonna set some of them up. What segments do you like? Well, I think I already mentioned the one with Vanessa, you know, the talking car and then the one with Helen Mirren, you know, it's like a little Arab kid. His daughter has come from London or from England to Berlin and she's working in this agency where it takes care of, you know, refugees and there's this little Arab kid whose brother is in the hospital with some infection, right? And they've come, they're probably living in a refugee camp. So she brings the little boy home because he can't stay at the facility, you know, because his mother's with the kid in the hospital. So she brings the kid home and then Helen Mirren's playing her mother who doesn't really approve this and says to her daughter, what are you doing? Bringing these problems home and then interaction between mother and daughter and Helen Mirren plays a really good role. I hear a nightly or whatever who's playing the daughter. They play the role pretty much but I'll go through them quickly and then you can allude to which one you're interested in. Then Mickey Rourke, right? That's a real, you know, you're really not sure but I'm pretty sure that what they're trying to say is that the woman he's trying to pick up in the bar and the hotel bar, it was about 25 years younger than him and she's beautiful, beautiful woman. And then he brings her home, he wants to make love to her, right? And then she's not really sure about this after they've communicated. And that turns out to be his long lost daughter, you know? Which is a shocker and then he's crying because he sort of abandoned his daughter and this is his daughter, you know? That's what I think they're trying to say there. And then- I mean, before you move on, I mean, Mickey Rourke is really something. Amazing. I mean, back when he was kind of a leading man, he was very tough and hard. He had a, with Kim Basinger, he had a movie called Eight and a Half which was absolutely knockout way back when but it's been a long time and his personal life has been up and down and he doesn't look so good. And in this movie, he's, you know, looks like he's in his 70s and he's got long tresses of blonde hair. Go figure that. And he looks old and when they have the bedroom scene, you can see all the tattoos on him. He's really been around Mickey Rourke. Very, very interesting character he plays and it works well on him because it is him. The other thing is these segments are filled with really good one-liners. I remember he's sitting at the bar with this beautiful blonde who is half his age and he says, what are my chances? And everybody knows what that means. The answer is half, half. He says half, half. Well, there's two possibilities. Yes and no. So it's half, half. That's true. That's true. That's right. You know, it's either yes or no, right? Not a good, yeah, all those tatting, you know, sort of, they could have found an actor who's more suave even though Mickey's getting a little old, you know. So that's what we can get back to. That was really a knockout to find that she was his daughter. And he had almost had sex with her, almost. But he pulled away the last minute and so you're so relieved that he didn't have incestuous sex unknowingly with this woman. I mean, the other way it would have left a stain on the movie somehow. Oh yeah, I mean, that's an incestuous, like you said, incestuous relationship. Let me go through these and then you can pick the ones. Then there's a laundromat scene with this guy who comes into the laundromat and he's sort of a male chauvinist and then there's a party, you know, that plays and some woman comes in and she says that her Brazilian, Colombian friend or Brazilian friend is gonna have a party there. Nobody sees it's a laundromat but then that's what happens. And then there's a Turkish cab driver from Turkey and there's this American spy or CIA agent and then they show him and then there's this Arab fugitive that's stabbed some kids who are tormenting his family and he goes into a brothel to hide a hide and then the prostitute wants to have sex with him and he says, no sex, no sex. And then there's one of the producers, she's Diana Agron, she's playing a puppeteer and she meets this American guy there and they have a little back and forth and he's trying to pick her up. Oh, that's a great line, that's a great line. He said this, they're at a fountain somewhere in Berlin, she's really pretty and he's a middle-class guy who you can tell he's well-educated and he's trying to pick her up. So he says, see, I've been sitting here wondering if I could ask you out to lunch. That's his opening line. Exactly. And she responds with the greatest biggest smile you ever saw, which is an answer to his question. It's a very touching scene. A very wholesome looking beautiful woman. Then there's a German street, a street mime with this Israeli song singer, right? She's there singing on the streets. I mean, they have a lot of attractive German men. This guy was god-awful, ugly and she's a beautiful Israeli woman. So I don't know how they match those two up and they fall in love at the end. I don't know how she fell in love. She's not really, I mean, they're attractive German men, he wasn't attractive at all. And then there's this other, I think American woman and she's carrying her, she's obviously come when she's got her bag, she's come from the United States or wherever. And then she meets up with this singer, this guy who's in a band and they sort of fall in love. And then the last one is a drag queen and a teenage kid. I mean, there's an interaction between them and that plays in. So there's a very interesting moment in that one where he says, have you ever kissed a man? And they wind up, there's a 17-year-old kid sitting by this famous waterfront early morning because they've been up all night where they agreed there would be one kiss between these two men, the transvestite and the high school kid. And you have this moment of, it's like the Sistine Chapel. It's not likely to repeat, it won't repeat with them. Not likely to repeat, but it's a kind of a negotiated kiss. So the kid can see what it feels like. And he's kind of blown away by the experience just to have tried it. It's really wonderful piece. Yeah, very, very interesting, you know, one of the interesting, they're all interesting. This is an interesting one too. Okay, now, do you want to emphasize? One comes to mind, I didn't want to interrupt you, but the one that comes to mind that really shook me was the Turkish cab driver. She was really a terrific character. Kim's from Turkey, comes to Berlin, drives a cab, and she's really smart, she's really akamai, she's got her feet on the ground and all this. And this guy hops in the back of the cab and she talks to him because she chats people up. That's what she does. And he is very shy and he doesn't really want to talk to her. But a little by little over the course of the cab ride, he opens up a little bit. And she's taking him to an embassy. I don't remember what embassy it was in Berlin. It was a foreign country embassy. Some Latin American. A Latin American country. And he's clutching this briefcase while he's in the cab and he looks like he's scared. And he looks very nervous. And he hops out. They've had a few minutes of conversation with them, but it's the kind of thing that happens maybe in the movies and in my experience in Europe, you can get to know somebody really well just in a few minutes, you can connect. And they did. They connected in the cab and then he hopped out and as the plot goes, he was actually stealing top secret papers from one country to give them to another country. And the end is not good. The end is not good. So what you have in terms of you're looking for a love connection is this few minutes in the taxi cab and after that he blows his life up. She's an aspiring reporter and she's driving a cab to make a buck, to make a living while she's aspiring to be a reporter. But yeah, I didn't quite catch that thing that you caught that he's gonna be, I thought he was just an American CIA agency. He was delivering papers. He was doing espionage. That made it so interesting. I wonder if he was so scared that he didn't want to say anything. Okay, which other one are you? What about the one where the lady ultimately gets to sing in the Amphitheater in the park? Do you remember that one? Oh, the Israeli woman, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, she's based, it starts with her. You've got the German mime with angel wings on a street corner in Berlin, a key street corner in Berlin. And she decided that she's gonna come stand 20 feet away from him and she's gonna sing because that's a key thing. And as she starts singing, he's a grump. He turns to her and says, oh, please stop it. And she says, no, there's enough people coming by here that we can both be here, right? And he's sort of holding her away, you know? And then they little by little, they get to know each other. Then he goes into this Russian owned shop and he wants to buy something and she walks in and she's willing to pay for him, right? And then he says that he's taking away from his pride because he doesn't have enough money to buy whatever it was and she pays for him. But then they get to, then he lets her stay at his place because she just showed up a day or two before, has no place to stay, not a hostel or anything. And then after one night, he tells her to leave, doesn't want her to stay and she wants to stay because it's a comfortable place. But they didn't really explain this mime with no money how he can living in this really beautiful apartment. He's obviously got money to pay for the apartment and he's actually secretly wealthy, as I recall from, he's secretly wealthy, he owns the building. And so it's hard to understand exactly why he threw her out. Maybe he was threatened by her in some way and you're right, he was really not a good-looking person. He's a very, very scraggly individual and they were an unlikely combination. But you know, at the moment where she finds herself and sings to a quite an audience there and the MP theater in the park, he shows up. It was not clear whether he was gonna show up, he shows up and so you see, they've connected. Again, like some of the other ones, they've connected. And that's love, I suppose. You can have a very short-term love too. And you knew this wasn't gonna last for a long. And I think it's also an interesting piece that she's Israeli, knocking around in Berlin where the Germans are, where the Nazis were. And she's bringing her legacy to him. And there's always a second dimension to that. There have been many other movies like that where Israelis have found solace among modern day Germans. And that takes me to something I wanted to mention to you, George. You know, one of the movies that we're going to look at in the pipeline in a few weeks is called The Billion Dollar Code. And I was just fascinated with this movie. It was, the heroes in the movie were a bunch of people who established something called television back in the, I wanna say the 90s, early 90s when the internet had not yet really been born. And they did that in Germany and I think in Berlin. And so you got to know them pretty well. It's a true story, by the way. You got to know them pretty well and you got to see Germany in the 90s. And after that, you got to meet Germans who were, you know, they were artists and computer people but mostly artists. And you got to see what their life was like there. You got to see how much time they spent in Lottie linear land, you know with the nightclubs and the strobe lights and the blaring music and all that. And you got to look, you got to look through the keyhole of modern day Germany, post-war Germany. And it was, you know, kind of raunchy in many ways. Although the individuals involved there and I'm sure they're like this in real life, the ones who have survived a long time ago already. They were kindly, they were hardworking of course. They were, they were worth knowing. They were people with character. And you get a little keyhole in that movie into life in Germany. And you didn't get that in this movie, Berlin I Love. You didn't get that. You never really met people like the ones who developed that software in the 90s in Berlin. And I think it was probably missing that. Cause all these, it's like skipping rocks off a pond, you know, these segments kept skipping off the pond. But they didn't really get down deep into the environment. Each one is a valuable story by a valuable cast and a valuable director. But I don't, I don't feel that you've got to know a lot about the German character. And I would have liked to see more of that. The other thing I wanted to mention to you is the music, you know, if you go to the reviews, you know, the thousands of reviews of this, of this movie, you will also see a strain, a substantial number of comments about the seductive music that is playing throughout the movie. I did not notice it when I watched the movie, but the reviews are very clear. They, a lot of people thought this music was an important part, if not the best part of the movie. It was, it was hypnotic somehow for them. Do you remember the music? Yeah, I've been, it's been going in my mind recently, you know, since I've been watching it twice, I watched this, Berlin, I love you. And that music keeps playing in my ear. So it's very seductive music, yeah? Like, yeah, that's, you know, totally seductive to me. Yeah, so, yeah, one thing I wanted to add about the scene with the Israeli woman, if I may, if you, I mean, they took, she goes to a building where her grandparents had lived. And in the street, they have the names of her grandparents, right? And, and, and who lived there. And then she tells the German guy that her grandmother survived, you know? And then he says to her, you know, isn't it upsetting for you to be here? And she said, you know, no, I, you know, that she's come to terms to what happened with her, you know, her grandparents and stuff. So that's, that was an interesting part of it too, you know, other than, as you said, the relationship between, she's really beautiful and he's sort of really god-willed for ugly. So, but that's a key point of that one. So I'll leave it at that. Well, you know, it goes back to the fact that Germany has changed. Whether they investigated that in this series of segments or not, Germany is different now. And it's not, it's not, you know, pre-war or during the war, post-war Germany. It's very, very vital and big-rated. They, it's a completely different kind of personality. Of course, there are minority groups that are fascist, but most people are, you know, worth knowing. And so I think she, part of the reason she gets by that is because she observes that Germany is different, including this guy who in another time might have been pretty threatening, but not out of the movie. So I saw it as a roller coaster, George. And one thing I wanted to mention to you is if you want to enjoy this movie, you have to watch it carefully because there's all new plots, all new drill-down points, finesse points that if you don't catch it, you won't really understand that segment and you won't understand what they're trying to tell you about the love condition of people who visit and connect or try to connect with Germany and Berlin. So, you know, it's not the sort of thing where you know, you can just watch it casually. You have to focus on it, don't you agree? Oh yeah. I mean, as you said, it changes so quickly from one to the other that you sort of, by the time you started to assimilate what happened, they're on to another segment. So it doesn't, you can't really, a little too quick. I have issues with that that there was, if they had done like five vignettes, given a little more time, I would have liked this more. It was too much, too many changes, too quick to try to really understand each individual one. As you said, yeah. Well, I mean, as it goes to my point about, you have to watch it because the vignettes move very quickly, but each one is its own story. Each one is compelling. Each one is memorable in its own way. I would have trouble making a choice among all of them because they were all good. They were all world-class stories. This movie won awards, by the way. And so I'm thinking that, it's about storytelling. It's about taking a rather complex story that stands by itself and somehow putting that into eight or 10 minutes, whatever it is. And making you understand the story or at least giving you enough material so that you can and giving you an in-depth story. And the lesson there is you don't need 90 minutes to tell a story in a movie. You can tell a story in 10 minutes and have pretty powerful impact if you do it right, if you do it with it. And that's the challenge to these various directors and actors. You know, their job is to give you a complex, valuable story in 10 minutes. And it's doable, absolutely doable. This movie, as the other movies in the series, absolutely proves that. And as filmmakers or would-be filmmakers, we should all know that you can really have an effect on somebody in a 10-minute film. So okay, what do you think about going forward with this? Would you watch another one of these I Love You movies? Would you watch The New York I Love You with a Paris I Love You? And if another one was Rio I Love You, those are the ones I think are in the series. Or is Berlin I Love You enough? Well, the thing is, I have issues with this Berlin I Love You because of the too many, too many, as I said, too many different vignettes. So I would have to see some of the others to get a better picture because all different directors, all different producers, each one of these. So I'd have to look at the others to really give it a good assessment. I mean, even though I have- Yeah, well, you can certainly look at the trailers for all of them. They're all on the internet, get a handle on it. And they'll tell you what the awards were. I think pretty much all the ones I mentioned have one awards of one kind or another. I mean, they're all excellent films, although some people disagree with some of the premises involved. So what would you give this film? Looking back on it here today, George, would you give it a five? Would you give it a zero? A three. Really? I wasn't really happy with the- I mean, compared to some of the other movies we've looked at, which I was really excited about, like the one on Rome, Woody Allen's movie was phenomenal. I love that movie, right? This has sort of left me, you know, I'd have to look at, as you said, some of the other I Love You series just to get a better. I mean, there was good parts of this, right? But I'm not really excited. You may feel differently than I do. I do. I felt emotionally uplifted by it. Maybe it was just the notion of these various vignettes of love. I like movies like that. And I like to see it in many forms. And I like the actors. So I would give it a four. I would not give it a five, but I would give it a four. Let me ask you also, George, we're almost out of time. What's in a pipeline? What do you recall we are looking at now and which we are going to report on in the near term? Okay, the next one is, it's about that British woman who didn't follow the restrictions operation. I'd have to look again before I see the movie. The official secrets movie. Yeah, the official secrets. And then the next one is the one you mentioned about. The billion dollar code. Billion dollar code. Those are the two next. But as I sent to you, I have some other suggestions down the line. Things that are, whatever you find to be important, I have some other things I'd like to really get into. But those are the next two. Okay, George, Kason, a Renaissance man, a man for all seasons and a man for all movies. Thank you so much, George. I look forward to our next discussion. Aloha.