2nd Opinion

Aus! Aus! Aus! Aus! Das spiel ist aus!”  (Over! Over! Over! Over! The game is over!) These golden words of German radio reporter Herbert Zimmermann are immortal. Its energy changed Germany's fortunes for good. Helmut Rahn's late goal in the final of the 1954 FIFA World Cup  — that served as the cause for Zimmermann's incredible on-air cry — was a moment of reincarnation for a nation crippled by the horrors of the Second World War. 4 July 1954. The date was meant to be historic. It was meant to be glorious. Victory was expected, but not on German land. Hungary were ready to celebrate its 'Golden Team' bringing home the nation's first-ever World Cup. The conviction of a Hungarian triumph was so strong that commemorative postage stamps had already been printed, according to FIFA.com The supreme confidence was well-founded. Hungary had not lost a football match for four years coming into the World Cup in Switzerland. They had trounced the Germans 8-3 early i...

The Vanishing Directed by Kristoffer Nyholm Starring Gerard Butler, Peter Mullan, Connor Swindells, and Olafur Darri Olafsson. If movies have taught us anything, it’s that putting men in isolation far from society is never a good idea. Whether it’s a sun-soaked paradise in the Pacific Ocean or a luxury resort hotel in the Colorado Rockies, those of us with Y chromosomes don’t fair well in quiet, far-flung locales. And so is the case for the three lighthouse keepers at the centre of The Vanishing, which imagines what might have happened to a real trio who mysteriously vanished without a trace from their post on the lighthouse on the Flannan Isles in 1900. Peter Mullan plays Thomas, the veteran keeper of the light, and his world-weary performance is the chief reason to see Kristoffer Nyholm’s handsome, satisfyingly dour thriller. So taken is the Danish director with his leading man that the camera will tend to linger admiringly on the crags of his forehead or on the strange...

Animals are great for allegory. Their representative nature - the sneakiness of snakes, the sleepiness of sloths, the industriousness of ants - allow storytellers to get to the heart of their message quickly and in a way that is almost subconscious. We all know the characteristics of a rabbit or a fox, and we understand their relationship in nature. From there the allegory can build something else, using those creatures to set the stage and to distance the audience from the moral enough that it can sneak past their defenses. It’s the entire premise of fables - these morality stories operate on enough levels that we can absorb the moral without feeling lectured. But the allegory can be a dangerous beast in its own right, especially as it grows complicated - or as it attempts to approach more complicated concepts. You need to be a master to control the seeming simplicity of telling a political story with barnyard animals; just ask George Orwell. That control seems to evade the film...