The Counterfeiters - By James Ellaby

When German/Austrian film The Counterfeiters won the Best Foreign Film award at this year's Oscars, there will probably have been some scepticism about its selection, after all, how can any 'worthy' film about concentration camps in World War II fail to win an Oscar? You could also just about be forgiven for wondering what the point of another film about the horrors of life in these camps would be, given that Schindler's List dealt with it so graphically and movingly, while Life Is Beautiful brought the scale down to one family's struggles. However, The Counterfeiters isn't just another of those films and is certainly well worth watching even if you have seen both of those two, because it sheds light on an entirely different aspect of life in Nazi concentration camps. And it does it with plenty of quality, both in terms of the production and the acting, which is first rate throughout. Karl Markovics plays Salomon Sorowitsch, a Jewish master counterfeiter who is arrested by the Nazis and put into a camp, where he manages to avoid the worst treatment by drawing and painting for his captors, who still see him as scum, but allow him the odd little luxury. Soon he is moved on to a different camp, which is run by Herzog, the officer who had first arrested him, and Sorowitsch is put into a special area of this camp which has been set aside for making counterfeit money for the Nazis. Sally and his comrades are still prisoners and still face death at any moment, but they are treated much better than most, even getting proper soft beds to sleep on, but can they deal with the knowledge that what they are doing is helping their captors win the war? Based on a true story and the book by Holocaust survivor Adolf Burger (whose character plays a major role in the film), this is a story about survival, not heroism and in Sally, it has a central character who is a criminal and is mostly just looking out for himself, with his relationship with Herzog is crucial to keeping himself and the rest of his comrades alive, particularly when they start to sabotage the counterfeiting. The fact that they live in comparative luxury (unlike the 'Shoe Testing Team', who are made to march in circles wearing shoes that are too small, before being shot) is what makes this a different kind of concentration camp film, though they are still very much the victims and there are plenty of reminders of that. The Counterfeiters is a very intelligent and mature film that is well worthy of the acclaim it has received and sheds light on a side to this most awful of stories that most people aren't aware of.

Night Watch - By James Ellaby

The first thing to point out here is that this isn't the Russian fantasy action film Night Watch, nor is it the American thriller starring Ewan McGregor. It's the Danish thriller that the McGregor film was a remake of, and is directed by Ole Bornedal (who also helmed the remake). It tells the story of law student Martin, who takes a job as the nightwatchman at a local morgue to help pay the bills, but ends up getting tangled up with a serial killer who murders and scalps prostitutes. If that all sounds pretty grim and depressing, then it's a relief that Bornedal mixes up the dark stuff with the story of Martin and his girlfriend and his pain-in-the-neck best mate Jens, who gets him into all kinds of scrapes. The two mates keep on coming up with 'challenges' for each other as they struggle with the fact that they are growing up and becoming responsible adults, but as more and more disturbing things happen to Martin at his job, is Jens taking things too far, or does he have a dark secret? There aren't many famous Danish horror films around, and Night Watch is probably the only one, but it is a very entertaining and atmospheric movie, with good performances all round from the cast, while the direction is refreshingly lacking in the kind of extreme gore that a film like this would have to have if it was made recently (it came out in 1994). It's quite grisly enough with the implications of the horrible, horrible things that happen, and we really don't need to see them to know that, though you shouldn't get the impression from that statement that this is in any way a family movie, as there's a fair bit of full-frontal nudity to go with the obvious horror of the plot. It's not a classic by any means, but Night Watch is a great little thriller that keeps you hooked throughout and is certainly worth checking out.