Popular reviews

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  Review by nosebleedwoman 7

  *filmmaker adapts hard-edged novel that for once tells the ugly truth about a serial killer“

  critics: ew wtf, where is the moral of the story?

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  Review by LeSchroeck ★★★ 4

  Fatih goes Fassbinder: Alkohol fressen Seele auf. Vernichtungstrinken - der Film. Nicht das Vernichtungskino, das es sein könnte. Keine Biografie, keine Erklärung, kein Skandal. Eine Beobachtung. Über Gewalt, Frust, Hässlichkeit, Schlager-Illusionen, Desillusionen. Unangenehm, über weite Strecken un-unterhaltsam und repetitiv. Aber dann immer wieder auch witzig, karikaturesk, sympathisch beobachtet bis hin zu einer Phase... die mir dann doch merkwürdig mitleidig erschien. Und in ihrer Ursachenforschung auch zu einfach. So hab ich neben dem Ekel und der Abscheu ebenfalls ein wenig Orientierungslosigkeit gefühlt. Gestärkt durch Akins Kamera, die mitunter gnadenlos draufhält und mitunter… dann doch etwas zu verschonend wirkt.

  Es gibt Szenen, ohne Schnitt, mit Darstellern, die sich halbnackt durch allerlei Retro- oder Ranz-Inventar schmeißen: die tun weh, entsetzen, machen betroffen. Aber…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★½ 12

  A fetid corpse flower of a film — the kind whose wretched stink only blooms into theaters once every few years — Fatih Akin’s “The Golden Glove” is a movie that you can smell just by looking at it. It’s relentlessly pungent; the cinematic equivalent of an overflowing porta potty. The sets reek of shit and decaying flesh, while even the living characters appear to rot before our eyes. Maggots fall through the ceiling and rain into a young girl’s soup. A jar of pickled sausages grows enough white fur to make a winter coat. There’s no reprieve from all this rancidness. It opens with a long, unblinking take of its sociopathic protagonist stripping the body of a bloated old…

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  Review by MJsays ★★★★½ 1

  Rancid, deranged, brutal, unapologetic, repellent, offensive, sickening, grim, nihilistic, bizarre, stylish, observant, funny, maddening, tense, shocking and downright depressing.

  This is everything a serial killer film should be, because in real life, this is how it is. 

  Lars von Trier, eat your heart out.

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  Review by Patrick Pryor ★★★½

  I'm getting really sick of professional film people being morally outraged by new releases. Is this the '90s where 2 Live Crew and Mortal Kombat can transform teens into murderous degenerates? Has anyone actually seen Angst or a Jörg Buttgereit Deutsch scum gobbler before?

  In an age where serial killer stans are horny for Ted Bundy, The Golden Glove drags itself from the filth to remind them of the ugliness, misanthropy, and hopelessness that can drive a dysfunctional fringe grotesque to murder. These killings aren't glamorous or the work of some criminal mastermind. They're sad and pointless and driven by some sort of twisted uncontrollable urge that no amount of drinking can drown. Most victims are just lonely down-and-outs looking…

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★ 2

  Filthy, rancid and grim. Had to put pine air fresheners all over my house after watching it.

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  Review by Horrible Reviews ★★★½ 4

  Wanna feel like shit? Ever woke up after a night of drinking too much only to find yourself feeling disgusted by the state you found yourself in the morning after?

  Luckily, you can now skip all of that and just watch this movie. Based on the life of actual serial killer Fritz Honka, this movie takes place around the titular bar where the Fritz picked up his victims. And I've seen a bunch of disturbing movies, and I've enjoyed a bunch of em, but this one mostly just made me feel filthy and sad.

  And that's exactly what I liked about it so much. Another review compared it in a way to the likes of Angst, Maniac and Henry: Portrait…

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  Review by André Hecker ★★★ 9

  ↓ English version below ↓

  Die Nacherzählung einer grauenhaften Morderserie im Hamburg der 70er Jahre verfilmt Fatih Akin auf Basis des gleichnamigen Buchs von Heinz Strunk. Dabei vermischen sich Tonalitäten zu einem undurchsichtigen, übel riechenden Brei.

  Fritz Honka (Jonas Dassler) ist eine kümmerliche Seele. Zwar einer Arbeit nach gehend, haut er sein Geld vornehmlich für Alkohol auf den Kopf. Am liebsten in der jämmerlichen Kiez-Absteige "Der goldene Handschuh", in dem sich tagtäglich der Bodensatz der ansässigen Gesellschaft tummelt. Gespickt mit den obskursten Spitznamen, sind die immer gleichen Gesichter an der Theke ebenso bekannt wie ihre Trinkgewohnheiten. In diesem nach Schnaps stinkenden Vorhof der Hölle hält Honka nicht nur nach dem nächsten Kurzen, sondern auch nach Frauen ausschau. Trotz seines entstellten…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★ 2

  If German shock cinema could be said to have a rich tradition, then this -- with its grisly violence, monotonous ugliness, sophomoric humor, sociopolitical preoccupations, and absurd non-sequitur -- fits into it snugly, for good or ill.

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 11

  Well, I must say that I am extremely disappointed. If you read many of the reviews on this and on various movie websites, everyone has pretty much singled out this as one of the most filthy movies ever to (dis-)grace the screen.

  And to be honest, this is a disgusting movie with a character that makes Arthur Fleck look a very stable, well-mannered human being. And worst of all, this loathsome individual is not a figment of someone's imagination, but a real-life monster who terrorized the streets of Germany in the 1970s. However, the problem is that, again, I was sold this movie as something that was even worse and more frightening than Angst (which, to date, has been one…

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  Review by cupofcoffinjoe ★★★★½ 6

  In cinema, serial killing is often portrayed as the glamorous, daring work of sophisticated masterminds. Director Fatih Akin has done the world a great service by reminding us of just how mindless and fetid these murderous wretches generally are. The reminder is all the more vivid for being pitilessly recreated from true events in 1970's Germany.

  Our murderer, played with excruciating realism by Jonas Dassler, is a greasy, drunken gargoyle of a man living in a squalid apartment wallpapered by pornography. His victims are the soul scarred, destitute women he picks up in a grotesque bar called The Golden Glove. His murders are petty affairs set off by drunken rages and performed in artless, poorly improvised ways. His victims expell…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★ 2

  certainly of a piece with the major shock-horror serial killer movies of the 80s like Angst, Maniac or Henry but with a 70s german arthouse style and period detail that firmly plants the textured repulsiveness into the festering wounds of history. a deeply ugly movie that doesn't try to psychoanalyze or moralize, just unblinkingly observes a national rot; the stinking corpses in the foundations that we try to ignore. the brief glimpses afforded to the precarious lives of the victims (many of whom were victims of the abuse, war and poverty long before honka approached them) is impossibly sad. my main complaint would be that there wasn't more of those glimpses and i guess the ending, which i liked in…