Popular reviews

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  Review by Scumbalina ★★★★ 1

  Fuck You, I'm Drunk: The Movie.

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  Review by rischka ★★★★½

  the mysterious 'she' buys a one way ticket to berlin. young, rich and beautiful, in a series of spectacular outfits 'she' intends to drink herself to death on cognac and champagne in all the finest nightspots and hotels of the city. 'she' picks up a bag lady, gives her a makeover and takes her to a gay bar, continually crossing paths with a greek chorus of uptight tweedy sociologists spouting facts about the dangers of alcohol. interspersed with dreamlike intervals featuring a variety of other odd characters, 'she' never speaks. ottinger shoots this mayhem with a painterly eye; at times hilarious, at times disturbing, always unforgettable

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  Review by Kyle Faulkner ★★★★½ 10

  Single, loaded, gorgeous, ridiculously overdressed and imbued with all the antiquity of a Medea, Beatrice and Iphigenia, Tabea Blumenschein heads to Berlin as her last port of call to get herself utterly arseholed on cognac. In a flurry of outsize bows, pillbox hats, tinfoil wraps and outfits that would work for an Etihad stewardess, she throws back the turps like there's no tomorrow, goes stunt-driving, encounters a giggly Nina Hagen doing operetta, an acerbic Kurt Raab who fires her from his law firm after one day, Eddie Constantine quoting Gertrude Stein while everyone nibbles his passed-out offsider's challah necklace in a sea of broken crockery, and a bevy of bookish stick-in-the-mud agony aunts hold forth with statistics on alcoholism and…

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  Review by Sarah ★★★★★

  this is simply the vibe of a lifetime

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★ 8

  To find yourself on the outside looking in when it comes to a given work is never fun, but alas, here I am. While there is great validity (though little subtlety) in the messaging here—not to mention a gorgeous, often madcap aesthetic and inventive (and textually complementary) camerawork—I found Ottinger’s film to be, for the most part, incredibly tedious. I was unable to engage with the material beyond a sort of baseline intellectualism, which made it tough to stay invested in its sparse narrative. But just ignore me… everyone else seems to love this, and for good reason; there’s plenty to admire here, even if it didn’t gel for me.

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★½ 12

  Discussion of suicide ahead.

  In Ulrike Ottinger's Ticket of No Return, a glamorous, rich young woman (known only as "She" or "The Drinker") dispenses with socially-imposed lies about purpose, and connection, and influence, and frankly and brazenly lives to die, with alcohol her weapon of choice.

  Intentionally adrift in a city of self-serious zombies who give voice to Important Facts, Deep Thoughts, and Profound Ideas that they're convinced make them seem serious, droll, and smart — or all three at once — The Drinker embraces the truth: none of it means anything. It's just stories we tell ourselves so we have something to think about other than death; so that we can imagine, for a little while, that we're making…

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  Review by Joshua Dysart ★★★★½ 10

  A practically Zoot suited - or whatever the late 70’s rich white High-Euro ladies fashion equivalent is - heroine with limitless funds and an incredible sense of self-identified purpose kamikaze drinks across Berlin as the eighties loom large just around corner. Don’t worry though, society is working on the problem of what ails her in the form of a three woman chorus often found tittering in the background about the statistics of being a suicidal queer. It’s transcendent. Dazzling, really. Lo-fi as the day is long. Nina Hagen is in it.

  It's a movie about how being empowered enough to destroy yourself is the highest kind of empowerment... or maybe it's about how all you judgmental assholes can go fuck…

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  Review by KYK ★★★★

  obsessed with the splashes in the face between sloshes

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  Review by laird ★★★★

  breaking bad
  or
  Wes Anderson, Almodovar and Fassbinder Walk Into a Bar...

  Liquid distortion. "Her resolve to live out a narcissistic, pessimistic cult of solitude strengthened... until it reached the level at which it could be lived." You and me both, sister! This is the kind of thing you shouldn't show to someone who thinks arthouse movies are all scene after scene of highly stylized but impenetrable nonsense. In other words, it's great.

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  Review by Jess666 ★★★★½

  The old cinema is dead, and this film is the high camp filth-mongering anti-bourgeoisie queer social commentary that we all still need and deserve. Catching so many elements that have been referenced and misappropriated elsewhere as recently as Lady Gaga's Met Gala camp is truly illuminating. This reinvigorated a trash punk anti-capitalist string in me, I left the theater wanting to drink cognac and wear elaborate gowns while I trash talk elitist swine and spit in their faces.

  (btw I made the poster!)

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  Review by CityGirl ★★★★½

  The ballad of alcoholic. The destination towards destruction. The vision of red. The flash of red. As pale as a vampire, instead of blood, she sucks liquor at every turn. Towards the future, no thinking of the present and no returning back. Just stuck here. Frozen in time and in between. Alcohol as the ultimate transportation transport.

  It looks so exquisite and futuristic. The contrast between glamour and the working class juxtaposed so perfectly. Certain looks feel as fresh as now. Her appearance and outfits are the only futuristic features, all around bland, everyday gloom. The glamour covers rotten and damaged emotionality. Behind the clothes, there's already another mask hiding the hurt enigma. We never quite know or find out…

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  Review by J Winston ★★★★★

  "Our addictions are just the Erinyes in the theater of cruelty."

  Well, I thought The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press was pretty fantastic but somehow this is even better. Again, many Fassbinder regulars appear (Kurt Raab, Eddie Constantine, and Peer Raben even does the music), and while it's tempting to compare Ottinger to the great German New Wave director, it would also be a huge disservice to her own clearly singular and unique talent.

  Even putting her in a box like "radical feminist filmmaker" feels insufficient and limiting. Obviously, there is a strong political subtext going on here, but it's fairly subtle and understated. Well okay maybe not exactly, but at the very least it's didactic in…