Last Sentinel
Last Sentinel, Germany 2023. Directed by Tanel Toom, written by Malachi Smyth.
Bambi Theater 2, Row 2, Seat 5. Original version w/ German subs. (It’s a German production, apparently, but the movie was filmed and produced in English.)
(This post originally appeared, in slightly different form, at my Instagram account betweendrafts.)
At long last, I resumed my pre-Corona habit of watching (almost) every original screening, no matter what, no matter how crappy the theater. That merely sounds a lot—Dusseldorf, where I live, is too exquisitely cosmopolitan to entertain anything as mundane as, like, a movie theater dedicated to showing original language movies.
Not everything in Last Sentinel made sense screenplay-wise but all in all it was surprisingly good. It’s running time—three minutes shy of two hours—was fine. As in games, I love to just “be there” even if nothing (or not a lot) happens as long as the world is interesting. Plus, setting, characters, and plot had perfect pen-&-paper role-playing game vibes.
When the movie started, it turned out to be the dubbed version, so I went out and complained and they switched to the original version and started again. No other patron had been bothered by it, it appeared, which was baffling. (The “German” title of Last Sentinel, by the way, is Last Contact because Germany is in so many ways an idiot country.) The original movie then, for some reason or other, didn’t quite fill up the space of the screen; but as it was well focused and I sat with my nose against the screen anyway, I refrained from complaining and having them reset everything again.
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