An absolute waste of money

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Aloys Aldon is a lonely man, he works as a Private Detective in Switzerland. He was under the thrall of his father who has just died and now he is alone with a cat who seems estranged and has a magnesium deficiency. He has spent his life viewing the World through the view finder of his cam corderThen something happens that makes him realise just how bland his existence is and that he has all the charm of a disused latrine – but strangely it awakens in him a part of his being that he had felt erstwhile lost. Now this is a strange film and it is meant to be. It co-mingles reality with fantasy in a way that is completely believable.The music is often portentous or hinting at a dripping emotion like a dam about to burst. The shots are all beautifully framed and the tension creeps up on you without you realising it – only to be broken by moments of release. In short a film that a lot of thought and soul has gone into. It is a slow starter though a very slow start but it is so worth staying with – this is one for those who appreciate what cinema can do and not expect it to be as they have always known.

A very good sci-fi concept, poorly executed. As the film begins, you are reminded of Harry Caul of Coppola's "The Conversation," which was brilliantly played by Gene Hackman.This film cannot boast of a Hackman or a John Cazale.You have a dead father being cremated but we are never told how he died.Secondary characters like Aloys' childhood classmate are never fleshed out. The concept of a drunk Aloy being locked up in a bus does not ring true. It appears he had urinated in his trousers in one shot. In a later shot, there is no such evidence.All in all it is a film that had so much potential that fails to deliver.

"Aloys" is a 90-minute live action movie that had its world premiere this year in 2016. Do not be fooled by the presence of lead actor Georg Friedrich. He may be Austrian, but this is nonetheless a French/Swiss co-production that resulted in a Swiss-language film. The writer and director is relatively young Swiss filmmaker Tobias Nölle and looking at the awards attention this film already received, it is definitely his biggest success so far. This is also thanks to Friedrich I am sure as he is among Austria's finest right now and you could almost call this film a one-man show for him, even if his female co-lead Tilde von Overbeck gets more and more screen time the longer the film goes on. And she may also be the biggest problem of this movie. With this statement, I am not referring to her acting, but to her character in general and how she was written. I very much enjoyed the film when it was just Friedrich and his life, how he did his job, how he dealt with his father's death, how he coped with meeting a former school mate etc. When the focus switches to his relationship to the character named Vera, it becomes an entirely different movie. The whole premise of somebody entering the main character's life in such a mysterious and drastic fashion is already pretty absurd, but I could have dealt with that if the movie had not turned into such a mess. What we see is all so absurd and goes completely against what we hear. Apart from table scene at the Asian restaurant, it is never clear what is fiction and what is fact sadly. And the words chosen also quickly feel pretty contrived and pretentious sometimes even. The characters add very little and feel (depsite the different physics) mostly interchangeable as they add nothing to the story at all. Such a shame. All this also hurts the final shot, which was actually pretty nice with the two uniting at the hospital, but I could not even appreciate this scene anymore after all the mess from earlier. I will not go a lot into detail, but one of the worst scenes is when the image of the woman changes into the image of the protagonist's dead father. It was really all style over substance at that point. Maybe the maker understood what he wanted to depict and tell us with this movie, but he sure did not succeed in making a film where the audience understands it. This film was definitely a missed opportunity as they could have turned this into one of the best German-language films from this year if they had chosen a different story path halfway in. Oh yeah, I just said "German", but the accents here are pretty thick, so I definitely recommend subtitles regardless of you being a native German or native English speaker. But I recommend much more to stay away from this film as it was not a rewarding watch. Thumbs down.

A lonely private investigator (Georg Friedrich) is contacted by a mysterious woman (Tilde von Overbeck) who pulls him into a mind game known as 'telephone walking'. Fascinated by her voice, Aloys discovers an imaginary universe that allows him to break out of his isolation.Although Aloys is a private investigator and is expected to be listening and watching at all times, we know something is off from the very first scene: he is intently watching (and filming) his own deceased father. But then again, everyone grieves in their own special way.This is writer-director Tobias Nölle's first feature, following his segment in the anthology film "Wonderland", and he has really created his own little universe with this one. The set design is appropriately gloomy to reflect Aloys' sullen emotions, with the only bright colors (ironically) being in the crematorium, where we watch his father's casket get unceremoniously dumped into the flames.We are introduced to the concept of "telephone walking", an idea that was allegedly developed in Japan around 1984 by an unnamed neurologist. Is this concept real? For the sake of the film, that doesn't matter. The methods involved allow lonely folks such as Aloys to envision a passing train, or a wildly flamboyant electric organ disco party. (Yes, the latter happens, and it's the highlight of the otherwise depressing film.)More interesting than the "telephone walking", perhaps, is how quickly Aloys and his mysterious caller find themselves in a game of cat and mouse, and she clearly has the upper hand. Writer-director Nölle has said, "We live in times where everybody wants to be seen, everybody takes pictures of themselves, everybody creates a second, more brilliant self on the web. I was interested in a man who is invisible, a private eye, who sees everything through his camera, but nobody sees him. Until the day a stranger turns the camera on him."How life is in Switzerland, I have no idea. But the theme of surveillance is very topical in the United States, where recent headlines about NSA snooping are still fresh concerns in the minds of many. Aloys is interesting in that he represents the hidden surveillance being unmasked. But his work raises another question: what has become of the private eye in a world where everybody is surveilling themselves? If he (or the NSA) wants to know someone's innermost thoughts, they only have to log onto Facebook and scroll through hundreds or thousands of photos uploaded daily. People like to ask before going in to the theater, "What is the movie like?" This film does not compare easily to anything else, which is high praise for the script. Critic Boyd van Hoeij notes, "Aloys, with his old-fashioned equipment, loner attitude and obsessive edges, recalls Gene Hackman's surveillance expert in Coppola's masterpiece, 'The Conversation'." That's a fair touchpoint, especially considering how often Aloys rewinds and replays his tapes. But the similarities are only superficial. There really is nothing else out there quite like "Aloys".One fumbles to even describe the picture. It is simultaneously beautiful and depressing, uplifting and lonely, hopeful and barren. Aloys lives in a world that few would want to be in; even he would rather be somewhere else. But at least everything looks good while being swallowed into the void. Even a brief shot of an ambulance seen through a window is gloriously perfect."Aloys" premieres July 21, 2016 at the Fantasia Film Festival. While certainly not the fell-good movie of the year, it is definitely one of the best-looking, and may find its way on to a few Top Ten lists.