Must See Movie...

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

An absolutely stylish movie! If style is what counts for you, go watch it and start praising Tom Tykwer for his wonderful way of making movies. Tykwer has a respectable sense of colours and he is a master of conveying moods and a notion of drama to his audience. The reason why I do not like his movies is that there is nothing about them which gives them the right to be stylishly dramatic. The stories are simple and not particularly interesting but Tykwer makes us believe they are something special. The moment you realize this is not true marks a rather big disappointment. Winterschläfer has some greatly filmed scenes and pictures, particularly when it comes to combining the beautiful white snow with the very full colours of the characters' cars or clothes. But it's a real pity that these scenes and pictures appear in such a third-rate, meaningless film. The background bears no relation to the magnitude of the pictures. It's the same as with Tykwer's next movie, the world-wide blockbuster Run Lola Run.Admittedly, Tykwer has chosen good actors for this film. Some of them, like Josef Bierbichler, struggle with the terrible screenplay but others, especially Marie-Lou Sellem interprete it in a convincing and fascinating way.

Tom Tykwer is a true visionary. So creative in all his films. Likes to play with odd elements (time and the ever so "what if?" factor)This film is the boy meets girl, boy kills little girl driving car, man gets trapped without transportation in said village.......won't get into it here, there are plenty of reviews everywhere, but if you want a truly surrealistic flic, don't read many reviews or you'll truly spoil the splendor of this flick.

This is the first I have seen of Tom Tykwer's work. In a word, outstanding. This movie has all the necessary elements for a successful production and ensures a completely entertaining evening. The opening (and what an opening!) sets the mood..... A chilly landscape of deep snow with helicopter shots racing across treetops heavily weighed down with a recent fall.....And the music with its tremulous monotone suggests impending drama. I wait expectantly.....Into the picture comes Rene. At first glance an odd-looking guy who suffers from a kind of amnesia. He knows his name and where he lives but can't remember anything else. That's why he photographs every little incident to jog his memory. Laura who works as a hospital nurse agrees he's a bit weird but is fascinated just the same. You get the feeling he's up to something.Her friend Rebecca, an attractive blond who works as a translator is having trouble with her boy friend Marco. He's so possessive. They congregate in Laura's house where much of the dialogue takes place. Rebecca and Marco are continually arguing, falling in and out of love. These scenes are exceptional.In some strange coincidence these four characters are in one way or another involved in the aftermath of a serious accident involving two cars swerving on the slippery highway. In one of the cars a farmer who is taking his horse float to the vet. is knocked unconscious. Later he is unable to convince the police that a second car was involved. So he sets out on a mission to find the other car and the man responsible for the death of his daughter who died in hospital as a result of the accident.Marco the skiing instructor has an eye for the girls and there are some exciting scenes on the ski slopes as they engage the treacherous terrain. It's a matter of "Hold tight!" as the skiers disappear into the foggy atmosphere.The snow bound landscape is for me a most unusual setting for the drama and I enjoyed every exciting minute. The ending left me almost open-mouthed! And I'm not telling!

By now, Tykwer may be tired of having everything he's done measured against his own gold standard, 1998's Run Lola Run. But in this case the comparison is natural, even inevitable, because Winter Sleepers shows Tykwer moving toward audacious, devil-may-care plot contrivances, of which Lola was the epitome--only, he doesn't move far enough in that direction to achieve the kind of success Lola enjoyed. The result is a storyline that is rather unbelievable, but not wildly enough so to make it a kind of cinematic Picasso...but more nearly like the work of a plodding third-rate painter of traditional landscapes who has yet to master perspective, say.But this particular analogy is unfair to WS, which does offer us some quite beautiful visuals; the favorable comparisons made by others to Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter are apropos. The soundtrack is hypnotic in places, and the movie engages the viewer, at least until the next unlikely plot twist.A falling-between-two-stools kind of effort. Still fairly enjoyable though.7/10