Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

AstridX "Max" is a tale of two very different young German WWI vets who meet after their fatherland loses the Great War. Of course, it is at this time that the nascent nazi party gains members and power in its quest to seek revenge against the Allies, communists and Jews. John Cusack plays Max, a successful bourgeois Jewish art dealer, formerly-known-as-artist-prior-to-losing-arm-in-WWI. This thoughtful lad ambles on seemingly without a care in these troubled times and befriends a foul, belligerent wanna-be artist named Adolf Hitler, played by an all-around gruesome Noah Taylor. I DO applaud Taylor's acting as he conducts himself as I believe the infamous young AH probably did.This film is riddled with absurdities, and one can only imagine why a happy-go-lucky Jewish art dealer would bother with this asexual bore, whose artistic taste and talents ultimately reveal that he has none. But Max seems relentless to win over the depressed and lost Hitler. (Max truly IS a good egg I must say. Personally, I would welcome his friendship.)As the Prussian anger and resentment toward the Treaty of Versailles' implications and the Jews become increasingly and dangerously pervasive, the story continues with jovial Max encountering in town a very frustrated and scowling Hitler. Max gives a shout with, "Hey Hitler, let me buy you a lemonade!" And off the two go. Puh-leez! AND, to top it off, the lemonade does nothing to lift AH's spirits.A waste of time to see? In my opinion, you bet. On the other hand, if you like a dark comedy, this may be your kind of flick! I wish "MST-3K" could have had a stab at it. That would have been a roar! On that note, do not get me started on the performance art à la stage-set, human-sized meat grinder. Sauve qui peut!Well, you'll suffer no loss if you say "auf wiedersehen" to this film ASAP. Or, you may get some chuckles before pitching the TV Brick. Best of luck to you.

jlinville-603-265207 Someone named holmest-2 entered a user comment fraught with claims of inaccuracies in the film Max. Holmest-2 is most certainly the inaccurate one; I find it implausible that this person has even read a full biography of Hitler unless he includes Mein Kampf as an accurate portrayal of Hitler's life. In the excellent biography The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (by James Cross Giblin), his life as a destitute street person is described. He tried to make it as an artist, was aided by a Jewish art dealer, was known to ramble about various political subjects in the day room of his government paid housing unit. Hitler captivated no one at the beginning. He was, indeed a pathetic loner, who would be befriended and then disappear as if to never get to close to anyone. For several months he was actually living on the streets of Munich. He was also painfully terrified of women and could only idealize them, yet not speak to them. Whatever holmest-2 said about Hitler's life in the immediate post WW 1 era is just plain wrong. To me the film showed Hitler as I had envisioned him in his lost years before he found his voice, his talent, and his vicious, evil inhuman purpose.

interfaithfreedom An excellent project in which Cusack excels, as he almost always does. It catches the sadness and sense of the absurd in the German art scene after the war, although it sometimes looks and feels more like Berlin than Munchen. (Wasn't George Grotz in Berlin in 1918, or was that deliberate artistic license?) In any case, the deeply melancholy undercurrent, combined with the lovely interiors, seems right to me.The film goes seriously off the rails toward the end, and a few central ideas don't work. The idea that modernism included the possibility of German fascism (and specifically the horror of Hitler and the Nazis) as a matter of course is highly subjective. The worst scene is the speech in which Hitler rails at the Jews in a hall, which came across as robotic and unconvincing. Political agitation at that time was a brawling, violent thing, in which the message of anti-Semitic German nationalists was communicated through beating people up as much as through any words. There was an intense atmosphere of systematic violence at those meetings, at least in the early days. Hitler's speech doesn't come close to capturing that, and misses the fact that whereas the far right had been anti-Semitic for a long time, most mainstream Germans had not been exposed to it that much, and thought it rather operatic and not particularly appealing as a political message. They wanted to hear other things, especially about the humiliation of Germany by the Great Powers, with anti-Semitism gaining momentum later in the 1920s. Many people will say that it's wrong to humanize Hitler and the Nazis, but that's wrong. People who make that objection want to believe that there is no Nazi in themselves, that they are completely without the capacity to commit evil. But the Nazi is in all of us, including some Jews who have internalized the aggression once directed against them. To defeat the Nazi that exists in everybody, you have to know that it's there inside you. Only if you know it's there, can you chose not to act on it.This film could be usefully viewed along with two excellent German films about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, a group of idealistic young students and soldiers in Munchen (Munich) that in 1943 tried to overthrow Hitler and paid with their lives. Both movies are available in DVD on Amazon.com with subtitles. Different period, same moral and existential challenges.

Malcolm Taylor "Max" is perhaps one of the most profound films I have ever seen.Max: Where is the work, Hitler? I watched it on my little portable DVD player, expecting to have it on as background. No chance. This movie is riveting from start to finish. It contains an exceptionally brave performance from the young Noah Taylor. John Cusack makes me wish I could be his friend and hang out in his world. He is such a gifted actor, making everything he does seem so natural and effortless. The film is full of great lines: "It's easier to fight a bull from the Barrera." "What was it your brother said about art. Baked Air. Brilliant." To quote just a few.What made this film so relevant to me is that I could identify with the frustrations of the young Hilter as an artist. How he can't get past his own inner barriers to accept art in all its forms. How he is unable to paint his own story and has to destroy his canvasses. This frustration leads him to strive for power and control. Fueled by anger, masking his fear of failure as an artist, he begins his journey in a direction few can continue to identify with.Even as an artist he was more concerned with the trappings of success and fame: to be admired over the influential artists of his era. Yet he didn't put in the time. "Where is the work, Hitler?" "Ernst is up at the crack of dawn." This film is so well observed. For me it serves as a great parable of the artist vs critic debate. Hitler calls politics the new art. And the story seems to let him get away with this unchallenged assertion. But really how can a politician ever be an artist. An artist must be brave enough not to be liked so long as he reveals the truth of human nature. A politician will sacrifice truth in order to be liked by the widest possible demographic. An artist is charged with mining truth to allow us a collective understanding. Where as a politician is a pitch man for a his party's political propaganda. As this movie so deftly shows Hitler to be.I love that line Cusack has quoting Nietzsche, "anti-semitism is the ideology of those who feel cheated." A must see film for anyone who's ever struggled with finding their "true" voice and choosing the harder path in life.