Lola has just twenty minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks or her boyfriend’s failure to pay off his underworld boss will turn very violent. But all is not lost. Lola (Franke Potente) is not only resourceful. She’s also very, very fast… And her daddy’s a bank manager. But can she convince him in time?
Writer-director Tom Tykwer plays out not one but three possible scenarios in this breathless thriller — imagine Speed crossed with Sliding Doors (or Blind Chance, if you prefer Kieslowski). We can’t help thinking Buster Keaton would have loved this movie, it’s relentlessly inventive, kinetic, and always a step ahead of you.
What a difference a quarter of a century makes! The days of our lives now run on digital kinetic energy. Our stories live in multiverses. Our imaginations hum and click to the mutating magic of technological possibility. When we don’t like reality, we reset it. Run Lola Run foresaw all that, incarnating it in a cinematic fable of destiny that felt like a three-part video game that was playing you. [Tykwer] treats filmmaking like drugs: as a mood enhancer to snort right into your mind’s eye. Run Lola Run was the ultimate feature-length music video to get high on, and maybe it still is.
Owen Gleiberman, Variety (2024)
It’s a furiously kinetic display of pyrotechnics from the director Tom Tykwer, who fuses lightning-fast visual tricks, tirelessly shifting styles and the arbitrary possibilities of interactive storytelling…
Janet Maslin, New York Times
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Tom Tykwer
Franke Potente, Moritz Bleibtru
Germany
1998
In German with English subtitles
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Credits
Producer
Stefan Arndt, Gebhard Henke, Andreas Schreitmüller
Screenwriter
Tom Tykwer
Cinematography
Frank Griebe
Editor
Mathilde Bonnefoy
Original Music
Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, Tom Tykwer
Production Design
Alexander Manasse
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Unforgiven
Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) is face down in pig shit when we first see him. He's a bad farmer, but has a natural facility for killing people – a vocation to which he returns in a quest that combines both profit and justice. Or so he chooses to believe.
Malcolm X
In an indelible role, Denzel Washington give us a layered, compassionate, conflicted man who finds the strength in Islam to transcend his demons and confront the inequity and racism in America head-on. Along with Do the Right Thing, this is Spike Lee's greatest film.
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
A bona fide classic and arguably the greatest Canadian film of the 90s, Girard's dazzling deconstruction of the biopic gives us the mercurial pianist Glenn Gould as Picasso might have rendered him, a cubist portrait combining multimedia vignettes.
Dazed and Confused
The last day of high school in May, 1976: seniors debate party politics while next term's freshmen run the gauntlet of brutal initiation rites, barely comforted by the knowledge that they'll wield the stick one day.
Short Cuts
Altman's adaptation of Raymond Carver short stories, Short Cuts weaves between 8 or 9 overlapping storylines and 22 characters. it's a teeming, caustic and compassionate human comedy; a singularly astringent, often cynical view of America and Americana.
Three Colours: Blue
The first of Kieslowski's acclaimed Three Colours Trilogy, inspired by the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity and the French flag, the Tricolour. Blue stars Juliette Binoche as a young woman grieving her husband and child.
Schindler's List
One of the most acclaimed films of the 90s, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark is the story of a German industrialist whose conscience is stirred to save his Jewish workers from the camps.
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Three Colours: Red
Irène Jacob plays Valentine, a runway model living in Geneva, who crosses paths with a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who's a bit of an eavesdropper. Initially repelled, she becomes intrigued by this man, as do we... Kieslowski's sublime adieu.
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Four Weddings begins with an onslaught of fucks. It's the first signal that this rom-com will break from tradition, despite the ritualized structural conceit described in the title. The witty screenplay is by Richard Curtis — it's still his best.
The Lion King
With its beautifully drawn East African setting, its humour, pathos, and engaging characters, as well as its stirring songs, The Lion King stands as the pinnacle of traditional Disney family entertainment.
Image: © Disney, 1994
To Die For
Buck Henry (The Graduate) wrote this acidic black comedy about a ruthless weather girl on the make (Nicole Kidman in her breakout role). A young Joaquin Phoenix is the dim teen she seduces on her way to achieving stardom.