Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Faustrecht der Freiheit" or "Fox and His Friends" is a West German German-language film from 1975, so this one had its 40th anniversary last year. The writer and director is German filmmaking infant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder and he was roughly at the age of 30 when he made this 120-minute film back in the 1970s. And I already wrote that I think it may be Fassbinder's most personal film. There seem a lot of parallels to the filmmaker's real life in here and it shows that he put all his heart in it, for example that he was not even scared of full frontal nudity to make Biberkopf/Fox look authentic. This one here came out 5 years before Fassbinder made his successful mini-series "Berlin Alexanderplatz", which is of course also known for its main character Franz Biberkopf, so the name in here is certainly no coincidence. But the thing that hits closest to home is of course the ending because (apart from the location) we see exactly the way the real Fassbinder died. Unfortunately, despite this emotional impact, I never managed to create a lot of interest in the story. I guess this may have to do with me not being the greatest Fassbinder fan, but also with the script, which never seemed really interesting or even edge-of-seat level to me. Fassbinder is nonetheless fun to watch and I still believe he is at least as good of an actor as of a filmmaker, if not better. So with another lead actor than RMF (who lost some weight for his role here), this may have dragged even more. Nonetheless, my verdict overall is thumbs-down. I do not recommend the watch. I guess Fassbinder is just superior with female main characters.

Ben Parker So, this felt completely foreign: being taken into a writer/director's own personal world for the first time. Four gay men play some kind of musical chairs with their relationships, when one of them wins the lottery, things get complicated.I've got to admit, I had no idea what was going on for most of this. I think I must have left the room at exactly the wrong moment, because I seemed to find out about the lottery win way later than I was supposed to. The characters are fascinating. They look at each other look food, ready to gobble them up. The characters who Fox meets are cold and distant, being nasty to him only seems to bring him closer. Fassbinder is effective in the main role, and the whole proceedings are engaging, even if like me you happened to miss the scene where the lottery win happens. Watch for it, though, its important.

d_m_s Thus far I have seen 4 Fassbinder films: Fear Eats the Soul, Effi Briest, Muther Kusters, and FoxAfter seeing Fear Eats the Soul I jumped to the conclusion Fassbinder was a genius and started to work my way through more of his films. It is with regret however, that I have to say I have been continually unimpressed.Fassbinder is an interesting director and I enjoyed much of how Fox was directed. What ruined it for me was the uniformly terrible acting and the most repetitive, banal and juvenile screenplay!El Hedi ben Salem's performance is so poor I actually sniggered at one point during the film. While Fassbinder is interesting to watch (maybe just as a curiosity), he gives a terrible performance in this film, acting like he is in a completely different movie. Regardless of the acting though, it is the screenplay that ruins this film. No character development, exposition through dialogue and the overall point is just way too heavy handed. Yes I get it, Fox is being used for his money. But it goes on and on, forever reiterating the point. Fox is the dumbest character on earth!Well I can't slate such a well respected film maker such as Fassbinder without good reason so I am obliged to detail some of the flaws that made this film so disappointing to me:One annoyance with this film is that a lot of things happen off screen. For example, Fox wins the lottery but it isn't clear when, so for a while I wasn't sure if he'd won the lottery before the film started or during it. A second example of this is when Fox is telling his boyfriend that he is really ill, verging on a breakdown and this has caused him to suffer black outs and chest pains. The thing is, we never got to see any of this. When did it happen?? A quality writer would show a character slowly disintegrating over time. Fassbinder just does it in one scene via dialogue. At no point do we feel he is suffering a breakdown or anything of a sort!Character development is non-existent in this film. When we are introduced to Fox he is shown to be a mysterious, rebellious character. But then he falls in love with a man he's just met and turns in to wimpy, clingy dork in the next scene, without ANY transitional period. It really is as quick as that. They meet in one scene, then are in love the next. And Fox has a complete personality change between the two scenes. To me, that is just bad writing. The characters just chopped and changed to suit what ever was needed to be stated in the heavy-handed storyline.There were other problems. Like, for example, Fox loans money to his partner's business and is paid back in monthly installments. Seems pretty clear, right? Well...then Fox starts working at the company like a regular employee. I assumed he was just helping out because he had a financial interest in the business. Then near the end, Fox's boyfriend tells him he doesn't have to work there and that he can come & go as he pleases. Fox says "I don't understand" and his partner says "I've always told you that". Well, I didn't understand either because at no point was it made clear to the audience that Fox thought he was a regular employee, and at no point had his boyfriend told him he could come & go as he pleased. So I wondered...why had that random piece of information been placed there so late in the film? Well, a couple of scenes later I got my answer, when Fox and his boyfriend have split up and Fox comes to get his loan back. His ex boyfriend then tells Fox that they already paid him back every month over 2 years. So for all this time Fox had apparently thought that the money he was getting each month was his wages?? Which means he thought he was an employee when he wasn't?? Is this really believable???? It was during these scenes that I found out the story had been going on for 2 years. My God, there was no indication of this what-so-ever, I thought it had been taking place over a number of weeks, maybe months at the most! Since there is no proper character development and the scenes are so repetitive, I could not empathise or feel connected to any character, so I didn't care at all for Fox, whom obviously we were meant to care deeply about as he is portrayed in such an OTT sympathetic manner. After the film finished my first thought was "what was the point of that?" It was kinda silly, kinda childish and had characters with no depth. I have to say that if the screenplay for Fox was critiqued properly it would be ripped to shreds!

Mithras-4 One of Fassbinder´s most sad, dramatic films. Very 70´s and interesting. The gay theme must have been very provocative in these times. But if you want to watch another, even more gay film by him, watch his final movie "Querelle" (after the novel "Querelle de Brest" by Jean Genet). For me this one is a ´9´.