The Holdovers

The Holdovers; drama / black comedy, USA, 2023; D: Alexander Payne, S: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Brady Hepner, Ian Dolley, Carrie Preston

History teacher Paul Hunham initially intended to spend his Christmas alone again, but he is stuck taking care of five teenage students who were abandoned at the boarding school Barton Academy. When four of them are picked up by relatives or friends, Paul is left alone with student Agnus, whose mother doesn't want him for the holidays as to spend it with her new rich husband. With the persuasion of school cook Mary, Paul and Agnus take a car trip to Boston to be among people for Christmas. Mary stays with her relatives, while Agnus goes to a mental asylum to see his absent father, who is institutionalized there. Returning back to the boarding school, Agnus' mother is angry because his visit caused his father to become violent, but Paul takes the blame for the decision of visit, and is thus fired. However, he gains respect from Agnus.

"The Holdovers" are an anti-Christmas movie. The holidays are sometimes used in cinema as means to show those characters who have someone to be with during this time, and those who don't have anyone—and since the director Alexander Payne has a very bitter, cynical and pessimistic worldview, he naturally shows the latter less fortunate characters which are avoided in your run-of-the-mill mainstream Christmas movies. Written by David Hemingson ("Pepper Ann"), "The Holdovers" starts off as a very depressing experience where the viewers think history teacher Paul (excellent Paul Giamatti) and student Agnus will be left alone and "stuck" in the empty boarding school for the entire Christmas, but after 40 minutes it luckily "twitches" itself from this grey frequency and becomes more dynamic when the two go out on a car trip to Boston and suddenly start to bond—by the end, it becomes clear that Paul and Agnus are the same person, just in different age. 

Like all of Payne's movies, this one also has no real story, but is instead a 'slice-of-life' character study, composed out of small vignettes and episodes, but all of which unite in the end and reach a point. Paul is another of Payne's outsiders and misanthropes, but a one who accepts that he is alone because he was born ugly—in a conversation with cook Mary, he explains it with determinism: "This is not exactly a face forged for romance". The film also has several great, witty dialogues ("I can't fail this class". - "Oh, don't sell yourself short, Mr. Kountze, I truly believe that you can."; in the museum, Paul goes: "There's nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion... Before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past"; "Do you think I want to be babysitting you? Oh, no, no, I was praying to the god I don't even believe in that your mother would pick up the phone or your father would arrive in a helicopter or a submarine or a flying saucer to take you"). Payne knows better than to craft a typical character arc or redemption lore in the last third, since life doesn't always have big events that change characters fully, yet he granted a rather elegant heart-warming finale regarding Paul's relation with Agnus, congruent to the Christmas spirit. Despite some omission and a rather meandering storyline, "The Holdovers" may be Payne's best film.

Grade:+++

The Master and Margaret

Majstor i Margarita; fantasy satire, Serbia / Italy, 1972; D: Aleksandar Petrović, S: Ugo Tognazzi, Alain Cuny, Mimsy Farmer, Pavle Vuisić, Bata Živojinović, Fabijan Šovagović, Ljuba Tadić, Danilo 'Bata' Stojković

Moscow during the Stalinist dictatorship. Playwright Nikolai Maksudov rehearses his new play about Pontius Pilate, but when the actor playing Jesus Christ says: "Every government is a form of violence against people", theater owner Berlioz cancels the premiere. A woman, Margaret, saw the rehearsal and becomes close with Nikolai. Satan, in the form of gentleman Woland, has his henchmen Azazello and Korovyev eliminate all of Nikolai's opponents: Berlioz dies when he slips and a streetcar cuts off his head; a newspaper critic who wrote a negative review without even seeing the play is attacked by Woland's black cat; Azazello kicks and kills Bobov, who took away Nikolai's apartment. Nikolai is sent to a mental asylum, but is freed by Woland's powers. Woland demonstrates a magic trick in the theater, giving the audience money and clothes, but then taking it away and leaving them naked. The play is reinstated, but Nikolai and Margaret drink Pilate's wine and die.

It is an oddity that the Yugoslav-Italian co-production "The Master and Margaret" by Aleksandar Petrovic is only the 2nd film adaptation of Ukrainian writer Mikhail Bulgakov's eponymous novel that gained cult status—and is a restructuring of "Faust". Several later film adaptations tried to transfer the novel to the screen, but failed creatively. Petrovic's version is shortened and condensed, with several omissions, but still has its moments due to Bulgakov's satirical sharpness when tackling the themes of artistic (self)-censorship, corruption by evil and fear of dictatorships. His main allegory is that, in this edition and setting, Stalin is Satan, here played by the mysterious henchman Woland, who seems to embody the Soviet secret police and their inexplicable whims when attacking people randomly. One hilarious moment appears when Nikolai and Berlioz are arguing in a cafe, Berlioz mentions that "Jesus never existed", and all of a sudden the mysterious stranger Woland opens the door and sits at their table to talk to Berlioz: "If I heard correctly, you said that Jesus never existed?" - "Yes, you heard correctly." - "Bravo, bravo, bravo! Allow me to thank you, from the bottom of my heart!" After the wild conversation, the confused Berlioz leaves the cafe, and Woland turns around to say: "Jesus existed, I saw him. I was there!" Another clever moment appears when Nikolai is interrogated by the committee for his play about Pilate and Jesus, because the text could be used by the enemies, upon which he poses the question: "Why would the truth serve our enemy?" Bulgakov used the novel to appeal to Stalin to leave him alone, to allow him to write without fearing that his art will be banned for not being appropriate. The conclusion feels a bit incomplete and vague, though Woland's magic tricks used on the audience in the finale are so insane and bizarre they have to be seen.

Grade:++

Canary Black

Canary Black; action thriller, UK / Croatia / USA, 2024; D: Pierre Morel, S: Kate Beckinsale, Ray Stevenson, Rupert Friend, Branko Kostić, Ben Miles, Saffron Burrows

Zagreb. Avery Graves is an undercover CIA agent who one days finds her home empty, and her husband David kidnapped by a mysterious group who order her to find a top secret file, "Canary Black", by the end of the day. Avery thus interrogates a CIA detainee and runs away, forcing her superior Hedlund to start a search after her. Avery gets a secret password by tying up the Director of the CIA in the hotel, and downloads "Canary Black": it's a virus program that can destroy all computer systems in each country. The kidnapper, Breznov, uses "Canary Black" to publicly blackmail all countries to transfer 1% of their GDP to his private account or he will unleash the virus. Avery stops him, but finds out David was a double agent who informed Breznov about the virus.

"Canary Black" is a standard and routine, but still effective and dynamic action thriller that works. It tackles the ever actual topics of blackmail and forced choice in the spy world, here untypically set in locations of Zagreb, which gives it a certain spark. Kate Backinsale is here to show off and present how "badass" she is, but she does this with style and charm, and therefore makes the protagonist Avery interesting even during the moments when her decisions don't make any sense. Plot holes appear several times in the story: for instance, criminal Breznov forces Avery to find the "Canary Black" file for him, but when she instead tries to find track down the locaiton of his phone call, he punishes her by setting her a trap in which she enters a room and steps on a mine under the carpet. What is it? Does Breznov want her to find the file or does he want to kill her? Because she barely survives this trap. The chase and shootout sequences are solid, sometimes good, though not that inventive, whereas the dialogue is dry. Humorless and conventional, though the reveal of the purpose of the file virus,a nd the commotion is causes among the heads of state during an international conference is suspensful, whereas the plot twist at the end arrives unexpected.

Grade:++

The Man Who Fell to Earth

The Man Who Fell to Earth; art-film / science-fiction drama, UK, 1976; D: Nicolas Roeg, S: David Bowie, Candy Clark, Rip Torn, Buck Henry

A humanoid alien arrives to New Mexico. He appears as an Englishman, Thomas Jerome Newton, and sells rings at a pawn shop to get money. With the money, he hires lawyer Farnsworth to patent a self-developing film and found the World Enterprise Corporation, earning more than 300 million $. Newton accumulates more wealth through his patents, to finance a spaceship that he will pilot to bring Earth's water to his dying home planet, a desert, where his wife and two kids await. Newton starts a relationship with a hotel assistant Mary-Lou and beecomes addicted to alcohol. The US government finds out he is an alien and abducts him, performing tests on him in a laboratory. When they cannot find anything, Newton is released. Scientist Bryce tracks down Newton who made a recording of radio signals and is selling them in a store. Newton is stuck as a human on Earth.

Walking a fine line somewhere between ambitious and pretentious, challenging and autistic, cryptic and incomprehensible, Nicolas Roeg's surreal sci-fi art-film "The Man Who fell to Earth" still seems modern today, but not that fresh. Long before the wave of movies about aliens visiting Earth in the 80s, such as "E.T.", "The Brother from Another Planet" and "Starman", this cult film depends a lot on the inclination and taste of the viewers, since those expecting classical narration will like it less, yet despite Roeg's experimental editing playing with ellipses, the story seems mostly consistent from today's perspective. For instance, in the opening act, we see the alien Newton (a very good David Bowie) selling a ring at a pawn shop. Cue to next scene where Newton gives a large number of cash to a patent lawyer to patent a new invention. Cue to next scene where a couple is playfully kissing and cuddling, they make a photo, and instantly the self-developing film shows their photos. Despite some gaps, everything is perfectly clear so far: Newton uses his alien technology to create a company with new inventions and accumulate himself wealth, with the ultimate goal of transporting water to his dying desert planet. All this is, ultimately, congruent and logical: the disorienting approach is there to show the perspective of this alien in a foreign world, and transmit this "weird" feeling through unusual editing and framing. 

Roeg, though, is very honest with intimate scenes, and thus the love moments between a naked Newton and Mary-Lou (a fantastic and underrated Candy Clark) feel so genuine. The movie abounds with bizarre moments. Sometimes, maybe even too much. Around 45 minutes into the film, Newton is driving in a car with Mary-Lou talking, while he has a random flashback to his home planet, a desert with himself, his wife and two little kids in spacesuits, and a yellow triangle house with a nylon above. The two best sequences are the one where Newton emerges from the bathroom naked, finally revealing his alien body, with a silver skin, bald head and hypnotizing yellow eyes, as Mary-Lou is so freightened she runs away. However, she stops in the hallway, he passes by and there is a close up of her urinating from fear. He lies in bed, and Mary-Lou takes her clothes off and still goes towards him, nontheless. She longs being close to him, regardless who or what he is. In the other, the patent lawyer is thrown out from the window of the skyscrapper, and the camera spins around its axis as it follows his body falling from the sky—cut to a match cut of another scene of a man falling into the swimming pool. The final act is a disppointment, though. We needed more of a punchline than the anticlimactic ending we got. One interpretation of the story is maybe a symbol for every human being born on Earth: every child is an "alien" and the world is new and strange to them, and then undergoes all the phases of process of life (finding a job, gaining independence, love, success, alcoholism, betrayal, failure, acceptance of decay). Overall, though, the main theme still stands—a person passively accepting misery and disappointment as something inevitable in life. 

Grade:+++

I'll Do Anything

I'll Do Anything; drama / comedy, USA, 1994; D: James L. Brooks, S: Nick Nolte, Whittni Wright, Albert Brooks, Joely Richardson, Julie Kavner, Tracey Ullman, Jeb Brown, Chelsea Field, Ian McKellen, Anne Heche, Vicki Lewis

Los Angeles. Matt is still a struggling actor going to auditions just to get rejected every time. He goes to pick up his 6-year old daughter Jeannie from his ex-wife, and has to take care of her. Film producer Burke allows Matt to have a screen test, but after it fails, Burke hires him as his driver. Matt starts a relationship with Burke's script reader Cathy. Inadvertently, Jeannie gets cast in a sitcom, and Matt gives her acting advice, thereby strengthening their father-daughter relationship.

Compared to the three excellent films he directed in the 20th century ("Terms of Endearment", "Broadcast News", "As Good as It Gets"), it seems the ambitions of screenwriter and director James L. Brooks dropped a bit in his 3rd film "I'll Do Anything", but he still has enough skills to create characters whose likeability alone is enough to become a virtue on its own. Nick Nolte has no sense for a comic timing, which inhibits the comedy side of the storyline, and the relationship between Matt and his 6-year daughter Jeannie is not that interesting—but the tantalizing satirical segment revolving around the Hollywood system works, whereas outbursts of Brooks' pure genius manifest occasionally in some fantastic dialogues. For instance, in one scene Matt is talking with his ex-wife on the phone, who is shouting at him, until he snaps: "I can scream too, you know!" When Matt finally goes to pick up his daughter after not seeing her for two years, his ex-wife berates him: "Why are you sending her letters when you know she can't read?" In the Hollywood studio, there is this exchange between a man and a woman: "We're development executives. We're the people you want to be." 

A small surprise here is Julie Kavner, the voice actress of Marge Simpson, as Nan, who gives one heck of a speech to the arrogant film producer Burke: "No woman has ever told you that you have an almost barbaric insensitivity? That you seem to have lapsed into some sort of final cynicism where you actually believe that not only does everyone think the way you do, but only you have the courage to express it? That you seem horribly certain that everyone else is only pretending when they talk about love... I am here for the same reason that 86% of older women love Beauty and the Beast. I would like to believe that underneath the creature there’s a sweet caring guy." The movie takes a sly jab at Hollywood studios at times—in one of the most painful and unforgettable, Matt does a great screen test, but then producer Burke asks the women watching the tape if they would go to bed with Matt. When they say no, Matt is excluded from further consideration for the film role. Brooks doesn't care that much about the plot or the narrative or the style as much as he cares about creating wonderful characters and dialogues, a 'slice-of-life' emotional collection. In this edition, he is a bit overstretched and without a clear focus. "As Good as It Gets" is the better film. But the moment where Matt goes to Cathy's (excellent Joely Richardson) apartment to do a read-through of the script, they sit on the couch, and then she suddenly leans towards him and randomly kisses his nose, is so sweet it could easily fit as a missing scene in "As Good as It Gets", showing that even some of the lesser artists' works carry the seeds of greatness in them.

Grade:++

Captain Conan

Capitaine Conan; war drama, France, 1996; D: Bertrand Tavernier, S: Philippe Torreton, Samuel Le Bihan, Bernard Le Coq, François Berléand, Catherine Rich

Macedonian Front, World War I. Captain Conan leads a French Army unit to attack the Bulgarian Army behind the trenches. After the end of the war, the army boards a train to Bucharest and settles there, waiting for further instructions. Faced with nothing to do, the soldiers lack discipline and steal from the locals, but Conan always defends them in front of his superiors. Officer Norbert becomes the prosecutor assigned to investigate the offences, and scorns Conan for having an affair with a woman, and then throwing out her husband down the stairs, who broke his knee. Disguised soldiers rob a night club, and are arrested and sentenced mildly. Young soldier Erlane deserted and is accused of giving the Bulgarian Army secret information about the position of the French on the front, and is also convicted. The army is sent east, to join the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, fighting Bolsheviks. After the war, Norbert meets Conan again, who is back doing his old haberdasher job, and who is diagnosed to have only six months to live due to an illness.

"Captain Conan" is a rather disjointed depiction of the lives of soldiers: the opening and the ending segments (with a combined running time of 30 minutes) show the battle part of their profession, while the whole middle segment (100 minutes) shows the boring part of their job, when they have to wait in Bucharest for months for further instructions, yet their boredom kind of contaminated this overlong and overstretched bulk of the movie itself. The most was achieved out of the main actor, the hyper-energetic Philippe Torreton as the title character, who minimizes and covers up the looting of the soldiers during peacetime, assuming that they are conditioned to be warriors on the front, and that such instincts cannot just go away when they get back to the normal life. Some of the lines are good ("What is your idea of a victory?" - "When I can raise my head up and walk everywhere without having to fear that it will get blown up"; "Did you steal the farmer's chicken?" - "Yes, but I returned it cooked!"; "The Germans had better uniforms than you." - "Well, we still kicked the Germans' butts with these uniforms"), but the movie is mostly too talkative and with conventional dialogue, exhausting with too much babble and always the same repetitions of variations of Conan defending his soliers in front of other officers. Allegedly, the battle sequence were unrehearsed, and thus they feel incredibly kinetic and energetic, since the actors didn't know what to do, giving them a feeling of real-life chaos. For instance, a soldier arrives at the hill to give Conan a letter with orders, but as he is about to leave, suddenly an explosion goes off in front of him, so he dodges right. A bonus is a rare film depiction of the Allied intervention against Communists in the Russian Civil War at the end. Like most of film directed by Bertrand Tavernier, this one is also good, but there is still something missing to be considered a true classic of great cinema, some focused inspiration that would align all these random episodes into a tight whole.

Grade:++

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; war drama, Japan / UK / New Zealand, 1983; D: Nagisa Oshima, S: David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano, Jack Thompson

Java, World War II. The Imperial Japanese Army is running a POW camp for British prisoners, under the supervision of Captain Yonoi. Lieutenant Lawrence knows Japanese and is thus used for translation, and is friends with Japanese officer Hara. Major Jack Celliers is accused of guerilla activity and subjected to a mock execution, but he doesn't flinch, which brings him the fascination of Yonoi. When a radio is smuggled inside the camp, the Japanese send Lawrence and Celliers to a prison, but Hara releases them for Christmas. When Yonoi wants to excute a British officer, Celliers makes a step forward and kisses Yonoi, who faints. The new commander buries Celliers up to his neck in sand, and the latter dies from the heat. After the war, Lawrence visits Hara, sentenced to death by a Tribunal.

A thematically similar "twin" to Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai", Nagisa Oshima's prisoner-of-war drama "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", based on the memoirs of Laurens van der Post, is an analysis of the inner conflict between two groups (in this case, the British prisoners and their Japanese guards) as a synecdoche for the wider observations of such manifestation in war in general, where one side wants to dominate the other. Some of the quotes have merit ("They were a nation of anxious people and they could do nothing individually. So they went mad en masse."; "You are the victim of men who think they are right... Just as one day you and captain Yunoi believed absolutely that you were right. And the truth is of course that nobody is right"). The two main actors—pop stars David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto—were probably deliberately chosen for their roles for their lack of acting experience, to bring across how "out of place" their two characters are in the war, and who would rather be doing something else during peacetime, but the movie still failed to bring a more articulated point across, whereas it feels way too overstretched in its running time of two hourse. Some of the random moments of shocking violence and cruelty startle the viewers, most notably in the lingering sequence where the Japanese Army forces a man who failed to perform "harakiri", and who has a bandage over his stomach, to "finish the job", so the man takes a knife and takes a long time to stab himself in the abdomen area, whereas one of the prisoners is so shocked he bites part of his own tongue while fainting. These kind of moments weren't really necessary in the story, and fail to be anything more than cheap shots at shock attention, whether or not this was based on real events. The storyline meanders across several directions, not really knowing where it is going nor what it wants to say, but Oshima has a sense for some aesthetic shot compositions (for instance, the blue filter of night scenes) and shows irony in the ending where the tables are switched and the situation between prisoners and guards has been turned upside down. 

Grade:++

The Apprentice

The Apprentice; satire, Canada / Denmark / Ireland / USA, 2024; D: Ali Abbasi, S: Sebastin Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Charlie Carrick, Catherine McNally

New York City, 1 9 7 0s. Rent collector Donald Trump meets lawyer Roy Cohn and persuades him to represent his family in a lawsuit filled by the federal government that alleges his father Fred Trump discriminates against Black people by renting mostly to White tenants. Cohn blackmails an official to make the lawsuit go away. Trump wants to re-build the Commodore into Hyatt hotel on East 42nd Street, and Cohn is able to blackmail officials into giving him a tax abatement, thereby making the investment profitable. Cohn mentors Trump that he needs to be willing to do "anything to anyone" to be a success. Trump marries Czech model Ivana and builds the Trump Tower, gaining a fortune. With time, Trump falls out with Cohn, dismissing him as a loser. Cohn dies of AIDS. Trump hires a writer to write a book, "The Art of the Deal".

A biopic on the early days of the Razzie Award Winner for Worst Supporting Actor Donald Trump, "The Apprentice" is a dark satire on abandoning any scruples and doing anything for success. The director Ali Abbasi directs the movie conventionally, but efficiently, with no empty walk, presenting the first half in an objective, restrained way, almost with a human dimension, showing Trump as insecure, humble and struggling, while the second half becomes its exact opposite, a clinical, cynical depiction of a cold Trump-businessman whose only goal is to earn more and more money. "The Apprentice" is an 'origin story' in which the ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn is depicted mentoring a young Trump into becoming ruthless to succeed, giving a philosophy where victory and success are the meaning of life. He will sell his soul for success, but doesn't realize what kind of a system he is invoking—an economy based on endless cruelty. Jeremy Strong gives an excellent and energetic performance as Cohn, while Sebastian Stan also delivers a very good performance, but he does not physically resemble Trump that much, and his voice is not that close to Trump's voice. Maria Bakalova is also powerful as Trump's first wife, Ivana. 

"The Apprentice" starts with a sly archive footage of former US President Richard Nixon holding a speech: "I've made my mistakes, but in all my years in public life, I have never profited from public service... And in all my years of public life, I've never obstructed justice... I welcome this kind of examination. Because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook". In one sequence, as Trump visits Cohn's apartment, he observes photos in which Cohn is seen with many famous people, so they have these dialogues: "How do you mix with all these people?" - "Everybody wants to suck a winner's cock". In another sequence, after blackmailing an official with photos of his gay relationship, and ordering him to make a lawsuit "go away", Cohn says to Trump: "You played sports? They probably taught you to play the ball, not the man. But you see, in reality, it's the total opposite. You play the man, not the ball... This is a nation of men, not laws. There is no right and wrong. There is no morality. There is no truth with a capital T. It's a construct, it's a fiction, it's man-made. None of it matters except winning. That's it." A sobering, nihilistic and sharp psychological analysis of the mentality of success under any cost, and the interwoven link between capitalism, blackmail, bribery and corruption—as well as success being used for therapy for some people's personal neurosis—but the ending feels incomplete and abrupt, failing to bring a more articulated point in the final scene.

Grade:++

The Spy

The Spy; thriller series, France / USA, 2019; D: Gideon Raff, S: Sacha Baron Cohen, Noah Emmerich, Hadar Ratzon Rotem, Alexander Siddig, Waleed Zuaiter, Nassim Lyes, Yael Eitan, Saïd Amadis, Hassam Ghancy

Tel Aviv, 1 9 6 1. After the Syrian Army strikes Israeli farmers again from the Golan Heights, Mossad official Dan decides to recruit office clerk Eli Cohen, an Egyptian Jew, to spy in isolated Syria. Lying to his wife Nadia that he is going for business abroad, Eli assumes a fake identity as Kamel Amin Thaabet, an importer-exporter born in Buenos Aires to deceased Syrian emigrants. Establishing contacts with Syrian emigrants, he gets a visa and travels by ship from Buenos Aires to Beirut, and from there to Damascus. He rents an apartment and makes friends with politicians and military, including the alcoholic lieutenant Ma'azi Zahreddine, the nephew of the Syrian commander-in-chief Abdul Karim Zahreddine, who shows him the Golan Heights and Syrian underground bunkers. When the Ba'ath Party takes over in a coup d'etat, Kamel bribes his way into their ranks, all the way sending telegraph messages back to Israel. Syrian intelligence agent Suidani is able to detect Kamel is Eli, a spy, and thus has him executed. 

Thriller series "The Spy" is a story composed out of pure intelligence. It takes the viewers inside this spy world, but it is all done with such a sophistication, finesse, prepared directorial strategy and delicate care that the audience is in the end engaged more intellectually than by simple suspense or thrills. There is sometimes no need to invent stories when history already has so many fascinating true events at disposal, and the case of Israeli spy Eli Cohen who took on the fake identity as Kamel Amin Thaabet and infiltrated not only the reclusive Syria, but also bribed himself to rise through the ranks into the Damascus government, is one of the most incredible life stories of the 20th century. As much as comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is known for his comic creations of Borat and Ali G, this dramatic role might remain as his finest acting performance. The writer and director Gideon Raff engages thanks to several clever details: for instance, a Mossad operative is instructing Eli about his equipment as a spy—a hand mixer device has a double bottom that can open, revealing pieces of the telegraph devices which can then be assembled and used to send radio signals back to Israel. He also gives Eli a cyanide bottle to have, just in case. 

Upon arriving at Damascus, Eli, now under the alias of Kamel, seemingly randomly walks the streets and leaves some coins every day to a street vendor, buying his newspapers regularly. He also buys every kitchen table from a company. Eli then hides microfilm with photos he made inside the hollow parts of the table legs, wraps them all up in newspapers, and sends them for shippment, since he works as an importer-exporter. The Mossad office then receives not only the microfilm inside these tables, but also valuable info in the Syrian newspapers. In episode 4, Eli gets a golden opportunity to go to the Golan Heights, a demilitarized zone, thanks to his friend, lieutenant Ma'azi. The military bases are under ground, and thus the Israelis do not know where they are hidden. Upon exiting said bunker, Eli feigns that the soldiers at the entrance must be exhausted from the Sun, so he arranges that high trees are planted above them, ostensibly for shade. Cue to Mossad agents observing with binoculars the newly planted trees, happily concluding how their secret targets are now at full display and marked in plain sight. Eli Cohen is such a fascinating character because of all these little details: he is small, alone in enemy territory, yet can achieve so much using his intelligence, meticulously planning so much, disguising his every ploy as innocent action. A shining spy series, one of the best Netflix shows of the decade, concise and without a single empty scene (the entire series has only six episodes), giving a valuable and rare insight into the Syrian-Israeli relations and society of that time, whereas even the dialogues ("You're insulting me with your luck"; Eli and Julia's exchange: "Kamel is not married. Eli is married" - "There is no Eli." - "It just sometimes helps me feel a bit less lonely" - "Kamel doesn't get lonely;" "I am in the presence of real Syrian soldier. A one who tonight single-handedly defeated two whole bottles of votka") and visual style have inspiration (in episode 5, a TV set in the center is divided between a split screen, featuring a soccer game for both a Mossad agent on the left and Eli on the right side of the frame), meaning that "The Spy" can be analyzed and praised from any perspective.

Grade:++++

The Concert

Koncert; drama, Croatia, 1954; D: Branko Belan, S: Nada Škrinjar, Viktor Bek, Branko Špoljar, Miroslav Petrović, Mirna Stopić

Zagreb. A group of music students arrives at a Kaptol apartment and bring a piano with them, where they find the former piano player Ema, now reclusive. Her story: in 1 9 1 4, Ema is a little girl and likes to play the piano of the store owner for employs her mother, the cleaning lady. As the news of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand spreads, the store owner sells the piano, Ema wants to stop the sale, but people accidentally drop the piano on her, breaking her hip and leaving her with a limp... 1 9 2 2. Ema plays a piano and is spotted by piano teacher Berislav across the next building, but since she limps, she decides to not go on a date with him... 1 9 2 9. Ema and a band of three other musicians is summoned during a rainy night to play after the wedding of Jurica and Greta, but one of the guests bought a radio so he doesn't want to waste money on live music... 1 9 4 1. During World War II, Ema spots Berislav being chased and shot by the Ustashe. Back in present, Ema collapses on the piano.

Included in a film critics' poll as one of the 10 best Croatian films of all time, Branko Belan's "The Concert" is still a notch below all this hype, dazzling more with its modern style of flashbacks, but underwhelming in its drama parts and emotions. Told as a series of four flashbacks in the life of a tragic piano player, Ema (a solid Nada Skrinjar), the movie is surprising in denying Ema her due as the main protagonist, and instead pushes her in the background, only as a passive observer of events, until the viewers feel as if she is the supporting character in her own lifestory. This imbalance wrecks "The Concert". The director Belan has a sense for some fine directed moments: for instance, when Ema, as a little girl, observes a newspaper reporter typing on the typewriter, there is an association dissolve to a scene of two hands playing the piano keyboard. In another story, while limping slightly, the grown-up Ema spots a disabled man, barely walking with a cane on the streets holding on to the hand of another man, while later the camera zooms in to a close up of a random woman observing the limping Ema in the same pitiful manner, whereby the movie says everything the viewers need to know about why she would all of a sudden be ashamed to go on a date with Berislav. The best sequence is the one in the fourth story, where Ema is in a bar, observing a singer and a piano player, the camera zooms in on Ema's face and then there is a flashback to a brilliantly directed sequence of her playing the piano on stage at the national theater, wearing a wedding dress, imagining all the people she knew from her life to be in the audience. The leitmotive of a piano influencing her life and emotional state throughout her lifetime is clever and well made, implying the fatalism of destiny, yet overall one wishes Ema was the leading catalyst of the story, and not just the mechanical toy of this fatalism, whereas some random moments of episodic characters lead nowhere (for instance, Edmund, convicted of embezzlement, or his deranged father, a retired military official, committing suicide in the bathtub).

Grade:++