Past Lives

Past Lives; romantic drama, USA / South Korea, 2023; D: Celine Song, S: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Ji-Hye Yoon

Seoul. The 12-year olds Na Young and Hae Sung develop a crush on each other, but Na Young's family just then decides to emigrate to Toronto. Na Young adopts a new Canadian name: Nora. 12 years later, Nora, now living as a writer in New York City, resumes contact with Hae via Facebook, and they have video calls, as he is still in Seoul. However, Nora asks for a pause, and as she meets a fellow writer, Arthur, at a writing course, she forgets about Hae. Nora marries Arthur and secures herself a Green Card. 12 years later, Hae travels to New York, and Nora meets him in person, with consent from Arthur. Hae and Nora talk about what could have been, and he departs.

Loosely based on her own experience, Celine Song's feature length debut film is a surprisingly touching, emotional, delicate and restrained romantic drama about unrequited love and a couple that is already in a relationship with someone else, in the vein of "Brief Encounter" and "In the Mood for Love". It's a minimalist story, scarce and poor with content, and thus overall overstretched—in a way, it would have been more suited for a short film than a feature. The concept is thin and underwritten, almost banal, but one simply has to admire its pure dedication to two soulmates, far away from any cynicism or nihilism in the time it was made. It's a rare film that believes solely in its own idealistic concept of humanity, without any gimmicks, and the leading actress Greta Lee is excellent as Nora. There is a fantastic little comfy sequence around 70 minutes into the film, where Arthur and his wife Nora are lying in bed, as he talks about how unusual the situation is that her childhood sweetheart is coming to visit her in New York ("I was just thinking about what a good story this is". - "The story of Hae Sung and me?" - "Yeah. I just can't compete". - "What do you mean?" - "Childhood sweethearts who reconnect 20 years later only to realize they were meant for each other". - "We're not meant for each other". - "I know. In the story, I would be the evil white American husband standing in the way of destiny"). Since they are both writers, there is something fascinating in the literate and mature way they talk—Arthur knows what is going on, but he is simply too educated to be jealous, and instead shows understanding. Juggling with Korean immigrants in the US, and the upheaval it causes in their relationships, Song created a half-fascinating film—it lacks something, and yet, as it is, it also has something that its missing ingredients lack themselves: humanism.

Grade:++

The Diary of Paulina P.

Dnevnik Pauline P.; comedy, Croatia, 2023; D: Neven Hitrec, S: Katja Matković, Judita Franković Brdar, Borko Perić, Igor Kovač, Aria Dunda, Ramona Ivanda

Paulina P. is a 9-year old girl from the 3C class in Zagreb. She lives with her mom and dad, an aspiring physicist who wants to disprove Einstein's theory of relativity. Paulina encounters several adventures: their class receives a new teacher; an abandoned house is rumored to host ghosts, but she instead finds a puppy inside and adopts him for her birthday; a new popular girl arrives in class, Ana, and Paulina hates her, but eventually becomes her friend; Paulina orders her boyfriend to take her out ice skating for Valentine's Day... When her mom and dad argue and break up, Paulina conjures up a plan to make them up again by renovating the abandoned house to be her dad's private workroom. The plan fails, but her parents do make up in the end.

The film adaptation of Sanja Polak's eponymous novel, "The Diary of Paulina P." is a solid, albeit underwhelming comedy that works as some sort of a lesser version of "Pepper Ann". As it is the problem with most of kids movies, "Paulina" also seems too naive, kitschy and unrealistic at times, without sharpness or spice, occasionally dangerously coming close to the synthetic feel of "Pippi Longstocking", and thus this type of humor will feel outdated as soon as the kids in the movie grow up, whereas the leading actress Katja Matkovic delivers a stiff and mechanical performance. Nonetheless, there is still some good moments of "universal" humor that manages to liven up the film. The story is episodic, more like a 'slice-of-life' set of vignettes without a clear storyline, but some of the episodes have charm. The best joke is a one with surreal sharpness: Paulina reveals her plan to the mother of her teacher as to how she plans to make up her parents, by renovating an abandoned house to be her dad's new workroom. A random house painter accepts the task and goes on to start work, and on his way he picks up another handyman, who in turn persuades over a dozen people at a cafe to enter his van and help. A dozen housepainters and handymen thus gather at the abandoned house to start work. Paulina shows up with her parents there, but the abandoned house is still derelict. Nontheless, Paulina accepts a pizza delivery and bonds with her parents, who make up. Cue to the house painter observing from the bushes and talking with other handymen: "Paulina must be angry that we didn't do aynthing with the abandoned house." - "How could we? We're just characters in her imagination!" Another amusing scene is when a boy randomly asks Paulina if he can sit next to her during the bus trip, and she has this thought: "Whenever someone falls in love with me, I immediately fall in love with him!" Despite a too neat construction, the film is still moderately fun to watch and has some good chronicles from the kids' experiences in elementary school.

Grade:++

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog; fantasy action comedy, USA / Japan, 2024; D: Jeff Fowler, S: Ben Schwartz (voice), Colleen O'Shaughnessey (voice), Keanu Reeves (voice), Idris Elba (voice), Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Lee Majdoub, Natasha Rothwell, Krysten Ritter

A super-fast anthropomorphic hedgehog, Shadow, escapes after being frozen for 50 years in a secret military compound. He teams up with insane scientist Gerald Robotnik, the grandfather of Dr. Ivo Robotnik, who thus in turn joins them. Sonic, Knuckles and Tails unite to try to stop them from finding a secret key needed to complete a dangerous space station with devastating laser capacity. Gerald uses Shadow to power the space station and announces he intends to destroy the entire Earth, as revenge for his granddaughter Maria who died when Shadow tried to escape from the compound and was chased by soldiers. Robotnik thus joins forces with Sonic, Knuckles and Tails to stop Gerald. Robotnik diverts the laser away from Earth and dies in the explosion of the space station, together with Shadow. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles return to Earth.

Compared to the very fun part 2, the third film in the "Sonic the Hedgehog" film franchise is a small disappointment. It still has a few amusing jokes, but this time with too much empty walk spread out between them, and generic, standard action to fill out the missing ingredients. Thus, a certain creative apathy is sensed in the story. Comedian Jim Carrey seems to be playing a different Robotnik character in each "Sonic" film, and this time he even plays a double role as his own grandpa, Gerald Robotnik. In one of the best jokes, Dr. Robotnik "breaks the fourth wall" when he stands next to his grandpa Gerald, and as they both turn their heads towards the camera, they say: "It's as if we're two characters in a movie, played by the same actor!" In another good joke, after Sonic escapes with Knuckles and Tails from inside a secret base inside a hill, which collapses onto itself from a mini black hole, leaving a crater, he comments with: "We need to inform Google maps". 

The highlight is a sequence in the middle of the film when Maddie and Tom disguise themselves and Rachel and Randall to try to enter the top secret London building, but when they don't have a security clearance to pass, Rachel has this hilarious exchange with the security guard: "Let me introduce myself. I'm Rachel. Rachel gonna-get-you-fired. Do you know what GUN stands for?" - "Of course, Guardian Union..." - "No! Getting Ultra Nasty... Go ahead and take those sad fingers and start typetty type-type!" Unfortunately, "Sonic 3" needed more of such inspired moments, since the rest is mostly a schematic sequel on autopilot, with a rather pretentious and bombastic action finale, equipped with one dumb, autistic buffoonery (Gerald using robot claws and scorpio tale, while Robotnik is using praying mantis robot claws to fight each other), whereas the characters of Tom and Maddie and underused and forgotten. Uneven and overstretched, the movie is this time much more powerful during its dramatic moments (the relationship between Maria and Shadow), though it does offer a neat contemplation of a mental fight between nihilistic self-destruction and optimistic-constructive faith in humanity. 

Grade:++

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Sonic the Hedgehog 2; fantasy action comedy, USA / Japan, 2022; D: Jeff Fowler, S: Ben Schwartz (voice), Idris Elba (voice), Colleen O'Shaughnessey (voice), Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell

While in exile on the mushroom planet, the evil Dr. Robotnik manages to create a laser beam which causes a creature from another dimension to appear, Knuckles, a red-colored anthropomorphous hedgehog and enemy of Sonic the hedgehog. They join forces and attack Sonic in his American home in Green Hills, but he is rescued by Tails, a fox that observed him. Knuckles want to obtain an emerald with great powers, and thus Sonic and Tails try to find it first. Sonic and Tails go to Hawaii for help from Sonic's friend Tom, who attends the wedding of Maddie's older sister Rachel. When the emerald is found in the middle of a town revealed by the retreat of part of the ocean, Robotnik takes its powers and uses it to create and giant robot in order to take over the world. Knuckles realizes he was deceived, so he teams up with Sonic and Tails to stop Robotnik. 

"Sonic the Hedgehog 2" is one of the best video game film adaptations: unexpectedly hilarious, full of creative outbursts in a whole array of jokes, likeable characters, all in a rare sequel better than the original. Writers for hire for sequels are a dime a dozen, but this represents a rare example where the writers (Pat Casey, Josh Miller, John Whittington) were on such an insane level of comedy spree that they almost reached the levels of Monty Pythons and the Marx Brothers at times, having a blast with the playful story. Likewise, Jim Carrey as the villain Dr. Robotnik is still able to extract enough comic tricks in the film. In the opening, for instance, Sonic appears as some sort of pseudo-Batman figure who descends from the top of a building in tune to the song "It's Tricky" by Run Dmc to pursue the van of bank robbers, and since the breaks don't work, Sonic simply uses a power tool and his super-speed to dismantle the entire vehicle, until only an empty platform with the criminal on top slowly grinds to a halt in front of an ice cream store, which is a pretty clever idea. 

In another joke, when Dr. Robotnik returns back to Earth from exile, his henchman, who has been working an unsatisfying job at a cafe (he makes high art of detail-painted face of Dr. Robotnik on the foam of a cappuccino, but a customer just ignores it and uses his spoon to stir the cup before drinking it), closes the store, and just to make sure nobody will show up, changes the sign of the sanitary inspection notice from "A" to "F-", while Robotnik gets back in shape by using his two miniature drones to clean his nose with a laser. One insane gag has Sonic and Tails show up at a tavern that is so full of shaddy characters that a seemingly normal looking grandma knits a sweater with a skull on it, while a fisherman hacks the head of a fish which falls in front of the two protagonists, and randomly says: "Run" (!). The highlight: the spectacular way Sonic and Tails interrupt the Hawaii wedding of Maddie's sister Rachel in the middle of the film—but then another plot twist appears on top of this sequence, which gives it an extra dimension of humor as a cherry on top, in a moment that is both stunning and unexpected. The flaw is the convoluted story in search for some emerald that gives its owner super powers, which feels rather chaotic and unfocused, as well as the overlong running time of 120 minutes, whereas the finale lost its inspiration and settled only for a routine, standard action fight against Robotnik's giant robot. Nontheless, "Sonic 2" is a fresh, energetic, smooth and good-natured comedy film full of positive energy, and the viewers enjoy in its ride.  

Grade:+++

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Čovjek koji nije mogao šutjeti; historical drama short, Croatia / France / Slovenia / Bulgaria, 2024; D: Nebojša Slijepčević, S: Goran Bogdan, Alexis Manenti, Martin Kuhar, Dragan Mićanović

Štrpci, Bosnia, 1 9 9 3. A train from Serbia stops unexpectedly at the site, and a Serb paramilitary enters and asks for everyone for their identity documents. A man in the train compartment obliges and remains silent when a paramilitary soldier asks a young lad without documents if he is a Bosniak. Just then another passanger, Tomo Buzov, a retired officer, intervenes and orders the young lad to remain seated, while he stands up and is taken away by the paramilitary and other Bosniak passangers out on the field. The train then continues its journey.

The first film adaptation about the Štrpci massacre, Nebojsa Slijepcevic's short film "The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent" unravels like a modern contemplation about passivity and integrity when faced with a crisis situation, as well as the 'bystander apathy effect'. A concise, quality and minimalist film that starts off with a train stopping unexpectedly, and a man (Goran Bogdan) observing through the window what is happening—everything is only hinted at (a paramilitary unit boards the train and asks passangers for documents; military trucks seen through the window), but the suspense is subtly growing, and the build-up is exquisite, since everything is clear. The paramilitary soldier asks the protagonist: "What do you celebrate?" When the man replies with "6 May", the soldier let's him off the hook, since it is the Serb-Orthodox holiday of Đurđevdan (Saint George's Day, as opposed to the Catholics who celebrate it on 23 April), but then starts harassing a young lad without any documents. And then the real hero stands up, Tomo Buzov (excellent Dragan Micanovic), who protests and defends the lad: "I'm a retired officer. What kind of an army are you supposed to be? You just remain seated!"—his idealistic stance and act of kindness, almost as some sort of a knight, is magnificent and offers that forgotten awe from the power of heroism. However, Slijepcevic made a strategic error by not depicting neither the execution of these passangers nor the sound of shooting. Instead, the train just resumes its trip, the man from the beginning smokes a cigarette, the end. Ultimately, at 13 minutes, the movie is too short for such a topic, and is missing the second half, the murder. Another flaw is that Tomo is the supporting character in his own story, which feels somewhat unbalanced and with undue weight.

Grade:++

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:++