Schtonk!

Schtonk!; satire, Germany, 1992; D: Helmut Dietl, S: Götz George, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Christiane Hörbiger, Veronica Ferres, Harald Juhnke

Hamburg. Fritz Knobel doesn't earn much money for his paintings, but earns a lot for inventing Nazi memorabilia, a hobby he started since he was a 9-year and sold a fake Hitler's visor cap to an American soldier. Fritz secretly cheats on his wife Biggi with model Martha, who poses while he makes a painting of Eva Braun using her naked body. Fritz sells it to the rich Lentz, and later even makes a forgery of the last volume of Hitler's diary. Slimy reporter Hermann Willie buys the diary for his newspaper, "HH". Smelling a fortune, Fritz starts writing earlier volumes of Hitler's diaries, all until the newspaper pays 9 million Deutsche Mark for it. Fritz flees to a Swiss town, while the federal police concludes the diaries were written on notebooks manufactured only after World War II, and are thus a forgery. Hermann becomes crazy and decides to search for Hitler, thinking he is still alive.

Based on the real case of forger Konrad Kujau who created Hitler's fake diaries, "Schtonk!" is a satriical German auto-reflection on its own society (but also other countries) where that unhealthy fascination with Nazism still lies on the margins, contemplating why some people are so obssessed with the past they never experienced, instead of living their own lives in the present. The writer and director Helmut Dietl uses unusual camera angles and sharp framing, but also relies on several jokes and black humor to carry the story, though he did not manage to make something more than the standard storyline that was expected from the concept. He shows how desperate the yellow press reporter Hermann (very good Gotz George) is who has to resort to playing a gigolo for the rich Freya von Hepp, Göring's grandniece, already obvious when they meet in the restaurant and have this exchange: "And you are...?" - "Broke." This gives justification for his attempt to get out of this slump and his motive for trying to gain a fortune to persuade his newspaper to buy Hitler's diaries. When Hermann wants to speak to the deputy editor, he greets him with contempt: "How long have we not see each other?" - "We have actually never seen each other." Fritz's "inspirations" for writing the diaries is a 'hit-or-miss' affair: in one sequence, he sees some people running a marathon on the road, so he already imagines writing a section about how Hitler opened the Olympic Games in '36. At one point, he is seen wearing a dark coat and even having a Hitler's accent in his mind as he writes further text on paper at his home. "Schtonk!" spoofs the supply and demand problem, since scammers will invent a fake supply just to sell it to the masses and earn a fortune, though some banal or lukewarm jokes could have been improved.

Grade:++

Children of Nature

Börn náttúrunnar; drama, Iceland / Norway / Germany, 1991; D: Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, S: Gísli Halldórsson, Sigríður Hagalín, Baldvin Halldórsson, Björn Karlsson, Bruno Ganz

Geiri (78) shoots his dog, packs his things and abandons his desolate farm. He goes to live in a Reykjavik apartment of his daughter, but since her teenage daughter argues with him, the family arranges that Geiri is transferred to an elderly home. There he meets Stella (79), his childhood friend. Together, they steal a car and drive off to die together at their childhood village on an island. The police tries to find them. They take a boat to the island and find the former fishermen outpost abandoned. Geiri finds Stella dead on the beach. He goes to the outpost and walks to the edge of a cliff, disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

"Children of nature" is one of those movies that tackle the ultimate taboo: death, or better said, accepting the inevitability of it. The simple story about an old couple who decides to die together in the abandoned village of their birth is subtle, emotional, minimalist and humanistic, but also has a certain sense for directorial craftmanship that tries to imply and rely on the subconscious rather than on a clear narrative—in the first 10 minutes, there is no dialogue; in the last 20 minutes, there is no dialogue. Several contrasts imbibe the film: the protagonist Geiri leaves a rural area, his farm, to live in an urban area, a residential building; whereas the finale becomes almost metaphysical and negates the realistic approach up to it (Bruno Ganz is credited as "The Angel" and appears as a man in a black coat who puts his hand on Geiri's shoulder in the sequence in the abandoned building; a naked woman is waving from the shore at Geiri and Stella in a boat, as the sailor says: "There is no need to be afraid of her. She is just a ghost"). The nature plays a big role in the film, showing the landscapes as a journey whose end leads to its beginning, the birth place of the couple. The two lead actors give fine performances, and are given intimacy to understand them (for instance, while sleeping on the hay in the open, they have this exchange: "I wonder if it's the same moon that shone on us back in the old days?" - "I don't know. I don't think it has ever recovered since they started taking strolls up there"). "Children of Nature" suffers from at times an overstretched running time and slow pacing, yet as a meditative contemplation on the cycle of passing and death, it is shaped to work completely. 

Grade:+++

The Round-Up

Szegénylegények; historical drama, Hungary, 1966; D: Miklós Jancsó, S: János Görbe, Zoltán Latinovits, Tibor Molnár, Gábor Agárdy

A prison in Hungary, 1868. The 1848 Hungarian Revolution failed, and thus the authorities are persecuting the last remnants of the followers of Lajos Kossuth and outlaw Sandor Rosza. The prison officers suspect that some of Sandor's men are among the convicts, so they summon a convict, Janos, who is sentenced to be hanged, and offer him amnesty if he can find someone who killed more people. Janos becomes a snitch and singles out convict Veszelka as one of Sandor's men, but since Veszelka doesn't want to confess anything, the prison guards whip a woman he loves in a gauntlet, causing her to die, so Veszelka, who was forced to watch from the tower, jumps into his death. Janos is later found strangled in his cell. The prison guards suspect convict Kabai. The prison guards start a mobilization of the convicts, and order convict Torma to assemble a unit made out of the former rebel army. The guards declare that their leader, Sandor was given amnesty, but that this does not apply to his unit, which is now identified and captured.

Ranked in a local poll ("The Budapest Twelve") as the best film of Hungarian cinema, Miklos Jancso's drama "The Round-Up" is in reality still a notch below all the hype. Set in only one location, a prison in the middle of a meadow, far away from anywhere, where the authorities are frantically searching for the remnants of the former rebel army of the failed 1848 Hungarian Revolution, the movie was interpreted as a sly allegory on the anti-communist '56 Hungarian Revolution, with a sense of isolation of the Eastern Europe and a well conjured up, depressive feeling of repression and authoritarianism. It starts with cynical sketches of military uniforms, boots, helmets, guns, sabers and cannons, as the narrator explains: "The spirit of 1848 has become a mere empty phrase..." Jancso is able to craft aesthetic, sharp shot compositions, but the overall storyline is still too monotone, grey, standard and narrowed down. The character development is abandoned as there are no emotions, no intimate scenes or some clever lines that gives these characters some greater interest, leaving the whole cast as cold, disposable (the top billed actor playing the seemingly main role of snitch Janos dies already some 57 minutes into the film) and mechanical. Only occasionally does the film offer some more untypical or strange situation (a naked woman running in between a row of some twenty prison guards who whip her). The final ploy with which the prison guards manage to trick the convicts into revealing they were members of the rebel army is neat, yet the movie simply needed a more colorful, higher amplitude of events and style.

Grade:++

The Promised Land

Ziemia obiecana; historical drama, Poland, 1975; D: Andrzej Wajda, S: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Kalina Jędrusik, Anna Nehrebecka, Bożena Dykiel, Andrzej Szalawski

Łódź, 19th century. Karol, a Pole; Moryc, a Jew; and Max, a German, decide to unite forces and build a textile factory, but they lack money. Karol works as a managing engineer under the ruthless Bucholz, owner of a taxtile factory. Karol also has an affair with Lucy Zucker, the wife of a rich tycoon, and through her reads in a letter that a 25 kopeks tariff on American cotton will be imposed in two weeks. Thanks to this advance knowledge, Karol, Moryc and Max quickly buy as much cheap cotton as possible, and secure a lot of money. However, it is not enough, so Moryc borrows money from a Jewish lender. Max is trying to persuade his father to invest into modernization of his dated textile factory with manual labor and no automated machines, but to no avail. The trio builds their factory, but since Karol had an affair with Lucy, her husband sets it on fire. Karol marries the rich Mada Muller, owns the factory, and orders the police to open fire on workers on strike.

Even though it was ranked as one of the best Polish films of the 20th century in a local film critics' poll, Andrzej Wajda's 3-hour drama about early industrialization and capitalism doesn't feel that fresh anymore today. Instead of enjoying in watching the movie, it feels more like homework. The major problem is that it is overlong, and that it isn't as interesting as it could have been. "The Promised Land" shows how the accumulation of wealth needed to start a business isn't that easy, and how the investors trying to finance their textile factory have to resort to unethical means, and later become as cold and distant from the workers as their bosses whom they initially despised, which kind of aligns with the socialist advocation for Poland during that time. Some of the dialogue is comical and witty. For instance, the main protagonist Karol enters the office of his cold boss, Bucholz, who gives him letters addressed to himself, to entertain Karol, who reads out loud one of them: "Most eminent Mr. President, emboldened by the fame and respect with which all the unhappy remember your name...". When Moryc wants to borrow money for his business, the Jewish money lender says this: "Why do I treat you like a son? What am I saying, like a son? Like a son and a daughter together!" In another sequence, the rich German industrialist Kessler belittles not only Karol, but the Polish nation, too: "First you must civilise, create an industrial culture. Only then will your attempts stop being laughable," and thus Karol replies with wit: "You are right and you are wrong. A pig, if it ever thought of an eagle, would think this way." The hyped orgy sequence, some 68 minutes into the film, today feels rather timid; whereas some unusual camera tricks are neat (the wide fisheye lens); yet the movie needed more of such eccentric, unusual and grotesque moments to become more entertaining, since such a long running time didn't justify its sole standard storyline.

Grade:++

The Saga of Tanya the Evil (Season 1)

Yojo Senki; animated fantasy war series, Japan, 2017, D: Yutaka Uemura, S: Aoi Yuki, Saori Hayami, Hochu Otsaka, Shinichiro Miki

A Japanese businessman fires an employee from his company, who in turn pushes him in front of a speeding train at a station. While falling to his death, a divine being appears and talks, but the businessman refuses to recognize that God exists, calling it being X, so the divine being has the man reincarnated as a blond girl, Tanya, in an alternate history Europe of the early 20th century, claiming that hardship in life will make him more religiously devout. At 10, Tanya discovers she has magical powers, and is drafted in a huge war of its homeland, the Empire. Tanya and a dozen other soldiers with magical powers fly and use machine guns to kill enemies. Tanya is ruthless and cruel, and thus climbs up the military hierarchy, followed by her friend Viktoriya. Despite victories, more countries join forces against the Empire, fearing its growth of power, leading to a world war.

Anime series "The Saga of Tanya the Evil" is the darnedest thing. It has a fascinating plot tangle—but it treats it as a subplot on the margins, even though it should be the center point of the story—and for some reason pushes the far less interesting (and questionable), standard war and battlefront story as the main segment. This uneven decision in the construction of the storyline which gives undue weight to the lesser story ultimately hinders "Tanya". One isn't quite sure what the point is, at least from this first season. This better plot tangle revolves around a nameless Japanese businessman who is pushed in front of a speeding train, but just then time stops—and an invisible divine being speaks through the mouths of "frozen" people around him, and even through the beak of a pigeon (!), but the businessman is an atheist and refuses to believe in God ("Are you unfamiliar with the 'duty of disclosure?' If you claim to be God, you should put more thought into your decisions." - "Administering 7 billion people is already beyond my capacity." - "Overwork is the sign of a failed business model."), defiantly calling it being X, as if his powerless, mortal status only leaves him with mental rebellion and critical wit at his disposal. The sequence is sheer genius, a fascinating contemplation on the problem of evil and satirical take on religion, but for some reason the authors stubbornly refuse to simply continue this story. 

Instead, they just focus 90% of the rest of the story on the businessman reincarnated as a punishment as a 10-year old girl Tanya, who is mobilized due to her magical powers to fight in an Empire in a big war. The allegory isn't well conjured up: the country is only named "Empire", but the maps of Europe clearly show Germany during World War I. Then why not just simply say so? What is the point of a militaristic fundamentalism and warmongering in Tanya who enjoys being cruel to get to the next promotion? Why is Tanya only a 10-year old, when she could have been a grown up (the 10-year old mobster in "RoboCop 2" fallacy), as it would have been more logical for such a war-themed plot? A lot was not that well thought-out or well written in the story. A rare critical distance is taken in episode #8 where Tanya orders the artillery shooting of rebellious Republican remnants retreating from a city, including civilians, even though a military colonel refuses to do so—because it is a clear war crime. A few post-credit jokes have charm, such as in episode #9 where Tanya writes to a family about a soldier who was injured and relieved of duty, but decorated with honors—only to comment that this is the first time she lost a soldier because he ate rotten potatoes. However, one simply cannot get engaged with the obscure sight of dozen soldiers flying in the sky, "Harry Potter"-style, shooting with machine guns at the battlefront. The viewers simply long for the confrontation with the divine being from the start, but this happens only three times (besides the said first encounter, it appears speaking through a toy soldier and through the corpse of a killed pilot in a war plane), which consolidates "Tanya's" lost opportunities. 

Grade:++

Hugo the Hippo

Hugó, a víziló; animated fantasy adventure musical, Hungary / USA, 1975; D: Bill Feigenbaum, S: Ferenc Bessenyei, Gábor Berkes, László Márkus, Tamás Major

On the island of Zanzibar, the harbor is far away from land and thus sharks always attack people coming from the ships. The Sultan thus orders his assistants Aban-Khan and a Wizard to bring hippos to chase away the sharks. A dozen hippos, including the little Hugo, are abducted from Africa and deported to Zanzibar. The sharks disappear, but since the people forgot to feed the hippos, the animals start eating food from the city. Due to these complaints, Aban-Khan kills all the hippos, except for Hugo who manages to escape, swim across the Indian Ocean and find refuge in Dar es Salaam. There Hugo befriends Jorma, a little boy, but when the animal eats all the crops from Jorma's father's farm, people again turn against him. Hugo is put on trial, but due to Sultan's compassionate speech, the judge acquits the hippo and orders that the kids take care of him.

One of the most famous animated films by the Pannonia Film Studio, "Hugo the Hippo" is a surreal, bizarre and phantasmagorical little flick, but it is honest, heart-warming and with a humanistic message that animals should be treated with compassion. Its weakest link is the dated animation which feels pale compared to modern examples the viewers are accustomed to; forced musical segments; as well as the meandering story (Hugo's best friend, little boy Jorma, doesn't appear all until 45 minutes into the film), but the title hippo is adorably cute—he doesn't speak a single line, but his innocence creates an emotional charge since he suffers from abduction, displacement, becomes an orphan and has to start a new life all over again, with grown people attacking him for eating from their farms. Luckily, the director Bill Feigenbaum allows for several comical moments, some of which are almost cartoonish: for instance, when the sharks attack the ship and see several people hanging from a pole, they imagine shish kebabs on sticks. The Sultan summons the Wizard, who is introduced sleeping wrapped up in paper and floating above ground. The clumsy teacher in Dar es Salaam is so distracted while reading a book that he "shaves" himself with a toothbrush and accidentally places a snake around his neck, mistaking it for a scarf. The most expressionistic and memorable moment is the sole sequence of the abduction: the Wizard creates a robot cowboy on a robot horse which sucks out all the water from a pond, leaving the dozen hippos in a crater. The cowboy then lassoes the biggest hippo, but it pulls the rope so hard that the robot horse's and cowboy's screws start falling apart. This and the sequence where giant vegetable creatures attack Hugo might come off as too scary for some kids, yet the overall story has some distinctive charm and flair. Sultan's final words at the trial are remarkable, showing that even some characters appear to learn and change in the finale: "Unless we can embrace the whole of life on Earth, unless we can manage to learn from Jorma, we are doomed. The fate of Hugo the hippo is our fate. Let there be justice for all living things!" 

Grade:++

Ćaća

Ćaća; documentary short, Croatia, 2025; D: Matej Beluhan, S: Ivo Sanader

The film chronicles the career of politician Ivo Sanader, member of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), who was elected as the Prime Minister of Croatia in 2003 and 2007. However, he suddenly held a press conference and announced his resignation in 2009. Later, he was indicted for corruption, including through rigging public tenders, illegally selling Croatia's oil and gas company INA to the Hungarian company MOL, and taking a bribe to allow the foreign Hypo Bank to enter the Croatian market. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

One of the best films from Kino Klub Zagreb, excellent satirical documentary "Ćaća" (Croatian slang for "Pops") is a grand analysis of corruption, political pliability and that effect of 'rise and fall' of an influential figure. It's all archive footage, there is not a single word of a narrator nor any new scene intended to be a direct intervention, but through its suggestive images and playful re-arrangement of some scenes everything is clear to such an extent that no commentary is necessary for the viewers to understand what the author wanted to say. The unwillingness of politician and former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to star in the film and be its "protagonist" is inversely proportional to the fun of this whole 13-minute movie. The director Matej Beluhan initially only presents political campaign ads in the first five minutes of the film, such as they were broadcast on TV, in all their propaganda. In the first ad, an old man points to a giant poster of Sanader in a park, and says: "I believe this man!", while a lad with long hair cheerfully replies: "Me too, my friend!" In a house, Sanader's speech is seen on TV, as a man with a goatee, sitting on a couch, scratching his chin, says: "Grampa, I believe this man", as the grandpa, with big moustache, just nods. 

In another public speech, Sanader is speaking: "Where are all those HDZ thieves? Why are they not in prison? It can't be that there are none!" In the second political ad, Niko Kovač, a football manager born outside Croatia, but allowed to vote in Croatia, looks into the camera and confidently says: "Precisely because of that, HDZ and Dr. Ivo Sanader." In a third political ad, the most surprising of all, the German Chancellor at that time, Angela Merkel, also promotes him: "Croatia is on the good way to become a member of the EU. All this was achieved under the leadership of HDZ and Ivo Sanader". Then the movie starts its deconstruction of all this. New inserts show how Sanader was indicted for corruption, and all those previous ads are now intermittently played again, gaining a new, comical conext, as if they drive in reverse: Merkel again repeats "all this was achieved under the leadership of HDZ and Ivo Sanader". At a court hearing, Sanader announces he is rejecting the accusations with disgust, and this is followed, indicatively, by the repeat of the ad where the lad with long hair says: "Me too, my friend!" A judge reads out the first degree verdict finding Sanader guilty, and the clip with Kovač is repeated: "Precisely because of that, HDZ and Dr. Ivo Sanader." When a news anchorman says Sanader was sentenced to 18 years in prison, the grandpa with the moustache is seen noding again. All the previous statements now sound incriminating and farcical. That everything is understood just through these subtle re-arrangements just shows how cleverly set-up and edited this whole film is.

Grade:+++

Starlet

Starlet; drama, USA, 2012; D: Sean Baker, S: Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson, Stella Maeve, James Ransone, Karren Karagulian

Jane lives in a house with Melissa and her boyfriend Mikey. They work as porn actors. One day, after buying a thermos from a certain Sadie (85) who has a yard sale, Jane discover bundles of money inside. She spends thousands of dollars on herself, but then has guilt and decides to meet Sadie better. At first, Sadie is suspicious and evasive, but slowly Jane becomes her friend and they play lottery. Jane lets Sadie watch after her dog. The dog escapes, causes stress for Sadie, but she manages to find him again. Jane buys Sadie a plane ticket for Paris. Melissa informs Sadie that Jane took her money from the thermos. During their ride, Sadie tells Jane to stop at a cemetary to gie flowers to her deceased husband. Jane goes to the cemetary and finds out it also contains a tombstone of Sadie's 18-year old daughter.

Sean Baker's 4th feature length independent film, "Starlet" once again follows his fascination with people living on the margins of society. On the one hand, it shows the isolation and neglect of people at old age, presented through the character of the 85-year old Sadie; on the other, it shows three young people living together in a house, until it is only later on revealed what their profession is—at 53 minutes into the film, the protagonist Jane goes to a film set of a porn to film a sex scene. Highly unusual blend of two extremes—and it is kind of a pity these two social groups never quite interact fully with each other. Baker, as a screenwriter, is not able to write a fully developed storyline, as if he is never interested in his stories any more than just the outline for his social themes. As such, "Starlet" has banal, schematic dialogue—Jane says she wants to re-decorate the room; Jane says to Sadie she wants to be her friend; Melissa says she needs money for her debt... All of this is said just at face value, without much sense for intricate writing or creative prose. The best line is actually said by someone who makes a surprising cameo, real AV actress Asa Akira, who delivers a funny joke that stands out, the one about how it would look like if Captain Hook was fingering someone. Baker strives towards de-glamorization and naturalistic depiction of life as it is, as realistic as possible, and as such creates a 'raw', messy and vital film. The supporting characters of Melissa and Mikey are annoying (especially Mikey who can only be a "pothead" and play video games the entire day), and thus the friendship between Jane and Sadie is the anchor of the film. Remarkably, this is the first and only movie role for Besedka Johnson, here playing Sadie with genuine ease, and it feels a bit sad that she is so underused here. Baker's trademark "surprise ending" here gives Sadie another layer, but isn't as effective as it could have been. She needed more "character build-up scenes". Compare what Nicholson says in the movie "As Good As it Gets" at the dinner sequence, about how he wants to be "a better man", and what Hunt says back to him—in just one sequence, these two lines are so creative they make time stop for the viewers. Is there any dialogue here between Jane and Sadie that ever comes close to that?

Grade:++

Tangerine

Tangerine; drama, USA, 2015; D: Sean Baker, S: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Mickey O'Hagan, Karren Karagulian, James Ransone

Los Angeles on Christmas. African American transgender prostitutes Sin-Dee and Alexandra meet at a donut shop. Upon hearing that her pimp and fiance Chester has been cheating on Sin-Dee with Dinah, Sin-Dee storms off and walks the streets to find said woman. Razmik, an Armenian taxi driver, has a sex encounter with Alexandra in his cab. Sin-Dee finds Dinah at a motel and drags her to Chester, to confront him. Chester admits having sex with Dinah, but only to "check her out" as a prostitute. Alexandra sings at a bar, but there are no customers there. Razmik leaves his family's Christmas dinner to feign he has to go to work, but instead finds Alexandra at the donut shop. Razmik's mother-in-law finds him there and confronts him cheating on his wife. Upon hearing Chester also had sex with Alexandra, Sin-Dee leaves them all. Someone throws urine on Sin-Dee, so Alexandra comforts her at a laundromat and gives Sin-Dee her own wig.

"Tangerine" is another naturalistic social drama by Sean Baker about the people on the margins and the lower class, in this case two transgender prostitutes (impressive performances by first time actors Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor), but uncharacteristically set on Christmas. For all his humanistic and noble approach, Baker is again not that good at writing a proper, focused storyline—the narrative is often improvised, comprised just out of random episodes and disconnected adventures of his protagonists without much plot strategy, which hinders the enjoyment value of the viewers. However, on the other hand, that is Baker's intent—he creates movies as 'raw', messy, dirty (drunk passenger throwing up in the cab) and unglamorized as daily life, in accordance with his movie influences (Cassavetes, Loach, Jarmusch). This is not very cinematic, but it is genuine and honest. One major plot point isn't that convincing, though, and feels forced (would a transgender woman really just drag another woman through the streets, against her will, without anyone intervening or without the latter at least screaming for help in public?). The best moments are when Bakes turns a bit more creative and intimate: Armenian taxi driver Razmik cleverly conceals his sex encounter with prostitute Alexandra by driving his car in a long car wash; the Christmas dinner of the Armenian immigrants where Razmik feigns he has to go to work because their Christmas is actually celebrated later, on January 6. In a very innovative idea for independent cinema, the entire film was filmed using only iPhones. Baker's trademark are startling, emotional endings, and the viewers never know how he will surprise them. The ending in "Tangerine" isn't as strong as the one in "The Florida Project", but it is still endearing—despite all their disagreements and problems, the two main characters have only each other for support.

Grade:++

Inspector Palmu's Mistake

Mysteriet Rygseck; crime comedy, Finland, 1960; D: Matti Kassila, S: Joel Rinne, Matti Ranin, Leo Jokela, Jussi Jurkka, Leevi Kuuranne, Elina Pohjanpää

Helsinki. Bruno Rygseck is a decadent millionaire who stages parties at his mansion, and killed the cat of his aunt Amalia as a prank. Inspector Palmu is informed the next day that Bruno has been found dead, drowned in his giant swimming pool, allegedly after tripping on a soap on the ground. Palmu arrives with Detectives Kokki and Virta to the mansion, but concludes it was a murder based on the butler's testimony that the lights in the swimming pool room were turned off. Bruno's wife Alli is poisoned via a drink, and Palmu assumes it was intended for Bruno. Since her brother Aimo was forging Bruno's signatures to repay his debt, Airi agreed to go to Bruno's room. Airi's fiance Erik claims he killed Bruno, but Palmu disputes this. It turns out Amalia killed Bruno because he killed her cat, and uses Virta's pistol to attack Airi, but is arrested by Palmu's men.

The first film adaptation of the novels about Insector Palmu, "Inspector Palmu's Mistake" is a light crime comedy that works as some sort of a Finnish version of Agatha Christie or Inspector Columbo 'whodunnit' murder mystery, without adding anything specific or new to it. It is elegant and fun, albeit straightforward and lacking in surprises or humor, except for the funny "twist ending" as to what the motive was for the murder. Some of the plot points are more of strained ploys than true clues to solving the mystery (for instance, the only hint that Bruno's drowning in the swimming pool was murder is that the room's lights were switched off from the inside, which is overstretched). The most was achieved out of the leading actor Joel Rinne as the title Inspector, who is both competent and charismatic enough to carry the film even when objectively there isn't much happening on the screen. The best segment is when a group of friends make a bet at who will perpetrate the best misdemeanor without the victim having the guts to contact the police due to embarassment, so a woman feigns she fainted in front of a man, he takes her inside his apartment, but as he goes to the kitchen to get her some water, she "wakes up", steals his manuscript for the novel and escapes, while he is unable to tell anyone because "he could not explain to his mother what a foreign woman was doing in his apartment". A few dynamic camera drives, an occasional cinematic technique (Alli drinks the poisoned drink and falls down with the glass, as it dissolves to the same (later) frame of Palmu's shoes standing above said glass on the floor) and a couple of solid jokes, but otherwise a rather standard and at times overstretched little crime flick.

Grade:++

Uncle Marin, the Billionaire

Nea Mărin miliardar; comedy, Romania, 1979; D: Sergiu Nicolaescu, S: Amza Pellea, Jean Constatin, Sebastian Papaiani, Brândușa Marioțeanu, Ștefan Mihăilescu-Brăila

During a flight from Frankfurt, a group of gangsters drugs and kidnaps Samantha, the daughter of rich American Marlon Juvett, and escapes from the plane via parachutes in Romania. They hand Samantha over to another group of gangsters, who then kill them in a car explosion. An ordinary peasant, uncle Marin, arrives for a visit to Constanta, so his nephew Gogu arranges for him to stay at a hotel room reserved for Marlon. When Marlon arrives with a briefcase containing a million $ to pay for the ransom of the gangsters holding Samantha, it turns out he looks identical as Marin, and their briefcases switch often, causing chaos. Finally, Marlon persuades Marin to help him. In the meantime, Samantha escapes from the gangsters and returns to Marlon. The gangsters kidnap Marin, thinking he is Marlon, but Marin makes them all drunk, so the police and an inspector arrest the gangsters.

"Uncle Marin, the Billionaire" unexpectedly became the highest grossing Romanian film of the 20th century, with over 14,600,000 tickets sold at that country's box office, gaining an almost mythical reputation in Romania, but outside of its home country, it still feels below all the hype, rarely managing to be something more than just mildly amusing. A peculiar pastiche of American screwball comedies and Romanian mentality, this film also carries some of their clichees revolving around the concept of a comedy of mistaken identity, since the main actor Amza Pellea plays both the simplistic peasant Marin and the American billionaire Marlon—it suffers from forced set-ups, contrived coincidences and occasionally spasmodic situations, whereas not all jokes ignite. However, there is still enough of good moments here to be found that are surprising, and they arrive swiftly thanks to the elegent directing by Sergiu Nicolaescu, who usually directed serious movies. 

In one of the best jokes, Marin is annoyed by a fly in his hotel room, so he tries to hit it with his hand, but instead pounds the top of the TV set which just turns off (after it was previously turned on by a pounding in the first place) and then hits the fly standing on the button to call the room service, a maid (as Marin comments: "Her mind is as short as her skirt"). In another visual gag, Gogu chases Marlon across the hotel hallway, finds a door locked, so in order to try to break it, he runs a few steps back to gain momentum, but goes too far and instead falls down a shaft on the other side of the wall, landing (again) in the basement with the dirty laundry. And in a commotion at a crowded night club, Marin's wife Veta mistakes Marlon for Marin and starts attacking him for dancing with another woman, which goes so far that Veta at one point walks to the singer, tells him: "Shut up!", takes his microphone away (!) and uses it to say: "Marin, stop! You can't get away from me!" The car and motorcycle chase sequences at around 49 and 54 minutes into the film, respectively, were inserted for more dynamic charge, but while it is amusing watching motorcycles driving across a beach full of tourists, they don't quite translate into humor. Overall, "Uncle Marin, the Billionaire" is a fun and relaxed light comedy, creating problems and twists, but in the end, just like in the works by Moliere, everything is resolved with a relieved gusto.

Grade:++

It Rains in My Village

Biće skoro propast svijeta; drama, Serbia, 1968; D: Aleksandar Petrović, S: Ivan Palúch, Annie Girardot, Mija Aleksić, Dragomir Bojanić, Eva Ras, Bata Živojinović

A village in Syrmia, Vojvodina. Triša is a pig owner on a farm who claims to enjoy his independence as a bachelor. Joška, another farmer, gets Triša drunk and finds a priest who marries him to Goca, a mute, mentally handicapped woman. Triša and Goca get a son. When an art teacher, Reza, arrives in the village to teach painting, Triša falls in love with her and even chases Goca away from his house. A pilot crash-lands with his plane on a tree and continues the affair with Reza, who dumps Triša. Later, Goca is found killed, and the police suspects Triša, but his father gives himself in, instead, thereby saving Triša from prison. The pilot leaves, admitting to Reza he is already married. The villagers tie Triša's arms and legs to church bells, leaving him having above the ground, and then kick him until he dies.

Compared to his wonderful film "I Even Met Happy Gypsies" where he had an impeccable sense for 'magic realism' which he combined with unexpected avant-garde, the director Aleksandar Petrovic delivered a weaker, meandering and vague film "It Rains in My Village", which didn't quite satisfy as the follow-up to his interest in rural areas and minorities living there. Petrovic aimed for a lyrical, surreal, even disconnected approach in his movie style, but some disjointed and underdeveloped moments clash badly with each other, and simply don't fit well. The relationship between the pig farmer Trisa and the mute, mentally handicapped woman Goca is handled the worst, since Petrovic ignores Goca so much it borders on artistic negligence—take, for instance, their sequence of ending up together: Trisa is drunk and then tricked into marrying Goca at night of a ruined church in a montage without any dialogue; in the next scene there is a baby next to Goca while the villagers stare at them; in the next scene the kid is already a five-year old and speaks to a slow-moving snail on a table... all these ellipses happen within only three minutes, with an impossible sense for rushing through such a delicate and crucial sequence that simply is not given due weight, and already the new character is introduced coming to the village in the car, the art teacher Reza, with whom Trisa will have an affair. 

But as the old film rules says, before the viewers can sympathize with the poor girl whose brute husband cheats on her, they first need to get to know the girl better, and the movie needs to conjure up emotions towards her, as Babaja rightfully concluded in his similar drama "The Birch Tree". Here, Goca has only maybe 5 minutes of running time in total in the entire film, which is not only too little, but is at the disservice to the excellent actress Eva Ras who had so much more potential. The rest of the film's focus in amost exclusively on the love triangle between Goca, Trisa and a pilot who randomly enters the film and stays there. Petrovic doesn't bother with the classic narrative and instead insists on random collection of episodes, some of which work better, and some worse. One interesting episode is when farmer Joska stumbles upon Czechoslovak cars parked in the meadow, and the drivers listening to the Yugoslav radio, depicting the then actual Soviet-Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, claiming that "500,000 foreign soldiers are in the country" and that they are "shooting at every moving vehicle in their way". Another is the comical bit where Trisa's father confesses on his deathbed that he lied about the murder to protect Trisa, but the man (Bata Zivojinovic) who wore black and pretended he is the priest, just takes his black robe off and reveals to be the police inspector. The ending aimed at being a great tragedy, but since the emotional anchor was missing (Goca's intimate state), it didn't amount to quite the punch it intended, and feels rather overstretched. 

Grade:++

Haibane Renmei

Haibane Renmei; animated fantasy mystery series, Japan, 2002; D: Tomokazu Tokoro, S: Ryo Hirohashi, Junko Noda, Akiko Yajima, Eri Miyajima, Fumiko Orikasa

A girl is falling from the sky, with a crow flying next to her. The girl finds herself in a womb-like cocoon and "hatches" inside a room, where she is greeted by other girls with wings and a halo circle above their heads. The girl, who also has these wings, is given the name Rakka, and her mentor is Reki, who tells her they are "Haibane". They are in a small town surrounded by huge walls, and nobody is allowed to exit them, except traders with masks who don't speak. Rakka has a sense of guilt, but cannot remember anything about her previous life. When's Haibane's halo starts to flicker, it is time for them to go to the western wall and disappear in a beam of light. Reki is frustrated that she is bound by a sin she can't remember and wants to die in front of a speeding train, but Rakka saves her, gives her forgivness, and thus Reki also disappears in a beam of light. 

Anime series "Haibane Renmei" is one of those stories that cram in more mysteries than they can chew. Just like "Lost", it brings up a riddle, then another one, and another one, and another one, but in the end, nothing is resolved, and the viewers have the impression as if the ending and a conclusion are missing. Set in a mysterious little town, where the main heroine Rakka was born from a cocoon in a room and doesn't remember anything from her past, and now has angel-like wings and a halo floating above her head, "Haibane Renmei" poses some universal existential questions where the viewers ask themselves: who are we? In what kind of a world are we living in? What is our purpose in life? Where did we come from? Where are we going? "Haibane Renmei's" world is fictional, but some of these universal parallels to our world overlap. One interpretation is that these characters died too young—maybe through suicide?—and are now in this town, stuck in a limbo of sorts, until they have repented for their errors and catch up with their lost time, when they are sent back to Earth, but not enough data is given for sufficient conclusions. The mood is overall depressive and "mellow", with only small bits of humor (a plate with a cake on it placed on the halo of Hyoko's head).

Most of the 13 episodes revolve around bland, mundane daily events of Rakka and other haibane: Reki works in a kindergarten with kids who also have wings and halo circles above their heads; Kana is fascinated with making the clock tower tick and ring; Hikari works at a bakery... It is almost a sort of 'slice-of-life' with slow pacing. The huge city walls keep them all inside, and Rakka observes some crows as they fly across the other side, back and forth, in a lingering shot that symbolizes their need to outgrow this narrowed-down status and set themselves free. Unfortunately, this never happens—the characters are all simply too passive to do anything outside this grey area. In one episode, Rakka follows the crows and falls at the bottom of a well, where she spots a skeleton of a bird at the ground. She has a feeling that she is somehow to blame for the crow's death, even though she doesn't remember anything from her past, so she burries its corpse and finds some relief and closure. This should have been explored more, but is, unfortunately, left frustatingly vague and never brought up later on. In another episode, the masked interpreter gives Rakka the assignment to clean the inside of the city walls, which are connected with a small water cannal, and she observes the unknown script written on it. Does this play role in the story later on? Is it expanded upon? No, just another throw-away mystery. "Haibane Renmei" is too cryptic and hermetic for its own good. It wants the viewers to decipher all these abstract allegories for themselves, but ultimately it makes the viewers think more about the practicality of the story than the sole authors did. Imagine if "The Truman Show" had just stopped at halfway into its story, and you would get the impression of the flawed vagueness of this anime.

Grade:++

Snow White

Snow White; fantasy, USA, 2025, D: Marc Webber, S: Rachel Zegler, Andrew Burnap, Gal Gadot, Jeremy Swift (voice), Tituss Burgess (voice)

Snow White works as a maid in a castle ever since her father, the King, died, and her stepmother took over as the new Queen. Citizens of the kingdom live in poverty. When the magic mirror on the wall says that Snow White is more beautiful than her, the Queen orders a hunter to kill Snow White, but he lets the girl escape into the forest. Snow White finds refuge in a cottage inhabited by the seven dwarfs, who become her friends. The Queen disguises herself as an old grandmother and gives Snow White a poisoned apple from which she dies. However, Jonathan's kiss revives Snow White who returns to the castle and becomes the new Queen after the old Queen dies upon breaking the mirror.

The live-action remake of one of the most famous and critically recognized animated Walt Disney films of all time, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", is naturally far below that level, but still an overall solid, innocent and honest family film with emotions, on par with other live-action remakes, Favreau's "The Jungle Book" and Condon's "Beauty and the Beast". Due to pre-production misinformation and the US culture wars, it became the scapegoat of ridiculous anti-woke counterculture fanatics (the scandalously malformed rating of only 1.6/10 on IMDb, when in reality it should have been a 5.5/10, signaling the abuse and misuse of the IMDb voting), which makes it more difficult to watch the film in a neutral, objective way without prior biases, but as it is, it is an easily watchable film where Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot actually delivered good performances as Snow White and the Evil Queen (though the latter is underwritten and doesn't get much to do except being mean). 

The live-action remakes of Disney's animated classics are unnecessary, and the bland musical sequences bother and feel shoehorned, whereas it was pointless to have CGI of the seven dwarfs instead of real human actors, though this film has its funny moments. One is when Snow White wants to confront the Queen regarding poverty in the kingdom, so they have this exchange: "Snow White, have you finished your chores? It's important we all do our share." - "Well, that's what I came to speak to you about, actually. Sharing." Cue to the Queen angrily lowering her spoon to stop eating from her luxurious table for a moment. When the guards bring a thief to the room, the Queen has this exchange with him: "Find his home and burn it to the ground." - "Funny thing is, I don't actually have a home." And that the movie can even be charming and sweet at moments can be found in the moment where Snow White gives her necklace to Jonathan before he departs, who says: "I can't accept this." - "I'm not giving it to you. I'm just giving you reason to return." The seven dwarfs have very little character development, which is a pitty, and thus some of the bonding with Snow White feels too mcuh like a shortcut. Nonetheless, Jonathan is a good addition, and the final 20 minutes give a new, unpredictable finale to the story. It's a flawed "Snow White", but it's still "Snow White".

Grade:++

Frieren (Season 1)

Frieren; animated fantasy series, Japan, 2023; D: Keiichiro Saito, S: Atsumi Tanezaki, Kana Ichinose, Chiaki Kobayashi, Yuichi Nakamura, Nobuhiko Okamoto

After spending 10 years fighting and defeating a demon king, elf magician Frieren and humans Eisen, Himmel and Heiter return back to a city that hired them. Frieren, who has a much longer lifespan and is a thousand years old, leaves to collect books with magic spells. Returning after 50 years, Frieren meets the old Himmel, who dies. Saddened that she never got to know him, Frieren goes to visit Heiter, who also dies, but leaves an adopted girl, Fern, to be her apprentice. Frieren and Fern travel across the land, and meet Stark, a clumsy dragon slayer. They also get another companion, Sein. They go to a city in the north to a tournament where Frieren wants to obtain the certificate of a magician of the first order from Serie, an elf with blond hair who is still angry that Frieren's mentor, the late Flamme, gave the knowledge of magic to humans.   

Anime "Frieren" is a gentle meditation on the passage of time and how the deceased can live on in memory of people whose lives they affected, just told in a fantasy setting. A big problem is that the authors keep changing the direction of the story three times, which makes its tonal shift a little bit inconsistent—it starts out as a meditative, quiet contemplation on transience; then switches to a road movie where Frieren and her three companions travel from town to town and meet people; and then, suddenly, almost as if the authors got scared this will not be able to keep the attention of the viewers, they changed it to an action-battle subplot, with even some bloody moments. "Frieren" starts out there where "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" ends, by presenting Frieren returning to a city with her three human companions Eisen, Himmel and Heiter after defeating a demon king in a campaign, which is only mentioned off screen. The mood, the patient character development and stunning animation give an outline of this anime, which is continued later on. Frieren, an elf with huge longevity, is even depicted as somewhat arrogant towards humans who live much shorter lives, obvious in episode #4, where Eisen has this exchange with her: "Don’t you want to take an apprentice with you?" - "That would be a waste of time. As soon as I would have tought him something, he would have already died." - "That’s not the point of a journey". - "It is for me. My time with you wasn’t even a hundredth of my lifespan". Later on, though, she develops more compassion and starts living in the moment by living with humans. 

Some inserted bits of humor are refreshing. For instance, in episode #5, "dragon slayer" Stark is introduced, standing still, seemingly to confront a dragon attacking a village. The villagers celebrate him as a defiant hero who confronted the beast. But then he admits to Frieren he was just too petrified to move at that moment, while the dragon was cutting rooftops, until it got bored a flew away. Episode #12 introduces Frieren's magic potion that dissolves women's clothes and which Frieren wanted to give to Stark as a birthday present, but Fern pours it on Frieren herself and it dissolves her clothes and leaves her naked, so she puts a blanket on. Episodes #8 and #9 are the first to offer a strange action de-tour, where demons Lugner and his assistant Linie use own spilled blood as solidified spears. This leads to one genius moment in episode #10: demon Aura has a "scale of obedience", which causes the person with stronger magic powers to control the weaker one, but Frieren suppresses her own magic powers to trick Aura into thinking she is stronger, but then the scale starts tipping in Frieren’s favor—and thus Frieren unleashes her true capacity and simply orders Aura to kill herself with a sword. After that, there is another bland road movie subplot, until the exciting finale with the tournament battle. This leads to two more brilliant moments: one is in episode #21, where Kanne cannot fight the powerful mage Richter because she depends on water for magic powers, so Frieren breaks the giant dome barrier above them, rain starts pouring down all over, and thus Kanne now has a trump card and uses this as a catalyst to defeat Richter in a giant magic water bubble. The other one is in episode #26, where Ubel outfoxed a magician with an invincible magic cape and a hood by simply cutting his cloth with scissors and then killing him from the inside with her magic powers. A undefeated clay clone uses her long hair to create spikes that pierce participants, but Ubel simply cuts the clone’s hair and thus finishes her off, Samson-style. Sadly, Frieren's two companions are absent from this finale. "Frieren" is composed out of three substories, but only the one featuring action and battle sequence truly rise to the occasion with ingenuity and inspiration, and thus it would have been better if the meditation and road movie substories had been cut way shorter than the undue weight they got.

Grade:++

Alpine Fire

Höhenfeuer; drama, Switzerland, 1985; D: Fredi M. Murer, S: Thomas Nock, Johanna Lier, Rolf Illig, Dorothea Moritz

A small desolate house somewhere in the Alps consists out of a family of four: father, mother, their deaf teenage son Bub, and teenage daughter Belli who teaches Bub how to spell and write. They feed pigs and chickens on the farm and try to manage their finances. Bub is acting more and more erratic. When the lawn mower shuts down and Bub throws it off the cliff, the father gets angry and Bub hides in the mountains from fear. Belli brings Bub food and they sleep together and have sex. Then they return back to the house. When Belli finally admits to mom she is pregnant with Bub, the father takes a rifle and aims it at Belli, but Bub intervenes and in the chaos the father is shot. The mother quickly dies, too. Bub burries their corpses in the snow and now leads the house with Belli.

Ranked in a local poll by film critics as the best Swiss movie of the 20th century, Fredi M. Murer's "Alpine Fire" is a 'raw', astringent and unglamorous ethnographic incest drama that plays with a combination of several disparate elements—it has both slow and powerful images, and is both minimalist and expressionistic at times. Filmed on only one location of the house on the mountains and featuring only four people (except for one brief excursion in which the family descends down to visit grandmother and grandfather at their house), the story slowly builds up a feeling of isolation which is embodied in the deaf protagonist Bub who feels sexual frustration, pressure, discomfort and a need for some relief. He acts peculiar, nervous, and seemingly incomprehensible, such as when he throws his sister Belli's radio in the water or when he lies on the ground to play with little pigs on the farm. Murer has a sense for aesthetic images supported by the stunning Alpine landscapes—for instance, the unusual frame of the father mowing the meadow on the highly steep hill or the tracking shot of Bub running across the long stone wall. 

The middle of the film, where a "fugitive" Bub in nature is visited by Belli who gives him food from the house, is highly poetic and subtle: they hug and fondle during the night, the fire burns, and then there is a wonderful, cathartic scene of their blanket on the meadow with a mountain in the background. Did the sex between the brother and sister happen suddenly? Not really, since there were subtle clues before—one scene at 45 minutes into the film indicates already something. In the first half of the film, the pressure is all on Bub—whereas in the second half, the pressure is all on the rest of the family, after the incest "twist". Nothing is presented as black and white, and Murer shows understanding for the shortcomings his characters found themselves in, so that even the brute father is not a real villain—in two seperate sequences, the grandmother tells to Belli everything about both the father ("Many nights your mother cried because of Franz's mother. She ruled the house till the end. All the children left home quickly. Franz was the youngest so he had to stay, engaged for 15 years. She didn't let another woman near as long as she lived") and Bub ("Nobody is to blame. For three years nobody noticed that he didn't hear. When he was small he laughed and screamed like all children"). It's an uncomfortable topic, but done with a lot of comfortable humanism, and as difficult it is to start watching this film—the longer it lasts, the more engaging it gets.

Grade:+++

Cognac

Tajna manastirske rakije; comedy, Serbia, 1988; D: Slobodan Šijan, S: Rick Rossovich, Catherine Hicks, Gary Kroeger, Dara Čalenić, Velimir 'Bata' Živojinović

A Yugoslav-American billionaire invested a fortune to restore a defunct monastery on a Yugoslav island because he is obssessed with its brandy which he didn't taste for decades. The mute monks who made it have disappeared, so the billionaire's daughter Ella travels from the US to the island to help re-create the brandy herself. Attracted by a large sum of money, numerous scammers show up pretending to be monks, including Bogoljub, their only requirement being that they don't speak. Bogoljub has to hide from his mother, Zorka, but when she shows up on the island and recognizes him, his cover is over. A gypsy band kidnaps Zorka by mistake, thinking she is Ella, to demand ransom to create an independent gypsy state, but Zorka saves herself. An old monk in the cave shows up and helps re-create the brandy with the final touch: igniting its surface in the glass. Bogoljub and Ella fall in love.

The director Slobodan Sijan ("Who's That Singing Over There?", "The Marathon Family") didn't manage to stand out with this overstretched and thin comedy which runs out of steam fairly quickly. "Cognac" (literal Serbo-Croatian translation: "The secret of the monastery brandy") starts out well, with at least one sympathetic and funny joke: while describing the life of the monastery, the American assistant says that the monks "never spoke or cried-out even during the direst emergency", as the flashback shows a monk trying to pick a herb on top of a cliff, but a rock breaks underneath him, so he just opens his mouth in "silent shouting" as he falls down into the sea, not ushering a single word. However, the main tangle where the rich American Ella travels to the island to restore the monastery but all the people showing up there are scammers pretending to be monks to get her money had much more potential than the rather routine story flow we got. Some jokes still manage to ignite (American Ella goes to a bank to exchange her money, but since one US dollar is worth a 1,000 Yugoslav dinars, the bank clerk gives her a full sack of money, so she goes: "The exchange rate here is great!"), but there is too much empty walk and the story drags. The authors wanted to make an "international film", so the majority of the dialogue is in English, and it features several American actors, including even Rick Rossovich ("The Terminator") who plays one of the fake monks who cannot say a word, whereas the locations on the Mljet island are wonderful. Unfortunately, the movie didn't have inspiration to conjure up better jokes (one missed opportunity, for instance, is the the underground cave laboratory to try to distill the brandy, which could have been used for several gags), and thus the last third feels especially faded and tacky, ending on a stale and pale note.

Grade:+ 

The Reenactment

Reconstituirea; satire, Romania, 1968; D: Lucian Pintilie, S: George Mihaita, Vladimir Gaitan, George Constatin, Emil Botta, Ernest Maftei, Ileana Popovici

A desolate café in a village, near a river. A van arrives with several people inside who settle there: the Prosecutor orders two student friends, Vuica and Ripu, to re-enact their fight when they were drunk at the same location, where they accidentally hit the waiter on the head and broke a small kiosk. The cameraman will record them to make an educational film about the dangers of alcoholism among the youth. A Sergeant also suprvises the filming and takes away the students' IDs until they finish. Problems constantly disrupt their process. The Prosecutor admits they will not go to prison, regardless of the outcome, but still insists they continue. Finally, when pressed to act more realistically, Ripu hits Vuica in the head for real, who falls down a hill. Stumbling and seeing all the people who return from a football match, Vuica falls on the mud in the ground and dies.

Included in a local film critics' poll as one of the best movies of Romania's cinema of the 20th century, satirical "The Reenactment" (also known as "The Reconstruction") is not only a metafilm experience, but also a meta-political and meta-sociological one. Based on allegedly true events, the director Lucian Pintilie pushes everything in the story to an as absurd level as possible, up until the bitter and dark ending. Already in the first scene (a film clapperboard is seen on screen, signaling the start of filming of a scene in the movie where protagonist Vuica falls in the mud and stands up, which is repeated six times), Pintilie alludes to the artificiality of these events and his intent to distil real-life messages from the illusion of art, and he keeps the viewers in anticipation—in the first 20 minutes, random weird scenes are presented (a waiter with a scar on his bald head lies on the table while a Sergeant watching him warns to watch out for the sun; a girl in a bikini swims in the river; a grandma pets a goose on her lap; a van with men arrives, but its car horn is stuck) almost as some sort of comical-surreal S. Leone-style opening, and the viewers are not quite sure what is happening. Only later do these align into a story of a Prosecutor forcing two students to re-enact their fight for an educational film about alcoholism.

Filmed on only one location (the exteriors of a café in a village), "The Reenactment" is an exercise in trying to craft a film out of the minimum, but Pintilie uses unusal camera angles, close ups, stylish shot compositions and other means to keep it interesting throughout. And comical moments constantly keep happening: an ambulance van rushes through the street and scares away geese from the grandma's farm, so the Prosecutor orders the two students to search for said geese in the forest and return them. The Sergeant and student Vuica have this exchange: "What will your father say when he finds out his son has been in jail?" - "Who says I have a father? He died two years ago in an accident. A tank came over him and he died. There was more dust than flesh in his coffin." The bikini girl asks Ripu to give her his bracelet from his arm; he obliges, she says it's "beautiful"—and then she throws said bracelet in the river, saying to the confused lad: "You are more beautiful like this." The wounded Vuica walks confusingly across a whole row of people who mock him because they think he is drunk, and one man even jokes: "Did you get drunk without soda? Or was the soda too strong for you?" Certain omissions reduce the movie's quality, though, including that such a restricted setting inhibits a greater development of the storyline and characters, and that it all becomes a bit stale in the last third. Nonetheless, the movie's subversive and biting allegorical sharpness was so strong that the Communist regime of Romania banned it and placed it into the bunker, since its universal theme gains an outline in the finale—the government targets a minor problem, decides to solve it, but in the end makes it even worse due to its rigid incompetence.

Grade:+++

Time of Violence

Vreme na nasilie; historical drama, Bulgaria, 1988; D: Ludmil Staikov, S: Yosif Sarchadzhiev, Ivan Krastev, Valter Toski, Rusi Chanev, Anya Pencheva, Vasil Mihaylov, Momchil Karamitev, Kalina Stefanova

Bulgaria during the Ottoman occupation, 1668. A Janissary regiment led by Kara Ibrahim, himself a Bulgarian kidnapped as a child and converted to Islam, is sent to the village of Elindenya, Rhodope valley, with the order by the Sultan to forcefully convert all Christians there into Muslims. The villagers, among them shepherd Manol, are summoned to the headquarters and given 10 days to decide to convert. The wedding between Manol and Sevda is interrupted when Ibrahim's soldiers show up, arrest everyone and send them to a prison for the last three days of their ultimatum. The women are raped, while those men who refuse to become Muslims are murdered publicly. When Ibrahim threatens to kill Manol's son, Manol feigns he will put the turban on his head, but then starts a fight with the soldiers and is killed. A boy brings the head of one of the last rebels hiding in the caves, Momchil, to the headquarters. When Ibrahim crouches to look at the head, the boy stabs him with a knife.

Voted in one local poll as the best Bulgarian movie of the 20th century, allegedly based on real events from the 17th century, 4-hour monumental historical film "Time of Violence" by director Ludmil Staikov is an excellent historical depiction of forced conversions of Bulgarian Christians to Islam during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, with a remarkable sense for reconstruction of the mentality and way of life of the people of that time, to such an extent that their actions and behaviors seem easily recognizable even today. Through this story several universal themes are observed, whether political ones—colonialism, imperialism, collaborationism, forced assimilation, resistance of suppressed nations to survive—whether personal, humanistic ones—some individuals show integrity and honor, refusing to convert to Islam, while others give up faced with coercion in order to save their skin (Sevda converts to Islam to save Manol, but is killed by the soldiers when she insults Ibrahim; an orthodox Christian priest leads the villagers from the cave to convert to Islam). The leading antagonist is Kara Ibrahim (played by the impressive Yosif Sarchadzhiev) who is the embodiment of (religious) fundamentalism, showing how extremism slowly destroys everything in its way, starting with moderate people. This is illustrated in the disturbing sequence where Ibrahim and his regiment arrive to a town, guided by the moderate Ottoman governor Suleyman Aga, and spot a man on a roof of a building. Ibrahim has this exchange with Aga: "Who is he?" - "A carpenter. A foreigner." - "Religious or non-religious?" - "Non-religious." - "Sell him to me." Ibrahim gives Aga a small bag of money, then takes a gun and shoots the man on the roof. Aga then asks: "Why did you kill him?" - "So that everyone in the headquarters know that I have arrived".

Upon hearing that Ottoman soldiers have arrived, the villagers quickly send all their kids away so that they won't be abducted to become Jannisary, and dig a hole in the ground to place a huge vase there, and grain inside the vase, covering it with grass, to hide their food. The dialogues are surprisingly engaging and sharp. For instance, there is a sly comment about the Ottoman Sultan: "A desperate man with power, my friend, is the worst of all evils." When the Christian villagers are "bullied" into finally becoming Muslims, one villager teases Ibrahim: "I can't, Aga." - "What if others change their religion?" - "I'll see then, Aga. Let me be the last one." - "Isn't it all the same, Giaur?" - "It isn't, Aga. If I'm the last one, no one will be left to curse me after it." Despite this, nothing is presented as black and white: the moderate Ottoman governor is opposed to these forced conversions: "A green water melon, forcibly riped, isn't sweet!"; whereas Ibrahim, ironically, is himself a Bulgarian Christian who was abducted by the Ottomans and converted to Islam, meaning that he is now the continuation of his own injustice that wrecked his life, as he has intermittent flashbacks of his mother running after him. Even more ironic, a man who tries to assassinate Ibrahim in his room, turns out to be Goran, his own long lost brother, hinting at the cyclic nature of self-destruction. The director Staikov crafts several aesthetic images thanks to the fantastic locations in Rhodope mountains: one is the wonderful panorama shot of three flocks of sheep running across a yellow meadow on a hill, the other are the amazing frames of hundreds of people fleeing inside giant caves. Dark and bleak, but also contemplative, philosophical, "Time of Violence" still feels fresh today, has a remarkably fluent story flow from start to finish, and a sense for universality of cinema.

Grade:+++

May December

May December; drama, USA, 2023; D: Todd Haynes, S: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton, Cory Michael Smith, Elizabeth Yu

Actress Elizabeth visits an unusual wife whom she is about to play in a movie: Gracie, who had sex with her husband Joe when he was 13 years old, and she was 36. Gracie gave birth to their child in prison, but upon release she married Joe, and now they have three kids: Honor, Charlie and Mary. Elizabeth befriends Gracie and Joe, stays at their house, and studies their behavior. Joe has sex with Elizabeth, but regrets it. Charlie and Mary graduate, while Gracie tells Elizabeth to beat it. Elizabeth later films the movie on set.

What would happen to a grown woman who had sex with a 13-year old boy 20 years later? Todd Haynes' "May December" is a movie that tells this story after the paparazzi sensationalism, depicting it in a restrained, clinical and cold manner, showing this couple (Gracie, Joe) now married, with kids, as they are visited by an actress, Elizabeth, who studies Gracie to play her in a movie. The sole story is "spicy", but the movie isn't very cinematic. It's all rather stale after one gets used to the opening concept, since the storyline doesn't know what to do with this in the end. Natalie Portman as Elizabeth and Julianne Moore as Gracie are again excellent. The direction is competent, yet it needed more creativity and a better plot that would offer a higher amplitude of events than the rather routine one we got.

Grade:++

My Dear Theo

Z lyubov'yu z frontu; documentary, Ukraine / Poland / Denmark, 2025; D: Alisa Kovalenko, S: Alisa Kovalenko

On 24 February 2022, Goreshist Russia invades Ukraine, contaminating the land with occupation. Kyiv film director Alisa Kovalenko decides to follow her own promise in case of such invasion and joins the Ukrainian Army to defend her country, and takes her camera and microphone to also intermittently film the war front. Her unit battles Russian invaders in the Kyiv and Kharkiv Oblasts. During that time, Alisa writes letters to her 4-year old son Theo, confessing she misses him and doesn't know if she will survive the combat.

Excellent "unplanned" documentary "My Dear Theo" is assembled out of random episodes from the director Alisa Kovalenko's secret recordings from the front in the Russo-Ukrainian War, but almost every one of her frames are stylized, aligned and directed with such a concise guidance that it all can be analysed from any sequence on its own, showing the director's sense for cinema, even though she was surprised to stand in front of the camera instead of behind the camera. Whether these scenes are terrifying (random "flashes" of explosions on the countryside of a village seen over the horizon from afar), tragic (cows too afraid to get back in the barn from too loud explosions in the background as a farmwoman is trying to guide them back) or poetic (ants walking over the trenches), they all illustrate a broader picture of the historic event, and give enough context despite their disconnected nature. Kovalenko also inserted her own narration of her letters to her 4-year old son from the title, which gives the movie a metafilm touch. Despite all of the madness and death of the war, and the eerie feeling of uncertainty since the enemy is always outside the frame, only its crimes and violence visible, the movie is even able to find moments of optimism and humor (Kovalenko filming rabbits on a farm for her son via the mobile phone, joking that "battlefront rabbits are greeting" him; a soldier lamenting: "It's the 21st century, and we are digging trenches for the war instead of going to Mars!"). A fascinating film, a chronicle of a destroyed 21st century by politicians with neo-atavism, a contemplation on courage, honor, humanity and integrity during dark times, and valuable archive for future generations.

Grade:+++