Plácido

Plácido; satire / black comedy, Spain, 1961, D: Luis García Berlanga, S: Cassen, José María Caffarel, Manuel Alexandre, Elvira Quintillá, José Luis López Vázquez

A small town. Alonso Placido uses his motorcycle as a makeshift vehicle to promote the upcoming annual charity event: each Christmas eve, the wealthy stage an event where poor people come to the homes of the rich to eat dinner with them. Alonso received a bank note ordering his first payment for the motorcycle, but he does not have enough money to pay at the bank. Actors arrive from Madrid to host the event on stage, sponsored by a food pot company. A lot of trouble shows up: a radio reporter wants to interview a poor man who is the guest at the home of a rich family, but the man has no time to speak since he spends the time eating. Another poor man gets drunk at the home of a banker. A third poor man suddenly feels sick, a doctor is summoned, but the guest dies. The rich family pays Alonso to discreetly take away the corpse, as to not spoil their Christmas, and thus Alonso now has enough money to pay his bill and return to his home. The wife of the deceased poor man cries at their home.

One of several social satires by director Luis Garcia Berlanga that were subtly critical of the Francoist dictatorship in Spain at that time, "Plácido" is a dark allegory on the fact that compassion and kindness are scarce in the world, and that the only charity available is that one day of the year, on Christmas eve, but even that is done just for show, for the wealthy to promote themselves. Berlanga is not as inspired as he could have been: the jokes are rather thin and not developed further than just the bare concept of each situation, which inhibits both the development of the movie and the enjoyment value of the viewers. However, Berlanga is able to create a sly "anti-Christmas", anti-holiday movie that is a biting criticism of religion and society in general. The plot of poor men getting invited for dinner at the homes of the rich people is cozy, but were not elaborated, and were narrowed down to only three examples shown on film, which is rather meagre. The best episode is the one where a poor guest suddenly becomes dizzy during dinner and dies on the chair, causing the wife and husband to angrily search for the protagonist Alonso to take away the corpse, as to not ruin their Christmas. As the corpse is being taken away from the house to be dumped back at his home, the message is obvious: these people are not true philanthropists, they even despise the poor and consider them as a burden, and are only preoccupied with whitewashing their conscience at the end of the year to resume being back to their old rotten selves again. All this is amusing, yet a tighter director's hand and a more versatile viewing experience would have been welcomed.

Grade:++

Misery

Misery; psychological thriller, USA, 1990, D: Rob Reiner, S: James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, Lauren Bacall

Writer Paul Sheldon only wanted to finish his latest romance novel about a woman called Misery in his quiet cottage in the middle of nowhere, but two things get in his way: a snow blizzard, which causes his car to crash; and Annie Wilkes, a nurse who saves his life, but now keeps him locked up in her remote house in Silver Creek. Annie is a big fan of his novel series, but is angry that Paul killed off Misery in his last manuscript and demands he writes a new one. Since Paul has two broken legs and a broken arm, he is stuck there. A suspicious Sheriff drops by to check on Annie, but she kills him. Having partially recovered, Paul sets the manuscript on fire, and as Annie tries to extinguish it, he fights and kills her. Over a year later, Paul is back in New York and is recovering from trauma. 

Do you want to be stressed out and worry? Then "Misery" is the right movie for you, but it just shows what an effective psychological horror-thriller it is, a one that is able to take a simple story about a woman nurturing a wounded writer at her home, and yet slowly, but constantly keep elevating the anxiety of suspense the longer the movie lasts. Kathy Bates is brilliant as the psychotic fan Annie Wilkes, who uses the ploy of saving Paul as an excuse to now take the right to own him, keep him hostage, torture him, and control his life, in a nightmarish scenario that is maybe even too effective in the end, when the viewers practically want to shout at the screen when they see her. Based on the eponymous novel by Stephen King, "Misery" is an unusual film for director Rob Reiner, but forms a part of his 8-year lucky streak in his career, between "This is Spinal Tap" and "A Few Good Men", when Reiner was on a row and made one critically recognized film after another, with a wide range of genres. 

There are some comical bits here involving the Sheriff, played by Richard Farnsworth. When Paul's agent phones the Sheriff's office to inquire about Paul missing, she has this exchange with him: "I'd like to talk to the Silver Creek Chief of Police or Sheriff." - "Which one of them do you want?" - "Whichever one's not busy." - "Well, I'm pretty sure they're both not busy, since they're both me." While Sheriff is driving his police car, and his wife puts her hand on his knee, he goes: "Virginia, when you're in this car, you're not my wife, you're my deputy." However, the bitter suspense moments involving Annie-Paul clearly take the center stage, and Reiner is able to make the story gripping and engaging despite it being a chamber play consisting almost out of only two people. The sequence where Annie leaves in her car, so Paul is finally able to unlock the door and exit the bedroom on a wheelchair, kicks a ceramic penguin statue from the table, catches it, but inadvertently places it back on the table facing the opposite direction, which Annie later notices, is an exquisite detail. Several psychological analyses were made of Annie's personality, ranging from borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder and psychopathic domination, while she can also be seen as a symbol for extremism and isolationism taking over, completely undermining reason, in this chilling Hitchcock variation. 

Grade:+++

The Executioner

El verdugo; satire / black comedy, Spain / Italy, 1963, D: Luis García Berlanga, S: Nino Manfredi, Emma Penella, José Isbert, José Luis López Vázquez 

Madrid. Jose Luis is an undertaker who wants to quit his job and re-train as a car mechanic. One day, he returns the bag of executioner Amadeo, who forgot it, and meets his daughter Carmen. Since nobody wants to date Carmen due to her father's morbid job in which he strangles convicts with a metal garrote, she starts dating Jose Luis. They get married, but due to an administrative error, they cannot get a new government-sponsored apartment since Amadeo is retiring soon as a civil servant. He thus persuades Jose Luis to officially declare that his new job is an executioner, thereby securing the apartment. A man is sentenced to death by a court in Mallorca and a frightened Jose Luis is sent to execute him. Amadeo assures him that the convict will be pardoned, but in the end, Jose Luis has to execute the convict. Jose Luis later returns to his family and says he will never execute anyone again.

Phenomenal "The Executioner" is ostensibly a comical movie about the problems of newlyweds, but is in reality a dark meditation on the death penalty in Spain during the Francoist dictatorship. The director Luis Garcia Bertanga plays the movie as a comedy most of the time, yet is able to keep his clever-subversive tone throughout, skilfully avoiding government censorship. There is no empty walk, there is no wasted scene, everything is needed to bring the point at the end across—namely to awaken the viewers' awareness about all the contradictions of Francoist rule: it is ostensibly conservative, religious, moral, yet at the same time upholds a death penalty. The sole concept of an undertaker marrying the daughter of an executioner, since nobody wants to date them due to their morbid profession, has several funny gags. For instance, in one sequence, executioner Amadeo takes Jose Luis' finger and places it on the electric chandelier, burning it, then claiming that an electric chair has even more voltage, a thusand volts, which burns a convict, and that his method of strangling convicts is thus more "humane". 

The scene where Jose Luis talks to Amadeo in the apartment to ask for the hand of his daughter, but Jose Luis' pants fall down in the middle of his sentence, so he quickly pulls them back up again, is hilarious, whereas even the sole wedding sequence is grotesque: the priests pull back a rug on the floor, while another one extinguishes the fire on the candles, until the couple Jose Luis and Carmen are practically wed in semi-dark, whereas the best man almost flees from the church before he even signed the document. This is practically a symbol for false family values in Spain at that time, contaminated by morbid, immoral authoritarianism which constantly pretends that everything is ideal. The finale reaches the limits of black humor where Jose Luis as an executioner is more nervous and frightened than the sole convict who is just calm all of the time. When Jose Luis wants to abandon the execution, the prison warden refuses: "The convict can't wait!" Bertanga combines slapstick, farce, black humor and social criticism into a surprisingly fluent whole, even in the end showing what he feels about the death pentalty and the grotesque profession that it became, since murder is difficult to come across as business as usual.

Grade:+++

Fawlty Towers

Fawlty Towers; comedy series, UK, 1975 / 1979; D: John Howard Davies, Bob Spiers, S: John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs, Connie Booth, Ballard Berkeley

Basil Fawlty and his wife Sybil clumsily run a hotel, Fawlty Towers, and their staff includes maid Polly and waiter Manuel from Barcelona, who still has troubles with English language skills. They enouncter several problems: while Basil is away, cheap construction workers build a wall that blocks the dinning room, which now has to be demolished; a hotel inspector is among the guests, but Basil doesn't know who he is; the cook is drunk and incapacitated, so Basil has to transport cooked duck from a far away restaurant to serve dinner for his guests, but due to a mix up, he only brings them pudding; a half-deaf guest, Mrs. Richards, complains about everything; an angry American couple arrives late and demands dinner after the cook is not there anymore...

The 12-episode comedy series "Fawlty Towers" enjoys a huge reputation, but is in reality still a notch below all the hype. It constantly walks a line between inspired, hilarious humor and forced, contrived and strained buffoonery, struggling to be more former than the latter, but is not always in control. The most is achieved from John Cleese's excellent performance as Basil Fawlty, presenting him, surprisingly, as deliberately unlikeable, arrogant and conceited, not even bothering to try to charm the viewers, but maybe therein lies the appeal of his cynical humor. Co-writer Connie Booth also steals the show as the charming maid Polly, but she is sadly underused, and the series needed a spotlight episode where she is the lead for a change. The jokes are a hit-or-miss affair. Some are wonderful. Others are typical forced humor based on old people not hearing / mishearing something, the protagonists trying to deceive someone and hide chaos behind their backs, shouting, nervous / exaggerated gestures... The latter has been done to death, has aged poorly, which reduces the enjoyment value of some moments of the show. 

The better moments manage to sparkle through occasionally, though. For instance, there is this dialogue between Basil and a lady guest in episode 3: "Mrs. Lloyd, can I have a word with you?" - "You are." Episode 5 could have had a better punchline at the end than just that Basil hits his broken car, which stopped on the street, with a branch. Likewise, despite pushing the envelope in episode 6 about German guests and Basil, his head hurt, saying all the wrong, inappropriate things with regards to World War II, it could have been funnier. Season two is superior and has a tighter rhythm. In episode 7, for instance, Basil makes a comment after a happy guest left: "A satisfied customer. We should have him stuffed." In that same episodes, as the waiter Manuel, who cannot speak English properly, pretends he doesnt know anything about a horse race bet, Basil says: "I'm gonna sell you to a vivisectionist!" Episode 8 has a great joke of Basil in another room, stretching his hand out to push a switch on the wall because there is no electricity, but then a woman leans on said wall, stands there, Basil stretches his hand out to click the switch again, but only inadvertently touches her chest. The final episode is really well done, with a great premise that Basil is shocked to find out Manuel's pet hamster in a cage is actually a rat, right when the health inspector is about to show up. "Fawlty Towers" is a fun, cozy show, though it offers more standard humor than unexpected one.

Grade:++

Three-Body

San ti; science-fiction series, China, 2023, D: Yang Lei, Vincent Yang, S: Zhang Luyi, Yu Hewei, Chen Jin, Wang Ziwen, Lin Yongjian, Li Xiaoran, Yang Rong  

Beijing. Wang Miao is a researcher of nanomaterials who suddenly sees a countdown of cryptic numbers on his eyes, nonstop, even when he his eyes are wide shut. A woman, Shen Yufei, advises him to shut down his research. Wang obliges, and the countdown disappears, but he defiantly re-starts his program, even though the countdown re-emerges. Numerous scientists are killed or commit suicide under mysterious circumstances worldwide, so Inspector Shi is sent to investigate and team up with Wang. They hear of a secret society called the “Frontiers of Science”, led by Ye Wenjie, a former employee at a defunct astronomical observatory that received a signal from an alien civilization in 1 9 7 7, the Trisolarans from the Alpha Centauri, and invited them to come and solve humanity’s problems. The Trisolarans have a very unstable planet due to three suns orbiting each other, so they embark on a 400-year journey to settle to Earth. Two Earth factions battle each other: the Adventists, led by Pan Han, who welcomes the removal of humans from Earth, and the Redemptionists, led by Ye, who hopes aliens will reform humanity. In a raid, they are all arrested at a meeting, but Shi is injured and poisoned by radiation in the event. In a video game, Wang finds out that the aliens plan to let humans continue living on Earth, but will forbid them one thing: procreation. The Earth assembles a defense unit to prepare for the alien invasion.  

The original Chinese TV series based on the eponymous Sci-Fi novel by Liu Cixin, “Three Body” takes more time, patience and detail to conjure up said story in its 30 episodes than the Netflix remake series “Three Body Problem” released a year later, which has 8 episodes, but both series are excellent—what are flaws in one version is a virtue in another, and vice-versa. “Three Body” develops its character better, but it is overstretched and suffers from occasionally frustratingly slow pacing issues, leaving the impression that despite its virtues, it could have benefited from a more concise storytelling which could have shortened it by 10 episodes without losing anything. Repeating certain plots points, when everything is sufficiently clear already the first time, comes off as superfluous at times. For instance, episodes 26-27 are banal melodrama which could have been cut. Episode 28 spends two thirds of its time showing generals in the headquarters discussing which plan they should adopt to capture the data from the Judgement Day ship, when it would have been a far greater surprise factor to not reveal it to the viewers, and just let the ambush in the next episode come as a surprise. This is where the Netflix version is better: it has a sense for efficient editing and build-up of suspense. “Three Body” displays audacity in its depiction of consequences of technological advancement on social issues, and shows even the humans betraying Earth to welcome the Trisolaran takeover as multilayered characters who have their reasons (one of the proponents of the alien invasion, ecologist Evans, promotes species egalitarianism and hates humans for their ecocide), but it caves in from fear of depicting Mao Zedong’s totalitarian Communist dictatorship in the flashback episodes, which is why the first 5 minutes of the first episode of Netflix’s remake series has more courage than entire episodes 10-12 depicting same events, which are here truncated and self-inhibited. 

Nontheless, the series is modern, smart, philosophical, with several fascinating examples of Sci-Fi depictions. The trap set up for the collaborators’ ship crossing the Panama canal using dozens of spread nano-wires in episode 29 is incredible and resourceful, almost playing out like a horror movie in slow motion. That same episode reveals the potential look of the aliens, as depicted in the video game, and the design is fabulous. The best character is snappy reporter Mu Xing (excellent Yang Rong), who in episode 8 leans her motorcycle onto the parked car of detective Shi. When Shi returns to his car, she goes: “You hit my car, but don’t worry. I am not going to demand a compensation.” She then questions him about the Frontiers of Science, and then it is revealed she hid a tape recorder under the windshield wiper of Shi’s car. Episode 10 has a philosophical dialogue when Shi goes: “Then she contacted Shen Yufei. She was sure that physics didn’t exist.” - Wang: “Yang Dong’s exact words were “Physics never existed””. - “Is there any difference?” - “Of course there is. If physics doesn’t exist, there may be a problem with our fundamental theory. If physics has never existed, it would overthrow human’s understanding of the entire universe for thousands of years, whether in the macro world or micro world.” Episode 16 has this sharp dialogue: “Human society can no longer rely on its own power to solve problems.” - “Human society can no longer rely on its own power to restrain its madness”. Episode 17 shows Ye observing human behavior: “Humans choose the side in line with their intentions”. The highlights are the video game depictions of the alien world orbiting Alpha Centauri which cause a chilling awe: for instance, just as sunrise appears on the horizon, it immediately turns back into a sunset, causing the valley to freeze, whereas a tale depicts the sun suddenly shrinking in the sky, almost to the point of being a star in the night sky, showing that from the POV of the aliens, they themselves did not know that they were part of a tripple solar system, since the three suns would often be so close they appeared only as one sun. One could also decipher a theme from the story: is there any species that is not able to feed off from another species to survive? Is this inevitable in nature? Still, Matsumoto’s phenomenal TV series “Queen Millennia” remains the best depiction of an alien invasion of Earth because it is all so genuine and fluent at the same time, without ‘empty walk’.  

Grade:+++

Come Sweet Death

Komm, süßer Tod; crime black comedy, Austria, 2000; D: Wolfgang Murnberger, S: Josef Hader, Simon Schwarz, Barbara Rudnik, Michael Schönborn, Bernd Michael Lade, Nina Proll, Karl Markovics, Reinhard Nowak

Vienna. Two rival ambulance companies—the Kreuzretter and the Rettungsbund—compete with each other. Ex-private detective Brenner and his friend Berti work as paramedics in Kreuzretter. One night, paramedic Munz stops with the ambulance van at a food store and then goes to urinate, while his colleague Gross quickly sneaks into an office and shoots director Stenzl who is having sex with nurse Irmi, and then returns back to the van. Brenner's detective instincts activate and he wants to solve the case, but Gross is soon found dead, strangled in the ambulance van. Brenner's old friend, Klara, helps him. It turns out Brenner's boss Junior led a scheme with Gross, killing rich diabetic widows by injecting dextrose into their blood, causing hyperglycemia, which is untraceable, and then forging their inheritance to get their money. Irmi was on to him, and was thus eliminated. Junior wants to kill Irmi's ex-boyfriend Jürgen, partially paralyzed, by gassing him to death in the ambulance van, but Brenner, Klara and Berti stop and kill Junior.

This film adaptation of Wolf Haas's eponymous novel is an unusual amalgamation of crime and black comedy, reminiscent of a whodunnit Agatha Christie detective crime story, just injected with a lot of raw, grotesque humor ingrained in Austrian mentality. "Come Sweet Death" is not for everyone's taste precisely due to such dark details and ideas, including the farcical premise about a conspiracy in an ambulance agency tasked to save lives misused to kill lives for profit and the subsequent cover-up, but at its core the ex-detective Brenner, now turned a paramedic, is just a cynical, slob version of Hercule Poirot. Some of the best bits are the feisty dialogue between Brenner and a civil policeman who always insults him ("Well, well, is it asshole day today?"). One such exchange starts when two civil policemen again start disparaging him: "Paramedics are always the biggest jerks." - "And the worst cronies", so Brenner jokingly asks them: "So you're applying for the job then?" 

There is no civility or gentlemen-like behavior here, everyone is shown in their worst light (in the opening act, the ambulance drivers bet at who can pass through more red traffic lights, while one of them even drives so fast he runs over a dog on the street, yet just has to continue driving to get to the hospital as soon as possible), but even as such, the flawed paramedics are still ethical enough to show integrity and refuse to be part of the crime murder conspiracy. The director Wolfgang Murenberger has no ideals towards the world in general, showing how selfishness, egoism and greed can make even the most noble organizations sink in crime, but he has several stylish images: for instance, in the opening, a static wide shot of trees in a meadow is "interrupted" when a car falls from above the frame. Several moments are heavy handed, crude or underdeveloped, which reduces the enjoyment value, whereas the characters are deliberately kept unlikeable and at a distance from the viewers, which is not quite the best cinematic strategy. However, the violent crime finale is even suspensful and will leave the viewers on the edge of their seats, whereas there are several little jokes scattered throughout (upon hearing about the emergency situation, Brenner extinguishes his cigarette by putting it on top of his ice cream before entering the ambulance van).

Grade:++

The Thundermans: Undercover

The Thundermans: Undercover; fantasy comedy series, USA / Canada, 2025, D: Trevor Kirschner, Wendy Faraone, Siobhan Devine, S: Kira Kosarin, Jack Griffo, Maya Le Clark, Kinley Cunningham, Nathan Broxton, Dana Snyder, Daran Norris, Ian Ho, Chris Tallman, Rosa Blasi

The superhero Thunderman siblings Phoebe, Max and Chloe are tasked with investigating the identity of a mysterious new villain, Mastermind, who is hiding in the coastal town of Secret Shores. Hiding their identity, Phoebe finds a job as an art teacher, Max as the assitent of the school principal, while Chloue enlists as a student in said school, and meets new friends, the wacky Kombucha and Jinx. Chloe becomes friends with a classmate, Bryson Chance, while Phoebe and Max assume his father Lazlo might be the Mastermind. They indeed apprehend Lazlo in a villain costume, but then realize he was just remote controled by Bryson, who is the real Mastermind. Thanks to their superpowers, Phoebe, Max and Chloe are able to apprehend Bryson and stop his evil plans.

Seven years after the conclusion of the TV series "The Thundermans", Nickelodeon emerged with this sequel/spin-off series, which is of meandering quality and thus weaker than said original. The excellent Kira Kosarin returns as Phoebe Thunderman, but seems to be inhibited this time around by a stricter writing schedule and rushed production, which reduces her trademark improvisational comic skills a bit. Nontheless, she is still able to be charming and funny, and her talent mostly comes in the first few episodes, since the series adapts a rather straightforward approach in the finale, sticking only to action and battle sequences. Four excellent episodes—"The Parent Zap", "Save the Date", "For Your Spies Only", "No Friend in Sight"—bring out the best of creative humor and charming characters from the original series, capturing its frequency, while the rest is either good or, at worst, just routine with obligatory cameos from the previous cast, failing to live up to expectations. Of the new cast, the one who shines and surprises the most is Kinley Cunningham as Kombucha, since she is very energetic and funny, even though she plays the character almost exclusively over-the-top—but in this edition, it works, and she is able to stand out. 

What is also interesting is that this shows displays a progress and growth of its two main characters, since Phoebe and Max now find jobs in the school and live on their own in the house, showing they are not teenagers anymore. The aforementioned four grand episodes really are wonderful, and each of them has its own style of humor. "The Parent Zap" gains the most from the concept of Phoebe and Max disguising themselves as their mom and dad, and thus Rosa Blasi does a fantastic impression of Kosarin, especially in the scene where she mischievously opens the front door while she lifts her leg while leaning forward. "Save the Date" has a wonderful concept of Max betting with Phoebe that she cannot turn off her duty as a superhero and just go on a date for one day, with the highlight of Phoebe explaining to Chloe that she did not run away from the guy she found cute: "I didn't run away from him. I bounded away like a gazelle", upon which Phoebe hops up in the kitchen. "No Friend in Sight" has an easily relatable concept of how difficult it is to find new friends when you move to another city, and it is even funnier when Phoebe and Max realize they have found the same friend: Brenda. Their siblings rivalry culminates in the comical dialogue of the three of them sitting at a table. "He's usually too busy looking at himself in the mirror to notice anyone else is there." - "Sorry. Did I miss a dumb insult?" - "Oh, Brenda, I actually wanted to invite you to a club tonight. It's a book club. The DJ is our imaginations." - "You had me. And then you lost me. But then you had me again." When Brenda is forced to choose between either Max's shake event or Phoebe's book club, she has this exchange with them: "Phoebe or Max?" - "Phoebe..." - "Yes!" - "No!" - "...I gotta go with Max." - "No!" - "Yes!" The final episodes are much weaker and standard, though, ending on a routine note, thereby limiting the enjoyment value.

Grade:++

Bal-Can-Can

Bal-Kan-Kan; black crime comedy, Macedonia / Italy / UK, 2005; D: Darko Mitrevski, S: Vlado Jovanovski, Adolfo Margiotta, Zvezda Angelovska, Branko Đurić, Dejan Ačimović, Nikola Kojo, Jelisaveta Sablić, Veronika Zakovska

During the 2001 insurgency in Macedonia, Trendafil Karanfilov wants to dodge being drafted in the army, so he flees with his wife Ruža and his mother-in-law Zumbula for a Bulgarian city along the Black Sea. However, Zumbula dies, and since he cannot find a grave for her since she is a foreigner, Trandafil and Ruža decide to smuggle her wrapped up in a carpet back to Macedonia. But, when they stop at a store, the carpet is stolen. they call Trendafil's Italian blood-brother Santino Genovese for help. Their trail leads them across Belgrade, Sarajevo, and finally to Kosovo, where they find it is in possession of criminal Sefket, whose gang wants to kill kidnapped children in an abandoned storage to be used for organ theft. In a shootout, Santino and a Russian woman named Nadya die, but Sefket is also killed, by Nadya's daughter. Trendafil retrieves the carpet and saves the children.

One of the most popular Macedonian movies, black comedy "Bal-Can-Can" uses its story of a search for a dead grandma wrapped up inside a stolen carpet just for an excuse as a giant allegory that depicts countries of South Balkan and their mentality, each having their own flaw and vice. The film abounds with unusual ideas, quirky jokes (smugglers trying to smuggle Italian clothes through Yugoslav customs by wearing five layers of clothes on them) and fast pacing, which ensured it cult status, but it was an unnecessary decision to have the character Santino speak in Italian for the entire film, when the rest of the movie is in Macedonian language, whereas the first third of the film is so brilliant, but the rest, revolving around the vague goose chase across Balkan countries, is of lesser inspiration and creativity, since its dynamic pacing overshadows its quality. 

The first twenty minutes are genius: the idea that toes of Santino's corpse in a morgue are narrating the story (!) is so bizarre and yet so unique at the same time, whereas one amusing montage shows how the protagonist Trendafil's major life events are always marked by the outbreak of a war somewhere (the Six-Day War started when he was born; he met the love of his life on the day the Slovenian War started; his first day of work was when the Bosnian War started; he got married when the NATO started bombing Serbia...). His mother-in-law, Zumbula, also has some funny dialogue: "If your father were alive, he would have died instantly of shame!" The main plot is a lot weaker, though. A lot of episodic character from Belgrade, Sarajevo and other locations are shown, but they feel rather random, arbitrary and too primitive at times, indulging more in the banal attempts at Balkan humor than trying to continue the high level from the start of the film. Nonetheless, the director Darko Mitrevski managed to make this Macedonian film look international and modern, making it more appealing than it was expected.

Grade:++

Welcome to Sarajevo

Welcome to Sarajevo; war drama, UK / USA, 1997; D: Michael Winterbottom, S: Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrleson, Goran Višnjić, Emira Nušević, Kerry Fox, Marisa Tomei, James Nesbitt, Emily Lloyd

Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. British reporter Michael Henderson, working for ITN, after completing the coverage for Battle of Vukovar, travels to Sarajevo and joins other foreign correspondents there covering the siege, including American Jimmy Flynn, Jane and Nina, who travel with Bosniak interpreter Risto. They film war crimes by the Serb paramilitary and snipers, shooting at civilians from the hills. Michael discovers an abandoned building used as a shelter by over fifty orphans, and decides to help organize a UN convoy out of Sarajevo, but along their way, a Serb paramilitary unit stops them and takes the Serb children from the bus, before leaving. Michael feels pity on one orphaned Bosniak girl, Emira, and decides to adopt her in England. Risto is shot by a sniper in his house. Before Michael leaves, he attends a concert by a cellist, out in the open, on a Sarajevo hill, for peace. 

Michael Winterbottom is one of the most agile and prolific directors covering uncomfortable social issues which are ignored by the mainstream cinema, thereby giving them a spotlight, and his film  "Welcome to Sarajevo" could play in a double-bill with the Bosnian film "The Perfect Circle", released that same year, in 1997—while the former shows a foreigner's perspective on the Siege of Sarajevo, the latter depicts the local perspective from within. What is remarkable about "Welcome to Sarajevo" is that it is based on real life account of British ITN reporter Michael Nicholson, which gives the movie authenticity, as opposed to many other war movies where directors or screenwriters would often make stuff up to fill in the gaps of their knowledge on the subject—but also that it intertwines and mixes his staged footage with real life archive footage of several incidents in the Bosnian War, thereby giving the viewers a "reference" point to reality. For instance, when the reporters arrive to cover a mortar massacre, modern actors covered in blood, lying on the street, are shown, but also archive footage of the real event is also shown, including a man carrying a woman whose lower part of her leg is half-detached and hanging from the mortar explosion. Had these foreign reporters not been on the scene of the crime, would the world even remember it or believe it?

After handing over such shocking footage for editing, Michael is surprised to hear from a co-worker that it will not be the main headline news: "What is the lead story? The second coming of Christ?" - "The Duke and Duchess of York are getting divorced". Later, even real-life footage of Omarska concentration camp is shown. Woody Harrelson is consistently the best among the cast as the cynical, flamboyant American reporter Jimmy who gives several comical wisecracks about the madness they are witnessing. In one sequence, as the international community finally decided to act, and UNPROFOR soldiers arrive posing for the cameras, Jimmy comments with: "My God, I don't think I've ever seen such clean looking people". In another sequence, when Jimmy and Michael are talking inside a building and a loud explosion is heard outside, Jimmy stands up and shouts at the wall: "Get a job!" Winterbottom improvises, or at least gives a feeling as if scenes are improvised, which might turn off a part of the viewers, since there is no story structure, it is all just random episodes happening here and there across Sarajevo which the reporters cover, which makes it more like a docudrama, and less like a cinematic achievement. However, of the foreign movies covering post-Yugoslav Wars, this one is among the best, showing meticulous care in reconstructing the events.

Grade:+++