The Perfect Host

The Perfect Host; psychological drama / crime, USA, 2010; D: Nicholas Tomnay, S: Clayne Crawford, David Hyde Pierce, Megahn Perry, Helen Reddy

Los Angeles. John Taylor robbed a bank in collusion with his girlfriend Simone, a bank teller who told him she needs money for her disease. Getting rid of his car and having a wounded foot, John randomly rings in front of a mansion and asks to come inside, claiming he was robbed. He is received by Warwick Wilson who claims to be preparing a dinner for his guests. John drinks his wine and falls unconscious. When he wakes up, he is tied up, while Warwick turns out to be a psychopath who just imagines he is having guests in his empty kitchen. John wakes up the next morning outside on the street and finds out Simone plans to leaves the city with the money, without him. He confronts her at the parking garage and takes the money, but the money is taken away from him by Warwick, who is a police lieutenant. Some time later, a detective receives a photo of Warwick and John together, and Warwick invites him for dinner.

This unknown independent film by Nicholas Tomnay is a surprisingly well made and clever blend of crime and psychological drama, playing with the always intriguing concept of a prey and predator switching roles in a plot twist. "The Perfect Host" from the title is played by the excellent David Hyde Pierce as the psychotic Warwick, who isn't as innocent and weak as it first seems. There are some creative details here (for instance, the desperate John randomly picks a mail box of a mansion, finds a letter inside signed by some Julie, and then rings the doorbell, claiming to be Julie's friend who lost his luggage at the airport and needs help) and each ten minutes in the first half offer some new twist or surprise to keep the story interesting and unusual, whereas the cinematography is aesthetic. In one of these surprises, Warwick imagines he is having guests at the table in his kitchen, only for the next scene to reveal him talking to himself, with only the confused John looking at him, revealing his deranged nature. However, after 45 minutes, the story kind of loses its surprise effect, and thus the rest is rather solid, but underwhelming, without any clear major pay-off to Warwick's psychosis. A final plot twist could have been that he is even imagining to be a police lieutenant, but that is contradicted when John hears his associate via walkie-talkie and the detective receiving John's photo, which undermines this theory. There was not that much depth to Warwick's character, and some moments are a bit contrived (why did Warwick apply fake wounds on John's face? Why did he simply release John?), yet "The Perfect Host" manages to be a slow-burning psychological crime-drama with the two leading actors carrying up the story for 90% of its time, on only one location.

Grade:++   

The Boys (Season 1)

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Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn); action / black comedy, USA, 2020; D: Cathy Yan, S: Margot Robbie, Ella Jay Basco, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Ewan McGregor, Chris Messina, Ali Wong 

Gotham City. After Joker broke up with her, Harley Quinn finds a new assignment: a little girl, Cassandra, stole and ate a diamond intended for crime boss Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask, so he orders Harley to get it back. Harley finds Cassandra, but actually becomes her friend. In the meantime, Detective Renee Montoya, singer Dinah Lance and Helena Bertinelli, aka The Huntress, also have a bone to pick with Sionis, so they reluctantly team up with Harley. Sionis orders his men to get the diamond any way they can, even threatening to cut out Cassandra's stomach, but luckily Harley is able to stop them and kill Sionis. Later, after Cassandra defecates the diamond, Harley escapes with her from Montoya, Dinah and Bertinelli.

The 2nd film in which Margot Robbie played Harley Quinn, "Birds of Prey" is weaker than "The Suicide Squad", but better than "Suicide Squad". It is a patchwork, using a convoluted narrative obfuscation of a rather simple story in which Harley has to save a girl who ate a diamond from criminal Sionis, which makes it slightly forced at times, but it still has enough virtues to offer a good fun, especially in some meticulously choreographed martial arts and fight sequences, where the creative work of the stuntmen rises to the occasion. The story is at times almost banal (the villain Sionis is presented almost exclusively as a one-dimensional bad guy, with one nasty sequence where he orders his henchmen to torture and execute three people hanging upside down; the hyena plays no role in the story, indicating the screenplay needed at least one more re-write), but the director Cathy Yan is still able to be playful on the field of directing, enriching the film. For instance, in one sequence, as Harley is running away from Detective Montoya through a market, she randomly spots other people who create obstacles for her, as the camera zooms in on their faces and shows their name and grievance ("Name: Roller Dummy. Grievance: Broke her nose."; "Name: Ralph Murray. Grievance: Fed his brother to a hyena"). In another comical sequence, Harley, in disguise, enters a police precinct and says: "I'd like to report a terrible crime". The police officer asks: "What crime?", and she replies with: "This one!", as she reveals a gun that fires some sort of a red ball at the officer, knocking him out. The best moment happens at a brilliantly choreographed fighting sequence at a warehouse, where a big henchman with a long beard is holding Harley by her neck, but she takes a lighter and lights his beard on fire, causing him to recoil in panic: genius. These kind of stylizations and anarchic humor fit very well with Harley's crazy persona, helping sway this film towards something better than it was fated initially.

Grade:++

I, Daniel Blake

I, Daniel Blake; drama, UK, 2016; D: Ken Loach, S: Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Brianna Shan, Dylan McKiernan

Newcastle. After recovering from a heart attack, woodworker Daniel Blake is faced with a bureaucratic heart attack: his doctor forbids him to work, but the British Government's Department for Work and Pensions refuses to pay him social welfare and orders him to get back to work. Daniel appeals, but has to wait in the meantime without any income. He becomes friends with Katie, an unemployed mother of two who moved from London. Daniel helps her repair stuff at her new home. Katie finds work as a prostitute and refuses to quit even after Daniel tells her to. Computer illiterate, Daniel has a difficult time at the employment center and attends a CV workshop. While seeing a lawyer to help him in his case, Daniel suffers a heart attack at the toilet and dies.

The movie that secured Ken Loach a second Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, "I, Daniel Blake" is a standard, schematic and grey social drama, but it has moments of freshness due to the humorous, energetic and measured performance by comedian Dave Johns in the title role. The director Loach often copes with his didactic preaching of themes "eating" his entire story, style and creativity, and some of these flaws are apparent even here, especially in the banal, unsatisfactory and abrupt ending which feels as if it is creating some sort of apotheosis of tragedy for the title hero broken by the system. Nonetheless, Loach crafts a film that is as unglamorized from Hollywood idealism as possible, establishing a realistic and grim picture of everyday working class, who are just one health problem away from bankruptcy. The best bits in the film are those where Daniel does something funny or rebellious which makes him stand out: for instance, in one sequence at the unemployment office, when he spots the unemployed single mother Katie with her two kids treated poorly by an official, even though they are new in town, Daniel stands up: "Who's first in this queue?" A man answers: "I am". - "Do you mind if this young miss signs on first?" Daniel then points with his finger: "Now you can go back to your desk and let her sign on and do the job that the taxpayer pays you for! This is a bloody disgrace!" An official warns Daniel that he is making a scene, but Daniel insists: "She's out of the area. She's just been a few minutes. Can you not let her sign on?" In another wonderful scene, Daniel is ordered by the unemployment office to attend a CV workshop, where a man holds a lecture: "Costa Coffee advertised 8 jobs. Do you know how man applications they got from that? Over 1,300. So, what does that mean?" Cue Daniel not missing a beat: "We should all be drinking a lot more bloody coffee... Well, if you can count, it's obvious. There's not enough jobs. Fact." An ambitious, intelligent and humane film about the madness of bureaucracy in modern times and ever growing financial crisis which is taking a toll of ordinary working people, whose lives keep shrinking.

Grade:++

Raining Stones

Raining Stones; drama, UK, 1993; D: Ken Loach, S: Bruce Jones, Julie Brown, Ricky Tomlinson, Gemma Phoenix, Tom Hickey

Northern England. Bob, an unemployed man, and his friend Tommy steal a mutton on a meadow to try to sell it to a butcher, but he warns them that only sheep meat sells. Indeed, they earn little trying to sell  meat at a pub. Even worse, Tommy left the keys in Bob's van, which gets stolen. Bob, a devout Catholic, is desperate because he needs 105£ to buy a dress for his daughter Coleen's First Communion. His wife Anne tries to help by applying for a sewing job, but is fired. Bob tries a job as a bouncer at a night bar, but is fired. Bob borrows money from a loan shark, Tansey, who arrives one day at Bob's home and forces Anne to give him her wedding ring and other valuables to repay Bob's debt. When Bob returns back home and hears what happened, he becomes angry, takes a wrench and follows Tansey. Bob attacks Tansey at the parking garage. Tansey flees in panic in his car, hits a concrete pillar and dies. Bob confesses everything to a priest, but he advises Bob to not tell anyone and resume his life. Bob enjoys Coleen's First Communion.

Ken Loach's parable on people who take desperate measures to find a solution out of their desperate situation, "Raining Stones" is both emotional and 'rough', never allowing to present the working class in idealized fashion. Loach's often screenwriter Jim Allen shows a lot of sense for the mentality of these people, so much that the viewers can easily identify with them, whereas they both find a wonderful support in the main actor Bruce Jones in the role of Bob. The protagonist is presented as a flawed hero: he wants the best for his little daughter Coleen and her First Communion, but is too 'rustic', clumsy and heavy-handed in his choices. A lot of freshness arrives from the surprising humor, which livens up the rather grey mood—in one sequence, Tommy tells Bob this joke: "Did you hear about that kid from Liverpool in the bloody wheelchair they took to Lourdes? ... And when he came out of the water, they all had a look at his legs. And his legs were still twisted. But the wheelchair had two new tires on it!" In another sequence, while Bob wants to buy an old van, Tommy has this exchange with the seller: "How many owners has it had?" - "Owners! Only one!" - "Who was it, Ben-Hur?" Everything here is dirty, raw and difficult, to be as a close to the experience of reality as possible, whereas Loach never preaches nor falls into sentimentality—the advice and reaction of the priest in the finale, when Bob confesses what he did, is a true surprise of pragmatism. The structure of the storyline feels a bit episodic, random and aimless, some moments seem fake (for instance, the illogical sequence where the daughter just let's the loan shark into their house, who demands money from the mother, even though he never presents Bob's document with borrowed money), whereas some characters deserved better treatment, for instance the underwritten role of Bob's wife Anne. Still, even though Anne's presence is sparse, she has one of the most poignant, philosophical lines in the film that say a lot about people feeling trapped by determinism and rigid fate: "It's funny how we start off, ain't it, with all these big ideas. And then you realize that things aren't going to change. I'll live and die in that flat, and nobody will ever know."

Grade:+++

Sorry We Missed You

Sorry We Missed You; drama, UK / France / Belgium, 2019; D: Ken Loach, S: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor

Newcastle upon Tyne. Manual laborer Ricky decides to try out a new job as a delivery driver who delivers boxes with items that people ordered via internet. His boss Maloney tells him he is "self-employed", but that he must pay a 1,000£ for a van. Ricky thus works 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. His wife Abby had to sell her car to afford Ricky's van, so she now takes a bus to work as a home care nurse. Their teenage son Sebastian is a troublemaker who one day steals spray cans from a store, so Ricky takes away his mobile phone. When Ricky's van keys vanish, he assumes it was Sebastian and slaps him, but it turns out it was their 13-year old daughter Liza Jane. One day, Ricky is attacked by three thugs who steals his boxes. Since Maloney will not reimburse him for the lost barcode scanner nor pay for his recovery, an injured Ricky drives off the van to continue work.

Ken Loach's penultimate film, social drama "Sorry We Missed You" is almost a shock therapy to all those idealized Hollywood films showing middle class work as pleasant and comfortable. The protagonist Ricky assumes he will get an easy job as a delivery driver, but he suddenly faces sobering problems along his way: a customer says he didn't order anything; a parking enforcement officer threatens to write him a fine for parking with his van in the middle of the street; Ricky has to urinate in a bottle because he has nowhere to stop with his van; he works 14 hours a day, six days a week... Loach simply poses an uncomfortable question—is there any dignified type of work left for the ordinary middle class? The film is a bit didactic and too schematic, presenting everything a bit too rigid and standard, since Loach often avoids cinematic technique or some more creative style to focus on the sole story and present reality as grey as it is, without any "make up", but the insight it shows into work over-exploitation and lack of any social welfare or solidarity creates some strong messages that make you think. Loach luckily never preaches, and instead just let's the story take its flow. Some of the best bits are when the characters' personalities come across as more important than the theme: in the best moment of the film, parents Ricky and Abby are arguing in their bedroom during the night, while all of a sudden they hear the knock on their door—it's their daughter Liza Jane, who tells them: "Stop it! No fighting!"

Grade:++

The Impossible

The Impossible; disaster film, Spain, 2012; D: J. A. Bayona, S: Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Ewan McGregor, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Geraldine Chaplin

December 2 0 0 4. Maria Bennett travels with her husband Henry and three children Lucas, Simon and Thomas to Khao Lak, Thailand, for a vacation. They enjoy their stay at the hotel and spend the Christmas there. On 26 December, the Indian Ocean earthquake causes a tsunami which reaches the shore and sweeps away the hotel and the guests. Badly wounded, Maria is able to find Lucas and a boy, Daniel, and climb up a tree in case of another tsunami. Locals find them and transport them to a hospital. Henry finds that his mother's bed is taken over by another patient, and cannot find her, until the staff leads him to her, who has undergone surgery, but is stable. Henry, Simon and Thomas also survived, and manage to find and reunite with Maria and Lucas in the hospital. They are then evacuated to Singapore. 

One of the first film depictions of the catastrophic 2 0 0 4 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which killed 228,000 people along the wider area of the Bay of Bengal, based on the real-life experiences of survivor Maria Belon, "The Impossible" is an intense, terrifying and strong blend of disaster and survival film. The director J. A. Bayona takes care of the authenticity, allowing for the story to contemplate about the notions of fragility of life under threat from random disasters of the harsh, cruel universe, whereas the leading actress Naomi Watts is excellent as Maria. The film does not waste time—the tsunami occurs already 14 minutes into the film, and this segment is its most impressive accomplishment: tourists are happily walking along the swimming pool, when all of a sudden Maria's paper is carried away by the wind and stops at a glass wall, as she and others turn around to randomly see palm trees falling down along the horizon. Cue to a random 12 ft tall wave of dirty, brown water which simply sweeps everything in sight, from tourists to the hotel building. It all just happens in 20 seconds, and they simply don't have time to react at all. Maria hangs on to a tree, and the water stream is all around her, she let's go to try to swim after her son Lucas, but she is pierced when she is carried by the water into a random tree branch. This whole sequence is incredible and one wonders how they managed to film it. The rest of the film is the aftermath segment, which encompasses the remaining 2/3 of "The Impossible's" running time, but it is of lesser intensity and falters a bit in interest. Having Maria and Lucas wait at the hospital is simply not that engaging, which is why the director even uses the cliche of father Henry almost not finding Maria in her hospital bed and is just about to leave in the truck when something happens, which is banal. The storyline clearly needed some better written dialogue or cinematic inspiration for support in this post-tsunami segment. Nonetheless, "The Impossible" is a valuable depiction of the disaster, showing how it looked like and what its effects were. If there is one villain here, then it is chaos; if there is one protagonist, then it is life trying to survive and live in peace and stability.

Grade:+++

21 Grams

21 Grams; drama, USA, 2003; D: Alejandro González Iñárritu, S: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Danny Houston

Jack, a former convict who now turned into a Christian preacher, accidentally hits a man and his two daughters on the street with his car. Jack panics and drives off, leaving the three there to die. The deceased man's wife, Cristina, is now both a widow and a mother who lost her two children. Her late husband's heart is transplanted into Paul, a mathematics professor. Paul finds out about the life of his donor and makes contact with Cristina, starting a relationship. This, however, means the end of Paul's relationship with Mary, who wanted to have a baby with him. Cristina persuades Paul to kill Jack, but he let's him go. Jack later enters into their apartment and demands to be shot, but in the chaos, Paul shoots himself and dies. Jack turns himself to the police, claiming he shot Paul, but is let go because the investigation finds out it is a lie.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2nd feature length film, and his first in the US, is a contemplative, ambitious and artistic achievement, but the problem is that it is basically a melodrama—just with better cinematography and presented in nonlinear narrative. The dialogue and plot points are bland and standard, thereby making the storyline limited, without much creativity. Another problem is that Inarritu already used this trick of disjointed narrative, with scenes being shown randomly out of order throughout the film, in his better debut "Amores perros"—and peculiarly, even in his next film, "Babel". The aesthetic images are thus applied as a "make up" to try to improve the routine story, and this works, actually. However, the main highlight are the three excellent lead actors who give outstanding performances, playing their roles with enthusiasm even in the most pale scenes. The standout among these three standout actors is Naomi Watts, who gives another stunning performance as Cristina, finding herself in a peculiar situation where she has a relationship with Paul, who has the transplanted heart of her late husband. The character of Jack (Benicio del Toro) is also fascinating: he was an ex-convict, reformed, became a Christian pastor who tries to convert juvenile delinquents (he is even ready to engage in a physical fight with one punk to convert him!) and implement religious teaching literally (when his son slaps his daughter, Jack forces her to "turn her other cheeck", i.e. allow her brother to slap her other hand), perpetrated a hit-and-run accident, and now lost his faith (and purpose in life) again. The vague ending feels incomplete and unfinished, leaving the whole point of "21 Grams" somewhat elusive, yet Inarritu shows his talent by making it more enlightened than expected.

Grade:++

Dinosaurus!

Dinosaurus!; science-fiction adventure, USA, 1960; D: Irvin Yeaworth, S: Ward Ramsey, Alan Roberts, Kristina Hanson, Gregg Martell

Engineer Bart and his team are triggering underwater explosions along the coast of a Caribbean island to clear the seafloor to build a harbor. Accidentally, they stumble upon a frozen Brontosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the sea and pull them out on the shore. Bad idea: a lightning bolt hits and awakens said dinosaurs, and they now roam the island. A Neanderthal is also awakened and becomes friends with kid Julio. The local 'island master' Hacker wants to kidnap the caveman and sell him to an exhibition. The Brontosaurus sinks in quicksand; the caveman dies by holding up the beam of a collapsing mine while Julio and Betty, Bart's girlfriend, escape. Bart uses an excavator to push the T. Rex into the sea.

"Dinosaurus!" once again proves that there are so few dinosaur movies, and even fewer of them that are good. A silly oddity, Irvin Yeaworth's film is a harmless 'guilty pleasure' that indulges the human fascination with giant monsters, but it aligns with one unwritten rule: in these kind of movies, human characters are often bland and boring, while only the scarcely shown dinosaurs are interesting. Indeed, already in the opening, the viewers sense that the main (human) protagonists are not only one-dimensional, but also wooden and stiff: engineer Bart and his team are launching underwater explosions off the coast, while Betty for some reason is heading with her boat right towards them, even though they are waving a red flag to not go near them. Didn't she hear all those explosions just a minute ago? Why didn't they close the coastline around them while they are blowing up the seafloor? When Bart arrives with his boat towards her, she suddenly starts taking her clothes off, revealing a swimsuit, saying: "I'm going down to Davy Jones' locker for my mother's portable icebox, in which I had stashed all sorts of goodies for you guys to eat, and which I intend to eat whether you're hungry or not." Whoever wrote this dialogue needs to have it read back to him. Would a woman really dive deep into the sea to get food from a sunk refrigerator on the seafloor? Is she that hungry? How about going to a supermarket? The rest of the movie is equally as strained and illogical, but the dinosaur sequences, created thanks to stop-motion animation, are a bit better. At 28 minutes into the film, there is an elegant camera pan from the head of a lying Brontosaurus up to his tale, which moves. The battle between the T. Rex and Bart operating the excavator is solid, a forerunner to Cameron's battle between the Alien Queen and an exoskeleton in "Aliens", whereas the comical moments involving the caveman are at least partially amusing: for instance, the caveman sees food on a table through the window, but is surprised that he cannot touch it because of glass, and when a woman with a wacky facial mask sees him, they are both scared from each other and run away. 

Grade:+

The Friend

The Friend; drama / comedy, USA, 2024; D: Scott McGehee, David Siegel, S: Naomi Watts, Bing, Sarah Pidgeon, Carla Gugino, Bill Murray, Noma Dumezweni

New York City. Iris, a writer, is surprised when she is informed that, following the suicide of her mentor and ex-lover Walter, she is assigned to take care of his giant Great Dane dog, Apollo. Iris is stressed because her superintendent doesn't allow dogs in her apartment, so she wants to get rid of him, but nobody is ready to adopt the dog. Walter's daughter Val helps her out. Iris decides to drive Apollo to Michigan dog shelter, but then changes her mind and decides to register it as an emotional support animal. Upon the advice of a psychologist, she writes a story where she confronts Walter about his suicide, scolding him for not talking it through with others. Iris stays at Walter's Long Island beach house for the summer with Apollo.

Based on the eponymous novel by Sigrid Nunez, "The Friend" is a peculiar film contemplation about suicide, accepting loss and processing emotional turmoil in the allegorical depiction of the heroine Iris taking care of a big dog. It has several jokes based on suicide, ranging from Samuel Beckett's quote: "The day you die is just like any other, only shorter", up to something a character who committed suicide, Walter (Bill Murray), said: "The more suicidal people there are, the less suicidal people there are." Nonetheless, except for that, "The Friend" is surprisingly measured, respectful and emotionally honest, showing the aftermath of friends of someone perpetrating suicide. Still, the film doesn't have that much of an inspiration, creative lift-offs or ingenuity to justify this complex concept. It is too light and thin, but it once again confirms that Naomi Watts is an excellent actress who is able to carry a film and make something more out of it: the highlight is definitely her emotional reaction in front of the psychologist in the finale, where she processes her own grief and makes her own closure by writing a story where she confronts the dead Walter about why he perpetrated suicide. It is not clear if she had a more romantic or formal admiration towards Walter, which leaves the writing lacking. Still, the dog, Bing, is amusing: he first starts out as a nuisance and troublemaker sleeping on her bed, but then she realizes he is also in grief, and thus becomes a comfort for her. 

Grade:++

Lone Wolf McQuade

Lone Wolf McQuade; action, USA, 1983; D: Steve Carver, S: Chuck Norris, Barbara Carrera, Robert Beltran, David Carradine, Dana Kimmell, L. Q. Jones, Daniel Frishman

Jim McQuade is a Texas Ranger in El Paso, nicknamed "Lone Wolf" because he lives alone in a hut in the wilderness with a pet wolf, ever since he divorced his wife. His boss assigns him a new partner, Hispanic officer Kayo, and McQuade starts a relationship with Lola. McQuade is shocked to hear that his daughter Sally was injured when her car was pushed off a cliff, and her boyfriend was shot because they witnessed Mexican mafia smuggling US Army weapons across the border during the night. McQuade investigates the dwarf mafia boss Falcon, discovers an arms depot in the desert, controlled by Wilkes who defies Falcon and kidnaps Sally. In the shootout, Lola is shot, so McQuade throws a grenade at Wilkes hiding in a depot, which explodes. Sally is saved.

One of Chuck Norris' best films, "Lone Wolf McQuade" is a surprisingly simple and effective action investigative film that defies clichés, and was so influential and genuine that it even inspired the TV show "Walker, Texas Ranger". The director Steve Carver refuses to show the title hero as a one-dimensional good guy: McQuade has flaws, is divorced, and even scorns his lover Lola for vacuum cleaning his home, throwing away his beer and replacing it with vitamins, but then apologizes. One slow-motion scene where they playfully embrace on the ground, with the water hose running, is even wonderfully romantic, whereas the opening sequence where McQuade is observing horse thieves with binoculars from a cliff, without any dialogue, is so expressionistic and sharply focused that not even S. Peckinpah would have been ashamed of it. Naturally, several cheesy 80s lines are amusing, staying true to the action genre they appeared from—when McQuade is observing the attractive Lola riding a horse, his friend cannot resist as to comment: "How would you like to bite that in the butt, develop lockjaw, and be dragged to death?" When one of the villains hits McQuade's partner Kayo, throwing him on the ground, he says: "Remember me?" Cue to Kayo taking his gun and shooting him while lying down, replying: "I never forget an asshole." Lola, played by Barbara Carrera, is a surprisingly energetic and three-dimensional character, who refuses to remain passive. In one sequence, while she is sitting with McQuade in a bar at a table for a date, a random punk approaches her and says: "How about a kiss, baby?" McQuade wants to react, but Lola just gives him a sign to remain seated, as she stands up—and slaps the punk herself! The finale loses ground to the typical martial arts fighting and the cliche of the villain shooting someone the hero loves to motivate him to fight even more, which is weaker than the rest of the film. Nonetheless, "Lone Wolf McQuade" shows that even seemingly ordinary stories can be executed in a few refreshing, extraordinary ways.

Grade:++

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie; computer-animated fantasy comedy, USA, 2026; D: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, S: Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, Charlie Day, Benny Safdie, Jack Black, Brie Larson

Kid Koopa Bowser Jr. uses a spaceship to kidnap Princess Rosalina from her observatory, and use her magical powers to fuel his giant weapon. Princess Peach and Toad leave the Mushroom Kingdom to save Rosalina, while plumbers Mario and Luigi stay behind and find a green dinosaur named Yoshi. The shrunk Bowser Koopa grows back to his huge size and meets up with Bowser Jr. Peach, Toad, Mario, Luigi and Yoshi reunite and travel in a spaceship by Fox McCloud to Fossil Falls galaxy where they battle and defeat the Koopas, whereas Peach discovers Rosalina is her lost sister.

One of the more routine sequels of the decade, "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" divorces itself completely from its cinematic obligations and instead aims to be only a feature length promotion for video games. The result is thus tired: the frenetic pace is inversely proportional to its style and inspiration. It is just a fast, random collection of different lands every 5 minutes, characters falling, running, kicking or fighting, but without any essence to it. They are empty vessels in the wrong medium. It is a pity, because the 1st film had at least some effort and care to set-up jokes with a punchline, unlike here. This is an improvisation, not a movie. The authors needed better jokes, because simply empty rushing a hundred miles an hour to nowhere does not suffice. Some tiny bits are at least partially amusing (a Toad drops ice cream from his cone, so Mario uses his ice superpower to create him an even bigger snowball on said cone; Mario and Peach jumping over a bridge over lava near the castle, while Bowser Jr. watches them on the screen, where they look like video game characters; the Minions cameo...), whereas one moment is an unexpected expressionistic blast (Luigi uses Bowser Jr.'s paintbrush to draw a black silhouette, Mr. Watch & Game, who simply hits Bowser with an animated hammer on the head, Looney Tunes-style). The rest is below expectations. Yoshi is underused, but when you think about, all the characters are underused: they are nominally there, but their playful spirit and fun are absent. 

Grade:+

The Hunt for Red October

The Hunt for Red October; thriller, USA, 1990; D: John McTiernan, S: Alec Baldwin, Sean Connery, Sam Neill, Stellan Skarsgård, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, Peter Firth

In 1 9 8 4, the Soviet Union dispatches a ballistic missile nuclear submarine Red October in the Atlantic Ocean, heading towards the US. Its commander is Lithuanian Marko Ramius. Soon afterwards, other Soviet combat submarines follow it. The US military staff in Washington, D.C. assume an attack on the American east coast is imminent, but CIA analyst Jack Ryan has a different theory: Ramius wants to deflect to the American side. The Soviet ambassador lies that Ramius has gone crazy and wants to strike, telling the US to sink their submarine. Ryan boards US submarine USS Dallas and sends signals to Ramius, who evacuates his staff from Red October feigning technical problems, and allows Ryan inside, seeking US asylum. A Soviet submarine fires a torpedo, but thanks to skillful maneuvering by Red October and USS Dallas, the torpedo is lured to strike the Soviet submarine and sink it. 

If you want to see Sean Connery playing a Lithuanian submarine commander who kills a Russian official named Putin, "The Hunt for Red October" is the right film for you, one of the last Cold War thrillers before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The competent director John McTiernan crafts a stylish, polished and suspenseful thriller thanks to aesthetic colors and a stunning, crystal-clear cinematography which make the film modern and fresh even today, whereas the charismatic Sean Connery is excellent in the role of Marko Ramius—in the first third, the movie keeps the viewers deliberately guessing, in uncertainty, as to what Ramius intentions really are: does he want to attack the US with ballistic missiles or just deflect to seek asylum? Alec Baldwin is also good as Jack Ryan, in his first film adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel, though there is not much of a character development or deeper psychological exploration than just that what is necessary for the bare minimum to keep the story going. Nonetheless, the story works at least for one engaging viewing, with some clever moments (the American submarine fires a torpedo at Red October, but then Greer (James Earl Jones), Deputy Director of CIA, presses a button and destroys said torpedo halfway, saying to a Navy official he was never there; the finale where the Red October and the USS Dallas maneuver to avoid a torpedo fired at them from a Soviet submarine, trying to destroy Red October so that its technology want fall into American hands, which reminds even a bit of the finale in "Star Trek VI"). A conventional, but effective and fluent thriller, so smooth that it will engage even viewers usually not that inclined towards these kind of films.

Grade:++

Toto the Hero

Toto le héros; tragicomedy, Belgium / Germany / France, 1991; D: Jaco Van Dormael, S: Michel Bouquet, Thomas Godet, Jo De Backer, Mireille Perrier, Gisela Uhlen, Sandrine Blancke

Thomas, now an old man in a retirement home, recounts his life: as a little kid, Thomas lives with his sister Alice and brother with a Down syndrome, while their father disappeared on a plane during bad weather. Thomas imagines that he was switched as an infant in the maternity ward with his neighbor boy, Alfred. Thomas is infatuated with Alice and jealous of her affections towards Alfred. Alice wants to prove her loyalty by burning Alfred's home with a gasoline canister, but due to an accident, she dies in the fire. As a grown up, Thomas meets Evelyne who looks remarkably like Alice, but she is Alfred's wife. In the present, Thomas wants to kill Alfred. While hiding in a shack, he overhears that a gangster will assassinate Alfred in his home that evening. Thomas thus locks up Alfred, takes on his clothes and appears in his house. The assassin shoots through the window and thus kills Thomas instead of Alfred. 

The feature length debut film of the Belgian cinematic hope of that time, Jaco Van Dormael's "Toto the Hero" is an unusual and creative film presented in a dispersed nonlinear narrative that flip-flops between the childhood, adulthood and old life of protagonist Thomas, but it still seems as if he "polished" and improved this concept more in his later film "Mr. Nobody". The episodes involving these three timelines in Thomas' life are interesting, though somewhat inconclusive in the end without a stronger point. The best bits are surreal comical scenes which, together with this storyline told out of chronological order, make this ordinary story more extraordinary and fresh (the mother is seen with blood dripping from beneath her hat in a grocery store, the people all gather around her and call the ambulance, but then the clerk takes her hat off—and it is revealed she was hiding a piece of raw meat on her head; when her dad's plane disappears, the 13-year old Alice goes inside a church and threatens a statue of Holy Mary (!) by saying: "We came to warn you! If our dad isn't found, you'll have to answer to me!"; the old Thomas attaches a lightbulb with a metal foil on a lamp, and when the security guard turns it on, it explodes, causing a short circuit in the retirement home, thereby allowing Thomas to escape). The "twist ending" isn't that well thought out (the viewers are led to believe one thing already in the opening scenes, only for Van Dormael to have this subverted) whereas a couple of 'autistic' ideas and situations make the film less comprehensible than it should have been, though the director has talent and skill, showing jealousy, confusion and disappointment in life from cradle to grave, never allowing to compromise and create a pleasant 'feelgood' film.   

Grade:++

My Life as a Dog

Mitt liv som hund; tragicomedy, Sweden, 1985; D: Lasse Hallström, S: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Manfred Serner, Melinda Kinnaman, Lennart Hjulström

Ingmar (12) is a problematic boy who either fights with his older brother Erik or causes mischief at home, stressing his sick single mother. To help her relax, the relatives send Erik to one part of the family for the summer, while Ingmar ends up living with his uncle Gunnar. Ingmar joins the association football and boxing club, where he meets the tomboyish girl Saga, who likes him. When his mother dies, Ingmar stays permanently with Gunnar, but he also hosts a Greek couple, so Gunnar's his wife arranges that Ingmar stays living with the old Mrs. Arvidsson. During a boxing match, Ingmar barks like a dog, so Saga tells him his dog, which he left behind at his mother's home, is dead. Ingmar runs away and hides inside a summer house, as the double loss takes a toll on him, and Gunnar comforts him.

"My Life as a Dog" is an overrated coming-of-age film, but still has merits in depicting how sometimes people make stupid mistakes in childhood, which they regret later in life. The main stumbling point is that the protagonist, the 12-year old Ingmar, is insufferably annoying in the first half of the story, which makes the task of enjoying the movie difficult, since, through his mischief and peculiar behavior, he acts as an autistic Dennis the Menace: for instance, Ingmar accepts to put his penis inside a glass bottle, on the behest of his older brother Erik, but when it gets stuck, his mother has to break the bottle by smashing it on the wall; Ingmar randomly splashes his face with a glass full of milk during breakfast, and when his mother wants to wipe the table, she finds his bedsheets hidden inside the kitchen cupboard, wet from his urine, but she still uses it to wipe the table; while arguing with Erik who holds a gun at their dog, Ingmar spills a bowl of batter on the floor, the mom chases them both, and then they hold the door of her bedroom so that she cannot open them to get to them. Considering that their mother suffers from some sort of terminal pulmonary disease, and this stresses her out even more, this is hard to watch. The second half of the film thus becomes Ingmar's self-realization of his missed opportunities and errors, though he is still too passive to undergo any kind of redemption ark. The mother's death is handled remarkably subtle and unemotional, with Ingmar only being invited by a relative to talk to him in private, but without showing any melodrama. Yet, in the end, as Ingmar remembers both his late mother and dog, he realizes the only joint memory he will have of her will be how he caused her anguish and misery, as he was not mature enough to improve in time, which causes his emotional collapse in a very touching ending. A small standout is Melinda Kinnaman as Ingmar's tomboyish semi-girlfriend Saga, though it is weird as she is around 13 years old, but still shows him his bare chest in a controversial scene. The director Lasse Hallstrom injects the film with a lot of humor to ease the tragic subject, yet he is rather conventional, except in a few more imaginative scenes (Ingmar runs on the football field to kick the ball, but before he does he is shoved away by another boy who kicks it instead).  

Grade:++

Kanal

Kanał; war drama, Poland 1957; D: Andrzej Wajda, S: Wieńczysław Gliński, Tadeusz Janczar, Teresa Iżewska, Tadeusz Gwiazdowski, Stanisław Mikulski, Emil Karewicz

The last days of the Warsaw Uprising, World War II. Lieutenant Zadra leads a Polish military unit of 43 people, down from 70 just three days ago, among the ruins of the Mokotov suburb of Warsaw. Among them are also Jacek "Korab", composer Michal and Madry. They rest in ruined buildings, but then the Nazi German army attacks and encircles them, so Zadra reluctantly accepts to evacuate 27 of his remaining unit down in the sewage. Down there, some are lost and escape when they think they smell poison gas. A girl, Stokrotka, helps guide a wounded Jacek, staying behind the main group. They reach the end of the sewage, but the exit is closed off with bars, so Stokrotka lies to a half-dead Jacek that they made it. Meanwhile, Madry climbs up a manhole, but on the surface is met by a Nazi soldier who sends him towards corpses of other Polish soldiers. Zadra exits on the other side and shoots his Sgt. Kula who lost all his soldiers behind them, and then goes back into the sewage.

Rarely has there ever been a director who anchored his film stories so firmly in Polish history as much as Andrzej Wajda, ranging from Nazi to Communist occupation. His 2nd feature length film, "Kanal", is one of his best achievements, a black classic that depicts the failed Warsaw Uprising during World War II, and thus the whole tone is bitter, dark, depressive and lyrical to the end, illustrating that time period of Polish history where everything seemed lost and hopeless, like there was no future awaiting. In the opening scenes, as the military unit walks pass the camera in Warsaw in ruins, the narrator briefly describes most of the soldiers ("Officer Cadet "Ark", dreams of a hot bath; "Slim", "Ark's" aide, wants to build planes after the war..."), before grimly concluding: "These are the tragic heroes. Take a good look. These are the last hours of their lives." Everything is already elegantly established and foreshadowed in the first 5 minutes of the film.

In one sequence, the Polish Army reaches a wounded woman lying on a stretcher, and a soldier asks her: "Are you badly wounded?", and she replies with: "No, it's nothing", as the medics lift the stretcher, the blanket falls down from her, revealing her right leg has been amputated. In another sequence, with the soldiers resting in a devastated building, composer Michal asks Lt. Zadra to make a phone call towards his family, and Zadra has this exchange with a man on the other end: "You have no windows? I forgot what they even look like!" In these and other small episodes, Wajda is able to efficiently show the psychological state of Poland during World War II, where people were dying, getting wounded, all the infrastructure was damaged, whereas the quality of life was basically zero. The first half of "Kanal" shows the Polish soldiers on the surface, while the other half shows them descending into the sewage, to try to escape via underground from the Nazi encirclement. There is no patriotism, nor heroism here—this is real life, unglamorized, de-propagandized, with civilians on the surface accusing the soldiers of abandoning them like cowards, showing war as dirty and heavy, in an explicit allegory of soldiers walking through the sewage water full of excrement. This underground sewage thus becomes a symbol of Dante's Inferno from "The Divine Comedy", a literal hell for soldiers trapped and outnumbered in a war against a stronger enemy. The most memorable episode revolves around a woman, Stokrotka, helping a wounded Jacek walk through the sewage, as she says two unforgettable lines: "My life story is longer than this tunnel!" and: "Do you think we will get our lives back?" As the movie asks: is it worth it to fight for justice and freedom even though you know it is hopeless and you will not survive? "Kanal" follows the people who said yes.

Grade:+++

One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another; action drama, USA, 2025; D: Paul Thomas Anderson, S: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Tony Goldwyn

California. Patrick, who is white, and Perfidia, who is black, are members of a far-left revolutionary group, French 75, who break into the Ota Mesa Detention Center and release the detained Mexican immigrants there, while Perfidia also holds military officer Steven J. Lockjaw at gunpoint, who gets aroused. Lockjaw blackmails Perfidia into having affairs with him as to not arrest her. Patrick and Perfidia become lovers and get a baby, Charlene, but Perfidia escapes the country when the police are after her for murder. 16 years later, Patrick assumes the fake identity of Bob and Charlene is called Willa, to hide their past connection with French 75. When Lockjaw, now a Colonel, wants to become a member of a far-right white supremacist secret society, he uses the military to hunt down Willa, his biological daughter, to kill her to hide the fact that he had a child with a black woman, Perfidia. Willa escapes and kills assassin Tim, and reunites with Bob. Lockjaw is assassinated by the secret society for interracial relationships. 

"One Battle After Another" is one of those movies that go for style over substance. There is not much of a plot in it nor narrative inspiration, as much as there is just pure cinematic fascination-infatuation with filmmaking in and of itself, even when just depicting ordinary scenes. It is not the best film by director Paul Thomas Anderson, but was still arguably the best film among the American films nominated for best picture at various awards—though several foreign nominated films were superior, for instance "The Voice of Hind Rajab". "One Battle After Another" has several flaws—for instance, its structure is messy and chaotic, a lot of complex social issues are just brought up or hinted at, instead of being elaborated properly (two scene of US soldiers walking between two giant fences containing Mexican immigrants at a detention center, but without having either Mexicans or soldiers as characters to say what they think about it; Willa is shown doing karate, but this is not used in the final act of the film, even though it would have been very useful), whereas it is a screenwriting error to remove the crucial character Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) from the story after 33 minutes and, incredibly, not have her return for the finale.

However, it is timely by touching the nerve of its time by showing the United States as torn between left and right-wing politics, that have become so incompatible and alienated from each other that they both went into extremism, in order to "counterbalance each other", in addition to a looming shadow of authoritarianism and militarization, while father Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and daughter Willa (very good Chase Infiniti) try to live in a healthy, normal way in the middle. The opening act contemplates at some problems regarding far-left politics in itself when Perfidia leaves Bob alone with their baby because she wants to put herself first, as opposed to him expecting her to take on a more conservative role as a mother. Equally as ironic is that the far-right, white supremacist military commander Steven J. Lockjaw (excellent Sean Penn) has an affair with the black Perfidia, triggered by his perverted fascination with dominance and power after she held him at gunpoint, thereby showing how even far-right and far-left politics need to cooperate to keep the society functioning, despite their disagreements. These themes about politics are always in the background, while the family triangle is the foreground. One highlight: the 4-minute car chase sequence on the "waves" of a hilly road, filmed in VistaVision and realized without any dialogue, is phenomenally cinematic, a hypnotic experience. That Anderson made it totally spontaneously is incredible. And it sums up the entire film: it is made by the cineastes and for the cineastes. Nothing else matters but the aesthetics, the thin story is just at its service.  

Grade:+++

Sinners

Sinners; horror drama, USA, 2025; D: Ryan Coogler, S: Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Jayme Lawson, Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Jack O'Connell, Delroy Lindo, Li Jun Li

In 1 9 3 2, African-American twins Smoke and Stack leave Chicago, abandoning their gangster lives to settle back in a town in Mississippi, where they buy a defunct sawmill to convert it into a night and dance club, and start an honest business. That evening, the night club has its premiere and attracts a lot of customers, while musicians Delta Slim, Pearline and Sammie perform. However, Irish vampire Remmick and his two possessed people show up, but are not invited inside. They still posses Mary, Stack's ex-girlfriend, and she enters inside, bites Stack and turns him into a vampire. The party guests leave. Smoke and his remaining friends battle the vampires and are able to eliminate Remmick. When the Ku Klux Klan appears in the morning, Smoke shoots them, but is fatally shot himself. Stack is spared and leaves to live with Mary in peace, while Sammie pursues a music career in Chicago. 

"From Dusk Till Dawn" meets "Mississippi Burning"—"Sinners" is a good, but considering all the nominations and awards, overrated film that once again proves that there is not that much more to add to the overused vampire genre. It's neither inspired as a historical drama nor as a horror, but it is at least more fun in that horror half when it drops all the pretentious aspirations and simply plays out like a suspenseful siege thriller. Considering that the vampire is white, and he possesses a white Ku Klux Klan couple to help him attack the night club run by African Americans, this could be interpreted as a symbolical depiction of how racism destroyed a black sanctuary in the Southern United States of the first half of the 20th century, wrecking their idyllic plans to be free of repression. However, themes alone don't make a movie. In the first half, "Sinners" is a historical drama, showing twins Smoke and Stack (very well played by actor Michael B. Jordan in a double role) trying to start an honest life in the town and open up their own business, a night and music club. The dialogue is standard there, but the standout character is musician Delta Slim, played brilliantly by Delroy Lindo, who has some of the best lines—for instance, upon seeing the young and inexperienced Sammie who aspires to be a musician, the experienced Delta Slim comments that he had "socks older than him", whereas when asked what he did with all his earnings, Delta Slim honestly admits: "I drank all my money!" A lot of characters are introduced in this half, but many of them are not that well developed to the end, as they are interrupted by the horror half of the film which doesn't care for character development anymore, just for fighting and kicking vampires. Writer and director Ryan Coogler surprises by constantly changing genres, refreshingly refusing to follow the genre rules, and thus blends in drama, gangster, musical and horror elements, but at the end of the day, "Sinners" is not as fun nor as creative as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".   

Grade:++

Weapons

Weapons; mystery horror, USA, 2025; D: Zach Cregger, S: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Cary Christopher, Amy Madigan, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong

One night, at 2:17 AM, 17 elementary school children of a small town wake up from their beds and run away into the night, disappearing without a trace. The police and the townspeople are bewildered, but their school teacher Justine is suspicious of Alex, the only child from her class who didn't disappear, and observes his house. Archer, one of the father of the missing children, teams up with Justine. The school principal Marcus attacks and chases Justine in a store, but dies when he is hit by a car in the street. It turns out Alex's parents invited a distant relative, witch Gladys, who caught them under her spell, and forced Alex to bring personal possessions of his classmates, so that Gladys can cast a spell to send them to their house, so that she can suck out their energy and rejuvenate herself. Alex takes a curl of Gladys' hair, wraps it on her witch stick and places a drop of his blood on it, thereby causing all the children to attack and kill Gladys. The spell is therefore broken, and Justine and Archer find the kids. 

"Weapons" is a good horror, but its initial mystery premise is so much better than its sole resolution in the finale, which is banal and falls into exploitation horror clichés. The opening set-up is wonderfully eerie and stimulating: 17 children wake up in the middle of the night, walk out on the street and disappear. Neither the police nor the parents have a clue what happened. This concept ignites interest of the viewers, and the director Zach Cregger crafts several stylistic solutions (the heroine, school teacher Justine, is initially only seen from the back, her face not shown), whereas at least one sequence is an example of elevated suspense (Justine falls asleep in her car while spying on Alex's home, and during the night the doors of the house open and a deranged woman holding scissors in her hand is seen exiting in the dark and walking towards her), but with time, as if "Weapons" starts depleting its sophistication, and the blunt scares take over (two jump scares in the first half, when Justine and Archer have nightmares, seem to be inserted just to keep the viewers' attention since the authors gave up to try to engage them narratively). The idea that the story stops and is presented through six different perspectives is ambitious, but at least two of them could have been cut since they do not contribute much (police officer Paul and drug addict James). "Weapons" is one of the rare movies that actually gets worse after the introduction of a character for which the actress playing it won several awards. Amy Madigan is a very good actress, but her character Gladys is a typical one-dimensional villain. There are certain multilayered themes here, since Gladys could be an allegory for the embodiment of various dangerous Tik-Tok challenges that influence kids to do damaging things, or a parasite (she appears right after Marcus and his partner watch a documentary on TV about a fungus that eats an ant from inside). But since all the characters are poorly developed, and the finale is standard bloodshed, "Weapons" is not able to grow into something more than a good horror, which the opening act hinted at. 

Grade:++

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon; drama / art-film, France / USA, 2007; D: Julian Schnabel, S: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Max von Sydow

Jean-Dominique Bauby wakes up in a hospital in Berck-sur-Mer and is informed by the doctor he had a stroke and is paralyzed completely, due to locked-in syndrome. Jean-Dominique can only communicate through his left eye, and two women, speech therapist Henriette and physical therapist Marie, devise a system of spelling aloud and waiting for him to blink for a specific letter. He was editor of Elle magazine, had a relationship with Celine with whom he had two kids, but left her for an affair with Ines. He thus decides to write a memoir about his life, recorded by his assistant. He had the stroke randomly while driving his son in a car, so he stopped on the road. Jean-Dominique dies from pneumonia ten days after his book is published, aged 44. 

After Amenabar's "The Sea Inside", the director Julian Schnabel took on an even bigger challenge of crafting a film around a paralyzed man who can only blink with his left eye in this film. That Schnabel is able to pull it through is already incredible: he does so much from so little at his disposal. His biopic based on true events, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a film that is depicted in 2/3 of its running time only through the point-of-view of the protagonist Jean-Dominique Bauby, and thus his subjective perspective becomes the film's perspective—meaning that the actor playing him, Mathieu Amalric, is not seen on the screen for the majority of the film. The opening 10 minutes are the most powerful, as a doctor looks into the "foggy" camera in a hospital and asks for the patient's name. Jean-Dominique says his name, but the doctor asks his name again, and again, until the protagonist realizes he cannot speak, and that his words are only his thoughts. Jean-Dominique can only blink with his left eye—one blink means "yes", two blinks mean "no", shown again through his POV as the camera's screen "goes black" for a second—but two women therapists patiently spell out loud until he blinks at a specific letter, and they then write it down on paper, bit by bit, until a sentence is formed. As one woman reads out a sentence from Jean-Dominique's planned memoir, he cynically thinks to himself that they "spent five hours" just to complete it. Throughout the film, flashbacks of Jean-Dominique's life before the stroke are shown, combined with lyrical-poetic sequences of him imagining himself in a diving bell suit under the sea to illustrate his feeling of helplessness and fragility (among others, he is annoyed when a medic turns off the TV in his room just as he was watching a football match). "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a very good contemplation on how bad life can get, asking us to be thankful for what health we have, but "The Sea Inside" is still better due to a much richer movie language used: the former is a monologue, the latter is a dialogue. One of those movies that are almost too depressing to watch for some viewers. 

Grade:+++

Dara of Jasenovac

Dara iz Jasenovca; war drama, Serbia, 2021; D: Predrag Antonijević, S: Biljana Čekić, Anja Stanić, Zlatan Vidović, Vuk Kostić, Marko Janketić, Martina Kitanović, Alisa Radaković, Nataša Ninković

Jasenovac concentration camp, World War II. Dara Ilić (10), her two brothers and mother are among numerous Serbs who are brought to the camp run by the Nazi-aligned Ustasha dictatorship. The Ustasha guards kill Serb inmates, while Dara's dad is assigned to bury the corpses. After her mother and older brother are killed, Dara and her 2-year old brother are among the children who are brought to the Stara Gradiška camp. There the women work on the farm, under the supervision of Mileva, while the Catholic nuns indoctrinate children to convert them into Croats. Diana Budisavljević, head of a humanitarian association,  arrives from Zagreb to transfer children to safety. Dara's brother is sick and thus under threat of being killed, but is covertly smuggled to Diana's van for adoption. As the van leaves, Dara runs after it. An Ustasha woman shoots at her, but misses, so Dara boards the van are leaves with her brother.

The first narrative film about the Jasenovac concentration camp is a film that should have been made since it is an important contribution for the genocide studies, and thus one wishes that it had been better. "Dara of Jasenovac" chronicles the Ustashe genocide of Serbs through the crimes of persecution, murder, torture, looting, unlawful confinement and forced labor in Jasenovac in the first 45 minutes, after which it switches to the Stara Gradiska concentration camp for women and children, and some situations are honest, genuine and emotional, but the movie suffers from several flaws, mostly in the form of a few heavy-handed solutions and scenes of propaganda. It is also problematic that the title heroine, the 10-year old girl Dara (very good Biljana Cekic) appears in only some 30 minutes of the two-hours of running time. The opening act has weight: it shows hundreds of Serb civilians marching across a meadow, led by Ustashe at gunpoint, while one Serb woman makes eye contact with a Croat woman working on the field, secretly sneaks away from the column, gives her own baby to her, and then returns back to the column (touching, but a bit illogical since she could have simply stayed there in the bushes as nobody had seen her, instead of returning back). As the train arrives on the bridge, the Jasenovac inmates, who are throwing corpses into the Sava river, comment cynically: "Look, more work for us." - "Tomorrow you will throw me like that." - "Just work, maybe you will live longer."

The depiction of the state of things inside Jasenovac is well done—as the concertation camp lacked any machinery, all the people were killed one by one, with several shocking scenes—though the director Predrag Antonijevic cannot resist not to insert a few pretentious bits. One sequence is particularly badly done: during the game of musical chairs for the inmates, where the last one is killed, there is a stupid moment of an Ustasha man getting so aroused that he goes to have sex with an Ustasha woman in a car; an Ustasha shoots Dara's mother while holding an apple in his mouth; whereas a Nazi is shown so disgusted by the killings that he throws up—contrived, as if their perversion is not obvious enough, so Antonijevic has to exaggerate even more by inventing things not based on historical records. These banal "additions" reduce the film's feeling of honesty. Two best moments: Dara's father is assigned to bury corpses from Jasenovac on the field, and is shocked to see his dead wife and son among the corpses, which is emotional and devastating; the other is a long speech held by an Ustasha officer, but then there is a cut to an Ustasha guard killing one of the inmates in a row in the meadow, as the words of the first one are heard off screen, talking about "rights in the country", in a good contrast between his propaganda and reality, showing how there are actually zero human rights there. Martina Kitanovic and Alisa Radakovic are surprisingly effective and memorable as the two Ustasha women. The ending is clumsy and unconvincing, full of plot holes and illogical 'saved-in-the-nick-of-time' clichés, but despite this disparate blend of honesty and manipulation, "Dara of Jasenovac" is an overall good film.

Grade:++

The Sea Inside

Mar adentro; drama, Spain / France / Italy, 2004; D: Alejandro Amenábar, S: Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda, Lola Dueñas, Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugallo, Tamar Novas, Clara Segura 

When he was young, Ramon Sampedro made a crucial mistake by jumping from a cliff into a shallow sea, and the seafloor broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed from his neck down. 26 years later, Ramon lives in the house of his older brother Jose, lying in bed, rarely leaving the bedroom. Jose's wife Manuela is Ramon's caregiver. Lawyer Julia, suffering from Cadasil syndrome, arrives to meet Ramon, to help him in his request towards the court to get permission for assisted suicide. Hearing about his case from the media, a single mother, Rosa, visits Ramon and becomes his friend. The Spanish Supreme Court refuses Ramon's request, so he tells his friends to prepare potassium-cyanide in a glass of water, which he drinks with a straw, and dies. Ramon's friend Gene gives a farewell note to Julia, but her brain deteriorated so much that she doesn't even remember who Ramon was.

Alejandro Amenabar's magnum opus, based on real life case of Ramon Sampedro, "The Sea Inside" is a movie about disability and suicide done the right way: subtle, sophisticated, measured, with wonderful characters, it has an uncomfortable topic that many viewers would run away from, but once you start watching it, it is so fluent, absorbing and genuine, that you have to see it to the end. As uncomfortable the topic is, so much is it of an comfortable watch. It owes this success to the formula of presenting a difficult theme in a light, normal, genuine manner with humor, so much, in fact, that by the end you will see the protagonist Ramon as a character, not as a bedridden man paralyzed from the neck down. He is played by the brilliant Javier Bardem, who gives a fantastic performance, outside of all those disability-movie clichés. Amenabar has a sense for a rich movie language, as he is able to make this static story into something very cinematic thanks to a nice use of cinematic techniques. Already the opening scenes are untypical: a white square appears on the black screen, and then expands into a white rectangle, expanding until it spreads across the screen, and shows the beach, as the narrator says: "Relax... Now imagine a movie screen that unfolds and opens in front of you. Project on it your favorite place..."

In a great little scene transition, lawyer Julia asks Ramon to tell her about the day of his accident, she presses the "record" button on her voice recorder—and then there is a match cut of her hand in the same pose, but now in a different room, as she presses the "play" button, to hear the recording she made of him earlier. In a surreal, but perfectly measured dream sequence, Ramon imagines he stands up from the bed and flies through the window over hills and trees, until he reaches the beach. Little details and character interactions say everything: Rosa (excellent Lola Duenas) watches a TV report of Ramon in bed, as he says: "When you can't escape and you constantly rely on everyone else, you learn to cry by smiling, you know?" Cut to Rosa, a stranger, arriving to visit Ramon, and who bashfully gives one of the most stunning sentences to cheer him up: "And I thought, his eyes are so full of life, how could someone with those eyes want to die? Look, we all have problems, and we don't have to run from them, you know? That's why I wanted to come. To make you feel like living." Amenabar never allows the movie to fall into grey or melodramatic territory, as the characters are full of life and humor, including Ramon's brother Jose, who wants to forbid him to commit suicide because he is "still the oldest in this house", while he also makes fun of religion and the Spanish judicial system (the Supreme Court refuses to even allow Ramon to talk in front of them). You watch the film and are entertained. But when it ends, its ideas, philosophy and way of thinking stay with you. What is life? What are we? Can we overcome our physical limitations? It shows how fragile life is, always under external and internal threats, asking us to think what we can do with the time that was given to us on this world, and that kindness and humanity can surpass transience. 

Grade:+++