Movie Critic

Poltergeist

2012-01-29T11:14:00.001Z

Poltergeist; horror, USA, 1982; D: Tobe Hooper, S: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Heather O'Rourke, Dominique Dunne

The Freelings lose their attribute of an average family when ghosts show up in their house and trap their daughter Carol in a TV set. When Freelings call parapsychologists, they discover that the cause of objects levitating and other freaky phenomena lies in the fact that the house was built on a cemetery. Mother and father, together with the crew, organize a huge rescue mission when they find a portal to another dimension and get Carol back to the real world. The house implodes while the Freelings move out to a motel.

Spectacular special effects, nominated for an Oscar, contributed to the rural horror "Poltergeist" that still seems creepy despite shortcomings in dramaturgy. Producer and screenwriter (and according to some, 'de facto' director in some scenes since he was more dominant than 'the jure' director Hooper) Steven Spielberg conjured up a story about a normal family in an isolated province, which gave him the chance to have an excellent build up of suspense when the ghosts suddenly start showing up in the house: just like "The Haunting", he knows that it's always the scariest when unknown forces hit in a large building that is far away from anywhere. However, he failed in creating a cohesive whole of the whole matter, even though some would argue that ghosts don't need to have a reason to suddenly attack and anguish an ordinary family. A few good scenes with style, like the camera following a heroine who is in front of a table, bends under it but when she stands up again she finds a whole bunch of chairs were set up on it in the meantime, have spark - a similar trick like that was later used in a scene in "The Sixth Sense" - whereas some examples of sophisticated suspense are exquisite (the tree attacking through the window; the scene where the kid looks under the bed is already a legend) yet they did not conceal the superficiality, i.e. the motivation of ghosts, nor were the characters fully developed, whereas some cheap shocks and examples of patchwork reduce the enjoyment value, though the movie still holds up well today.

Grade:++

The Happening

2012-01-27T11:37:00.001Z

The Happening; mystery/ thriller, USA, 2008; D: M. Night Shyamalan, S: Mark Whalberg, Zooey Deschanel, Ashlyn Sanchez, John Leguizamo

An unknown force causes people in New York to commit mass suicide. This pattern of behaviour spreads across the US north east, which causes some to speculate that it might be a terrorist attack with an unknown gas. Elliot and Alma, a couple with a troubled marriage, find themselves in the rural area as one of the few survivors, travelling on foot with a little girl. They find refuge in the house of an old lady. The same way as it started, the force suddenly stopped. People speculate it was a defence mechanism of plants, who reacted to the increasingly unstable human pollution of the planet.

The movie that definitely marked a decline in the career of director and screenwriter M. Night Shyamalan, "The Happening" is a heavy handed and sometimes even ridiculous mystery thriller that did not repeat the impressive narrative of his previous achievements with the similar formula, the (overhyped) "Sixth Sense" or the (underhyped) "Signs" and "The Village". Unlike those aforementioned mystery movies that slowly built a sophisticated suspense and had a formula that worked - despite the lamentation of some critics, the plot twist at the end worked every time as Shyamalan's trademark, similarly like Hitchcock's frequent theme of a hero who is falsely accused and has to prove his innocence - "The Happening" is not even cheaply suspenseful simply because no suspense can be created out of the unconvincing ways that people suddenly commit mass suicide: Shyamalan seems as if he has no basic knowledge of biology or psychology at all when he directs humans taking their lives as if they are buying some ice cream (let alone when something is forcing them to do that), since there is no way that a guy would so calmly step into a lion's cage or a woman take a gun to shoot herself in such a bored manner after two guys used that same weapon do blow their heads off just a couple of seconds ago. Not even the ending can truly be considered a 'twist ending' since the story never truly lead viewers to a certain direction. It's a pity because the concept really had some things going for it, especially when they mention the sudden disappearence of bees or the pollution, since the whole movie is unconvincing and silly.

Grade:+

7 seX 7

2012-01-25T13:01:00.002Z

7 seX 7; erotic drama-comedy, Croatia, 2011; D: Irena Škorić, S: Petra Težak, Ivan Đuričić, Ana Majhenić, Frano Mašković, Jelena Perčin, Sara Stanić

Seven erotic stories: a guy wants to fix the antenna on the roof of the building in order to watch "Emmanuelle" on TV, but his girlfriend wants to do it there...A photographer is so charmed by his model that he sleeps with her...A gay actor tests if his fellow gay friend is in love with him...Employees Marko and Hana accidentally meet in a music store and decide to have sex there. He loses his erection when he finds out that she is not of Czech origin, but she still manages to bring him into the right mood...Two women and a man try out a threesome...A girl cheats on her boyfriend just minutes before they have a date...In the forest, a guy tricks a girl into having sex with him under the pretext that a nonexistent tick will pass from her vagina on to his penis.

"All this effort just to watch some porn?" - "It's not porn, it's an erotic film." - "What's the difference?" - "In penetration." This snappy (self-referential) dialogue aimed at educating the audience in distinguishing a simple porn from a sophisticated erotic art film that also juggles with some more complicated themes in life neatly illustrates the playful nature of "7 seX 7", the first (moderately) erotic Croatian film directed by a woman that tried to imitate the tone from Pasolini's cheerful "Decameron". Consisting out of two great stories and five solid ones, which all culminate in sex (except for the gay one, where the two men just kiss), this rare example of an untrammelled depiction of sensuality in the otherwise conservative country is indeed uneven, yet refreshing and stylistically pleasant since director Irena Skoric filmed each segment in a single, 10 minute long take, which causes awe both for the mise-en-scene and the tight acting with no mistakes in dialogues, even though explicit sex is not shown, as already alluded in the aforementioned dialogue. Five stories are, unfortunately, just mediocre and/or unrealistic (women don't have such casual sex with strangers without condoms), with only two standing out, one of which is chronologically the first one on the roof, shot in black and white, which abounds with humor, shrillness and a clever heroine, Gloria (Petra Tezak) who talks with her boyfriend who is fixing the TV antenna ("What happened to the antenna?" - "That swan was here again." - "What swan?" - "The one that weighs as much as Pazin turkey!" - "Why don't you shoot him?" - "I can't, he is protected!" - "By what? A bulletproof west?" - "No, the law! The law protects him!"). The sixth story is also suggestive, yet the movie never really repeats the magic and sharpness of that perfect first story that told more about those two characters than any other episode.

Grade:++

Meet Dave

2012-01-23T12:08:00.000Z

Meet Dave; science-fiction comedy, USA, 2008; D: Brian Robbins, S: Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Austyn Myers, Ed Helms

A small orb falls from space into the New York apartment of a boy, Josh. Three months later, a crew of miniature aliens from planet Nil land on Earth in an android in order to obtain the orb back, which will help them extract the salt from Earth's oceans and save the energy supply on their planet. After numerous misadventures, the android successfully passes as a human called Dave and meets Josh and his single mother Gina, but the crew decides not to ruin Earth's oceans. Instead, they make friends with Josh and Gina and return back to space in order to find another planet.

Out of all the negatively received Eddie Murphy comedies, this is one of the rare ones that did not deserve such a harsh reputation: a blend of "Star Trek" and "Innerspace", "Meet Dave" is a refreshingly fun, imaginative, untrammelled and harmless family fun that gains 90 % of its charm thanks to the great performance of the comedian who once again showed that innocent humor suits him far better than dirty jokes. Never for a moment vulgar, never for a moment moronic, "Meet Dave" is at times contagiously fun, draining jokes from the classic "fish out of water"/"stranger in a strange land" concept, i.e. the contradiction between the hero's obvious unnatural reactions and the superficial reaction of the people around him that "overlook" them and still (forcefully) regard them as natural, whereas, unlike "Norbit", director Robbins this time builds a story not based on jokes "below the belt". The opening drags and it takes some good 30 minutes until the story takes off, whereas some ideas or subplots were underdeveloped, yet Murphy is simply indestructible in playing the title android with that hilariously naive-blank facial expression, which pays out in such funny scenes as the one where he "fights" with a green stuffed toy he mistook for an alien or when he has an entirely calm face during a roller coaster ride, while his miniature commander inside him has an entirely different face with panic written all over him: as someone already noted, if it makes you laugh, why fight it?

Grade:++

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

2012-01-21T10:45:00.000Z

Luftslottet som sprängdes; crime drama, Sweden, 2009; D: Daniel Alfredson, S: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Tehilla Blad, Lena Endre

Stockholm. Lisbeth recovered in the hospital after the previous incidents, but is indicted for attempted murder against her father, ex-Soviet spy Zalachenko who switched to work for the Swedish Security Police. This Security Police kills him in order to hush up the long suppressed affair where they covered him abusing his wife for decades, and in order to do so they also confined Lisbeth who stood up against the abuse by sending her to a mental asylum. Despite numerous staged attacks, with the help of reporter Mikael, Lisbeth is acquitted of all charges, released, while her ex-asylum keeper Teleborian is arrested for child pornography.

The final contribution to the 'Millenium' trilogy, part III is arguably the weakest of the three Swedish movie adaptation of Steig Larsson's popular novels, not managing to catch up the level of awe and suspense of the first two films, yet it still managed to give a satisfying conclusion to the story that more or less circled out the events by setting them in a bigger, thought-provoking context: Lisbeth turns out to be the victim of the cover-up by the Security Police, by which the author poses some big questions about his society where the rights of an individual can be squashed just to protect anyone who works for the national security of the Swedish nation. Noomi Rapace, despite less great material to work with in this film, still shines as the nonconforming wild girl Lisbeth, though, just like in the previous film, it is a pity that she avoids Mikael throughout the whole film, until the end when they finally meet, since it was shown they had some great chemistry in the first edition. The story of the trilogy is engaging, though not that deep or groundbreaking as some would like to put it, yet it gains definite plus points by allowing characters to develop from film to film, which is why the original film might actually seem even better and multi-layered after the viewers see it again after seeing all three films and getting the bigger picture.

Grade:++

Army of Darkness

2012-01-17T10:48:00.004Z

Army of Darkness; horror comedy, USA, 1992; D: Sam Raimi, S: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie, Bridget Fonda

After the last events, Ash and his car land in the Middle ages where he gets caught by some knights and thrown into a well of demons, yet he survives thanks to his chainsaw which makes the inhabitants of the castle proclaim him as the "chosen one". In order to return back to the 20th century, he retrieves once again the book of the dead, but since he speaks the magic words wrong, an army of skeletons is unleashed that starts the siege of the castle in order to their book back. Thanks to his knowledge, Ash creates gunpowder, destroys the skeleton army and returns to the future thanks to a wiseman.

In the final part of the trilogy that spans a decade, Ash switched from a "man of chaos" into a "man of action" whereas the whole movie was so tamed down since a major studio - Universal - took over the production that some fans lamented that compared to the first two "Evil Dead" instalments part III looks like "Care Bears", yet "Army of Darkness" is the most accessible movie of the series and still abounds with original ideas and impressive style. Similarly like "Back to the Future III", "Army" took the original storyline into an entirely different direction by setting it in the Middle ages, yet its leap in style and gratuitous slapstick have sense if the viewers simply look at it as a standalone film, whereas the minute Ash uses his shotgun to blow up a sword of a knight and shoot a witch does the story become simply a pure fun.

Numerous directors of horror trash should take a lesson or two from Raimi's approach here who still managed to make the mill run his way despite the fact that the producers inhibited him from too exotic directorial stunts. Obviously, there are many pointless scenes (Ash fighting with his midget clones, which is annoying) whereas Embeth Davidtz received a mild role, yet the final 25 minutes where Ash uses gunpowder to fight against the army of skeletons that besiege the castle really let's the fun loose - with the scene where the camera follows a catapulted flame from the castle falling down on the army almost seems as if it inspired a similar one with the falling rock in "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" - numerous references to other movies are plain clever (the magic words "Klaatu barada nikto", the fight with the skeleton that is a homage to "Jason and the Argonauts"...) whereas out of two available endings the happy one clearly lifts the movie up a notch.

Grade:++

Evil Dead II

2012-01-15T20:07:00.002Z

Evil Dead II; horror/ grotesque/ comedy, USA, 1987; D: Sam Raimi, S: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Danny Hicks

One night, Ash and his girlfriend Linda take a vacation to an isolated cabin in the woods, situated on a plateau. He finds a tape recorder of a professor who discovered the "book of the dead", but his recorded words accidentally summon an evil force that wakes up demons. Linda is killed while the professors daughter, Annie, as well as her associates Ed, Jake and Bobby gets trapped when they enter the cabin. One by one, the demons kill them. Ash survives despite his severed hand, puts a chainsaw as a "hook" and battles demons. Annie reads out the spell from the book and transports the whole house into year 1300, together with Ash.

After the hyped original, Sam Raimi directed this well anticipated sequel which is arguably the best contribution to the "Evil Dead" trilogy: while the first movie was too serious, and the third was too "tame", part 2 is "just right", an eerie independent cult classic that is unbelievable in blending hard horror with slapstick comedy, whereas it contains a fantastic visual style that enhances the experience thanks to unusual camera angles, close up shots or bizarre mise-en-scene. The first 30 minutes are gold, especially in the virtuoso directed scene in which the camera's POV (aka the "evil force") travels through the woods with incredible speed, enters the cabin, breaks the door on the hallway, exits through the other door, wonders again outside through the woods and "crashes" into Ash, suddenly lifting him up and catapulting him for dozens of yards through the air into a tree: truly, a tour-de-force sequence that will have viewers rewinding it several times. Some ideas were a tad too bizarre and the ending is stupid, yet Raimi gains plus points by setting the whole story only on one location (the cabin), inserting wacky-insane jokes (a moose head on the wall suddenly bursting into laughter; Ash saying "Groovy" as if from another world; a floating demon attacking Annie until Ash interrupts his "job" by whistling), casting Bruce Campbell and, unlike "Braindead", insisting on channelling the intensity of the mood not exclusively on scares or gore, but also on clever stylistic fun.

Grade:+++

The Girl Who Played with Fire

2012-01-13T14:29:00.002Z

Flickan som lekte med elden; thriller, Sweden, 2009; D: Daniel Alfredson, S: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson, Per Oscarsson

Stockholm. Riding on the wave of success, editor of the 'Millennium' magazine, Mikael Blomkvist, is about to publish a sensational article about human trafficking that links some high ranking clients who use their services. However, just as they mention the name "Zala" over the phone, his two reporters, Dag and Mia, are killed in their apartment. Bjurman, a lawyer who raped Lisbeth, is also killed. In all three cases, the weapon was a gun with Lisbeth's fingerprints. Mikael wants to prove her innocence, but she avoids contact with him. She finds out "Zala" is Zalachenko, her father, and that a huge blond giant, Niedermann, who wanted to kill her, is her half-brother. They shoot her, but she survives and attacks her father. Mikael shows up just in time to call the authorities.

The second movie adaptation of Stieg Larsson's popular 'Millennium' trilogy, "The Girl Who Played With Fire" is an equally intriguing and quality achievement, just different on so many levels that it almost seems like a different kind of movie. One of its main plus points is the fact that it actually explores and extends relationships and situations from the first film, which gives it a more holistic approach: in this edition, Lisbeth Salander developed into a three-dimensional, fascinating character who isn't just your average 'punk girl' but a very complex personality that grows on you, equipped with a brilliant performance by Noomi Rapace (even better than in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo") whereas the writers made the mill run her way also by "feeding" off from the impression of the first story. For example, while the rape performed by the lawyer seemed rather superficial in the first film (since his character was "detached" in the second part of the plot), here it gains a fully circled out impression in the scene where Lisbeth breaks into his apartment and threatens him if he removes her tattoo: it shows that the act and its consequences are here to stay in their lives. The main negative point to this film is that she and protagonist Mikael are this time separated (which is a pity since they made a great team) and only unite in the end, which is kind of underwhelming. Still, as a thriller, it is suspenseful until the last minute, rich with unusual characters (Terminator-style bad guy Niedermann), feminist undertones and bitter observations about the flawed Swedish society.

Grade:++

Infested

2012-01-12T12:38:00.001Z

Infested/ Ticks; horror, USA, 1993; D: Tony Randel, S: Seth Green, Rosalind Allen, Ami Dolenz, Virginya Keehne

A couple of antisocial teenagers are brought with a bus to a forest, for camping, since the organizers Holly and Charles hope the nature will help them bring their life in balance. That is actually going to happen, yet in a very extreme way when the group encounters fist sized ticks that mutated from a nearby steroid factory. When a fire causes all the ticks to flock to the cabin, shy teenager Tyler saves the day by bringing the bus to the cabin in order to evacuate everyone.

After the big screens saw giant spiders, ants and wasps, horror specialist Tony Randel decided it is time to put fist sized ticks in the spotlight, yet his independent cult flick "Infested" - also known as "Ticks" - is just a sufficient movie, even though it is at least a 'guilty pleasure'. The opening shots announce at first a much better film than it eventually turned out to be, since Randel slowly creates a creepy mood thanks only to the camera slowly panning around a factory at night that drops chemicals on something unknown on the ground, whereas Seth Green is also refreshing as the shy teenager with glasses, Tyler, who meets other opulent characters in a forest camp, but the movie starts depleting its plus points inevitably when it starts to reach for cheap, slimy effects (i.e. a giant tick bursts out of a dead man's body, splitting it in half) which are aimed more towards disgust than elevated-sophisticated scare. The finale with the protagonists getting surrounded by ticks in the cabin turns into trash, which is further emphasized by the ending that does not circle out the human characters but instead just abruptly returns to ticks, yet an occasional touch of humor give the story solid charm.

Grade:+

Fellini's Casanova

2012-01-08T12:01:00.001Z

Il Casanova di Federico Fellini; drama, Italy, 1976; D: Federico Fellini, S: Donald Sutherland, Tina Aumont, Cicely Browne, Carmen Scarpitta, Clara Arganti

Venice, 18th century. After returning from another erotic adventure with a fake nun on an island, Casanova is arrested on his boat and sent to prison for heresy due to his involvement with alchemy. He escapes and travels through Europe, meeting numerous women - a giantess in a circus, prostitutes, even a mechanical doll shaped as a woman - until he ages and dies alone in the Czech city of Duchcov.

Federico Fellini's 16th film, "Casanova" was made in the second phase of his career, when the director abandoned logical storytelling a long time ago and went far into the spheres of abstract, so much that the majority of the viewers could not follow him anymore, yet even though it is obvious it is definitely not one of his best achievements - since some other directors would have made a much richer contribution to the life of the famous womanizer - it nonetheless won an Oscar and a BAFTA for best costumes (truly fantastic while helping to carry the surreal mood) whereas Fellini himself was nominated for an Oscar for the last time in his career, in the category of best adapted screenplay. For such a subject, it is strange that Fellini took so little care of the erotic touch (one could only think what Medem or Luna would have done with such a story) since all the sex scenes are situated somewhere between shyness and "carnivalizing" - for instance, how can it be that Donald Sutherland showed his naked butt in a throw-away scene in "National Lampoon's Animal House", yet always wears underwear as Casanova, even when sleeping with women? - which even makes that aspect of the movie surreal-unreal. However, despite its overlong running time and omissions, "Casanova" still has some scenes that are so bizarre they should be seen (the protagonist sleeping with a hunchback girl while another woman "wiggles" her breasts besides him) whereas it even adds a small feminist touch here and there (Casanova charms some women by telling them they are better than men, which was revolutionary back in those days when male sexism was so common; a giant woman in circus who is stronger than any man...).

Grade:++

My Favorite Year

2012-01-06T09:01:00.002Z

My Favorite Year; comedy, USA, 1982; D: Richard Benjamin, S: Mark Linn-Baker, Peter O'Toole, Jessica Harper, Joseph Bologna, Bill Macy, Lainie Kazan

New York. Benjy Stone, actually Benjamin Steinberg, is a young, aspiring Jewish writer for a comedy TV show featuring Stan Kaiser. One day, their guest actor shows up, the famous movie star Alan Swann, but they are shocked to find out he is hopelessly drunk. Benjy risks his career when he insists on letting him perform tomorrow anyway, hoping he may keep him sober, which leads to numerous misadventures. When he finds out the show is broadcast live, Swann backs out, but changes his mind and gives a memorable performance.

A nostalgic comedy, "My Favorite Year" is an occasionally corny and 'staged' film, yet it exploits just enough charm to sustain its premise in the positive field thanks to the two main actors, Mark Linn-Baker as the clumsy Benjy and Peter O'Toole as the famous, but alcoholic actor Alan Swann, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar. In having Benjy basically babysit the irresponsible Swann, the story neatly plays with the perception of "the idol" the reputation and "the idol" the reality, as a flawed human, in the end letting Benjy become Swann's voice of reason. The movie is filled with jokes, not even hesitating to include goofy ones, too, with some turning out more successful than the others (the hilarious scene where Benjy kneels down in front of K.C. in order to "propose" to live with him, inside a women's toilet (!), all the while a lady is lamenting about his "kitschy" words and flushing the water; the line "Before your father passed away and eventually died..."; the line "Some people are naturally funny, like all of the Marx brothers, except Zeppo.") yet despite some omissions and insecurely executed moments, the emotional side to Swann finally trying to live up to his reputation gives "My Favorite Year" certain weight, Lainie Kazan has a neat supporting role as Benjy's mother whereas the movie has one of the greatest posters of its time.

Grade:++

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-05T10:58:00.004Z

Män som hatar kvinnor; thriller, Sweden/ Denmark, 2009; D: Niels Arden Oplev, S: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Haber

Stockholm. After loosing a libel case following allegations that tycoon Wennerstrom was selling arms, reporter and editor of the 'Millennium' magazine Michael Blomkvist is so devastated that he accepts an offer by the 82-year old Henrik Vanger to find his grand-niece Harriet who disappeared 40 years ago. At the same time, Lisbeth Salander (24) is a rebellious computer hacker who takes revenge on a lawyer, her legal guardian, for raping her - she already took revenge on her stepfather by setting him on fire when she was a kid. She teams up with Michael and they discover that Harriet's brother Martin killed numerous Jewish girls since his father was a member of the Nazi party. He also finds out that Harriet is still alive and only escaped because she killed her father who raped her.

Winner of a BAFTA as best foreign language films, the first movie adaptation of Stieg Larsson's famous crime novel trilogy 'Millennium', "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is a robust and strong thriller that plays out like an Agatha Christie type investigative mystery case delayed by 40 years and at the same time aligns itself towards an ode against rape. Some details may be a tad contrived in staying true to that message or are slightly roughly patched together, especially towards the finale (it features, for example, the classic cliche of a bad guy not killing his victim instantly, but waiting until it wakes up to tell him all about his previous crimes; the annoying "hero gets saved in the nick of time" stereotype...), yet as a whole the story works and its flow seems entirely natural, except for the rather pointless subplot involving the lawyer rapist - he is basically a one-dimensional bad guy, set-up so unconvincingly evil that he cannot be perceived in any other way than as a plot device to carry the film's message against rape. The already infamous sequence where the lawyer rapes Lisbeth (very good Noomi Rapace in punk clothes) is shocking but rather even and short, actually turning more horrifying after the sole event when the film shows its consequences (in one scene, Lisbeth's hands are shaking when she holds a cigarette after that incident). It's a stretch, yet it could be argued that it somehow fits into the big picture when Lisbeth teams up with Michael to investigate a whole series of rapes and crimes against women. With very good actors, fine cinematography, nice locations and an eye for detail, this film is never boring despite its running time of 150 minutes.

Grade:++

Mirta Learns Statistics

2012-01-01T19:44:00.002Z

Mirta uči statistiku; comedy short, Croatia, 1991; D: Goran Dukić, S: Nataša Dorčić, Sven Medvešek, Boris Miholjević, Ljubica Jović

Mirta is a law student who is annoyed by her father's obsession with statistics, whether it applies to burglary, car defects or mortgage. One day, she has a fantasy that she runs away from home with her boyfriend in a car. However, in that dream of hers, he commits suicide because he cannot find a job. Back in reality, Mirta uses his rants about the percentage of unemployed people as a useful advice to apply in real life.

Shrill style, pointless story: Goran Dukic's short student film "Mirta Learns Statistics" (rightfully) gained critical acclaim thanks to its upbeat-playful nature filled with numerous comical scenes, ideas or solutions (while Mirta and her boyfriend leave the town in a car, they cynically shout: "Goodbye, lizards! Goodbye, dirtbags!" while people on the streets wave at them cheerfully; throughout the film, unusual, "off" clips show up, such as a man on a tree, a man by the river and seven people looking down from the roof. At the end, as the boyfriend holds a rant about statistics, he mentions the current suicide rates and actually gives those clips a context when he says that "one youngster hanged himself" (man on tree), "five drowned themselves" (man by the river), "seven jumped from the roof" (seven people on the roof) etc.) that walks somewhere between "Amelie" and "Bonnie and Clyde" whereas the main actress is contagiously fun. However, the blend between a fantasy world and a young couple of rebels does not have a point nor a conclusion, obvious in the witty but ultimately pointless scenes involving the father obsessed with statistics, which is why the movie still seems more like a stylistic exercise than a truly thought out, intact story.

Grade:++

Planet of Dinosaurs

2012-01-01T13:48:00.001Z

Planet of Dinosaurs; science-fiction adventure, USA, 1977; D: James K. Shea, S: Max Thayer, Chuck Pennington, Charlotte Speer, Derna Wylde, Pamela Bottaro

A spaceship suddenly malfunctions and explodes in outer space. A group of nine astronauts manages to land on a nearby planet in an escape shuttle. However, they find out the planet is inhabited by dinosaurs, some of which are meat-eaters and attack them. Several members of the team die, but they manage to kill their main enemy, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and start their own civilization on the planet.

Stiff acting, a trippy synthesizer score, funky 70s clothes and a syrupy mood adorn the low budget science-fiction extravaganza "Planet of Dinosaurs", a cult movie that has hundreds of flaws but at least two virtues: it is refreshingly direct and it is still a 'guilty pleasure'. As with most movies featuring dinosaurs, even this version of 'Robinson Crusoe' on a different planet eventually has the giant lizards turning more interesting than the bland human characters which are so underdeveloped that the viewers barely distinguish them (i.e., the only thing we find out about Jim is that he is 'tough' and from Chuck is that he never wears a shirt), yet since almost the entire budget was spent of the stop-motion effects, they still hold up well today, especially the T. Rex towards the end. The ending is terrible, the trashy ingredients are overemphasised, yet a couple of scenes are so bizarre they have to be seen, among them when Nyla accidentally stumbles upon a giant spider, as big as a dog, but just as it climbs on her stomach, she simply slaps it, catapulting it far away and thus eliminating it.

Grade:+

The Expendables

2012-01-01T10:57:00.002Z

The Expendables; action, USA, 2010; D: Sylvester Stallone, S: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Eric Roberts, Giselle Itié, Dolph Lundgren, Charisma Carpenter, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Barney Ross, leader of a group of mercenaries, accepts an offer to eliminate Garza, a dictator of the island of Vilena. However, it turns out that his contractor is just a front for the CIA, since Garza is basically just a puppet for Monroe, a former CIA operative who now raises drugs on the island. Ross abandons the assignment, but returns to save Sandra, Garza's daughter. In a showdown, Ross' team destroys Garza's mansion.

A variation of the second part of the hyped movie "The Dirty Dozen", "The Expendables" are a cheap action exploitation film with not enough "juice" to satisfy fans of the genre - by comparison, "Saving Private Ryan" had three in one: character development, artistic weight and amazing action sequences - and its status is further undermined by occasional splatter violence. The movie gained fame thanks to Stallone's idea to gather the 'holly trinity' of action movies from the 80s and 90s for the first time on one place - himself, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger - yet the last two show up only for three minutes, which means that "The Expendables" are still only Stallone's vehicle, without them joining him on a mission (though Schwarzenegger has a fantastic, deliciously auto-ironic cameo), supported by new action stars like Statham and Li. Except for that humorous cameo and a touching monologue by Mickey Rourke, this is basically a standard, though solid action film that needed more wit and spirit in order to develop into something more than it eventually turned out to be.

Grade:+

Tales from the Golden Age

2011-12-29T13:16:00.000Z

Amintiri din epoca de aur; satire, Romania, 2009; D: Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricaru, S: Alexandru Potocean, Avram Birau, Vlad Ivanov, Ion Sapdaru, Diana Cavallioti

Five comical stories set in Romania during the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu: an important official is about to pass through a village, so the party inspector tries to "beautify" everything using the help of the locals. However, once they start the carousel, they realize that the engineer is also on board and nobody is on the ground to turn it off. They thus rotate the whole night and miss the visit...The official photographer modifies an image by putting a hat on Ceaușescu, yet the press has to be stopped when everyone realizes that they forgot to delete the hat in his hand...A chicken driver gets arrested for taking eggs from the chickens in his truck...A fat police officer kills a pig before Christmas by gassing it in his kitchen. Yet when he uses his flame, the gas in the pig explodes...A poor student, Diana, decides to earn some money by teaming up with a con-artist, pretending to work the Ministry of Chemistry and taking samples of air from apartments, but in reality collecting bottles.

An anthology of five directors directing five comical stories set in Romania during the 80s, "Tales from the Golden Age" are a surprisingly catchy and engaging satire, with a sharp jab aimed not necessarily at socialism or communism, but at the loathed egocentric regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu that left the whole society in chaos. Predictably, the anthology is uneven since every director had his or her own take on the story, written by Cristian Mungiu who already took a serious approach at the same subject with his previous film "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days", yet as a whole it is coherent - the first two stories are arguably the best. The first story should be commended for engaging the viewers instantly through its humorous take on a official visit to a village where the party inspector demands for pigeons to be released during the passing of the car - a man asks: "He had pigeons, right?" and gets this answer: "Yeah, but he ate them." In the same scene, someone asks for the carousel to be turned on, but gets the reply that they still did not get fuel for it. In that one scene, thus, the director already showed how the people are forced to glorify a leader that not only leaves them hungry, but also scarce on other resources as well. The second story is also sharply witty, but the third story already shows that a sudden switch from comical to serious was not that even, whereas the forth segment, in which a fat man tries to kill a pig in his apartment, could be seen as an allegory promoting vegetarianism, yet in a heavy handed way. The fifth story again returns to the purely "A je to!" nonchalant tone, yet the movie is slightly overlong by that time.

Grade:++

Dreaming the Rose

2011-12-27T12:21:00.000Z

San o ruži; drama, Croatia, 1986; D: Zoran Tadić, S: Rade Šerbedžija, Fabijan Šovagović, Iva Marjanović, Ljubo Zečević

One night after returning from work, Valent, an ordinary worker in a steel mill, observes a gang of thugs killing a man on the street. He finds a bag near the man's corpse and takes it. Subsequently, he finds it is filled with money. Since his wife Ljuba and his two kids live in poor conditions, he decides to spend the money on his family. However, the local butcher witnessed him taking the bag and tries to blackmail him. When the butcher gets arrested by the police, the thugs capture Valent and interrogate him about the money. However, he shoots them with his gun and disappears.

One of the more overrated Croatian movies of the 80s, "Dreaming the Rose" gained most of its hype for bravely depicting how the social situation of the lower class in pseudo-communist Yugoslavia was not that rosy as it was presented in the news back in those days, yet from today's perspective that hardly seems revolutionary, just normal example of European critique of society. The story about a man (excellent Rade Serbedzija) who finds a bag full of money and decides to keep is stimulative and has spark, yet it is never fully developed by director Zoran Tadic, except on symbolical basis as an essay about ethics and morality. Tadic's scarce style was also present in "The Rhythm of Crime", yet unlike that great crime drama the difference in quality is sensed in artificial story flow, lukewarm dialogues and the stand-out magnificent ending that overshadows almost the whole story up to it, which is the only truly intense crime example - just as the thugs interrogate the hero in a shabby place, demanding for the money, an unexpected twist surprises the viewers and gives them a "run for their money".

Grade:++

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

2011-12-26T10:29:00.002Z

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story; comedy, USA/ Germany, 2004; D: Rawson Marshall Thurber, S: Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Rip Torn, Justin Long, Stephen Root, Hank Azaria, William Shatner, David Hasselhoff, Chuck Norris

The conceited owner of an elite gym, White Goodman, wants to buy off a washed up gym right besides his, the "Average Joe gym", in order to shut it down and make a parking lot instead of it. In order to repay their debts, Peter, Justin, Gordon and others, aided by lawyer Kate, attend a dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas and win the top prize, 50,000 $.

Despite a fast pace and a few hilarious jokes, this dodgeball variation of "Kingpin" is an uneven and heavy handed comedy that reaches too often for cheap, crude and banal means when setting up a punchline. There's an unwritten rule that the most outrageous comedies always ignite the biggest laughs, as opposed to more intelligent, but timid ones, yet some authors still managed to occasionally combine the best of both worlds, like the Monty Pythons, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio or the Marx brothers, while "Dodgeball" does not manage to juggle with it - one of the rare instances where it proves otherwise is the already legendary Chuck Norris joke, though it does manage to be really funny in presenting some stupid jokes, such as when Gordon trains the aforementioned sport by trying to "dodge" cars on a road. Some less funny ones are just cringe worthy. Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller are in good shape, the ending is surprisingly satisfying whereas the movie should at least also be given credit for reviving the interest for dodgeball, probably one of the most underrated sports (though the European version of it is better conceived).

Grade:+

Ella Enchanted

2011-12-24T17:48:00.000Z

Ella Enchanted; fantasy comedy, USA, 2004; D: Tommy O'Haver, S: Anne Hathaway, Hugh Dancy, Aidan McArdle, Cary Elwes, Minnie Driver, Eric Idle

In a medieval magical land, a clumsy fairy gave baby Ella the "gift of obedience" - as a consequence, Ella is forced to do whatever others tell her to. When her stepsisters find that out, they exploit her. Still, Ella meets prince Charmont and persuades him to use his future power to stop the oppression of elves, ogres and giants which is carried out by his suspicious uncle Edgar. Having found out about her secret, Edgar orders Ella to stab Charmont at midnight. However, she refuses and thus breaks the spell.

"Ella Enchanted" is such an audaciously outrageous fairytale comedy that it can easily divide the audience, yet its charm in blending in "The Princess Bride", teenage girls, "Cinderella" and an amended variation of "Liar Liar" outweigh towards the positive tone and help mitigate an occasionally silly moment. 90 % of that charm was achieved thanks to the talented Anne Hathaway and a couple of sharp satirical ideas (one of the best is when Ella's activism and fight for ogre rights is shown in the scene where she protests against the prince and his rule by holding a banner that says "Say no to ogrecide") while the rather contrived basic premise did not catch some viewers on the right foot. Banal solutions aside, this is a fairly good family fun with postmodern references and a spectacularly sneaky satirical jab at conformity and populism, which is faithful to its simple constitution.

Grade:++

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze

2011-12-23T08:34:00.001Z

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze; fantasy action comedy, USA, 1991; D: Michael Pressman, S: Mark Caso, Michelan Sisti, Leif Tiden, Kenn Troum, Paige Turco, David Warner, François Chau

A year after the first events, ninja turtles Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo have cozily settled into April O'Neil's apartment, much to her annoyance. However, Shredder survived and using a toxic chemical creates two mutants, Rahzar and Tokka, unleashing them against the turtles. The four heroes manage to transform the two creatures back to their form while Shredder dies trying to make a dock collapse on them.

"Turtles II" starts off with such a stimulative, charmingly engaging opening sequence and entrance of the four title heroes that it instantly brought a smile to children's faces and topped the opening of the first film. The sharp cinematography is also an improvement to the first film. And Paige Turco is a more charming April O'Neil. However, that's where the praise stops since part II is palpably inferior to the original on every other level. Unlike "Turtles I", this film shows the four ninja heroes without charm, presenting them as nearly identical characters without any distinguishing features (could anyone tell the difference between Michelangelo or Raphael, for instance, without the color on their bandana?), the fight sequences are naively choreographed (instead of the whole Foot gang attacking the turtles at once, they wait in the background until they fight one-on-one?), the story has too much plot holes to handle, especially in the rather ill-considered trashy Frankenstein concept involving around the mutating Oooze, whereas the low point was achieved in the embarrassing sequence in the night club where Vanilla Ice continues to sing and the audience continues to dance (!) despite six mutants suddenly storming the place and fighting there. The humorous final sequence brings the movie right on the back tracks again, and the costumes are again amazing, yet by that time the audience wished for a different kind of film.

Grade:+

The Odd Couple

2011-12-21T11:00:00.000Z

The Odd Couple; comedy, USA, 1968; D: Gene Saks, S: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fiedler

Introverted Felix is affected by the the fact that his wife left him and took their kids. When he tries to commit suicide by jumping off from a building, he cannot open the window and gets a cramp in his back. His friends calm him down and tell him that there is a lot worth living for, whereas colleagues Oscar, also divorced, takes him into his apartment. The odd couple quickly turns chaotic: Oscar is messy and is annoyed by Felix constantly cleaning rooms and cooking. After two ladies ladies invite them to their apartment, Felix rejects them so Oscar throws him out of his apartment. Later on, he apologises.

"The Odd Couple" is not so fresh today, but is still a good comedy nonetheless that gains its source of agility from the chemistry between comedians Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau (both nominated for a Golden Globe in a musical or comedy). The screenplay by Neil Simon (also nominated for an Oscar) actually offers an anecdotal little story about two divorced friends living together and clash due to different perspectives, equipped with a few funny jokes: in one comical moment, friends tell Oscar that he has a messy apartment before he answers the phone, so he replies to them: "Yes, I am divorced, messy and broke! (phone rings) Hallo? Divorced, messy and broke?" Felix is an equally comical character, an introverted counterpart for Oscar, who among others moves his jaw up and down and makes strange noises ("Mbwab!...Mbwab!") when he wants to unclog his ears. Today, one could almost decipher hidden gay subtexts from their feuds, especially since Oscar even jokingly tells him "yes, dear". Still, it is obvious that Saks does not have a sure director's hand in this occasion, whereas other flaws are a lukewarm mood and a fair share of not so funny jokes.

Grade:++

Friends

2011-12-15T13:54:00.003Z

Friends; comedy series, USA, 1994-2004; D: Gary Halvorson, Kevin Bright, Michael Lembeck, James Burrows, David Schwimmer, S: Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, Elliott Gould, Tom Selleck

The story revolves around everyday events and misadventures of six friends in New York: Rachel, who starts off as a waitress and then finds as job in a department store; Joey, who is a struggling actor; eccentric Phoebe, who decides to give birth for her brother and his wife; paleontologist Ross who got divorced from his wife and his sister Monica who wants to be a cook; as well as the often sarcastic Chandler. Ross and Rachel break up but still have feelings for each other. Those culminate when Rachel ends up pregnant after a one night stand with him and gives birth to a daughter.

Subconsciously or not, the authors gave a special feeling of comfortability among the viewers by giving the title "Friends" to one of the most popular and acclaimed TV shows of the 90s, which still holds up pretty well today despite some omissions. Even though it was more a hit in the US than in Europe and the rest of the world, "Friends" have a certain universal appeal in presenting some everyday problems and misadventures, that "slice-of-life" flair that manages to build up awe from scratch, whereas a lot of credit should go to the six main actors who established a strong chemistry and carried even weaker seasons thanks to their charm: the story is a true ensemble cast since none of the actors stands out more than the other, equal care was given to everyone. The first three seasons were arguably the best, until the writers made a crucial error: the break-up between Ross and Rachel was unnecessary and pointless. They tried to make it suspenseful by having the viewers guess until the end whether or not they will make up again, yet the sole concept was erroneous: would an ex-couple still hang around as friends after such a bitter split? Some remarks made by Rachel aimed to belittle Ross were especially mean-spirited and seemed as if they came from a sitcom called "Enemies". Generally speaking, whenever Ross' character swims at top, the episode would always be at least good.

However, during its prime the story offered truly a lot of funny ideas and social observations. In one especially comical episode, Joey exaggerated his CV during an audition for a musical in order to win the role, claiming he had years of experience in step dance. When the supervisor asked him to train a whole class of students for a dance rehearsal, the music started and Joey, after a moment of awkward silence, simply just ran away outside. During another audition, he had to show his uncircumcised penis for a sex scene in a movie, but since it was made out of salami, it fell off. Ross plays a tune and then stops. Joey thinks he found a job as a photo model, but the next day his photo shows up in the city in the form of an add for sexually transmitted disease. The static camera and lax story flow towards the end, when the show lost steam, bother, yet if there is one episode that achieved perfection of cosmic proportions and that should be seen by those who never intend to see the show, then it's in season 5, "The One Where Everybody Finds Out", written by Alexa Junge. In it, Monica and Chandler are still hiding that they are a couple, but Joey, Rachel and Phoebe already know that and are annoyed by endless pretending. So, Phoebe decides to "push the limits" by pretending to seduce Chandler, mischievously "exploring" how far he will go until he finally admits that he is already with Monica. But he and Monica figure out that Phoebe is just faking it so they decide to switch the tables and have Chandler pretend he wants to sleep with Phoebe, too, which culminates in the sequence in his apartment where they both dare it more and more (a stroke, a kiss...) to see who will give in first. That episode was so virtuoso, so deliciously written that you did not care about directing, acting, shot composition or anything else at that moment - you were simply fully absorbed by the story.

Grade:++

The Beauty of Sin

2011-12-12T12:20:00.002Z

Lepota poroka; erotic drama, Montenegro, 1986; D: Živko Nikolić, S: Mira Furlan, Milutin Karadžić, Petar Bozović, Alain Noury, Ines Kotman, Mira Banjac, Jasna Beri

In the Montenegrin hinterland, some villages are still rigidly conservative and the tradition is that a husband kills his wife with a mallet if she cheats on him. One such rural couple, Jaglika and Luka, decide to follow the invitation of their relative Đorđ in order to find a job along the liberal coastline. Đorđ turns out to be a notorious con-artist who cheats on his wife and even fires Luka while Jaglika finds a job as a housemaid in a nudist resort. There she befriends a nude English couple who awaken her extroverted side. Back in the village, Jaglika admits to Luka that she cheated on him, but he does not kill her.

After the authority of censors started to deplete in the 80s, the Yugoslav cinema slowly started to catch up with the European trend of erotic dramas, vividly represented with Pasolini's trilogy of life that started with "The Decameron", Vadim's "And God Created Woman", Luna's "Ham Ham" and others. Zivko Nikolic's "The Beauty of Sin" does not have an artistic authority, but it is surprisingly honest, avoiding "cheap flesh" in favour of a more-or-less even presentation of a shy, conservative woman, Jaglika, slowly awakening her untrammelled passionate side in the middle of a nudist resort. In this edition, the "fish out of water" story is a gentle rubbing of a collision of two opposite worldviews - the conservative and liberal wing - whereas Nikolic shows the effects of both of their negative extremes - bigotry and decadence. The film needed more humor and at least three more truly skillful sequences (one of the rare examples that prove otherwise is when the shy heroine, working as a housemaid, is surprised to encounter a couple lying naked on bed, so the wife makes a humorous remark: "Maybe we should wear clothes until she gets accustomed to us.") yet it enjoys the reputation of a cult classic for some examples of sophisticated erotic (the sole scene where Luka finds himself in the room with a naked prostitute with large breasts but freaks out and runs away is a favourite among the fans of such genre), aesthetic images of beach and the wonderful character of Jaglika - she is basically the only fully circled out character, yet the viewers can truly easily identify with her whereas Mira Furlan plays her wonderfully sincere.

Grade:++

Hellsing Ultimate

2011-12-10T10:35:00.026Z

Hellsing Ultimate; animated horror series, Japan, 2006-2012; D: Hiroyuki Tanaka, Tomokazu Tokoro, Yasuhiro Matsumura, S: Jouji Nakata, Yoshiko Sakakibara, Fumiko Orikasa, Nobuo Tobita, Norio Wakamoto

United Kingdom. After police officer Seras Victoria falls as a casualty to a ghoul, vampire Alucard abides her wish and "saves her" by transforming her into a vampire herself, recruiting her to fight in the Hellsing organization - led by Lady Integra - against those vampires that threaten humans. However, they get in the middle of a huge battle involving a neo-Nazi Major who uses SS-vampires to level London to the ground, on one side, and the Iscariot organization, a catholic fraction led by Vatican and priest Anderson, who fight against all three: Nazis, protestants and vampires.

The 2001 anime series "Hellsing" was a success, though it "amputated" the main tangle in the manga and thus caused complaints by fans, so a new creative team decided to "remake" it five years later with the "Hellsing Ultimate" OVA series that is more aligned towards Kouta Hirano's original work. Unfortunately, in this edition "Hellsing" went on the way of "Fist of the North Star": it dropped the mood in favor of splatter and (sometimes cheap and banal) violence which went way overboard. It is difficult to pin down why this OVA is so ephemera and convulsive when it has so many things going for it: the main tangle, for instance, intact in this edition, is unbelievable by revolving around a Major who "rebuilds" a new Nazi force in order to continue there where it ended after the World War II and his Blitz part II against London is a sight to behold - the scenes of Britain's capital getting demolished and burned in flames are a rare spectacle of the bizarre without limits. Some expressed worries against such a neo-Nazi "revisionist" story, yet it clearly distinguishes them as the bad guys. As a matter of fact, the sole subtext is subversive since one of the themes in "Hellsing" is the relativity of evil: Alucard is a vampire, but when his evil force is used for good, then it is acceptable. All three sides in the conflict have an evil side to them and the question is thus whether a goal can justify any means. Alucard himself puts it nicely in one episode: "A monster fighting for God. And a monster fighting against God. That's all the same."

The animation and character designs are top-notch, yet since the production is slow and it takes sometimes up to a whole year for a new episode to show up, the mood is uneven since the authors constantly have to remember to "pick up" there where the previous events left - after all, you have to expect a toll for consistency for a series whose production was stretched to half a decade, yet it plays out in only two nights - whereas the long, absorbing takes of standoff do tend to seem hesitant after a while (the 6 minute long monologue of the Major in one episode is truly too long), not entirely managing to recreate that desired Leone touch. Seras actually comes off less developed in this OVA: in the first "Hellsing", the authors took their time to show her struggle with becoming a vampire, while here everything was already consolidated in the first episode. For instance, the scene in the first anime where Seras tackles and immobilizes Jan had weight because it was so real, while here it seems too neat (also, her yellow uniform does not suit her so well). The best ingredients were again found when the story went into some absurd-caricature spheres, which were there to relax from the otherwise bleak events (in the closing credits for episode 4, the Major and the Doc show up wearing anime shirts, singing in a karaoke and having tourist equipment when they go to England!). "Ultimate" is more faithful to the manga, yet that does not automatically mean that is superior than the first "Hellsing" - the Fleischer brothers "Gulliver's Travels" is, for instance, quite unfaithful to Swift's novel, but it is still superior than the loyal '96 miniseries of the same title - therefore, these two do not necessarily contradict each other. Despite some genius ideas, "Ultimate" crammed so many bloody violence that it numbed the viewers, and ultimately the whole viewing experience.

Grade:++

Greed

2011-12-05T14:46:00.006Z

Greed; silent drama, USA, 1924; D: Erich von Stroheim, S: Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt

A former miner, brute McTeague, becomes a dentist in San Francisco. One day, he falls deeply in love with one of his patients, Trina, who is the girlfriend of a certain Marcus. When McTeague tells him about his love, Marcus decides to generously "give up" on Trina. However, he regrets it when Trina wins 5.000 $ on a lottery. She and McTeague get married and move to a new house. Still, despite her fortune, she turns out to be a real penny poacher and refuses to give anything to McTeague after he loses his license as a dentist and can't find a job. He steals 450 $ from her and runs away. On Christmas, he returns, kills her and takes the rest of the money. He returns to the mine and then flees to Death Valley where he meets Marcus again who wants the money. McTeague kills him, but stays handcuffed to his corpse.

Greed has always been a great source of inspiration for movies and novels, whether it is the central theme in the dramatic "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" or humorous novel "L'Avare" by Moliere, probably because of the sheer intensity of characters found between it that collide with huge intensity. Just as the anti-hero McTeague was obsessed with it in "Greed", director Erich von Stroheim was in equal measure obsessed with greed for perfection found in overlong running time of the movie - seven hours are truly too long to sustain the viewers' concentration, even in such a great classic. Von Stroheim's greed was outmatched only by those of the producer's for profit who cut the movie to only 2 hours, yet the 4 hour version was restored and can be today compared.

The ideal movie would probably lie in the middle - some subplots in the extended version are unnecessary (Zwerkov and Maria, for instance, who are just there to foreshadow what is going to happen to McTeague and Trina) yet von Stroheim shows remarkable sense for "proper/inner" directorial skill in meticulous details (the minute the brute McTeague exits the coal mine but stops to pick up a bird on the ground and kiss it, he is able to reach the viewers), just the right balance of delicious emotions, which are neither too cold nor to sappy (i.e. the scene where bride Trina clings to her mother because she is afraid to spend her first night with her husband alone; the detail where she buys him a present, a giant golden tooth) and even slightly provocative-subversive ideas for those times (the legendary scene where dentist McTeague kisses a tranquillized Trina, who was still only a patient to him; the obsession with money over love/human relations as a critique of capitalism) all revolving around the story where instead of a couple consuming money, it consumes them. "Greed" is surprisingly dark and bitter even today, entirely opposite to many sugary movies of the 20s, a raw, existential allegory on selfishness, bravely tackling the "unpopular" Hollywood theme of lower class, with the expressionistic finale in Death Valley remaining an unforgettable example of "black ending", which is actual even in our time, and the repeated McTeague's line "You won't make small of me!" is brilliant.

Grade:+++

Brainstorm

2011-12-01T12:11:00.009Z

Brainstorm; science-fiction drama, USA, 1983; D: Douglas Trumbull, S: Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher, Cliff Robertson, Alan Fudge

Scientists Lillian and husband and wife team Michael and Karen create a device that can record a person's audio-visual-sensory experience on a tape and then play it for other viewers via a special helmet. After the military insists on exploring the invention, Lillian has a heart attack in the laboratory, but uses her last piece of strength to turn the device on and record her own death. Michael wants to play the tape to see a human's experience of death, with amendments that will not affect his own heart. Since the military wants to use the tape for torture, Karen hacks into the factory to cause chaos among the machines while Michael downloads the tape and sees the death experience in the shape of space travel to another galaxy and fairies.

With all due respect for Natalie Wood in her last screen performance, science-fiction movie "Brainstorm" as a whole seems like patchwork, an uneven and incoherent story based on a fantastic premise of "recording" people's audio-visual experiences, whereas it stays open if Wood's sudden death caused certain rewrites in the film or even lack of whole sequences since she was one of the leading roles. In this forerunner to "Strange Days", the authors did not manage to exploit all the rich possibilities of the stimulative concept to the maximum (one of the rare examples where they prove otherwise is the idea that a man can "record" his sex experience with a woman, which is then replayed by one "viewer" to the point where he gets dizzy from too much orgasms) which is why "Brainstorm" seems rather underused, sadly waisting its running time only on an (albeit subversive) subplot where the hero Michael is trying to obtain a "death tape" from the military who has taken over his research centre in order to use it as some sort of MKULTRA project. The sole visual style of the movie that "replays" the recorded experiences is excellent, though, using fish eye lens in filming a person's POV of riding a horse, flying, driving or going down the water slide. The ending turned out the worst, both in not resolving/neglecting what will happen to the device in the army's hands and Michael's surreal (and pointless) obsession with seeing the "death tape" that inappropriately drifts away into the religious since he sees a person's soul traveling through space, which is entirely out of character with the whole previous "scientifically cold" tone of the film up to it.

Grade:+

Cow and Chicken

2011-11-29T12:09:00.009Z

Cow and Chicken; animated comedy series, USA, 1997; D: David Feiss, Robert Alvarez, S: Charlie Adler, Dee Bradley Baker, Candy Milo

An array of misadventures revolving around Cow and Chicken, children of Mom and Dad (whose faces are never shown since they only have legs), who often encounter the Red Guy, an incompetent nemesis: the school goes for a field trip to prison (!); Cow and Chicken decide to become sailors; Cow writes a screenplay for a play about "The Ugliest Weenie" or decides to assist a "king and queen of cheese"; Chicken finds a credit card and fakes a comet in the sky in order to scare the city...

An eccentric and extremely comical satire, "Cow and Chicken" by director and screenwriter David Feiss received critical acclaim after his short cartoon, "No Smoking", was picked by Cartoon Network and expanded into a TV show which even surpassed the pilot. TV shows mostly start to loose their freshness after running for a long while, yet that was avoided here since "Cow and Chicken" span only 52 episodes, just enough to end on a high note. The main attraction in this roundabout of insane jokes became undoubtedly the Red Guy (the devil in the pilot), but since the story is deprived of any deeper philosophical connotations, "Cow and Chicken" still remained a children's animation: this is one of the rare examples of a comedy that blends both the outrageously grotesque and childishly naive humor and gets away with it since it somehow almost always outweighs towards the latter, towards the harmless tone, whereas a huge portion of kudos should go to Charles Adler who provided a bravura triple dub by voicing Cow, Chicken and the Red Guy - I watched the show dubbed in a different language once, and it wasn't even 50 % as funny as the original, which really says a lot about his comic delivery.

Whether it's the dialogues (in a store, a clerk says: "Hallo, can you be *helped*?"), the creative sight gags making fun of the fact that Mom and Dad's faces are never shown (they push it to such an extent that in one episode Dad's legs are seen in the lower part of the screen while an inch-thin horizontal pole "hides" his nonexistent upper part), the demented character designs (often showing men with red lips) or simply insane-surreal situations (in one episode, the Red Guy is hired to teach Cow and Chicken how to play the piano: Chicken just pounds the keyboard with its beak while Cow pounds it with its utter, creating awful music. Since the Red Guy observes that they both have only three fingers, he concludes that the problem is resolved by simply removing a third of "needless" keyboards from the piano. Some time later, in order to show his "capacity" and their musical progress, he organizes a real concert which is attended by a huge crowd. But when the curtains go up, Cow and Chicken just simply continue pounding the partial keyboard on the piano, creating again awful music!), this is a howlingly funny show and a fantastic fun, if the "I Am Weasel" segment is excluded.

Grade:+++

For Your Eyes Only

2011-11-28T12:33:00.005Z

For Your Eyes Only; action, UK, 1981; D: John Glen, S: Roger Moore, Carol Bouquet, Chaim Topol, Julian Glover

Somewhere in the south Adriatic sea, a British spy ship collided with a mine and sunk. It contains ATAC, a system that could order submarines to fire at their own cities. Timothy Havelock is killed by pilot Gonzales from a helicopter that was about to retrieve ATAC from the sea. His daughter Melina wants to take revenge on the people responsible for it. James Bond stumbles upon Gonzales, but the latter is killed by Melina. They both flee to the Italian peninsula, and then to a Greek town where they discover that the villain Kristatos wants to sell ATAC to the Soviets. In an ambush, Bond retrieves ATAC and destroys it, whereas Kristatos dies. For his vacation, Bond brings Melina with him.

With the action thriller "For Your Eyes Only", director John Glen managed to conjure up a truly good James Bond film and thus saved the movie series, whereas even Roger Moore's performance is much more dignified in this edition. Bond is basically a long spy soap opera, so Glen choose wisely when he decided to craft it as an unpretentious fun full of attractions. There are comical scenes, such as when a computer makes a phantom image of a villain with a nose as big a Pinocchio's or a burglar who wants to break into Bond's car despite the warning, so the vehicle explodes with him in self-defence. Even the action is top-notch: downhill car chases are equally as spectacular as the pursuit of Bond on skis. Despite the fact that the ending is slightly confusing and illogical, this 12th Bond film is a very polished and satisfactory edition.

Grade:++

The Spy Who Loved Me

2011-11-28T11:36:00.007Z

The Spy Who Loved Me; action, UK, 1977; D: Lewis Gilbert, S: Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curd Jürgens, Richard Kiel

British and Soviet ballistic-missile submarines mysteriously disappear in the sea, thus both governments decide to jump over their shadow and cooperate. The English call their agent 007, James Bond, who on his way down the mountain kills a Soviet agent - a close friend of Soviet agent Anya who now has to cooperate with Bond. In Egypt, they manage get a hold of a secret microfilm who indicates the way of the submarines, but are persecuted by Jaws, the villain with metal teeth. Bond and Anya discover Stromberg on a platform on the sea, who plans to destroy Moscow and New York. Bond kills him and diverts the fired rockets on submarines, causing them to self-destruct.

It is strange that Roger Moore once stated that "The Spy Who Loved Me" is his favorite James Bond film, since it is one of his weaker products and in reality his best Bond is "For Your Eyes Only." The opening is quite fun: a love couple lies on a bed, but just then the spy device rings - ironically, not the man, but the woman is the one who answers the call, whereby the story gives a neat satirical jab at a "female Bond" who also enjoys seducing. The opening credits are creative whereas one of the main bad guys is "Jaws", the giant with metal teeth. But the main story is boring, standard and naive (when the submarine crew spots that a giant platform is about to swallow them, why don't they simply dive?; "Jaws" destroys a van with agents with his bare hands (!)...) despite the chemistry in the British/Soviet joint cooperation between Bond and Anya and a good box office result. As a whole, the movie is unusually clumsy and anemic due to a too serious tone and wooden characters, which is why the initial fun spark already disappears some 60 minutes into this 2-hour movie.

Grade:+

H-8

2011-11-26T10:26:00.009Z

H-8...; drama, Croatia, 1958; D: Nikola Tanhofer, S: Boris Buzančić, Đurđa Ivezić, Antun Vrdoljak, Vanja Drach, Marija Kohn, Mia Oremović, Marijan Lovrić, Mira Nikolić, Fabijan Šovagović

On 14 April '57, a passenger bus was driving from Zagreb towards Belgrade. Among the passengers are piano student Alma Novak; reporter Boris; actor Krešo who lost his career since a doctor's treatment made his laryngitis even worse and thus has a grouch against Mr. Šestan just because he is also a doctor; a young mother with her baby; a middle-aged Swiss man who is jealous of his young wife just for talking with anyone; aging poet Nikola; a couple with a little girl with a nosebleed. At the same time, a truck from Slavonski Brod is driven by Rudolf. 147 km from Zagreb, at 8:34 pm, an unknown car driver with a license plate starting with H-8, wants to pass the bus even though the truck was heading towards him in the opposite direction. In order to avoid the car, the truck makes a sharp turn left and thus crashes into the bus. The car driver escapes.

One of the most critically acclaimed Croatian movies of the 20th century, based on a real event, road movie drama "H-8" is indeed a small classic, a cleverly conceptualized and executed story. The inventive opening already gives a small summary of the road accident for the viewers, determining the exact time (8:34 pm), location (147 km away from Zagreb) and causes of the crash between the truck and the bus: the story then "rewinds" and goes back to the start of the bus journey and the slow build-up of suspense results from the viewers knowing which passenger seats will be fatal (at the front, number 2, 3, 4 and 5) yet the uncertainty is heightened since the characters exchange their seats several times (a mother with a baby cannot close her window, so a soldier concedes his seat to her and thus resettles towards the "death row"), unknowingly "playing" with their fate, so the audience is always hoping their "favorite" will survive while the bad guy will die.

Director Nikola Tanhofer leads the moody story with a sure hand, yet at times the weakness of the writing is not entirely hidden since there is too much babble among the passengers which is at times "just there" to fill the story, instead of acting natural, like the slightly superior example of "Who's That Singing Over There?" where practically every line of the passengers on the bus was essential to the story or simply fun. Still, numerous lines reveal fine writing ("We were poor, we had only 7 dinars when we got married. For our honeymoon we went to the cinema" or "Doctors have it easy: their "successes" praise them, while their failures are buried!") whereas the 'fatalism' of the crash is a source of gripping storytelling towards the end when the inevitable is about to happen, which is why this is a quality achievement.

Grade:+++

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

2011-11-24T10:47:00.010Z

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; animated-live action fantasy crime comedy, USA, 1988; D: Robert Zemeckis, S: Bob Hoskins, Charles Fleischer (voice), Christopher Lloyd, Kathleen Turner (voice), Joanna Cassidy

Hollywood, '47. Cartoon characters, the "Toons", are alive and interact with humans. A washed up alcoholic private detective, Eddie Valiant, gets in the middle of a conspiracy after his photos revealing a fling between Mr. Acme and "Toon" Jessica Rabbit cause an outburst of jealousy by her husband Roger - the next day, Acme is found dead and the police suspects Roger killed him. However, Valiant believes Roger is innocent and helps him dismantle the plan of ominous Judge Doom who wants to buy off Toontown, destroy it and build a freeway stretching through it. It turns out Doom not only killed Acme, but is a "Toon" himself, yet dies by his own acid invention, "the dip", whereas Roger is acquitted of charges.

One of the most commercially successful collaborations between producer Spielberg and director Robert Zemeckis, unusual crime comedy "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" is dedicated almost as some sort of an "edgier" lesson to Disney's "Mary Poppins", whereas in it there is more chemistry between real and animated characters than there is between two real ones in many movies. The story actually managed to circumvent all copyright laws and encompass several cartoon characters from rival studios in one, which is why this is to date the only movie where Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny - from the rival Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios - appear together on screen - though, truth be told, considering that, their scene actually should have contained a far better joke than the standard one we got. The combination of the live action and animated parts does have its fair share of inventive solutions, jokes (an animated car driving a real car) and dialogues ("I am not bad. I am just drawn that way" or "You almost got me a heart attack!" - "In order to have one, you must have a heart first!"), yet the disjointed blend between a film noir for grown ups and animated characters for kids still seems heavy handed at times, nonetheless: only Christopher Lloyd (fantastic as the villain Doom who comically writes "Rabbit dip" on the chalkboard in the virtuoso bar sequence) and Bob Hoskins (nominated for a Golden Globe) are consistent, whereas some cartoon characters indeed tend to go "way out of line" with distorted grimaces and annoying antics. Instead of infantile characters from Looney Tunes and co., it would have been far more interesting to actually see a live action-animated interaction with animated characters from the far East, like Seras Victoria, Spike Spiegel and Faye Valentine, Minako Aino, Usagi Tuskino and Haruka Tenouh, Kagome...Now, that would have been a blast.

Grade:++

The American

2011-11-21T11:32:00.007Z

The American; thriller-drama, USA, 2010; D: Anton Corbijn, S: George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli

Assassin Jack arrives to the small Italian town Castelvecchio for another assignment of his boss Pavel. One of his associates, Mathilde, wants him to build a tailor-made sniper rifle, so Jack goes on to assemble it from various devices. Upon meeting a priest and a kind prostitute, Clara, who falls in love with him, Jack starts to feel the effects of his long suppressed loneliness and the urge for love. He creates the rifle but tells Pavel he quits his job afterwards. After delivering the weapon, Pavel and Mathilde try to kill him, but Jack outsmarts them. Still, he succumbs to his wounds before he could start his love with Clara.

Even though it might seem sterile and pointless at first, contemplative minimalistic art thriller-drama "The American" actually subsequently turns out to be a quality made film with a precise purpose, where the long and empty scenes evoke existentialism of the tragic protagonist, assassin Jack (great George Clooney) who in the end gets so consumed by his profession that he can never relax, fearing that every passer-by might be his killer. By setting the story inside a small, rural Italian town where people still seem to have some traditional values, friendship, and some kind of joy of life, the authors set-up the stage for Jack "melting away" and wishing to blend in with them, creating very good character development: the scene where he and assassin woman Mathilde lie on the meadow for a "fake picnic" but then suddenly observe a butterfly gently landing on her, sums up perfectly the contradiction of two "ugly" antagonists suddenly getting puzzled by beauty. The movie is not original, nothing here was not already shown before, yet just like its forerunners, Melville's "The Samurai" and Furuhashi's "Samurai X: Reflection", it bravely shows the only possible conclusion for a hitman who cannot live happily ever after after what he has done, but will experience death himself, which is precisely why the ending is so intense.

Grade:++

The Big Knife

2011-11-20T11:50:00.007Z

The Big Knife; drama, USA, 1955; D: Robert Aldrich, S: Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Shelley Winters, Rod Steiger

Charles Castle is a successful actor. One day, he is visited by reporter and friend Patty who inquires when he is going to divorce from his wife Marion, but the latter chases her away from the mansion. Charles, upon Marion's suggestion, does not want to sign a 7 year contract for a studio since he would have to star in bad, cliched movies, but producer Stanley persuades him to sign it anyway, blackmailing him about his car crash accident. After a while, Charles' career starts diminishing while an actress, Dixie, also wants to blackmail him. When Smiley, Stanley's lawyer, suggests Charles to kill Dixie, he starts an argument and renews his relationship with Marion. Charles in the end takes his own life.

Hollywood gained quite a negative reputation in modern times, yet already in 1955, black drama "The Big Knife" made an anti-ode to 'the dream factory' by subtly creating an epitaph to movie art which was replaced by the urge for profit: in this version, a studio boss (excellent Rod Steiger) practically blackmails actor Charles (Palance) to sign a seven year contract for new bad movies since he holds him in his hand by concealing an unfortunate car accident from the public, whereas towards the end the law extension of the movie producers even considers murder to achieve their goal. By bravely showing a situation where a major industry can coax the state system in order to 'audit' circumstances towards their advantage, "Knife" crafted a story full of bitterness and pessimism, which is felt even in dialogues ("All roads lead towards disaster" or "You always do the worst towards people you love the most"), whereas the whole film is almost entirely placed in Charles' mansion, which gives a feeling of static touch. But at the same time the whole thing is also tiresome to watch whereas too much babble reduces the enjoyment value.

Grade:++

Hellsing

2011-11-17T12:03:00.009Z

Hellsing; animated horror series, Japan, 2001; D: Yasunori Urata, Umanosuke Iida, S: Joji Nakata, Fumiko Orikasa, Mika Doi, Akiko Hiramatsu

An older gentleman starts kissing a pale woman in his mansion. But he is interrupted by a certain Alucard, a mysterious man in red clothes, who shoots the woman with a silver bullet. The woman disappears because she was a vampire. Alucard himself is a vampire, but works for people in an organization called Hellsing, lead by Lady Integra Hellsing. After a police woman, Seras Victoria, is wounded while taken hostage by a priest ghoul, Alucard saves her by making a vampire out of her. Still confused, Seras now has to get use to sleep in a coffin and eliminate vampires for Hellsing, whether they are vampire brothers, authors of Internet snuff movies or the henchman called Incognito.

The brilliant character of police woman Seras Victoria (voiced by Fumiko Orikasa) completed the tone of the esoteric "Hellsing": this agile-stimulative fantasy-horror anime series manages to present the vampire theme sufficiently in only 13 episodes, but this time in the interesting Hanjian concept where an invincible vampire, dissident Alucard ("Dracula" spelled backwards), actually fights against vampires and is a collaborator with humans, personified in the ironic fact that his master Lady Integra is actually weaker than him. Already the first episode crystallized an eerie mood: among others, Alucard sees the sky in red whereas when his enemies tear his whole body to pieces in the shootout, he just rejuvenates again with ease due to his super-powers. That pilot episode is conventionally suspenseful, but still in the end contains a genius abstract scene that wondered off far into the spheres of anime shrillness: an overweight ghost of a man in a robe floats above the ground and comments the first episode ("No girls, no sex...What a pity!") but then Seras, drawn in comical-caricature manner, shows up and scorns him. The animation is slightly "wooden" at times whereas the original manga remains an untouched ideal (the main plot of the comic-book, revolving around Nazi vampires (!), was "amputated" away from this anime, which was later tried to be corrected with the more faithful "Hellsing Ultimate" OVA 5 years later), but as a whole, this is an unusually aesthetic series, whereas Seras is truly fascinating in scenes where she throws blood into the toilet because since does not want to drink it or fights in her police uniform.

Grade:+++

The Hound of Baskervilles

2011-11-14T14:42:00.013Z

The Hound of Baskervilles; crime/ mystery, USA, 1939; D: Sidney Lanfield, S: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Richard Greene, Wendy Barrie

19th century. After another member of the Baskervilles dies under mysteries circumstances, the last heir, Henry, is summoned to inherit their valuable estate in Devonshire. First he arrives to London, where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson assume that someone wants to kill him too. Watson and Henry go to the Baskervilles mansion, where they meet the neighbors, Beryl and John Stapleton. After a while, Holmes shows up himself. It turns out that John wanted to kill Henry with a dog trained to attack, so that he can inherit the estate. Luckily, Holmes saves Henry and prevents his plan.

Hailed as the best movie adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's cult crime novel with the same title, Sidney Lanfield's "The Hound of Baskervilles" is a thoroughbred mystery-detective story with just two major flaws that undermine it - in the middle part of the film, the absence of the main hero Sherlock Holmes is too long whereas the ending is a real anti-climax that should have been handled better and/or should have shown what happened to the villain - yet the remaining part of the film works, especially since Basil Rathbone is great as the legendary logical detective. The story is compact and gains the most of its plus points thanks to a spooky mood that was achieved thanks to the expressionistic play with shadows and fog (definitely one of the most convincing examples of fog being put on film in the 20th century) surrounding the isolated mansion at night, stimulative moments (from the mansion, Dr. Watson and Henry discover that someone is giving light signals from the dark marsh forest, so they decide to go out and find its source) and a generally fine use of a straight-forward style that neatly blends it all together.

Grade:++

Burn After Reading

2011-11-13T11:52:00.005Z

Burn After Reading; black comedy, USA, 2008; D: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, S: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, David Rasche, J. K. Simmons

After his superior informs him that he is downgraded from his CIA position, Balkan analyst Osbourne Cox is so furious that he quits his job and decides to write memoirs with sensationalistic undertones. At the same time, his wife Katie is having an affair with Harry, a womanizing Treasury employee and US Marshal. After a careless lawyer loses Osbourne's CD with his memoirs, it is found in a gym by Linda and Chad who want to return it for 50.000 $, mistakenly thinking it is a highly classified CIA file. After Harry accidentally kills Chad in Osbourne's apartment and finds out his wife is also planning to divorce him, he decides to leave the US. Osbourne wanted to kill Ted for breaking into his apartment searching for more documents, but both were shot by CIA agents. Back at the CIA headquarters, Palmer and director are puzzled by the mess of the events in the report.

The 13th film by the Coen brothers, "Burn After Reading" is another edition to their 'misanthropic comedy' list, yet the directors and writers became so comfortably 'Hollywoodized' in the meantime that they lost their 'Coen touch' which adorned their fresh first phase of their career. A spoof of two major US institutions, the CIA and the body-beauty industry, "Burn" is as a whole a surprisingly circled out movie with a polished structure and cold calculation, yet the Coens do not manage to show their pure sense for comic timing, which is also undermined due to their bleak-negative perspective which belittles almost every character in the film. All actors are good, yet the movie "clicks" only when George Clooney and Brad Pitt (who once again showed that funny-relaxed roles suit him more than melodramatic ones) are on the screen, yet in all other examples it takes too much time to bring a point across or is simply not that funny. The chair with the dildo scene particularly seems as if the Coens lost their taste and sense for measure. Two great payoffs, though, come towards the end of the film: in one, Malkovich plays Osbourne, the kind of guy who is a wimp and suffers from a minority complex: you get the idea that he was only in the CIA to show off, but once he loses his job nobody perceives him as an authority. Towards the end, when he stumbles upon an even bigger wimp, Ted, who broke into his house to steal data from his PC, he finally enjoys the chance to "show his strength" and even says: "You're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. My whole life. But guess what... Today, I win." What follows is a hilarious scene of insanity. Secondly, the conclusion with the two CIA officials summing up all the events and commenting how crazy they were are simply a riot, with the underrated actor J. K. Simmons showing his full potentials.

Grade:++

Twilight

2011-11-13T11:11:00.006Z

Twilight; romantic horror, USA, 2008; D: Catherine Hardwicke, S: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Taylor Lautner

Bella is a teenage girl who moves away from her mother in Phoenix to live at her father's place, Forks, situated on the north-western part of the US. The weather there is cold, rainy and generally rarely sunny. Bella adjusts to er new high school and meets an unusual teenager, Edward Cullen, who saves her one day by stopping a van from hitting her. Puzzled by him and the legend of the city, she discovers that he is a vampire. They fall in love and Edaward meets her with his family. When a nomadic vampire, James, decides to hunt Bella "for sport", Edward saves her and goes to prom with her.

One of the most hyped and famed movies of the decade, the originator of the "Twilight" saga, this first movie adaptation of the series of novels by Stephenie Meyer is an interesting attempt to blend the "impossible" romance with horror, yet as a whole seems like patchwork: the romantic segment is surprisingly good, moody and even slightly stimulative, yet the horror segment is chaotic and 'anemic'. The reason for why teenage girls went so crazy about kind vampire Edward lies probably in the fact that he represents a triple manifestation of male attraction in one: a forbidden 'naughty guy', a prince charming and strong protector of the heroine. Robert Pattinson is solid in the role, appropriately wearing pale make-up to emphasize his origin, yet it is not quite clear why Bella is so pale too. "Twilight" achieves the most when it attempts to create that 'slice-of-life' mood presented from the teenage female perspective, reminiscent of the narrower writing skills of the classic series "Sailor Moon" and others, such as when Bella also hangs out with Native Americans, feels as an outsider in high school or simply goes to buy a dress with her friends for prom night, whereas her romance with Edward fits in into the concept, equipped with a few neat scenes, such as when he climbs up a tree, carrying her on his back to impress her. However, the story does indeed tend to "show off" and "ham it up" excessively, which is why the horror parts indeed seem unintentionally comical at times (especially the basketball sequence). The finale is entirely illogical: why would James all out of blue suddenly decide to hunt Bella "for sport"? The cause of the confrontation was not well thought out whereas the movie needed more wit and is indeed weaker than its forerunner "Let the Right One In", yet it does have some bizarre charm.

Grade:+

The Sunshine Boys

2011-11-11T11:57:00.009Z

The Sunshine Boys; tragicomedy, USA, 1975; D: Herbert Ross, S: Walter Matthau, Richard Benjamin, George Burns, Lee Meredith, Carol Arthur, F. Murray Abraham

New York. Clark (73) is an old comedian who has not worked with his ex-partner Lewis for 11 years. Clark's nephew Ben is trying to find him a job, but to no avail: in an audition for a commercial, he has troubles remembering his lines. Ben tries to persuade Clark to attend a TV reunion with Lewis since the studio is willing to pay 10,000 $ for them, but Clark is opposed to it - Lewis often spat while talking and poked his chest. Still, Lewis arrives to Clark's apartment. They start an argument over an old sketch so Lewis decides to do the performance, but not talk to him. During the shooting, Clark gets a heart attack and lands in hospital. Lewis visits and comforts him.

This movie adaptation of Neil Simon's play "The Sunshine Boys" received a very good reception: it was critically acclaimed and won 3 Golden Globes (best motion picture - musical or comedy, actor in a musical or comedy - Walter Matthau, supporting actor Richard Benjamin) and one Oscar for the excellent performance by comedian George Burns who prior to this this has not appeared in a film for 36 years. The movie abounds with humor, wit and inspired dialogues, yet is clumsy in the melodramatic dramaturgy which often tends to be sappy-pathetic: Matthau stars as the bald, aging comedian Clark who is senile (he does not distinguish the whistling of the teapot from the telephone ringing) and thus a fair share of misunderstanding tends to be more tragic than comical whereas Burns shows up only some 40 minutes into the film. Still, Simon's fabulous dialogues and quotes are indestructible: "Will you star with him again? Can we discuss this?" - "No, I am busy!" - "Busy with what?" - "With not discussing." / "Is your father dead or alive?" - "Both." - "What do you mean, both?" - "He was alive, and now he is dead." / "Your father laughed the only time in his life in 1932." / "I haven't seen Lewis in 11 years. I haven't spoken to him in 12 years." Despite the fact that the tragic tone somehow undermines the jokes, some of them are simply fantastic nonetheless whereas the chemistry between Burns and Matthau is great.

Grade:++

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

2011-11-10T17:22:00.009Z

The U.S. vs. John Lennon; documentary, USA, 2006; D: David Leaf, John Scheinfeld, S: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, Ron Kovic, Tariq Ali, Bobby Seale, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky

The documentary explores the awakening of political and activist consciousness within ex-Beatles member John Lennon during his stay in New York at the time of the Vietnam War. Rebellious since his childhood, Lennon and his love Yoko Ono made the public stunt of staying in bed in Amsterdam as long as the war is still waging; he wrote the songs "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine" where he advocated peace as well as give public anti-war speeches and support the Black Panthers. In a transparent attempt, the government tried to deport him from the US. Still, Lennon won the case and the war ended in '73.

Since John Lennon is one of the most opulent personalities of the 20th century, almost any movie trying to put anything from his life on the screen already has the potential to be interesting, and this documentary by the directorial duo Leaf-Scheinfeld gives a quality retrospect of his his political activism burning inside his blood during the wild 70s and the Vietnam War. Back then, Lennon was almost some sort of a forerunner to Michael Moore: he was a showbiz celebrity who used his status to promote liberal-pacifist messages to the masses, deliberately attacking the government in office. The realization of the movie is standard, yet the energetic guest speakers (from Tariq Ali up to Gore Vidal), frequent use of the protagonist's songs and the extensive use of rare-obscure archive footage of a "daft" Lennon back in those days (especially in the humorous publicity stunts where he and Ono would cover their whole bodies with a sheet during an interview in Vienna or stay laying in bed in a room in Amsterdam as long as the war is waging!) give it charm and wit that lack in the "present" chunks of the movie.

Grade:++

Jamaica Inn

2011-11-08T16:06:00.007Z

Jamaica Inn; crime, UK, 1939; D: Alfred Hitchcock, S: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Newton, Leslie Banks

England, 19th century. A gang of thieves is notorious for igniting a light above cliffs at a coast during stormy nights in order to attract ships who mistake it for a lighthouse, who then crash at the shore where the gang robs the passengers. Mary arrives to the infamous Jamaica Inn tavern and finds out that Joss, her aunt's husband, is the leader of that gang. She saves a man from hanging, James, who turns out to be a spy working for the police. It also turns out that the local judge Humphrey is actually the covert chief of the gang. Humphrey kidnaps Mary, but when James and the police surround his ship, he commits suicide.

Alfred Hitchcock's last film shot in the UK before he moved to the US to pursue his Hollywood career - where he untypically made some of his best films and actually managed to make the mill run his way in the tough studio conditions - "Jamaica Inn" is one of his rightfully forgotten films, a patchwork that does not know what direction it should take and in the end gets lost, just like his earlier films "Juno and Paycocok" and "Rich and Strange". A large part of the blame should go to Charles Laughton who is a very good actor, but - since he also took the role of the producer - egoistically subordinated the whole story to his character, the bad guy Humphrey who actually turned into a leading role, and thus hammed it up too much, mistakenly thinking that he knows better what is good for the film than director Hitchcock. The black and white cinematography, with some moody shots of the shore and stormy nights, is charming whereas the first half actually works as a crime story, yet towards the end the movie crammed too many illogical situations, plot holes and inconsistencies (in one of the many goofs, Mary is supposed to be guarded by the gang during the luring of the ship towards the coast, but then her guard just makes a few steps forward and she just conveniently runs away without anybody noticing!) while it was probably a mistake for Laughton to insist that his character gets revealed as the bad guy so early in the story, since it took away a dimension of awe later on.

Grade:+

My Life in Pink

2011-11-06T11:19:00.006Z

Ma vie en rose; drama, France/ Belgium, 1997; D: Alain Berliner, S: Georges Du Fresne, Michèle Laroque, Jean-Philippe Écoffey, Hélène Vincent

Hanna and her husband Pierre move to a quiet suburb where their first neighbors are Pierre's boss and his family. Hanna has three sons and a daughter. During a welcoming party, the guests are disturbed when Hanna's youngest son Ludovic shows up in a pink dress. Ludovic even starts saying that he considers himself a girl and shows interest for "female shows", which is why only his grandmother has understanding for him. When Ludovic has a fake wedding with the son of Pierre's boss, the parents send him to a psychiatrist. He starts feeling shame whereas the school kids make him an outcast. The family moves to a new town. At first they are angry at him, but gradually accept him.

Winner of the Golden Globe for the best foreign language film, Alain Berliner's feature length debut film "My Life in Pink" is a gentle essay about the different views between kids and grown ups: even though the plot revolves around a boy, Ludovic, who considers himself a girl, this is not entirely a movie with a gay-transgender theme, but also (and maybe even to a larger extent) a story about the search for one's identity and freedom, despite intolerance. The best scenes are those done with measure, taste and even little humor, such as the one where Ludovic secretly takes the place of the sleeping Snow White during a school play, thus forcing the boy he likes and who plays the prince to kiss him or the imaginative-surreal scene where the TV character Pam exists the TV set and flies away. As a whole, the movie is indeed slightly uneven - maybe it was not the best decision choose a little kid for such a delicate story, but a grown up - sometimes heavy handed and stylistically unsure, yet Berliner truly seems to love his story and crafts strong characters, some of which establish an intact character development thanks to only one scene, such as when Ludovic's mother takes revenge on the racist boss by simply kissing him in front of his wife, thus causing a thorough marital feud.

Grade:+++

The Haunting

2011-11-05T12:36:00.010Z

The Haunting; horror, UK, 1963; D: Robert Wise, S: Julie Harris, Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn

A remote English mansion has the reputation of a haunted house and in its 90 years of existence several of its owners either died from mysterious circumstances or committed suicide. When Dr. Markaway, a parapsychology enthusiast, is given the opportunity to investigate it, he invites three other guests: Theodora, Luke and the outsider Eleanor. The latter hears strange knocks on the door of her room during the night. When a fifth lady shows up, she disappears. Feeling she is disoriented, Dr. Markaway sends Eleanor home, but she loses herself and crashes with her car into a tree, dying. It turns out that the missing lady accidentally caused the accident when she showed up on the road.

"The Haunting" was not one of the first 'haunted house' movies, yet its distinctive creepy tone helped to cement the aforementioned setting as a genre for itself. Using some brilliant camera tricks (wide angle or fish eye lenses; "rotation" of the camera around an object which creates the feeling of dizziness; camera climbing up spiral stairs) combined with the spooky location assured a moody 'kammerspiel' for "The Haunting" which is why some consider it as a small classic of psychological horror. The characters are also well rounded up, especially the outsider Eleanor who arrives to the mansion since she simply hates her life with her mean sister, yet the story is inconsistent. For instance, during their first night in the mysterious mansion, Eleanor and Theodora are shocked when they hear strange, undeniably paranormal knocking sounds on the door of their bedroom. A short while later, Dr. Markaway and Luke arrive from the hallway but claim they did not hear anything outside, upon which Eleanor and Theodora burst in laughter, joking that someone "knocked on their door with a cannon". That is an entirely illogical reaction for the two women: they just experienced a genuine paranormal fright and yet joke at it as if it was not such a big deal? Likewise, the story again resorts to double explanation, i.e. the ending can be interpreted both ways: that ghosts indeed exist or that Eleanor was just crazy, which is slightly contrived. Still, it is a good psychological horror and the sequence with the spiral stairs and the image of a woman emerging from the trap door is an anthology of suspense.

Grade:++

Julius Caesar

2011-11-04T11:15:00.012Z

Julius Caesar; drama, USA, 1953; D: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, S: James Mason, John Gielgud, Marlon Brando, Louis Calhern, Edmond O'Brien, Greer Garson, Deborah Kerr

Rome, 44 BC. After another triumph, Julius Caesar returns to the city and reaches the peak of his power when the Roman Senate proclaims him as the lifelong dictator. Nonetheless, numerous senators see this as the end of freedom in their state. In order to save democracy, Cassius and Casca decide to kill him and even persuade Caesar's adoptive son Brutus to help them. Despite a bad feeling of his wife Calpurnia, Caesar goes to the Senate, where he is killed. Marc Antony seizes power and persecutes the conspirators. Left alone and isolated, Cassius and Brutus commit suicide.

This is an interesting example of how not every movie from the 50s is automatically a classic: despite an ambitious setting, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's adaptation of the play "Julius Caesar" is today a stiff, schematic and dated achievement, one of those dry monumental movies where the basic themes are strong (struggle between being loyal to a friend who "lost his way" or being loyal to your principles and integrity) yet are diluted and therefore difficult for the modern audience to identify with, whereas Shakespeare's artificial and overlong dialogues and monologues also tend to seem more forced than poetic. At times they indeed reach a high level of sophistication ("Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once!" or "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more...as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it, as he was valiant, I honor him, but as he was ambitious, I slew him!") and this movie adaptation is indeed intelligent and demanding, yet as a whole "Caesar" simply does not manage to engage the viewers to the fullest. The maximum was achieved from great actors, James Mason, John Gielgud and especially Marlon Brando as Marc Antony, who was so electrifying during the big speech sequence that the Academy Awards actually nominated him for an Oscar as best actor in a leading role - when he was actually a supporting character! - and won his third BAFTA in his third consecutive year, after "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Viva Zapata!"

Grade:++

Initial D: Extra Stage

2011-10-30T17:37:00.010Z

Initial D: Extra Stage; animated sports/ romance/ action, Japan, 2001; D: Shishi Yamaguchi, S: Michiko Neya, Yumi Kakazu, Keii Fujiwara

Mako and Sayuki are two girls who enjoy car races and their Nissan Sil80, the so called "Impact Blue" is the fastest car in their suburb. Sayuki often hangs around with her pal Shingo, whereas his friend Nakazato has a secret crush on her. The two girls surprise them when they audaciously accept a car race against a champion from the Emperor gang and win. At a ski resort, Sayuki wants to match Mako with a guy, but she declines since she still has feelings for someone else.

This anime OVA from the "Initial D" series surprised with its feminist take on car races, providing only one racing duel in the middle - and on top of that a one that gives the main heroine who drives inspiration and strength when her male opponent gives her a sexist remark, namely that women can't drive - yet the story is evenly spaced out thanks to a good mood that juggles with gentle romance and drama, which is why it does not look like an empty vehicle. The two main heroines in this story, fan favorites among the "Initial D" series, Mako and Sayuki, are both attractive (truth be told, Sayuki has a mannish face with "Cow and Chicken" like lips, but is otherwise quite feminine) and thus sometimes give the authors a "pretext" for some standard fan service - Mako in the short scene while having a shower, Sayuki slightly less in the spa scene - which is just there to sustain the attention of the audience. "Extra Stage" is a neat, good, but not great achievement. More could have been made out of the potential romantic subplot where Mako wanted to give her virginity to a guy she fancies, but he showed no interest in her, whereas the story lacks intensity and spark, yet flows in a solid manner.

Grade:++

She-Ra: Princess of Power

2011-10-27T14:32:00.010+01:00

She-Ra: Princess of Power; animated fantasy adventure series, USA, 1985-1987; D: Bill Reed, Lou Kachivas, Richard Trueblood, Ed Friedman, Tom Tataranowicz, S: Melendy Britt, George DiCenzo, John Erwin, Linda Gary, Alan Oppenheimer, Lou Scheimer

Former member of the Horde, Adora switched to the side of the rebellion that is trying to rid the planet Etheria from the autocratic rule of Hordak and his troops in order to restore freedom for the people. She is aided by Bow, Glimmer, Madame Razz, Kowl and others. Likewise, she can transform into She-Ra, a heroine with super strength. Their clash sometimes overlaps when Skeletor and He-Man visit their world and also choose their sides.

A feminist follow-up to "He-Man" and an American forerunner to "Sailor Moon" and other editions of the 'magical girl' genre, "She-Ra" is one of those mainstream animated shows that erred in some areas - the dialogues and situations tend to seem unnatural at times, the character development is thin whereas the sole story doesn't have an ending (the final episode, "Swift-Wind's Baby", does not conclude the outcome of the fight between the Horde and the rebellion) probably because the authors intended to make episodes indefinitely, which gives it a feeling of unfinished business - yet it is easily watchable and interesting even today, which means that the authors obviously did something right. Despite a weaker popularity, "She-Ra" is actually a better show than "He-Man" since it has twice as many good episodes and a higher budget, which gave the animation fluency: as in the aforementioned show, the drawings reach almost rotoscopic quality at times, yet feel stiff because some movements are over-recycled.

"She-Ra" is indeed not a classic of animation, yet it is refreshing and sweet: the crossover episodes involving He-Man and/or Skeletor visiting Etheria are almost always twice as fun whereas the sole transformations of Hordak's arm into a cannon or even his whole body into a rocket, a tank etc. are stylistically pleasant, giving authors room for some highly creative enterprises. For instance, isn't the episode "Of Shadows and Skulls" where Hordak transforms his arm into a drilling rig and causes a rift which captures Skeletor an excellent example of mise-en-scene? Or She-Ra's elaborated fight with Hordak who transforms multiple times in "A Loss for Words"? Some episodes, on the other hand, are boringly formulaic, and generally the stories achieve the most when She-Ra is not performing "cartoonishly impossible" things (such as simply whirling to dig out a tunnel underground) but is actually challenged and when the Horde is actually menacing. Unfortunately, unlike Usagi Tsukino, we do not find out much about the heroine except for the fact that she is kind: one of the rare examples of character development is only truly found in two episodes, when Adora locks herself up in the prison so that her beloved Sea-Hawk can "save her" and in the smashing "Sweet-Bees Home", the best and only truly romantic episode of the show where characters' faces were animated entirely alive, which payed out when He-Man made his only grimace in the entire two shows when Frosta tried to seduce him! Story editor J. Michael Straczynski should again be given credit for his effort. "She-Ra" never reaches the grace of the movie it originated from, Filmation's magnum opus "The Secret of the Sword", but even her flaws somehow give it charm.

Grade:++

Braindead

2011-10-26T10:32:00.007+01:00

Braindead; black horror comedy, New Zealand, 1992; D: Peter Jackson, S: Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin, Stuart Devenie

An official manages to transport a mysterious and cursed monkey from Sumatra to the New Zealand Zoo. Wellington. After her mother prophecies the love of her life, the shy clerk Paquita decides to start a relationship with the clumsy Lionel, who lives with his dominant mother Vera. While spying on them, Vera gets bitten by the Sumatran monkey and thus squashes it. However, she soon becomes a Zombie. Lionel, determined to keep it a secret, fakes her funeral and keeps her at his place. Still, since she attacks others, the house is soon found under siege by hundreds of Zombies. Using his lawnmower, Lionel grinds all the undead and finishes off his giant, mutated Zombie mother by throwing her into the burning house, also discovering that she killed his father after he had an affair. He thus starts a new life with Paquita.

One cannot really complain at the lack of intelligence in a movie that calls itself "Braindead" nor can one pin down that it is exaggerated without limits when it already sets up its own internal logic of 'over-the-top' right from the start, yet this homage to "Evil Dead" and its aesthetics of "impossible" blending of slapstick and hard horror cannot avoid the flaw of empty "shock for shock's sake", since it seems like Peter Jackson back then followed the rule that the best way to make your film stand out when you are an unknown film maker (and on top of that in an "unknown" cinema of New Zealand) is to gain attention by simply being controversial without limit. Unfortunately, while this cult film indeed crosses every limit of controversy (necrophilia, scalping, mutilation, acrotomophilia...), it does far less so with crossing the limits of quality. Jackson copes the best in the first half of the movie, when he establishes a stylish mood (with the creepy opening in Sumatra when the two explorers are running through a narrow canyon or unusual camera angles) and genuinely funny moments, both with sympathetic innocent jokes (like when Paquita's dog jumps over the fence and lands on the clumsy Lionel) and even more grotesque ones (such as when Lionel's mom, after being bitten by the Sumatran monkey, squashes its head with her heel - the scene would have otherwise been disturbing, but since the monkey's head is so obviously a fake puppet with "button-eyes", it actually has a comical effect).

Nonetheless, while the humor was natural in the first half, it turns forced in the second. Jackson crammed so many Zombies and splatter violence there that it numbed not only the viewing experience but also the characters: the best example is the character of the priest, who is hilarious when he says "I kick ass for the Lord!", but as soon as he transforms into a Zombie himself, becomes just a boring extra who doesn't stand out in any way anymore and you don't even register him among the Zombies. Likewise, the Zombie baby segment is disastrous, perverted and stupid in trying to make fun of infanticide: even when you make a movie about bad taste, you must have at least some taste. "Braindead" is indeed at least 30 % garbage, but it has that sheer enthusiastic energy of a young author as well as a hidden message that almost gives more meaning than an other edition of the genre: Lionel, whose life is dictated by his over-dominant mother, has to become independent and stand for his "forbidden love" with Paquita. Symbolically, he has to break free from the past, get over his suppressed family secret, his burden, and move on to live in the present. As such, Paquita is a symbol for the romantic genre while his mother for the horror genre, and he must choose which he wants. The finale with killer intestine and others is a spectacle of the strange, which is why the movie is almost never shown on TV, yet the story in the 2nd part still longs for the humor from the opening, which is only found in small crumbs, such as the performance of uncle Les who acts as if Rodney Dangerfield got lost in a Zombie movie. Too much gore, too little sophistication.

Grade:++

Viva Zapata!

2011-10-25T12:00:00.007+01:00

Viva Zapata!; adventure drama, USA, 1952; D: Elia Kazan, S: Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Joseph Wiseman, Jean Peters, Arnold Moss

After they visit the Mexican president Porfirio Díaz to complain about their land that was taken away from them by the government, the peasants led by Emiliano Zapata realize that the whole political top is part of their problem, not their solution. Zapata and his brother Eufemio start a rebellion which advances into the Mexican Revolution, conjoined by Pancho Villa from the north. After Diaz is ousted, the moderate Francisco Madero takes over the rule, but his general Huerta has him assassinated and thus creates a coup d'etat. Eufemio is killed while Zapata marries Josephine. In an ambush, Zapata is killed, but his white horse survives.

Nominated for five Oscars and winning one for best supporting actor Anthony Quinn, "Viva Zapata!" was boosted by the Academy Awards back in those days, but today it's a moderate viewing experience, sandwiched between two superior Elia Kazan-Marlon Brando collaborations, "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On the Waterfront". The Mexican Revolution, a conflict with the biggest death toll played out entirely on the Western Hemisphere, is an interesting topic for a film, and even though Kazan manages to insert his strong-electrifying directorial style on numerous occasions, some parts were uninteresting or simply too standard and schematic for his talent, especially in the conventional second part, up until the poetic tragic ending with the white horse. The most banal moment is when a disobedient farmer openly speaks out against the government taking away his land and the angry Zapata, now part of the government himself, circles out his name on a paper, the identical way when dictator Diaz circled out his name when he spoke out about the same problem at the start of the movie, which was aimed at a jabbing the corruption of power and politics, yet luckily the movie is more skillful in other parts. The story is fictionalized, yet never glamorous (it bravely depicts how Josephine was not interested in Zapata when he was poor, but married him as soon as he gained power and wealth) whereas the undoubtedly best ingredient is Marlon Brando's powerful performance as the title hero. With this film, Brando won a BAFTA as best actor and thus started his back-to-back wins for the next three years, which were followed by "Julius Caesar" and "On the Waterfront".

Grade:++

Big Business

2011-10-24T12:19:00.007+01:00

Big Business; silent comedy short, USA, 1929; D: James W. Horne, Leo McCarey, S: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson

California. It's Christmas time and Laurel & Hardy drive with their car, trying to sell Christmas-trees from door to door. After a few failed attempts, Hardy decides to take a more "aggressive" approach with the next customer, a bald man. Neither he is interested in Christmas-trees and shuts his door in front of them. Since their tree gets stuck in the door, Hardy rings the bell several times in order for the man to open the door again and release it. However, the man loses his patience and cuts their Christmas-tree. Laurel & Hardy decide to strike back with the same measure and start destroying his house, while he starts demolishing their car. A police officer stops them so the duo escapes.

Comedians Laurel & Hardy shot over 100 films together, of short and (much weaker) feature length format, whereas the website Internet Movie Database lists "Big Business" as their 2nd highest rated film - right after the good, but overhyped "Music Box" - that short silent comedy has a barely 20 minutes running time, yet still manages to encompass a whole spectre of their comic possibilities. Arguably, it is their best film. The story is simple - while persistently striving to sell a Christmas-tree to a reluctant man, Laurel & Hardy start such an argument with him that it escalates into an excessive spectacle of destruction in which he wrecks their car while they deconstruct his whole house (!) - turning into a surprisingly 'politically incorrect' anarchic comedy for them, some critics even going so far to perceive the absurd destruction and violence against inanimate objects as a foreshadowing of untrammelled violence in cinema later found from Peckinpah to Scorsese. Still, if the violence against Christmas-trees is ignored, "Business" is first and foremost a classic childish comedy, a gentle jab at both "aggressive sales tactics" and human weakness to restrain from escalating conflicts, entirely exploiting the potentials of the concept in such hilarious scene where the bald man (Finlayson) gets tangled and "fights" with the Christmas-trees, in the end not knowing how to destroy Laurel & Hardy's wrecked car in any possible new way, so he just lights and throws a dynamite at its rubble, whereas Laurel & Hardy again prove their chemistry when they destroy his door and his chimney.

Grade:+++

Interview with the Vampire

2011-10-21T12:54:00.008+01:00

Interview with the Vampire; horror drama, USA, 1994; D: Neil Jordan, S: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, Antonio Banderas, Stephen Rea, Thandie Newton

New York, 20th Century. A reporter is interviewing a certain Louis who claims to be a vampire. He tells him about his life: in 1791, Louis was a plantation owner who was suicidal after the death of his family, but was given two options by vampire Lestat: either to die or to live on as a vampire. Louis chose the latter but had to adapt to avoid the Sun and to drink blood from mice. Lestat once made a vampire out of a little girl, Claudia, which angered her since she could never grow into a woman. They moved to Europe and then the US. There she was killed by Armano, causing a revenge by Lestat. In the present, the reporter runs away in his car, but is bitten by Lestat.

In the light of constant (over)-popularity of vampires with the cinema goers, Neil Jordan's adaptation of the novel with the same title by Anne Rice, "Interview with the Vampire", actually secured itself a longer memorability than some of his better films, since it is an interesting and polished, but slightly pompous and too serious horror drama that does not distinguish itself that much from the your run-of-the-mill vampire movie. The sole concept where the main story is framed by the reporter interviewing a vampire in the exposition and conclusion is stimulative, taking on the form of a "dissident confession" and assuring deeper psychology and tragedy of the main protagonist, avoiding to larger extent the monster portrait for a more 'human' one, almost existentialist one. A few chapters are genuinely clever assembled, with a few sharp details (such as when Louis narrates how he saw the Sun rising for the first time in 200 years after watching movies in cinema) and Tom Cruise is not at all bad as vampire Lestat, yet the supporting character of the little girl, Claudia, is pointless whereas the story is overburdened with the "inflation" of dialogues, resulting in babble. The nihilism was intended in the story, yet in the end it turned pointless itself, which is why the ending was swift, but welcomed.

Grade:++

The Company of Wolves

2011-10-20T11:00:00.008+01:00

The Company of Wolves; fantasy, UK, 1984; D: Neil Jordan, S: Sarah Petterson, Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Stephen Rea

Mother and father arrive with a car to their house. One daughter greets them while the other, Rosaleen, is still sleeping and having nightmares: in them, she is running through the forest in order to escape from wolves while there are mice in her toys. The dream continues: Rosaleen is a Little Red Riding Hood in a village and attends the funeral of her sister. Her parents are poor while her grandmother warns her of werewolves and tells her an anecdote about a woman whose husband disappeared and returned as a wolf, so her second husband killed him. Rosaleen goes for a walk with a boy, but they get scared by wolves. She meets a man who seduces her. He kills her grandmother and transforms into a wolf. Even Rosaleen becomes a wolf.

2 million $ was the budget for Neil Jordan's 2nd feature length film, bizarre "The Company of Wolves", which was aimed at being a poetic horror movie that works entirely and exclusively on a symbolic level by using the werewolf legend as an allegory of sexual maturing (though sex is not shown), but due to an tedious and incomplete tone the movie does not manage to satisfy on a higher level. It has a lot of symbols that work and actually have sense, but symbols alone do not constitute a great film. By placing the whole story inside Rosaleen's dream, "Wolves" obtains a free hand in following its own internal logic, queuing surreal situations - i.e. in one scene, the heroine climbs up a tree and discovers a nest in which she finds a mirror and make up for herself; while on her way to visit her grandmother (as a Little Red Riding Hood alias), she does not meet a wolf but a man who tries to seduce her ("I have big eyes so that I can see you better...") - which are all there to give audiences a different perspective of average fairy tales. Grandmother is played by Angela Lansbury, who even calls a priest a "molester", who humorously saws a branch from a tree that falls on her head, as a revenge. Jordan again displays his strange directorial touch, yet the movie is truly not for everyone.

Grade:++

Mona Lisa

2011-10-19T12:33:00.008+01:00

Mona Lisa; crime drama, UK, 1986; D: Neil Jordan, S: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Caine

After spending seven years in prison for him, George returns to his former crime boss Mortwell, now owner of a night club, who gives him a small job out of pity: to drive prostitute Simone from one client to another. George has troubles returning back to his world: his ex-wife doesn't allow him to see his daughter while his friend Thomas is obsessed with novels. George falls in love with Simone and decides to search for her friend, Cathy, who is also a prostitute. When he saves her, it triggers an angry backlash from Cathy's pimp Anderson and Mortwell. They are both shot by Simone, but George is disappointed when he realizes she never loved him, but instead only cared for Cathy.

"Mona Lisa" seems as if director and writer Neil Jordan saw so many movies where a couple ends up happily ever after that he decided to make an entirely different take on it: a large part of the audience was disappointed by the "dead end" of the story, yet when one has the main theme in mind - namely that the main protagonist George is a tragic figure, an outsider who loves and adores prostitute Simone, but cannot understand her nor "fit in" into her world - then the perspective is shifted and that flaw suddenly seems like a virtue. Not since "Vertigo" or "Brief Encounter" was there ever such a bizarre tale of unrequited love. Bob Hoskins plays the leading role entirely natural, to such an extent that we could truly believe that his George is one of those "thugs from the streets", switching from cheap-dirty when it is required to be and then to noble when even that is required (the elaborated sequence where he wonders London's night clubs in search for Simone's friend Cathy in order to save her from the "underground" is reminiscent of "Taxi Driver", but is somehow more emotional because the song "In Too Deep" by Genesis almost makes it seem like Orpheus is descending into an evil world to rescue someone), for which he won a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, the New York Film Critics Circle Award and was nominated for an Oscar. Unfortunately, "Mona Lisa" is indeed rushed and heavy handed at times, especially towards the hectic finale, which is why Hoskins was still better in the more harmonious cult crime "The Long Good Friday". Actually, the story seems like a prelude to Jordan's later superior film about "impossible love", "The Crying Game", yet as a whole it flows naturally and is indeed elegant.

Grade:+++

Mystery Train

2011-10-16T13:06:00.006+01:00

Mystery Train; drama, USA/ Japan, 1989; D: Jim Jarmusch, S: Youki Kudoh, Masatoshi Nagase, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Nicoletta Braschi, Cinqué Lee, Elizabeth Bracco, Steve Buscemi, Tom Noonan

A young Japanese couple, Mitsuko and Jun, visit Memphis since she is obsessed with Elvis Presley. After touring Sun Records, the two tourists decide to stay at a hotel over night. In the morning, they hear a gunshot...An Italian woman, Luisa, is stalked by a strange man on the street, so she decides to spend the night in the same hotel, sharing her room with Dee Dee, who just broke up with Johnny from England. Luisa sees Elvis' ghost in the room...Annoyed by losing his job, Johnny robs a liquor store and shoots its owner. His colleagues, Dee Dee's brother Charlie and Will, thus become his unwilling associates and hide with him in the same hotel. In the morning, Charlie gets wounded when he stopped Johnny from shooting himself.

Jim Jarmusch's fourth film, and his first in a Japanese co-production, "Mystery Train" is another minimalistic cult achievement aligned towards his style and trademarks: an intentional de-dramatization of story (as opposed to numerous mainstream films who always tend to over-dramatize plots), realism, slow rhythm and a foreigner's view of America (ironically, in all three stories, the protagonists are either Japanese, Italian or English citizens). One untypical structural innovation for him, though, are three stories told at the same time, at the same hotel, just in different rooms and with different characters. The first segment is arguably the best: revolving around a young Japanese couple, Mitsuko and Jun, who visit Memphis almost as tourists who visit a cultural heritage of some long gone civilization, as Jarmusch puts it, is elegant, moody and funny (the "Elvis would have weighed 648 pounds on Jupiter" line; the scene where Mitsuko kisses Jun in order to draw a "smile" on his lips with her lipstick; the genius idea of Mitsuko being so obsessed with Elvis that she made a photo album of his picture that resembles the picture of Buddha). However, the second and the third story do not manage to repeat the same level of frequency due to a lack of point or underused potentials. The scene where the ghost of Elvis shows up is especially out-of-place whereas the third story finally gives the clever revelation of who fired a shot (which was heard at the end of the first two stories), yet the sole story goes nowhere and is lost in a dead end. Especially comical is Hawkins as the hotel manager who never moves from his seat during the entire film.

Grade:++

Fright Night

2011-10-12T11:34:00.005+01:00

Fright Night; horror, USA, 1985; D: Tom Holland, S: William Ragsdale, Chris Sarandon, Amanda Bearse, Roddy McDowall

Teenager Charley enjoys watching old vampire horror movies of the "Fright Night" franchise on TV, but suddenly gets the chance to experience his fascination first hand when he realizes that his new neighbor, the seemingly charming Jerry Dandridge, is a vampire who kills prostitutes at his home. Charley's mom nor his friends do not believe him, until Jerry makes a vampire out of Charley's friend Ed and kidnaps his girlfriend Amy. With the help of a washed out star from the "Fright Night", Peter Vincent, Charley enters Jerry's house and manages to eliminate him.

Tom Holland's cult humorous vampire horror "Fright Night" starts off elegantly with a long take wondering away from the moon on the sky up to the window of a house, revealing the creepy off-screen dialogue between a man and a woman to be actually coming from a TV show inside. The first half is amusing and moody, containing that 80s flair, yet the second half loses its wit and turns into a conventional, standard (rural) horror. If you do not find it illogical for a next door vampire to phone the hero to actually announce when he is going to kill him (!) or for the clumsy vampire slayer Vincent to travel all the way to Jerry's house to give him holy water to drink in order to test if he is a vampire, yet at the same time have such a rigorous objection to Charley's suggestion for Jerry to simply touch a cross, then the story will work for you, while for the others such heavy handed plot points deplete the cohesion of the storyline. As a whole, the movie is very solid and must be complimented for not showing the real scary creatures until the last 30 minutes, in the finale in the house, yet still sustaining suspense, great cinematography and good performances, but it should have stayed faithful to that clever and funny tone in the first half.

Grade:+

Disaster Movie

2011-10-12T10:59:00.009+01:00

Disaster Movie; parody, USA, 2008; D: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer, S: Matt Lanter, Vanessa Minnillo, Gary "G Thang" Johnson, Crista Flanagan, Nicole Parker, Kim Kardashian

Will has a dream about the upcoming end of the world. Suddenly, while on a party, an earthquake hits the city whereas meteors start falling from the sky. His friend Lisa is crushed while his other friends Calvin, Juney and a demented Enchanted Princess roam the streets in order to find his girlfriend Amy, trapped in a museum. Everyone is killed, except Will who saves Amy and subsequently the world when he inserts the crystal skull at the altar.

It is too easy to just simply attach the eponymous adjective to the 2008 parody "Disaster Movie", which was pretty much done by almost every critic, yet directors and screenwriters Friedberg and Seltzer really did not improve their "style" in any way since the catastrophic "Date Movie", but delivered just another forced, empty, chaotic, deformed and self-defeating mainstream comedy without humor. Even "Kung Pow" and "Wild Zero" are entirely dazed and insane comedies, but at least they are comedies with humor. "Disaster Movie" is simply embarrassing to sit through and causes more damage to the brain than Bisphenol A or phthalates. Though, at least three jokes were decently funny: the one where Juno observes a guy wearing only underpants in front of her and calls him "Battle-crotch Galactica", the fight between a pregnant Juno and Carrie Bradshaw who is actually a long-faced man and the naked Beowulf sequence. Yet, when one has in mind that everyone can, by pure statistics, accidentally stumble upon 2-3 funny jokes out of 100 attempts, those three good jokes do not compensate for the 96 % of the remaining story, which is "garbage humor". Contrary to the popular belief, I must give a dissident opinion about the small role by Kim Kardashian as Lisa since she actually gave an honest and sweet performance. But since her character and that of Juno were eliminated so early on in the story, it just shows that the authors cannot even pick right characters for their movies.

Grade:-

G.O.R.A.

2011-10-10T11:09:00.007+01:00

G.O.R.A. - Bir Uzay Filmi; science-fiction comedy, Turkey, 2004; D: Ömer Faruk Sorak, S: Cem Yilmaz, Özge Özberk, Rasim Oztekin, Ozan Güven, Idil Firat

Carpet salesman Arif is notorious for his counterfeit photos of UFOs. However, one day, as he was trying to sell a carpet to prince Charles, he was abducted by a real spaceship, together with a dozen other Earthlings, and deported to planet G.O.R.A. by the selfish commander Logar. He wants to enslave humans because he still has a grouch against them since an incident in 1789, when his grand-grandfather was harassed by a Turkish peasant after landing on Earth. Logar wants to marry princess Ceku, but she falls in love with Arif and helps him and robot 216 and a certain Bob Marley Faruk escape from prison. Ceku is later on abducted by Logar, though. However, Arif manages to film Logar in incriminating position and thus marries Ceku and returns to Earth.

A Turkish version of "Spaceballs", "G.O.R.A." quickly seized a cult reputation by the sheer fact that any movie outside the US and Britain of the science-fiction genre will instantly stand-out as something unusual - it became one of the highest grossing Turkish movies of the decade, though failed to attract an audience in other parts of the world, since the humor is very "Turkish" and thus confined to that area - and is a silly, wacky and dazed spoof, yet consistent in its set-out tone. Just like in Brooks' aforementioned film, actor and writer Cem Yilmaz (in a double role, both as the good guy Arif and the main villain Logar) achieves the most positive points when it aims at a more elevated kind of humor, such as the creative opening when Arif is shown as such an exaggerated UFO photo fraud that not even Billy Meier would be ashamed off his tactics or when he gives satirical jabs at the American dominance over any other country (i.e. in the "in medias res" opening in the spaceship, every crew member is talking in English, until all of a sudden someone suggests to "switch to Turkish" language, which they all do, gently ridiculing the cliche that every movie alien has to speak in English; at a desert G.O.R.A. market, Arif wants to bribe an alien by giving him some dollar bills, but he declines because they are "worthless". However, when Arif gives him some Turkish money, the alien happily accepts). The movie is indeed terribly overlong at a running time of over 120 minutes, some cheap attempts at jokes are disastrous whereas the supporting character of Bob Marley Faruk is entirely useless, yet the surprisingly solid special effects and Yilmaz's enthusiasm lift it up a notch, especially in the hilarious sequence where planet G.O.R.A. is threatened by a "ball of fire" from space, and his Arif just shouts: "This is just like in that movie, "The Fifth Element"! You know, with Willis!", but nobody seems to have heard about it.

Grade:++

Up

2011-10-09T13:13:00.007+01:00

Up; CGI animated adventure comedy, USA, 2009; D: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, S: Edward Asner, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, Christopher Plummer

Carl Fredricksen, a young boy, considers Charles Muntz, an explorer who is searching for a ostrich like blue bird in Paradise Falls, in South America, as his idol. He meets a girl, Ellie, who is equally obsessed with exploring. Her dream is to place her house above the Paradise Falls one day. With time, they get married, discover they cannot have kids, but never have enough money to finally visit those waterfalls. When Ellie dies, Carl stays alone living in his house as an old man. However, by attaching thousand balloons, he is able to fly his home to the Paradise Falls, discovering that a little boy, Russell, accidentally boarded his home. Once there, they prevent Muntz and his horde of dogs from enslaving the giant bird, returning home.

Winner of the Oscar, Golden Globe and a BAFTA as best animated film, Pixar's "Up" is a critically acclaimed, but overhyped achievement: whenever it tries to be emotional, it is brilliant, but whenever it reaches for comedy, it is silly and naive. The opening act is fantastic, for the first time trying to actually grasp a dramatic story for the Pixar studio: in a grandiose montage, without any dialogue, it encompasses the whole life of Carl, from his wedding with Ellie, through the time when she gives him a hint that she wants to have a lot of kids (a very subtle and delicate scene of them observing the clouds, which suddenly "transform" into a dozen babies) up to her death, easily transmitting the feeling of deep happiness and then deep sadness to the viewers, cleverly establishing themes of transience and lost dreams - and actually bravely putting an old man as the main hero, untypically for a CGI animated movie. Even the sequence where his house is flying has some surreal merits and details, though it has so more plot holes than cheese. However, once the South American segment starts, "Up" is lost. It does not know what direction it should take, whether it should be a "Looney Tunes" cartoon or not, it looses its subtle touch with silly attempts at humor and ideas that border on "Gummi Bears" (talking dogs (?), a giant ostrich like bird...) and too sugary characters, inevitably wondering off into standard mainstream territory for a big budget animation. It is understandable that director Pete Docter and Bob Peterson wanted to establish Russell as an extension to Carl's nonexistent family, yet the action finale is nothing new, just typical cliche, until the ending when "Up" finally returns to its roots and again finds the right frequency of a more elevated entertainment.

Grade:++

The Pink Panther

2011-10-09T12:36:00.009+01:00

The Pink Panther; comedy, USA/ France, 2006; D: Shawn Levy, S: Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Kevin Kline, Beyoncé Knowles, Emily Mortimer, Henry Czerny, Jason Statham, Clive Owen

Paris. In order to solve the murder of football trainer Yves Gluant and the disappearance of his diamond ring, "The Pink Panther", chief inspector Dreyfus hires the clumsy Inspector Clouseau, hoping in advance that he will fail, thus giving Dreyfus the chance to solve the case himself and win the "Medal of Honor". However, together with his associate Ponton and secretary Nicole, the clumsy Clouseau actually manages to find the killer - Yuri - and the solve the whereabouts of the diamond ring.

It would arguably be wrong to just dismiss the 2006 remake of the "The Pink Panther" series as an unworthy and cheap comedy that relies too much on the main protagonist tripping or bumping into something, yet the original was just a more skillful variation of the same shtick, except for maybe part 4, "The Revenge of the Pink Panther", which had moments of high inspiration in choreographing some stunts and movements almost as a meticulous ballet. Despite of his funny interpretation as Clouseau, Sellers never really cared for the role and gladly passed it on, yet when comedian Steve Martin took over, he managed to give a more-or-less good performance, a one which saved the film which otherwise relies too much on heavy handed (instead of elevated) slapstick. This version of "The Pink Panther" has only one truly hilarious, laugh-out-loud moment, the 2 minute long sequence where the dialect coach is repeating the line "I would like to buy a Hamburger" and tries to teach Clouseau to speak it out with an American accent, but he just hopelessly repeats it again and again with a French accent, whereas the remaining part of the story is standard, predictable, sometimes 'politically incorrect' in trying to squeeze "humor" out of hurting someone, yet solid as a whole, among others thanks to Jean Reno, who actually steals almost every scene he is in as Clouseau's partner.

Grade:+

Getting Any?

2011-10-07T20:49:00.008+01:00

Minna yatteru ka!; comedy/ parody, Japan, 1995; D: Takeshi Kitano, S: Dankan, Moeko Ezawa, Hakuryu, Sonomanma Higashi, Yojin Hino, Takeshi Kitano

Asao wants to have sex. So he buys a car to attract girls, yet it turns out they are still not interested in him. So he buys a convertible, yet with no progress either. In order to buy a real car, he decides to go work in an weapons manufacturer so that he can rob a bank. However, even when he gets a pistol from a dead yakuza, he still is completely incompetent and cannot rob a bank. Figuring he might as well find girls among flight attendants, he boards a cheap airplane where he kills a yakuza named Joe and takes his identity. Alas, he gets in the middle of two rival yakuza gangs fighting over supremacy. Finally, two scientists recruit him for an experiment and turn him invisible, yet he uses that only for voyeurism. In a failed experiment, he turns into a Fly-man and is squashed.

After four serious films in a row, ex-comedian Takeshi Kitano returned to his roots and directed a pure, insane Marx brothers style slapstick comedy, "Getting Any?", which seems to be aligned towards a feature length "Simpsons" or "Family Guy" episode: it starts out with one premise (one guy wants to attract girls) and then wonders away - again and again - into completely different directions. Kitano seems to have a broad sense humor, encompassing several puns, spoofs and references to numerous films, shows and celebrities, from "Ghostbusters" up to "The Fly"; from Stalin to Kurosawa; from "Lemon Popsicle" to "Zatoichi" (a movie, as a footnote, which he himself directed a decade later!), and even though this 'patchwork' is not for everyone, especially towards the increasingly stupid ending, those who can just simply relax and have a good time will be entertained by the movie, since even dumb jokes somehow manage to ignite a good laugh (a car transporting 20 people (!), among them several on the roof and in the trunk; Asao wants to rob a bank, but he enters one where two bank robbers - much more "serious" looking than him - are already looting the place, so he just quietly exits the same way he entered). Actually, the movie is so crammed with completely absurd scenes and a dazed tone, similarly catching the same "wave length" as the cult grotesque "Wild Zero", that some moments will be laugh-out-loud funny even though they should suppose not be (such as the entirely demented sequence where Asao is the guest of the yakuza and - instead of just simply hiring a striptease girl - the overweight yakuza boss gives him a welcome by sync singing a woman's song and dancing half-naked in a negligee).

Grade:++

Samurai X: Reflection

2011-10-04T18:18:00.015+01:00

Ruroni Kenshin: Seiso hen; animated tragedy romance, Japan, 2001; D: Kazuhiro Furuhashi, S: Mayo Suzukaze, Miki Fujitani, Mina Tominaga, Yuji Ueda

Japan, 19th century. Former assassin Kenshin Himura is now wiser and regrets his immature past when he killed unknown people for money. Thus, he wants to at least somehow compensate his misdeeds towards the world by helping people overseas. He wanders for 15 years, which leaves a toll to his devoted wife Kaoru who waits for him, while their son Kenji resents this kind of absence. Two of Kenshin's former adversaries kidnapped Kaoru in order to lure him into a trap, but he nullified their plans by rejecting to fight. Even after catching leprosy, Kaoru still loves him and sleeps with him. Finally returning home, Kenshin dies on Kaoru's lap.

Can too much humor be considered a flaw for a comedy? Can too much suspense be considered a flaw for a thriller? Following that principle, can we really blame a drama for being too sad or too emotional in its representation of a story? Each viewer must settle that out with himself/herself before watching "Samurai X: Reflection", the ending of the famed saga that turned into a real tragedy, without any humor or break for the viewers from the torn protagonists, which divided the fans into a camp that loves it and into another (which includes the author, Nobuhiro Watsuki!) that considers it too depressing and 'out-of-character'. In this edition, the story takes a huge twist on the hitman/ assassin genre, showing how Kenshin is haunted by all the victims he killed, which makes him unable to lead a normal, happy life, and thus much closer to fragile hitman in "Leon" than invincible 'killing-machines' in "No Country for Old Men" and co. His "X" shaped scar on his cheeck serves both as a symbol for physical and emotional scars, healing only when he does good deeds that slightly reedem him.

Redressing the victim-aggressor balance, showing how sometimes violence can have a traumatic effect even on perpetrators - and even decades after they have done it - "Reflections" is a circled out, fine and sure achievement, though indeed slightly too melodramatic-pathetic at times: one of the few emotional situations that turned out "just right", neither too cold nor too sappy, but simply touchingly sophisticated, is a quiet moment where Kaoru is sitting on a bed and thinking how she envies Kenshin's late wife Tomoe because "at least he thinks about her all the time", which is more than she can be sure for herself. Kaoru is an excellent character, so in love with the anguished protagonist, so devoted to ease his pain, that she even has sex with him while he is infected with leprosy, insisting that she wants to share pain with him no matter what - that is one of the most bizarre, unusual and yes, romantic moments in the history of anime. Nothing compares to that. Despite some confusing flashback segments, despite a too monotone tone of constant sadness, "Reflection" tells an honest story that is tragic from the start until the finish: as some have already pointed out, when someone kills hundreds of people, he cannot expect to live happily ever after. As much as the ending is frowned upon, it is the only realistic one. It is a real ending.

Grade:++

In Bruges

2011-10-02T14:40:00.010+01:00

In Bruges; black crime comedy, UK/ Belgium, 2008; D: Martin McDonagh, S: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy

Christmas. After an ill-executed assassination of a priest, where a little boy died as a collateral damage, two British assassins, Ray and Ken, get the assignment to hide in Bruges, Belgium, until further notice of their boss, Harry. Ken is intrigued by the architecture while Ray starts dating Chloe, a girl he met on a movie set. When Ken disobeys Harry's instructions to eliminate Ray, Harry arrives personally in Bruges to kill them both. He shoots Ken and Ray, but in the end commits suicide after he figures he accidentally killed a collateral person in the duel.

Another hyped and critically acclaimed movie of the assassin genre, "In Bruges" is a proportionally clever written and executed directorial debut by Martin McDonagh, neatly filmed besides the opulent landmarks of the eponymous Belgian city, yet, as a whole, it is still uneven: it contains too much sentimentality (regarding the subplot where Ray feels guilt after accidentally killing a little boy) but too little real humor, unless someone finds that midgets are somehow particularly funny on their own. While the story flows around the two main protagonists, Ken and Ray (Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, who even won a Golden Globe as best actor in a musical or comedy), it manages to engage thanks to a few neat touches, yet ultimately lacks that special touch: one of the few rare examples of truly genius, inspirational comic timing is when Ken is about to shoot the oblivious Ray, who is sitting in front of him on a bench, in a park, but just as he is about to pull the trigger, the depressed Ray suddenly puts a gun on his own head, so Ken cannot help himself but to - save his life! Another good example is the horse tranquillizer dialogue. However, "In Bruges" is truly excellent only when boss Harry (fantastic Ralph Fiennes) is on the screen: he is so cynical, witty and just plain clever that practically his every line is a riot - for instance, after Ken called to say that he disobeyed him, Harry angrily slams his phone on the desk, again and again, until his wife enters his room and says: "It's a phone! It's an *inanimate* object!" - and thus steals the show. As much as it tries, "In Bruges" does not strike strike the right balance between crime and comedy, obvious in a few heavy handed scenes, as it was the case with the harmonious and superior forerunner, "Grosse Pointe Blanke", no matter how overlooked it is.

Grade:++

Iron Man

2011-10-02T13:57:00.009+01:00

Iron Man; science-fiction action, USA, 2008; D. Jon Favreau, S: Robert Downey, Jr., Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Shaun Toub

Tony Stark, a spoiled and prodigal billionaire and head of a L.A. based weapons company, is forced to change his view on life when he gets captured on Afghan territory by warlord Raza who wants him to make a powerful rocket for his militia. Teaming up with another captive, Dr. Yinsen, Tony is able to escape by building a robust exoskeleton. Following his announcement that he will not be making weapons anymore, his partner Obadiah has a major clash with him, which results in fighting between the two of them in two exoskeletons. Tony wins, falls for his secretary "Pepper" and announces that he is Iron Man.

The live-action adaptation of one of Marvel Comics most famous superheroes, "Iron Man" turned out to be a much more sympathetic film thanks to director Jon Favreau than it would have been in some other director's hands since the CGI overkill, cliches and pompous ideas were avoided and toned down to the minimum, though, obviously, it does not reach some higher artistic-quality levels or expand our mind, which is why the hype of the critics was rather exaggerated. The sequence near the start, where Tony Stark (very good Robert Downey Jr.) escapes from the Afghan cave in his exoskeleton, is truly unusual and refreshing since mixing a superhero milieu with a Third World country was something rarely done before this, numerous jokes are flat yet effective, Jeff Bridges is more than solid as one of the two bad guys in the story, the hidden critique of the weapons industry and its detachment from victims of their products is surprisingly subtle, almost poignant, though it wouldn't have been bad for the movie to insert more examples of genius moments, such as the surprising, completely untypical moment when one of the two bad guys eliminates the other. Elegant and accessible, "Iron Man" is a fun, though standard edition of the super-hero genre.

Grade:++

Great Posters

2011-09-30T18:28:00.050+01:00

Some movie posters are so enchanting that you remember them even if you never saw the movie itself. Here are some examples of my favorite ones - some may not be among my favorite films, some may not have that great taglines, yet all are simply fantastic, captivating and stimulative, whether they are simplified, visually engaging, wonderfully aesthetic or just plain clever. Kudos to the authors were not just preoccupied with marketing the movie, but with doing an art of itself.

Friends with Benefits

2011-09-28T10:51:00.008+01:00

Friends with Benefits; romantic comedy, USA, 2011; D: Will Gluck, S: Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman, Jason Segal, Emma Stone

After Jamie, the Executive Recruiter for the GQ magazine, manages to hire Dylan as the new art director and resettle him to New York, they both find out they just recently broke up from unhappy relationships. As an experiment, they decide to make a pact: to have sex whenever they want, but just stay friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. At first, it works, yet when Jamie goes to visit Dylan's family in Los Angeles, she falls in love with him. He does not register that and turns accidentally insensitive towards her, which causes an animosity between them. However, they make up in the end.

"Friends with Benefits" is a too light, too fast, too dynamic romantic comedy overburdened with excessive babble, but charming thanks to various satirical jabs at cliches of the romantic comedy genre and, especially, refreshingly untrammelled performances by its two leads actors, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Snappy dialogues give the story - about a guy and a girl who want to have an exclusively sexual relationship until it also gets an emotional and spiritual one - the most sparks: for instance, after Dylan arrives in New York for the first time in his life, pondering over whether or not he should work here, Jamie gives him a grand day out by presenting him with a "flash mob", i.e. hundreds of people who suddenly start a public performance on the streets of Times Square, choreographing a mass dance. Dylan is so impressed that he decides to accept the offer and indeed live in New York, upon which Jamie jokingly says: "OK, you may all go home now!", which coincidences with the mob leaving the street. In another comical moment, Jamie mentions to Dylan how he read the L.A. Times for 23 years, which causes another funny dialogue exchange (Dylan: "Wow. You know so much about me. Someone made her homework." - Jamie: "Yeah, I have this thing in my office...It's called Google."). Only in the last quarter does the movie slow down and give room for the situation in which the characters found themselves in to 'sink in' and for the viewers to absorb the mood, though it does turn melodramatic towards the end (and fall itself into some romantic comedy cliches), yet the wit and supporting performances by Woody Harrelson and Jenna Elfman manage to assure a good fun.

Grade:++

Rome, Open City

2011-09-28T10:11:00.005+01:00

Roma, città aperta; war drama, Italy, 1945; D: Roberto Rossellini, S: Marcello Pagliero, Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Francesco Grandjacquet, Harry Feist, Maria Michi

Rome towards the end of World War II. Giorgio and Franscesco are two resistance fighters who constantly have to hide from fascist raids of apartments. Don Pietro, a clumsy but good natured priest, helps the resistance by smuggling messages for them. Franscesco is engaged to Pina, a widow with a little boy. When the fascists arrest Francesco during a raid, Pina gets shot for interfering. Marina betrays the remaining members of the resistance for money. Fascists torture Giorgio until death. Don Pietro gets shot in a firing squad for not wanting to give information about the resistance plans.

Winner of the Golden Palm in Cannes, the New York Film critics Circle Award for best foreign language film, and nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay, "Rome, Open City" went down in history of cinema as one of the first, if not the first example of Italian neorealism (experts also cite "Ossessione" as one of the possible forerunners to that direction), surprising the audience in those times with honest, unglamourous, "un-Hollywood" depiction of ordinary people coping with a tough, dirty life: with this film, director Roberto Rossellini also started his 'war trilogy'. "Rome" flows well and is a quality piece of art, but still seems to be an underdeveloped forerunner to Rossellini's future and better films "Germany: Year Zero" and "Paisa" - for instance, in the first half of the story, the viewers truly make a connection only with one character in it, the clumsy but lovable priest Don Pietro, in the scene where he is in a shop but cannot help not to turn the statue of a saint away from the "view" of a nude sculpture. Other actors and their characters are also good, but simply not that engaging. Rossellini concentrated his talent only in the last third of the film when it reaches huge intensity during the torture sequence of the fascists where so little is shown, but everything is said on the terrified expression of Don Pietro's face, yet despite an ambitious tone that deserves recommendation, the movie as a whole does tend to turn rather melodramatic at times.

Grade:++

Splendor in the Grass

2011-09-24T12:33:00.008+01:00

Splendor in the Grass; drama, USA, 1961; D: Elia Kazan, S: Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie

Kansas, '28. Bud Stamper and Deanie Loomis are a teenage high school couple. They kiss a lot and are passionate but still did not have intercourse because Deanie wants to stay a virgin until marriage since her conservative mother taught her that "good women" do not have erotic fantasies. Bud is annoyed by this status quo, especially since his sister is no virgin anymore while his father Ace is inciting him to leave Deanie. After catching pneumonia, Bud breaks up with her. Deanie thus rebels against her parents and tries to commit suicide. Bud goes to Yale but changes his plan to become a farmer, while his sister and father die. Deanie lands in psychiatric treatment. When she visits Bud, it turns out he already married and started a family with someone else.

One of the last, if not the last great film by Elia Kazan, undated classic "Splendor in the Grass" offers a different, contemplative view on the life in a conservative province, a one that is incredibly direct, honest and daring even today, which makes it modern-actual: sexual repression. Kazan used the theme for a deep emotional portrait of his two teenage protagonists, Bud and Deanie, who feel bound by the norms imposed on them through their parents, but he did not criticize the society in areas that were not subject of the story, thus achieving a measured and even mood, even though some of his scenes do tend to be rather heavy handed. Warren Beatty is surprisingly good in his first feature length role, but Natalie Wood as the sexually frustrated Deanie is truly the main star of the film: from her daring dialogues ("My pride? My Pride? I don't want my pride!") through her reaction when her mother tells her how she felt about her husband when they became intimate ("Your father never laid a hand on me until we were married. Then I... I just gave in because a wife has to.") up to her final rebellion against her mother who asked her if her boyfriend "spoiled her", symbolically shown when Deanie cuts her hair, as a reaction to being constantly denied her sexual rights, Wood simply steals the show and delivers a phenomenal performance, one of the best ones in her career, which may blush even conservative viewers from today. The screenplay won an Oscar while Wood was nominated in the best actress category for that award, while she was even nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.

Grade:+++

Coup de Torchon

2011-09-22T12:13:00.007+01:00

Coup de Torchon; drama/ satire, France/ Senegal, 1981; D: Bertrand Tavernier, S: Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Eddy Mitchell, Guy Marchand

An African country during the French colonialism. Lucien is a sloppy local police officer who is humiliated and despised by everyone: his wife Huguette openly cheats on him with Nono; local crooks and pimps like Le Peron ridicule his authority and bribe him while even his superior, Marcel, belittles him for his inefficiency. When Marcel jokingly advises him to eliminate the crooks, Lucien untypically follows his advice and shoots them, humiliating them before. From there on he gets the hang of revenge and shoots Rose's husband, who beat her. Lucien starts an affair with Rose and even kills the African "Friday" because he was a witness. Finally, he frames Rose by spreading the rumor that she stole Huguette's money: in self-defence, Rose kills Huguette and Nono.

The concept of a weak, humiliated underdog suddenly getting the upper hand over his tormentors in a twist of fate or chance is a good base for numerous films, and Bertrand Tavernier's cynical "Coup de Torchon", nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film, copes well in that category until it suddenly seems to lose interest in it and wonders away into other directions - messages about colonialist (White) morals in general - which are also good but not quite that engaging. Philippe Noiret plays the overweight, sloppy police officer Lucien well, a person who is humiliated by virtually everyone - in one especially ironic sequence, after Lucien was bribed and humiliated by two pimps, his superior Marcel kicks him in the butt and throws him through the door into another room, and then he does it again (!): so by "demonstrating" to him how it "feels" like to be humiliated by two pimps, his superior actually humiliates him again! The African desert panorama is opulent, the dialogues are incredibly cynical ("Better the blind man who pisses out the window than the joker who told him it was a urinal. Know who the joker is? It's everybody."; "There are three kinds of French: real French, shit French and French shit. You're not even French shit!") and the initial vengence of the seemingly harmless Lucien, who starts killing his opressors, has some spice and wit, yet with the running time of over 125 minutes the movie deflates itself way too much: Chabrol would have stopped at 90 minutes and achieved an excellent film, while Tavernier overstretched the story way pass the limit when the viewers started loosing their concentration.

Grade:++

The Blair Witch Project

2011-09-21T13:51:00.010+01:00

The Blair Witch Project; horror adventure, USA, 1999; D: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, S: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

In '94, three film students disappeared mysteriously in Maryland. Five years later, their camera footage was discovered with the following recording: students Heather, Michael and Joshua are preparing a documentary about the alleged witch from Blair, a city that abounds with stories about her. According to the legend, the witch killed children centuries ago. The trio goes to the nearby forest by foot. They spend the first night in fear due to strange noises in the dark. They get lost and have an argument, while numerous stones are placed in unusual positions. Joshua disappears. Heather and Michael go to a house from which they hear noises. Then something grabs them and the camera turns off.

"The Blair Witch Project" is the US film that gained cult status thanks to its mainstream promotion of a horror story told from the protagonist's POV, filmed in its entirety with hand-held camera: if it was not already an international phenomenon in 1999, then it became one based on numerous follow-up movies like "REC", "The Troll Hunter", "Cloverfield" and others that all acted as an extension to its concept. Despite everything, it is interesting to note how directors Myrick and Sanchez "obscured" the fact that "Blair" has so little, practically nothing to show through its shaky camera that gives the empty story intensity and suspenseful adventure tone: not only does the opening state that the entire recording from three "disappeared" students is "authentic", but the three main actors do indeed use their own names. The opening with them improvising random lines has charm: for instance, when Heather takes a sip of Scotch and makes a comical grimace or when she hides from the camera in the forest to urinate. However, basically, the title witch never shows up - instead, the entire film is just based on the three protagonists anticipating her, which is why a large part of the viewers felt cheated: to be fair, the authors are indeed trying to sell 'hot water', allowing the story to turn too much 'lassez-faire' instead of opting for a strong directorial intervention, yet the mood does occasionally send genuine (clever) scares here and there.

Grade:++

My Name is Nobody

2011-09-19T12:56:00.011+01:00

Il mio nome è Nessuno; western comedy, Italy/ Germany/ France, 1973; D: Tonino Valerii, Sergio Leone (uncredited) S: Terence Hill, Henry Fonda, Jean Martin

The Wild West, 19th century. The aging Jack Beauregard was once an unsurpassed shooter during a draw, but now he just wants to go to Europe and retire. On his way he meets cowboy Nobody who is his big fan and who follows him. But Jack has a lot of enemies: the Wild Bunch and the rich Sullivan who both want to eliminate him after his brother died and thus discontinued their profitable fraud of a fake goldmine. With the help of Nobody, who placed explosives on the saddles of the Wild Bunch, Jack wins by shooting at them and causing an explosion. He then fakes his own death to peacefully go to Europe while Nobody takes on his post as the new shooter.

Unusual cult western comedy "My Name is Nobody", which Terence Hill once named as his favorite film, was based on the screenplay by Sergio Leone and thus the opening, where there is almost no dialogue in the first 10 minutes, really seems as if it came directly from some Leone film: three bandits take over a barber shop, place one of their men as the barber and wait. Jack (Henry Fonda in a dignified role) enters the shop and sits on the chair while the "barber" starts shaving him "suspiciously". But Jack then aims his gun towards him so the "barber" shaves him properly. A brilliant opening, and it's not surprising to find out that Leone directed that sequence himself.

This comical, fun and sympathetic comedy drains most of its virtues by spoofing or twisting the western cliches upside down, especially in leading long or inaudible situations of expectations to the extremes of absurd (the hilarious sequence where Nobody is in a river, places a bug to float on the surface and waits, with a club in his arms, almost endlessly long for something - a fish - while people look at him in confusion). Even though "Nobody" has considerable flaws - the story seems to be roughly patched from various subplots; a couple of contrived moments; the stupid, disastrous joke where Nobody is whistling in order to 'stimulate' a railroad engineer to urinate at the toilet; the sequence where, instead of a duel, Nobody is so fast he is able to draw the gun from a bald man, slap him and return it to his belt before the guy can even move is a legend, yet it was "borrowed" from a previous Hill film, "Trinity is Still My Name" - the story as a whole is elegant and works, contains a bunch of irresistible ideas (a gang called "The Wild Bunch", Sam Peckinpah's name is on a tombstone) whereas Fonda is excellent.

Grade:+++

A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe

2011-09-19T11:49:00.008+01:00

Un genio, due compari, un pollo; western comedy, Italy/ Germany/ France, 1975; D: Damiano Damiani, S: Terence Hill, Robert Charlesbois, Miou-Miou, Patrick McGoohan, Klaus Kinski

Sneaky Joe Thanks beats Doc Foster in a duel and meets Lucy and Bill who stole silver from the church. In the desert, the trio witness how a stagecoach is attacked by bandits who kill a colonel. Nobody persuades Bill to disguise himself as the colonel and enter the fortress of Major Cabot in order to extract 300,000 $ from him which he withheld from Indians. But Cabot figures out the trick and arrests Bill, while Joe persuades him that gold is hidden on the Indian land. Cabot buys the worthless land and places the Indians in a reservation: he finally figures he was fooled, but Bill and Joe take the 300,000 $ and give to the Indians.

Just as "Fierce Creatures" cannot be considered a sequel to "A Fish Called Wanda", neither can "A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe" be considered as a direct follow-up to the popular and fun western comedy "My Name is Nobody", but rather as a re-structuring of some of its elements, again featuring Terence Hill as the main star. The whole story about multi-layered double-crossing is just an acronym of all the potential sharpness that it could have built, and some elements are slightly confusing, yet one simply cannot deny that there are many successful jokes in it: especially the well written "duel" between Doc Foster (Klaus Kinski in a short cameo) and Joe (Hill) where the villain shoots at a pipe, causing it to spill water on the hero, but he just shoots his revolver from his hand behind his back. Some moments bother due to their contrived character, but the sense for fun is never lost, such as in the Sheriff's excuse to the arriving colonel due to whistling of cowboys who spotted a lady ("There's been a mistake! The people thought the prostitutes just arrived!" - "It was a mistake, all right, to appoint you as the Sheriff in this town!") and other similar dialogues.

Grade:++

[●REC]

2011-09-16T10:26:00.012+01:00

[●REC]; horror, Spain, 2007; D: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza, S: Manuela Velasco, Ferrán Terraza, Jorge-Yaman Serrano

A routine TV report about local firemen turns into a horrifying fight for survival for two reporters,
Ángela and Pablo, when people start mutating into flesh eating zombies in an apartment complex. The building is sealed off since the cause for their mutation is suspected to be an infection. The health inspector tells them that the infection originated from a mad dog, which belonged to a girl. The little girl eventually becomes a zombie herself and attacks the residents. Little by little, Ángela, Pablo and a fireman are the only remaining normal people in the complex. When the fireman gets finished off, the two reporters hide at the top of the penthouse where they discover articles about a possessed girl which was left there by a Vatican inspector. The zombie girl kills them.

After "The Blair Witch Project" introduced the concept of a horror event being filmed entirely with shaky camera, i.e. entirely from someone's POV, to the mainstream cinema, numerous film makers decided to continue with the idea, paving the way for a new generation of 'mockumentary horrors', like "Cloverfirled", "Paranormal Activity", "The Troll Hunter" and others. One of those editions is also the hyped Spanish zombie horror "REC", which also uses that stimulative and direct concept in an imaginative way, though its 'rough' solutions and some heavy handed moments bloated the overall impression. Directors Balaguero and Plaza use the TV camera movements of the two protagonists, reporters, as means for creating some truly creepy thrills - for instance, the cameraman lifts the camera to an opening from where he "secretly" takes a glimpse to the other room where a zombie lying on the bench suddenly attacks the quarantine official; in another tight moment, he again lifts the camera to take a peak at the attic above them: he rotates the camera for 360° and finds nothing there, up until the last turn when he suddenly stumbles upon a zombie kid who attacks him - but the story carries too many contrived ideas, such as the unrealistic scene where a policeman approaches the zombie little girl (a questionable idea of using children in a splatter horror), but then "carelessly" turns his head away from her upon which she attacks and bites him, which in the end make "REC" a suspenseful, though too hysterical-chaotic film.

Grade:++

The Man Who Knew Too Much

2011-09-14T18:19:00.012+01:00

The Man Who Knew Too Much; thriller, UK, 1934; D: Alfred Hitchcock, S: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre

St. Mortitz. During their winter vacation, Mrs. Lawrence is openly flirting with a stranger, Louis, while Mr. Lawrence is making fun of her with their daughter Betty. When Louis gets assassinated, he tells her to get a secret message from his room before he dies. Mr. Lawrence finds the message, pertaining secret information about a planned assassination of a diplomat, but since his daughter gets kidnapped, he has to keep his mouth shut. However, tracking a phone call, he and his friend Clive find the criminal gang led by Abbott in a church. Just as his men plan to assassinate the diplomat during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, Mrs. Lawrence screams and thus he is only wounded. The police start a siege of the gang's hideout and thus Lawrence and Betty are saved.

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the few directors in cinema who directed two films with identical titles. Similarly like Sluizer, who directed his thriller "The Vanishing" both as the dutch original and the American remake, Hitchcock remade this classic 22 years later again under the same title, "The Man Who Knew Too Much", probably ironically concluding that he cannot be worse than himself, anyway. The original from 1934 is a raw, but surprisingly robust crime film that steadily raises its thrills after a kitschy-lax opening: the dentist sequence is an early example of director's sense for exquisite suspense, the idea that the bad guys have their hideout in a church is wonderfully ironic, Peter Lorre is great as the bad guy whereas small humorous touches give the film additional spice (such as when Lawrence is trying to warn his partner Clive in the aforementioned church during the choir by "disguising" his singing with these words: "Clive...Clive...Cliveeee...The womaaan at the eeeend...to our leeeeft..."). Technically an stylistically the movie is indeed paler than the remake, though it manages to surpass it at some moments nonetheless, such as in the fantastic Royal Albert Hall concert where the danger is heightened while the audience is waiting for the music note when the assassin is going to strike.

Grade:++

Harold and Maude

2011-09-12T17:41:00.007+01:00

Harold and Maude; Tragicomedy, USA, 1971; D: Hal Ashby, S: Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack

Many teenagers are full of life, but Harold would just die. Alas, he fakes his suicides repeatedly: by hanging, drowning in a pool, burning, with artificial blood or a pistol. he even bought a car for undertakers, but his mother is already use to his "caprice" and tries to match him with girls, who often just run away from the house. One day, at a funeral, he meets the old lady Maude (79). Love blossoms between the two people different by age: they talk about flowers and freedom and plant trees in the forest. Maude even saves Harold from his militant uncle Victor, a war veteran. Harold shocks everyone when he announces their engagement. On her 80th birthday, Maude kills herself with pills. Harold is sad and throws a car down the cliff, but realizes she thought him how to have the will to live.

Bizarre black tragicomedy "Harold and Maude" is arguably the most unusual romance of the 20th century - the one between a teenager and a 79-year old lady! Even though it is not one of his best (or for that matter, surest) films, director Hal Ashby blends the most extravagant, untypical themes together - the existentialist young generation that wants to die and the optimistic old generation full of life who teaches them to live with pure joy (and then pass the lesson to the next generation) - to such an extent that this small cult classic impresses easily even today through its freshness and quiet mood, achieving the highlight when Harold and Maude land in bed: that one scene is at the same time grotesque, funny and touching. The songs by Cat Stevens elevate the soundtrack, Ashby doesn't miss the opportunity to make fun of the military circles and the establishment whereas he shows that the 'hippie' spark can exist at any age, various jokes are very comical (a psychologist says this to the hero: "Some sons want to sleep with their mothers. You on the other hand want to sleep with you grandmother.") but the spasmodic fake suicide sequences by Harold do tend be irritating and too grotesque, making the character seem as if he is a caricature that came from 'The Addams Family', despite all the later explenations where Maude teaches him to channel his rebellion into something meaningful and positive. Actors Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon were both nominated for a Golden Globe.

Grade:+++

Midnight in Paris

2011-09-08T11:59:00.008+01:00

Midnight in Paris; Fantasy comedy, USA, 2011; D: Woody Allen, S: Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Corey Stoll, Tom Hiddleston, Kurt Fuller, Michael Sheen, Carla Bruni, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody

Paris. Gil is a 'light' Hollywood screenwriter who wants to write a serious novel. He is nostalgic of the good old days of Paris in the '20s when artists were achieving real masterworks, whereas his sense for detachment from the present is exacerbated by his absent fiance Inez and their parents who are conservative and clash with his liberal political views. One midnight, an old car shows up and brings Gil back to the Paris of the 20s, where he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Picasso,
Luis Buñuel, Dali and others. He falls in love with a girl, Adriana, but she is nostalgic of the 'Belle Epoque'. A carriage brings them to that period, but it seems artists there think the best age was the Renaissance. Realizing he should live in his own time, Gil returns home and meets a French girl.

A gentle fantasy comedy, surprisingly charming and elegant, cultured and full of almost unobtrusive educational lessons about artists from the beginning of the 20th century, "Midnight in Paris" continued Woody Allen's untypical streak of films in the latter phase of his career where he experimented much more with a new kind of modern style. The wage: "Midnight" surprisingly became his biggest box office hit, even surpassing his previous champion "Hannah and her Sisters", whereas he again picked a fantasy setting where two worlds collide, reminiscent of his similar "Purple Rose of Cairo". Allen's French version of "Back to the Future" is funny and has inspiration: the Iraq War remark; the Tea Party joke; the mispronunciation of Versailles as "Versaille"; the perfect Salvador Dali performance by Adrien Brody; the great Luis Buñuel joke when Gil advises him to make a "movie about people who cannot get out of a room" but the director doesn't get it...All these are delicious small pieces of pleasure that grow on you and create sympathy for the film, so full of good humor that it is difficult to ignore it, while at the same giving a hidden message that every person should live in their own time and age. "Midnight in Paris" is comprised just out of small jokes and ideas, but even the greatest things are assembled out of small elements.

Grade:+++

Way Out West

2011-08-31T11:36:00.006+01:00

Way Out West; comedy, USA, 1937; D: James W. Horne, S: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson

The wild west, 19th century. Laurel & Hardy travel slowly with their donkey so they hitchhike a carriage to a nearby town. There, the sheriff warns them that they must leave the town. Laurel & Hardy enter a saloon and and inform the owner that they are here to give a certain Mary the ownership rights of a gold mine that she inherited from her late father. But the greedy owner doesn't want her to get the permit so he persuades his wife Lola to play Mary. After they give her the documents, Laurel & Hardy realize the fraud. During the night, they steal the document from the safe and give it to Mary.

"Way Out West" is a triumph of the comic duo during their feature length movie phase: a dynamic rhythm, striking humor and good directing are the main virtues of this comedy. The opening is rather lethargic (a donkey is dragging Hardy lying on an armchair, until it stops in a river) whereas the intrigues of the greedy saloon owner (James Finlayson, practically a "third" member of the Laurel & Hardy team, in an untypical role of a clear bad guy) whose goal is to get a hold of the gold mine rights are slightly annoying. However, the story easily manifests hilarious jokes: the sequence where Hardy loses his appendage under his shirt so Laurel is disrobing him in order to find the object is equally as successful as the moment where Lola and Laurel exchange this dialogue: "Is my father really dead?" - "I sure hope so. We already buried him." Still, despite virtues, "West" does not extend itself into an excellent film. The music was even nominated for an Oscar.

Grade:++

Bad Teacher

2011-08-29T12:31:00.009+01:00

Bad Teacher; black comedy, USA, 2011; D: Jake Kasdan, S: Cameron Diaz, Lucy Punch, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Molly Shannon

Elizabeth only works as a teacher at a high school in order to have a laziness alibi for her sugar daddy, a rich guy. However, when he figures she just wants to marry him for the money, he breaks up with her, and thus she now has to work for a living as a teacher permanently. Elizabeth fancies the new substitute teacher Scott because she think he is wealthy, ignoring the nice gym teacher Russell. She cheats in order for her class to win the state test so that she can get a bonus and pay for her breast surgery. She also starts a feud with teacher Amy. In the end, she falls for Russell.

An inversion of "Stand and Deliver" (which is even shown in a clip during the class) and a slacker female version of "Great Teacher Onizuka", "Bad Teacher" is an uneven (anti-)school comedy, as heavy handed as the methods the heroine uses in her class, yet contains enough good jokes for a casual viewing experience. Exclusively thanks to the charisma by Cameron Diaz does this vehicle work because the screenplay by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg is clumsily structured, rushed and chaotic, resembling more a "Family Guy" episode that starts with one story and then wonders off into completely different territory than a coherent whole. Fast and pointless, "Bad Teacher" does have a good chuckle hidden here and there: for instance, when Justin Timberlake's character Scott is playing his self-styled song "Sympatico" on his guitar, and the joke where he and Elizabeth have sex with their clothes on (!) is so bizarre it's a must see. A small jewel here is the performance by Jason Segel as gym teacher Russell, who seemed to have smuggled somehow his charisma from the excellent comedy show "How I Met Your Mother" into the story occasionally, especially in the scene where he is arguing with a little boy over whether LeBron is better than Michael Jordan ("Call me when LeBron has six championships!" - "That's your only argument?" - "It's the *only* argument I need, Shawn!").

Grade:++

Brute Force

2011-08-27T14:14:00.011+01:00

Brute Force/ The Primitive Man; silent adventure, USA, 1914; D: D.W. Griffith, S: Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, William J. Butler, Wilfred Lucas

During one dinner party, one gentleman spots a lady and falls asleep while reading a book, imagining how cavemen had it "easier" because the only thing they had to rely on to find a wife was brute force. In his dream, he is a weak inventor in a tribe with a lot of women. When their cave is attacked by a woman-less tribe, the inventor beats them thanks to a club. The enemy tribe creates a club themselves, but the inventor invents an arrow and wins, becoming the new leader of the cave.

One of D. W. Griffith's lesser films, his short silent caveman version of "The Abduction of the Sabine Women" is just an exercise for his future films, yet it remained a peculiarity as a rump forerunner to cult fantasy-trash "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth". Basically just a 24 minute extravaganza where two caveman tribes fight with clubs, simplistic "Brute Force" has little to nothing to show, neither stylistically nor thematically, except for the sole unusual setting. However, it went down in history as the first film that tried to depict dinosaurs on film, unfortunately with little success: if the snake and the crocodile with silly wings placed on its back are excluded, the only dinosaur shown is a Tyrannosaurus Rex in front of a cave, but since it is just a stiff, 10 feet tall puppet that barely moves its jaws, this 10 second scene does not match the kinetic stop-motion special effects of its successor that stimulated the imagination of the viewers more, the uneven but interesting artifact "The Lost Word" filmed 11 years later.

Grade:+

Our Relations

2011-08-27T10:27:00.005+01:00

Our Relations; Comedy, USA, 1936; D: Harry Lachman, S: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson, Sidney Toler

Laurel & Hardy are married, wealthy and respectable friends. Thus, they are ashamed of their twins, Alf and Bert, who work as sailors on a boat. Their twins just arrived in the city in order to transport an admiral's ring. But they don't have any money in order to pay some ladies a drink at a bar, so they leave the ring as a payment. When Laurel & Hardy pay the bill, not knowing for what, though, they receive the ring. Since Bert and Alf start a fight with the owner of the bar, who is convinced he returned their ring, they land in prison. There, the judge releases them, mistaking them for Laurel & Hardy. When the twins finally meet, they realize what caused all the commotion.

"Our Relations" are as a whole a proportionally memorable Laurel & Hardy comedy having in mind the lax opening. The story presents the two comedians in a double edition, since they star both as themselves as well as their own twins - Alf and Bert! - so the majority of the story revolves around troubles caused by the latter on one place which are then "inherited" by Laurel & Hardy who accidentally show up there and then have to settle things out for them, without knowing why. In one joke, Alf & Bertie show up at a bar and promise to pay some ladies a drink, but have to leave the premise in order to get more money. Two hours later, Laurel & Hardy enter the same bar - with their wives - and obviously, the bar owner immediately attacks them because they didn't pay the bill, which they do without knowing why, though the ladies ask them "what took you so long?" It's a simple, accessible and fun comedy, with flaws and some omissions, yet it contains arguably the funniest, most insane and laugh-out-loud sequence in the entire career of the comic duo: the one where Laurel & Hardy have their legs placed in oval cement blocks; when gangsters push one of them, both of them tip, but then dodge back and start uncontrollably swinging, accidentally throwing gangsters into the sea, break the door, get stuck in a barrel and all other wacky, impossible swinging movements while trying to catch each other.

Grade:++

Seven Beauties

2011-08-25T11:59:00.019+01:00

Pasqualino Settebellezze; grotesque, Italy, 1975; D: Lina Wertmüller, S: Giancarlo Giannini, Shirley Stoler, Elena Fiore, Enzo Vitale, Fernando Rey

Naples, shortly before World War II.
Pasqualino acts as a macho and wants to protect the oldest of his seven sisters, the chubby 37-year old Concettina, from a pimp who wants to make a cabaret star out of her. When the pimp persuades her to become a prostitute, Pasqualino shoots him. He gets sentenced to 12 years and sent to a mental asylum. There he charms the female director and in order to get out enlists to fight in the Italian Army. He deserts somewhere on the Eastern front and lands in a Nazi concentration camp. In order to save his skin, he seduces the obese female camp commandant. Back at home, he forgives his fiance for surviving as a prostitute and wants 25 children.

A grotesque (and far more realistic) forerunner to Benigni's "Life is Beautiful", "Seven Beauties" didn't just gain cult reputation because its author Lina Wertmuller became the first woman to be nominated for an Oscar for best director, but also due to a black humored story that dismantles the masculinity myths, showing how the main anti-hero transforms from a 'macho' who dictates his seven sisters how they should live to an obedient servant in a Nazi concentration camp who seduces the obese female camp commandant in order to survive, thus yielding to feminine power. From the bizarre opening showing archive footage of World War II accompanied by the legendary song "Oh yeah", that sums up symbolically all the human vice, up to small jokes about the mafia (the double-bottom coffin where an "extra" corpse can be secretly added by mobsters), Wertmuller shows she is a nihilist who views the whole world as a huge mess, which is why some have criticized her for depicting life as purely biological survival, without any spiritual or emotional dimension that enriches it.

Numerous scenes are haunting and entirely extreme, but also comical at the same time, especially when Pasqualino is "neurotically" trying to seduce the repulsive female camp commandant by "whimsically" whistling a "seductive tune" to her, while the camera just shows her deadpan face in an extreme close-up, until she slaps him and yells: "What kind of nonsense are you doing here?" The scene where he is having intercourse with her with his eyes shut turns into a grotesque without limits. Dark and cruel, and yet Wertmuller is - more or less - stylistically consistent, even in the end saying something about life - people who die for ideals will not survive, people who give up their ideals to live on will - advancing almost into an 'ugly classic', whereas her only sympathy is shown towards anarchist communists, one of whom, a camp inmate, gives a long rant about how in "200-300 years there will be 20 billion people on Earth and then it will be worse than here, because people will be killing each other for a piece of bread and an apple."

Grade:+++

Vertigo

2011-08-24T10:17:00.007+01:00

Vertigo; drama, USA, 1958; D: Alfred Hitchcock, S: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore

San Francisco. During a pursuit of a robber, emotional police detective John "Scottie" Ferguson discovers his fear of heights when he gets stuck hanging from a roof, a feeling which is only exacerbated when his colleague dies trying to pull him up. Now retired, Scottie is hired by his old friend Elster to follow his wife, blond Madeleine, because she acts strangely and wonders around aimlessly. Scottie falls in love with her and she tells him she thinks she is Carlotta Valdes, a woman who committed suicide in the 19th century. When Madeleine insists on going to Mission San Juan Bautista, she climbs up a bell tower. Scottie just sees her body falling from the roof and a committee concludes that she committed suicide due to a mental disorder, acquitting him and Elster from every guilt. Years later, Scottie meets a girl, Judy, who looks exactly like Madeleine. When he brings her to the tower, she admits she just played her, while Elster killed the real Madeleine and threw her from the tower so that it only looks like suicide. Unfortunately, Judy slips and falls from the tower.

"Vertigo" is probably one of Hitchcock's most misunderstood films: first underrated during its premiere when it confused the audience and then overrated 44 years later when the self-righteous voters awarded it the 2nd place among the best films of all time in "Sights & Sounds". Hitchcock himself viewed the film years later, trying to figure out why it was such a commercial failure, and concluded that it was probably because it is an "endlessly depressing" film. His comment is indicative because the audiences and critics consistently tend to error and perceive "Vertigo" as a thriller, when there is hardly any suspense in it since it is a clear case of a psychological drama about loneliness. It starts off with opening credits dwelling in psychedelic colors and then moves on to humorous dialogues involving hero Scottie (while observing an unusual bra, Midge explains to him:"An aircraft engineer down the peninsula designed it; he worked it out in his spare time," and he replies with "What a hobby..."; when his acquittance Elster asks him if his fear of heights burdens his everyday life, Scottie replies that he just has to avoid "At the top of Mark's" bar) and then goes to the main tangle, revolving around the mysterious behavior of blond Madeleine, which will in a plot twist turn out to be just a fake decoy for establishing a conspiracy.

In one small line, Scottie says he has never been married. He is an emotional, middle-aged detective who is a perfect prey for the ploy when he falls for the attractive Madeleine: he thinks he finally has the chance to find the love of his life, that it is still not to late. She leads him through numerous false trails and pulls his leg, though thanks to Hitchcock's direction the story flows naturally, especially thanks to small details (especially memorable in the cross-section of a very old tree that shows the history of almost a thousand years during the grow of the plant, while she touches its edge and points to when "she was born and when she will die"). The final third, the "revelation segment", is arguably the weakest in the entire film. Some unusual solutions, the peculiar "art-deco shot composition" and the dumb, clumsy ending involving the nun are notable flaws. However, as a whole, "Vertigo" is practically a romantic Greek tragedy: Scottie lost the chance to find the love of his life, Madeleine, and then when he got another chance, he lost it again, conveying fatalism of his destiny.

Grade:+++

Sons of the Desert

2011-08-23T11:55:00.007+01:00

Sons of the Desert; Comedy, USA, 1933; D: William A. Seiter, S: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Dorothy Christy

Laurel & Hardy are members of a club, "Sons of the Desert", which is about to hold an anniversary meeting in Chicago. Since they live in Los Angeles and their wives don't even want to hear about their silly club because they plan to go on a trip to the mountains, Laurel & Hardy decide to think of a scheme. Hardy pretends he is sick and persuades his wife that Laurel will accompany him to Hawaii. But in reality, of course, they go to the meeting. However, their alibi is refuted when the news report that the ship for Hawaii has sunk, so they have to hide on the roof, fearing their wives will reveal them. Laurel admits the lie to his wife and she forgives him, but Hardy gets into trouble.

According to some circles, like the American Film Institute which even ranked it number 96 on its list of "100 Years...100 Laughs", "Sons of the Desert" are the best feature length comedy by the Laurel & Hardy duo, a fun childish comedy of misunderstanding. Even though the two comedians were always better in their short movies, even here they manage to achieve that humorous 'chemistry' - why, the scene where the two of them show up late during a meeting and interrupt it while "quietly" seeping through the lines is a moment that only the two of them could have been able to pull off. Numerous jokes are also comical independent from their talent, especially during the "plot twist" that demolishes their lie that they went off to Hawaii via the newspaper with the headline: "The ship for Hawaii was sunk by a typhoon!". As always, the authors were not ambitious nor deep, but only correct. Laurel & Hardy are excellent, and yet, still, if they at least shot one film like Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" or Keaton's "The General", they would have been even much greater actors.

Grade:++

The Devil's Brother

2011-08-22T18:19:00.005+01:00

The Devil's Brother; comedy, USA, 1933; D: Hal Roach, Charley Rogers, S: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Dennis King, James Finlayson

Italy, 18th century. Fra Diavolo is a famous outlaw who robs rich people. When Laurel & Hardy get robbed, they decide to become thieves themselves and thus accidentally attack Diavolo. He and his gang at first want to hang them, but then change their mind. Diavolo introduces himself as Marquise of San Marco and brings Laurel & Hardy to a small town in order to seduce dutchess Pamela and steal her money. When the commander captures Diavolo, Laurel & Hardy also get arrested. Just as they were about to get shot, a bull shows up and disperses everyone.

Based on the "Fra Diavolo" opera, "The Devil's Brothers" are a simple, light, naive children's comedy, one of the lesser efforts of the famous Laurel & Hardy duo. The biggest problem is an uneven structure: too much time is wasted on Fra Diavolo (Dennis King), who is a too serious character, and on unecessary musical sequences, whereas the main attraction, Laurel & Hardy's humor, is rather overstretched (it again turns out that they work at best in comedy shorts). Of course, a few jokes are truly funny, like when Laurel has to hang Hardy and thus tries to lisp him: "This is going to be a lot more painful to me than to you!" - "I wish I was on your place." - "When you die, do you want me to burry you or to stuff you?" They save the movie from too large chunks of straightforward, serious segments revolving around the main bad guy.

Grade:++

Pack Up Your Troubles

2011-08-22T17:59:00.005+01:00

Pack Up Your Troubles; Comedy, USA, 1932; D: George Marshall, Raymond McCarey, S: Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Tom Kennedy

The US enters into World War I. Laurel & Hardy would gladly avoid getting drafted, but a general catches them on a bench. Since they are clumsy, they bring garbage into general's room and thus get brought into jail. On the French battlefront, the duo accidentally immobilizes the German army, but their colleague, Eddie Smith, dies and thus his daughter is left an orphan. Laurel & Hardy decide to find her grandfather so she can stay with him, but the whole town is filled with people whose last name is Smith. Just as the police is about to bring her to an orphanage, the grandfather finds her.

After a mass of light comedies, Laurel & Hardy made an untypically ambitious film, "Pack Up Your Troubles", which almost has a touch of dramatic flair: not only does it depict US soldiers in World War I, but also a little girl who was left without parents, so the duo tries to find her grandfather. However, when all is said and done, this is still a straightforward comedy with a whole list of funny jokes and situations (i.e. a cook is threatening the two heroes who are sitting on a bench, but when Laurel stands up, Hardy's weight tips it and the bench hits the bad guy; a police officer exchanges this line with Laurel regarding the girl: "Are you searching for her grandfather?" - "We are not searching for him. We want to find him.") Probably the most absurd scene is when the two heroes storm a wedding and claim they have "Eddie's daughter", and the husband is truly called Eddie, but Headaway, not Smith! However, just like most of their films, even this one suffers from 'rough' style and spasmodic execution.

Grade:++

The Music Box

2011-08-21T14:40:00.011+01:00

The Music Box; Comedy, USA, 1932; D: James Parrot, S: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Billy Gilbert

A woman buys a piano and Laurel & Hardy have to deliver it to her home. But they quickly get shocked when they find out that her address is on a hill, and only steep stairs lead to it. Half-way there, the duo has to go back to let a mother with a baby pass. Finally up there, they descend down stairs again to deliver the piano with a wagon. Then they break into the apartment in order to hand the piano over to the owner, accidentally breaking a lot of stuff. When the owner shows up, he breaks the piano because he hates music, but then his wife shows up and informs him it is a present, so he thanks her.

"The Music Box", though a very simplistic comedy, achieved legendary reputation since it was awarded with an Oscar for best short film, becoming the only Laurel & Hardy film to win that award (Stan Laurel later on went to win an honorary lifetime achievement Academy Award in '61). "The Music Box" is not their best film, but the story about troubles during transportation of a piano on a hill is childishly sweet and fun: it works the best in the first half, with agility stemming from the expressions of the two heroes when they discover the address of the delivery is on a hill and the only way to it is the almost monumental piece of stairs or when they have to get down half-way up to pass a mother with a baby. Later on, the rhythm depletes itself due to banalities (the postman tells them they could have delivered the piano through a road leading to the address, so they go down stairs again and actually do it!), yet the film is still a good fun.

Grade:++

Pardon Us

2011-08-21T14:23:00.006+01:00

Pardon Us; Comedy, USA, 1931; D: James Parrot, S: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Walter Long, James Finlayson

During the prohibition, all alcohol drinks are forbidden, so Laurel and Hardy decide to make their own home brew. Since they offer their first glass to a police officer, they land in jail. The duo has to share their cell with four criminals. They manage to escape and disguise themselves as African-Americans working on a field. Since Laurel whistles because he has a hole in his tooth, he is recognized by the warden. In prison, they discover a plan for mass escape and stop it, so the warden releases them on freedom.

The first feature length film by the legendary Laurel and Hardy, if the running time of barely 60 minutes can be called that way, "Pardon Us" is a spoof and an ironic commentary on the prohibition era. This comedy is an obvious example how the duo works the best in comedy shorts (stand out "Big Business", for example) than in overstretched feature length films, but maybe the main problem lies in rather thin jokes: i.e. Laurel has a hole in his tooth and thus always whistles when he talks (which starts to become lame after a while) or when Hardy slips on a soap and falls into the prison pool, so he wants to hit Laurel with a towel, but accidentally hits the prison guard. Ironically, the funniest dialogue is delivered precisely by two supporting characters, an inmate and the teacher ("Who was Columbus?" - "The mayor of Ohio." - "What did he do?" - "He died." - "...And who killed him?" - "Cock Robin!") and not by the two main stars. A light comedy, however the comic duo still occasionally breaks through with their charm, like in the fun scene where they disguises themselves as African-Americans, but Hardy has a white cheek on one side.

Grade:++

Pretty in Pink

2011-08-17T16:09:00.005+01:00

Pretty in Pink; Drama, USA, 1986; D: Howard Deutch, S: Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Harry Dean Stanton, Annie Potts

Andie (18) is a poor teenager who lives alone with her father who still cannot get over the fact that his wife left him. Andie isn't popular in school, but the clumsy Phil, nicknamed "Duckie", has feelings for her and is her best friend since childhood. Unfortunately for him, she falls in love with the rich Blane and they become a couple. Andie and Blane go to a party but his friend Steff insults her, and when they go to a disco, "Duckie" insults him. Realizing how much money makes them different, Blane ends the relationship. Still, "Duckie" finds a girlfriend while Blane returns to Andie.

"Pretty in Pink" is a too neat, too artificial and rather sentimental drama about the problems of youth, mostly thanks to kitschy writing by screenwriter John Hughes, yet at the same time it has some spark that captured that 80s flair. Despite simplistic construction, this modern "Cinderella" story has characters with a soul, is correct and kind-spirited as a whole, thus turning into a solid hit at the box office. The clothes and attitude do not manage to convince that Andrew McCarthy's Blane is rich while Molly Ringwald's Andie is poor, which is why the actors did a much better job themselves, especially excellent Jon Cryer as Andie's best friend who has a secret crush on her. Often attempts at humor also help to lighten up the dramatic story, some to lesser and some to better extent ("You must have a sense of humor when you go out with such a poor girl", says one character cynically) whereas the authors themselves made their own remake of this with "Some Kind of Wonderful", released a year later, which also achieved cult status.

Grade:++

Earthquake

2011-08-14T18:09:00.006+01:00

Earthquake; Disaster film, USA, 1974; D: Mark Robson, S: Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Geneviève Bujold, Lorne Greene, Ava Gardner, Richard Roundtree, Marjoe Gortner, Walter Matthau

Los Angeles. Several stories and personal fates - ex-football star Stewart is in love with the widowed, struggling actress Denise who lives with her son Corey, while Stewart's ex-wife Remy is trying to undermine their relationship by asking her father, Stewart's boss and superior, to promote him if he yields; police officer Lou is disappointed by his profession; a stuntman wants to impress a Las Vegas talent scout; a bullied store manager enlists for the reserve army - are shaken by a devastating earthquake that destroys large parts of the city and causes the release of water from the dam.

For all the machinations with the now defunct "Sensurround" extravaganza that tried to conjure up the feeling of tremors in theaters, Mark Robson's "Earthquake" is a solid and even today proportionally effective piece of 70s disaster film genre that massively attracted audiences optative to sense hysteria in a story of an unstoppable natural disaster. Penned among others by Mario Puzo, "Earthquake" tickles the ever present fear of a large earthquake hitting L.A., and despite some roughly patched stories contains enough good scenes, mostly humorous ones, such as when two disappointed police officers are sitting at a bar and not reacting to a fight behind their back, whereas Genevieve Bujold is great as struggling actress Denise, especially when she tries to describe her small role to the hero ("Talk, talk, talk, I walk in, introductions, introductions, introductions...Then...The main star, you, makes his appearance."). The sole 9-minute sequence of the tremor in the middle of the film is phenomenal (a highway collapse that derails a truck, mass panic of people on the streets, collapse of buildings...) equipped with a small humorous touch involving Walter Matthau's character who just indifferently sips his drink at the bar the whole time, while the film turns rather tiresome and schematic during dry scenes of saving people, up until the unusual, completely untypical ending that shows that not every event can end up that neatly.

Grade:++

Dangerous Liaisons

2011-08-13T10:24:00.008+01:00

Dangerous Liaisons; Drama, UK/ USA; D: Stephen Frears, S: John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer, Swoosie Kurtz, Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves

France, 1780. The Marquise de Merteuil is a mean-spirited woman who was left by her lover Bastide because he wanted to marry Cecile (15). Therefore Merteuil colludes with sneaky Valmont, persuading him to sleep with Cecile in order to bring shame to Bastide. However, Valmont refuses in order to take on an even bigger challenge: seducing the religious, conservative beauty de Tourvel. At first, Tourvel banishes him from her castle because she heard awful rumors about his character, but in the end she gives in. In the meantime, Valmont slept with Cecile anyway and leaves de Tourvel in order to get Merteuil's body, as she promised as his reward, but she betrays him with a lover. In a duel with the lover, Valmont dies but gives him letters that confirm Merteuil's intrigues. In a theatre, everyone thus despise her.

Coincidentally or not, two Hollywood adaptations of Christopher Hampton's play "Le liaisons dangereuses" were planned and filmed in 1988, "Valmont" by Forman and this critically acclaimed drama which is truly excellent and wonderful in transmitting "old characters" from the 18th century into real characters who seem fresh and alive no matter in which epoch you are watching them. Winner of 3 Oscars (best adapted screenplay, costume design, art direction) and two BAFTA awards (best screenplay, supporting actress Michelle Pfeiffer), "Dangerous Liaisons" creates a sober drift in our perception of an innocent epoch of the 18th century: the main protagonists are cheaters who seduce and then dispense people out of a bet or boredom. To them, affection is just a tool to control people. Only in the end does one of them, before his death, realize that he was truly in love. The exposition introduces those anti-heroes in humorous light: servants apply make-up to Mertuille's cleavage whereas they pull hair from Valmont's nose. Valmont (excellent John Malkovich) is a finely conjured up character who masterfully manipulates people, but himself doesn't really know what he wants. When a spy is "secretly" following him, he complaints at what a "loud spy" he is and even uses the naked back of his lovers as a table to write letters. Director Stephen Frears is skilfully creating an easily engaging film with an emotional touch and Pfeiffer is great as the beauty who falls for Valmont.

Grade:+++

Barefoot Gen

2011-08-08T12:20:00.015+01:00

Hadashi no Gen; Animated drama/ disaster film, Japan, 1983; D: Mori Masaki, S: Issei Miyazaki, Yoshie Shimamura, Takao Inoue

Hiroshima, World War II. Gen is a young boy who helps his family in search for food. His little brother Shinji, older sister Eiko and father are all concerned about their pregnant mother. In the early morning hours of 6 August, US plane Enola Gay drops an atom bomb on the city, causing utter destruction and mass mortality. Father, Shinji and Eiko all die in the burning house, while mother and Gen, who was outside during the explosion, survive. Mother gives birth to a baby, but radioactive rain, corpses and lack of food make the survival unbearable. The baby dies, but Gen finds a little boy who resembles Shinji and adopts him in the family.

Atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which killed at least 70,000 people in only 10 seconds, was for the longest time a taboo topic in Japan's society, yet its catastrophic effects stayed in the subconscious and were sensed in numerous films. Various documentaries showed the explosion only from the American perspective, i.e. just showing the bomb dropping from the airplane, yet "Barefoot Gen" is one of those rare stories that actually show the event from the perspective of people who actually lived through it. This anime actually has additional weight because the author Keiji Nakazawa actually experienced the explosion as a child himself and lived to tell the tale. "Gen" is without a doubt one of the most terrifying movies of the 20th Century: the first third revolving around the struggling family with a pregnant mother, when everything is quiet and tranquil, slowly creates an intense mood of uncertainty whereas the sole 5-minute sequence of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima is a sight of unforgettable horror.

The camera shows at first just small hints of the upcoming disaster: ants mysteriously rush into the house, Gen and a girl observe a plane high in the sky while shots of a clock are ominously ever-present. The virtuoso sequence of the explosion, where buildings, streetcars and trees just get blown away, is corroborated by human tragedy when it shows how people decompose on the streets from heat and how Gen survived just because he ducked behind a wall to pick up a rock on the floor. Even more devastating than "Grave of the Fireflies", "Gen" abounds with shocking scenes, but they do not seem fake, cheap or perverted but honest precisely because they constitute an honest story that shows the way things were back in those days. Despite everything, this is a monument to hope, peace, the message that life will find a way even in the darkest times and fight for humanity, which makes it somehow positive in the end, and it is one of those rare movies that are both vicious and gentle at the same time. The ending is one of the most touching, emotional ones in the history of anime - among the ranks of "Only Yesterday", "Utena", "Sailor Moon" and others - precisely because it managed to make the viewers so genuinely care about the characters.

Grade:+++

Airplane II: The Sequel

2011-08-06T13:46:00.011+01:00

Airplane II: The Sequel; parody, USA, 1982; D: Ken Finkelman, S: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, William Shatner, Sonny Bono, Raymond Burr

After a shuttle crash is blamed on him, pilot Ted Striker is sent to a mental asylum. However, when he hears that the same type of deeply flawed shuttle is about fly to the moon with his ex-girlfriend Elaine, he joins the crew. The computer in co-charge of the flight malfunctions and diverts them towards the Sun, but the passengers get into panic only after they find out they are all out of coffee. Using a bomb, Striker destroys the computer and lands on the moon semi-safely, thanks to coordination of Murdock, the Commander of a lunar base.

"Airplane!" was a parody that walked on thin ice the whole time, but still managed to ignite a very high number of funny jokes. Despite the fact that almost all actors from the original were recruited and the budget was bigger, "Airplane II" simply cannot offer the originality, humor or inspiration of Part I, among others because the director is Ken Finkelman who replaced the daft Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio - and thus it broke the thin ice. "Airplane II" has a joke every a quarter minute - but there is a big difference between funny and lame jokes. With forced jokes, violent humor and crude ideas too dumb to pass through the story without wrecking it, this comedy is a mess that borrowed at least a dozen gags from the first film. For instance, despite bombarding us with attempts at humor, the first 20 minutes of the movie have only truly one brilliant gag: the "Rocky XXXVIII" poster featuring an old wimp. A parody is a genre that can always easily go wrong, though this is still a solid flick with a stand-out small role by William Shatner as the hilariously wacky Commander Murdock who spots "USS Enterprise" in space with his telescope.

Grade:+

Bad Day at Black Rock

2011-08-06T10:50:00.011+01:00

Bad Day at Black Rock; crime drama, USA, 1955; D: John Sturges, S: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin

Black Rock, a small Californian town after World War II. For the first time in four years, the passenger train stops at the local station and drops off a stranger, the one-armed J.J. Macreedy. The people are all acting suspicious while the nice stranger takes a hotel room and inquires about the fate of Japanese American Komoko. Macreedy discovers that Komoko was killed by the local bully Smith. However, Macreedy confirms that Komoko was a loyal American since his son sacrificed his life for him in the war. In a showdown at night, Macreedy beats Smith and leaves the town.

One of those good 'old school' movies that talk about some controversial topics in an intelligent, calm, measured and natural way to such an extent that even children could watch them and understand its universal messages without feeling traumatized, "Bad Day at Black Rock" is arguably the best achievement by director John Sturges. Spencer Tracy, who won the Cannes award and was nominated for an Oscar as best actor, is absolutely phenomenal as the kind, simple one-handed stranger who visits the title town and causes a commotion among the locals, easily establishing an engaging and accessible mystery story that grips the viewers right from the start - once you watch the first minute, you just get the urge to see it to the end. Tracy's character Macreedy is wonderfully humorously determined to find his goal - when he enters a hotel, he exchanges this dialogue with a suspicious local: "Can I help you?" - "Are you the owner of this hotel?" - "No." - "Then we don't have anything to talk about"; whereas when the hotel manager tells him that all vacant rooms are "reserved", he just takes one key himself and goes to one empty room anyway. Another humorous moment shows up when Macreedy goes to the local prison and spots the Sheriff sleeping on a bed in the jail - the one-armed hero wants to close the jail door but then the Sheriff wakes up and steps outside, exchanging this line with him: "I just wanted to close the door! I thought you were the guest!" - "Guest? I'm the host!" Cleverly contemplating about the strained treatment of Japanese Americans in the US during World War II, this is an elevated, shining classic where only the last 20 minute lose that tight grip.

Grade:+++

And Now for Something Completely Different

2011-08-03T12:18:00.007+01:00

And Now for Something Completely Different; Comedy, UK, 1971; D: Ian MacNaughton, S: John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Chapman, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam

Several people are hiding in a forest. Whenever the narrator calls someone by his or her name to stand up, that person is immediately shot...A Hungarian immigrant has troubles communicating in English...Arthur arrives with his wife Deidre to see a marriage counselor, but he seduces her...A gym teacher demonstrates to his students self-defense against people attacking with fresh fruit...Several grandmas are terrorizing people on the street...A secretary is attacked by Mao Zedong's servants...A giant cat attacks a city...A dirty fork in a restaurant turns into a melodrama for the chief manager and the cook.

The 1st film by the Monty Python team, "And Now for Something Completely Different" is actually just a rehash of 40 of their best sketches (as always roughly) patched together, which is why the British audiences were not especially overwhelmed back in those days, perceiving it as a rerun of their TV show, yet for all those unfamiliar with the "Flying Circus" or simply fans of hilarious humor, this edition is still a blast. From the opening with the title saying "The End" through the bizarre-wild animated segments up to the gym teacher teaching his students how to defend themselves when someone attacks them with a banana ("The banana has to be eaten, thus disarming him and rendering him helpless!"), the Pythons again display their "satire on acid", the type of humor where anything can happen and a reference to reality is shockingly absent. As such, their taste is not for everyone, yet the film is simply funny and they work arguably the best when they present childishly-innocent jokes which seem as if they saved them from high school, such as the twist joke where a delinquent gang of grandmas is harassing two teenagers in a park or when an extended arm wants to take the leaf covering the genitals of Michelangelo's David, but when it does it reveals just a face of a whiny, uptight old woman who pledges that such obscenity will not be shown on film.

Grade:+++

Wayne's World 2

2011-08-01T19:00:00.015+01:00

Wayne's World 2; Comedy, USA, 1993; D: Stephen Surjik, S: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Tia Carrere, Christopher Walken, Ralph Brown, Kevin Pollak, Kim Basinger, Ed O'Neill, Chris Farley, Charlton Heston, Drew Barrymore

One year after their misadventures, Wayne and Garth are still making their own comedy TV show, "Wayne's World". When Wayne has a dream in which Jim Morrison orders him to organize a concert in Aurora, he decides to make his own "Waynestock". However, his girlfriend Cassandra has an argument with him and runs away with producer Bobby while no band wants to sign on for "Waynestock". In the end, the bands eventually do show up and the concert is a success.

After the huge success of the first film, the authors expressly assembled a sequel a year later that is so faithful and true to the spirit of "Wayne's World" that is seems like a natural extension to it. Some critics complained at it, just like they do at every sequel, yet the only aspect where part II lacks is in crudeness and obscure jokes, which is a good thing, instead improving the story with a smooth structure, "concrete" jokes, elimination of some useless side-characters and a tighter directing by debut director Stephen Surjik. The subplot where Cassandra again falls for a greedy producer is a rehash of the 1st film, yet the whole main plot revolving around "Waynestock" is entirely original, at least two lines by backstage manager Del - the long monologue about how he broke into a Ceylon store with Keith Moon and David Crosby to get some M&Ms at night and the remark about Woodstock ("It rained all morning, and then it cleared up in the afternoon. And that's it, I almost remembered something else, but it's gone!") - are funnier than anything in the original film; the "Keith Richards can't be killed with conventional weapons" remark is a riot, whereas Myers obviously loved the joke involving staring at a bureaucratic official's different eye colors so much he recycled it in "Austin Powers 3" with the "mole joke". The ending might seem slightly shaky, just like in the first film, yet Wayne's and Garth's antics and positive energy are simply indestructible, which is why it is a pity there was never part III of their adventures.

Grade:+++

Wayne's World

2011-08-01T10:18:00.012+01:00

Wayne's World; Comedy, USA, 1992; D: Penelope Spheeris, S: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Tia Carrere, Rob Lowe, Lara Flynn Boyle, Kurt Fuller, Brian-Doyle Murray, Ed O'Neill, Alice Cooper, Chris Farley, Donna Dixon

Aurora, Illinois. Wayne and Garth are two youngsters who run a local show at an open channel, "Wayne's World". They still live with their parents and don't have a job, but enjoy their lives and music. Wayne starts a relationship with Cassandra and the wealthy producer Benjamin buys their show to promote it. However, when Wayne makes fun of his sponsor, he is fired while Benjamin goes to Chicago to film a music spot with Cassandra. Still, Wayne manages to gain Cassandra's heart again in the end.

Based on the eponymous popular sketch from the TV show "Saturday Night Live", "Wayne's World" is one of those movies that charm more with their enthusiastic energy than successful jokes, yet since the sympathetic Wayne and Garth are Mike Myers' and Dana Carvey's lifetime achievements, it is simply difficult for viewers to ignore their contagious fun. Somewhere near the opening, when Wayne, Garth and their friends are driving in a car, listening to Queens' "Bohemian Rhaspody", the lyrics "Nothing really matters..." sum up how their characters are entirely uninterested in politics, life problems or social order and only live for jokes and music. The Shitty Beatles rock band joke is a riot, the "Camera 1, camera 2, camera 1" sight gag, when Wayne is flip-flopping between his left and right eye while looking at Cassandra, is sympathetic whereas Garth's antics and one-liners are incredibly underrated and almost steal the show ("Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played girl bunny?"; "It's like a new pair of underwear. At first, it's constrictive. But after awhile it becomes a part of you"). There are too many obscure gags, definitely, whereas the ending is clumsy and rushed, yet just like similar "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", "Wayne's Word" is simply a good 'hangout' comedy film, perfectly able to carry their daft mood and entirely relaxed in being true to its own spirit.

Grade:++

Jaws: The Revenge

2011-07-30T10:52:00.009+01:00

Jaws: The Revenge; Disaster movie, USA, 1987; D: Joseph Sargent, S: Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Michael Caine

Amity Island. After her son Sean gets killed by a shark on Christmas Eve, Ellen Brody is shocked so her other son Michael, a sea biologist, decides to take her to the Bahamas to take her mind off depressive thoughts. She meets a charming pilot, Hoagie, and gets to spend more time with her granddaughter Thea. However, the big white shark follows them and attacks again. Ellen takes a ship to settle the score once and for all. With the help of Michael, Jake and Hoagie, she manages to kill the huge fish with the boat.

By title, concept and an occasional actor 3rd sequel to the "Jaws" franchise, "The Revenge" ended the movie series since it really did not have anything more to add to it, just like the previous two sequels. The original "Jaws" is a timeless hydrophobic classic that actually offered intelligent scare for the audience; "Jaws 2" is just a tiresome copy-paste sequel, though it ended up being a solid horror, while "Jaws 3" is the worst contribution, an entirely insane flick. Part IV is bland, stiff and empty, but watchable movie thanks mostly to the charming performance by veteran actor Michael Caine as Hoagie, the eccentric pilot, and an occasional good idea - such as the opening where the underwater shot dissolves into a shot of a fish on the frying pan - and humorous quotes (during a rehearsal for a Christmas song, the director shouts "Where the hell are the Three wise men?"; "Mental midget."). Actually, if it weren't for the shark, the love subplot involving Hoagie and Ellen Brody would actually have some potential for a good film on its own. The cheap scares and horror elements are trashy, boring and lukewarm, whereas the finale is patchwork, which is why it is good nobody insisted on a 5th movie since the story really didn't have any more sense - or need - to go on.

Grade:+

The Outlaw Josey Wales

2011-07-30T07:47:00.018+01:00

The Outlaw Josey Wales; Western, USA, 1976; D: Clint Eastwood, S: Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, John Vernon, Bill McKinney, Sondra Locke

American Civil War. When Union soldiers kill his family during a raid, ordinary farmer Josey Wales joins to fight in the Confederate army, led by Fletcher. However, the Unionists led by Abraham Lincoln win so Fletcher and others decide to surrender - but the bitter Wales decides to fight on. He meets Indian Lone Watie and moves south, since bounty hunters led by Redlegs are following him. On his way, he also saves several people from slavery, among them a grandma and her daughter Laura. They settle at a small town where Wales kills a dozen bounty hunters. After meeting with Fletcher again, Wales rides towards south.

The 5th film directed by Clint Eastwood, "The Outlaw Josey Wales" was not remembered during the flow of the cinema history, yet critical acclaim assured it a certain promotion. "Wales" starts off as a Confederate 'wet dream' since the title anti-hero from the South decides to continue fighting against the Unionists even after the American Civil War is over (!), making the crucial mistake of projecting an individual crime of Unionists (who burned Wales' home and killed his family) as the universal face of the Union movement, since people from the North are all presented in negative light, in black and white solutions. Likewise, Eastwood again has troubles confining his ego - the first 10 movies where he appeared as the invincible hot-shot Chuck Norris who can never get shot and get every girl he wants were somehow more charming than the last 30 of them whereas it didn't help that he always had to - when he starred - put himself in the leading role of a movie he directed, never even considering a supporting role. Still, when the movie wonders away from the Civil War and presents new characters, it actually serves its purpose as an anti-war message where people can never escape from an "endless war". Chief Dan George is fantastic as the Indian sidekick ("The Unionists made me surrender! They even made my horse surrender! Now he is pulling a wagon to Kansas!") and humorous elements are refreshing, such as when Wales shoots the rope of the ferry on which bounty hunters were getting transported to him over the river. One can sense Eastwood's sure hand as the director through the elegant narration and a natural story flow that attracts attention thanks to its simplicity.

Grade:++

Garfield

2011-07-27T11:06:00.006+01:00

Garfield; Comedy, USA, 2004; D: Peter Hewitt, S: Bill Murray (voice), Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Stephen Tobolowsky

The lazy and fat cat Garfield is coiled Jon's pet. Garfield enjoys his life; he watches TV, bothers the neighbor's dog, makes friends with mice instead of catching them and steals Jon's food. However, recently Jon is bringing him to a veterinary often lately because he fell in love with doctor Liz. Jon gets a dog, Odie, who gets kicked on the street by Garfield. Odie then gets kidnapped by Happy Chapman, a TV host who wants to become a star thanks to him. Still, Garfield saves the dog while Jon and Liz fall in love.

After two masterworks - "Tootsie" and "Groundhog Day" - as well as critically acclaimed dramatic roles, comedian Bill Murray decided to take it easy for a while and picked a more relaxing, casual children's comedy based on the comic book with the same title about the fatest cat in the world. Even though the critics were proportionally too harsh towards the very solid "Garfield", it is still difficult to shake off the impression that the comic books were funnier and more subversive. The CGI depiction of Garfield is all right, though not too faithful towards the original design, whereas it wasn't really expected that a comic-book adaptation will be the new masterwork of cinemas anyway. The roles by Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt are thin and underwritten, the story unoriginal, though Garfield's charm can be sensed occasionally, like in the scene where the fat cat is pretending to eat a mouse but then just spits him out saying: "Blah! Have you tasted yourself lately?" or when he dances with Odie on two feet.

Grade:+

Airplane!

2011-07-24T11:08:00.010+01:00

Airplane!; Comedy/ parody, USA, 1980; D: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, S: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

A smooth flight to Chicago comes to a rough dead end when all the pilots and half of passengers become sick from food poisoning after eating fish. Dr. Rumack quickly realizes that the only healthy person on board who is able to somewhat fly an airplane is the traumatized ex-pilot Ted Striker, afraid of flying, who is not in good relations with his ex-girlfriend, stewardess Elaine. Still, thanks to her motivation and the instructions from the airport by Kramer and McCroskey, Striker manages to land the airplane (semi)-safely.

There are 99 wrong ways of doing a parody movie and only one right way, and the debut film by the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio did it the right way: "Airplane!" is a grand spoof on mass of disaster films which inhabited the US cinemas in the 70s, a hilarious comedy of the absurd that almost reaches Monty Python's or Marx brothers' proportions of insanity, while at the same time discovering Leslie Nielsen as a comedian. It is walking on thin ice the whole time, especially during some too obscure gags, but thanks to a tight rhythm, focused tone and a contagiously fun touch, "Airplane!" is one of those comedies where even "dumb" jokes cause a good laugh. It is not stylistically sure as their "Top Secret!" and some complained when the screenplay was nominated for a BAFTA and the movie itself as best picture - musical or comedy at the Golden Globe ceremony, yet the wide range of jokes, varying from silly dialogues ("Captain, how soon can you land?" - "I can't tell". - "You can tell me. I'm a doctor." - "No. I mean I'm just not sure." - Well, can't you take a guess?" - "Well, not for another two hours". - "...You can't take a guess...for another two hours?"), through slapstick (the obnoxious dog harassing a courier at Kramer's home) to sight gags (when the autopilot goes down and causes a turbulence, Dr. Rumack, seen near a woman spreading her legs for a gynecological examination, turns around and says: "What in God's name is going on in there?!") simply all contribute to a good fun.

Grade:+++

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

2011-07-22T12:04:00.010+01:00

Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Comedy, UK, 1975; D: Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam; S: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones

England, Middle Ages. King Arthur and his servant arrive to a fortress and enter, but nobody recognizes them. Still, Arthur gathers a mass of Knights, from Lancelot to Bedevere. On a meadow, God appears before them and gives them an assignment: to find the Holly Grail. On their long journey, the meet a blood-thirsty rabbit and various wackos, until the police in the end arrests Arthur for murder.

Viewers annoyed by too serious movie depictions of King Arthur will surely enjoy in the 2nd Monty Python film, "The Holly Grail": this hilarious grotesque is a grand spoof on sagas, legends, myths and theatrical cliches of knights, much more inspiring than Python's last film "The Meaning of Life". Those unfamiliar with the Pythons will need some time to "adjust" to their frequency, but once they get use to it the movie will turn out to be a blast: unlike numerous comedies that are just pretending to be funny, "The Holly Grail" is funny. It is a howlingly funny comedy of the absurd, achieving laughs through dialogues, movements, slapstick, exaggerated situations or simple directorial intervention. For instance, in one scene there is this golden dialogue: "Who is that guy?" - "The King!" - "How do you know?" - "He hasn't got shit all over him!" while another line gives a genius comment on Excalibur ("Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!"). The scene where a boring historian is walking on a meadow and pretentiously giving a lecture about King Arthur until some knight passes by on a horse and sacks him is a riot; the sequence where the knights are dancing and jumping on the table while geese are flying above them is a comical 'tour-de-force' sight whereas even one simple movement, the where one knight constantly raises his visor up and down on his helmet just to say one word, slowly advances into a joke that will sooner or later cause the viewers to burst into laughter. A fantastic fun, despite an occasional empty, too abstract or bizarre scene.

Grade:+++

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

2011-07-22T11:14:00.006+01:00

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life; Black satire, UK, 1983; D: Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, S: Michael Palin, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle

A collection of various stories, some of which do and some of which don't address the meaning of life: old employees start a rebellion in a building against their bosses and CEOs, eventually becoming pirates who rob concerns and multinational corporations...An unemployed Catholic is a father of hundred children...A teacher strips and demonstrates sex to his students in the classroom...Despite his protest, paramedics take the liver of a living man because he is an organ donor...Wherever there is a restaurant, a fat man is there to eat...A woman gives birth without pain...Soldiers go crazy during World War I.

The fourth and final Monty Python film (if their concert film "Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl" is excluded), "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" is also their worst one, a superficial, sketchy and at times catastrophically unimaginative comedy that more often than not does not justify unbearably grotesque jokes and disgusting special effects, like a hacked man who falls apart. The Monty Python crew has a great sense of humor, which was demonstrated in their TV show and previous films, yet anyone who watched their "Flying Circus" knows that when they are funny, they are really funny - but when they are "off", they *really* are "off". Unfortunately, it seems "The Meaning of Life" caught them in their "off" phase since its charm and wit are microscopic. The most sympathetic sketch is the opening with the old employees starting a rebellion in their company, advancing to pirates who rob corporations. Another joke that manages to "break through" to a certain point is the sequence where John Cleese plays a teacher who strips with a woman in the classroom in order to demonstrate sex to his students, who are completely uninterested. The rest of the movie is bitter and violent, unsuitable for younger or sensitive audience. Unfortunately, "The Meaning of Life" is entirely meaningless, a mess where the Pythons went more overboard with excess and tasteless ideas (the fat man who throws up every 20 seconds in a restaurant) than humor and laughs. Whatever the meaning of life is, it has got to be something better than this.

Grade:+

High Anxiety

2011-07-17T15:17:00.005+01:00

High Anxiety; Comedy/ parody, USA, 1977; D: Mel Brooks, S: Mel Brooks, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Howard Morris

Dr. Thorndyke, a psychiatrist suffering from fear of heights, is appointed as the new administrator of a mental asylum in Los Angeles after his predecessor died in mysterious circumstances. Upon arriving there, the suspicious behavior of nurse Diesel and Dr. Montague attract his attention. At a conference in San Francisco, he is contacted by Victoria Birsbane, whose father is still held in the asylum by Diesel and Montague even though he is completely normal. Diesel and Montague want to throw Mr. Brisbane from a tower to make it look like suicide, but Thorndyke saves him.

A spoof of dozen Hitchcock films, "High Anxiety" seems, just like most Mel Brooks comedies, as a rough patchwork, though still far less so then his last five films which had less good jokes to offer. Unlike "History of the World - Part 1" and "Blazing Saddles", Brooks here actually has a tight story, yet wonders between clever-inspiring and silly-embarrassing jokes, and depending on the mood, the viewers will either be swayed more towards the positive or the negative sides of the film. One of the most hilarious jokes is entirely abstract, a deliberate mishap when the camera zooms in to a dining room where the protagonists are eating, but actually approaches them so close that it breaks the glass on the window (!), upon which the protagonists just stop, turn and look into it for a minute, so the camera pulls back; and then they just continue talking as if nothing happened! That Brooks can make up an intelligent joke is also evident in the ironical sequence where Dr. Thorndyke is informed that his hotel room was canceled because a certain "Mr. MacGuffin called to make a reservation, but canceled it" whereas the spoof on "The Birds" is a riot. Unfortunately, it seems the author rather took the easy way and filled the movie too much with spasmodic, empty or overstretched jokes which rely too much on the shrill expressionistic performances to be pulled through, no matter how good an actress Cloris Leachman is.

Grade:+