Golden Balls

Huevos de oro, erotic drama, Spain, 1993; D: Bigas Luna, S: Javier Bardem, Maribel Verdú, Maria de Medeiros, Elisa Touati, Raquel Bianca, Alessandro Gassmann, Benicio Del Toro

Melilla. Benito and Miguel work as construction workers, but Benito breaks all contact with him after findout out his girlfriend Rita is having an affair with Miguel. Benito decides to become and architect and build the tallest building in the enclave, and thus uses his new girlfriend Claudia to seduce a banker to have cash for his investment. That fails, so Benito instead marries the banker's daughter Marta. A loan shark, Gil, adds another half of amount, which is enough to start the construction of Benito's building. However, Marta finds out about Benito's girlfriend Claudia. While driving angry, Benito has a car crash which kills Claudia and leaves his right hand partially paralyzed. Gil backs out, and thus the construction is halted. Benito finds a new girlfriend, Ana, and goes with her to Miami. He leads a boring life, and cries after finding out she cheats on him with the gardener Bob.

The director Bigas Luna tackles in this film his often theme of a person's two main driving forces that mean the world to them: their love life and their dream. In "Golden Balls", the protagonist is architect Benito (very good Javier Bardem) who pursues these two goals, reaches them, but then falls, undergoes a slump in life and ends in a disappointment. Chaotic and messy, where the story isn't that much important as just observing the interactions of these characters, "Golden Balls" once again shows Luna's enchantment with sexuality and erotic sophistication, which enchants even the viewers: he is strange and wild, but his movies always feel alive, full of vibrant energy, optimism and celebration of life. The Hispanic world seems to have a natural sense for sensuality. Luna's focus is on the passionate people who express their emotions through affectionate eroticism, which gives them meaning in life, and not so much the film structure or the style. Several passionate moments thus stand out: for instance, Benito draws rectangles with a marker around Claudia's breasts and abdomen area, and later on lies down on bed, while she "sits" on top of his face, as he is giving her oral sex and holding her butt, causing her to say: "Last time someone did that to me, I fell in love!"

Bizarrely, when Claudia has sex with Benito, she has a peculiarity that he is not allowed to touch her breasts, since they are great and she doesn't want them "deformed". When Benito's wife Marta encounters Claudia, they both realize they have his rectangulars drawn on their bodies, and then Benito has both of them lie down on bed, side to side, as he stands above them, joking: "I wish I had two dicks!" A fascinating specific is that this is a rare film depiction of Melilla, the Spanish enclave in north Africa, displaying mental traits of these inhabitants and their behavior, but also human nature in general (upon meeting, Claudia is reluctant to be Benito's girlfriend, all until he asks: "Do you want to be my secretary?"), whereas Luna even adds a surreal touch in one dream sequence (a woman's black pubic hair "blends" with black ants swarming around it) that is, though, unnecessary and disruptive for the rest of the film, which is rather "normal" in its format. Maribel Verdu is excellent as Claudia, as well as Elisa Touati as Rita, though the latter has much less screen time. Despite its seemingly wild and naughty tone, "Golden Balls" even has a tragic-emotional side: Benito starts off as an underclass worker whose girlfriend cheats on him. This causes an outburst of rebellion as he sets out to start a new life and rise up the hierarchy. However, in the last act, Benito returns back to the same situation, just in a different setting, and breaks down, signaling the inevitability of fatalism.

Grade:+++

Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle; erotic drama, France, 1974; D: Just Jaeckin, S: Sylvia Kristel, Daniel Sarky, Marika Green, Alain Cuny

Emmanuelle travels from Paris to Bangkok to join her husband, diplomat Jean, who tells her he doesn't want to treat her as possession and allows her to have freedom. Emmenuelle thus decide to explore her sexuality. She meets Bee and goes away with her in a jeep, to a waterfall, where Emmanuelle has a lesbian encounter with Bee. However, afterwards, Bee is bored of her and rejects her. Emmenuelle meets with the older gentleman Mario who takes her to an opium bar and watches a Thai man have sex with her. In a boxing match, the winning champion, a Thai man, also gets to have sex with Emmanuelle, while Mario watches, but doesn't have sex with her. Emmanuelle watches herself in the mirror.

"Emmanuelle" obtained an almost cult reputation and helped erotic cinema gain significance, but looking at it from today's perspective, it is lacking not only artistic, but also erotic merit. It just isn't that erotic in the first place. Sylvia Kristel, with her short tomboyish hair, doesn't seem that attractive, but the bigger problem is that the story doesn't know what to do with her character, her exploration of her own sexuality, obvious in the ending that lacks a point, a conclusion of sorts, and thus feels vague and incomplete. Emancipation and sexual liberation cannot quite be deducted from the finale where a Thai man rapes Emmanuelle in an opium bar nor when a Thai man winning in a boxing match "wins" to take Emmanuelle from behind. Still, the exotic locations of Bangkok are interesting and different, and some of the dialogue is intermittently really well written. For instance, during a massage, Jean tells to a friend the reason why he married Emmanuelle: "You must have married her for her beauty, though?" - "I married her beacuse no woman I know enjoys making love more, or does it as well". When Emmanuelle is perplexed as to why she should have sex with the old gentleman Mario, her friend explains it to her: "When someone still makes love at his age, it becomes pure poetry". One almost wishes the director would have taken a more honest, emotional and psychological depiction of Emmanuelle, since these two sentences show the story had potential to be more. Instead, it's just random, isolated and disjointed episodes, with very little sex, that lead nowhere. The sequence where Emmanuelle has sex with two passangers on a plane, while all the other passangers are asleep, is almost comical and naive, for instance. One iconic scene is legendary, though: Marie-Ange sits and masturbates while watching the photo of Paul Newman in a magazine hanging from her leg, which is an example of almost sophisticated erotic touch. Too bad the rest of the movie cannot follow it.

Grade:+

Babe: Pig in the City

Babe: Pig in the City; fantasy comedy / drama, Australia / USA, 1998; D: George Miller, S: E. G. Daily (voice), Glenne Headly (voice), Steven Wright (voice), James Cosmo (voice), Magda Szubanski, Mary Stein, James Cromwell, Mickey Rooney

When the pig Babe accidentally steps into the bucket and falls and injures farmer Arthur on the bottom of the well, Arthur's wife Esme, plagued by the financial burden of the farm, accepts a proposal to fly to the Metropolis and be paid to feature Babe participating in a fair. At the airport, they miss their connecting flight and now have to stay in a hotel for a while. Babe is kidnapped by a circus performer, Fugly, but he becomes sick and lands in a hospital. Babe, together with other abandoned animals in the hotel—three chimpanzees, an orangutan, dogs—stay alone, since Esme has been arrested. Animal control officers take all the animals away in a shelter, but Babe is able to free them and reunite with Esme. The hotel owner rents the hotel to a dance club, gives the money to Esme, who returns with Babe to the farm and helps a recovered Arthur to service the new well and pay the bills.

"Babe: Pig in the City" is plot-wise a very questionable sequel—the first 20 minutes feel like a natural continuation of the Babe story, but the remaining 70 minutes seem like an "intruder", as if Babe got lost in a "counterfeit" movie. The opening act that shows the aftermath of "Babe" is set on the farm, and thus works the best, especially in the brilliantly comical sequence where Babe accidentally enters a descending bucket and injures farmer Arthur on the bottom of the well, in a triple injury, but once the pig and the farmer's wife Esme travel to the big city, one is not so sure what this movie is about anymore—it actually feels as if the director George Miller had a different story in plan, about the urban-rural dissonance, but then just slapped Babe and Esme in it to fake a sequel. The work of coordinating all these animals and aligning them into a narrative is impressive, and there are detailed set-designs and elaborate comical set pieces (especially in the finale, where Esme, her suspenders tied up to a rope hanging from a chandelier, swings left and right across a charity hall, trying to pick up Babe on the ground, while three other people are swinging at the same time, trying to grab Babe first). 

However, several problems burden the film, and clash badly with film critic Gene Siskel's decision to pick it as the number 1 film of 1998. For instance, it is a pity that almost all the characters from the previous film are largely absent in this sequel, since farmer Arthur (an underused James Cromwell) and other farm animals are left behind on the farm, leaving only Esme and Babe as the "core crew". The new animal characters aren't that impressive either, since they mostly lack a personality—we don't find out much about the chimpanzee Zootie, expect that she is pregnant, nor about orangutan Thelonius, except that he has a sad look. Then an angry Bull Terrier dog is added to be Babe's friend, but the movie could have worked fine without him, anyway. Another peculiar anomaly is the circus owner played by Mickey Rooney, who is brought up, and then suddenly disappears from the film after just 5 minutes, ostensibly due to health issues. The movie could have worked fine without him, for instance that the animals were already alone in the hotel. Neither is there a reason to use elaborate visual effects to conjure up various city landmarks (Chrysler Building, Willis Tower, Empire State Building...) in this city, when they are not relevant or necessary for the story. The final third feels kind of lacking, since not enough is at stakes (Babe wants to save the animals from the animal shelter, but wouldn't they have been also fine there? How is this connected to Esme's quest to find money to pay the bills for her farm?). Miller opted for less comedy and more stylization this time around, creating a peculiarity, but Babe is still an endearing and sweet character, even in this abridged edition.

Grade:++

The Emigrants

Utvandrarna; historical drama, Sweden, 1971; D: Jan Troell, S: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, Allan Edwall, Monica Zetterlund, Pierre Lindstedt

Ljuder village, Sweden, 1844. After injuring himself trying to remove a rock from the land for famring, the father's leg is permanently disabled and he has to use crutches, so his son Karl Oskar takes over the farm. Karl Oskar marries Kristina and they have four kids, but the harvest is always bad: it's either too rainy, causing wheat to rot, to too dry, causing droughts. Karl Oskar's brother Robert spends too much time daydreaming and reading, so his boss Aron hits him when he catches him not working. Karl Oskar and Robert decide to emigrate to the US, hoping for a better life. Besides their families, they are also acompanied by priest Danjel who preaches alternative Christianity; ex-prostitute Ulrika; and Robert's co-worker Arvid. They take a carriage to Karlshamn, and from there on board a ship across the Atlantic. After 10 weeks, they reach America, and then take a train to Buffalo, and from there on a boat to Minnesota, hoping to settle at a Swedish farmer, the son of one of the passangers, but the latter lives only in a wooden shack. Still, Karl Oskar marks his territory on a nearby land.

Based on Vilhelm Moberg's eponymous novel exploring the Swedish emigration to the United States, Jan Troell's film "The Emigrants" is a dark, astringent, naturalistic and realistic epic about immigrants. At three hours, its running time is definitely overlong, and yet it's as if Troell takes his time to create a three-dimensional, 'larger-than-life' chronicle of one sample of Swedish immigrants, giving both a story of Sweden as well as the population origin of the 19th century United States, and thus the viewers will have to adjust to his frequency to accept the pacing. He uses high amounts of close-ups, more frequent than other directors, to conjure up a private, intimate point-of-view of this family and their friends from the village, and he gains huge support from the movie's two main actors: the excellent Max von Sydow as farmer Karl Oskar, and especially the wonderful, tender performance by the great Liv Ullmann as his wife Kristina. The first half of "The Emigrants" shows the harsh living conditions of the farm family (hunger, failed harvest, lack of money, overlong working hours...), as to give a sufficient motivation and explanation for their departure from their homeland, to such an extent that the locals start believing the most outlandish idealistic fairytales about America. For instance, in one scene Robert reads to Arvid from a book: "In America, no one works more than 12 hours a day, and many slaves have better houses, food and circumstances than peasants in Europe", so Arvid comments that he should sends himself as a slave to America to live better than now. 

Faced with another bad harvest, the religious Kristina and the more somber Karl Oskar have this exchange: "We will put our faith in God". - "Faith... If it was just up to faith, we could reap a hundred barrels of wheat this autumn!" The long trip and departure of the protagonists takes up almost the entire second half of the film, to convene to the viewers the feel of a long journey the European immigrants endured back in that time. The 10-week ship journey is dark and depressing, showing how the passangers were trapped in the Ocean and faced with diseases, poor hygiene and food shortage. When Kristina finds out she got lice on ship, a passanger comments: "You know it's bad when even the lice is emigrating from Sweden!" A small humorous relief before this is when Robert talks with the naive Elin, who thinks that just by through faith she will immediately know English when she steps foot in America, so he tries to teach her a few English words beforehand, as to "take some of the burden off the Holy Spirit". Upon learning the English words for washing hands, Elin asks why the immigrants are given handbooks with instructions how to wash hands, so Robert gives another naive response: "It's probably because everything is so nice and clean in the new world that they have to ask those who came from the old, dirty world". Watching their plight, where some of the immigrants even die along the way, and how they are lost since nobody of the Americans speaks the Swedish language, the viewers gain symathy with the protagonists, and thus engage more with the story the longer it lasts. It is a conventional movie approach, without much directorial intervention or stylization, but it works, nontheless. 

Grade:+++

Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal

Scipione l'africano; historical film, Italy, 1937; D: Carmine Gallone, S: Annibale Ninchi, Camillo Pilotto, Fosco Giachetti, Francesca Bragiotti, Marcello Giorda

Rome during the Second Punic War, 205 BC. Carthaginian general Hannibal is still in Italy even after a decade of his army's incursion, so the Roman Senate names general Scipio as consul and approves his plan to attack North Africa and cut off Hannibal. The Roman Republic starts a mobilization and embarks war ships from Sicily. The Roman Army wins the Battle of Cirta and captures Syphax, the king of the Carthage-allied Numidian tribes, while his Carthaginian wife Sophonisba commits suicide. Hannibal is then summoned to return to Carthage to defend it. Scipio oversees victory of the Roman Army in the Battle of Zama in 202 BC.

A rare film depiction of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Roman Republic, "Scipio Africanus" was aimed to be a propaganda film to drum up support for Mussolini's Greater Italy and planned annexation of parts of North Africa, but is still a surprisingly well done and relatively historically accurate picture. Carmine Gallone directs the film in a conventional and standard, but effective way, leaning towards spectacle through its scenes of masses (thousands of people gather in front of the Roman Senate and welcome general Scipio, giving the Roman salute; a vertical camera pan over a thousand Roman soldiers, followed by a zoom on Scipio in the middle) and opulent set-designs. There are some good attempts at giving a three-dimensional recreation of the life and mentality of that era: for instance, a servant gives a message to Hannibal: "Oh lord of victories, the Romans have so much faith in Scipio that they dared to put the land on which you camped for auction". Upon laughing off Scipio's plan for the invasion from Sicily ("So he wants to play Hannibal in Carthage?"), a commander cautions Hannibal: "Scipio is much closer to Carthage than you are to Rome". A little bit overstretched, where Hannibal is actually a more intruiging character than Scipio, the movie still works. The highlight: the 20-minute finale depicting the Battle of Zama, where 10,000 extras played soldiers on both sides, and even a dozen elephants were used in the charge against the Roman Army, which reminds a bit of the central battle in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King".

Grade:++

Local Hero

Local Hero; comedy / drama, UK, 1983; D: Bill Forsyth, S: Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Peter Capaldi, Burt Lancester, Fulton Mackay, Jenny Seagrov

MacIntyre, an executive, is chosen for his Scottish last name by his oil American company to travel from Houston, Texas to the village of Ferness, Scotland, and buy off property leading to the sea in order for said company to build an oil pipeline there. Macintyre and another copany employee Oldsen arrive there by car and settle at an inn run by Urquhart and his wife. Macintyre contacts his boss Happer regularly via the only phone booth in Ferness. When an old man, Ben, doesn't want to sell his land on the beach, Happer travels personally there to negotiate with him. However, Ben actually persuades Happer to build an astronomical observatory and marine research facility instead, while the oil would go through an offshore refinery. Back in the US, MacIntyre feels isolated. In Ferness, the phone booth rings again.

The director Bill Forsyth's third film, "Local Hero" is a quiet, amusing, restrained and minimalist comedy about the difference between the urban, extroverted and rural, introverted mentality—and the contemplation on which one is more rewarding in life. Overstretched and thin, with sometimes too lukewarm ideas, "Local Hero" nontheless still has enough charm built almost exclusively on small vignettes and gentle, comical culture clash between the American protagonist from a big city staying in a Scottish village. Forsyth's concept neatly sets up a local Scottish film "augmented" by an American international dimension since an American oil company is "at the mercy" of the Scottish village to buy off their land for a pipeline. Several little jokes are amusing: for instance, in the opening act, the CEO of the oil company, Happer (Burt Lancester) fell asleep and is snoring during a business meeting, so the managers give their plan in whisper to each other, as to not bother him. The inn keeper Urquhart tells some roof workers to stop making noise, but when his wife enters his room and they start passionately kissing, he tells the workers through the window to resume working, as he becomes intimate with her.

There is a whole running gag of a psychiatrist trying out his "shock therapy" of insulting Happer even after he was fired, so the psychiatrist continues with it (he phones Happer in his home to insult him, Happer hangs up, but after a while picks up the phone again and finds out the psychiatrist is still on; the psychiatrist gluing paper pieces with letters to assemble "Happer Motherfu..." on the company's windows). There is also a delicious gag where Ben doesn't want to sell his beach property, and when he grabs a bundle of sand in his hand, he asks: "Would you pay me a pound for every grain of sand in my hand?" MacIntyre says no, but then Ben says that there couldn't have been more "than 10,000 grains of sand in his hand". The local village characters, except for Urquhart, ended up underwritten and almost as extras, which reduces the film's range, and several episodes could have been cut for a tighter rhythm (for instance the pointless supporting character of a Russian ship captain who visits the village). Congruent with the state of mind he is trying to conjure up, Forsyth directs the film in a simple, conventional, meditative way, which requires the viewers to adjust to its "frequency". In most of movies, the big company absorbs the little nature, but this films offers a different outcome, which is refreshing. "Local Hero" needed more jokes and more highlights written for the rather bland protagonist, yet its last two scenes will stay in the viewers' mind—how Forsyth made this ending resonate so subconsciously in such a simple way is a delight.

Grade:++

Past Lives

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

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

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

Grade:++

The Diary of Paulina P.

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

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

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

Grade:++

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

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

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

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

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

Grade:++

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

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

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

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

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

Grade:+++