Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Paddington 2

Paddington 2; fantasy comedy, UK / France, 2017; D: Paul King, S: Ben Whishaw (voice), Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson

London. Anthropomorphic bear Paddington wants to buy a 3D postcard-book about London for his aunt’s birthday. However, the book is stolen from the store by washed-up actor Phoenix, a master of disguise, while the police mistakenly arrests Paddington for the crime. Paddington is sent to prison, where he forms an unlikely friendship with a brute cook, who helps him escape. Together with his foster family, the Browns, Paddington finds out Phoenix was the book because it contains clues to a hidden treasure, but luckily the villain is stopped and arrested, clearing Paddington’s reputation.  

“Paddington 2” established an unlikely sensation and an almost mythical reputation—even though a sequel, it received even more praise than the 1st film, and actually became one of the rare movies with an astonishing 100% positive reviews on critics’ website Rotten Tomatoes. While such a high consensus is in reality a little bit overrated and overhyped, since this is no chef-d'œuvre, “Paddington 2” is still a surprisingly fun film with an universal inspiration that entertains both the kids and the grown ups, and has at times some wonderfully creative and unique gags. When you watch its first 20 minutes, you might feel a little bit stupid, since it seems like the opening to a typically harmless kid’s film starring a humanoid bear, yet once Paddington lands in prison, the jokes become remarkably rampant. 

One of the best ones is when Paddington talks with other prison inmates about the bad food (“It’s not as bad as it seems. It’s even worse”), and thus stands up to complain to the cook, Knuckles, a brute so scary that every inmate is afraid of him. Clumsy as he is, Paddington accidentally throws ketchup at Knuckles’ apron, but then when he tries to wipe it off with mustard, it makes the stain only worse—while the camera cuts to a wide shot of the kitchen, where every inmate is now hiding under their tables, too afraid to look what will happen to Paddington now. In another joke, Knuckles has a deal and wants to have a 'brute handshake', so he spits into his hand and gives it to Paddington—who just spits into Knuckles' hand, too, without touching it. Hugh Grant has a field day as the main villain, actor Phoenix, who is, congruently, a master of disguise, and thus puts on costumes while searching for the treasure, ranging from a nun up to a man with a beard. Alas, some six sketches are made about the suspects, one for each of Phoenix’s disguise, all until Mrs Brown sits next to Phoenix—and she suddenly has a “flash” of all six sketches popping on Phoenix’s head, as she realizes he is all of these characters. Some omissions are still apparent: the Brown family is kind of a weak link, as they are rather standardly written or underdeveloped, whereas neither the sequence of Paddington on a dog chasing a burglar, nor the finale are anything truly special to write about. Simple, yet so effective: this film demonstrates just how funny the most innocent, family-friendly jokes can be.

Grade:++

Monday, December 28, 2020

A Witch's Way of Love

Un Amour de Sorcière; fantasy comedy, France / USA, 1997; D: René Manzor, S: Vanessa Paradis, Gil Bellows, Jean Reno, Jeanne Moreau, Dabney Coleman

Wizard Molok kills a scientist, and plans to do the same with Michael Firth, a famous inventor. Molok has this plan because Firth can save a little baby from obtaining witchcraft, which would mean a normal human life. When Firth arrives from New York to France, he meets the baby's mother, young witch Morgane, and spends a night with her in the forest. Tomorrow, Morgane and Firth drive to a castle to meet Morgane's mother. When Molok finally finds Firth, Morgane promises that she will not use Firth to save her child from witchcraft if Molok spares Firth's life. Morgane falls into a coma, so Firth himself saves the baby from Molok and escapes to the castle. When Molok catches up to him, Firth sets him on fire and transforms him into water, while Morgane wakes up.

After two interesting, darkly weird feature length films starring kids, "The Passage", about how people are at the mercy of destiny, and "Deadly Games", about how a kid is at the mercy of a burglar who invades his mansion, director and screenwriter Rene Manzor made a departure to this more "light" film, a weak, but proportionally sympathetic and straightforward fantasy comedy romance "A Witch's Way of Love". It takes an unusual topic of a good witch, Morgane (a charming Vanessa Paradis), but overall it lacks humor, emotions or inspiration, and is a solid film, but nothing more (or less). Had Manzor followed the tone of the storyline and dedicated more humor, he could have gotten a better result than this one, which sometimes looks like an overstretched version of the TV series "Sabrina the Teenage Witch". The film has no irritating or illogical flaws, yet no truly great moments, either. While Jean Reno astounds in the untypical role of a villain Molok, Paradis is the real highlight here, and one almost wishes she was in a better written film than this one.

Grade:+

Sunday, December 27, 2020

You Only Live Twice

You Only Live Twice; action, UK, 1967; D: Lewis Gilbert, S: Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Tetsuro Tamba, Teru Shimada, Donald Pleasence

An unidentified rocket opens up, "swallows" a NASA spacecraft with American and Soviet astronauts on board, and then disappears and lands somewhere near Japan. Since the US and Soviet politicians accuse each other, the British MI6 fakes James Bond's death, sends his coffin into a sea, but retrieves it on a submarine, and then Bond gets the mission to go to Japan to investigate. He meets his allies, Aki and Mr. Tanaka, who help him. Bond discovers that Mr. Osato, a Japanese industrialist, is collaborating with SPECTRE, which was paid by a "secret country" to lure America and the Soviet Union into a war, in order for the said country to rise to stardom afterwards. Luckily, Bond and Aki storm the secret hideout in a volcano, led by Blofeld, and stop SPECTRE's plan of a nuclear attack.

The 5th James Bond film featuring Sean Connery is unfortunately one of the weaker ones, which is a pity considering that its setting is in Japan, which is refreshing. However, for a spy film, this is counterproductive: if a spy is supposed to be sent to Japan, then he or she should be Asian, since a White spy like Connery sticks out like a sore thumb, and thus cannot "invisibly" blend in during his investigation without causing suspicion. The screenwriter Roald Dahl (!) was an interesting choice, but it seems the Cold War and spy subgenre is not quite his thing: the story is illogical, filled with sloppy action sequences, where rarely something connects as a whole. Take for instance the opening act: the rocket that "swallows" the NASA spacecraft seems today almost like something that came out of an "Austin Powers" film, whereas if MI6 wanted to feign Bond's death, why was there a need to use actors to play out soldiers who ostensibly shoot him in bed? Why not simply skip that, send Bond in a coffin in the sea, and just spread the story that he was shot? There were no witnesses, anyway. Some of the "macho" cliches aged badly, as well: Bond is in bed with a Chinese woman, and asks her a cringeworthy question ("Why do Chinese girls taste different from other girls?"), or the weird moment where Tanaka orders his women to wash Bond, telling him that "in Japan, men come before women", which is embarrassing. The fake metal water on a volcano, which is a rooftop for the secret base, is also laughable. However, at least Blofeld's appearance of a bald villain in a grey suit, holding a cat, was inspiration for Dr. Evil, while Akiko Wakabayashi is a beautiful, underrated actress whose charm graces the screen.

Grade:+

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Elf

Elf; fantasy comedy, USA, 2003; D: Jon Favreau, S: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen, Daniel Tay, Bob Newhart, Ed Asner, Peter Dinklage

Buddy is a human who grew up living on North Pole, thinking he is one of Santa Claus' elves. One day, upon discovering the truth, Buddy sets out to meet his real father, Walter Hobbs, a publisher in New York. Upon arriving there, Buddy causes chaos, and Walter is surprised that the DNA test confirms he is Buddy's father. Walter introduces Buddy to his wife, Emily, and 12-year old son Michael. Buddy becomes friends with Jovie, a worker in a store. When Buddy accidentally calls a short writer, Miles Finch, an elf, it ruins a business agreement, causing Walter to throw Buddy out of his life. However, Buddy and Michael manage to ignite the Christmas spirit on Christmas, giving power of Santa's sleigh. Publishing Buddy's story, Walter achieves a bestseller.

Even though it was received better than the majority of the rest of his films, "Elf" is pretty much just a gentler version of a Will Ferrell comedy, meaning it is a "hit-or-miss" affair: some jokes work, some don't. And one cannot expect anything more than that. However, even though an untypical movie for him, the director Jon Favreau delivered a fun little comedy with several burlesque moments, refusing it to go into the stupid-detrimental territory of some of Ferrell's worst comedies without any criteria, whereas James Caan is neat in the rare comedy role of Walter, Buddy's dad. The best jokes arrive swiftly, such as the crazy sequence where Buddy is suspicious of an actor playing Santa Claus in a store, and tells him: "You sit on a throne of lies." But there is a major problem: with his 5-minute guest appearance as writer Miles Finch, Peter Dinklage wipes the floor with Ferrell. It is because Dinklage actually has class and dignity in a comedy, while Farrell hasn't. The said sequence is the highlight of the film, from the moment Finch is introduced as a writer who has "more classics than Dr. Seuss", through his entrance where the elevator door opens but he is not visible above the desk, up to his feisty response to Buddy who called him an "elf" ("Hey, jackweed, I get more action in a week than you've had in your entire life. I've got houses in L.A., Paris and Vail. In each one, a 70 inch plasma screen. So I suggest you wipe that stupid smile off your face before I come over there and smack it off!"). The finale is a mess, with an obligatory, tiresome "Christmas spirit" message shoehorned in, yet overall, "Elf" has just enough charm and innocent energy that it works, since the viewers are willing to forgive its weaker moments to enjoy in its stronger points.

Grade:++

Friday, December 25, 2020

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas

Kimi no suizô o tabeta; animated drama, Japan, 2018; D: Shinichiro Ushijima, S: Lynn, Mahiro Takasugi, Yukiyo Fujii

Sakura (17) has a lot of plans in life, but little time: she has been diagnosed with a terminal illness regarding her pancreas. When her classmate Haruki goes to a hospital after an appendix removal, he finds Sakura's diary and reads about her disease. Sakura refuses to tell anyone from the class about it, and wants to spend her last few months alive with Haruki helping her do all the things she always wanted. He accepts, even though he is a loner and only reads novels. They spend the time in a restaurant, traveling with a train to a different city, spending the night in a hotel, playing video games... Sakura's friend Kyoko does not understand why she is absent so often. Unexpectedly, Sakura is killed in a criminal attack on the street. Haruki changes and asks Kyoko to be his friend. 

Yoru Sumino's deeply moving story about a girl with a terminal disease who gets a guy to help her achieve her bucket list was adapted into this tender anime that laughs, saddens, terrifies, devastates, rebuilds, questions and makes the viewers think about life, death, lost chances, purpose and meaning of existence on Earth, whereas its probably most impressive act is how the director Shinichiro Ushijima manages to make even the most seemingly routine, normal or ordinary sequences seem to have much more of a value later on, in retrospect, when the storyline makes a full circle. The tragic heroine Sakura refuses to be a typical melodramatic cliche of a victim, and is instead a fascinatingly happy and cheerful person, refusing to tell anyone about her illness except Haruki, with a stand-out monologue she has that rejects isolationism and embraces people who give each other meaning: "If you are always alone, how can you know if you even exist? I think the relationships we have with other people are what shows that we are truly alive in this world. My heart only exists because of all the people in my life right now." Two sequences are masterful: the first one is when the two protagonists have to spend a night in a hotel, and Sakura challenges Haruki to truth or dare, but when he chooses dare, she orders him to sleep in the same bed. The other is the dramatic sequence in her room, where she suddenly grabs him from behind and implies she wants to experience "something naughty" before she dies, and the lighting changes from bright to dark-moody in this corner where they are now. Remarkably, the story ends with a second conclusion than expected, the one focusing on Haruki and his change from a loner who is only interested in novels to someone who truly decides to embrace life to the fullest and form new relations with people. Despite a tragic story, "I Want to Eat Your Pancreas" is a film that turns into a celebration of life: Ushijima achieved a small "home run" for anime.

Grade:+++

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Deadly Games

3615 code Père Noël; thriller, France, 1989; D: René Manzor, S: Alain Lalanne, Patrick Floersheim, Louis Ducreux, Brigitte Fossey  

The 24 December. Rambo fan and child prodigy Thomas (10) lives with his widowed mother Julie and grandpa in a secluded mansion. Since Julie is a manager in a shopping store, she has to work overtime for all the customers who buy presents before Christmas, but a shady criminal is hired to play Santa Claus, and fired for slapping a girl. He overhears that a shipment is headed towards Julie’s house, and thus kills the driver and enters into the mansion through the chimney. The evil Santa Claus attacks Thomas and grandpa, who are hiding in the corridors and set booby-traps for the intruder. After a long cat and mouse chase, the evil Santa Claus is shot and killed, while Julie comforts Thomas.  

Home Alone” as a dark thriller—this peculiar French cult extravaganza takes the concept of Santa Clause entering a house and turns it into its complete, black opposite, the one of a 10-year old kid Thomas having to set up traps to try to defend his home from a siege of a psychotic burglar on Christmas eve. The director and writer Rene Manzor adorns the film with a great visual style, ranging from the aesthetic blue-filter cinematography up to unusual camera angles and camera drives, to create a creepy, but cozy mood, neatly located in an isolated mansion in a forest during the night, and its design is strange itself (there is a maze and even a basement with a rope bridge hanging over a bunch of toys), giving it even a surreal touch. Its biggest flaw is the vague motivation of the villain: is his goal to rob the mansion? Or to kill the kid? Or just to scare him? The problem is, it is never established what he truly covets, and thus they had to resort to the old cliche that the antagonist is just mad whenever the authors write themselves into a corner. For instance, the criminal Santa Claus sends the toy train with dynamite driving back, heading towards the knight armor in which grandpa is hiding, so Thomas runs to stop it, but the criminal tackles the kid and throws him on the floor. The villain has the kid. But what happens next is unclear and confusing: the kid just stands up and runs away, while the villain just remains lying there, looking at the toy train. This makes no sense. In another sequence, the evil Santa Claus grabs the kid by the neck from an ambush. Game over, again. But then, the villain just releases the kid (?), and tells him it is his turn to play hide and seek. These inconsistencies greatly disrupt the suspense, giving cheap escapes for the kid which diminish the danger. Several awkward editing choices also strain the narrative (Thomas ignites a fire in front of the villain, but then the sequence abruptly ends, instead of showing what happens next). Nonetheless, “Deadly Games” shows a better French attempt at imitating American-style commercial movies.   

Grade:++

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Play It Again, Sam

Play It Again, Sam; comedy, USA, 1972; D: Herbert Ross, S: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Jerry Lacy, Susan Anspach

San Francisco. Movie geek Allan is shocked when his wife Nancy files for divorce and leaves him. Allan's friends, couple Dick and Linda, try to save him from depression by arranging several dates for him, but none of the women like him. Allan is also a huge fan of "Casablanca" and has Humphrey Bogart as an imaginary friend who gives him love advice. When Dick leaves the city, Allan cannot resist but to fall for Linda, and the two land in bed. When Dick returns and suspects Linda had an affair, Allan goes to meet her at the airport and re-creates the ending in "Casablanca", telling Linda to board the plane with Dick.

Cinema heroes as a form of self-help for people: this early Woody Allen film—untypically directed by someone else, Herbert Ross, not by Allen himself; and set in San Francisco, not in Allen's "bastion" New York—is a funny little comedy with a prototype of the author's future (more dramatic) films, encompassing already some of his frequent themes, from an isolated intellectual, neurotic behaviors in urban life and the difficulty of ugly people trying to date and find a love life. Similarly like "Jojo Rabbit", "Play It Again, Sam" also has the idea of a protagonist talking with an imaginary authority figure for advice, here a more positive one, the one of Humphrey Bogart from "Casablanca", while Allan also has an imaginary vision of his ex-wife Nancy nagging him occasionally. This culminates in one howlingly funny moment that is comedy gold: Bogart is sitting next to Allan, and giving him advice on how to seduce Linda on the couch, more and more, with compliments ("You're uncommonly beautiful."), but just as Allan is about to kiss Linda, his imaginary version of his ex-wife shows up, holding a gun, and says: "I warned you to stay away from my ex-husband!", and shoots Bogart! Ross is better at mise-en-scene than Allen is when directing, relying more on moving camera, since Allen is more of a writer than a director, yet the latter's wacky dialogues are sometimes bound to cause at least a chuckle: in one of them, after having a date in an "undergournd" bar, two punks start following Allan and his date, and one thug even grabs Allan by the neck, causing a protest ("Your tattoo's coming off on my neck."). While not quite thought out to the fullest, especially in the rather incomplete ending, this film still has a lot going for it, if it is the viewers' cup of tea.

Grade:+++

Saturday, December 19, 2020

The Bad News Bears


The Bad News Bears; sports comedy, USA, 1976; D: Michael Ritchie, S: Walter Matthau, Vic Morrow, Chris Barnes, Tatum O'Neal, Jackie Earle Haley

The golden days of baseball trainer Buttermaker must be behind him when he has to accept training the the Bears, a team consisting of mostly 10-year old kids. They are terrible and lose their first baseball game. The alcoholic Buttermaker thus recruits Amanda, the 12-year old daughter of his ex-girlfriend, to help boost the Bears. This indeed helps, and the Bears start getting better, while Amanda also starts hanging around the rebellious boy Kelly who drives a Harley-Davidson. During a major game, Buttermaker spots that the opposing trainer Roy is too harsh towards his team, so Buttermaker allows even for weaker players to play and participate, preferring this over winning under any cost. The Bears thus get the 2nd place.

The 1st installment of the popular trilogy, "The Bad News Bears" are a rather fun little film celebrating friendship and comradery over winning under any cost. It gets the maximum out of Walter Matthau, who works as a grouchy trainer with several cynical lines ("Now get back to the stands before I shave off half your mustache and shove it up your left nostril!"), while a close second is the very good Tatum O'Neal as the "tough" girl Amanda ("I know an 11-year-old girl who is already on the pill."), though the rest of the kids in the team are rather bland and are not able to keep up with them. The parents reluctantly allowed their kids to the cinemas due to the too much cussing of the Bears team, yet a bigger problem is that a fair share of the storyline feels rather improvised and too "loose" instead of more tight and with more inspiration. Too much baseball, too little comedy, but still and overall fun film: a small home run for the director Michael Ritchie.

Grade:++

Thursday, December 17, 2020

KonoSuba: God's Blessing on this Wonderful World! Legend of Crimson

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! Kurenai Densetsu; animated fantasy comedy, Japan, 2019; D: Takaomi Kanasaki, S: Jun Fukushima, Sora Amamiya, Rie Takahashi, Aki Toyosaki, Ai Kayano
Kazuma, a teenager transported to a fantasy world, and his women friends with magical powers—goddess Aqua; wizard Megumin; Yunyun; Darkness; Wiz—get the assignment to travel to a village and save it from attacks by demon king’s general, in this case Sylvia. They settle at Megumin’s house where her parents question Kazuma if he is in a relationship with their daughter. Kazuma even sleeps in bed with Megumin in her room for the night. Using their powers, they stop the demon attack and eliminate Sylvia.  

The feature length anime film of the popular fantasy anime series “Konosuba” is a pure escapist comedy extravaganza that can be enjoyed the most if one does not take it too seriously. Its low-points are, predictably, when it comes dangerously close to those ‘harem’ clichees which are beyond parody and thus cannot be salvaged through humor, yet it mostly manages to avoid them since it establishes that the teenage guy Kazuma would actually love to start a relationship with one of the girls around him—but they are not that interested. The opening act starts off very good: Yunyun storms a tavern, goes to Kazuma’s table and announces in front of everyone: “I want to have a baby with you!” It turns out Yunyun was given a written prophecy telling her that their child will defeat the demon king in the future, and thus she “has to do it”. Kazuma is content with that, and later on even drops his pants in a room, saying: “Do you want me to do it here and now?” However, the other girls quickly discover that the prophecy was just a joke text written by a prankster, shaming Yunyun, while one girl pulls Kazuma’s pants back up - angering him (“My one big break and you girls ruin it!”). In another comical moment, Kazuma is supposed to attack the 7ft tall, buxom demon leader Sylvia, but she submerges his head into her giant cleavage, “converting” him to her side, as he turns around and places both of his hands on her bra above his shoulder, defying now his previous allies. Unfortunately, the second half of the film runs out of ideas, since just a lineup of silly scenes can only go so far, and is not a good of a substitute for a well thought out joke with a point, whereas the obligatory action finale is tiresome, exhausting the attention span of the viewers who have “switched off” by that time. Colorful, wacky and fun patchwork, yet it still does not have that punch of greatness that adorned anime in their hay days.  

Grade:++

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Fullmetal Alchemist

Hagane no Renkinjutsushi; animated fantasy series, Japan, 2003, D: Seiji Mizushima, S: Romi Park, Rie Kugimiya, Toru Ohkawa, Yuuko Satou, Junichi Suwabe, Hidekatsu Shibata, Ryotaru Okiayu  



  In an alternate 19th century world, teenage brothers Edward and Alphonse “Al” Elric have burned their house down and are searching for the philosopher’s stone in order to get back their human bodies. Edward lost half and Al all of his body after they tried to use alchemy to revive their dead mother, so Edward now has a robotic arm and leg, whereas Al is a metallic armor. Alchemist Roy Mustang persuades them to become official state alchemists for the Army. Their country perpetrated the Ishbal massacre when the traditional local populace considered alchemy blasphemous and declared independence. The survivor, Scar, became a murderer who is killing alchemist out of revenge. Edward discovers that people sentenced to death by the Army were actually sacrificed in secret experiments in order to create the philosopher’s stone. However, each attempt at reviving the dead creates Homunculi, artificial humanoids which have secretly installed their representatives among the military high commanders. The Homunuculi are commanded by Dante, an ancient alchemist who continuously transported her own mind into new, younger bodies for over 400 years, prolonging her own existence, and wants the philosopher’s stone to switch into the body of a girl called Rose. Dante was the lover of Hohenheim, Edward and Al's father who mysteriously disappeared because his body started decaying after so many rejuvenations. Dante is defeated and killed, while Edward sacrifices his life to give Al's body back. Edward is in exchange transformed to Munich in the early 20th century Earth, together with Hohenheim.

The first anime adaptation of “Fullmetal Alchemist” is an intriguing enterprise: flawed and overstretched with its 51 episodes, but with several incredible moments of awe. A few creative ideas are used to exploit the potentials of the concept in which Edward can draw an alchemy sign on an object and thus reconfigure it through alchemy into something different. In one of them, he draws the sign on a train and thus “conjures up” a cannon on top of it, which he mounts and uses against the enemies who tried to kidnap the train. He uses the trick in several other clever ways, too: by touching the floor, he conjures up prison bars which trap a fleeing burglar, or draws the sign when he is chained by a serial killer, thereby breaking the chain and freeing himself. The first 12 episodes are fillers, just random adventures Ed and Al encounter on their journey, but starting from episode 13 onwards, the story finally aligns into an overarching narrative with a clear guideline that leads somewhere. Episode 27 should also be noted for a virtuoso moment: teacher Izumi is holding a book in her hand, but when Edward charges for an attack, she throws the book up in the sky, grabs Edward’s hand and catapults him away, while the book falls back into Izumi’s hand—and Edward falls down parallely in the bushes in the background. Now that is style. Some melodramatic moments fare less, including the said episode: it contains a syrupy subplot or a pregnant cat that was scared by a dog, and thus fled on the rooftop of a house (!) to give birth there, but ultimately died from straining itself too much of all the climbing. A girl wants Izumi to revive the cat with alchemy, but the latter informs her that it is not possible. The message is that people should be mature and accept harsh reality, instead of trying to “cheat” and find easy anwsers, but it is presented through such a ludicrous, contrived parable of a pregnant cat that it kind of nullifies it, unable to be realistic.   

The story features a fascinating socio-political essay on military rule, presented through the dark subplot of the Ishbal massacre perpetrated in order to block its independence and keep them as their colony, even including a false flag operation to invent a casus belli, which is very close to reality—for instance, it is almost identical to what Kremlin did to Chechnya when it declared independence, as well. Comedy episode 37 surprises as a refreshing “intruder” (the Army finds a bone and concludes that the skeleton of a murdered soldier is buried under ground, but it all leads to a hilarious reveal when they discover a dog was just burying its bones there), but, congruent to its own motto of equal balance, this anime also has serious moments to counterbalance humor which are on the other, dark spectrum of emotions, some of which are tragic, bloody or downright unsettling. For instance, Marta hides inside inside Al’s armor, but is killed when the military commander Bradley stabs through the armor with his sword, leaving only blood dripping down from Al. A clever set-up is also established: in a couple of episodes, Scar is seen randomly plowing the ground with a stone. At first, it is unknown why he is doing that. Until, in episode 42, it is revealed that he plowed a giant alchemy sign around an entire city, evacuated it, and then, when thousands of soldiers invaded it, used alchemy to sacrifice all of them to create the philosopher's stone—this is Scar's one giant checkmate. All this is strung up to illustrate several themes about life in the grand finale, from Frankenstein-style fear of death, trying to overcome fatalism, mankind’s struggle to gain power through enlightenment (evident even in Edward’s discovery of the true nature of his father), up to the bitter realization that for every victory something else must be lost and sacrificed as a compensation. There are several surprises in the story, but the viewers will not see the four (!) plot twists coming until they are right in front of them. “Fullmetal Alchemist” has that unique tenacity of anime: it has dozens of flaws, yet its one main virtue—it is good—is so strong and all-encompassing that nothing else matters.   

Grade:+++

Monday, December 7, 2020

The Intruder

The Intruder; drama, USA, 1962, D: Roger Corman, S: William Shatner, Frank Maxwell, Beverly Lunsford, Robert Emhardt  

The secretive Adam Kramer arrives to a small Southern town. He quickly starts rallying White followers who are opposed to Black people attending school, and uses hate speech to demand racial segregation. He is opposed by intellectual newspaper editor Tom, who is attacked by a mob, leaving him in an injury where he loses an eye. Kramer seduces the wife of a certain Griffin, and persuades Tom’s daughter Ella to feign she was raped by a Black student, Joe. A mob is about to lynch Joe, but then Griffin convinces Ella to tell the truth. The mob then abandons Kramer.  

An intruder of sorts among his opus, this film showed the director Roger Corman in a different, more dramatic edition, featuring the best performance in the career of actor William Shatner, here in the uncharacteristic role of schemer Adam Kramer. Even though at first it may appear as one of those calculative ‘social issues’ films comprised only out of preachy messages, “The Intruder” is a surprisingly mature, sophisticated and thoughtful psychological drama that has a lot going for it, and seems just as relevant today as during its premiere. The most surprising analysis is that of its main antagonist Kramer: even though he is using hate speech to promote racial segregation, and all the transparent clichees that go with it (scarewords such as “Communists”, “Jews” and “Negroes” are used to incite the masses), Kramer is ironically not even racist himself, but is only using hate insofar to attract followers and gain power as a leader, using it only to promote his own ego, his illusion of self-importance. Other characters, such as Griffin, see right through him (“You're gutless, Adam, that's why you are doing this, to prove to yourself that you are not!”; "You began losing your grip on those people the minute you got it!"). The way this hate-business is dismantled is fascinating, especially in the final scene which shows that these kind of populist ideologies are chaotic and cannot have a stable, permanent value. The finale is kind of lukewarm and without a clear direction where this is all heading, but the storyline unfolds smoothly and elegantly, posing some thought provoking questions, and transforming into one of the underrated movies of the 60s.  

Grade:+++

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Freaky

Freaky; horror comedy, USA, 2020; D: Christopher Landon, S: Kathryn Newton, Vince Vaughn, Katie Finneran, Celeste O'Connor, Misha Osherovich, Melissa Collazo, Alan Ruck

A serial killer left an entire town in a state of emergency after killing four teenagers. When he takes an old Aztec dagger and attacks teenage girl Millie, a strange phenomen happens and the two swap their bodies. The next morning, the killer wakes up inside Millie's body and starts killing in her high school, while Millie wakes up in the killer's body, yet manages to persuade her friends Nyla and Josh about the body swap, as well as her crush, Booker. They have 24 hours to use the dagger to change their bodies back, or the change will stay permanent. They succeed and return Millie's mind back in her body. When the killer strikes again at her house, Millie kills him, with the help of her mum and sister.

"Friday the 13th" meets "Freaky Friday"—this strange syncretism of 'hard core' slasher horror and body-switch comedy works only in the latter, but this said latter part is sadly lesser used in the story. Congruently, the two leading actors only work when they are playing their good counterpart, and not their serial killer counterpart—but Vince Vaughn is such a good comedian that he almost steals the show as the feminine Millie stuck in the body of the male killer, with a few delicious examples of humorous body language, such as when he imitates the cheerleader dance to persuade the two high school friends Nyle and Josh to identify "her", or the hilarious kiss with Booker. Unfortunately, the director Christopher Landon gets stuck in the mud of splatter violence and senseless horror clichees, such as the disgusting sequence where Millie "the killer" executes her teacher by slicing his entire body in half on a saw mill, which ruins "Freaky" right from the start. It is a pity, since more finesse and sophistication could have made a much better film out of this interesting concept. However, one stand-out sequence is such a surprising example of stylistic perfection that it has to be seen, even isolated: it is the genius slow-motion tracking shot of a "transformed" new Millie walking cool towards her high school, while the cheerleaders are doing a salto, a human pyramide or waving their flags around her, with the song "Que Sera Sera" playing until it slows down to a standstill, in a moment of sheer superiority and energy compared to the entire rest of the film.

Grade:+

Monday, November 30, 2020

Dredd

Dredd; science-fiction action thriller, UK / South Africa / USA, 2012; D: Pete Travis, S: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Wood Harris, Lena Headey, Rachel Wood

In the future, the police sends Judges who arrest and sentence criminals, but can only cover 6% of all the crimes reported. Judge Dredd gets a new partner, Cassandra Anderson, a psychic, and they both get the assignment to investigate the murder of three people who were thrown from the top of Peach Trees, a huge apartment building. They arrest criminal Kay, but the building is run by drug dealer Ma-Ma, an ex-prostitute, who shuts down the entire building and orders all the inhabitants to attack and kill Dredd and Anderson. The two police enforcers thus climb with Kay floor by floor, in order to get to Ma-Ma on the top of the 200-storey building. Kay is sought after since he can testify that Ma-Ma is producing the new drug, "Slo-Mo". In the end, Dredd and Anderson manage to reach the top and throw Ma-Ma from the building, killing her.

This second live action film adaptation of the comic-books "Judge Dredd" is regarded as better than the 1st one directed by D. Cannon in '95—a tight storyline, fast pace and a concise direction by Pete Travis are the main virtues of this 'hard-boiled' action flick. "Dredd" is very violent and brutal at times (the slow-motion sequence of Dredd shooting a criminal through its cheeks; people thrown from the top of the building and forced to experience their death in slow-motion due to the drug "Slo-Mo" that makes their brain slow down), which undermines and narrows its scope, yet the main protagonist is something like a variation of Robocop—he embodies the rule of law and follows it to the fullest, treating pacifist people in a peaceful way, and violent people in a violent way, each the way they deserve. In the opening act, a criminal takes a woman as a hostage and expects to use her as a human shield to escape, but Dredd shows his characteristic integrity when he agrees to have a negotiation, saying: "Release the hostage, unharmed, and I guarantee you a sentence of life in an iso-cube, without parole". The criminal is angry at that remark: "That's the deal you're offering?", but Dredd assures him: "If you do not comply, the sentence is death." Karb Urban is effective as Dredd, though he never takes his helmet off, and Olivia Thirlby is excellent as the 'tough' police girl Anderson who never succumbs to the role of a victim. The main villain is a woman, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), giving a refreshing feminist touch. The set-up of Dredd and Anderson climbing up in a sealed-off apartment building is reminiscent of the thriller "The Raid", giving a neat suspense-rush. It is sad that the movie lacks humor, such as in the delicious sequence where a wounded Dredd says "Wait!" to his nemesis, and is a tad too 'hard core' at times, yet "Dredd" offers enough to satisfy action fans.

Grade:++

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Bums and Princesses (Season 4)

Bitange i princeze; comedy series, Croatia, 2008; D: Goran Kulenović, S: Rene Bitorajac, Hrvoje Kečkeš, Mila Elegović, Tarik Filipović, Nataša Dangubić, Predrag Vusović, Mile Kekin, Alka Vuica

Due to Teo's relationship with the criminal girlfriend Adriana, all his friends land in prison, too: Robi, Irena, Kazo, Lucija and the Boss. Luckily, they are all released. Since Adriana serves a prison sentence, she gives birth and thus Teo has to take care of their baby alone, much to dismay of the jealous Lucija, who is secretly in love with him. Kazo starts a relationship with an urologist, but is insecure since she sees so many bigger penises every day. The Boss hires Irena and Kazo to work in his marketing Agency, where they receive strange requests from customers: from a celebrity woman who wants them to make a commercial proving she is not a man; sponsors wanting to film a commercial about Croatia's accession into the EU; conservative men from the Sinj area... In the meantime, Teo secretly works as a secret agent, hunting for small time criminals.

Season 4 of "Bums and Princesses", the popular Croatian version of "Friends", doesn't quite hold up—it has one genius episode of comedy perfection, 4.10; and five good ones: 4.16, 4.17, 4.22, 4.23 and 4.24; yet in order to get to those good ones, the viewers have to pave their way through 18 lackluster, schematic and inept episodes full of too much empty walk and corny gags. It is a pity, but the first nine episodes of season 4 are underwhelming, failing to conjure up some good jokes. Teo's misadventures as a secret agent do not lead to much and fall flat. The subplot involving Robi working as a butler for a count in a castle, where Teo feared that the count wants to restore Austria-Hungary, but is in reality just preparing to start a career as a folk singer, also disappoints. Excellent actor Hrvoje Keckes gives a surprisingly energetic performance as the clumsy movie buff Kazo, and is able to say even the most mundane lines with enthusiasm, but is equally as limited by the thin storyline. One miniscule exemption is episode 4.3 which features three hooligans, fans of association football who storm into Kazo's apartment, even though he doesn't know them, but surprise in a plot twist when two of the them later turn out to be police officers in disguise and arrest a criminal at Kazo's Agency—leaving even the third hooligan bewildered, puzzled that they were all "faking it" all the time. However, the first truly "juicy" part does not show up all until the legendary episode 4.10, which is funnier than all previous nine episodes combined.

Episode 4.10 is presented as a series of short TV commercials of the Agency, and all of them end on a non sequitur when the viewers find out what product or service they are promoting. In one clip, Mile Kekin wants to pay at a shopping store with a giant, 3 ft long credit card, but the clerk declines it. When a police officer asks for Mile's identification, Mile pulls out an equally oversized ID, causing the policeman to lose his patience and decide to arrest him. But just as the policeman wants to book him, the handcuffs suddenly shrink into miniscule size compared to Mile's hands. The policeman just looks at the handcuffs in confusion, until the commercial ends with: "Prepare yourself for new perspectives: EU! Coming soon!" In another clip, Kazo plays a caricature man who discovers that his neighbor, played by Robi, is driver's license counterfeiter, and blackmails him into fabricating one, too, which leads to the slogan: "You can do it that way, but you can also do it legally! Car driving school "Tires"!" But the comedy height is the clip where Kazo enters a porn store and is relaxed when he orders eatable underwear, a vibrator ("Cockmaster soft or Long-John?" - "Whatever. The black one." - "Long-John Black."), and a porn DVD, but stutters when he makes one last request—a car map of Croatia. Upon getting it, Kazo rushes to enter a car with Robi, showing him how he bought the map ("The guy didn't suspect anything." - "Yes! Bjelovar, here we come!"). A similar gag is repeated when Kazo enters a brothel run by Mile, but is only interested in the "illegal" tour guides to Bjelovar ("Bjelovar. The best hidden secret of the Mediterranean") . All the actors have a field day in this episode, which has a staggering level of humorous inspiration. No further episode reaches that creative zenith, though another good one is 4.22 which features a similar style of the crew trying to create a TV clip for promoting the EU, with Irena and Robi bickering over whether to talk about the Croatian Miss Universe or football players ("Who cares about some guys chasing after a skin bubble?"), until Kazo delivers a black-and-white art-film clip in which Teo laments how Croatia "gave so much to Europe" only for him to now stand with other Balkan people in line at the borders. TV host Krešimir Mišak also has a neat cameo in episode 4.23. While it has sadly too much lame jokes, "Bums and Princesses" still have enough good jokes even in season 4 to satisfy their comedy fans.

Grade:++

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Tomorrow Never Dies

Tomorrow Never Dies; action, UK / USA, 1997; D: Roger Spottiswoode, S: Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce, Teri Hatcher, Judi Dench, Joe Don Baker, Ricky Jay, Götz Otto

The British MI6 discovers a secret weapon's bazaar for terrorists and fires a missile at them, but right then, the transmission discovers a nuclear missile among the weapons. Luckily, James Bond is on terrain, steals the fighter jet with the nuclear weapon and thus avoids a disaster. However, an even bigger problem is manifesting: Elliot Carver, a media mogul, orchestrates an attack on a British frigate after it distorted their GPS signal and led them off-course in the South China Sea. Carver then blames the Chinese Army and publishes the story in his newspaper "Media". Britain and China are on the brink of war; Carver plans to get broadcast rights in China for the next 100 years when his general takes over China, so Bond enters the game. Carver does not shy away from even killing his wife, Bond's ex-girlfriend, but the British agent teams up with the female Chinese spy Wai Lin and they together sink Carver's ship in the sea, killing him.

The 18th instalment of the "assembly line" spy franchize about James Bond easily grossed finely at the box office and is the best film starring Pierce Brosnan as 007. Since it is predictable that Bond will survive all the ostensibly "dangerous" situations and traps thrown at him at the end of the day anyway (in order to get another sequel), a big plus point is that a lot of the story turned towards satire. This way the villain, Carver (a cynical Jonathan Pryce), is trying to create his own news for his tabloid "Tomorrow" ("The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success!", he claims), and even shape the events in the process. This is neatly summed up in the scene where Carver is typing the headlines with gusto: he writes "British Sailors Killed", but then deletes the last word and uses a more sensationalistic title: "British Sailors Murdered". Carver even teases Bond when he presents him with an obituary on the screen prepared in advance: "Commander James Bond Dead". The choreography of the action sequences are excellent (including the sly chase sequence where Bond is driving the car over a remote control from his back seat, and thus at one point exits and allows the car to jump from the top of the building); Roger Spottiswoode's direction is solid; a few ideas are amusing (Bond and Lin slowly descend down from the top of a building by holding on to a giant banner of Carver, thereby tearing his poster face through the middle); whereas Michelle Yeoh is wonderfully charming, even overshadowing Teri Hatcher, which are the main virtues.

Grade:++

Monday, November 16, 2020

Goldeneye

Goldeneye; action, UK / USA, 1995; D: Martin Campbell, S: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Joe Don Baker, Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane, Tchéky Karyo

Alec Trevelyan, whose parents were survivors of the Stalinist massacre of Cossacks who were repatriated by the British soldiers to the Soviet Union after World War II, wants to take revenge on the British. He thus teams up with Xenia Onatopp, Russian General Ourumov and computer hacker Boris and takes control of the Goldeneye, a spy satellite in order to fire a laser on London, and thereby also hide his theft of money from the Bank of England. However, MI6 sends their trustworthy spy 007, James Bond, who teams up with Natalya, a survivor of Trebelyan’s raid on a Russian base, and manages to stop the evil plan.  

After a disappointing commercial success with “Licence to Kill”, it took a long wait of six years until the producers decided to continue the James Bond film series with this 17th installment, and this time, they did not choose wrong: “Goldeneye” proved to be a blockbuster. With its convoluted storyline and unconvincing motivations of the villain, the film is nothing better than “Licence to Kill”, but marked an improvement on a different front: casting Pierce Brosnan was a stroke of genius, since the charismatic actor gave a fresh kick to the franchise, needed to get it rolling again. “Goldeneye” had the burden of being the 1st James Bond film after the end of the Cold War, the spy era that gave birth to the subgenre, yet it found new ways, new enemies, and even amusing opening credits in which the Communist symbols are dismantled. Several problems still plague the film: it has too many illogical, naive or ridiculous ideas, the biggest one being the same old cliche of writers writing themselves into the corner whenever James Bond is captured by the villains, since they cannot kill him outright but have to concoct far-fetched ploys to eliminate him, which gives him time to escape (in this edition, after the bad guy captures Bond and Natalya, he knocks him unconscious, and the agent wakes up tied with Natalya in a helicopter about to shoot rockets which will return and destroy it, yet, naturally, Bond and Natalya escape via an ejection seat). The film also lacks wit: the small episode featuring Robbie Coltrane almost steals the show and overshadows even Bond with his charm. This is set up already in the dialogue between Bond and agent Wade: “Who is the competition?” - “Ah, an ex-KGB guy. Got a limp on his leg. Name’s Zukovsky.” - “Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky?” - “Yes. You know him?” Bond replies: “I gave him the limp.” The character of Onatopp, the villain woman who gets excitement through violence, is so over-the-top it is laughable. Overall, though, the film has just enough charm and elan to offer solid entertainment. 

Grade:++

Saturday, November 14, 2020

White Balloon

Badkonake sefid; drama, Iran, 1995; D: Jafar Panahi, S: Aida Mohammadkhani, Mohsen Kafili, Fereshteh Sadr Orfani

Tehran. It is Iranian New Year, and the 7-year old girl Razieh wants to buy a new goldfish for herself, but her mother is against it. Her brother Ali persuades mother to give Razieh a 500 toman banknote to buy herself the goldfish, anyway. On her way, Razieh stops at a gathering of people around a snake charmer, who takes her money thinking it is to pay for his act, but since the girl protests, he gives her the banknote back again. At the shop, Razieh realizes that the fish she wants is 200 toman, not 100, and that she lost the banknote again. She and Ali spot the banknote at the bottom of a grate of a closed store. They ask the neighboring clerk to help, but he cannot reach the banknote with a rod. Finally, an Afghan boy selling white balloons uses his stick and a bubble gum to get the banknote, but Razieh and Ali just leave without saying anything.

Jafar Panahi's feature length debut film as a director is a gentle, simple, unobtrusive, touching and honest little film, though he is not able to keep the interest of the viewers to the fullest in the rather overstretched second half. Panahi is the best when he presents small, humorous 'slice-of-life' moments that are small, but somehow have a big impact on the positive impression of the storyline: in one of them, the heroine Razieh wants to buy a goldfish for New Year, but her brother Ali protests because they already have fish in their pond. Razieh replies at that: "You call these goldfish, you haven't seen the others! It's as though they're dancing when they move their fins!" In a neat directorial intervention, their father (who is never seen, but only heard off-screen) hits a bowl she is holding in the pond with a soap, complaining at Ali: "I tell you shampoo and you come back with soap!" Another neat intervention is that the story plays almost in real time: the film's running time is 1 hour and 22 minutes, and in the opening a radio announcer is heard saying: "1 hour and 22 minutes until New Year". This is repeated two more times in the film, the last one being when they say: "44 minutes until New Year", which is congruent with the remaining time of the "White Balloon". Unfortunately, the last 40 minutes are just spent on the two kids sitting above the grate, trying to figure out how to get the banknote under it, which tends to slow the movie down way too much. A 10-minute sequence where a soldier sits to talk to the girl, for instance, leads nowhere and is somewhat boring. Curiously, the film's theme is not about the innocence of the kids, as some thought, but about something else: the inconsiderate nature of society. Throughout the film, Razieh is ignored by her mother, by the snake charmer and by the store owner, all of whom are preoccupied with themselves. This comes full circle when Razieh and Ali themselves just take the help of an Afghan boy and leave him alone without even saying thanks, thereby becoming inconsiderate themselves, signalling how even the weaker ones of the weak are always brushed off on the margins.

Grade:++

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist; drama, USA, 1988, D: Lawrence Kasdan, S: William Hurt, Geena Davis, Kathleen Turner, Amy Wright, Bill Pullman, Ed Begley, Jr.  

Macon writes tourist guides for a living. Following the death of their 12-year old son, his wife Sarah files for divorce. One day, Macon has to leave his dog at a pet hotel, where he becomes friends with employee Muriel. The two start a relationship, but he then finds out Muriel has a little sick son. Feeling overwhelmed, he tries to end the relationship, but Muriel convinces him to continue. When Sarah announces she wants to reconcile, Macon dumps Muriel. At a flight for Paris, he meets Muriel again, who stays in the same hotel and wants contact. Macon sends her away. When Sarah shows up, he realizes he cannot remarry her again and leaves. He takes a taxi and meets a boy who looks like his son. He stops the taxi when he accidentally spots Muriel on the street.  

“The Accidental Tourist” is an intimate, quiet character drama film about a tourist guide writer who likes to travel to different places, but ironically cannot travel to different emotional states outside his life routine in his own hometown. From today’s perspective, the film seems too stiff, schematic and lukewarm at times, achieving a good quality, but barely. The main protagonist Macon is just so passive and placid the story has difficulty engaging the viewers, whereas the script lacks ingenuity. The most charming character is thus Macon’s love interest Muriel, played good by Geena Davis — the best moment is when Macon admits he is broken inside at her doorstep and wants to end their relationship, yet Muriel simply lets him inside to hug and comfort him in private; another fine one is his observation: "This odd woman helped me. She's given me another chance to decide who I am" — but even she is hindered by the underwritten role. At least three plot points are terribly contrived and banal: the sequence where the dog jumps from the stairs on Macon who steps on a laundry kart on wheels and thus falls and breaks his leg; the overlong Thanksgiving sequence of the family debating if a turkey is undercooked; and the convenient way Macon wants to reach after a chord behind a desk but only strains his back and is bedridden. All three could have been either better written or deleted altogether. Some symbolism is understood visually, such as the camera pan from Macon walking on crutches due to his broken leg up to Muriel, to show how she metaphorically became his “crutches” for his broken life following the divorce. This comes full circle near the end, when Macon simply leaves his luggage behind on the street, and his old life as well. Others fare worse, such as Muriel’s sick little son. Director Lawrence Kasdan allowed for too much of the story to go way out of hand at a running time of 120 minutes—especially since a lot of the dialogues are just an ‘empty walk’— but this is an overall nice little film.   

Grade:++

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Battle Royale

Battle Royale; action thriller, Japan, 2000, D: Kinji Fukasaku, S: Aki Maeda, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Taro Yamamoto, Masanobu Ando, Kou Shibasaki, Takeshi Kitano, Chiaki Kuriyama

After the Japanese unemployment rate reached 15%, teenagers massively turned to crime and violence, so the government passed the strict Battle Royale Act, in order to discipline juvenile delinquency: 42 high school students are abducted in a bus, placed with electric collars, given such weapons as guns and knives; and ordered by teacher Kitano to fight and kill each other on an uninhabited island, until only one teenager is left alive. Scores accept the task and murder each other, while the two friends Shuya and Noriko are the only ones refusing to fight, teaming up with Kawada, a guy who survived the last Battle Royale. The three are the last survivors and fake they shot each other since they know of microphones on their collars. When the soldiers go to find their bodies, the three confront and kill Kitano. Kawada dies, but Shuya and Noriko escape on a boat and hide as fugitives in Tokyo.  

The director Kinji Fukasaku’s final film also became his most famous one, "Battle Royale", a bizarre forerunner to "The Hunger Games" and a more darker restructuring of "Assassination Classroom", which depicts a murder tournament of teenagers presented as a harsh lesson on growing up. Today, naturally, with less and less children being born in modern Japan, nobody would ever dream of harming the scarce youth anymore. Several themes emerge from this allegorical storyline: integrity, presented through the teenagers Shuya and Noriko who try to resist the order to kill their classmates, since she even throws the backpack with weapons into the sea; true nature through the observation that during the crisis times people show their true faces and dissolve their facade; anguished adolescents in fear of finding their place in the world of scarcity (the new, young generation has to leave their carefree childhood behind and learn how to fight each other - for the few remaining jobs, for instance); and political messages about how the governments resort to extremism to maintain their authority over civil unrest during crisis times. The movie has some grandiose moments of style which give it momentum: for instance, after each murder, subtitles inform about the name of the deceased and the number of players still alive (“Boy, Kuninobu- dead. 40 to go.”). 

Some are also presented in a refreshingly playful manner (the video in which a cute woman explains the rules of Battle Royale to the teenagers who will fight on the island; two girls on the hill, one waiving a drape while the other speaks over the loudspeaker, and then they change and the other one waives while the first one talks). Anyone wondering why Tarantino picked actress Chiaki Kuriyama for his film “Kill Bill Vol. 1” will understand when seeing her deliver a graceful swang song performance here, in an episode of unexpected humanity: her character Chigusa is seen in a flashback, jogging on the street with yellow exercise clothes, while a guy she has a crush on is driving on a bicycle behind her, and she turns right, whereupon the film delivers an elegant transition cut to Chigusa jogging in a different scene, in the same yellow clothes, but just with an electric collar on her neck, to show that she is back in the dark present. Luckily, “Royale” refuses to sink into splatter violence or sadism, except maybe in the scene where a decapitated head with a granade in its mouth is thrown through the window, and thus most of the action seems almost like cartoon violence. Unfortunately, the 42 teenage characters just come and go, barely having more than 3 minutes of time to do anything before they get killed, which makes them one-dimensional, whereas the ending is anticlimactic and simply no good, because it lacks a point of a conclusion. Let’s be honest, a part of the concept is obviously just of exploitative nature, trying to draw attention through (teenage) violence, but it is still interesting how well made it is at times, nonetheless.  

Grade:++

Monday, November 2, 2020

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great; adventure, USA / Spain, 1956; D: Robert Rossen, S: Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Danielle Darrieux, Fredric March, Barry Jones, Harry Andrews

The life of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC). His father, king Philip II of Macedon, brings Alexander on his campaign to invade and unite all the warring Greek city-states. Alexander is influenced by his mother Olympias, who fears that Philip II will leave his throne to a new heir with his new wife Eurydice, since he divorced Olympias. When Pausanias assassinates Philip II, Alexander is conveniently left as the new king and in charge of the army. In 334 BC Alexander and 30,000 Macedon soldiers cross into Anatolia, where they defeat the Persian army at the battle of Granicus. They liberate the Greek cities along Ionia. After the battle of Issus, the Persian king Darius III flees and is assassinated by his own men. The Achaemenid Empire dissolves and is replaced by Alexander’s empire. In 323 BC, Alexander dies in Babylon from unknown causes, leaving his generals in a scramble for power.  

The American cinema was for some reason always more interested in the era of ancient Rome than in the ancient Hellenistic era, and thus Alexander the Great was the subject of only one US film adaptation in the 20th century, this one from 1956 directed by Robert Rossen—while it took 48 years until another one was made, by O. Stone. As with many history films, this one also struggles from trying to translate the dry events from the past and make them feel genuine, alive to the modern audiences, whereas Richard Burton is an unusual choice to play the title role, equipped with a strange blonde wigg (he is too “burly” to be playing the swift, athletic lad Alexander) though it is an overall very solid film that manages to at least show some episodes from that time. The wars of Alexander were so grand that it would take a 4-hour film, at a minimum, to try to give these events justice, and thus this film spends too much time on its prologue—Alexander does not cross into Anatolia all until 74 minutes into the film. The story also simply lacks pathos, and it shows only three of Alexander’s battles (Chaerona, Granicus, Issus). However, Rossen refused to present Alexander’s life as a hagiography, and was realistic about some of his tyranic treatments, whereas there are some good moments here (Alexander standing on a cliff, promising victories to Zeus the world has not seen yet, while his cape is blown in the wind; when Darius III sends him a golden toy to play with to leave him alone, noting his empire has a lot of gold, Alexander writes him a response: “You shouldn’t have mentioned the gold, because now we will fight twice as hard to get it!”; the quote: “We were outnumbered in everything except courage and discipline”). While a good film, “Alexander the Great” is only a rump version of what this material could have been at its best.    

Grade:++

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Sorcerer

Sorcerer; action road movie, USA, 1977, D: William Friedkin, S: Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou, Ramon Bieri 

Various criminals and felons from different parts of the world — Nilo, wanted in Veracruz for assassinations; Kassem, wanted in Jerusalem for bombing; Victor, wanted in Paris for fraud; and Scanlon, wanted in New Jersey for robbing a church and shooting a priest — find refuge in a desolate village somewhere in Latin America. In order to get a large sum of money, they accept a job of driving two trucks full of nitroglycerin 200 miles through the jungle to extinguish a fire at an oil rig. On their journey, they reach numerous obstacles, until only Scanlon brings a box of nitroglycerin to the destination, on foot. He is rewarded, but a bounty hunter awaits him outside a bar.  

The problem with remakes is that even those good ones lack the “surprise factor” for the viewers initiated with the original. William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” is one of those good remakes that would otherwise get more recognition had they not been eclipsed by Clouzot’s timeless classic “The Wages of Fear”, which draws inescapable comparisons, but is even today a wonder to look at, since it is at times almost an “impossible” movie extravaganza that was still made, nonetheless. Friedkin’s pace is more dynamic and direct than Clouzot’s, establishing the set-up quickly, and he really films in a jungle while Clouzot filmed in the safety of the French South — whereas he relies more on visuals than on dialogues, yet the four characters are still somewhat underdeveloped and thin. Just like in the original, this film also depicts the two truck drivers embarking on an allegorical road movie, on a long journey through the horrors of life, where the people are just toys in the game of fate, chance and destiny. Not all of the new additions work — for instance, the sequence where a native Indian is running in front of the truck and suddenly sits down is not that scary or suspenseful. However, at least one sequence is equivalent to Clouzot’s original intensity, the famed 10-minute one where the two trucks have to slowly go over a deteriorating bridge during strong rain, which is so shaky it rocks left and right — it is insanity watching it, depicting Friedkin’s audacity and sheer creative will in following his artistic vision, equal to Herzog’s in “Fitzcarraldo”. Wild and raw, using surreal images (a helicopter flying over a jungle hill towards a pillar of smoke coming from an oil rig on fire), this film ilustriously depicts the long struggle between two forces: the force of a cruel, destructive world, and the force of life that refuses to wither in order to live on.   

Grade:++

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

The Legend of Santa

The Legend of Santa; animated silent short, USA, 2020; D: Andrew de Burgh

In 330 AD, in Anatolia during the Roman Empire, bishop Saint Nicholas spots a girl sitting on the streets and gives her a wooden doll as a gift. Her happiness inspires him to open up a shop to make toys to give as a present to kids.

"The Legend of Santa" is a quiet, gentle and touching little animated short film without any dialogues, aimed at telling its story only visually, using opulent watercolor-style animation to give the film a dreamy, innocent look. Its central theme about awakened compassion dwells on some timeless efforts to improve life through little things in history, on what every individual is able to do what is in his or her power. Despite its compact running time of 6 minutes, the director Andrew de Burgh is able to achieve an optimistic vision of humanity, and make the transitions of time an interesting symbol for the protagonist's path to the best version of himself.

Grade:+++

Monday, October 26, 2020

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm; black comedy / satire / mockumentary, USA, 2020; D: Jason Woliner, S: Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova, Manuel Vieru, Jerry Holleman, Jim Russell, Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Hanks

Kazakh reporter Borat is summoned back from retirement to travel again to USA in order to give American President Donald Trump a gift, so that Kazakh politicians would be recognized as strongmen by America. However, instead of the planned gift, a monkey, Borat finds his 15-year old daughter Tutar smuggled herself in the package. Borat has Tutar undergo a beauty treatment so that he can give her to Mike Pence as a bride. When that fails, Tutar becomes a feminist and wants to be equal to men, so she becomes a reporter herself. It also turns out Borat was infected by the Covid-19 virus by Kazakh scientists, and thus caused the pandemic in the US.  

In “Borat 2”, Sacha Baron Cohen continues with his Poe’s Law-style of comedy inversion, where he ostensibly fully embraces a party, but is in reality holding a giant mirror to Donald Trump’s (Bible Belt) America, just as “Borat” was holding a mirror to George W. Bush’s America where conservatism became an ideology whose extreme bias and apologetics became ridiculous. This mockumentary is a satirical jab at any kind of glorification of backwardness, authoritarianism or regressive inhumanity, whether it is a criticism of profit under any circumstances (the patisserie saleslady who just obediently writes “Jews will not replace us” on an ordered cake), opposition to abortion under any circumstances (even when the woman is pregnant with her own father), professional parasites (an influencer and a “sugar baby”) or just plain spoofing of politicians (Mike Pence is called “the vice pussy-graber”; Rudy Giuliani has a hilarious “Punk’d” interview). 

Luckily, this sequel is not as crude nor as a vile as the 1st film, and Maria Bakalova is a nice new partner on Borat’s side, playing Tutar, a backward woman who undergoes a transformation and becomes self-aware and critical of the patriarchy, whereby the movie embraces the power of women this time around. However, Cohen always needed a better “editor”, someone who would point out which of his material is really funny, and which should be deleted due to its misguided humor which contaminates the good impression, and some of these problems are noticeable in the tasteless sequence where Tutar is dancing and lifts her skirt up, revealing her underwear to be drenched in her period. What was the point of that? Assembled as a series of sketches, where it is not always clear which scenes were real and which were staged, “Borat 2” is a social issue essay disguised as a comedy (“I wanted to shoot myself, but could not afford to buy a gun, so I went to the nearest Synagogue!”) worthy of Cohen’s specific humorous taste, the one which culminates in the sequence where he disguises himself as Trump on a conference where Pence is holding a speech: sheer pandemonium breaks loose. However, it would have all worked better if Cohen would use elevated humor to describe the primitivism in society, and not primitive means himself.  

Grade:++

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Ball of Fire

Ball of Fire; romantic comedy, USA, 1941; D: Howard Hawks, S: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oskar Homolka, Dana Andrews

Eight professors have been residing in a mansion for 9 years, compiling an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, sponsored by Miss Totten's late father, the inventor of toast, who was angry that his name was not mentioned in an encyclopedia, so he set out to finance his own encyclopedia with himself in it. The professors arrived to letter S, but the linguist among them, Bertram Potts, who is compiling the section on slang, is shocked that he knows so little new slang words, so he invites a night club singer, Sugarpuss O'Shea, to the mansion to help him with the analysis of jargon. O'Shea really shows up at the mansion, but only to hide from an investigation of her boyfriend, gangster Joe Lilac. Potts falls in love with O'Shea, and proposes her, but she misleads him and only ostensibly accepts the proposal to flee safely to Lilac. Potts is disappointed and returns with his professors to compile encyclopedia, but when Lilac's two henchmen show up, threatening to shoot them unless O'Shea says yes to Lilac's marriage proposal, Potts realizes she really loves him. The professors overrun the two henchmen, and stop the wedding, saving O'Shea from Lilac and allowing her to end up with Potts.

One of Howard Hawks' lesser films, "Ball of Fire" is an amusing and well-paced screwball comedy, offering a rare glimpse inside the long process of scholars trying to compile an encyclopedia, working almost as a modern re-telling of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (the seven professors, Barbara Stanwyck's character as the Snow White and Gary Cooper's character as her Prince), but it has two problems: for one, it has too many archaic slang terms which were used in 1941, but seem dated today (words such as "hunky-dory" and "skedaddle"); for the other, it is simply not that funny. The screenplay caught the worst traits of Billy Wilder at certain moments, the one of ponderous, "geeky" talk of naive characters, which just go round and round in circles relying too much on the faint notion that all of this will carry the story because it sounds cute. None of the seven professors, for instance, is particularly funny, and just relying on them talk like geeks is kind of empty. The film has two great moments: one is when O'Shea explains to the coiled Potts what the slang "yum-yum" is by kissing him: "Here is yum." She then kisses him again: "Here's the other yum". And then she embraces him so fully, until he falls over backwards: "And here's yum-yum!" The other is when Potts serves breakfest to O'Shea and basically admits that being an intelligent scholar who only has books is lonely: "Dust settles on your heart. And then you came and blew the dust away." While the finale involving gangster Lilac is kind of corny, especially the way the professors overrun him, and the story is somewhat too far-fetched, it ocassionally has witty lines ("Richard ill. Who's Richard ill?") while the two leading actors have charm.

Grade:++

Monday, October 19, 2020

The Post

The Post; drama, USA, 2017; D: Steven Spielberg, S: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk

In 1 9 7 1, The Washington Post is in trouble. Ever since its publisher died, the newspaper is led by his inexperienced daughter Katherine Graham, and its readership is declining. The New York Times beats it again to the punch when it publishes a sensational report about the Pentagon Papers, i.e. how US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara knew that the Vietnam War could not be won, but continued sending American soldiers to die there for years, nonetheless. Executive editor of The Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, finally senses a big break when a court order forbids Times to publish any further info from the leaked report. Ben tracks down the analyst who copied thousands of pages of the classified report, Daniel Ellsberg, and decides to publish a summary of it, despite enormous opposition from the Nixon Government. This brings The Washington Post a huge surge in reputation.  

In the later phase of his career, director Steven Spielberg started exploring political themes, yet none of these movies managed to advance into one of his finest classics. As it was the case with “Amistad” and “Lincoln”, “The Post” is also a noble, well meant, but overall too didactic, schematic presentation of a social issue, in this case freedom of the press and the right of a reasonable criticism. These dry topics are simply not that cinematic, and seem more like a PowerPoint lecture. However, the movie does become more engaging in the second half, where there is a race with time to publish the report before any Government crackdown, symbolized in the passionate sequence where Ben and a half a dozen reporters are trying to read through thousands of pages of the leaked report lying scattered on the floor of a house, in order to summarize all this for their new edition of the newspaper in only one day. That is a scene specific and worthy of Spielberg, yet there are not that many of them here. Tom Hanks is again great in the leading role of Ben, who laments to his staff that they are always reading news from someone else, and not discovering news themselves. An amusing hidden criticism is near the end, where Nixon is ordering his White House staff to forbid any further contact from The Washington Post reporters, which can be interpreted as a sly jab at the Donald Trump administration in 2017, which forbade CNN from asking questions during press conferences. “The Post” is a solid film, idealistic and pure, though it is kind of obvious that the real protagonist of this story was actually The New York Times, not The Washington Post, and that a similar journalistic film “All the President’s Men” was directed with much more passion and grandeur.    

Grade:++

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Blue Collar

Blue Collar; drama, USA, 1978, D: Paul Schrader, S: Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, Ed Begley Jr., Lucy Saroyan

I never knew how to handle money. I was always broke”. Ezekiel Brown is a blue collar worker of an assembly line in a Detroit car factory. Plagued by a shortage of money and dishonest union representatives, and in order to feed his wife and three kids, he agrees to rob the union safe with his co-workers Jerry and Smokey. However, the three only find 600$ in it, and a notebook detailing shady transactions and loans. Ezekiel decides to blackmail the union with the notebook, demanding 10,000$. When the officials find out, they offer Ezekiel a promotion into a union representative in exchange for the notebook. Smokey is killed while locked up to suffocate in a car paint room. Jerry detests Ezekiel’s “selling out” and decides to testify for the FBI.  

The feature length debut film of Paul Schrader, the screenwtiter of “Taxi Driver”, “Blue Collar” is a surprisingly bitter, strong and disenchanted independent film. Schrader was probably not immune to the aura of comedian Richard Pryor (here without his trademark moustache), and thus allowed him to randomly insert a few humorous one-liners: in one sequence, an IRS official discovers that Ezekiel lied he has six kids, when he only has three. But Ezekiel’s wife “borrows” three kids from the neighbor and lines them all up for inspection. The official asks the kids what their name is, but they do not anwser, so Ezekiel says: “That’s because they don’t talk to strangers”; in another sequence, Jerry wakes up in the middle of the night and tells his wife that he ostensibly forgot to lock the door of the gas pump, but in reality meets with Ezekiel to have a night party in a house. However, overall, Pryor’s performance is serious, and much more so in the second half of the film, delivering a rare dramatic performance, with enough subtlety and nuances (the sequence where he basically explains to Jerry why he “sold himself out”). The storyline is kind of unfocused in its theme, trying to bring across some sort of a big message about the exploitation of the working class, wealth inequality and the power play of the big people in charge, yet this kind of feels chaotic and not that well thought out to the end, or it works, but only to a certain degree. Despite a slow start and not that much inspiration, “Blue Collar” is a quality social study of the ‘underdogs’ in the world, whereas Pryor is even able to perform on pair with the veteran actor Harvey Keitel.   

Grade:++