The Fighter

The Fighter; drama, USA, 2010; D: David O. Russell, S: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Jack McGee

Lowell, Massachusetts. Micky Ward aspires to be a successful boxer, but this is hampered by his mother Alice, who is his manager, and especially by his crack cocaine-addicted brother Dicky, who is his trainer. In the latest fiasco, they persuade Micky to accept a match with a boxer who is 20 pounds heavier than him, resulting in Micky getting beaten up heavily. Micky is so ashamed, he does not even want to contact waitress Charlene for a date, who still eventually becomes his girlfriend. After Dicky gets into a fight with police officers, and Micky's hand gets broken when he tries to intervene, Micky decides to break all his ties with his family and accept the offer of a new trainer. Micky wins several matches. Eventually, when Dicky stops taking cocaine, Micky reconciles with him, and wins in a London match against Shea Neary.

This "Rocky" knockoff would not have gained so much attention had it not been for the fact that it is actually based on true events, giving the seemingly predictable story of a boxer who falls and then rises actual credibility and authenticity. While it is unknown how much of the story involving Micky and Dicky Ward is true, as opposed to what was made up for cinematic drama effect, "The Fighter" is a movie that slowly manages to engage the viewers, since its set-up is paid off in the final act. A lot of credit goes not to the rather standardly written script, but rather to the excellent actors who make something more out of their roles, most notably Christian Bale as Dicky Ward, who deteriorated due to crack cocaine, which leads to a strange situation in which it does not matter how much Micky invests into Dicky, since the latter just keeps dragging him down, regardless of all the efforts, since he is a "human liability". Bale is very good, though he only manages to exceed to greatness in two sequences: one is when Dicky thinks that HBO is making a movie about him due to his boxing match with Sugar Ray Leonard, only to later find out they were just making a documentary about crack cocaine-addicts, and upon seeing the film in prison, Dicky is disgusted by himself, as if he sees the mirror for the first time. The other is when he takes a cake and just hands it over to his former cocaine sellers, signalling that he transformed. A lot of the rest of the film is nothing particularly new, giving a study on the lives of lower-class which was already seen a hundred times before, yet the movie is still good, especially in the exciting finale.

Grade:++

Atlantic City

Atlantic City; crime drama, France / Canada, 1980; D: Louis Malle, S: Burt Lancester, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Robert Joy, Hollis McLaren, Michel Piccoli, Al Waxman, Robert Goulet, Wallace Shawn

Atlantic City. Lou is a small ex-criminal in his 60s who now works practically as a butler for Grace, the widow of a deceased gangster. Lou is fascinated by his neighbor Sally, a waitress in an oyster bar. One day, Sally takes in her ex-husband Dave and her sister, Dave’s now wife. Dave found and took a bag of cocaine hidden in a phone booth, and is thus killed by the criminals looking for it. Dave gave cocaine to Lou, who now sells it, buys a fancy suit and takes Sally out for dinner. When the two criminals corner Lou and Sally, Lou shoots them. The couple flees in the car to a hotel. Sally leaves in order to work in a Casino in Monaco, while Lou returns to Atlantic City and starts a relationship with Grace.

"Atlantic City" has not aged that well, and is one of Louis Malle’s more overrated films. Nonetheless, it is a good and ambitious little drama, with a very 'European' feel and perspective on an American city in transition, including its often theme of a lower class trying to make something better out of their lives, whereas the constant scenes of building demolitions serve as a leitmotif for the ugly past that must be destroyed in order for these characters to find a new future in a new world. The highlights are definitely the two lead actors: both Burt Lancester and Susan Sarandon are great in their roles, delivering performances better than the film itself. The dialogues are often standard, though there are a few juicy exceptions, for instance in the snappy lines by the cranky Grace who at one point says this to Lou: "Cookie had more manhood in his toupee than you have in your fat frame!" 

Unfortunately, the movie is at times awkwardly made, with several tacky or clumsy moments. For instance, a criminal is chasing Dave who stole his bag of cocaine, and then the criminal stabs and kills Dave—but then the criminal remembers he has to search for cocaine some more, because he had no common sense to ask Dave where he hid it before killing him. In another, a couple of kids are touching the antenna of a car with their hands, but then the camera pans to the left to reveal a man sitting in the car, turning around and smiling at them—there is no way any driver wouldn’t simply chase the kids away from his car, even if he is waiting for someone. Also, Lou and Sally have two parallel apartments, living side by side, and yet, since Lou is able to watch Sally from his window, her apartment should be on the opposite building of his. The finale is inconsistent and rather vague, since it is not clear what exactly Lou’s goal is: it seems he wants to take the money from selling cocaine and cherrish his last chance to make something out of his life, now in his old age. But what? The only difference is that Lou is wearing a fancy suit, while he acts the same even after that, and has no plan what to do. The film’s resolution thus feels fake and incomplete, even rushed, yet the nostalgic mood and Malle’s sure hand as a director give enough artistic weight to carry the film.

 Grade:++

Brooklyn

Brooklyn; drama, UK / Ireland / Canada, 2015; D: John Crowley, S: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters  

In the 1 9 5 0s, the young Eilis leaves her mother, sister Rose and her Irish homeland behind to emigrate to America. The journey across the Ocean in a ship is bothersome, yet she arrives and settles in Brooklyn, living in a boardinghouse with other Irish girls. An Irish priest helps her to study accounting at a night class, while she finds a job as a clerk in a store. During one dance night, Eilis meets Italian Tony and the two become a couple. Upon hearing the news that her sister Rose died from a disease she was hidding, Eilis decides to visit Ireland again. Tony is affraid she will not return, so Eilis accepts to sleep with him and marry him. Back in Ireland, Eilis takes Rose’s part-time job as a bookkeeper and feels comfortable back in her homeland, whereas a certain Jim even tries to persuade her to stay. However, after a nasty remark by Mrs Kelly, Eilis realizes how spiteful the city is and thus returns back to Tony in Brooklyn.

Immigration drama "Brooklyn" is one of those movies that are just sufficient enough to be good, yet too safe to truly gain respect. Its only truly excellent ingredient is the great main actress Saoirse Ronan, but the entire film just lags behind her. While its portrait of Irish immigrants is honest, gentle and emotional, it is too banal at times, and some chunks in the story seem like a soap opera. There is one wonderful little moment that describes the heroine Eilis and her homesickness, her feeling of being stuck between two worlds, when she meets Tony and finally feels like she is not an outsider, but like someone who actually belongs in America, so she writes a letter to her mom and sister: "Tony helped me feel that I have a life here. My body was here, but my life was back in Ireland, with you. Now it’s halfway across the sea." Unfortunately, the rest of the movie’s dialogues are disappointingly bland, schematic and standard, often too dry in just describing the obvious emotions of the characters or lacking inspiration. An amusing little early scene involving a long journey on a ship, where a toilet is locked so Eilis has to improvize and urinate in a bucket, announced that the story would have more life and color, yet everything quickly turned to flat routine. Due to its interesting concept and high production values, the movie works and is overall well done, but it is a shame that it did not have the courage to be more than just correct, and nothing more.   

Grade:++

Passengers

Passengers; science-fiction drama, USA, 2016, D: Morten Tyldum, S: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne

In the future, spaceship Avalon is set to travel 120 years to planet Homestead II, carrying 5,000 passengers who are in hibernation and will only wake up upon arrival. However, when Jim wakes up from hibernation, he is shocked to find he is the only one to do so, due to a malfunction, and that there are still 90 more years until they reach Homestead II. After spending a year in solitude on board, he decides to wake up an attractive woman, Aurora, to have company. At first, they fall in love, but upon finding out, Aurora resents him since they cannot get back to hibernation. When a Captain wakes up as well, he determinea an asteroid damaged the ship. The Captain dies, but Aurora and Jim are able to repair the reactor. 88 years later, the crew wakes up, and find Aurora’s chronicles of her life with Jim on the spaceship during that time.

"Passengers" are a rather unusual blend of Bunuel’s "The Exterminating Angel" and Dudok de Wit's "The Red Turtle" set in space, a meditation on two people stuck in an "isolation existence" and yet still trying to make the best out of their confined lives. There are some thoughtful observations in the story: one is that a shared bad fate is made bearable, the other is that sacrifice can make a difference for someone else, even if the one making it will inevitably lose a future. The ‘kammerspiel’ works at some moments, though one has to wonder at how bad the design of the spaceship is: why have a hibernation pod that cannot put people back into sleep once they wake up? It makes no sense. It is akin to a car that, once its engine is turned off, cannot ignite anymore. Furthermore, it is puzzling why the flight crew would be in a sealed off chamber, seperate from the rest of the passengers, that cannot be accessed. The counterargument would be for security reasons, yet at least a part of the technicians should have been there to contact in case of an emergency. While a lot in the story is contrived in order for the forced set up to start, it does pose some interesting questions about life, and has a few expressionistic images (for instance, when the spaceship falls into zero gravity, the entire water in the pool flies up, carrying Aurora in the bubble). Unfortunately, the film hasn’t got much inspiration, and a lot of the dialogues are written without much effort, since they are bland, routine and schematic. The ending is surprisingly fascinating, though an entire movie could have been made on that abridged segment which is just mentioned off screen. 

Grade:++

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 4)

Star Trek: The Next Generation; science-fiction series, 1990-1991; D: Cliff Bole, Les Landau, Rob Bowman, Robert Scheerer, S: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Whoopi Goldberg

In the 24th century, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is commanding the Federation spaceship Enterprise, with the goal of exploring space and seeking out new civilizations, and containing the Borg aliens. He is assisted by Commander William Riker, android Data, Klingon Lt. Worf, Dr. Beverly Crusher, Counsellor Deanna Troi, engineer La Forge, and others. They have to be careful of not to interfere into the development of other, less advanced alien cultures, while they also have to keep up the fragile peace between the Federation and the antagonistic Klingon and Romulan Empires.

The 4th season of the "Next Generation" edition of "Star Trek" continues the high impression established in the previous season, offering an impressive row of inspired episodes, though also several bland fillers hidden in-between. What is surprising is how sophisticated and wise some of these characters are, in order to give an appearance of different, more advanced type of people in the 24th century, most notably the protagonist Jean-Luc Picard (a great Patrick Stewart) who has patience in a lot of situations that would otherwise cause someone else to simply "snap", all adding to the theme where everyone is trying to build a form of grand multicultururalism of all these alien civilizations, in order to leave behind the biased, narrow worldviews of each planet (and their ideologies). The final episode of season 3, "The Best of Both Worlds", was great, but it seemed it left the writers cornered, so they had to resort to cheating in episode 4.1 in order to resolve everything—the Borg cube spaceship easily destroys dozens of Federation spaceships, yet Enterprise is able to somehow manoeuvre itself out of its grasp and even teleport a rescue team to save Picard, turned into a half-Borg, with no major problem. Considering that the Borg were able to teleport themselves on the main bridge and take Picard with them in previous episode, this seems like a classic cliche of writers artificially making the villains incompetent in order for the protagonists to prevail. The next three episodes after that are bland and routine, all until episode 4.5, which starts an interesting trend of an Agatha Christie-like mystery in this season. Episode 4.5 has a delicious restructuring of "The Lady Vanishes" done to the tenth of power: Dr. Crusher notices that more and more crew members are disappearing, yet nobody remembers that they ever were on the ship in the first place. This goes so far that people do not even remember that Worf was ever on board, until in the end only Picard and Dr. Crusher are left, whereas even he does not find anything suspicious in the fact that only two people are on a spaceship. When even the Universe starts disappearing, Dr. Crusher at one point asks the Computer to define "Universe", and gets the anwser: "The universe is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter." The story is gripping and has a very good conclusion.

Episode 4.7 has an ordinary story, but done in a very well way. Episode 4.8 also offers a delicious mystery that reminds of "36 Hours": in it, Riker falls unconscious on an unknown planet and wakes up—but Dr. Crusher informs him that 16 years have passed in the meantime, after a strange virus allegedly wiped his memory. However, Riker starts suspecting that he might, in fact, still be in the present, and that this is all an illusion. The first plot twist in the episode works, but the second one is unconvincing—they should have stopped at the first one. The next two episodes are routine, but then comes another good one, 4.11, "Data's Day", which gives a wonderful spotlight to Data. It is a rare treat to hear the thoughts of an android, who here narrates his events as if writing a diary, and giving an outsider's perspective on human emotions, in this case the wedding between O'Brien and Keiko. 4.13 is another great episode, an allegory and a thought experiment on the claims of religions: a woman claims that she is goddess Andra and demands that the entire planet Ventax II serves her due to a myth from a thousand years ago. She can cause earthquakes, teleport and transform into a monster, so Picard brings her on trial to find out the truth, with Data serving as the neutral judge. The way Picard dismantles the woman's confidence trick is delicious, culminating in him using technology to repeat every trick she did, including teleporting himself from place to place, which gives food for thought.

Episode 4.14, "Clues", is another fine mystery: the Enterprise crew falls unconscious after encountering a wormhole, and when they wake up, Data claims only 30 seconds have passed. However, Dr. Crusher finds out the spores in the lab grew to such an extent that days must have passed, so Picard suspects Data is lying and hidding something. The episode has suspense and stimulates the brain like a good puzzle, until the disappointing resolution, which feels contrived and unworthy to the previous set-up. 4.15, "First Contact" offers a fascinating upside-down perspective on planet Malcor III, 2,000 light years away from Earth, where humans are trying to initiate first contact, and are thus aliens on that planet. At the same time, Riker is disguised as one of the aliens, acting as a "scout" to pave the way for the contact. Curiously, the leader of Malcor III concludes that the culture clash would be too much of a shock for his nation, and thus asks for Picard to leave and give them more time to grow out of nationalism, when they will be ready for the encounter. Honourable mention: episode 4.19, where the clumsy, coiled Barcley is suddenly transformed into a super-intelligent, confident hot-shot, delivering a smashing Cyrano de Bergerac performance: "I would not have you weep any less for that charming, good and handsome Christian. I only ask this: that as the great cold surrounds my bones, you allow a double meaning for your mourning veil. And when you let fall your tears for him, some few will be... for me". The rest of the episodes are solid, though pale at times, feeling isolated since there is no grand plan that connects them all and leads towards a final purpose. Another good one is 4.21, "The Drumhead", which is somewhat overrated, but still a quality story presented as a courtroom drama: after an explosion of the Enterprise engine, the Federation Security team led by Norah Satie tries to find a spy at any cost, which leads to fanaticism and persecution of anyone suspicious on board, causing Picard to give one of the greatest quotes in the series, demonstrating how even the smallest form of repression leads to a decline: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably". He acts almost as a corrector of atavism in the series, advocating reason and enlightenment, which gives the series spark. Finally, episode 4.25, where officer Jenna falls in love with Data, so he tries to act as if they are in a relationship even though he does not understand human reactions or expectations, could have been a much better episode than we got. It has a fan's dream concept, and yet is unable to ignite it to the fullest, almost as if it feels forced. However, the argument between them at the end is amusing, since Data only mimics quotes he heard from movies of couples arguing: "You don't tell me how to behave, you are not my mother!" Brent Spiner is again fascinating as Data, and one almost wishes the writers would lead him to something more than what he always does.

Grade:++

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms

Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazarou; animated fantasy, Japan, 2018; D: Mari Okada, S: Manaka Iwami, Miyu Irino, Ai Kayano, Miyuki Sawashiro, Yuki Kaji, Yoshimasa Hosoya

Maquia is an Iorph, a female human fairy, living for thousands of years in their secluded village. Humans from the Kingdom of Mezarte attack their village and kidnap Leilia in order to marry her to the human Prince, since the power of their kingdom is decreasing. Maquia finds a murdered human family, takes pity on their little baby and decides to adopt it and be his mother. Maquia names the child Ariel. She finds refuge inside a house of a widow with two children, one of whom is Lang, who falls in love with Maquia. Now a teenager, Ariel is aware that Maquia is not his mother and is ageing much more slowly. As a grown up, he feels distant from her and becomes a soldier in the Mezarte army. After a war breaks out, Leilia leaves her daughter and flies away with Maquia on a dragon. Decades later, a still young Maquia returns to see Ariel one more time. He married and has grandchildren, but is now old. When he dies, Maquia sheds a tear and leaves.

"Maquia" is a good anime, a very emotional little story. Its author, Mari Okada, is privately an outsider, and thus transmitted that experience of an outsider into a fantasy story—in this case, the title fairy trying to understand humans when she adopts a human baby. It seems they may have wanted to make an OVA series, since the story, in this edition, is occasionally jumping through a lot of stuff in huge ellipses (for instance, from Ariel as a kid to an adult), and thus tried to cram all this in only two hours. However, the concept is interesting, even fascinating—the relationship between a long-lived and a short-lived being. For him, this era is his entire life, while for her, this is just one short episode in a much longer experience of a superhuman existence. His entire life is just a footnote for her longevity, but she still tries to understand him and feel his emotions. There are gentle little episodes that adorn "Maquia": she has no clue how to feed the baby, so she puts it under a cow's udder; when Krim hugs Maquia, the little kid Ariel "mingles" between their stomachs out of jealousy; while working as a waitress in a pub, Maquia is so overjoyed upon seeing the now grown up Lang that she drops a giant menu plaque, but a knight lifts his arm to hold it from falling on his table. The aspect that bothers the most is the unnecessary subplot involving white dragons and a war in the Kingdom, since they are basically irrelevant and contribute nothing to the main story. In a few moments, the film is too melodramatic, as well, yet the ending is remarkably honest, genuine and heartfelt, one of the more emotional ones of the decade.

Grade:++

The In-Laws

The In-Laws; comedy, USA, 1979, D: Arthur Hiller, S: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Nancy Dussault, Penny Peyser, Richard Libertini, Arlene Golonka




A US State treasury van is robbed, but the thieves take only one thing: the engraved plate used to make a 500$ bill. They hand it over to Vince, a CIA operative. Vince’s son Tommy is going to get married to Barbara, the daughter of dentist Sheldon. When they finally meet, Vince persuades Sheldon to get the plate from his office, but Sheldon is then chased by two thugs. Vince reveals his plan to Sheldon: General Garcia from Tijada wants to buy the plates in order to flood the market with trillions of dollars, thereby causing an inflation and an economic collapse of the US, so Vince wants to give the plates to him and then arrest him. Vince and Sheldon travel via plane to Tijada and hand the plates to Garcia. Just as Garcia is about to have them shot, the CIA intervenes and arrests him. Sheldon and Vince return to New Jersey to attend their kids’ wedding.

This film by director Arthur Hiller is the closest someone came to distilling a Screwball comedy in the 70s: it is at times wonderfully zanny and wacky, and even though not every joke works, you chuckle almost throughout the entire story, sometimes even in a delayed reaction when you just try to visualize all these insane dialogues. Peter Falk dominates the film as the CIA operative Vince with crazy ideas, and his highlight is the now legendary dinner sequence in the first act, where he talks about his visit to the Guatemalan jungle, or "the bush" as he calls it, and gives a demented monologue about "tsetse flies the size of eagles" with a serious face that is so howlingly funny that it is better not spoiled out of respect to its comic perfection. Unfortunately, "The In-Laws" are not able to repeat this high frequency of humor again, and fall at times into the trap of a forced farce or low frequency humor, yet some jokes are still solid. The Communist-like ruler of the fictional Latin American country General Garcia delivers a great joke when he presents the new flag of his country: a flag with his face on it (!), perfectly summing up the egoism of such systems. Alan Arkin is good as Sheldon, though somewhat coiled at times, and never as genuine as Falk. However, even he benefits when they share a grand joke through dialogues: "I thought you wanted to buy a magazine!" - "I did, I wanted to buy The Hustler, but it was in Spanish, El Hustlero." Spoofing both Cold War spy films and the horror of a dad realizing that he cannot stand his new family, the in-laws, at the same time, Hiller delivered a relaxed cult film that deserves to be seen more than once.

Grade:++

Wander Life

Kakuga, mama; drama, Japan, 2018; D: Naho Kamimura, S: Shuri Nakamura, Yo Hasegawa, Koharu Matsuhara, Daisuke Matsuki, Eriko Tomioka

Hinano (14) is a shy, secluded girl whose parents divorced. She is bad at expressing emotions and thus writes down what she feels in a notebook. She is bullied by some girls who read her notebook in front of the class, so Hinano hides in the school infirmary where she forms a friendship with the school nurse who talks to her. Hinano is fascinated by the rock band Swanky Dogs and thus persuades her sister Miho to drive her to their concert. After the concert, Hinano hands all her notebooks with her feelings to Swanky Dogs and asks them to write a song using them as lyrics. Taking the finished CD, Hinano plays the song in the school infirmary, and runs away with the nurse, who was shunned by students after having an affair with a married school counsellor.

"Wander Life" is a quiet, unassuming little film about school bullying and shy teenagers coping with high school problems, done honestly and well, yet it is somehow too simplistic and banal at times: it needed more intricate plotting, ingenuity or surprises to lift off into a better position, since a lot of this was already seen. It is never quite clear what exactly seems to be Hinano’s underlying problem, except for her bullies, yet she is a really sympathetic character. After being humiliated, she escapes from class, puts her notebook on the floor of the hallway and writes down what she feels—as she writes down “I wanna die”, her pencil breaks. Her friendship with the nurse is neat and has an interesting twist: at first, the nurse comforts Hinano, but in the end, Hinano comforts her. The girl bullies go so far they even show Hinano a photo of the nurse and the councelor together, and say: "Get it? You are just their excuse to see each other!" The finale where Hinano transforms all of her written text into a song is quietly brilliant, almost magical, which compensates for the rather vague ending and several "empty walks" in the overstretched story.

Grade:++

Assassination Classroom (Season 2)

Ansatsu Kyoushitsu; animated science-fiction / comedy / drama series, Japan, 2016; D: Seiji Kishi, S: Jun Fukuyama, Mai Fuchigami, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Shizuka Itou, Tomokazu Sugita, Aya Suzaki

Koro-sensei continues teaching his students at class 3-E. When teacher Karasuma gives flowers to Irina Jelavich for her birthday, she finds out that it was actually a gift conjured up by the class, and thus, in disappointment, joins the Reaper who captures the entire class in an underground bunker, hoping to lure and kill Koro-sensei there. The plan fails and the class is saved, while Jelavich appologizes. Student Kaede Kayano turns out to have tenctacles inside her neck because she wanted to kill Koro-sensei, blaming him for her sister's death. Koro-sensei then tells the class his story: he was Reaper's mentor, an assassin, and underwent a secret laboratory experiment that went out of control while they transformed him into a tenctacle-man with super powers. When a teacher was killed in the chaos, Koro-sensei woved to continue her path as a teacher. When the military seals off the entire place and is about to fire a deadly laser from the space station, the class agrees to let Nagisa kill Koro-sensei. 7 years later all the students found jobs, while Nagisa works as a teacher.

The 2nd season of the hyped anime series "Assassination Classroom" subtly moved away from comedy to lean more towards drama, ending in a very emotional finale. The entire plot seems to be a sort of wildly creative restructuring of some teacher-students genre cliches—it is "Great Teacher Onizuka" or "Dead Poets Society" mixed with a tentacle mutant and saving-the-world-plot, combining them into a bizarre story in which the end of the world depends on the 3-E students graduating, whereas the penultimate episode is an allegorical meditation on how teenagers symbolically have to kill their old (childhood) era in order to grow up and gain a new era of the future. The jokes are far less present this time around, making room for Koro-sensei teaching students life leassons, and guiding them into trying to find what they want to study. Still, one joke is comedy gold, and twists the "nosebleed" cliche as well: in episode 2.8, the busty Irina Jelavich—who was accustomed that every man around her is charmed by her looks—is saved by a shirtless Karasuma, who asks her if she is injured, and all we see is her face turning around and getting a "nosebleed" from seeing his muscles. This anime takes on a "collective characterization" of the entire classroom, nost just one character, though Nagisa stands out as a wonderful, sympathetic and pure person, though struggling with his assassination mission. Several episodes still fall into caricatures, though: 2.9 shows Nagisa's overcontrolling mother, who is a stereotype. Some good moments appear in this episode, anyway—one is when Nagisa imagines being chained by his mother who projects all her own wishes onto him ("I am not and never will be the hero of my own life. Not even close. It's her RPG, I'm just her playthrough."), the other is when the screenwriters at least gave her a decent moment when she tells Nagisa one bitter truth about studying at a specific college: "It's not what you know, but *who* you know." Despite several far-fetched (anti-matter contraptions) and unconnected ideas (Kaede has a twist in episode 2.13, only to later return to her old self, as if nothing happened), "Classroom" still has some flawed freshness that is better than flawless routine.

Grade:++

The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water; fantasy romance, USA, 2017; D: Guillermo del Toro, S: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg

1 9 6 2. Elisa Esposito is mute, single and works as a cleaning lady in a secret US military research facility. Her best friends are her co-worker Zelda and Giles, a gay advertising illustrator. One day, the military fills the pool with a captured amphibian man from the Amazon to research it, but Elisa finds sympathy in the creature's plight while it is abused by Colonel Strickland. Upon hearing that the military plans to disect the creature, Elisa smuggles it out in the laundry van, keeping it in her bathtub. The two fall in love and communicate through sign language. When Strickland finds out that Elisa wants to release the creature in a cannal during rain, which leads to the sea, he shoots them both. However, the amphibian man heals itself, kills Strickland and saves Elisa by jumping with her into the water, transforming her into a sea creature.

Guillermo del Toro's best film is also at the same time his most emotional and tender one, a peculiar re-structuring of Arnold's "The Creature from the Black Lagoon". However, while the latter was only interested in narrow, cheap scares, del Toro crafts a surprisingly thoughtful allegory about outsiders who fall in love, and has understanding for them—all of the characters are actually minorities (Elisa is mute; Zelda is an African-American during the 60s segregation era; Giles is gay) who are in one shape or another persecuted or oppressed for not "fitting in" with the concept of the majority. The monster thus becomes a symbol for these "others". "The Shape of Water" combines a wide range of stories, from "The Beauty and the Beast", through "Splash" up to "The Little Mermaid", yet this bizarre syncretism works thanks to the wonderful performance by Sally Hawkins as Elisa—when she explains to Giles what she sees in the creature, everything falls into its place: "When he looks at me, the way he looks at me... He does not know, what I lack... Or how I am incomplete. He sees me, for what I am, as I am. He's happy to see me. Every time. Every day."

The character of Zelda, played by the very good Octavia Spencer, is there to be a comic relief, and in one scene she mentions her husband: "The man is as silent as the grave. But if farts were flattery, honey, he'd be Shakespeare!" A lot of the story is a stretch—it is hard to think that a cleaning lady would be left inside a dangerous top secret facility alone, without any supervision—yet it unravels like a fairy tale and thus suspends disbelief, especially in the scene where Elisa gets carried away while dancing, her mop hits the aquarium and thus makes an adorably worried facial expression when she asks the amphibian man: "Are you OK?" Del Toro's biggest flaw throughout his movies is in the stereotype bad guys, and here he stumbles in the villain Strickland who is a tad one-dimensional, spending undue amount of time on him instead of on the relationship between Elisa and the amphibian man, which is heavy handed. Yet, the story is so audacious and creative that even the intimate scene of the naked Elisa and the amphibian man hugging is topped by the black and white musical (!) sequence of them dancing, by which the director stands out stylistically from the mould as much as the couple stands out from typical love stories. Del Toro won several awards for the film, completing the tripple "Mexican lucky streak" in the decade, after Cuaron and Inarritu also won awards for their films "Gravity" and "Birdman".

Grade:+++

36 Hours

36 Hours; thriller, USA, 1965; D: George Seaton, S: James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Taylor, Werner Peters

1 9 4 4. US Army Major Jefferson Pike is completing the final plans of Allied attack on the Third Reich through Normandy. In Lisbon, he drinks a potion prepared by German soldiers and falls unconscious. When he wakes up in a hospital, a man tells him he is in Germany in the year 1 9 5 0, and that World War II is long over, and that the Americans won. But Pike is unaware that the entire hospital is fake and that the Nazis want him to reveal the secret plans of Allied invasion of the Third Reich. Pike finally finds out it is still the year 1 9 4 4, but he already revealed that the attack will come from Normandy. Luckily, German General Otto does not believe it and allows Pike and nurse Anna to flee to Swiss territory.

Thriller "36 Hours" is not a classic, but for its time it has a very original and astounding concept in which a man is tricked into thinking he was in a coma for six years, when in reality he was just asleep for a day, in order to reveal secret informations during World War II. As he wakes up, he even finds grey hairs as he watches himself in the mirror. The way the protagonist Jefferson Pike (very good James Garner) is observed by the conspirators and the sheer scale of people who are acting this ploy throughout is eerie and scary, reminiscent of "The Truman Show" which referenced it, and thus a wonderful mood is created, even posing some philosphical, disturbing questions about the reliability of reality. However, by uncovering that a soldier is a Nazi through the latter's salute, the hero already discovered and dismantled the whole illusion already 60 minutes into the film, and told them that, and thus the magic ended too soon. The remaining 50 minutes of the film covers his escape from the German soldiers, which is somewhat boring and conventionally spy-ish. Only the ending is able to resume the good quality from the first half, when a Nazi proclaims: "Today, you don't know whom to trust anymore".

Grade:++

The Red Turtle

La tortue rouge; animated drama / tragedy, France / Japan / Belgium, 2016; D: Michaël Dudok de Wit

After a storm, a man is stranded on an island. He explores it and finds fruit to eat there. He falls into a rift of a cliff, but manages to escape through an underwater tunnel. He builds a raft to escape from the island, but is again and again destroyed by a red turtle under the sea. When the turtle appears on the beach, the man turns it over, but it transforms into a woman, and the two start a love affair. A son is born to them. A tsunami hits the island and destroys large chunks of the forest. The teenage son bids farewell to his parents and swims away from the island with three turtles. The man is old and dies, while the woman transforms back into a turtle and leaves the island.

Michael Dudok de Wit's "The Red Turtle" is a peculiar minimalist-ascetic art-film that contemplates about the bitter themes of fatalism and determinism. Filmed without any dialogue, it starts off as an ordinary Robinson Crusoe tale of a man stuck on an island and his attempts to escape from it, yet there is a plot twist in the middle that transforms the film into something more, an allegory on life. As unreachable as these events seem, they still talk about human life in general: people are born into a specific life, they try to escape from it, but realize that fate always stops them, and that everything is served to them, without much choice. The red turtle from the title is the personification of fate, a sort of Moirai: it destroys the man's raft, preventing him to escape from the island. The man is angry at the fate, curses and hits it, turning the turtle upside down, yet he cannot escape from it. The turtle transforms into a woman, his future wife, indicating how people do not even choose their love partners—life serves a partner to people, a specific look will attract specific partners, and they can either accept this or be stuck in loneliness. De Wit uses interesting cinematic techniques to illustrate some points: escapist dreams are filmed in black and white, to symbolize the futility of false hope; whereas almost all scenes are filmed in wide shots, to show how small humans are compared to the natural world and the Universe around them. Not much makes a difference whatever the man does, and he thus has to accept life as it is. The final scene is noteworthy, almost as if it shows how destiny itself has pity on the man, but is unable (or unwilling?) to do anything to give him a better life. The sour story hasn't got much enjoyment value, but it stimulates the viewers to think about how much actual control they have in life.

Grade:+++

Prospect

Prospect; science-fiction, USA, 2018; D: Zeek Earl, Chris Caldwell, S: Sophie Thatcher, Pedro Pascal, Jay Duplass, Andre Royo




In the future, Damon and his teenage daughter Cee are in a space station, orbiting an alien planet. They are prospectors and descend in a lander to the forest of the planet, with space suits, in order to extract gems from oysters hiding in the ground. Two other prospectors approach, Ezra and his friend, and try to rob him. Cee ambushes them from behind, and in the shootout, Ezra's friend and Damon are killed. Cee rushes to the lander, but cannot start it. Ezra enters, Cee wounds him in the arm, and they decide to cooperate to get away from the planet. They approach human settlers living in a hut, but these want Cee to stay with them, so she flees. Ezra reunites with Cee, and she has to perform an amputation on his arm due to an infection. They approach mercenaries and ask them for a lift to the space station. In a shootout, Cee and the wounded Ezra board the ship of the mercenaries, returning to orbit.

"Prospect" is an intruiging independent science-fiction flick, proving that even independent studios can produce good films in such a genre where big budgets are expected. The movie is a blend of Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and Petersen's "Enemy Mine"—the first half tackles the theme of greed and its consequences which just cause unnecessary detriment, whereas the other half explores the theme of two disparate people forced to cooperate to escape from an isolated place, in this case Cee and the dubious Ezra. While the science-fiction setting starts off with a bang, creating a feeling of awe, once the viewers get use to it, the storyline becomes rather stale and traditional, without a higher amplitude of events which would sustain the initial attention. While "Prospect" has suspense, it does not offer more ingenuity neither in style, writing, creativity or characters—the latter are especially banal at times, and only thanks to Sophie Thatcher's great performance as Cee does the characterization feel better at times. The only two sequences where Cee is "twitched" out of this grey depiction is in the opening sequence where she listens to Rock 'n roll music on her headphones while the gas planet is seen in the background of the space station, and in the sequence where she tells Ezra how she read a novel and liked it so much she even made up additional chapters in it, in order to enjoy more in these adventures. The directing is tight and effective, yet one does feel the resolution and the ending lacked just a little bit more of a versatile touch, since they feel somewhat standard.

Grade:++

D'Artagnan's Daughter

La fille de d'Artagnan; adventure, France, 1994; D: Bertrand Tavernier, S: Sophie Marceau, Philippe Noiret, Nils Tavernier, Claude Rich, Sami Frey, Jean-Luc Bideau, Charlotte Kady

France, 17the century. While persecuting an escaped African slave, some men storm a convent, stab a nun and flee. After the nun dies, Eloise, the daughter of the famed Musketeer D'Artagnan, wovs to find the perpetrators. Eloise teams up with a clumsy poet, Quentin, and meets her aging father again, who reluctantly agrees to help her. They have a trace, a paper that she believes has a secret code. When Eloise is abducted and sold to slave trader Duke of Crassac, D'Artagnan, Porthos, Aramis and Quentin storm Crassac's ship and kill his men, freeing the slaves inside. They find out that Crassac is part of a conspiracy to kill the underage Louis XIV on the day of his coronation, which would enable Crassac to gain a monopoly on the lucrative coffee delivery chain. In a duel, D'Artagnan stabs Crassac, while Eloise and Quentin fall in love.

The art director Bertrand Tavernier made a peculiar and untypical excursion into the mainstream genre of the old "swashbuckling" movies with "D'Artagnan's Daughter" (somewhere also alternatively translated as "The Revenge of the Musketeers"), which takes a lot of time to get going and ignite, but once it does, it actually turns into a very amusing adventure film with a refreshingly feminine touch by presenting Sophie Marceau as the daughter of the famous Musketeer. The movie suffers from too much exposition, since the characters often go to great lengths to describe some situations and give context to the storyline, whereas several sequences are sometimes stiff, dry and overlong. However, once D'Artagnan and his friends enter the scene, the story ricochets into a more ironic-comedic direction, giving "D'Artgnan's Daughter" more freshness. For instance, Eloise takes her shirt off and is topless in front of Quentin who is asleep in his bed and unaware, so the next morning she teases him that he "missed" something last night, comparing it to "missing a comet".

The highlight is probably the sword fight sequence on the ship, where Aramis is able to beat every opponent with his sword, so one henchman decides to cheat by using a more "heavyweight" weapon, a giant axe, but then Aramis tops him by cheating as well—by simply drawing his gun and shooting the villain. Athos forgets which eye is supposed to be covered by his eyepatch, whereas Aramis complains that Quentin got valuable information through a confession of a dying villain ("Why couldn't you let me do the confession?" - "But he was dying!" - "He could have waited!"). The humor appears even in most unusual places (Louis XIV is in bed with his concubine, who is trying to persuade him to "elevate" her into royalty: "You always said I kiss like a Queen!"), whereas the finale also has several funny moments, such as when the bad guy Crassac is losing to Eloise in a sword fight, so he complains that "her sword is probably longer" than his. It is a pitty that somewhere in the middle of the film Eloise is kidnapped, and from there on D'Artagnan and his friends practically take over the entire second half of the film, as if Eloise "disappeared" from the story until the finale, making such an absence problematic and uneven, yet the movie has just enough wit and charm to hold up even today.

Grade:++