Nobody's Fool

Nobody’s Fool; drama, USA, 1994, D: Robert Benton, S: Paul Newman, Dylan Walsh, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Jessica Tandy, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Gene Saks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Margo Martindale  

Sully is a troublesome man in his 60s in a small town during winter, a tenent in a house run by the older Miss Beryl. He makes ends meet by accepting construction jobs for the wealthy Carl, and works with the always broke Rub. When Sully hitchhikes one day, he is picked up by his estranged son Peter, who has marital problems with his wife. Sully comforts his two grandkids, Peter’s kids, and gradually bonds with Peter. Sully also flirts with Carl’s estranged wife Toby, since Carl has a mistress. When Toby offers him to leave to Hawaii with her, Sully refuses, and instead stays and helps Peter reconcile with his wife. Sully then returns to the house of Miss Beryl, with Carl’s dog.  

Director Robert Benton’s 8th feature length film, “Nobody’s Fool” is a quiet, gentle, humorous ‘slice-of-life’ drama without a story, though with two surprising erotic moments that somehow break this dormant mood (the protagonist Sully talks with Toby in her office, and she mischievously lifts her sweater up to show her breasts for a split second before he leaves; Carl and his mistress playing strip poker, and losing literally everything they wear). While occasionally too lukewarm, overstretched and with not that much inspiration at every turn, the movie stand and falls with its main star who is featured in almost every scene, and since Paul Newman is simply excellent as the charming grouch Sully, “Nobody’s Fool” stands the test of time. One of the funniest sequences is after a police officer has been giving various fines to Sully, and this time blocks the route of his truck driving on the sidewalk with the police car, and aims his gun at Sully. But Sully just looks at Peter, sitting next to him in the truck, and says: “This is where a smart person would get out of the car...”, but then defiantly just continues to drive the truck towards the cop. Earlier in the film, Sully is not afraid to threaten his boss Carl: “You are going broke, but before you do, you will pay what you owe me!” This runs in the tradition of older people playing the cynical grumpy wise guy to get awards, with more of less justification in the narrative structure. However, while he is an excessive troublemaker, Sully also has a gentler side to him, for instance in the scene where he comforts his scared grandchild by telling him to “be brave only for one minute” at a time, and then gives him a stop watch to time that minute when he needs it. The episodes do not align into a storyline, but meander all around, leaving a rather loose structure behind, yet the film succeeds in its goal of a melancholic observation of small town people interacting with each other, revealing a theme that most people will grow old without doing much with their lives, just like Sully, but that they will find comfort in small moments of kindness and happiness with other people like them.  

Grade:++

Shy People

Shy People; drama, USA, 1987, D: Andrei Konchalovsky, S: Jill Clayburgh, Barbara Hershey, Martha Plimpton, Don Swayze, Pruitt Taylor Vince, John Philbin, Mare Winningham, Merritt Buttick

New York reporter Diana Sullivan travels with her drug-addicted teenage daughter Grace to the swamps of Louisiana to write a story about the descendants of Joe, the late brother of her grandfather. Diana is shocked when she meets Joe’s widow Ruth, who married him when she was 12, and lives in a desolate shack, ruling over her grown up kids with an iron fist: she locked up Tommy in a cage for misbehaving; Mark catches fish and lives with his pregnant wife Candy; Paul is mentally disabled, whereas Mike left the place and works in a striptease bar in the local town. When Mark is attacked at night in his boat, Diana and Ruth travel to the city to report the incident to the Sheriff. In their absence, a bored Grace gives cocaine to Mark, who attempts to rape her, so she flees on a boat. Diana finds her and they leave, Diana a little bit stricter; and Ruth a little bit softer, while Mike returns to her shack.  

A rare Golan-Globus production outside the action genre, and one of the more misleading titles ever, swamp drama “Shy People” seems almost like a more grounded, dramatic version of Craven’s “The Hills Have Eyes”, exploring a yin and yang difference between two families, one civilized, the other backward and regressive. In this edition, the wealthy New Yorker Diana (Jill Clayburg) becomes a symbol for liberalism, and the Louisiana resident Ruth (excellence in acting by the brilliant Barbara Hershey) a symbol for autocracy, alas the stage is set for a culture clash between these two worldviews. These two women mirror themselves as some sort of antipodes (both lost their husbands; both have grown problem-kids), try to understand each other, and will eventually adopt certain traits from each other: the movie explores both positive and negative sides of their worldviews, since Ruth is too authoritative and allergic to any kind of change (she threatens the pregnant wife of Mark, Candy, that she is not allowed to leave the property; Tommy is even locked up in a cage for disobedience), but is strong (when a snake shows up under Diana’s legs during a boat ride, Ruth just takes it and throws it into the river), whereas Diana has class and an open mind, but is too lenient and permissive (her daughter Grace takes cocaine). “Shy People” is a peculiar and odd film, not that well written, but well made and acted. It may even have a political subtext, depicting Ruth’s swamp shack as a variation of a dictator isolating a derelict community from the rest of the world and proclaiming it as their “paradise”. However, the film relies too much on allegory and symbolism, instead of also developing an interesting story on its own right, or displaying a more versatile movie language. The characters of Mike and Paul are unnecessary. While flawed and meandering, this is a quality made drama that has a vision and a purpose behind its crazy decisions.   

Grade:++

The Hitman's Bodyguard

The Hitman’s Bodyguard; action comedy, USA, 2017, D: Patrick Hughes, S: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek, Elodie Yung, Joaquim de Almeida, Richard E. Grant  

Bodyguard Michael is demoted following the assassination of a client he was supposed to protect, which also negatively affects his relationship with Amelia. The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) is holding a trial against Belarus dictator Dukhovich, but all the witnesses keep getting killed before they can testify. The last witness, assassin Darius, is thus released from jail, and Michael is assigned to protect him so that Darius can testify at the court. Dukhovich’s henchmen organize a huge attack on Michael and Darius across the Dutch cities, but Darius is able to arrive to The Hague and testify against Dukhovich, as well as meeting up again with his wife from prison, Sonia.  

This unusual action ‘buddy comedy’ works mostly due to the chemistry of its two lead actors, the charming Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, as well as a couple of incredible action stunts. In one notable action highlight, playing out in Amsterdam, two cars chase each other, but then the one driven by Darius turns around, and drives in reverse along the canal, they go up an alley, until the two cars eject on a highway—but the second one, with the bad guys in it, is immediately hit by a truck. Even though it juggles with a topic of a dictator on trial in front of the International Criminal Court, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” is a non-political and unambitious film, a simple comedy that does not take itself seriously and is instead just there for the anarchic fun of it all, and the director Patrick Hughes has a good sense of keeping the pieces of the disparate story together, even giving the viewers a treat in the form of exotic European locations. Its pace is a little too fast, though, almost frantic, to such an extent that one wishes it showed more confidence in its quiet parts, slowed down and just enjoyed some of its moments longer, instead of treating them as throw-away material that is just there to keep the viewers’ attention with flashy effects. It’s as if many of the scenes just don’t have a weight to them, except for being loud.   

Some of the dialogues are witty (“He is a coffin magnet”; “You know what they say: when life gives you shit... you make Kool-Aid!”), whereas Salma Hayek has a field day as the feisty Sonia, in the 2nd best sequence of the film, the stylish bar fight where she takes Darius’ beer bottle, drinks it, and then uses the empty bottle to smash the head of some criminal she was holding with her other arm. But the main prize for the no. 1 sequence of the entire film goes to a contagiously funny sequence that the viewers will find the better the more they rewind it. It plays out some 91 minutes into the film, and is filmed, intermittently, in two one-minute long takes, and features a waiter taking food from the stove, as the camera follows him glamorously exiting the kitchen to serve the guests of a restaurant, while this is contrasted with a reverse camera shot of Reynolds’ character Michael unglamorously rushing into the place to hide into the kitchen. Two assassins are right behind him, they smash open the door of the kitchen—but he is safely inches away from the swinging door, and then smashes them back shut, blocking one of the villains. This chase continues in a hardware store, where the lyrics of the cheerful song “Little queenie” by Chuck Berry are in a hilarious contrast with Michael trying to save his life by throwing various tools at the invincible assassin who just cannot be stopped, and thus at one point we have the lyrics going “...Looking like a model on the cover of a magazine...”, while the said assassin has a nail on his forehead, but just continues charging at Michael: comic pandemonium. Too bad the rest of the film never reaches a quarter of such sheer extraordinary fun of the said two sequences, but it is still good fun, nonetheless.  

Grade:++

The Ipcress File

The Ipcress File; thriller, UK, 1965, D: Sidney J. Furie, S: Michael Caine, Guy Doleman, Nigel Green, Sue Lloyd, Gordon Jackson

London during the Cold War. 16 British scientists mysteriously terminated their careers, and when atomic physicist Professor Radcliffe is kidnapped, the British secret service, run by Ross and Dalby, bring agent Harry Palmer on the case. Palmer follows suspect named Grantby in a library, but the latter disappears. During a raid in a factory suspecting to be holding Radcliffe, the secret service finds an audiotape marked “Ipcress”. Grantby agrees to return Radcliffe for a large amount of cash, but once back, Radcliffe’s mind is damaged, and he cannot understand physics anymore. The “Ipcress” file disappears, and Palmer is kidnapped by Grantby’s men, working with Dalby, a double agent, who put him in a brainwashing container. In a warehouse, Dalby orders Palmer to shoot Gross, but Palmer is able to resist brainwashing and shoot Dalby, instead.  

“The Ipcress File”, the originator of the famous Cold War espionage film series, is a surprisingly fresh and suspenseful thriller, its hero Harry Palmer serving as an alternative and more grounded version of James Bond. The said main protagonist is played wonderfully by Michael Caine, here uncharacteristically wearing glasses for such a genre, and tries to unfold a giant web of intrigue, with agents and double agents. While the dialogue is standard and conventional, the director Sidney J. Furie tries to compensate this through a highly unusual visual style, consisting out of bewildering shot compositions and unusual camera angles, similarly to the film “Get Carter”, with such scenes as the waist of a man placed in front of the camera, covering almost 2/3 of the frame on the right, while the person speaking to him is almost microscopic, placed on the far left of the screen, standing far away from the camera. In another, outside a suspicious abandonded factory, the camera takes the POV of the driver of a police car, and after Palmer tells him to “lose that door, will you?”, the driver just backs up the vehicle for a couple of yards, and then drives with full force towards it, crashing through the door. Some of Palmer’s methods are quite clever: for instance, in order to track down Grantby, he goes to a special bureau and finds the latter has three parking tickets all received on the same location, with the car license plate going 417 FLU. Palmer then goes to the location, finds the car parked there, and just waits. Finally, a man puts some coins in the parking meter, so Palmer follows him to a library where Grantby is researching. The brainwashing container, where psychedelic lines are being projected over all four walls and on the ceiling to hypnotize a man inside, is expressionistic and unique. While some of the flaws are noticeable—for instance, the obfuscated double-agent-plot twists in the finale became so complicated that the viewers will have trouble deciphering who of Palmer’s officials is the bad guy— “The Ipcress File” has a rather robust structure. You expect a cheesy espionage flick, but get a much more ambitious, challenging and dedicated thriller.   

Grade:+++

Army of Shadows

L’armée des ombres; war drama, France / Italy, 1969, D: Jean-Pierre Melville, S: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret, Claude Mann 

World War II, France during the Nazi occupation. Resistance member Philippe Gerbier is arrested and sent to an internment camp, but manages to flee and hide in Marseille. His Resistance colleagues are Bison, Le Masque, Felix, Mathilde, and others. He travels to London to coordinate with the French government in exile, and then goes back to France. Felix is arrested by the Nazis and tortured in a prison, so Mathilde conjures up a plan in which she disguises herself as a nurse, equipped with an ambulance car, while Bison and Le Masque use forged papers to try to transport Felix away from prison, but the prison doctor rejects their request, declaring Felix too weak for transport. A Resistance member gives Felix a cyanide pill for suicide. Philippe is arrested, but manages to escape again. When Mathilde is arrested, and the Gestapo also knows she has a daughter whom they threaten to send to a brothel on the Eastern Front, the Resistance members agree to kill Mathilde by shooting her on the street.  

Included in Roger Ebert’s list of Great Movies, “Army of Shadows” is a typically ascetic, cold, clinical and minimalist film by director Jean-Pierre Melville, who hereby delivered a monument to the French Resistance members during the Nazi dictatorship, the former of which he was himself a part of, and thus the story is imbued with authenticity, avoiding any kind of glamour. Melville is a realist: he is sympathetic towards the Resistance movement, but also objective enough to show how a change will not happen during their lifetime. All the six main characters of the movement in the story die before the end of World War II, and are doomed to a transitory-interim existence before any results of their efforts will bear fruit. The happiness of peace awaits only the generation after them. Congruent to this pessimistic mood, even the cinematography is bleak and dark, full of shadows, revealing a sad underground in which these members hide while undercover, but the movie is boring at times, grey and overlong. 

Some of the tactics of the Resistance are not that impressive: in one sequence, Philippe arrives via train to a train station, but a whole row of Vichy officers are awaiting the passangers to inspect some of their luggage. Philippe thus spots a woman with two little kids and offers to help her by carrying one of the children, thereby “camouflaging” as a parent to walk pass the customs control. It is kind of a stretch that the Vichy officers would fail to inspect everyone, even parents, if they are suspecting Resistance members. One cool moment has Philippe rowing in a boat in the middle of the sea, until he reaches a British submarine, and then just exits from the boat onto the submarine. The best moment arrives when the Nazi soldiers are marching prisoners in a basement to a firing squad, when Melville untypically abandons realism and reveals Philippe’s narration, which includes this poetic line of thought: “It is impossible not to be afraid when you know you are going to die. I am just too stubborn, too much of an animal to believe it. But if I don't believe it to the end, to the very last split second, then I won't die.” The film is very good, yet it still lacks some true ingenuity or inspiration to be as great as the said sequence where the protagonist contemplates his mortality, life, fate and all the things between. 

Grade:+++

Loaded Weapon 1

Loaded Weapon I; parody, USA, 1993, D: Gene Quintano, S: Emilio Estevez, Samuel L. Jackson, Kathy Ireland, Tim Curry, William Shatner, Jon Lovitz, Frank McRae, Whoopi Goldberg, Denis Leary, F. Murray Abraham  

L. A. Sergeants Colt and Luger get a new case of investigating the murder of Billie York, who hid a secret microfilm that can disguise cocaine as ordinary cookies. Colt starts an affair with Miss Destiny, who knows the villain searching for the microfilm, General Mortars. After a lot of misadventures, Luger shoots Mortars in a warehouse and stops his drug smuggling operation.  

“Loaded Weapon 1” (despite its sly title, it never had a sequel) is one of those rare pure parody films from the 90s, spoofs so unabashedly ridiculous and over-the-top that they are almost tantamount to a live-action cartoon, but it once again proves that only the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio had the capacity to truly make that specific sub-genre reach a greater level. “Loaded Weapon 1” is a light, carefree, dumb comedy, yet it works only to a certain extent: some jokes succeed, others fail. And for a parody to work completely, their rate of success should be at least 80%, with some outstandingly funny moments. This film is below that line, with only moderately amusing jokes, but it is nonetheless fun watching Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson as a team that spoofs “Lethal Weapon”. In one good joke, their characters Colt and Luger are driving in their car, when all of a sudden one of them says that “they are being followed”—cut to the next scene of two criminals sitting in the back seat behind them, in the same car. Another good moment has the villain (William Shatner) enter the mansion of a guy (Denis Leary), and starts shooting—cut to a scene of even a man on TV covering his face and ducking for cover. When Luger asks a clerk about York, the clerk asks for a photo of her, so Luger reaches for his jacket and takes out a T-shirt with York’s face on it, leading to an insane exchange (“Is that her?” - “No, that’s the photo”). Other jokes fare less: for instance, the “Silence of the Lambs” sequence doesn’t work. Just referencing a scene from a classic movie is not a joke on itself. Bruce Willis makes a cameo as a guy whose trailer was accidentally shot at by a helicopter, but this is also just bland. The beautiful Kathy Ireland is effervescent as Miss Destiny, and she has chemistry with Estevez. Overall, a good zany fun, yet the cinema world would later on move to more grounded comedies, anchored in reality.  

Grade:++

Fack ju Göhte

Fack ju Göhte; comedy, Germany, 2013, D: Bora Dağtekin, S: Elyas M’Barek, Karoline Herfurth, Jana Pallaske, Alwara Höfels, Jella Haase, Katja Riemann, Anna Lena Klenke, Max von der Groeben, Uschi Glas  

After serving 13 months in prison, Zeki Müller is released and immediately goes after the money stolen in a bank robbery, but is shocked that a Goethe high school was built on the land where he buried the cash. Müller thus forges a diploma and gets a job as a teacher in the said school, secretly excavating a tunnel under ground during the night. A young teacher, Lisi, blackmails Müller into taking over her class, 10B, the worst bunch of students in school, but Müller’s unusual methods get him a grip over the students. Müller finds the money, but Lisi orders him to leave school since he is associated with criminals. However, the principal hires Müller back as a teacher, since the class improved.  

In one sequence, the slob protagonist Müller, who improvises being a teacher, is attending a rehearsal of a school play of “Romeo & Juliet”, and interrupts it, complaining that the sets look “like one of those channels you immediately switch away from after you accidentally tuned in”; that he has only seen a “porn version of Romeo & Juliet”; that the dialogues sound like relics since “Shakespeare has been dead for 4,000 years or so”; and that the main actor should tell them in his own words, causing the guy to say: “Juliet, I want to shag you, show me your boobs!” Depending on each viewers’ taste, these kind of ‘crude jokes’ will either be amusing or just downright embarrassing, and this can be applied to the entire film “Fack ju Gohte”, whose inclination is relative. The film seems like an inversion of the classic German student comedy “Die Feuerzangenbowle”, spoofing the teacher-student relations, but just done worse and dumber. Nonetheless, it was a huge hit in German cinemas by selling over 7,000,000 tickets at the box office. It is a shallow, but easily accessible and simple fun, with enthusiastic actors, especially Karoline Herfurth as the shy teacher Lisi who has a secret crush on Müller, who in a way seems to self-educate himself, undergoing a character arc from a primitive brute to a more likeable, enlightened guy. In one of the funniest early moments, Müller is so lazy that he does not even bother to teach the teenagers in class, instead just giving them the assignment to watch movies on DVDs for homework, culminating in a hilarious essay by one of the students who imagined being the T-Rex from “Jurassic Park” (“The electric fence is off. I can finally go out and explore my freedom. This day has given me hope in my life!”). The writer and director Bora Dagtekin intends to double-down on crafting only a simple, ‘rough’ comedy for the masses, even deliberately dodging some potentials for more touching moments (such as when Müller pretends to be Lisi’s boyfriend to help her keep custody of her underaged sister), and some moments are tantamount to a cartoon: for instance, the students from the problematic class concoct such ridiculous pranks on Müller like a bucket pouring tar on him from nowhere, or an explosion of feathers inside his car. A clumsy populist comedy, but it has its moments.

Grade:++

Bridge of Spies

Bridge of Spies; drama, USA / Germany, 2015; D: Steven Spielberg, S: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Austin Stowell, Scott Shepherd, Sebastian Koch, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda

New York, 1 9 5 7. Painter Rudolf Abel works as a Soviet spy, and is thus arrested by the FBI. Since he has to have due process, for fairness sake, he is awarded to insurance lawyer James Donovan, who reluctantly accepts to defend him. Abel is sentenced to 30 years in prison. However, when a US spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union, its pilot Gary Powers is also sentenced for espionage. Donovan is sent to East Berlin to try to arrange a prisoner exchange of Abel and Powers, but also including American student Frederic Pryor, who was arrested by the Communist East Germany. Despite complications, Abel is exchanged for Powers and Pryor.   

“Bridge of Spies” is another good, but monotone ‘social issues’ film offering a routine Steven Spielberg, indicating that the famous director achieved his last great film with “Munich”, after which he dedicated himself to formally noble, albeit underwhelming “message movies” about human rights. Everything in this film is done just right, with no bad scenes, and on a technical level there is nothing to complain about, yet except for the opening (Abel has a mirror on his left side and his own portrait on the right side, looking at drawing himself in his own reflection), there are no great scenes. There is just no fun or excitement in watching this film. Everything is somehow standard, bland, clinical and mechanical, like a cinematic PowerPoint presentation, which is mostly disappointing when one has in mind that the script was co-written by the Coen brothers—but just without their trademark clever, witty dialogues. Spielberg has some observations about the Cold War in the story: he presents both Abel’s conviction for espionage at a US court, and then American Powers’ conviction for espionage in a Soviet court, drawing parallels about how the two countries acted similarly about this, yet this comes full circle in a sequence that rhymes, when Donovan (good Tom Hanks) is traveling in a train in East Berlin and spots some men climbing the wall, only to get shot by border guards, and later on he is in a train in the US, watching some teenagers climbing identically over a fence—and blissfully smiling that nothing happens to them for that, indicating a profound difference between the USA and USSR: despite all of their flaws, the former is still a society that promotes and advances humans, while the latter is a society that debases humans. Mark Rylance is solid as spy Abel, but his role is too lukewarm to engage the viewers. Spielberg and Hanks cooperated on five films together, but only two filmed before “Munich” touched greatness: “Saving Private Ryan” and “Catch Me If You Can”.   

Grade:++

Get Out

Get Out; horror, USA, 2017; D: Jordan Peele, S: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Stephen Root, Catherine Keener

African-American Chris and his White girlfriend Rose travel to the countryside to meet Rose's parents. Once there, Rose's parents Dean and Missy declare themselves as liberal and try to charm Chris, but he feels uncomfortable. Chris spots unusual behaviors of the two African-American servants to the family, and is hypnotized by Missy, and then wakes up the next morning. Chris is hypnotized again and tied to a chair in a basement, since the family plans to insert the brain of a blind old man into Chris' body. During the planned surgery, Chris escapes and kills the family. He is found by a friend and flees the house.

"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" meets "The Skeleton Key" meets "Being John Malkovich"—Jordan Peele's feature length debut film is an interesting example of observing race relations through the prism of an allegorical horror, but once again proves that social issues alone do not always automatically subsume greatness. The first hour plays out like a typical "meet the parents" story, with quiet moments of the African American protagonist Chris interacting with the parents of his White girlfriend Rose, equipped with such comical chit-chat scenes as the dad insisting that he "would have voted for Obama's third term if he could" or Rose joking after Chris came back to dinner by saying: "You missed a lot of nothing". Peele crafts a mysterious mood where the viewers constantly feel something is "off", especially in an unexpected, highly eerie mood shift some 35 minutes into the film, but cannot quite figure why until the final reveal at the end. Unfortunately, the last 20 minutes are moronically ridiculous, to such an extent that "Get Out" self-destructs in the end. The ending contradicts the entire story up to that point, switching from a movie about racism to a movie about ageism and conformism ("Black is in fashion", says one of the White guys to Chris), leaving a confusing impression, as if the author did not himself know what exactly he wanted to say. On one hand, it can be seen as an allegory on how liberals just use minorities to achieve their own private interests—but on the other hand, it makes no sense since it seems almost as a compliment to the African Americans (White people's ideal is to become Black). Had the plot twist been something else, like that they kill Black people for organ theft, it would have fit perfectly with the first and second act of "Get Out". But the plot twist we got here is just skewed, with some far-fetched situations (starting a surgery without the donor being in the same room at that time, for instance). "Get Out" is good, but it relies too much on guilt or political correctness, and too little on an inspired story on its own right.

Grade:++

Moonlight

Moonlight; drama, USA, 2016; D: Barry Jenkins, S: Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders, Alex Hibbert, André Holland, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali, Jharrel Jerome  

Miami. Chapter I: Drug-dealer Juan spots some bullies chasing a little kid, Chiron, who hides in an abandoned building. Juan brings Chiron back to his mom, Paula, a prostitute and drug-addict. Juan becomes Chiron’s friend and mentor. Chapter II: a teenage Chiron hides that he is gay. He has a romantic encounter with his friend Kevin who gives him a hand-job. School bully Terrel pressures Kevin into punching Chiron, and then kicks Chiron with other bullies. Later, Chiron slams a chair against Terrel and is arrested. Chapter III: a grown up Chiron, now a drug dealer, returns to his city upon invitation of Kevin, now a cook, who makes him a meal in a snack bar. Later, in Kevin’s home, Chiron admits he was the only man who touched him. Kevin comforts him.  

“Moonlight” is a puzzlingly uneven film comprised out of three chapters that are not only different stylistically, but also qualitatively: chapter I is undoubtedly excellent, but the others never repeat that high impression, since chapter II is good, but chapter III, which was supposed to be the crucial final act, messes everything up. Chapter I starts out as a typically cliche crime flick involving a drug dealer Juan in a poor neighborhood, but then some bullies pass by him on the street, chasing a little kid, Chiron, and from there on it seems as if this segment breaks away from this mold and goes against everything that we expected, to become a different movie, making a de-tour into this beautiful friendship between Chiron and Juan, who takes pitty on the kid and decides to help him. Instead of a ‘tough’ criminal, we got a friendship of two gentle souls which is genuine and touching, featuring at least one great dialogue (“What is a faggot?” - “It’s a word used to make gay people feel bad”) whereas the director Barry Jenkins has a sense for finesse when Juan realizes Chiron’s mom is buying his drugs. 

Chapter II is never up to the level of the previous segment, but it is still good, featuring Chiron’s tender first gay encounter on the beach, and showing how he is bullied in school, contemplating this ill-treatment of a minority-within-a-minority (a gay in an African-American neighborhood). Chiron’s reaction at the end is weird, but understandable. One plot hole bothers here, though: why was he arrested for attacking the bully, but the police didn’t arrest the bullies after they beat him up on the ground? There were more than enough witnesses. Chapter III is unfortunately the weakest one of the lot, and ends “Moonlight” on a disappointing note. With its 45 minutes of running time, it is the longest chapter, and had the burden of concluding the storyline about growing up and finding one’s identity, but is overstretched and drawn out since it was unnecessary to sit through a routine story of a grown up Chiron just sitting the entire time with Kevin at a diner only to get to that one good part in the last sentence. Mahershala Ali was building up his character of Juan wonderfully in chapter I, but it seems as if he was cut short or interrupted since Juan doesn’t show up neither in chapter II nor III, which is illogical and unsatisfying: since he was supposed to be Chiron’s good friend, he could have played a crucial role at the end and helped to heal him. This way, Juan was forgotten and failed to become a great role. “Moonlight” is very good, but not a great film. Its awards may be the result of a need to pay-off a debt for ignoring “Brokeback Mountain” 11 years earlier. It is a remarkably personal and honest little film, but it would have been so much better if its last chapter had been at least half as good as its first chapter.   

Grade:++

Die Hard with a Vengeance

Die Hard with a Vengeance; action, USA, 1995; D: John McTiernan, S: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irons, Larry Bryggman, Anthony Peck, Nick Wyman, Graham Greene, Colleen Camp

New York. A bomb explodes in a store, and a mysterious Simon calls the police and threatens to detonate more bombs unless Lt. John McLane walks with a "I Hate Niggers" sign on the streets of Harlem. John has to comply, and gets into trouble on the streets, but is saved by clerk Zeus. Simon phones again and poses a riddle next, after which he detonates a bomb in a subway train. While the police are busy trying to find an alleged bomb in a school, Simon Gruber, Hans Gruber's brother, sets his real plan into motion: disguised as railway repair crew, Simon enters the Federal Reserve Bank over it, whose alarm was nullified by the explosion, and robs its gold. Simon and his crew escape with the gold in a ship, but John and Zeus manage to find them, and the police raid catches them. In a shootout, Simon is killed in a helicopter.

Part III of the "Die Hard" franchize is considered better than part II, but still weaker than the classic part I, which was helmed by director John McTiernan, who retroactively returned the story to its roots. The protagonist John McLane (his name sounds similar to McTiernan's) is refreshingly brought into a story that is not set on Christmas, but is its very own thing, yet some of its elements are still repetitive, especially in the disappointing idea that his wife Holly is absent from the story, and is again in a feud with him, which negates their character arc from the first "Die Hard" film, and thus feels frustrating, as if we just got back to square one. "Die Hard with a Vengeance" works the best in its first half, where the villain Simon tricks the police by sending it on a wild goose chase equipped with neat riddles (in one that is very amusing, John and Zeus have to solve how to fill 4 gallons of water and place it on a scale using only a 5-gallon and 3-gallon jugs) only to distract them while he goes after his real target, robbing the gold from the Federal Reserve Bank, whose alarm system he conveniently nullified using a previous explosion in the subway. The rest of the film, the entire second hour, is just a standard action film repertoire, which never has neither the inspiration nor the style to engage the viewers on a deeper level. Some scenes are even a bit unconvincing and silly (the way John escapes from a driving truck, because a wall of water is flooding the tunnel behind him, so he emerges from the manhole in a fountain, and is conveniently seen by Zeus who just happens to pass the place in a car just at that moment; the rope attached from a car on the bridge to the passing ship), whereas this time around not every little detail plays a role later on. The anticlimactic ending seems a bit rushed and too neat, and thus the range of this part III was set to good, and it works within these parameters.

Grade:++