Nymphomaniac: Vol. II

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II; erotic psychological drama / tragedy, Denmark / Germany / France / Belgium, 2013; D: Lars von Trier, S: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, Mia Goth, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe 

The middle-aged woman Joe continues to confess her life story to bachelor Seligman in his apartment: while she was married to Jerome, and they had a son, she suddenly lost her ability to achieve sexual pleasure. Jerome passively allowed her to see other men. Joe tried everything: she randomly talked to an interpreter to ask an African migrant to have sex with her, but later, in the hotel room, the African migrant brought his friend with him to have a threesome, after which Joe left. Joe accepted to see sadist K, who slapped and whipped her butt. When her son almost fell off from the window, Jerome files for divorce and brings the kid for adoption. Joe became pregnant and performed an abortion herself at home. She attended a sex-addict therapy, but eventually blasted them for rejecting their passion. Joe was hired by L to be a debt collector, assissted by two bodyguards. She recruited a teenage girl, P, to be her apprentice. P wanted to have a lesbian relationship with Joe, but Joe refused. P then had an affair with Jerome. Joe wanted to shoot Jerome, but her gun failed to fire. Seligman admits he never had sex. When Joe goes to sleep in bed, Seligman touches her butt and wants to sleep with her, upon which Joe shoots him.

If you can't keep the viewers' attention through inspiration, shock. That seems to be the motto of Lars von Trier's second part of "Nymphomaniac", which forms the final part of his 'depression trilogy', yet judging by the finished result, it is more suitable to be called von Trier's 'creative crisis trilogy'. The film is an aimless mess of episode after episode, without reaching a specific goal, lingering for some reason on several gruesome details which feel like empty provocation. Its biggest problem: it's not even sexy. Von Trier directs the scarce erotic sequences as if an alien would try to recreate human sexuality. In one example, at the sex-addict therapy, one woman tells about her sexual encounter with other men: she invited them, and then lied down naked with her back on a hill of coal. She then used the dirt from coal to besmirch the black soot over her breasts and stomach. You would rather want to give her soap than to think to touch her in that filth. In another, Joe arranges for a sexual encounter with an African migrant in the hotel room. But for some reason, the migrant arrives with his friend and they want a threesome, even though they don't speak her language. Would a migrant really risk ruining his chance at sex like that? For all he knows, the woman could be terrified and run away when a third, uninvited person appeared. At best, he would first have sex with her, and then subtly ask her if she would like a threesome next time. In this edition, this sequence feels fake and unconvincing. The worst moment is the infamous self-abortion procedure by Joe at her home, in which she inserts three tubes deep inside her vagina, equipped even with an X-ray image of a sharp tube penetrating the uterus to pierce a fetus, which is so disgusting and intolerable it makes you want to throw up. Does von Trier want to make a movie about sexuality or to traumatize viewers? He himself seems to be confused as to what he wants to say here, and thus this misguided tone contaminated the entire film. Far below the best movies about sexuality with taste, such as Nishima's "In the Realm of the Senses", Virgo's "Lie With Me" or Medem's "Sex and Lucia", which look at this ill-conceived movie with pity.

Grade:+

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

To All the Boys I've Loved Before; romanic comedy, USA, 2018; D: Susan Johnson, S: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Janel Parrish, Anna Cathcart, Andrew Bachelor, Trezzo Mahoro, Madeleine Arthur

Lara Jean is a teenage girl living with her widoved father and two sisters, Kitty and Margot. When her older sister Margot goes to study in Scotland, she breaks up with her boyfriend Josh. Lara Jean has a crush on Josh, but realizes it would be inapropriate to date her sister's ex. Lara Jean wrote five love letters to the guys she has a crush on, yet never sent them. One day, her letters are gone and were mailed by Kitty to Peter, Josh and Lucas, who is gay. In order to deflect from talking with Josh about the letter, Lara Jean kisses Peter, and they also decide to fake a relationship to make Peter's ex Gen jealous. When Peter really gets feelings for Lara Jean, it causes a lot of troubles, but in the end they truly become a couple.

Based on Jenny Han's popular teen romantic comedy novel, "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" is considered the best entry in this film trilogy, a sweet, honest, humble, loveable and funny little film with a great lead, Lana Condor, who plays Lara Jean with charm. The concept of someone sending the heroine's unsent love letters is tantalizing, though it is too quickly concluded when Lara Jean decides to lead a "pretend relationship" with Peter, which becomes the real, unannounced new plot of the story from around 40 minutes in. The movie starts refreshingly daft: Lara Jean imagines she is in a romance novel, seeing Josh on the meadow, all until she is hit in the face with a pillow, as the camera pans to the left to reveal her sister in the house who threw it, and then the camera pans right, revealing the "normal" Lara Jean in bed, in a cool match cut. Sadly, the rest of the story is less inspired, running sometimes better and sometimes weaker, depending on how snappy the dialogue is. Some lines are great ("How does he look at me?" - "Like you're a sexy little Rubik's cube. He can't figure you out, but he's having fun trying." / "Look, her logic was off, but her heart was in the right place!" - "Her face is gonna be in the wrong place!"), yet there are also long empty spots in between. Both the actors playing Lara Jean's crushes act self-congratulatory and do not feel genuine, whereas the story needed more sharpness, yet it is overall an endearing and sympathetic depiction of the chaos time of high school life.

Grade:++

Seinfeld (Season 8)

Seinfeld; comedy series, USA, 1997, D: Andy Ackerman, S: Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Wayne Knight, Jerry Stiller

Susan's parents name George the head of Susan foundation, much to his dismay... George uses the photo of Susan to date other women for pity... Jerry is bothered that his new girlfriend has big, "man's hands"... Elaine hates "The English Patient", but everyone else loves it... Kramer cannot sleep due to too bright neon lights of a chicken restaurant seen through his window... Everyone feels Jerry's new girlfriend is terrible, but he himself cannot find a single flaw about her... When his dentist converts to Judaism and starts making jokes about Jews, Jerry is angered... Elaine inspires a man to make a cake shop selling only muffin tops, but the rest of the muffins need to be disposed off... In order to get pity from women and get a date, George pretends he is an Arkansas tourist in New York, working for Tyler Chicken. However, this gets George fired from his job, since his boss makes a deal to exchange him for food from Tyler Chicken. 

Season 8 is creatively a big fall for "Seinfeld", making the season at times even weaker and overstretched than the 1st season, caused by the departure of co-writer Larry David. Indeed, it seems Jerry Seinfeld spends the entire first 13 episodes struggling to find David's "missing link" and make sense of his own show, yet he eventually does get a hang of it in the last nine episodes. Some early episodes are embarassing in its banal attempts at humor, with jokes so lame and silly they feel like an episode from some cartoonish sitcom. For instance, in episode 8.10 Kramer decides to take the cheaper dog medicine for his cough, but starts displaying dog-like behavior, resulting in several weak jokes such as the one where Jerry is driving him in the car and Kramer just escapes and acts like a dog. However, he character of George (great Jason Alexander) saves the episode: upon hearing that a committee will grant a lovely apartment to a man who survived Andrea Doria, George takes this as a challenge (!) and speaks in front of the committee to try to gain even bigger pity by listing all the misfortunes and tragedies that happened in his life, in a glorius "take that!" moment. 

Episode 8.11 is somewhat better, but exclusively again thanks to George: a woman working in the photo store gives a photo of women's underwear to George, who interprets this as the woman trying to seduce him, so Kramer makes a photoshoot of him to give it to the photo store for development. The photoshoot sequence is hilarious, especially in an insane moment where George, in his underwear, randomly stretches his hand out towards the photo camera, in a pointless pose. Episode 8.11 involving a rooster trained by Kramer and Jerry for a fight is one of the weakest episodes, but other episodes still have that witty observations about life, from Kramer having trouble sleeping in the same bed with his girlfriend (Sarah Silverman) because she keeps tossing and turning, up to George complaining about hair growth at advanced age ("It's like puberty that never stops. Ear puberty, nose puberty, knuckle puberty..."). In the funny episode 8.15 Elaine is mistaken for "Susie" by a woman superior at work, but fails to correct it out of fear of sounding disobedient, culminating in the sequence where the boss and said woman call a meeting with both Elaine and "Susie", but since only Elaine is in the office, she carefully plays both roles without mentioning her own name. The following episode, 8.16, even tops it, featuring a great pay-off: sufficient to say it involves three random events (a sewing machine on the road; Newman hitting it with his truck; flammable tar on the road) merging into a perfect, hilarious disaster at the end. However, the last episode is an anticlimax, Seinfeld's opening and closing stand-up comedy bits are sadly absent (probably due to his exhaustion from too many episodes), whereas the first episodes are disappointing, all leading to the conclusion that "Seinfeld" seasons have a horshoe curve when it comes to quality.

Grade:++

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; art-film / drama, Belgium / France, 1975; D: Chantal Akerman, S: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Yves Bical

Bruxelles. Jeanne is a housewife in her 40s, living in a small apartment together with her teenage son Sylvain after the death of her husband. She spends her day making lunch, dinner, and occasionally having sex with men for money in the bedroom. In the evening, she goes out for a walk with Sylvain. They get a letter from her aunt in Canada. Sylvain goes to a Flemish school to be with his friend. On the second day, Jeanne becomes more nervous and erratic. She goes to pay her bills at the post office and bring Sylvain's shoes for repair to the shoemaker. On the third day, Jeanne sits for a long time on the chair. After a customer has sex with her, she takes scissors and stabs him in the neck, killing him. Jeanne then returns back to sit at the table.

You know 2022 is a bad year when the Sight & Sound poll released that year picked "Jeanne Dielman" as the best film of all time, in the critic's category. Chantal Akerman's art-film is a good meditation on the existentialist themes of loneliness, isolation and feeling of empty existence, yet it drags on for far longer than its point can sustain it. This is a movie that needed a better editor: Akerman opted for an "epic about boredom" with a running time of 3 hours, yet the movie didn't require anything above the 1.5 hours mark. While such long, static 5-minute kitchen scenes of the title heroine dipping pork meat in eggs, and then in flour and bread crumbs to prepare schnitzels make for interesting recipes, what does the cinema viewer get from them? As the book "1001 Movies You Must See" observes, Akerman aims to capture the "drab routine of her life in real time", so that the viewers can sense and experience how it looks like to be this housewife, articulating a depressing mood of a woman who has nothing going for her in this void life. Jeanne's bizarre, radical decision in the penultimate scene is almost a sort of protest against the grey world, and the movie sets it up subtly—on the first day, Jeanne does everything perfectly (dinner, prostitution as she puts the money in the porcelain in the living room...), but on the second day, cracks start to appear, as she becomes sloppy at times (she overcooks a meal on the stove and thus throws it into the trash can; she forgets to put the lid on the porcelain with the money...), and on the third day, everything seems to go wrong for her, showing her quiet mental collapse. However, themes alone don't make up a movie—"Jeanne Dielman" is thinly written and directed, without much ingenuity or creativity that would stand out. This life routine goes so far that one gets the impression than anything in life is worthy for an Akerman movie, no matter how trivial, making even "Seinfeld" seem significant. The main strategy of the film is almost self-defeating: Akerman wants to depict how boring and monotone life is by making a boring and monotone film. 

Grade:++

Seinfeld (Season 7)

Seinfeld; comedy series, USA, 1996, D: Andy Ackerman, S: Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Wayne Knight, Jerry Stiller, Heidi Swedberg

Jerry thinks he has too high standards towards his girlfriend, which causes George to return to his ex, Susan, and propose her. However, Jerry breaks up with his girlfriend, so George starts having second thoughts... Elaine cannot sleep from a dog barking, so she has Kramer and Newman kidnap it... An African who overslept the Olympics stays at Elaine for a New York marathon, but Jerry wants to make sure he wakes up on time and doesn’t trust Elaine’s alarm clock... George doesn’t want to share his credit card password with Susan... Jerry gets the phone number of a woman he liked from an AIDS walk list... George is angry that a friend wanted to hook him up with Marisa Tomei, but he is already engaged... George becomes his boss’ favorite employee when he keeps buying him Calzone, but then George is banned from buying in the Italian restaurant... While licking the adhesive for their wedding invitations, Susan is accidentally poisoned, and thus George’s wedding is canceled.  

Season 7 of "Seinfeld" is a bit weaker than seasons 4 & 5, since a certain sense of mechanical routine entered these stories, yet it still has more than enough fresh humor and 'sleaze charm' to entertain better than some modern comedy shows. Some moments still have that typical sharp observations about life, such as in the episode “The Wink” where Jerry asks Elaine what percentage of the people is attractive and suitable to date, and her estimate is “25%”, but Jerry doesn’t agree: “No way, it’s more like 4 to 6%! It's a 20 to one shot!” The dinner with the Ross family also has some fine lines, such as the wife commenting on her husband, the writer: “If I had a dime for each time he wrote a book, I would be broke.”  In the episode "The Shower Head", Seinfeld has a sense for dark humor while talking to his Uncle Leo: “Look at you, you're disgusting. You're bald, you're paunchy, all kinds of sounds are emanating from your body twenty-four hours a day. If there's a woman that can take your presence for more than ten consecutive seconds, you should hang on to her like grim death. Which is not far off, by the way!" - "But she's an anti-Semite!" - "Can you blame her?!” 

Other episodes also have funny moments: in one, George plans to name his future kid Seven. George’s dad finally buys himself a pool table in the house, but when playing with Kramer, they realize the room is too small for them to swing or manoeuvre cue sticks, as they always hit them on the wall. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has consistently been better and better with each season as Elaine, and reached a zenith here, since she is in best comedy shape and manages to outshine almost anyone of the regular cast. Some of her facial expressions and sassy behavior really is brilliant. On the other hand, numerous episodes feel underwhelming. "The Soup Nazi" episode has gained such a high reputation and was referenced from "Scrubs" to "The Thundermans" that when watched it feels below all this hype. It is good and mildly amusing, yet much more could have been made out of the concept of an ultra-strict cook who punishes any client's untypical behavior vaguely interpreted as inobedient by banning him or her ("No soup for you!"), though Elaine is perfect when she "breaks" him in the final scene. Several epsiodes are only mildly amusing in this season. One wonders why "The Bottle Deposit" episode had to be a two-part episode when it is mediocre and leads into nothing. And the ultimate fate of Susan, George's fiancee, in the final episode is misguided and unworthy for her. It is more cringe than funny, and is the rare time when George isn't sympathetic anymore, but despicable. Seinfeld was feeling exhausted by coming up with new episodes by that time, yet the viewers can still find many situations from everyday life they can identifiy with. 

Grade:++

My Cousin Vinny

My Cousin Vinny; legal comedy, USA, 1992; D: Jonathan Lynn, S: Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei, Fred Gwynne, Ralph Macchio, Mitchell Whitfield

Youngters Bill and Stan accidentally forget to pay for a fish can in Bill's pocket after leaving a store in Alabama. When a police car stops them, Bill immediately confesses the misdemeanour in the police station, but later on realizes the two of them were mistaken for killers and that the police think they confessed to killing the clerk in the store. Bill calls his New York cousin Vinny for help, a personal injury lawyer with no experience in homicide cases. Vinny agrees to defend them at the trial. Initially, Vinny is very clumsy, and judge Haller even fines him 200$ for contempt of court for not wearing a suit. However, thanks to his girlfriend Mona Lisa, a car expert, he manages to free Bill and Stan of all charges when a photo proves the tires of the assualt car are different than on their car, and that two different youngsters were caught in another city. 

A light comedy suitable for relaxation, "My Cousin Vinny" owes 90% of its charm to the energetic performances by Joe Pesci and Maria Tomei, without whom the movie may not have reached the threshold of a recommendation. Pesci is particularly memorable in an untypical, refreshing comic role as the title amateur lawyer who, faced with emergency, suddenly rises to the occasion and finds his great potentials. The jokes are mostly lukewarm to only moderately funny, without a single excellent one that stands out, yet due to Pesci's and Tomei's charisma these characters are so sympathetic that the viewers are willing to go along with them on the ride, even during the more boring moments. Many complimented the film for its accurate depiction of criminal procedure, here presented in an entertaining way: for instance, Vinny wants to "bond" with the district attorney in order to get a glimpse into his files for the trial, so he goes hunting with him the whole day, only for Vinny's girlfriend Mona Lisa to ridicule him later on since the prosecutor has to share vital materials and evidence with the other side according to the Disclosure of evidence clause. Vinny also seems to learn as he goes along, and adapts quickly to skilfully question witnesses and establish that their testimony cannot be taken beyond reasonable doubt. He is also funny in the sequence where Mona Lisa laments as to when they will finally get married because of her "biological clock", so she stumps her foot three times on the ground, yet Vinny replies and also stumps on the ground. More could have been made out of this concept, since several jokes are banal, yet Tomei shines in the finale when she proves to have an undisputable knowledge of cars which helps solve the case.

Grade:++

Richard III

Richard III; drama, UK, 1995; D: Richard Loncraine, S: Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, Dominic West, Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, John Wood, Robert Downey Jr., Adrian Dunbar

England, 1 9 3 0s. A civil war wages on between the house of York and Lancester. A tank crashes into the mansion of King Henry VI and his son Edward, and they are killed by Field Marshal Richard, Duke of Gloucester. At first, Richard's brother Edward York becomes the new King, but Richard wants the crown for himself. During several months, he has all his relatives killed in mysterious circumstances: Edward; brother Clarence; Rivers, the Queen's brother; Lord Hastings. This paves the way for him remaining the only candidate next in line, and is thus crowned as the new King. Richard intends to marry Queen Elizabeth. His henchman Tyrrel also executes the Duke of Buckingham, who was loyal to Richard but was impatient about his rewards for support. In the battlefield, the Lancester-led army prevails. Richard flees on top of a building where he is confronted by Lancester heir and rival Henry Richmond. Richard jumps from the building into suicide.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, Richard Loncraine's "Richard III" is besides Olivier's '55 film the most successful adaptation of William Shakespeare's eponymous play. Even though the play was written in 1594, and probably influenced by various bloody power schemes and "games of thrones" of the Byzantine Empire, "Richard III" proved surprisingly relevant even centuries afterwards—the villainous nature of the power-hungry Richard III was sensed from Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar up to Stalin. Shakespeare's dialogues are somehow never quite suitable for cinema since they are often ponderous and archaic, and thus never feel like genuine dialogues between people, yet his themes and observations about human nature are timeless, such as it is the case here: "Richard III" is a giant meditation on how power corrupts, how absolute power corrupts absolutely—and how those who seek it absolutely are ethically bankrupt absolutely.

The title antagonist simply kills almost anyone to eliminate any competition for the crown, until he becomes King. The message is chilling—in such a system of hierarchy of violence, the rulers on top are the most ruthless criminals. The sequence where Richard enjoys his corronation, accompanied by Charpentier's song "Te Deum", stays subconsciously in your head. Transported in an alternate history England of the first half of the 20th century, the movie works mostly thanks to sharp dialogues and monologues, as theatrical as they may sound. In one sequence, as Richard is scheming to eliminate Clarence, he goes: "Simple, plain Clarence! I do love you so, that I shall shortly send your soul to heaven. If heaven will take the present from my hands". With that hump and a paralyzed left hand, Richard is an unlikely leader, yet he sets everything in motion to get a hold of power, one step at a time: in one scene, he sweet talks to someone, only to already plan his murder behind his back. He is thus accosted for his hypocrisy, from Queen Elizabeth ("I have no more sons of the royal blood for you to slaughter") to the Duchess of York ("Oh, hear me a little, for I shall never speak to you again!"). These lines are simply clever, wise or sharp ("Shall I be tempted by the devil thus?" - "Yes, if the devil tempt you to do good." / "And where's your conscience now?" - "In the Duke of Gloucester's purse"). The title anti-hero is played brilliantly by the excellent Ian McKellen, who gave one of his career best performances, and who feels like he could hardly wait to sink his teeth into this classic material. 

Grade:+++

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; tragicomedy, USA, 2015; D: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, S: Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, RJ Cyler, Nick Offerman, Katherine C. Hughes, Jon Bernthal, Molly Shannon, Connie Britton

Pittsburgh. Teenagers Greg and Earl go through life in a daily routine, all until Greg's mom informs him that his high school acquaintance Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia. When his mom persuades him to spend some time with Rachel, Greg reluctantly agrees, but gradually begins to like hanging out with Rachel. Since Greg and Earl made over forty short films spoofing film classics, Rachel's friend Madison talks them into making a movie about Rachel. Rachel is diagnosed with cancer, but refuses further chemotherapy after she loses her hair and feels even worse. Greg and Earl fight and separate. On prom night, Greg drives to the hospital to show Rachel the movie he completed for her, but during the screening she falls into a coma and dies. Later, Greg finds out Rachel wrote a letter to a college to try to persuade them to accept Greg as their student.

Excellent drama-comedy "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" is all the more wonderful and humorous considering its depressive subject. And yet, such a depressive subject would have probably fallen into intolerable melodrama hadn't it been presented in a humorous way like this. The film tackles that unpleasant topic many people will experience at least once in their lifetime—that feeling of helplessness and despair when a person they know is slowly dying from a terminal illness—yet screenwriter Jesse Andrews and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon craft such a wild concoction of positive energy through wacky jokes, director's intervention or comical dialogues that it all gradually becomes a celebration of life. Its quirky style reminds initially of W. Anderson, yet it slowly becomes much more humane and character-driven. The whole film is filled with an endless amount of creative ideas and dialogues. In one sequence in high school, for instance, Rachel is comforted by her friends when she receives test results for her illness, yet Greg, passing by, just hears the word "test" and nonchalantly says: "Tests? I've been there!", and after realizing what the context was, he later remorsely says to himself: "I'm like innovatively stupid." 

While trying to cheer Rachel up in her room, Greg feigns how to get out of boring conversations with people by playing dead, yet then he looks at a poster of Wolverine hanging on her wall and imagines hearing the voice from said poster accosting him for inappropriate behavior towards a cancer patient. Greg often breaks the fourth wall, whether it is random observations about life ("Hot girls destroy your life") or him acting like a narrator ("So, we're pretty far into this stupid story now and you're probably saying to yourself, "Hey. I like this girl Rachel. And I'm gonna be pissed off if she dies at the end."). Every now and then, the most ridiculous jokes will pop-up in the story, such as the random one where Greg's dad, obviously a "pothead", goes into a monologue about his experience with half a dozen people lost in the Amazon, adding at the end: "Did you know you could smoke a hornet?" Such a wildly hilarious outburst of clever zaniness is typical for this independent cult 'slice-of-life' film. The only flaw are the last 20 minutes when the movie enters a wrong turn and does some things in a questionable manner: Rachel and Earl warranted more screen time, and it was a pity we didn't find out even more about their personalities. The similar "I Want to Eat Your Pancreas" focused more on the girl in question. They both just suddenly disappear in the end. Greg is depicted in a surprisingly realistic way: he does several mistakes and is clumsy when articulating emotions, just like most teenagers, yet in the end he eventually does the right thing. A small bonus are the wacky short films Greg and Earl made, with a wide range of titles that spoof classics, such as "Pooping Tom", "A Sockwork Orange", "Raging Bullshit" and "Gone with My Wind". Greg's short movie isn't the ultimate tribute to Rachel; this whole movie is.

Grade:+++

The Sixth Bus

Šesti autobus; war drama, Croatia, 2022; D: Eduard Galić, S: Zala Đurić, Marko Petrić, Toni Gojanović, Muhamed Hadžović, Josip Ledina, Filip Mayer, Andrej Dojkić, Ermin Sijamija, Maša Đorđević, Matija Prskalo, Josipa Anković

Belgrade, 2 0 0 8. An American-Croatian reporter, Olivia, arrives to cover the trial of Serb soldiers who perpetrated the Vukovar massacre during the Croatian War of Independence. She specifically inquires about the sixth bus with 60 captured Croatian soldiers that disappeared. However, the locals are reluctant to tell her any details. She goes to Vukovar and befriends Josip who remembers the dark times of the Battle of Vukovar, when Croat and Serb friends split over whether to defend the city or to attack it with the Serb paramilitary. Sveto, a local Serb, was spared by a Croat friend who became a Croatian soldier. After the capture of the Croatian soldiers, Sveto managed to save him and release him to escape. Back in the present, Olivia admits to Josip that she witnessed the war when she was a little girl in Vukovar.

The director Eduard Galic gained interest about the Battle of Vukovar during his documentary series "Heroes of Vukovar", where he interviewed the surviving Croatian soldiers of said battle, which gave him a certain credit to try to make a feature length film about that rarely talked about event of the Croatian War (it was quickly overshadowed in the news by the outbreak of the even bloodier Bosnian War). While the limited budget constraints war movies, since elaborated pyrotechnics are needed to conjure up the intensity and destruction of war battles, "The Sixth Bus" managed to still deliver a solid depiction of it. Its story is divided in two parts: one plays out in 2 0 0 8, where the American-Croatian reporter Olivia (very good Zala Djuric) tries to uncover what happened to said bus; while the other story plays out during the sole Battle of Vukovar in a flashback, and is filmed in "washed out" colors, "Saving Private Ryan"-style. At times, the dialogue in the modern story tend to sound too artificial and fake, yet the sequences of the battle in the flashback story have suspense and dark moments. One of those memorable moments include a French volunteer for the Croatian Army, who taunts Serb soldiers over a walkie-talkie, jokingly calling their country "petit Serbia". Croatian soldiers fire anti-tank missiles at tanks driving through the Vukovar streets, and when a granade falls down into their basement, one soldier kicks it away as far as possible before the explosion. The scenes involving Croatian POW who exit a bus and have to endure when two rows of Serb paramilitary beating them with clubs is very bitter. Despite the fact that the Battle of Vukovar had many more stories to be told on the big screen, but the authors didn't have enough money to stage them all, "The Sixth Bus" is an honest little film that at least recorded some of its moments in cinema.

Grade:++

Manila in the Claws of Light

Maynila, sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag; drama, Philippines, 1975; D: Lino Brocka, S: Bembol Roco, Lou Salvador Jr., Tommy Abuel, Hilda Koronel, Tommy Yap

Manila. Fisherman Julio arrives to the capital and finds a job as a construction worker at a building. He befriends co-worker Atong and realizes that the workers are exploited by the boss, who withholds a part of their salary until he can find enough funds, in a scheme called "Taiwan". Julio is actually searching for a woman from his village, Ligaya, who was recruited by Mrs. Cruz to work in Manila, but who has since mysteriously vanished. After he gets fired from work, Julio spends the night on the open, where he is recruited by a male prostitute who initiates him to do this job. By following Mrs. Cruz, Julio finds Ligaya in a church. Julio and Ligaya land in bed, and she admits that she works as a prostitute, and that her pimp is Chinese Ah-Tek, but that she cannot leave because of her baby. Julio persuades her to meet him later to escape. However, he reads in a newspaper Ligaya allegedly fell down stairs and died. Julio goes to Ah-Tek's apartment and stabs him to death. He is chased by a mob and attacked in an alley.

The only Filipino film included in the book "1001 Movies You Must See" by Steven Jay Schneider, "Manila in the Claws of Light" is a dark and sober social drama that ostensibly talks about the hero's search in Manila for the woman who disappeared from his village, yet along the way it also depicts a wide array of socialist criticism against work exploitation and the plight of lower class in the country at that time. For instance, already in the opening act (which switches from black and white to color the minute the protagonist Julio appears on screen), Julio finds work for 2.50 peso, yet is coerced into signing a misleading contract that feigns it is paying him 4 peso, more than he is actually getting. Prostitution plays a major role in the story, implying that people have to "sell out" completely to finance a living. The director Lino Brocka crafts the movie surprisingly fluent, including association flashbacks of Julio imagining Ligaya walking on the beach, to symbolize his yearning for her and nostalgia for a better past, and adding allegory, such as during the sequence of the visit to the slums of Manila, where Pol spots three kids happily playing in the sea, just to comment how they will soon grow up and experience how harsh life is, which can be applied as a foreshadowing of the fates of the three characters of Julio, Ligaya and Atong. However, the movie is still a tad too conventional, routine and grey, failing to truly become outstanding in any other field besides the depressive mood. It all ends in a perdictable tragedy, yet it is all effective and humane in its essence.

Grade:++

Zwei Nasen tanken Super

Zwei Nasen tanken Super; comedy, Germany, 1984; D: Dieter Pröttel, S: Thomas Gottschalk, Mike Krüger, Simone Brahmann, Sonja Tuchmann, András Fricsay

Gangsters disguised as janitors rob diamonds from a museum and hide them in a motorized tricycle. However, two tricycles are given to Tommy and Mike as a reward for being the 100,000th costumers at a car fair. Tommy and Mike thus decide to travel south for a vacation, and pick up two hitchhikers: nurse Birgit and circus artist Farah. They are followed by the gangsters who assault Tommy and Mike, but then find out they gave the diamonds to Birgit and Farah, so they go back to retrieve them. They get one diamond from Birgit in the hospital, and then go to a circus to visit Farah. The gangsters attack them there, but get arrested by the police. Tommy and Mike are pleased, but then an elephant takes the diamond and eats it, so they go around after it, waiting for it to defecate it back.

The sequel to the, for some reason, popular hit comedy "Die Supernasen" ("Super Noses") proved even more successful when it sold over 6,000,000 tickets at the German box office, yet it is still unsuccessful as a movie on its own, turning essentially into a weak comedy in which nobody wanted to invest a little more effort in conjurng up better jokes. "Zwei Nases tanken Super" ("Two Noses refuel Super") has a few good gags in the opening act: it is, for instance, amusing how the gangsters managed to perpetrate the heist in the museum (they disguised themselves as janitors, made a hole in the glass and then just used the vacuum cleaner to suck the diamonds in); the first introduction of the two protagonists, Tommy and Mike, has charm, since Mike needs to urinate outside, but wherever he goes, he has no privacy (he goes to a bush, but a bum emerges and asks him not to disturb him; he goes to a wall, but an old lady is angrily observing him through the window; so he finally decides to enter a fair, jumping across a long line to buy a ticket, where they both win a prize); whereas the sequence where the four passengers randmoly stop their tricycles at a meadow at night and go to sleep inside a tent, but then wake up in the morning and realize they camped in the middle of a grass field on a football stadium, is funny. Sadly, after 30 minutes, the movie runs out of jokes, and all we are left with are a boring hour of nothing, of a tiresome plot where the gangsters chase the heroes. Not one of the three locations they go through (hospital, art gallery, circus) offer any inspiration for the writers to place them in any amusing situation. It is almost as if the producers had an outline for the plot (gangsters chase the heroes to get diamonds) and sent a memo to the writers: "Write some jokes in between these chases". But the writers didn't get the memo. The only reason to see the film is Simone Brahmann, who later gained fame as a great German voice actress.

Grade:+

Supercool

Supercool; comedy, Canada / Finland / USA, 2021, D: Teppo Airaksinen, S: Jake Short, Miles J. Harvey, Damon Wayans Jr., Madison Davenport, Odessa A'zion, Iliza Shlesinger, Peter Moses, Kira Kosarin

Teenagers Neil and Gilbert are best friends, but one of the least popular guys in high school. Neil wants to ask his crush Summer out for a date, but throws up due to nervousness, ruining everything. He wishes he were cool... and the next day, he wakes up as an attractive lad. At first, Gilbert doesn't recognize him, yet is persuaded when Neil knows everything about him. Taking on the name Ace, Neil approaches Summer, who invites him to his birthday party, over at her house. Neil and Gilbert want to burrow a Porsche from a man in a suit, Jimmy, to act even more cool, but Jimmy uses them as accomplices to rob a store. Angered by this, Ace goes to the party alone, while Jimmy and Gilbert accidentally land on a gay party and are chased by cops. After he gets pushed into the pool by pranksters, Summer orders Ace to leave. Ace returns to the house, now back as Neil, and simply talks with Summer. The two like each other, and he reveals he made a comic-book about her.

Too much "Hangover", too little "(500) Days of Summer": "Supercool" is a typical example of pushing for misguided extreme comedies in a post-"Hangover" era, where instead of sophistication or inspiration the authors rely more on raunchy humor that needs to be more and more shocking. And yet, as it was established many times before, being only crazy or zany alone doesn't always have a punchline. The sad thing is that underneath all this populist garbage thrown on top of it, "Supercool" actually has a sweet and honest little story. The main idea is that the unpopular, ugly looking teenager Neil wakes up for one day as an attractive lad, and uses this as an opportunity to not be shy anymore, but to approach his crush Summer, which is reminiscent of Marshall's "Big". Sadly, the emotional moments are pushed in the background, but vulgar, gross-out humor isn't a better substitute. The moment Neil approaches Summer to ask her out in school, but is so nervous he throws up over her, the movie takes a nosedive. Here and there, a good gag shows up. For instance, while in a Uber car, Neil and Gilbert are talking, but the driver looks at Neil and asks: "Are you famous, by the way?" - "No, I'm not", replies Gilbert. "Yeah, yeah, I'm not talking to you, pal. You have the face of someone who is *not* famous." Later, the same driver drops off Neil at the house for a party, and gives him his phone number: "I talked to my girlfriend. She's down to clown around in threesome town. She said you could be the mayor!" 

Unfortunately, the remainder of the jokes fare less. A short sequence where a man has sex with his girlfriend, who is on top, and asks Neil and Gilbert to hold his hands on the left and right side of bed, is more bizarre than anything close to funny. The storyline makes a fatal mistake when it decides to focus a third of its running time on an unnecessary, lame subplot of a man in a suit, Jimmy, who uses Neil and Gilbert as accomplices to rob a store. From there on, the two friends split, and the movie wastes its time on Gilbert hanging around Jimmy's car being chased by cops, equipped with such lame jokes as when they crawl through a sewer, Jimmy holds a snake in his arm, and just as a woman aims her gun at him, Gilbert hits her behind her back, causing her to accidentally shoot and blow off the head of the snake. No scene involving Jimmy works, he is a "third wheel", when in fact the story needed more scene involving Neil and Gilbert at the party, and Neil interacting with Summer. Ironically, the movie ends there where it should have only started, namely when Neil sums up the courage to simply be himself and talk with Summer, and even helping her clean up the trash after the party. When she goes: "The sad thing is I didn't do this party for me, I did it for them!", she finally becomes a real character, and "Supercool" a real movie. If this romantic subplot were the main focus, with normal, quality dialogue, this would have been a much better movie. The great Kira Kosarin has a small supporting role as Summer's friend, Ava, and is much more effective than the majority of the cast.

Grade:+

Dragonslayer

Dragonslayer; fantasy, USA, 1982; D: Matthew Robbins, S: Peter MacNicol, Caitlin Clarke, John Hallam, Peter Eyre, Sydney Bromley, Chloe Salaman, Ralph Richardson, Ian McDiarmid

Galen is an apprentice of wizard Ulrich. One day, an expedition led by Valerian and Tyrion asks Ulrich to help them get rid of a dragon that has been terrorizing their land for a long time. Upon demanding proof of his magical powers, Ulrich asks Tyrion to stab him with a dagger in the heart. Tyrion obliges, and Ulrich dies. The expedition leaves, but Galen follows them, taking a magical amulet with him. He finds out Valerian is actually a woman, hiding her gender since the King of the land ordered that women be tied to a pole and sacrifised to the dragon to appease him. The amulet is able to cause a landslide of dragon's cave, but the people are shocked when the dragon turns out to be alive. Using a huge spear, Galen goes to the cave and wounds the dragon. After throwing Ulrich's ashes in he burning water, Ulrich is resurrected, is able to trick the dragon into grabbing him, but then explodes after Galen smashes the amulet, thereby causing the dragon to die. 

"Dragonslayer" is a dark fantasy that is almost a dragon-version of "The Seven Samurai", except that in this case only the apprentice Galen (comedian Peter MacNicol in a serious edition) travels to a village to save it from the villain—in this case, the mythological giant lizard. This movie is a very straightforward affair, sometimes even a bit too much, since it is at times too monolithic and grey, while one wishes it had a higher amplitude of range, such as more ingenuity or versatility. The characters are all one-dimensional, yet the narrative is very concise and well made, creating a dirty and realistic environment inside this fantasy world. Some situations are grim, such as the one where the kingdom has a tradition of sacrificing women to the dragon by chaining their hands to a pole, so one unlucky one manages to squeeze her hands out of the chain bracelets, yet it causes her wrists to be all bloody and damaged. Having the wizard Ulrich disappear from the story already in the opening act was a weird choice, though that gave Galen a chance to prove himself as the new hero. The main attraction are definitely the outstanding special effects, featuring a great example of a stop-motion dragon—the highlight appears 80 minutes into the film, when Galen enters the cave and the camera pans to the right to reveal a whole catacomb with a lake on fire. Galen first spots the dragon's head as a reflection in the water, and then goes out to fight it with a spear, creating a wonderful suspense rush. These painstaking visual effects of the dragon, fleeting as they may be, compensate for the other parts in the film.

Grade:++

Veronika Voss

Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss; drama, Germany, 1982, D: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, S: Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Cornelia Froboess, Annemarie Duringer, Armin Mueller-Stahl  

Munich, 1 9 5 0s. While watching herself in a World War II film in a cinema theater, forgotten actress Veronika Voss leaves and starts crying outside in the rain. A reporter, Robert, offers her an umbrella, and they go on a dinner. Upon finding out Veronika is famous by his press colleague Henriette, Robert starts investigating and finds out Veronika lives in a clinic as a patient of neurologist Dr. Katz who controls her through Veronika’s drug addiction. Veronika gets a small role in a film, but is unable to remember her two lines, and collapses from a nervous breakdown. Dr. Katz persuades Veronika to leave all her estate to Dr. Katz, after which Veronika dies from an overdose of sleeping pills, locked inside her room. Robert cannot prove anything and just leaves the building.  

Included in Roger Ebert’s list of Great Movies, the penultimate film by director Reiner Werner Fassbinder before his too early and tragic death, "Veronika Voss" is a darker version of "Sunset Blvd.", depiciting an aging actress suffering from the fact that she passed her prime, unfolding almost as a suicide in slow motion. As is often the case in his movies, Fassbinder overemphasizes the melodramatic aspects of the story a bit too much, but he manages to "expand" the soap opera storyline thanks to several cinematic techniques, dialogue and directorial interventions, upgrading the film into something more. In the opening scenes, the title protagonist Veronika is in the cinema, watching an old World War II film she starred in, in which she plays a role of a drug addicted patient who is controlled and eliminated by a nurse with a syringe, eerily foreshadowing the ending of this film and her own fate. In a further metafilm touch, a short behind-the-scenes flashback appears, depicting Veronika while making this film and embracing her husband-screenwriter, explaining to the director: "You don't understand. It's not only his screenplay, it's also his love that gives me strength". 

Returning to the present time of her decay, in which Fassbinder almost gives an allegorical commentary on Germany in disarray as a whole after World War II, Veronika meets a reporter, Robert, who doesn't know how she is. Later, back in his apartment, he gets a phone call picked up by his girlfriend (!) Henrietta, who doesn't seem to mind he sees other women as well, and informs him Veronika invited him for a date. Henrietta just tells Robert: "I guess she doesn't know you, either. She said you were a charming man." Robert, as a symbol for the viewers, begins to naturally explore more and more, and thus the movie reveals several layers in Veronika's life. In another good line, Veronika goes: "When an actress plays a woman who wants to please a man, she tries to be all the women in the world rolled into one". Around 67 minutes into the film, there is a great stylistic scene of a film set, in which the camera is behind a movie camera and a director is slowly approaching Veronika on a camera dolly, but as the movie camera stops, the camera even continues approaching Veronika further, beyond the film director, signalling the intention of a film-within-a-film. Not all the ingredients in the film work, though. Some are of lesser quality. For instance, Robert is a too passive character, whereas the ending is simply too rushed, without elaborating more to give weight of what just happened: instead, the tragedy happens too fast and too fleeting, it's almost in the vein of "blink and you'll miss it", as if a scene is missing. Yet, considering Fassbinder's fate was very similar to Voss' own tragedy, the movie seems almost prophetic. 

Grade:+++

The Piano Teacher

La Pianiste; erotic psychological drama, France, 2001; D: Michael Haneke, S: Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Magimel, Annie Girardot, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel, Anna Sigalevitch

Erika is a piano teacher. She is secluded, living a quiet life and sharing her apartment with her mother. However, ocassionally she disppears late at night to watch porn at various erotic stores. She gets a new student, Walter, in his 20s, who plays Schubert and wants to apply to the conservatory. Erika is against it. One day, she breaks a glass bottle and leaves it in the pocket of another student, Anna, whose right hand is thus injured. Realizing Erika was jealous at Anna because of him, Walter embraces Erika in the public toilet, where she masturbates him, but forbids him from touching her. She writes a letter to him, demanding that he tie her up and beat her in her room, while her mother is in the next room. Walter is disgusted by the letter, refuses it and leaves. Later, he arrives at her flat and slaps her. Before the start of a concert, Erika injures her shoulder with a knife in the lobby, and exits the building.

"The Piano Teacher" is a nerve-wretching psychological drama about sexual perversion caused by a person prevented from expressing her sexuality for a long time, and builds its unease from a peculiar blend of static long shots and uncomfortable anticipation, yet it once again shows that the director Michael Haneke is not able to properly end his stories. The film starts off as a boring music drama, featuring long sequences of the protagonist, Erika (excellent Isabelle Huppert), teaching students how to play a piano, all until it is shown how she secretly enjoys going to an erotic store to view porn there. She has a need for some wild passion, some exciting outburst in her sterile and boring life surrounded by classical music. In the second half of the film, Walter, a student in his 20s, finally realizes she is attracted to him, leading to a bizarre encounter in the public toilet: she unzipps his pants and starts masturbating him, but forbids him to touch her. She starts giving him a blow job, but then stops, ostensibly because he refuses her rules, but it seems she is never able to simply accept normal sexuality, and always has to stage some deviations to make it untypical. Instead of exploring this issue, the movie quickly drops it, as not much insight is given into Erika's mind. In one scene, while both are in their beds, Erika suddenly jumps on her mother and starts kissing her in the mouth, holding her arms, again demonstrating her misplaced urges, her inability to articulate her sexuality at the right place, the right person. We never see neither Erika nor Walter naked. They have only one sex scene in her apartment, wearing clothes. We are never shown what caused this sadomasochistic behavior in Erika (her letter with her wishes is disturbing), which is a pity. These movies stand or fall during their endings, which could give a great conclusion that sums everything down to a T. Unfortunately, the ending here is a cop-out, and thus feels incomplete and unfinished. Haneke is an artistic director, yet here he needed a better point at the end.

Grade:++

Seinfeld (Season 5)

Seinfeld; comedy series, USA, 1994, D: Tom Cherones, S: Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Wayne Knight, Jerry Stiller, Estelle Harris, Marlee Matlin, Courteney Cox

New York. After Elaine tells him she faked all her orgasms during their relationship, Jerry asks her to give him another try... George is approached to be a hand model... Elaine is annoyed that her new boyfriend has the same name as a serial killer, so she wants to change his name... Jerry dates a deaf woman, Laura, who can read lips from other people... George decides to convert to the Latvian Orthodox church for his Latvian girlfriend... George is annoyed that he has nothing to talk about with his new girlfriend Daphne... Elaine spots a mannequin that looks exactly like her... Jerry is accosted for kissing his girlfriend during the entire screening of "Schindler's List"... Feeling each instinct he had was wrong, George decides to do everything the opposite he would usually do...  

Season 5 of “Seinfeld” is, together with season 4, definitely ‘peak Seinfeld’, marking an era when comedian Jerry Seinfeld could touch whatever he wanted and make it funny, crafting a hugely inspired set of episodes that exploits all their comedy potentials to the maximum. It's not that these episodes do not consist out of trivial observations; rather, the authors managed to make them appear consequential. These are small 'slice-of-life' humorous vignettes, yet they were restructured and reassessed to make them look funnier and more engaging than some epic "high stakes" stories. There is no story or character arc—the stories in episodes are so random that the viewers could watch them randomly and not miss a thing, and all the characters always stay the same, including the legendary George Costanza (excellent Jason Alexander) who is a slob and remains a slob, refusing to learn any new lessons—yet so many moments ring so true that the viewers can easily identify with them. Some jokes are simply hilarious: for instance, in episode 5.6, during a live broadcast of a tennis match, the camera randomly zooms in on George in the audience who is all besmirched across his face from eating a sundae, and the TV commentators randomly poke fun at him: “Hey buddy, there’s this new invention. It’s called the napkin.”

In 5.11, George decides to convert to Latvian orthodox church for his Latvian girlfriend, but, naturally, his parents accost him for it, claiming that this is how "sects lure people" into their membership, whereas many can identify with episode 5.12 in which Elaine is in a pinch in the public toilet, and asks a neighboring woman if she can borrow "at least three squares of toilet paper", but said woman refuses: later, in a typical "Rashomon" moment, both women lament to Jerry, Elaine claiming that a selfish woman wouldn't share, and the woman that Elaine was intruding on her privacy, which is a great satirical jab at "both sides are the same". Michael Richards is again overacting as Kramer, since his sudden "jolts" feel like forced humor (except in episode 5.4, where he somehow manages the trick of drinking beer while still holding a cigarette in his mouth), yet the remaining three characters have pleanty of scenes that spotlight their talent, from George's lines (“You’re giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ routine? I invented the ‘it’s not you, it’s me!”) up to Jerry's stand-up comedy lines (“We never should have landed a man on the Moon. It’s a mistake. Now everything is compared to that one accomplishment. Now we go: I can’t believe we landed a man on the Moon, and taste my coffee!”). Despite a weak start, the episodes just get better and better, as one gets used to their frequency of humor, reaching a momentum in at least three episodes that are simply perfect: "The Marine Biologist", "The Raincoats" and "The Opposite". In the "Biologist" episode, Jerry lies to a woman from high school that George is now a marine biologist, she agrees to go on a date with him, so George goes into full "bullshit" mode when they walk on the beach: "Then, of course, with evolution the octopuss lost the nostrils and took on a more familiar look we know today. But if you still look closely, you can see a little bump where the nose used to be..." "Raincoats" are a stunning two-part episode with endless highlights, but one must single out Judge Reinhold as Aaron the "close talker". Finally, in "The Opposite" George decides to do everything the opposite of what he would usually do, and unexpectedly experiences a perfect day where he practically becomes a "Superman", in an episode so magnificent, so brilliant, so genius and so legendary that it echoes to this day.

Grade:+++

Pixote

Pixote; drama, Brazil, 1980; D: Héctor Babenco, S: Fernando Ramos da Silva, Jorge Julião, Gilberto Moura, Edilson Lino, Zenildo Oliveira Santos, Claudio Bernardo

São Paulo. Dozen of homeless juvenile delinquents are brought from the street to a police station, and then transferred to a reformatory for boys. Among them is orphan Pixote (10). Two troublemakers are escorted out of a van and shot by the guards on the field during a night. When a boy dies from abuse, the manager of the reformatory frames Garatao for the crime, who is later found dead. Pixote sets his mattress on fire, thereby causing an evacuation of the reformatory. He and his friends then escape through the window of the medical room. Pixote, transvestite Lilica, Chico and Dito go to Rio de Janeiro to try to sell drugs, but a showgirl, Debora, swindles them and doesn't return with the money. The boys then team up with prostitute Sueli, robbing her clients in the room, until an American fights back, which causes Pixote to shoot both him and Dito. Sueli then throws Pixote out back on the street.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, who rightfully compared it to Italian neorealism due to its naturalistic depiction of poverty, Hector Babenco's "Pixote" is a depressive, bleak, dark, dirty and sober essay on the lowest possible outcomes in life. The viewers cannot but feel deep sadness for the characters when they go through some of the worst situations that can happen in a human existence. The whole movie is one giant dead-end from which there is no escape. "Pixote" abounds with shocking moments: already on the first night in the reformatory, orphan Pixote witnesses an anal rape of a boy in bed by local bullies. Later on, the manager of the reformatory just shouts in front of the boys: "If you want to kill each other, do it outside, not in here!" During lunch time, a bully spits in Pixote's cup of milk and orders him to drink it. Pixote witnesses how the guards shoot two boys out in the open, in a well directed scene of two flash lamps going left and right while searching for them in the dark night.

In the second half of the film, once out of the reformatory, the kids shuffle pedestrians on the street, steal their purse and run away. On the toilet, a prostitute, Sueli, tells Pixote that a bunch of meat in a bucket is her aborted fetus. "Pixote" isn't for everyone's taste. It is so unpleasant, vile and unbearable that at one point one is not so sure anymore if all those dark scenes are actually good, but Babenco always avoids exploitation and sensationalism, and instead presents everything in a sincere, albeit resentful manner. An additional bitter detail is that the main protagonist, Fernando Ramos da Silva, indeed returned back to the streets and died when he was 17. Babenco presents these episodic scenes in quiet misery, as a neutral observer who records what life was back in his time for the future generations to see. Certainly, there are social issues here (homeless people, street gangs, unwanted kids...), but "Pixote" refuses to make these themes the main highlight, and instead focuses on its characters, who do the most random things because they are lost in this confused world. This leads to one of the most bizarre moments in 80s cinema, when the 10-year old Pixote is comforted by the prostitute Sueli who allows him to suck her breast in bed, only to later push him away and shout how she hates kids, summing up the movie in a nutshell.

Grade:+++

One Piece: Red

One Piece: Red; animated fantasy action, Japan, 2022; D: Goro Taniguchi, S: Mayumi Tanaka, Kaori Nazuka, Shuichi Ikeda, Kazuya Nakai, Akemi Okamura, Kappei Yamaguchi 

Luffy and his pirate friends—Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji and others—arrive at the island Elegia to attend a concert of the new singing star Uta. Luffy recognizes her as the girl he met 12 years ago, when she was adopted by pirate leader Shanks, but who left her at Elegia so that she can make a music career. Uta ate the magical fruit and obtained powers which allow for her singing to place people into a dream, as she intends to make the world full of happiness. When Luffy’s team declines to stay, she captures them with her magical powers. Demon entity Tot Musica appears in both worlds, so Luffy’s team beats him in both the dream world and reality, returning people back from the dream state, while Uta and Shanks reconcile.

Made as a commemoration of sorts for the 1,000th episode of the neverending anime series “One Piece”, the 15th “One Piece” anime film is overburdened, overstuffed and at times too dense to be truly enjoyed, since the authors struggled to cram so many subplots and characters into the story, yet it still has enough charm and anime spirit to make it work. “One Piece: Red” shares the basic plot elements of Hosoda's anime film “Belle”, where a teenage girl is attempting to become a singer superstar in a parallel world, since there are uncharacteristically many songs for this kind of genre thanks to the new character of singer Uta, who uses her singing as a form of magical powers that allow her to do anything, Genie-Aladdin-style. The opening act works the best: it almost starts as a reference to Hill's film "Streets of Fire" in which a singer is abducted on stage during a concert—here, several gangsters want to kidnap singer Uta on stage, but, in a great twist, she turns out to be the one in full control, since her singing powers easily defeat said villains. In a further twist, the sympathetic Uta turns into an unlikely villain herself: initially, she wants to create an utopia of happiness for everyone, but when Luffy and the gang decline, since they want to go on their own adventures and don't want to stay with her for the rest of their lives, she starts enforcing her vision, thereby creating a fundamentalist dictatorship, in a sly jab at numerous revolutions in history that started out with good intentions, but ultimately just brought about a new layer of terror. Unfortunately, the rest of the film feels out of touch with the viewers, since its frenetic pace doesn't allow for the rushed story to simply calm down and give the audience time to "interact". Numerous characters feel almost like extras (Nami, Zoro, Usopp) since there was not enough time to give everyone a scene to shine, and even Luffy is almost the supporting character in his own movie. The bizarre finale involving a double fight in the real and dream world ultimately just leads to the typical 'fightorama', feeling more obligatory than inspired. "One Piece: Red" is good and imaginative, but feels like a syncretic "A Star is Born" and "Dragonball" patchwork dictated by the committee.

Grade:++

Seinfeld (Season 4)

Seinfeld; comedy series, USA, 1993, D: Tom Cherones, S: Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Wayne Knight, Bob Balaban, Heidi Swedberg

Kramer is mistaken for a murderer in Hollywood, so George and Jerry contact the police about the misunderstanding... After being approached by NBC producers who want to create a comedy TV show about Seinfeld, Jerry and George pitch their concept as a “show about nothing” to NBC CEO Russell. At the same time, George begins dating an NBC producer, Susan, but he gets tired of her fast, and is happy when she breaks up with him... George starts nostalgically missing Susan, but when she agrees to renew their relationship, he gets bored by her instantly, so he picks his nose in order for her to break up with him again... George starts dating a lawyer, Cheryl, who thinks he is funny, so he forbids Jerry to be comical in front of her, fearing Cheryl will leave him if she finds Jerry even funnier.. The NBC TV pilot "Jerry" is filmed, but dropped by a new producer, after Russell quit his job after Elaine dumped him.

Season 4 of "Seinfeld" is among the best ones, forming an era of 'peak Seinfeld', and was unnecessarily diluted only by a couple of lesser episodes which hold it down. The first six episodes and the last three episodes are brilliant, as they form the backbone of this season and contain the highest number of inspired moments. Other episodes in the middle fare less, since the jokes are again meandering between great and subpar, yet they also have some gems hidden in them. Episode 4.2, for instance, has writers Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David in top-notch shape, from sight gags to wacky dialogues (Kramer sneezes and his shaving cream flies from his face into the mirror; while driving inside the police car, George listens to the police siren and goes: “When I was a kid, the police sirens sounded different, they went vioo-vioo-vioo..."). Seinfeld is the master of witty observations about everyday little things in life people don't pay attention to, until he changes the context to make them sound funny. One is found in episode 4.22: Jerry and his friends buy an expensive, giant TV as an engagement present for a couple, but when said couple breaks up, Jerry and George suddenly start wondering if it would be the best to demand the TV back, since the engagement is off, and it looks as if it was just used as a scheme to get them gifts. In the same episode, Jerry is again inspired while doing his iconic stand-up comedy routine which frames every beginning and ending of episode: "The handicapped parking spot is the mirage of the parking desert. Do you know that feeling? You see it, there in the distance. It's almost... And you can't believe your eyes. It's too good to be true. It's a big, wide spot, it's right by the entrance. Somehow, everybody missed it. What is the handicapped parking situation at the Special Olympics? They must have to just stack, like, 100 cars into those two spots!"

Episodes 4.9, 4.12 and 4.14, which play out in an opera, an airplane and a cinema, are simply too close and similar to the already seen "minimalist" episodes in the parking garage and Chinese restaurant from the previous seasons, thus seeming routine and repetitive, whereas episode 4.7 feels, despite a twist on the typical handicapped person story (the "bubble boy" is a jerk), uncomfortable and wrong. Episode 4.11 was hailed a little bit too much: the four protagonists start a bet as to who can endure the longest without masturbating, but what other joke stands out besides the amusing montage of all three of them tossing and turning in bed at night, having trouble sleeping, except for Kramer who "did it" and thus sleeps like a baby? The episode wasn't that very well written nor was it versatile. By far, the highlight is the meta-series subplot of Jerry and George pitching to the NBC producers their idea for a TV pilot, basically "Seinfeld" within "Seinfled". This leads to one of the most surreal and demented two-episodes finales ever, when George is watching all those bald, short actors auditioning in the office for his role, and even Kramer auditioning for the role of Kramer (!), whereas the filming of the TV pilot in the studio is full of giggles. In one joke, George talks to an actor playing Kramer, giving him advice how to play the role, but the actor rejects him, demanding to play Kramer "his own way". This almost escalates when the Kramer actor threatens George to get off his back. One enchanting moment of pure gold is when Sandi, the method actress playing Elaine in the TV pilot, goes for a drink with Jerry, and is so dedicated to exploring her role she says to him: "I want to experience everything she experienced". Sandi then leans forwards, says: "How did Elaine kiss? Did she kiss like this?", and then kisses the confused Jerry. Perfection. Season 4 had much more of a focused storyline with longer story arcs, whereas Seinfeld has numerous lines that cause you to chuckle: "I would think the less time you have in life, the faster you would want to go. I think old people should be allowed to drive their age. If you’re 80, drive 80! If you’re a 100, drive 100!"

Grade:+++

The Act of Killing

The Act of Killing; documentary, UK / Denmark / Norway / Indonesia, 2012; D: Joshua Oppenheimer, Chrystine Cinn, S: Anwar Congo, Herman Koto, Syamsul Arifin, Ibrahim Sinik, Yapto Soerjosoemarno

Indonesia. Gangsters Anwar Congo and Herman Konto recount how they were picked up by the government to join a paramilitary hunting and killing alleged Communists in the country during the Indonesian mass killings of 1 9 6 5-'6 6, and the Cold War. Anwar describes how people suspected of being Communists were brought to an office, interrogated, found guilty, and then strangled by a wire around their neck on a different location. Anwar and Herman re-enact the murders in movie genres, including a Western and a gangster film. Pancasila Youth members support Anwar and Herman. While re-enacting an interrogation with himself playing the victim, Anwar expresses regret and feels devastated.

Excellent documentary "The Act of Killing", one of the best movies of the decade, is a giant contemplation on the notion of "necessary evil". It depicts the rarely mentioned or publicized event of the Indonesian mass killings of 1 9 6 5-'6 6, when at least 500,000 suspected Communists were killed, of which at least half of them were probably innocent, presented through the two executioners, Anwar and Herman, who recount and re-enact how they killed these people. What follows is one of the most haunting and complex ethical debates seen in cinema. On the one hand, they were right: Communism killed at least 50 million people worldwide in the 20th century, was a dangerous ideology of a dictatorship, and Indonesia was just one of many countries that applied the Containment policy which stopped its spread during the Cold War. But on the other hand, so many people were killed that this supression itself reached a disturbing point, reminiscent of the old saying: "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster". It's a trolley problem and lesser of two evils principle thought experiment. Therefore, a large part of the film's crew, including cinematographers, production manager and gaffers, are only credited as "Anonymous".

Rarely were such chilling tales of murders told in such a calm, tranquil manner: Anwar and Herman talk about killing someone as if they are talking about such normal things as buying a cake or drinking coffee. Anwar goes to the location where hundreds of suspected Communists were brought, he then placed a long wire around their necks, and pulled it from two yards away until they were strangled. The bizarre thing is that the director Joshua Oppenheimer allows Anwar and Herman to stage movie clips from their favorite movie genres while depicting these murders, and thus in one such fake movie Anwar plays a cowboy on a horse as he re-enacts killing a Communist in the forrest, while Herman is for some reason dressed in a drag during a horror movie segment, where he feigns he is eating Anwar's liver. Several surreal moments stand out. Anwar recounts a government propaganda film that was made for the audience to hate the Communists, and little kids were ordered to watch it in the cinema, as he says: "Some children were traumtized by the film. But deep inside I was proud because I killed the Communists who look so cruel in the film." Some people go into a debate: "So, the Communists were not more cruel than us!" - "Cruel is totally different from sadistic!" In another, Anwar says how he cut the head of a man and threw the body away in the forest, but he was haunted that he didn't close the eyes of the victim's head. It's fascinating how some people need a justification that the others were a bigger evil as to make their evil less bad or more acceptable, as a psychological method to calm themselves. One deduction from the film is that certain groups still have that primordial bloodthirst that needs to be satisfied by declaring someone the enemy and then killing them. The other is that there are no ideal solutions in the complex world, and that we all live in a Catch 22, where whatever we do, we will regret it, more or less. These characters will stay in your mind rent-free long after the movie is over.

Grade:+++

Lilies of the Field

Lilies of the Field; drama, USA, 1963; D: Ralph Nelson, S: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Pamela Branch, Lisa Mann, Isa Crino

Homer Smith, an African-American handyman, stops at a desolate Arizona convent with five nuns to ask for some tap water for his overheated car engine. However, Sister Maria persuades him to stay to fix their rooftop. Homer agrees, but when he demands for his salary, Sister Maria persuades him to sleep over at the convent and start building a small chapel in the back yard. Homer realizes the nuns have no money, as they fled from East Germany to try to find a new life in the US, but only live off the land and animals on their farm. Homer leaves them, but then changes his mind and returns to continue building the chapel. He is helped by the men from the nearby town, including a waiter and a construction worker who gives them bricks and cement. Finally, the chapel is completed, Sister Maria is pleased and Homer leaves in his car.

A gentle and harmless "feel-good" drama with a dash of occasional humor, "Lilies of the Field" is an overall good little independent film with its heart on the right place, yet from today's perspective it hasn't aged that well, and one realizes why it didn't become a classic and is largely forgotten, save for a footnote in film lexicons mentioning the excellent Sidney Poitier who was awarded with several prizes for the role of the kind and noble protagonist Homer Smith, one of the most innocent and philanthropic movie characters of the 60s. The movie has a noble message, but, alas, as it is the case with most of such 'message films', it is not very cinematic. The situations and dialogue is banal or simplistic, without any sequence that truly stands out, whereas the finale feels strangely lukewarm and incomplete, as if something is missing: maybe a better connection between Homer and Sister Maria, or a better conclusion than the plain ending. Neither that well directed nor written, "Lilies" work exclusively thanks to the character of Homer, who basically decides to work at the convent for free out of pity for the German nuns who fled the Communist persecution in East Germany, only to find themselves in an even worse situation in Arizona, where they are broke and barely survive from the food of their desolate farm. Thanks to Homer's actions, a certain level of redemption and salvation is reached, which compensates for the lacking storyline. 

Grade:++