A Prairie Home Companion

A Prairie Home Companion; drama / comedy / musical, USA, 2006; D: Robert Altman, S: Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Maya Rudolph, L. Q. Jones

A Prairie Home Companion is a radio show recorded live in Minnesota, but the private detective Guy Noir fears that it might be its last show, as investors plan to shut it down in the TV era and demolish the building. The crew still gives it their best during the recording: sisters Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson sing songs, while Yolanda's daughter Lola writes songs about suicide and death; Cowboys Dusty and Lefty perform "bad jokes" song; the host Garrison Keillor mentions all of the sponsors... A woman in a white trench coat appears to be an angel, so Guy persuades her to escort the Axeman who wants to shut down the show to death via a car crash. However, the show is shut down, anyway. Years later, several members reunite in a diner and talk about their new jobs.

The final film in Robert Altman's meandering career, "A Prairie Home Companion" is situatued somewhere between his best and weakest films, since its homage to the last days of the eponymous radio show has its moments of humor and charm, yet its loose episodic structure with too many characters also revealed some of Altman's flaws in finding a focus. One can sense a feeling of nostalgia and sadness as the radio crew fears this is their last show, the fear of being run over by time and becoming outdated in the TV and Internet era, wrapped in a contemplation about whether what you love to do is profitable or useful in the modern world. The screenplay by real-life host Garrison Keillor is the best when it embraces the behind-the-scenes anecdotes and funny lines, since the sole singing sequences during the recording are uninteresting and mostly bland. Some snappy dialogues and witty lines are delicious. For instance, Guy Noir (a fancy Kevin Kline) descibes a woman: "She was beautiful. Her hair was... what God had in mind when he said: let there be... hair. She gave me a smile so sweet you could have poured it on your pancakes. She had a trench coat so white that rain would be embarassed to fall on it." In a sweet little sequence, Garrison tells Lola how he drove off in his car and accidentally left her father behind at a cafe, where he met her mother, a waitress working there, causing Lola to infer: "I mean, if you hadn't looked behind the back seat and seen he weren't there, I wouldn't exist." - "One of the most beautiful things I ever did not do." The subplot involving a woman who is an angel is ridiculous and doesn't work, whereas it is a pity that Lola wasn't used more in the storyline (she starts of thinking about death, so why not give her a character arc in which she outgrows it through working on the radio show?). Despite an inconstant storyline, there are more good bits that keep this film going, and Roger Ebert even included it in his list of Great Movies. 

Grade:++

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast; fantasy romantic musical, USA, 2017, D: Bill Condon, S: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Stanley Tucci, Emma Thompson, Audra McDonald

A French village, 18th century. Belle is a curious woman who loves to read books. When her father Maurice goes into the forest to pluck a rose for her as a present, he is arrested and sent to jail in a castle run by the Beast, a prince who was cursed by a witch who transformed him into a beast and his entire servants into anthropomorphic furniture, and who can only break the curse and turn back into a human if someone falls in love with him. Belle swaps places with her father, and stays in the castle. Despite initial hostility, Belle and the beast develop feelings for each other. When the villagers storm the castle to kill the Beast, former soldier and Belle's admirer Gaston shoots with his gun at the Beast. However, Gaston falls from the height of the tower, whereas Belle confesses she loves Beast, which breask the curse and transforms them back to human form.

It is an unwritten rule that in its remake-mania wherein Walt Disney Pictures' marketers aim to sell their own products twice, all the live-action movie adaptations are weaker than their original animated classics, with the only exception being as to how much. Luckily, Bill Condon's "Beauty and the Beast" isn't that far away from their famed '91 animated film, yet one can feel that the majority of the storyline and scenes feel artifical and predictable, lacking that genuine feel that would make all of this come to life. Emma Watson (Hermione from the "Harry Potter" film series) is a slightly wrong choice to play Belle, since she doesn't look nothing like Belle from said animated film, yet she gives a good performance and sings really well. The movie works the best when it tries to be its very own thing: some of the new jokes work (after meeting all the living furniture, Belle picks up a hairbrush and asks: "What's your name?", but Cogsworth laughs: "It's a hairbrush!"; LeFou singing until he stops because he has to spell: "And his name is G-A-S-T... I believe there's another T... It just occurred to me that I'm illiterate and I've never actually had to spell it out loud before.."). The ending even has a deliciously naughty joke said by Belle ("How would you feel about growing a beard?"). Conversely, it is the weakest when it is just a lame copy-paste of the original, very noticable in the almost identical musical sequences of "Be Our Guest" and "Beauty and the Beast" (during the dance sequence). Everything here is done right, there are no illogical or wrong moments, all this is neatly polished and perfect, and yet, one somehow feels that it lacks a soul, as if it is missing some 'raw' energy to come to life, which is why the viewers will only rewatch this movie in its '91 animated edition.

Grade:++

Waking Life

Waking Life; animated art-film, USA, 2001; D: Richard Linklater, S: Wiley Wiggins, Adam Goldberg, Kim Krizan, Eamonn Healy, Nicky Katt, Timothy "Speed" Levitch, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Alex Jones, Steven Soderbergh

A man has several dreams: he arrives at a city and hitchhikes in a boat-car driven by a wiseguy. The man sees a note on the street which says: "Look to your right", and as he looks in that direction, a car runs into him. He seemingly awakens, but is just in another dream. And another. And another. He encounters philosophers contemplating about life, talking about existentialism, free will and synchronicity. A man pours gasoline over himself and sets himself on fire out of protest against the world. A red man shouts against his enemies while being in jail. Alex Jones shouts over the loudspeaker while driving a car. Another guy warns him that you cannot know if you are dreaming all until you wake up. Finally, the man seemingly awakens, but then starts floating and flies up into the sky.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, "Waking Life" seems like a rotoscopic version of Richard Linklater's own previous film "Slacker" which had an experimental structure without a real story, and consisted just out of random episodes featuring unusual characters that random appear and disappear in the city. "Waking Life" also has no story and instead just consists out of twenty 5-minute episodes in which random people talk, which is its biggest flaw. At first, the rotoscopic animation is fascinating, with lavish colors and a dreamy mood to it, but once you get use to it, you realize that these disparate episodes are of a varying degree of success: some are interesting, some are boring. Kim Krizian, for instance, has a gorgeous monologue about communication: "Or what is anger or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable." Another great moment is when the protagonist walks, randomly passes by a red-hair woman, but then the woman runs after him: "Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us." They then stop and have an endearing, honest and heartfelt conversation, all until the protagonist looks at his watch, notices the numbers are "fuzzy" and realizes it's all a dream, so he asks her: "How is it being a character in a dream?" There is an overabundance of philosophy, which is refreshing and challenging, yet a scarcity of a guideline of where all of this is heading, since all these episodes just come and go without any point, leaving a feeling of an aimless exercise. Art-film lovers will enjoy it more, but the proper audience will enjoy it less and perceive it as frustratingly hermetic and abstract.

Grade:++

A Year of the Quiet Sun

A Year of the Quiet Sun; drama / romance, Poland / Italy / Germany, 1984; D: Krzysztof Zanussi, S: Maja Komorowska, Scott Wilson, Hanna Skarżanka, Ewa Dałkowska, Vadim Glowna, Daniel Webb

Poland post-World War II. The widowed Emilia and her mother who has an infected leg try to survive in a small one-room apartment. The city is plagued by poverty, robbery and ruins, yet Emilia tries to earn money by baking cookies. Emilia meets US soldier Norman who is searching for the grave of executed Allied soldiers. Even though Emilia doesn't speak English, and Norman doesn't speak Polish, they fall in love. He wants to take her to Berlin, and from there on to the US, to live on his farm. Realizing she doesn't have the money to pay a smuggler to transfer both of them outside Poland, the mother opens windows during cold nights and refuses to take penicilin, and therefore dies faster. Emilia cedes her emigration place to prostitute Stella and thus doesn't show up at the train station where Norman was waiting for her. Decades later, an old Emilia lives in a retirement home run by nuns, and is informed that she inherited money from the US. She falls unconscious, and hallucinates that she is dancing with Norman in Monument Valley.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, Krzysztof Zanussi's quiet and minimalist drama of an American-Polish couple in post-war Poland is a good little film, yet it feels dated and too banal by today's time. The simplistic story never manages to engage on a higher level, among others due to too many moments when it falls into the trap of melodrama, yet it features a lot of symbolism which was hidden and was understandable only to Polish and Eastern European countries during that time—the US soldier who wants to save the poor Emilia by taking her to the West where she will have a better life was interpreted as the Western democracy trying to pull Poland out of Communist dictatorship and poverty into a better system, which was bold during that era, and this is why in Poland "A Year of the Quiet Sun" was referenced after the fall of Communism seven years later. There are some interesting details here and there (Emilia watches as a landmine explodes in the mud after it was triggered by a chain dragged through the ground by a cow that just keeps on walking; Norman and Emilia going to the attic at night with just a candle to have intimacy, as he covers them with his jacket due to winter cold), yet mostly the story plays out straightforward, without much ingenuity or an enriching style that would upgrade it. The final two sequences involving an elegant transition / time jump and a dream scene are impressive, playing with the motive of Poland who suffered through a terrible past and is about to suffer even more in the Communist present, yet more inspiration and sense of cinema would have been welcomed.

Grade:++

Ripley's Game

Ripley's Game; crime / psychological thriller, Italy / UK / USA, 2002; D: Liliana Cavani, S: John Malkovich, Dougray Scott, Ray Winstone, Lena Headey, Chiara Caselli

Berlin. After a botched deal to sell art forgery in an apartment, Tom Ripley kills a butler of a rich collector, takes the money and escapes, ending his cooperation with British gangster Reeves. However, three years later, there he is again: Reeves encounters Ripley again in Veneto. Ripley recommends Jonathan, an art framer who insulted him at a party and who is dying of leukemia, to become an assassin for 100,000$. Jonathan begrudgingly accepts in order to leave money for his wife and son after his death. Jonathan goes to a zoo and shoots a criminal, Belinsky, who was observing insects there. Reeves then offers Jonathan another assassination in a train, but it must be done with a noose. Ripley shows up in the train and helps Jonathan strangle the mafioso and two of his bodyguards in a toilet. However, now the mafia sends their own assassins against Jonathan and Ripley. Jonathan is killed in his home, while Ripley kills his assassins. Ripley then goes to a concert of his lover.

Even though it's not as great as Wenders' first film adaptation filmed 35 years prior, "The American Friend", Liliana Cavani's take on Patricia Highsmith's eponymous novel, "Ripley's Game" is a clever and subtle psychological thriller that starts off deceivingly lukewarm and meandering in its first 20 minutes, but once it starts going, its intrigue factor just keeps growing exponentially. John Malkovich isn't that charismatic here as he could have been, but is still a very good fit as the anti-hero Tom Ripley, a cold, distant, opportunistic, autistic criminal who cannot understand humans. In one memorable sequence, after capturing an assassin at his mansion, Ripley tells him to phone his boss and claim he mistook Ripley for the perpetrator: "If you don't do it convincingly, I take you out back, and I run my tractor over your head the rest of the day. Okay?" In another sequence, while driving a car, he says to Jonathan: "You know the most interesting thing about doing something terrible? After a few days, you can't even remember it." These kind of moments are good examples of a knack for dialogue. The first murder is disappointingly easy and smooth: the hapless Jonathan sneaks behind the back of a mafioso, simply shoots him and walks away. A little more dilemma and fear on Jonathan's side would have worked much better. However, the second murder, on a train headed for Düsseldorf, is much better set up, creating not only suspense but also intolerable anxiety for Jonathan and Ripley when everything goes wrong, since the murder has to be perpetrated by strangling with a noose, which becomes an impossibe challenge. As a fallout, the mafia then starts sending assassins against Jonathan and Ripley, leading to even more chaos and unpredictability. While the movie has several flaws—its visual style is bland and conventional; it needed more character study of Ripley's persona—once it grips you, it doesn't let you go. With time, others started paying respect towards the film, too, as it was the case with Roger Ebert who included it in his list of Great Movies.

Grade:+++

Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra

Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre; comedy, France / Italy, 2002; D: Alain Chabat, S: Christian Clavier, Gérard Depardieu, Jamel Debbouze, Monica Bellucci, Alain Chabat, Claude Rich, Gérard Darmon, Édouard Baer

Ptolemaic Egypt, 48 BC. Cleopatra makes a bet with Roman General Caesar that she can construct a greater palace than the one in Rome, and thus gives architect Numerobis three months to complete the job, who in turn hires Gauls Asterix, Obelix and druid Panoramix to help him. Panoramix' magic potion helps the workers carry building blocks for construction much faster, but the jealous Pyradonis tries to sabotage the whole enterprise. Caesar and his army start a siege of the palace, but Asterix runs to Cleopatra, who in turn shows up and accosts Caesar. The Roman army thus help rebuild the palace, and Caesar admits Cleopatra won the bet. Asterix and Obelix stay for a while to celebrate at Alexandria.

The 2nd live-action adaptation of the popular Asterix comic books, "Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra" is arguably the only good live-action film that the French ever managed to complete, since all others were weak and inferior to the animated films from the 70s and 80s. Even this edition is shaky at times, with some jokes copied from the animated film "Asterix and Cleopatra" (Obelix climbs up on the head of the Sphinx of Giza and accidentally breaks its nose, giving the statue its distinctive look) and several puns and word play that is sometimes difficult or too obscure to translate from French (Numerobis riding a donkey called Canabis; Cleopatra's servant called Guimieukis, which sounds like "Give-me-a-kiss"), yet it has just enough original jokes and good ideas to rise above mediocrity. Another problem is that the best jokes don't involve the heroes Asterix and Obelix, but rather the supporting characters who often randomly get the best gags, such as the comedian Jamel Debbouze who stands out the most as the clumsy architect Numerobis. A lot of the story is overstretched, yet the movie works the best when it simply acknowledges its cartoon roots: for instance, while trapped inside the pyramid, only Asterix's, Obelix's and Panoramix's animated eyes are seen in the dark; Numerobis and the villain Pyradonis have a comical Kung-Fu fight; or when, during a prolonged fight, Asterix is swinging a Roman soldier in circles, holding him by his legs, so the latter goes: "Leave me alone! I've been beaten already!" One moment surprisingly became a cult favorite in France, summing up a certain life philosophy. It's the one 30 minutes into the film, when an assistant, Otis, is asked: "A writer, is that a good position?", and he gives a long reply: "You know, I don't think there's a good or bad situation. Me, if I had to sum up my life today with you, I would say that it is first of all encounters. People who reached out to me, maybe at a time when I couldn't, when I was alone. And it's quite curious to think that chance, encounters, forge a destiny..."

Grade:++

The Gentlemen

The Gentlemen; crime, UK / USA, 2019; D: Guy Ritchie, S: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Hugh Grant, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell, Jason Wong

American Mickey Pearson arrived to the UK to study at Oxford, but decided to build his own marijuana plantation business instead, which grows in underground laboratories. He now wants to retire from the crime world and sell it, to live a peaceful life with his wife Rosalind, and he also made good connections with Lord Pressfield, who will help him with his goal. However, at a high society party, Pearson refused to shake hands with Daily Print tabloid owner Dave, who now wants revenge and hires detective Fletcher to spy on Pearson and Pressfield. Fletcher instead wants to sell his findings to Pearson's associate Raymond, and then to Dave, to earn double. Pearson wants to sell his business to Berger, but is shocked when some teenagers break into his marijuana laboratory and post YouTube rap videos of it, which alarms the police and reduces the value of other marijuana laboratories, which could be raided any time. Raymond discovers that the teenagers were given the location by thug Phuc, and that he in turn was hired by Berger to buy the business cheaper, for which he is punished by Pearson. Dave is kidnapped, drugged and filmmed while he was raped by a pig, and thus now has to avoid publishing anything about Perason or this video will be leaked online. Fletcher is also apprehended, while Pearson decides to return to his business.

The director and writer Guy Ritchie returned to his genre, the humorous crime film, with "The Gentlemen", which is typically fast, dynamic, extreme and unpredictable as his earlier films, yet a certain feeling of routine seems to have creeped in which makes the whole story feel as if we have already seen it even though we didn't. One of the more clever bits is the metafilm framing of the entire film: the majority is narrated by the cynical private detective Fletcher (excellent Hugh Grant) who spied on the antihero Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) and wrote his findings into a screenplay (!) which he now verbally "pitches" for an hour and a half in front of Pearson's associate Raymond, and in the finale even presents the ending of the film in front of a film studio executive. Fletcher's lines are the best in the film, giving it humor and wit, such as when he describes the meeting between Pearson and Berger: "Now starts the alpha dance. They're not really talking about clothes, Raymond. Oh, no. They're like a pair of old doggies sniffing round one another's intellectual assholes." There are enough surprises and twists to keep the movie interesting and engaging (for instance, when it is revealed that Raymond only told Fletcher to take off his shoes inside his home so that he could secretly hide a tracking device into said shoes and locate Fletcher later on), but it slips and falls several times due to some misguided or stupid ideas (Pearson infecting George, who vomits twice on the table; the compromising pig video) which reduce its quality. The second best performance was delivered by the underrated Eddie Marsan, who is deliciously vain and slimy as the villain Dave, a tabloid owner who writes the most ad hominem attacks as headlines ("Aristocratic, Bulimic, Junkie Autotuned Singing Daughter"). A bit of a rehash of Ritchie's previous film styles, but still energetic and strong enough to stand out.

Grade:++

Waterloo

Waterloo; historical war film, Italy / Russia / Ukraine, 1970, D: Sergei Bondarchuk, S: Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Dan O'Herlihy, Philippe Forquet, Jack Hawkins, Gianni Garko, Virginia McKenna, Orson Welles

Paris, 1814. Having lost all the battles, Napoleon is forced by the Coalition forces to renounce power, and goes to exile to Elba. However, in 1815, Napoleon returns back to France, and all the French soldier lay their arms and deflect back to his side again. King Louis XVIII, installed by the Coalition, flees Paris. The Coalition assembles its forces again and sends commander Wellington and his British Army to attack the French Army at Waterloo. In the battle, Napoleon suffers from a disease, yet his forces are able to gain ground. However, the Prussian Army reinforcements outweigh in the favor of the Coalition, and thus the British win against the French at Waterloo. 

There is an unwritten rule that almost every movie about Napoleon is good, but never able to be truly great in capturing all the vast events and pathos that surrounded his extraordinary life. Having used Napoleon as a supporting character in his previous film "War and Peace", the director Sergei Bondarchuk gave him here the lead and explored him more, though only in the period of the Hundred Days, the final stages of his military career. "Waterloo" feels incomplete and narrowed down, unable to give a broader psychological portrait of Napoleon who feels underwritten. All the focus is on the one-hour long (!) Battle of Waterloo which starts around 70 minutes into the film, and lasts until the end. Rod Steiger is good as Napoleon and gives it his best, even when more is implied than actually written, and some of his classic lines have spark, such as when he says: "Never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake", or when he tries to boost the morale of his soldiers during fighting: "I've been in this position before at Battle of Marengo. I lost the battle at 5 o'clock, and won it again by 7!" Sadly, the opening act could have been better made, since it has too many ellipses. For instance, Napoleon's exile at Elba is not shown, though it would have been interesting to see how he decided to return back to France in a boat. At least the famous moment where he walks to French soldiers, under the command of a new King, and persuades them to lay down their arms and switch to his side again, is there. The battle is shown in great detail, with aerial shots of thousands of soldiers on horses, various explosions and one great camera pan across the hill to reveal all the army formations, though it does become rather tiresome and schematic near the end. The conclusion feels interrupted, yet "Waterloo" manages to give a small glimpse inside this historical event in a realistic, objective manner.

Grade:++