Conclave

Conclave; drama, USA, 2024; D: Edward Berger, S: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Lucian Msamati, Brian F. O'Byrne, Carlos Diehz, Merab Ninidze, Isabella Rosellini

Vatican City. The Pope dies, so over a hundred Catholic cardinals from all over the world gather at the Sistine Chapel to vote for the next Pope. Among the candidates is Thomas Lawrence, Aldo Bellini, Tremblay, and others. The leading candidate, and a potential first African Pope, Adeyemi, is disqualified when a nun from the kitchen reveals she had a child with him 30 years ago. But when Lawrence finds out Tremblay had the nun flown from Nigeria, Tremblay is also disqualified. The candidates cannot agree if they should follow the hardline traditional or the more liberal way. A priest from Kabul, Benitez, is elected, and he becomes the first transgender Pope.

Despite high critical acclaim and numerous nominations and awards, "Conclave" is still a movie below all the hype, a rather standard, conventional and dry depiction of behind-the-scenes problems of a conclave. Its two main virtues are aesthetic shot compositions of the interiors and the strong performance by the always competent Ralph Fiennes as Thomas Lawrence, a cardinal who is having a crisis in faith, yet evverything else is just as sufficiently good as it needs to be, and nothing more than that. An interesting perspective is that several cardinals try to sabotage each other in order to gain advantage for themselves for the votes for the Pope, which mirrors certain Presidential political campaigns and the fight for power, but it would have been better if "Conclave" had explored that even more of this dirty campaign, or if a murder happened which would have livened up this wait for the final vote. As it is, it flows smoothly, yet isn't particularly inspired, whereas the "plot twist" at the end does not feel that rewarding or worth the wait of 120 minutes. Some humorous touches give it intermittent spice, such as when it is shown how some cardinals smoke while another one is more preoccupied typing on his mobile phone than preparing for the election process.

Grade:++

Y tu mamá también

Y tu mama tambien; erotic drama / road movie, Mexico, 2001; D: Alfonso Cuarón, S: Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Maribel Verdú, Diana Bracho

Teenagers Tenoch and Julio have a farewell sex with their two girlfriends before the girls depart at the airport for an Italian vacation. The two guys are from wealthy families, and are bored or smoke marijuana. At a party, they meet Luisa, a woman in her 30s, who starts a conversation with them. After her boyfriend Jano makes a phone call and admits he cheated on her, an angry Luisa calls Tenoch and Julio and offers herself to travel with them on their planned trip to a beach with a car, and they happily accept. They stop at motels, talk, while Luisa has sex first with Tenoch, and then with Julio. They get lost, but eventually find the beach and make friends with local fishermen. Tenoch and Julio drive back home, while Luisa stays at the beach. A year later, Tenoch tells Julio that Julia died from cancer.

The director Alfonso Cuaron returned from Hollywood back to his homeland Mexico and achieved a huge critical and commercial success with the independent erotic road movie "Y tu mama tambien". Although undoubtedly a quality achievement, the movie is not for everyone's taste, and neither is it that particularly inspired. Luisa (excellent and underrated actress Maribel Verdu) is a great character, but Tenoch and Julio are kind of annoying. Especially weak is the opening act where a lot of scenes just seem random, arbitrary or banal, such as the moment where Tenoch and Julio are driving in a car until one of them farts inside, or when they masturbate lying on two springboards, until their sperms fall into the water of the swimming pool—would two straight guys really masturbate in front of each other, regardless how good of friends they are? Through the directing treatment the story reaches a higher level: there is almost no music, long takes sometimes last up to 8 minutes, whereas the most refreshing addition is the metafilm idea of a narrator who randomly gives summaries of what's going to happen to totally random supporting characters who appear in just one sequence.

For instance, the narrator explains that a traffic jam was caused by bricklayer Marcelino who was hit by a bus; that a fisherman will in the future find a new job as a janitor in a hotel and will never fish again; or the especially ironic episode when Tenoch and Julio chase away pigs from their tent at the beach, and the narrator goes: "The 23 pigs had escaped from a nearby ranch. Over the next few months, 14 would be slaughtered. Three of those would cause an outbreak of trichinosis among attendees at a festival in the village of El Chavarin." Cuaron also gives a lot of colorful little episodes that depict the mentality and customs of Mexico, and give the movie a three-dimensional look, such as when the car stops randomly because a white-blue ribbon is "blocking" the road since some random people ask for donations to their little daughter, a "queen", or when Luisa in the car asks Tenoch and Julio about how they "turn on" their girlfriends, somewhere 48 minutes into the film, while a police truck randomly stops right to them and police officers start arresting random people standing there. The sex scenes are rather sparse: Luisa has sex with Tenoch, and then with Julio, but both already come after 10 seconds, which is underwhelming, whereas their final "threesome" in the end feels rather inconsistent and random. The best moments are thus humorous ones (in the opening act, mom sends Julio to help Cecilia find her passport, but as he goes to her room, Cecilia persuades him to have a "quickie" with her on the bed, saying: "I want to take a little of you with me!" But when she hears the footsteps of her mom approaching, she quickly shoves Julio out of the bed on the ground, pulls her pants up, and he emerges with her passport: "I found it!"), contemplating about growing up and embracing to live to the fullest, regardless of what other people will say, but the cancer death at the end feels shoehorned, as if it tries to force sympathy out of the viewers instead of believing in itself without such gimmicks.

Grade:++

Wicked

Wicked; fantasy musical, USA, 2024; D: Jon M. Chu, S: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Peter Dinklage (voice), Marissa Bode

The Land of Oz. Elphaba has been born with green skin and thus shunned from society for beng different. When she escorts her sister Nessarose, in a wheelchair, to Shiz University, Elphaba accidentally unleashes her uncontrolled magic power, and thus the dean, Madame Morrible, enlists Elphaba as the new student, to nurture her powers. Elphaba shares her room with student Galinda, a popular blonde, who becomes her friend. Talking animals are banned from society, but Elphaba and Galinda's boyfriend, Fiyero, rescue a lion cub from a cage. Elphaba travels to see the Wizard of Oz in hopes of getting rid of her green skin, but it turns out he is a charlatan without any magical powers, who uses Elphaba's magic powers to make his monkey-servants grow wings to be used as flying spies. When Elphaba refuses to work with him, the Wizard of Oz and Morrible make her a scapegoat and order the guards to arrest her, but Elphaba flees on the flying broom.

"Wicked" is a strange prequel to "The Wizard of Oz" that is colorful, fun, opulent and energetic, but by presenting the Witch as a good, kind person, it causes more continuity problems for the original film than "The Last Jedi" caused to the original "Star Wars". This isn't a re-telling or a background story to the Wicked Witch of the West—it is an alternate dimension Wicked Witch who is victim of racism, social isolation, and is an all-around good person who fights against injustice and persecution of minorities by an authoritarian charlatan, while everyone else is passive and submissive. After "Wicked", some viewers will now probably even hate Dorothy for killing the Witch in "The Wizard of Oz", which is inconsistent and contradictory to the canon. It's not quite clear what the author Gregory Maguire intended with his eponymous novel on which the movie is based on, but at times it comes close to gaslighting the audience and it doesn't fit with the original narrative of "The Wizard of Oz", since the viewers now feel pitty with the Witch. 

In spite of all expectations against them, the two leading actresses Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are excellent in the roles of Elphaba and Galinda, not only in acting but also in singing, since they both have incredibly smooth voices. The whole story works in unusual symbols and allegories—for instance, in one scene a talking goat is introduced as the professor Dr. Dillamond at the Shiz University, and at first this seems ridiculous and silly. But later on, this introduction is validated and given a new context when a new decree forbids that talking animals can no longer teach humans, and then three secret police officials show up during the class and take Dr. Dillamond away into the unknown, thereby giving eerie parallels with apartheid and persecution of minorities. Several scenes are clumsy, though (the way Elphaba causes the flowers to levitate and spread some magic dust that causes every student in the class to fall asleep, except for her and Fiyero, who free a lion cub from a cage), the story is overlong at 160 minutes, whereas the songs are good and uplifting, but except for "Defying Gravity", they never quite reach the heights of the original film, such as the songs "Over the Rainbow" and "We're Off to See the Wizard". By far, the best part of the film is the last third when it becomes remarkably subversive, showing the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) as a fraud who wants to become a dictator of the land by always inventing new scapegoats to fight against ("The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy!"; "Citizens of Oz! There is an enemy who must be found and captured. Believe nothing she says!"), proving that "Wicked's" dark-sharp observations and thought-provoking symbols are stronger and more interesting than its somewhat forced musical numbers.

Grade:++

The Substance

The Substance; horror, France / UK / USA, 2024; D: Coralie Fargeat, S: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Edward Hamilton

Los Angeles. For her 50th birthday, Elizabeth Sparkle gets a rather unwanted birthday gift: producer Harvey fires her from the TV aerobics show because she is now too old. She thus decides to accept an illegal product called "The Substance" from an unknown agency, which causes her to fall unconscious in her bathroom while a 20-year old self, Sue, emrges from her back. As Sue, she re-gains her old role in the same aerobics TV show. But Sue needs to transfer her consciousness back into Elizabeth's body every 7 days, and vice-versa, in order to keep the balance. As she spends too much time as Sue, Elizabeth's body degenerates into a deformed state. When Sue is hired to host a New Year's eve show, she uses "The Substance" on herself, creating a monster which goes on stage and spills blood on the audience. It flees on the street, and dissolves, with the remnants of Elizabeth's face crawling up her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

A satire without humor: Coralie Fargeat's "The Substance" is a (horror) meditation and commentary on the beauty industry and all its beauty products, plastic surgery, medication and others which are proclaiming to be improving people's lives, but come with a high side-effects-price. Conceptualized as some sort of horror version of "Freaky Friday" and "17 Again", Fargeat and her cinematographer Benjamin Kračun use the stunning camera to conjure up aesthetically pleasant, stylish images in the opening act, but with time the film becomes more and more gruesome, gory, grotesque, bloody and nauseous—congruent with its theme of traversing from the aesthetics of beauty into the aesthetics of ugliness. The first third is the best—several clever ideas (bird's-eye view of Elizabeth's star on the Walk of Fame as it changes with time, ending with a tourist dropping his food on it, signalling her fading away; the painting of Elizabeth is "covered" when her younger self Sue raises her head up) and a sharp visual style (wide-angle fisheye lens; polished shot compositions; unusual camera drives; the hyper-stylization of the aerobics show, such as the camera circling around Sue's butt in gym clothes as she is about to do an audition) appeal more to the intellectual side of the viewing experience. Unfortunately, just as Elizabeth is slowly starting to fall apart, so does the movie, which slowly starts appealing only to the disgust side of the viewing experience. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley are excellent, but underused, yet "The Substamce" becomes more and more excessive, bizarre and revolting, especially in the unnecessary close-ups of a syringe or a needle going through the skin, whereas the ending is bad, since Fargeat botched the directing of the banal finale of a deformed monster (reminiscent of Cronenberg's "The Fly") spilling gallons of blood over the beauty-obssessed audience, which doesn't work. Watching "The Substance" is a strange experience: it is better than the similar feminist horror "Titane", but also suffers from the same syndrome of slowly dissolving from a good story into a mess that drowns in its sick, misguided symbols.

Grade:++ 

Bambola

Bambola; erotic crime, Italy 1996; D: Bigas Luna, S: Valeria Marini, Jorge Perugorria, Stefano Dionisi, Manuel Bandera, Anita Ekberg

After their mother dies, Mina, nicknamed "Bambola", and her brother Flavio decide to close their goat butcher shop and open a pizza restaurant at their secluded home along the beach. Ugo, their business partner, becomes jealous and attacks Settimio who flirts with Mina, who kills him in self-defense. Mina visits Settimio in jail, but inadvertently gains a new fan, criminal Furio, who threatens to beat up Settimio unless she sleeps with him. Furio rapes Mina in his mental asylum jail cell. Upon release from prison, Furio moves in at Mina's and Flavio's home and starts having sex with her. When Furio has an argument with Flavio and chases him away, Mina flees from the house. Furio follows her, but just as he is about to rape her again, Flavio shoots him with a rifle.

After he reached creative highs with his Iberian trilogy ("Ham, Ham", "Golden Balls", "The Tit and the Moon"), the director Bigas Luna fell into creative lows during his excursion into the Italian cinema with this cheap, banal, vile and violent erotic crime film, showing that rape and sexual assault simply don't suit his mentality and wreck his sensual touch. "Bambola" is a disappointingly thin film in the vein of exploitation films, where a lot of problems could have been avoided if the characters simply acted logically. There is one good moment when the three protagonists want to go to a water park, but their business partner Ugo objects since Mina is still mourning after the funeral, but she simply brushes it off: "I'll wear a black bikini!" Cue to Mina wearing a black thong as she climbs up a water slide. The movie is destroyed, unfortunately, the minute the brute criminal Furio enters the story, since his violence and blackmail used to force Mina to have sex with is terrible and misguided. Maybe that was the point, to show the passivity of people who are petrified with fear and hesitate to react, which causes a bully to slowly take over their whole life, but the whole story is heavy-handed and clumsy. Too many illogical plot points bother: could Furio simply rape Mina, a guest, in his mental asylum prison cell, without nobody from the guards noticing? Could Furio later simply have been released from prison without any objections to his threat? When Furio decides to "settle down" at Mina's and Flavio's home, why didn't anybody of them call the police? It's not even clear what Mina's stance is regarding this "hostage situation": her narration mentions that Furio is an evil brute, but that she loves him. Why? It's a disgraceful shoehorning, even worse than "50 Shades of Grey", which pushes for a misguided notion of a woman who loves her abuser. Not much was made out of this crime film, which never reaches that enjoyment value.

Grade:+

Golden Balls

Huevos de oro, erotic drama, Spain, 1993; D: Bigas Luna, S: Javier Bardem, Maribel Verdú, Maria de Medeiros, Elisa Touati, Raquel Bianca, Alessandro Gassmann, Benicio Del Toro

Melilla. Benito and Miguel work as construction workers, but Benito breaks all contact with him after finding out out his girlfriend Rita is having an affair with Miguel. Benito decides to become and architect and build the tallest building in the enclave, and thus uses his new girlfriend Claudia to seduce a banker to have cash for his investment. That fails, so Benito instead marries the banker's daughter Marta. A loan shark, Gil, adds another half of amount, which is enough to start the construction of Benito's building. However, Marta finds out about Benito's girlfriend Claudia. While driving angry, Benito has a car crash which kills Claudia and leaves his right hand partially paralyzed. Gil backs out, and thus the construction is halted. Benito finds a new girlfriend, Ana, and goes with her to Miami. He leads a boring life, and cries after finding out she cheats on him with the gardener Bob.

The director Bigas Luna tackles in this film his often theme of a person's two main driving forces that mean the world to them: their love life and their dream. In "Golden Balls", the protagonist is architect Benito (very good Javier Bardem) who pursues these two goals, reaches them, but then falls, undergoes a slump in life and ends in a disappointment. Chaotic and messy, where the story isn't that much important as just observing the interactions of these characters, "Golden Balls" once again shows Luna's enchantment with sexuality and erotic sophistication, which enchants even the viewers: he is strange and wild, but his movies always feel alive, full of vibrant energy, optimism and celebration of life. The Hispanic world seems to have a natural sense for sensuality. Luna's focus is on the passionate people who express their emotions through affectionate eroticism, which gives them meaning in life, and not so much the film structure or the style. Several passionate moments thus stand out: for instance, Benito draws rectangles with a marker around Claudia's breasts and abdomen area, and later on lies down on bed, while she "sits" on top of his face, as he is giving her oral sex and holding her butt, causing her to say: "Last time someone did that to me, I fell in love!"

Bizarrely, when Claudia has sex with Benito, she has a peculiarity that he is not allowed to touch her breasts, since they are great and she doesn't want them "deformed". When Benito's wife Marta encounters Claudia, they both realize they have his rectangulars drawn on their bodies, and then Benito has both of them lie down on bed, side to side, as he stands above them, joking: "I wish I had two dicks!" A fascinating specific is that this is a rare film depiction of Melilla, the Spanish enclave in north Africa, displaying mental traits of these inhabitants and their behavior, but also human nature in general (upon meeting, Claudia is reluctant to be Benito's girlfriend, all until he asks: "Do you want to be my secretary?"), whereas Luna even adds a surreal touch in one dream sequence (a woman's black pubic hair "blends" with black ants swarming around it) that is, though, unnecessary and disruptive for the rest of the film, which is rather "normal" in its format. Maribel Verdu is excellent as Claudia, as well as Elisa Touati as Rita, though the latter has much less screen time. Despite its seemingly wild and naughty tone, "Golden Balls" even has a tragic-emotional side: Benito starts off as an underclass worker whose girlfriend cheats on him. This causes an outburst of rebellion as he sets out to start a new life and rise up the hierarchy. However, in the last act, Benito returns back to the same situation, just in a different setting, and breaks down, signaling the inevitability of fatalism.

Grade:+++

Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle; erotic drama, France, 1974; D: Just Jaeckin, S: Sylvia Kristel, Daniel Sarky, Marika Green, Alain Cuny

Emmanuelle travels from Paris to Bangkok to join her husband, diplomat Jean, who tells her he doesn't want to treat her as possession and allows her to have freedom. Emmenuelle thus decides to explore her sexuality. She meets Bee and goes away with her in a jeep, to a waterfall, where Emmanuelle has a lesbian encounter with her. However, afterwards, Bee is bored of her and rejects her. Emmenuelle meets the older gentleman Mario who takes her to an opium bar and watches a Thai man have sex with her. In a boxing match, the winning champion, a Thai man, also gets to have sex with Emmanuelle, while Mario watches, but doesn't have sex with her. Emmanuelle watches herself in the mirror.

"Emmanuelle" obtained an almost cult reputation and helped erotic cinema gain significance, but looking at it from today's perspective, it is lacking not only artistic, but also erotic merit. It just isn't that erotic in the first place. Sylvia Kristel, with her short tomboyish hair, doesn't seem that attractive, but the bigger problem is that the story doesn't know what to do with her character, her exploration of her own sexuality, obvious in the ending that lacks a point, a conclusion of sorts, and thus feels vague and incomplete. Emancipation and sexual liberation cannot quite be deducted from the finale where a Thai man rapes Emmanuelle in an opium bar nor when a Thai man winning in a boxing match "wins" to take Emmanuelle from behind. Still, the exotic locations of Bangkok are interesting and different, and some of the dialogue is intermittently really well written. 

For instance, during a massage, Jean tells to a friend the reason why he married Emmanuelle: "You must have married her for her beauty, though?" - "I married her because no woman I know enjoys making love more, or does it as well". When Emmanuelle is perplexed as to why she should have sex with the old gentleman Mario, her friend explains it to her: "When someone still makes love at his age, it becomes pure poetry". One almost wishes the director would have taken a more honest, emotional and psychological depiction of Emmanuelle, since these two sentences show the story had potential to be more. Instead, it's just random, isolated and disjointed episodes, with very little sex, that lead nowhere. The sequence where Emmanuelle has sex with two passangers on a plane, while all the other passangers are asleep, is almost comical and naive, for instance. And you don't get the impression that she "enjoys making love" the most. One iconic scene is legendary, though: Marie-Ange sits and masturbates while watching the photo of Paul Newman in a magazine hanging from her leg, which is an example of almost sophisticated erotic touch. Too bad the rest of the movie cannot follow it.

Grade:+

Babe: Pig in the City

Babe: Pig in the City; fantasy comedy / drama, Australia / USA, 1998; D: George Miller, S: E. G. Daily (voice), Glenne Headly (voice), Steven Wright (voice), James Cosmo (voice), Magda Szubanski, Mary Stein, James Cromwell, Mickey Rooney

When the pig Babe accidentally steps into the bucket and falls and injures farmer Arthur on the bottom of the well, Arthur's wife Esme, plagued by the financial burden of the farm, accepts a proposal to fly to the Metropolis and be paid to feature Babe participating in a fair. At the airport, they miss their connecting flight and now have to stay in a hotel for a while. Babe is kidnapped by a circus performer, Fugly, but he becomes sick and lands in a hospital. Babe, together with other abandoned animals in the hotel—three chimpanzees, an orangutan, dogs—stay alone, since Esme has been arrested. Animal control officers take all the animals away in a shelter, but Babe is able to free them and reunite with Esme. The hotel owner rents the hotel to a dance club, gives the money to Esme, who returns with Babe to the farm and helps a recovered Arthur to service the new well and pay the bills.

"Babe: Pig in the City" is plot-wise a very questionable sequel—the first 20 minutes feel like a natural continuation of the Babe story, but the remaining 70 minutes seem like an "intruder", as if Babe got lost in a "counterfeit" movie. The opening act that shows the aftermath of "Babe" is set on the farm, and thus works the best, especially in the brilliantly comical sequence where Babe accidentally enters a descending bucket and injures farmer Arthur on the bottom of the well, in a triple injury, but once the pig and the farmer's wife Esme travel to the big city, one is not so sure what this movie is about anymore—it actually feels as if the director George Miller had a different story in plan, about the urban-rural dissonance, but then just slapped Babe and Esme in it to fake a sequel. The work of coordinating all these animals and aligning them into a narrative is impressive, and there are detailed set-designs and elaborate comical set pieces (especially in the finale, where Esme, her suspenders tied up to a rope hanging from a chandelier, swings left and right across a charity hall, trying to pick up Babe on the ground, while three other people are swinging at the same time, trying to grab Babe first). 

However, several problems burden the film, and clash badly with film critic Gene Siskel's decision to pick it as the number 1 film of 1998. For instance, it is a pity that almost all the characters from the previous film are largely absent in this sequel, since farmer Arthur (an underused James Cromwell) and other farm animals are left behind on the farm, leaving only Esme and Babe as the "core crew". The new animal characters aren't that impressive either, since they mostly lack a personality—we don't find out much about the chimpanzee Zootie, expect that she is pregnant, nor about orangutan Thelonius, except that he has a sad look. Then an angry Bull Terrier dog is added to be Babe's friend, but the movie could have worked fine without him, anyway. Another peculiar anomaly is the circus owner played by Mickey Rooney, who is brought up, and then suddenly disappears from the film after just 5 minutes, ostensibly due to health issues. The movie could have worked fine without him, for instance that the animals were already alone in the hotel. Neither is there a reason to use elaborate visual effects to conjure up various city landmarks (Chrysler Building, Willis Tower, Empire State Building...) in this city, when they are not relevant or necessary for the story. The final third feels kind of lacking, since not enough is at stakes (Babe wants to save the animals from the animal shelter, but wouldn't they have been also fine there? How is this connected to Esme's quest to find money to pay the bills for her farm?). Miller opted for less comedy and more stylization this time around, creating a peculiarity, but Babe is still an endearing and sweet character, even in this abridged edition.

Grade:++

The Emigrants

Utvandrarna; historical drama, Sweden, 1971; D: Jan Troell, S: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, Allan Edwall, Monica Zetterlund, Pierre Lindstedt

Ljuder village, Sweden, 1844. After injuring himself trying to remove a rock from the land for famring, the father's leg is permanently disabled and he has to use crutches, so his son Karl Oskar takes over the farm. Karl Oskar marries Kristina and they have four kids, but the harvest is always bad: it's either too rainy, causing wheat to rot, to too dry, causing droughts. Karl Oskar's brother Robert spends too much time daydreaming and reading, so his boss Aron hits him when he catches him not working. Karl Oskar and Robert decide to emigrate to the US, hoping for a better life. Besides their families, they are also acompanied by priest Danjel who preaches alternative Christianity; ex-prostitute Ulrika; and Robert's co-worker Arvid. They take a carriage to Karlshamn, and from there on board a ship across the Atlantic. After 10 weeks, they reach America, and then take a train to Buffalo, and from there on a boat to Minnesota, hoping to settle at a Swedish farmer, the son of one of the passangers, but the latter lives only in a wooden shack. Still, Karl Oskar marks his territory on a nearby land.

Based on Vilhelm Moberg's eponymous novel exploring the Swedish emigration to the United States, Jan Troell's film "The Emigrants" is a dark, astringent, naturalistic and realistic epic about immigrants. At three hours, its running time is definitely overlong, and yet it's as if Troell takes his time to create a three-dimensional, 'larger-than-life' chronicle of one sample of Swedish immigrants, giving both a story of Sweden as well as the population origin of the 19th century United States, and thus the viewers will have to adjust to his frequency to accept the pacing. He uses high amounts of close-ups, more frequent than other directors, to conjure up a private, intimate point-of-view of this family and their friends from the village, and he gains huge support from the movie's two main actors: the excellent Max von Sydow as farmer Karl Oskar, and especially the wonderful, tender performance by the great Liv Ullmann as his wife Kristina. The first half of "The Emigrants" shows the harsh living conditions of the farm family (hunger, failed harvest, lack of money, overlong working hours...), as to give a sufficient motivation and explanation for their departure from their homeland, to such an extent that the locals start believing the most outlandish idealistic fairytales about America. For instance, in one scene Robert reads to Arvid from a book: "In America, no one works more than 12 hours a day, and many slaves have better houses, food and circumstances than peasants in Europe", so Arvid comments that he should sends himself as a slave to America to live better than now. 

Faced with another bad harvest, the religious Kristina and the more somber Karl Oskar have this exchange: "We will put our faith in God". - "Faith... If it was just up to faith, we could reap a hundred barrels of wheat this autumn!" The long trip and departure of the protagonists takes up almost the entire second half of the film, to convene to the viewers the feel of a long journey the European immigrants endured back in that time. The 10-week ship journey is dark and depressing, showing how the passangers were trapped in the Ocean and faced with diseases, poor hygiene and food shortage. When Kristina finds out she got lice on ship, a passanger comments: "You know it's bad when even the lice is emigrating from Sweden!" A small humorous relief before this is when Robert talks with the naive Elin, who thinks that just by through faith she will immediately know English when she steps foot in America, so he tries to teach her a few English words beforehand, as to "take some of the burden off the Holy Spirit". Upon learning the English words for washing hands, Elin asks why the immigrants are given handbooks with instructions how to wash hands, so Robert gives another naive response: "It's probably because everything is so nice and clean in the new world that they have to ask those who came from the old, dirty world". Watching their plight, where some of the immigrants even die along the way, and how they are lost since nobody of the Americans speaks the Swedish language, the viewers gain symathy with the protagonists, and thus engage more with the story the longer it lasts. It is a conventional movie approach, without much directorial intervention or stylization, but it works, nontheless. 

Grade:+++

Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal

Scipione l'africano; historical film, Italy, 1937; D: Carmine Gallone, S: Annibale Ninchi, Camillo Pilotto, Fosco Giachetti, Francesca Bragiotti, Marcello Giorda

Rome during the Second Punic War, 205 BC. Carthaginian general Hannibal is still in Italy even after a decade of his army's incursion, so the Roman Senate names general Scipio as consul and approves his plan to attack North Africa and cut off Hannibal. The Roman Republic starts a mobilization and embarks war ships from Sicily. The Roman Army wins the Battle of Cirta and captures Syphax, the king of the Carthage-allied Numidian tribes, while his Carthaginian wife Sophonisba commits suicide. Hannibal is then summoned to return to Carthage to defend it. Scipio oversees victory of the Roman Army in the Battle of Zama in 202 BC.

A rare film depiction of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Roman Republic, "Scipio Africanus" was aimed to be a propaganda film to drum up support for Mussolini's Greater Italy and planned annexation of parts of North Africa, but is still a surprisingly well done and relatively historically accurate picture. Carmine Gallone directs the film in a conventional and standard, but effective way, leaning towards spectacle through its scenes of masses (thousands of people gather in front of the Roman Senate and welcome general Scipio, giving the Roman salute; a vertical camera pan over a thousand Roman soldiers, followed by a zoom on Scipio in the middle) and opulent set-designs. There are some good attempts at giving a three-dimensional recreation of the life and mentality of that era: for instance, a servant gives a message to Hannibal: "Oh lord of victories, the Romans have so much faith in Scipio that they dared to put the land on which you camped for auction". Upon laughing off Scipio's plan for the invasion from Sicily ("So he wants to play Hannibal in Carthage?"), a commander cautions Hannibal: "Scipio is much closer to Carthage than you are to Rome". A little bit overstretched, where Hannibal is actually a more intruiging character than Scipio, the movie still works. The highlight: the 20-minute finale depicting the Battle of Zama, where 10,000 extras played soldiers on both sides, and even a dozen elephants were used in the charge against the Roman Army, which reminds a bit of the central battle in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King".

Grade:++

Local Hero

Local Hero; comedy / drama, UK, 1983; D: Bill Forsyth, S: Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Peter Capaldi, Burt Lancester, Fulton Mackay, Jenny Seagrov

MacIntyre, an executive, is chosen for his Scottish last name by his oil American company to travel from Houston, Texas to the village of Ferness, Scotland, and buy off property leading to the sea in order for said company to build an oil pipeline there. Macintyre and another copany employee Oldsen arrive there by car and settle at an inn run by Urquhart and his wife. Macintyre contacts his boss Happer regularly via the only phone booth in Ferness. When an old man, Ben, doesn't want to sell his land on the beach, Happer travels personally there to negotiate with him. However, Ben actually persuades Happer to build an astronomical observatory and marine research facility instead, while the oil would go through an offshore refinery. Back in the US, MacIntyre feels isolated. In Ferness, the phone booth rings again.

The director Bill Forsyth's third film, "Local Hero" is a quiet, amusing, restrained and minimalist comedy about the difference between the urban, extroverted and rural, introverted mentality—and the contemplation on which one is more rewarding in life. Overstretched and thin, with sometimes too lukewarm ideas, "Local Hero" nontheless still has enough charm built almost exclusively on small vignettes and gentle, comical culture clash between the American protagonist from a big city staying in a Scottish village. Forsyth's concept neatly sets up a local Scottish film "augmented" by an American international dimension since an American oil company is "at the mercy" of the Scottish village to buy off their land for a pipeline. Several little jokes are amusing: for instance, in the opening act, the CEO of the oil company, Happer (Burt Lancester) fell asleep and is snoring during a business meeting, so the managers give their plan in whisper to each other, as to not bother him. The inn keeper Urquhart tells some roof workers to stop making noise, but when his wife enters his room and they start passionately kissing, he tells the workers through the window to resume working, as he becomes intimate with her.

There is a whole running gag of a psychiatrist trying out his "shock therapy" of insulting Happer even after he was fired, so the psychiatrist continues with it (he phones Happer in his home to insult him, Happer hangs up, but after a while picks up the phone again and finds out the psychiatrist is still on; the psychiatrist gluing paper pieces with letters to assemble "Happer Motherfu..." on the company's windows). There is also a delicious gag where Ben doesn't want to sell his beach property, and when he grabs a bundle of sand in his hand, he asks: "Would you pay me a pound for every grain of sand in my hand?" MacIntyre says no, but then Ben says that there couldn't have been more "than 10,000 grains of sand in his hand". The local village characters, except for Urquhart, ended up underwritten and almost as extras, which reduces the film's range, and several episodes could have been cut for a tighter rhythm (for instance the pointless supporting character of a Russian ship captain who visits the village). Congruent with the state of mind he is trying to conjure up, Forsyth directs the film in a simple, conventional, meditative way, which requires the viewers to adjust to its "frequency". In most of movies, the big company absorbs the little nature, but this films offers a different outcome, which is refreshing. "Local Hero" needed more jokes and more highlights written for the rather bland protagonist, yet its last two scenes will stay in the viewers' mind—how Forsyth made this ending resonate so subconsciously in such a simple way is a delight.

Grade:++