The Naked Gun

The Naked Gun; comedy / parody, USA, 2025; D: Akiva Schaffer, S: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston

Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr. of the LAPD Police Squad is sent to investigate a mysterious case in which a certain Simon died in a car accident in his electric vehicle. Conversely, Simon's sister Beth considers it a murder. Frank and his partner Ed discover that Simon's boss Richard Cane, a billionaire and owner of a company which produces elcetric vehicles, plans to use a device to turn the human population into its premordial state and thereby reduce it, to start the civilization anew, while he and other billionaires will hide in the bunker. Luckily, Frank and Beth are able to stop him, and become a couple in the process.

31 years after the last sequel to the film series, "The Naked Gun" was rebooted with this peculiar new version which is not as funny as the first or the third film, but is still better than the strained second film. The parody genre and its live action cartoon-style of comedy became extinct in the modern era of harsh hyper-realism cinema, and thus it is surprising how well this film works, regardless, almost as some sort of a "dissident" of comedy films of that time. Liam Neeson is somewhat miscast as Frank Drebin Jr. since he doesn't have a sense for comic timing, but Pamela Anderson is a refreshing discovery as a charming comedian, here playing crime novelist Beth. The gags are a hit-or-miss affair, since some fail to ignite, yet the movie is overall luckily never as forced as some feared it would be. The opening sequence where a little girl enters a bank during a robbery and reveals underneath her mask that she is actually Frank Drebin Jr. in disguise is awesome, as is the follow-up fight sequence where he hams it up big time. The authors mock everything and everyone, from oligarchy, plutocracy, through even the original film series (as Frank looks at the photo of Leslie Nielsen at the LAPD wall and pays homage to his late dad, we also see an African-American police officer looking at the photo of his dad, O.J. Simpson, but then just shakes his head, stops and walks away), and even the police conduct during certain racial situations ("You don't remember me, do you?" - "Should I?" - "My brother. You shot him in the name of justice". - "It can literally be thousands of people". - "You shot him in the back as he ran away". - "Hundreds". - "Unarmed". - "At least fifty". - "He was white". - "So you're Tommy Roiland's brother!"). The fantasy sequence involving the snowman is surreally hilarious and out of place, showing that even this updated "The Naked Gun" works, despite some of its weaker moments.

Grade:++

The Phoenician Scheme

The Phoenician Scheme; art-film / comedy, USA / Germany, 2025; D: Wes Anderson, S: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Bill Murray

Arms dealer and millionaire Zsa-Zsa Korda survives another assassination attempt when his plane crashes. He is used to it, since he made many enemies, but decides to repair his broken relationship with his daughter Liesl, a Catholic nun. Together with assistant Bjørn, they go to implement Korda's "Phoenician Scheme", a business plan which will ensure them a huge fortune. Korda hopes Liesl will inherit his business. Bjørn turns out to be a spy, but falls in love with Liesl. Korda's brother Nubar killed Liesl's mother. In a clash, Korda kills Nubar. He renounces all his business and goes to lead a bistro with Liesl, who quit being a nun to become a cook.

"The Phoenician Scheme" seems to follow an unwritten rule: the higher the number of a cast in a Wes Anderson film, the more it is inversely proportional to the film's quality. One of Anderson's weakest films, "The Phoenician Scheme" is a strange patchwork of disconnected episodes which feels more like an exercise than a real, coherent film product. Anderson was never interested in a story or characters, but was instead more invested in his camera frames and style, yet he had a better balance in his earlier, more modest films, as opposed to here where he went a bit overboard. At times difficult to comprehend and follow, "The Phoenician Scheme" is supposed to be, at its core, a film about a father-daughter relationship, yet since there is almost no emotion or warmth, as everything is artificial and de-constructed, it is difficult to buy it. Benicio del Toro is slightly miscast as the main protagonist Korda, since he has no sense for comic timing or innocent charm, yet Mia threapleton is excellent as his daughter, nun Liesl. One remarkable moment appears when Liesl asks Bjørn when was his last confession, and he unexpectadly gives her one of the best compliments for a woman: "Are you really, terribly pure yourself?" - "Obviously, how can you ask me such a thing? Look at me." - "It wouldn't matter in the least. Even if you were the cheapest girl at the filthiest brothel in the seethiest red district on this world. Nothing could detract from your loveliness." The surreal tone is augmented by several moments where Korda has black-and-white visions of heaven, as a warning that he might not enter if he does not change and become a good person, and he even has this weird dialogue with God (Bill Murray): "Are you against slavery in the Bible?" - "It's damnable." Chaotic and wild, but without a sense for genuine ideas (for instance, isn't it a pity that lookalikes Tom Hanks and Bill Murray don't share a single scene together?), and a lot of underused or wasted actors (Scarlett Johansson), with great mise-en-scene lost in autism, this film is more for Anderson hard-core fans than universal audiences.

Grade:++

A Tale of Winter

Conte d'hiver; drama, France, 1992; D: Eric Rohmer, S: Charlotte Véry,  Hervé Furic, Michel Voletti, Frédéric van den Driessche, Ava Loraschi

Felicie has a wonderful summer romance with a stranger, Charles, but accidentally gives him her wrong address before departing (Courbevoie, instead of Levallois), and thus loses contact with him. Five years later, during December, Felicie lives in Paris with Elise, her daughter she had with Charles. Felicie, a hair stylist, has an affair with Maxence, who separates from his wife, and goes go to live in his house in Nevers, but then changes her mind and returns back to Paris. Felicie decides to continue her relationship with Loic. One day, she sits in a bus with Elise, right next to Charles with another woman. Felicie leaves the bus, but Charles follows her and explains he is not with said woman. At New Year's Eve, Felicie and Charles celebrate together.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, "A Tale of Winter" follows the writer and director Eric Rohmer's often theme of human relationships—like most of European films, it strives to depict a realistic life in an interesting way. Rohmer is elegant and laconic in crafting his films—he cares more about his characters and dialogue than style or cinematic techniques, and thus the entire film is filmed in a flat cinematography, in medium shots, without any over-the-shoulder shots. Due to this, "A Tale of Winter" is thus somewhat too lukewarm to truly "ignite" the viewers, and suffers from an overstretched running time of two hours. Rohmer simply enjoys his empty walk as long as it includes his characters. Some dialogue really does shine, though, when Rohmer allows his heroine Felicie (very good Charlotte Very) to speak about some sharp observations and her true feelings about Maxence with her casual semi-boyfriend Loic: "I love him as a man I can live with, even if I'd rather live with someone else who's absent. Many women would rather live with some other man, but he's not real, he's a dream. An absent reality." She then looks at Loic and simply declares a break-up with him in the most relaxed and gentle roundabout way possible: "You need a woman who loves you as you love her. I'll never love you enough. You know that. If I'm here, you won't meet the love of your life. She exists. You are lucky I'm leaving." Felicie basically has a triangle love relationship, all the while hoping her true love, Charles, with whom she lost contact, will somehow meet her again, living between reality and wishful thinking. A neat detail is a long depiction of Shakespeare's play "The Winter's Tale", in which Felicie identifies with the fate of Hermione, and the ending is kind of expected, and yet also so unexpected in the way it plays out, since it happens with such an ease that you do not see it coming.

Grade:++

Mondo Bobo

Mondo Bobo; crime, Croatia, 1997; D: Goran Rušinović, S: Sven Medvešek, Nataša Dorčić, Svebor Kranjc, Lucija Šerbedžija, Mladen Tojaga

A young lad, Bobo, is attacked by two criminals in an elevator for not paying them a racket, so he kills one and wounds the other one. His lawyer defends him, and Bobo lands in a mental institution. Bobo flees to see his girlfriend, but she is accidentally shot when the police tries to stop Bobo from escaping the asylum. Bobo is hit by a car driven by a woman, and takes her as a hostage. Along the way, he shoots a cop, and hides with the woman inside an abandoned barn. The police sniper accidentally hits and wounds the woman inside, who dies. The lawyer appeals to Bobo to surrender, but he shoots at everyone, until he himself is shot and killed by the police.

Goran Rusinovic directed his feature length debut film "Mondo Bobo" as an independent black-and-white film in 35mm tape in tune to numerous "fancy" daft filmmakers from the 90s, such as K. Smith and J. Jarmusch, yet its appeal has corroded with time. The storyline of a clumsy criminal who flees from the police references Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" and Godard's "Breathless", but its dialogue is stale and conventional, as much as its story, and thus only the moody cinematography which captures Zagreb in an unusual, barely recognizable optics is able to engage. The most was achieved from Svebor Kranjc who plays Bobo's lawyer, in impossibly reasonable and logical contrast to the antagonist. In one interview, the lawyer even says this to the reporter: "He couldn't tolerate injustice, but he created it. He was Sisyphus. Can you imagine a happy Sisyphus?" Bobo himself is presented as a man who is always on the wrong place at the wrong time, and then does the dumbest possible choice which makes his situation even worse. When he has to pay the taxi fare, the annoyed Bobo just takes the car keys and throws them far away, but then throws money to the cab driver, who replies: "I don't have any change to return you." The finale is forced, since the director shoehorns too many contrivances to fit the crime-tragedy genre mold, yet it feels totally different from other Croatian movies from that time, which gives it a certain freshness.

Grade:++

Fear

Angst; thriller, Austria, 1983; D: Gerald Kargl, S: Erwin Leder, Silvia Ryder, Edith Rosset, Rudolf Götz

A nameless man is released from prison after serving a sentence for stabbing his mother, who survived, and killing a 70-year old woman. He enters a taxi and wants to strangle the driver with a shoelace, but when the woman turns around he escapes in the forest. The man breaks into a house and kills an older woman, her grown daughter and grown son, a handicapped man in a wheelchair. The killer hides the corpses in their car and drives off to a snack bar, but since he had a hit-and-run car accident, the police track him down and catch him.

Independent slasher-thriller "Fear" is a strange and peculiar viewing experince. It is intense and dynamic, thanks to an elaborate visual style since the cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczynski uses unusual camera angles (either a bird perspective or a frog perspective, representing the POV of a predator and prey; a camera attached with a ring to the body of the main actor, thereby creating a feeling of claustrophobia as he runs through the forest while the camera is fixated on his head) to conjure up a distorted, disorienting feel congruent to the mental state of the nameless sadistic psychopath, but the director Gerald Kargl doesn't have much else going for it, since the story is basically empty and overstretched. The main nameless antagonist barely speaks three sentences in the entire film, as only his off-narration is heard in the background, giving some sparse glimpses into his diagnosis: for instance, he narrates how he simply has to kill and torture someone, that this urge simply takes him over, which makes "Fear" all the more disturbing—it is a portrait of mindless evil without motive. Basically a sketchy analysis of a terrorist and a criminal. Two sequences are unbearable to watch (the killer stabbing the woman running away in the hallway, while her small dog is helpess to stop him; the killer drowning the handicapped man in the bathtub), and the rest is just running on empty, leaving the impression that "Fear" was not up for such a complex task, since it relies more on shock, instead of intelligence, sophistication and creativity.

Grade:++

A Man for All Seasons

A Man for All Seasons; historical legal drama, UK, 1966; D: Fred Zinnemann, S: Paul Scofield, Leo McKern, Nigel Davenport, Wendy Hiller, John Hurt, Susannah York, Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, Corin Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave

England, 1529. Thomas More is regarded as one of the most honorable judges in the country. King Henry VIII wants to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragorn since she cannot give him a male heir, so that he can marry Anne Bolyn. For that, he needs to put pressure on the Pope for the approval, but the deeply Catholic More refuses to be in conflict with the Pope. More becomes the High Chancellor, but when Henry VIII distances himself from the Catholic church and the Pope, and makes himself the new Head of the English church, paving the way for Protestantism, More refuses to place an oath to such a changed title. Henry VIII marries Anne, but More does not show up at their wedding. More is thus sent to prison and placed on trial by Thomas Cromwell, but remains silent with regards to the oath, without explicitly denying the rule of Henry VIII. The court still sentences More to death.

The film adaptation of Robert Bolt's eponymous play for which he himself wrote the screenplay, "A Man for All Seasons" is a noble contemplation about the clash between integrity and conformity. The competent director Fred Zinnemann uses a classicist style (simplicity, minimalism, clarity of structure, restrained emotion, appeal to the intellect) to conjure up an episode of injustice pereptrated against an honest man, Thomas More, who fell victim to Henry VIII's descent into authoritarianism and rule of caprice. The two main virtues are the excellent leading actor Paul Scofield as More and Bolt's sense for snappy, clever and sharp dialogues ("Pray by all means. But in addition to prayer, there is effort!", says Cardinal Wolsey; "There's a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves. And then there's you...", says the King to More; More posing fascinating questions during his interrogations: "Some men think the earth is round, others think it flat. It is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King's command make it round? And if it is round, will the King's command flatten it?"; "And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?"; "If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice, and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes"). The story is a bitter chronicle of how fast a respectable man is abandoned by everyone around him when he falls out of mercy with the authority or there is danger, which is reminiscent of Zinnemann's own previous film "High Noon", as well as a warning about authoritarians gerrymandering reality in order to invent evidence against good people standing in their way, an ode to the power of individualism which seems strong even today despite some standard, conventional or dry moments. 

Grade:+++

The Unknown Soldier

Tuntematon sontilas; war drama, Finland, 2017; D: Aku Louhimies, S: Eero Aho, Johannes Holopainen, Jussi Vatanen, Aku Hirviniemi, Hannes Suominen, Paula Vesala

June 1 9 4 1. As Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union, Finland sees this as a great opportunity to regain back its territory which the Soviet Army occupied in the Winter War. The Continuation War commences, and corporal Antero Rokka is one of the first to enlist in the Finnish Army, since he and his family became refugees and had to leave their farm on the Finnish territory that the Soviets annexed. The Finnish soldiers force the Soviet soldiers into retreat, cross the old Finnish-Soviet border mark, and even occupy the city of Petroskoi in Eastern Karelia. The next two years are bogged down in trench warfare, and many soldiers die, including the newly-wed Kariluoto and lieutenant Koskela. Exhausted by attrition, the Finnish soldiers are forced to evacuate. Finland signs an armistice with the Soviet Union, and numerous Finns become refugees from further land the Soviets annex.

Widely regarded as the best film adaptation of the eponymous historical fiction novel by Väinö Linna which enjoys an almost mythical status in Finnish culture, "The Unknown Soldier" is a rare depiction of the "apostate" war that ran parallel to World War II, the Continuation War, which saw Finnish soldiers trying to reclaim territory stolen by the Soviet Union in the Winter War. Despite its running time of 3 hours, the director Aku Louhimies is able to craft an opulent, vigorous, kinetic and suspenseful story that engages from its first to its last minute, thanks to numerous little details that all feel alive. Everything is told from the point-of-view of the Finnish soldiers, specifically the main protagonist Rokka, and thus the enemy is always outside of their perspective, hidden, visible only through gunshots from the forest or artillery attacks, yet nothing is black and white since Louhimies shows even unfavorable moments to their cause—in one sequence, the Finnish soldiers drive through the forest to the battlefront, while they observe the Nazi Army passing by them in opposite direction, in an ominous sign, while even archive footage of dictator Adolf Hitler meeting Finnish president Risto Ryti and commander Carl Gustaf Mannerheim is shown. 

Nontheless, it is clear that Finland had its own goal of reclaiming its own territory, contrary to the Nazis who were stealing foreign territory, and thus the Finnish soldiers are heroes in this lost cause—in the first third, they act triumphantly as they not only reach their own former Finnish-Soviet border, but even occupy a city in Eastern Karelia, but this is contrasted with the last third, where everything they achieved starts to dissolve as they have to tragically leave and flee. Numerous scenes illustrate this array of characters, and many are even humorous. For instance, after inspecting the corpse of a Soviet soldier, the Finnish soldiers find Communist photos with him and comment: "What the hell is that? Long-bearded Satan?" - "That's Lenin." - "He is so cockeyed that he can see both Sundays from mid-week!" While commenting how massively outnumbred Finns are compared to the Soviets, the two soldiers have this exchange: "A Finnish soldier is worth as much as ten Russians!" - "Maybe so. But what do you do when the 11th comes?" While stuck in trench warfare, Russian propaganda is heard over the loudspeaker, enticing Finns to surrender, but a Finnish jokester is quick to shout a reply: "Finnish men! Come and get bread!" - "Come here and you will get butter on your bread!" There is also the already classic quote in the dialogues between a new soldier and Rokka: "How does it feel to shoot a human being?" - "I have no idea. I only shot Communists." Despite all these small jokes here and there, "The Unknown Soldier" is raw, bloody and uncompromising in its action and battle sequences, showing dirty mud in autumn and cold desolation during winter, crafting a movie that is never artificial, but is instead able to be genuine and intense.

Grade:+++

The Promised Neverland (season 1)

Yakusoku no Nebarando; animated mystery / horror / psychological thriller series, Japan, 2019; D: Mamoru Kanbe, S: Sumire Morohoshi, Maaya Uchida, Mariya Ise, Yuko Kaida, Lynn, Shinei Ueki

In 2045, an orphanage hosts 37 children looked over by their ''mother'' Isabella. The children never left the estate, which is surrounded by a giant wall. One day, kids Emma (11) and Norman (11) go to the entrance of the wall, where their friend Conny was supposed to be adopted, but find out she was killed and sacrificed to a demon. Emma, Norman and Ray thus realize they are a food harvest for the demons, sent to be eaten when they turn 12. After Norman is being taken away when he reached the age of 12, Emma and Ray hatch up a plan to climb over the wall and slide on ropes over the canyon underneath, and thus escape with half of the children to the outside world.

The Epstein Files meet Shyamalan's ''The Village'' meet ''The Cabin in the Woods''—the 1st season of the anime ''The Promised Neverland'' is a remarkably sophisticated unraveling of a mystery about kids in an orphanage who discover their narrow world presented to them is not what it seems, and they become a symbol for dismantling and overcoming the propaganda bubble. The mood, the clever writing and the patient story build-up are the main virtues of this anime, yet it is all rewarded in the end. The often tactic of implying something supernatural, but keeping it hidden while the protagonists (and the viewers with them) slowly discover more about this world, is used here to an effect that reaches its optimum, since the story is intriguing, intelligent and swift at the same time. Except for a few neat camera drives (POV shot of someone walking upstairs towards a door; the tracking shot moving behind the corner as it tracks Ray walking in front of it), there are also some delicious details here: for instance, Emma shows a map of Isabella's room and explains to the other kids that she measured with her footsteps the distance between the walls outside and inside, and realized 10 footsteps are missing inside her room, meaning that there is a secret room behind the book shelf. In another tantalizing moment, the kids discover that books written by a certain William Minerva have a secret Morse Code imprinted on its seal, revealing clues like ''orphanage'' and ''monsters''. The final two episodes, 11 and 12, are the highlight, since a plan is devised and executed that is so genius that one simply cannot mention it without spoiling it, though the director uses masterful match cuts and flashbacks to say so much about the past of these characters and their relations. Several themes were deciphered from this story (vegetarianism and animal rights in a slaughterhouse; collaborationism in order to survive; freedom of information; the relation between passive obedience and active hope), but what is more relevant is that these themes were presented in a well set-up and executed storyline which engages until the end that hints at a second season.

Grade:+++

The Elementary School

Obecná škola; comedy / drama, Czechia, 1991; D: Jan Svěrák, S: Václav Jakoubek, Radoslav Budáč, Jan Tříska, Zdenek Svěrák, Libuše Šafránková, Rudolf Hrušínský, Petr Čepek, Irena Pavlásková

A village near Prague after the end of World War II. Eda (11) lives with his father, an electric engineer, and mother. Eda likes to play with his friend Tonda, but since their all-boys class lacks discipline, the school principal hires a former Nazi resistance member as the new teacher, Igor Hnizdo. Igor sometimes hits the hands of the boys with his stick, but the boys still adore him due to his stories about World War II, even though nobody can confirm at which unit he served. Igor has an affair with the wife of the tram driver, and even seems to be seducing Eda's mother. When news spread that Igor got two twin teenage girls pregnant, he is suspended from school, but reinstalled when it turns out to be rumor. For the anniversary of the liberation of the Allies, Igor stages a World War II school play with the boys as actors.

 ''The Elementary School'' is a typical example of 'Czech humor', consisting out of wacky situations and unusual characters without a tight plot, and is instead just a 'slice-of-life' collection, set here in nostalgic past times. Luckily, the director Jan Sverak and his dad, the screenwriter Zdenek Sverak, refuse to treat it as purely innocent nostalgia, instead defying and avoiding the cliches thanks to naughty humor (after all, the 11-year old boys are entering puberty) and concessions that there were bad things in the past, as well. The opening sequence is already amusing and clever: in the exteriors, a combat vehicle is seen driving across a meadow as gunshots are heard and explosions seen around it, while two little boys are seen inside, seemingly driving it—all until Eda's mother is heard calling them to get back home, as the two boys exit and it is revealed it was all just their fantasy, as they were just sitting in an abandoned old combat vehicle on some abandoned property. 

The first half of the movie consists mostly out of Eda and other boys doing either pranks or just plain silly things to amuse themselves in this boring, desolate village. In one scene, they ignite a mortar out of curiosity, but its missile just barely ejects and starts sliding on the ground through its exhaust pipe, passing under the legs of scared people who found themselves on the meadow. Eda has to take care of his sibling, so he simply attaches the baby on a cart to his bicycle—and naturally has to drive downhill of a rugged terrain, not caring that much what happens to the cart behind him. And there is the classic curiosity error when three boys lick a metal pole during winter and get stuck, so the principal orders an assistant to use a blow torch to melt the frost and release them, but part of their flesh from their tongues is left on the ice surface. Sverak crafts an episodic, messy structure, but loses his steam in the finale, since the abrupt ending feels incomplete and unfinished, whereas too much time is invested on the womanizer teacher Igor, when focusing more on Eda and his friends or family would have been more logical, instead. This is a very good movie, yet it seems something is still missing in the end.

Grade:+++

Drifting Clouds

Kauas pilvet karkaavat; tragicomedy, Finland, 1996; D: Aki Kaurismäki; S: Kati Outinen, Kari Väänänen, Sakari Kuosmanen, Elina Salo, Markku Peltola

Helsinki. Ilona loses her job as a head waitress in Dubrovnik restaurant at the same time that her husband Lauri loses his job as a tram driver. As now are both unemployed, they try to make ends meet. Lauri is offered a job as a bus driver, but fails the medical exam because he hears weaker on one ear. Ilona bribes an employment agent to get a new job immediately, but it is as a cook and waitress in a shabby bar that quickly gets shut down by the audit for not paying taxes. Ilona and Lauri invest all their money into a casino, but he loses it all in the bet. However, Ilona meets her former boss and she gives her money to open up a new restaurant, which attracts many customers.

Aki Kaurismaki's 12th feature length film is a gently ironic and uplifting depiction of unemployment, a depressive topic that he luckily refuses to treat too seriously. Similarly like most of his films, Kaurismaki directs the film in a minimalist, laconic style, incorporating bizarre-dry humor and de-dramatized acting reminiscent of Bresson's films, and the main actress Kati Outinen is charming as the heroine Ilona. The film is overstretched and with some empty walk, but the intermittent humor gives it a refreshing touch. In one of the most amusing scenes, Lauri goes to complain at the cashier after exiting the screening of a film at a cinema: ''I want my money back.'' - ''What for?'' - ''Unbearable rubbish. Get me my dough!'' - ''You didn't even pay.'' - ''So what! Cheating people. Goodbye!'', as he picks up his dog from the coatrack. The way Lauri loses his job as a tram driver is also amusing: the boss summons all the employees, and announces that he will fire four based on them picking a card from the deck of cards. In another funny situation, Ilona finds work in a shabby bar where she is the only employee—when one man orders something to eat, she goes to the kitchen door, pretends to pass the message to the cook, and then discretely goes inside the kitchen and prepares the meal quickly by herself. Kaurismaki paints an exaggerated and yet accurate depiction of Finnish mentality and small little quirks, filming everything in flat cinematography and medium-wide shots, creating a fine feeling of the people living there, despite the rather naive ending. Still, as the title implies, human existence is just a random drifting of chance: there are bad times and good times, but just like the clouds, this cycle dissolves and re-assembles repeatedly. Everything here is artificial, and yet the viewers are still able to decipher some basic human truths from it.

Grade:+++

Flickering Lights

Blinkende Lygter; crime black comedy, Denmark, 2000; D: Anders Thomas Jensen, S: Søren Pilmark, Mads Mikkelsen, Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Sofie Gråbøl, Peter Andersson, Iben Hjejle

Copenhagen. Torkild is and his friends Peter, Arne and Stefan are friends and gangsters. Since Torkild owes money to a mafia boss, he is assigned to steal a briefcase from a safe, not look at what is inside, and bring it to the mafia boss. Naturally, Torkild looks into the briefcase, finds out it contains millions of Danish krone inside, so he and his friends flee with a car with it. The plan to flee to Barcelona, but since Peter was wounded in the shootout, they stop at a barn in the middle of a forest. Little by little, they start liking the place and the hunter and doctor in the nearby town, buy it, and decide to renovate it into a restaurant. Stefan's girlfriend Hanne arrives and informs him she is pregnant, but he eventually decides to stay at the restaurant. The mafia boss arrives to kill them, but the hunter shoots him and his henchmen with a machine-gun. The publicity of the event causes the number of guests of the restaurants to skyrocket.

Voted in one 2023 local national internet poll as the best Danish film up until that point, Anders Thomas Jensen's feature length debut film is one heck of a crazy, wild fun. A blend of ''Grosse Pointe Blank'' and ''In Bruges'', ''Flickering Lights'' has such insane and wacky jokes and gags, sometimes even so grotesque that it is on the verge of being too much, that the viewers at first cannot believe it, but as more and more of such jokes keep coming, this mood consolidates itself. But as mad as all this seems, everything has its why and because, so that the whole storyline has a purpose in the end, with every detail leading to a punchline later on. Most of this black comedy stems from interactions between these characters, who all have their own frequency of humor. In the opening scenes, the main character, gangster Torkild, has a dinner at a restaurant with his soon to be ex-girlfriend Therese, who gives him a book as a gift: ''I already gave it to you before, but you threw it away, so now I'm giving it to you once more.'' When Torkild returns to his apartment late at night, he notices the door is unlocked, so he pulls out his gun and shoots in the dark—as the lights turn on, it is revealed his friends were preparing a surprise birthday party for him, but his friend Peter now holds a smashed, shot wine bottle in his hand. 

The movie is full of such type of humor which just keeps its weird blend of laconic, cynical and sardonic humor throughout, and Jensen is able to get away with it, except for maybe three scenes which were misguided. Yet, everything else works. Jensen also gives four childhood flashbacks for each of his four gangster characters, explaining somewhat how they were either traumatized or damaged and became the way they are now. The childhood flashback revolving around Arne is the most painful: as a kid, he persuaded his two friends to go hunting in a forest with a rifle. One of his friends shoots at a pheasant, but then the scream of a boy in the forest is heard. Arne walks up to the wounded boy who was hit accidentally, but tells him it is alright since the rifle was only loaded with blanks, revealing the boy's leg is only scratched. The two boys hear another rifle shot, go back, and find the first boy who shot has committed suicide from guilt. Filled with creative ideas (the mafia boss plays billiard with a pool ball knocking down mini bowling pins), ''Flickering Lights'' is one of the most untypical crime comedy films, with the four gangsters abandoning the city, their previous gangster careers, a pregnant girlfriend and money, to just simply live in peace running a restaurant, with a neat ending that rounds up everything nicely. This is its very own film—you can like it or not, but you have to admit it is original in what it does.

Grade:+++

Quest for Fire

La Guerre du feu; adventure, Canada / France, 1981; D: Jean-Jacques Annaud, S: Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi, Rae Dawn Chong

Earth, 80,000 years ago. A tribe of prehistoric humans lives inside a cave, supported by fire burning inside an improvised lamp, used to cook, keep the animals away and create spears. They are attacked by a tribe to ape-like homo erectus, who try to steal their fire. While escaping, the prehistoric human tribe flee through a lake, which extinguishes the fire. Three men are sent to find fire and bring it back. They save a girl from a cannibalistic tribe that uses fire to cook humanoids. The girl joins the trio of prehistoric humans. The tribe of the girl capture one of them, but the other two help him escape. Another one is attacked and wounded by a bear in a cave, so the other one carries him. They bring back the fire back to their tribe, but it is extinguished in the lake. Luckily, the girl uses friction on two sticks to ignite fire.

The director Jean-Jacques Annaud seems to have been so fascinated with the opening segment depicting prehistoric humanoids in ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' that he decided to make a whole movie dedicated to them, but a little more closer to modern times. Set 80,000 years ago, the film has no dialogue except for grunting, and depicts a raw, primordial and basic state of mind back in that times, and thus the movie uses raw, primordial and basic means to conjure up that feeling for the viewers. Watching it, the viewers immediately get two impressions—what enormous effort is accumulated in generations spaning tens of thousands of years in order for us to survive up until this day; and what a blessing technology and civilization are, which surpassed such a dreadful state. The opening is already gruesome in its details—three prehistoric women go to a creek for water, bend down, revealing their butts from underneath their leather clothing, so one prehistoric man sneaks up behind one to have sex. 

Their tribe is attacked by ape-like humanoids, probably homo erectus, and as the prehistoric humans want to exit their cave, the enemy throws rocks from above them. It shows how there were several humanoid subspecies, and there was simply a too big intellectual rift between some, such as the violent ape-like ones and cannibals, one cannot reason with them nor know why they are acting the way they do, as opposed to prehistoric humans who were at least rudimentary human. There is chaos, madness, primitvism and cruelty in this savage world, but also one wonderful moment of compassion which breaks it—after the hero caveman saves a girl, covered all in grey paint (excellent Rae Dawn Chong, whose face is very expressionistic thanks only to her two eyes visible behind this paint), she later walks up to him and shows gratitude by giving him improvised medicine for his wounds. Even elephants have make up, when they wear fur to appear as mammoths some halfway into the film. Some heavy handed moments bother, and thus ''Quest for Fire'' is only a rump forerunner to Annaud's excellent and similar minimalistic nature drama ''The Bear'', filmed 7 years later. However, even though these characters are ugly, backward and unrecognizeably looking behind the caveman make-up, when the man and the woman are sitting and hugging each other, at the end of the day they have become more human.

Grade:++

The Garden

Záhrada; comedy, Slovakia / France, 1995, D: Martin Šulík, S: Roman Luknár, Marián Labuda, Zuzana Šulajová, Jana Švandová

Jacub, a teacher, has an affair with Tereza, a married woman. When his father catches them, he orders Jacub to move out of his apartment. Jacub travels from the city to an isolated house of his late grandfather with a garden, in the middle of the countryside. He initially wants to sell it to buy an apartment, but quickly becomes pleased with the garden, the nature and a nearby girl, Helena, who becomes his girlfriend. Tereza shows up and wants to continue the affair, but Jacub refuses. Since he did not show up at school, Jacub is fired from his job, but he does not mind. His father shows up at the garden, claiming he feels lonely in the apartment. Tereza starts levitating above while lying on a table.

This unusual and meandering comedy examines the issue of what is the better area to live—rural or urban—and that even this change of a location can cause a change of a peron's mentality. It doesn't have a clear narrative storyline, but is more a meditation on just letting go and enjoying the peaceful nature. However, some episodes work better, while others less so. The director Martin Sulik crafts some unusual and creative scenes, the best ones being those that are on the verge of a slapstick comedy: for instance, the first time the protagonist Jacub visits the garden, he encounters a whole array of visual jokes (he cannot find a door knob of a tall wooden fence, so he climbs atop of it, only to find out the door moves since it was not locked; he enters an empty greenhouse, and it collapses; he takes a step on a bridge, and it breaks as he falls into a creek). Another fascinating detail is when Jacub finds a diary written in reverse letters, so he uses a mirror to read its sentences. There is also a sudden, spicy erotic moment already 3 minutes into the film, when Jacub's affair, Tereza (Jana Svandova), takes her bra off, shows her breasts and then fondles with him—until they are interrupted by his father. A lot of scenes seem superfluous and unnecessary in the second half of the film, which wonders off into too many random, poorly thought out ideas (in one fantasy moment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau shows up fixing his car in the garden, while his wife is inside; and for some reason, Jacub and his father give each other haircuts halfway into the film, so that they are bald for the entire second half), leaving a feeling of underdeveloped ideas, but the moment of Jacub and Helena rolling wrapped up in a white blanket across the garden, embracing inside, is wonderful.

Grade:++