The Butcher Boy

The Butcher Boy; psychological drama / crime, Ireland, 1997; D: Neil Jordan, S: Eamonn Owens, Stephen Rea, Alan Boyle, Andrew Fullerton, Fiona Shaw, Aisling O'Sullivan, Milo O'Shea, Sinéad O'Connor

A small Irish town during the Cuban missile crisis. Francie Brady (12) lives with his alcoholic father and suicidal mother. Francie runs away from home and spends some time at a cinema and reading comic books, but when he returns, his mother has died. His only friend is boy Joe, but Mrs. Nugent advises him against seeing Francie, whom she deems as mentally unstable and a "pig". As a revenge, Francie causes a mess and defecates at her place, and is thus sent to a reform school. When a priest tries to molest him, Francie is released by the principal under the promise to keep quiet about the incident. Dad dies while Joe disappears from the town. Francie finds him in a catholic school, but Joe says he is not his friend anymore, so the priests throw Francie out. Francie finds a job as a butcher boy and kills Mrs. Nugent, hiding pieces of her corpse under cabbage waste. The police arrest him and he spends 30 years at a mental asylum. As a grown up, he is released from the institution.

"A Clockwork Orange" meets "Problem Child"—something like that could be used to describe this bizarre patchwork by Neil Jordan, based on the eponymous novel by Patrick McCabe. The protagonist in question is a mentally ill boy, Francie, and his aggressiveness should be discouraged, which makes Jordan's job of trying to somehow explain his behavior by showing him as a victim of traumatic childhood somewhat unconvincing. The story also seems lost, meandering through several episodes, which all comes across as aimless. The topic seems to be wrong, but Jordan still directs the film with a lot of creativity and black humor: the idea that the narrator speaks with Francie in one scene 36 minutes into the film is genius; whereas Sinead O'Connor is fabulous as Holy Mary in four brief scenes, who talks to Francie as an apparition. One great laugh has Holy Mary being absent for a very long time in the final third act, and when she finally appears again next to a grown up Francie, he just turns around and says: "Hi, stranger!" Jordan even goes so far to make fun of pedophilia in Catholic church in the scene where Francie, in a reform school, is telling about his vision of Holy Mary, while a priest (Milo O'Shea) is leaned on right behind him, as the narrator goes: "So there I am, telling him the story, and the next thing his hand is jiggling in his pocket. What are you doing there, Father Teddly? Pay attention!... Just what is one half of Father Teddly doing over with the boot case, and the other half on the floor?" Though this subplot should have been developed further, and not just glossed over like it is a trivial thing. Some little details are exquisite (a cupcake spinning on a record player; Mrs. Nugent's two brothers want to scare Francie by holding his face down in a river, after a while he stops moving, so they panic and run away—but later, when a shocked Joe turns him around, Francie smiles in the water, because he just faked that he drowned). Can a story about a mentally ill child killer be translated into great art? In this case, not quite. But it is still a good, albeit controversial film about wrongly adapted individuals whose lack of social skills just make them ruin their life even more.

Grade:++ 

Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe; fantasy, USA / Australia / Canada, 2026; D: Travis Knight, S: Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes, Idris Elba, Jared Leto, Alison Brie, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Morena Baccarin, Sam C. Wilson, Kristen Wiig (voice)

He doesn't have the power: kid prince Adam is too weak to stop Skeletor's army from invading and taking over the kingdom of his father, King Randor, while he has to flee to Earth, leaving planet Eternia behind. 15 years later, Adam Glenn works in human resources of an IT company in Oklahoma City, but when he finds his sword of power, his Eternia friend Teela finds him and brings him back to his world. Using the sword, Adam transforms into the powerful He-Man, teams up with Duncan and others, and defeats Skeletor and his assistant Evil-Lyn, thereby restoring the kingdom and freeing the people.

39 years after the first feature length "Masters of the Universe" '87 film, screenwriters Chris Butler, David Callaham, Aaron and Adam Nee restructured the He-Man storyline in the most radical way in this 2nd attempt, but the gamble paid off: this film works better. "Masters of the Universe" walks on the verge of self-parody, but this gives it a dose of freshness and vibrancy, full of references to the original animated show, whereas it even has a delicious cameo by Dolph Lundgren, the original '87 He-Man. There are several questionable choices here—the blend between innocent comedy and some hard-core, intense battle sequences (in a fight at Snake Mountain, He-Man impales henchman Karg with his sword to the wall, goes to fight with Goat Man and throw him from the top of the building, and then returns, retrieves his sword, while Karg falls to the ground) is uneven—whereas the two acting choices for Skeletor and He-Man are not entirely convincing—Jared Leto's voice is so scary and psychotic that his jokes almost don't come across; Nicholas Galitzine is neither muscular nor charming enough. However, while Lundgren's He-Man is better physically looking in the '87 film, Galitzine's He-Man has the better personality, since he is given a character arc of being true to himself, which makes him a three-dimensional character.

Some outrageous jokes are wonderful, and outflank the clichés. For instance, after a deadly-serious 20-minute opening sequence, which shows how Skeletor's army invaded the kingdom on Eternia and 10-year old Adam fled to Earth, there is a fabulous cut—to a grown up Adam, in a suit, talking to a woman, his date, in a restaurant: "Anyway, that's how I ended up in Oklahoma City! How about you, Julie, is your family from around here?" Genius. Another funny bit involves Adam working at an office, but then storming out upon hearing the news that someone found his magic sword, so his boss, who is ultra-politically correct, says to him: "Adam, if you walk out that door, you can kiss this place goodbye!... Consensually." The director Travis Knight even inserted a joke regarding the Internet meme of Prince Adam in tune to the song "What's Going On" in the sequence where Beast-Man first shows up, and Adam is in the police car while said song plays in the background. The two best performances are by the excellent Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn and Camila Mendes as Teela. In one very amusing moment, just as He-Man is about to attack, he is "frozen" by Evil-Lyn's spell, who just recites random magic words, which just go on and on, until Skeletor finally interrupts her by coughing: "That will do, Evil-Lyn. He's frozen". The augmented humor works for the cynics, while the finely choreographed battle sequences work for action seeking viewers, and even though these two disparate elements don't work together, the viewers will at least enjoy one half of them in this surprisingly entertaining movie: "Conan the Barbarian" meets Mel Brooks.

Grade:++

The Quiet Girl

An Cailín Ciúin; drama, Ireland, 2022; D: Colm Bairéad, S: Catherine Clinch, Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, Michael Patric

Cait (10) is a secluded, misunderstood girl who often runs away from her house. She has three sisters, all of whom are neglected by their parents who don't care that much for them. Since her mother is pregnant again, she sends Cait to spend the summer at her relatives, the middle-aged Eibhlin and Sean. The childless couple welcomes Cait, and she helps them at their cattle farm by cleaning the stable. At a funeral, a woman tells Cait that Eibhlin and Sean had a son who drowned in a slurry pit by chasing a dog. As the school is about to start, Eibhlin and Sean return Cait back to her home, where her mother gave birth to a son. As Eibhlin and Sean leave in a car, Cait catches up with them, and calls Sean "dad".

Colm Bairead's feature length debut film is, as the title already hints at, a quiet, meditative, introverted and gentle little drama about growing up, filmed in Irish language. "The Quiet Girl" is well meant and honest, but still too slow, suffering from too much 'empty walk' and conventional storytelling which does not engage on some higher level. The opening act neatly establishes how the heroine Cait (very good Catherine Clinch) feels neglected by her distant parents: when she is brought to stay over at her relatives, her father is so backward that he smokes in the kitchen during the meal, extinguishing his cigarette on the plate, and then leaves the farm in his car—with Caith's suitcase still inside the trunk! Relative Eibhlin makes Caith feel not only welcomed, but also gives her a feeling of worth and importance, and even says to her: "If there are secrets in a house, there is shame in that house. We don't have any shame here". Not much is going on, though, as the storyline is rather routine and stale. The story contemplates about some unfairness in life—Caith's parents have four children, but don't care about them, while Eibhlin and Sean don't have children and truly appreciate Caith, but cannot keep her—and conjures up emotional, realistic characters. One just wishes all of this was more creative and better written.

Grade:++

The Boys (Season 2)

The Boys; fantasy-thriller series, USA, 2020, D: Phil Sgriccia, Liz Friedlander, Steve Boyum, Fred Toye, Batan Silva, S: Karl Urban, Antony Starr, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Aya Cash, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Tomer Capone, Karen Fukuhara, Giancarlo Esposito, Chace Crawford, Simon Pegg, Goran Višnjić

Billy “Butcher” returns to Hughie, Marvin and Frenchie. They are hunted down by the superheroes led by Homelander, but manage to escape. Homelander finds out the new superhero among the ranks of Seven, Stormfront, is actually a woman born in Berlin over a century ago, as her husband Vought performed Nazi eugenics experiments, which was continued by the Vought corporation that aims to create superhumans via their Compound 5. Stormfront and Homelander start an affair. A-Train, angry that he will be excluded from the Seven upon Stormfront’s insistence because he is black, hands over this confidential documentation to Hughie and Annie, aka Starlight. They in turn send it to the media. Billy reunites with Becca, but she refuses to leave without her son Ryan. Billy and the gang try to trick Homelander into leaving Ryan’s house while they take away Ryan, but then Stormfront appears and starts chocking Becca. In panic, Ryan’s superpowers activate and his laser kills Stormfront, but accidentally also Becca. Billy still decides to take care of Ryan.  

The 2nd season of “The Boys” is a step back compared to the better first one. It seems the authors wrote themselves into a corner on at least three times, so they resorted to convoluted, forced resolutions to save their protagonists. At the end of the first season, Homelander brought Billy to see Becca again, at her house. Why didn’t Homelander eliminate Billy right there? He just let’s Billy walk away, in a very lame example of screenwriting. Sure, Billy is framed for Madelyn's murder, but they could have still eliminated him outright and then released the accusation. Later, when Homelander finds Hughie in a sewer and orders Starlight to kill Hughie in episode 2.3, the resolution is also unconvincing, yielding to “deux ex machina” clichés. The sick tendency to show bizarre, random splatter violence and vile murders (in a shocking, traumatizing sequence, just as a doctor and former employee was about to testify against Vought at a hearing in episode 2.6, dozens of people’s heads start exploding in the room, compared to which even Cronenberg’s “Scanners” seem restrained), as well as bad ideas (The Deep hallucinating that his fins are talking to him in episode 2.2; the yacht running through a whale in episode 2.3), which takes its toll on the season. Unfortunately, the authors resorted to typical “shock engineering” to keep the viewers’ interest, which is already a bad sign. The reveal that Vought was created through Nazi eugenics experiments on people was a tad too banal, but lately it became actually relevant, as Stormfront is a symbol for the ever growing normalization of far-right tendencies and extremism in politics (she even mentions the term "white genocide").  

Nonetheless, there are still some more intelligent, subversive and creative allegories on the modern era, which lift the season up a notch. One of the more subversive jabs is aimed at how any error or crime of those in power can simply be whitewashed by gaslighting the masses through social media and fake popularity conditioning, controlled by these same people in power. As superhero Stormfront explains to Homelander: “You don't need 50 million people to love you. You need five million people pissed. Emotion sells, anger sells”. That way, the fact that Vought corporation experimented with injecting Compound 5 substance into babies turns from a scandal to a patriotic necessity, redirecting the narrative into a polemic that many more potential future superheroes will make America stronger from supervillains wanting to attack them. Another layer of this theme can be interpreted in compliance and Faustian bargain, from Vought employees and even their CEO disagreeing with the corporation’s evil policies, yet still obeying and remaining passive because it is profitable. Billy thus stands out as someone with integrity, in an active existence, as opposed to them: he is powerless, but still has the courage to keep going. One episode is excellent—2.4—while others are either good or weak. One genius sequence in episode 2.7: when an ex-superhero sets himself on fire, this triggers a fire alarm, which inadvertently causes Annie to be released from her prison cell. In a battle, Black Noir overwhelms her, but then Queen Maeve puts a candy bar into Black Noir’s mouth, and he is suddenly weak. Maeve then explains to Annie that Black Noir has a peanut allergy, in a brilliant restructuring of the Kryptonite concept. Despite clumsy and heavy-handed moments, season 2 still works.

Grade:++

The Commitments

The Commitments; musical drama-comedy, Ireland / UK, 1991; D: Alan Parker, S: Robert Arkins, Glen Hansard, Dick Massey, Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle, Bronagh Gallagher, Andrew Strong, Michael Aherne, Johnny Murphy, Colm Meaney

Dublin. The unemployed Jimmy decides to create a soul band, The Commitments, and be its manager. He holds an audition in the home of his parents, and numerous people apply. He chooses three girls as singers—Natalie, Imelda, Bernie—and seven guys as musicians—Outspan, Derek, Dean, Steven, Billy, Joey Fagan—plus the overweight Deco as the lead singer. Jimmy buys them instruments and finds a first gig: at a church hall, under the excuse that it is an anti-heroin musical event. Joey seduces all the women in the band, claiming to have known Elvis. They don't have money, but they book other gigs. Deco becomes impossibly arrogant, thinking he is the main star of the band. Just s a talent agent offers them a contract with a budget company, The Commitments start a fight and break up in disunity.

The surprising winner of BAFTA awards for best film, director and adapted screenplay, "The Commitments" is one of the most popular Irish films of the 20th century, a simple, but accessible and effective bitter-sweet story about a dozen nobodies who attempt to becomes "somebodies", in this case how a bunch of Dubliners start a soul band from the title to raise their significance. Even though he previously directed mostly dramas, the director Alan Parker shows a lot of sense and enthusiasm for humor in this comedy, augmented by the screenplay based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, who perfectly captures the mentality and spirit of the Irish from that era. However, there are too many characters in this story (and band), and thus there is not enough time to dedicate to all of them, thereby inevitably leaving most of them feeling like extras, as we don't find out much about them. Nonetheless, three actors stand out the most and feel genuinely fascinating: Robert Arkins as manager Jimmy, the founder of the band; Johnny Murphy as trumpet player Joey Fagan; and especially the comical Colm Meaney as Jimmy's dad, who remarkably just accepts his plan to host an improvised audition at his home. 

The first half of "The Commitments" works the best, elegantly establishing many characters and the poor circumstances they want to escape from. In one funny sequence at a wedding, a guy is pushed and accidentally spills his drink over the dress of the local beauty Imelda, mostly along her chest area, who says she will wash it later, while two guys look at her, until one says: "Wash it? I'd frame it!" Fagan has a way with words, being able to persuade a lot of people with his enthusiasm, especially when he introduces himself to Jimmy: "Why would you want to join us?" - "The Lord sent me. And the Lord blows my trumpet." Jimmy is very effervescent, spending either his time talking to himself by imagining he is having an interview after becoming famous, or coaching the amateur band: "I want a strict diet of soul!" The second half loses its humor, charm, and is "eaten" too much by sole singing and stage performances of the soul band, which become excessive, leaving too little room for the "proper" storytelling, since, after all, this is not a collection of music videos. This reduces the film's initial high impression. The ending is also disappointing, showing that there was never real unity in this band, which also takes a toll on these sympathetic characters from the beginning, who ended up rather arrogant in the end. One unforgettable quote between Jimmy and Fagan must be mentioned, showing thinking outside of success, looked at it only from the perspective of optimistic life journey: "I've achieved nothing!" - "You're missing the point. The success of the band was irrelevant: you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure, we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way it's poetry."

Grade:++

Cowboys

Kauboji; comedy, Croatia, 2013; D: Tomislav Mršić, S: Saša Anočić, Živko Anočić, Matija Antolić, Hrvoje Barišić, Krunoslav Klabučar, Ivana Starčević, Rakan Rushaidat

Theater director Saša is sent to a small desolate town to stage its first theater play in 12 years. Six local wackos audition—Domagoj, Juraj, Javor, Bruno, Miodrag and Ivan—and since they are the only ones who showed up, they are all hired to be actors. A woman, Marica, wants to join, so she is enlisted, as well. Saša decides to make a western play for them. Despite numerous problems, including threats from the supervisor that he will shut the whole project down, and the fact that Bruno might be gay, they perform the play on stage. The theater is full. The play is about a sheriff who upholds the law in the wild west. The audience gives them applause, while Saša dies from pneumonia in the hospital.

"Cowboys" is a fun comedy about seven people with aimless existence who unite to perform a play on stage and thus give themselves some meaning and goal in their empty lives, and it once again shows how sometimes it is more interesting watching artists making a movie or a play than watching that sole movie / play. The first 20 minutes are the best, elegantly and skillfully setting everything up so smoothly that the viewers not only instantly understand what is going on, but are also engaged. The sole audition scene, where the six locals appears and disappear on the screen in jump cuts, is aesthetic and very funny, with some absurd dialogue ("Acting experience?" - "More amateur ones. Like, at home"). The theater director Sasa complains to his supervisor that all these candidates are atrocious actors, but, surprisingly, he just calms him down: "Nobody even expects from these people to become real actors. Neither from you to make a masterwork. The important thing is that you are here, that the town gets its first play after 12 years. And that you accept this as such." In another comical scene at the bowling alley, three of these amateur actors sit at a table, until one has this exchange with Miodrag: "Are you a Serb?" - "No, I'm half Gypsy, half... Someone else. I know who. And you?" - "What me? I'm normal!" He then asks the third guy, who is always quiet: "Are you always quiet?" - "No", he replies. And then just continues being quiet. The rest of the film never really manages to repeat this level of comedy, settling mostly only on amusing, but standard, routine, without much creative liftoffs, and it's a pity that out of the seven characters, only three truly stand out (Miodrag, Bruno, Marica), while the rest is not that distinct and "disappears" in the crowd. Despite the fact that there isn't a clear payoff nor a rounded up conclusion at the end (it would have been interesting to see how the play affected their lives in town afterwards, or what self-esteem Marica got from playing her role), "Cowboys" is a well made comedy that will be more appreciated by artists and creators.

Grade:++

The Perfect Host

The Perfect Host; psychological drama / crime, USA, 2010; D: Nicholas Tomnay, S: Clayne Crawford, David Hyde Pierce, Megahn Perry, Helen Reddy

Los Angeles. John Taylor robbed a bank in collusion with his girlfriend Simone, a bank teller who told him she needs money for her disease. Getting rid of his car and having a wounded foot, John randomly rings in front of a mansion and asks to come inside, claiming he was robbed. He is received by Warwick Wilson who claims to be preparing a dinner for his guests. John drinks his wine and falls unconscious. When he wakes up, he is tied up, while Warwick turns out to be a psychopath who just imagines he is having guests in his empty kitchen. John wakes up the next morning outside on the street and finds out Simone plans to leaves the city with the money, without him. He confronts her at the parking garage and takes the money, but the money is taken away from him by Warwick, who is a police lieutenant. Some time later, a detective receives a photo of Warwick and John together, and Warwick invites him for dinner.

This unknown independent film by Nicholas Tomnay is a surprisingly well made and clever blend of crime and psychological drama, playing with the always intriguing concept of a prey and predator switching roles in a plot twist. "The Perfect Host" from the title is played by the excellent David Hyde Pierce as the psychotic Warwick, who isn't as innocent and weak as it first seems. There are some creative details here (for instance, the desperate John randomly picks a mail box of a mansion, finds a letter inside signed by some Julie, and then rings the doorbell, claiming to be Julie's friend who lost his luggage at the airport and needs help) and each ten minutes in the first half offer some new twist or surprise to keep the story interesting and unusual, whereas the cinematography is aesthetic. In one of these surprises, Warwick imagines he is having guests at the table in his kitchen, only for the next scene to reveal him talking to himself, with only the confused John looking at him, revealing his deranged nature. However, after 45 minutes, the story kind of loses its surprise effect, and thus the rest is rather solid, but underwhelming, without any clear major pay-off to Warwick's psychosis. A final plot twist could have been that he is even imagining to be a police lieutenant, but that is contradicted when John hears his associate via walkie-talkie and the detective receiving John's photo, which undermines this theory. There was not that much depth to Warwick's character, and some moments are a bit contrived (why did Warwick apply fake wounds on John's face? Why did he simply release John?), yet "The Perfect Host" manages to be a slow-burning psychological crime-drama with the two leading actors carrying up the story for 90% of its time, on only one location.

Grade:++   

The Boys (Season 1)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn); action / black comedy, USA, 2020; D: Cathy Yan, S: Margot Robbie, Ella Jay Basco, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Ewan McGregor, Chris Messina, Ali Wong 

Gotham City. After Joker broke up with her, Harley Quinn finds a new assignment: a little girl, Cassandra, stole and ate a diamond intended for crime boss Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask, so he orders Harley to get it back. Harley finds Cassandra, but actually becomes her friend. In the meantime, Detective Renee Montoya, singer Dinah Lance and Helena Bertinelli, aka The Huntress, also have a bone to pick with Sionis, so they reluctantly team up with Harley. Sionis orders his men to get the diamond any way they can, even threatening to cut out Cassandra's stomach, but luckily Harley is able to stop them and kill Sionis. Later, after Cassandra defecates the diamond, Harley escapes with her from Montoya, Dinah and Bertinelli.

The 2nd film in which Margot Robbie played Harley Quinn, "Birds of Prey" is weaker than "The Suicide Squad", but better than "Suicide Squad". It is a patchwork, using a convoluted narrative obfuscation of a rather simple story in which Harley has to save a girl who ate a diamond from criminal Sionis, which makes it slightly forced at times, but it still has enough virtues to offer a good fun, especially in some meticulously choreographed martial arts and fight sequences, where the creative work of the stuntmen rises to the occasion. The story is at times almost banal (the villain Sionis is presented almost exclusively as a one-dimensional bad guy, with one nasty sequence where he orders his henchmen to torture and execute three people hanging upside down; the hyena plays no role in the story, indicating the screenplay needed at least one more re-write), but the director Cathy Yan is still able to be playful on the field of directing, enriching the film. For instance, in one sequence, as Harley is running away from Detective Montoya through a market, she randomly spots other people who create obstacles for her, as the camera zooms in on their faces and shows their name and grievance ("Name: Roller Dummy. Grievance: Broke her nose."; "Name: Ralph Murray. Grievance: Fed his brother to a hyena"). In another comical sequence, Harley, in disguise, enters a police precinct and says: "I'd like to report a terrible crime". The police officer asks: "What crime?", and she replies with: "This one!", as she reveals a gun that fires some sort of a red ball at the officer, knocking him out. The best moment happens at a brilliantly choreographed fighting sequence at a warehouse, where a big henchman with a long beard is holding Harley by her neck, but she takes a lighter and lights his beard on fire, causing him to recoil in panic: genius. These kind of stylizations and anarchic humor fit very well with Harley's crazy persona, helping sway this film towards something better than it was fated initially.

Grade:++

I, Daniel Blake

I, Daniel Blake; drama, UK, 2016; D: Ken Loach, S: Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Brianna Shan, Dylan McKiernan

Newcastle. After recovering from a heart attack, woodworker Daniel Blake is faced with a bureaucratic heart attack: his doctor forbids him to work, but the British Government's Department for Work and Pensions refuses to pay him social welfare and orders him to get back to work. Daniel appeals, but has to wait in the meantime without any income. He becomes friends with Katie, an unemployed mother of two who moved from London. Daniel helps her repair stuff at her new home. Katie finds work as a prostitute and refuses to quit even after Daniel tells her to. Computer illiterate, Daniel has a difficult time at the employment center and attends a CV workshop. While seeing a lawyer to help him in his case, Daniel suffers a heart attack at the toilet and dies.

The movie that secured Ken Loach a second Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, "I, Daniel Blake" is a standard, schematic and grey social drama, but it has moments of freshness due to the humorous, energetic and measured performance by comedian Dave Johns in the title role. The director Loach often copes with his didactic preaching of themes "eating" his entire story, style and creativity, and some of these flaws are apparent even here, especially in the banal, unsatisfactory and abrupt ending which feels as if it is creating some sort of apotheosis of tragedy for the title hero broken by the system. Nonetheless, Loach crafts a film that is as unglamorized from Hollywood idealism as possible, establishing a realistic and grim picture of everyday working class, who are just one health problem away from bankruptcy. The best bits in the film are those where Daniel does something funny or rebellious which makes him stand out: for instance, in one sequence at the unemployment office, when he spots the unemployed single mother Katie with her two kids treated poorly by an official, even though they are new in town, Daniel stands up: "Who's first in this queue?" A man answers: "I am". - "Do you mind if this young miss signs on first?" Daniel then points with his finger: "Now you can go back to your desk and let her sign on and do the job that the taxpayer pays you for! This is a bloody disgrace!" An official warns Daniel that he is making a scene, but Daniel insists: "She's out of the area. She's just been a few minutes. Can you not let her sign on?" In another wonderful scene, Daniel is ordered by the unemployment office to attend a CV workshop, where a man holds a lecture: "Costa Coffee advertised 8 jobs. Do you know how man applications they got from that? Over 1,300. So, what does that mean?" Cue Daniel not missing a beat: "We should all be drinking a lot more bloody coffee... Well, if you can count, it's obvious. There's not enough jobs. Fact." An ambitious, intelligent and humane film about the madness of bureaucracy in modern times and ever growing financial crisis which is taking a toll of ordinary working people, whose lives keep shrinking.

Grade:++

Raining Stones

Raining Stones; drama, UK, 1993; D: Ken Loach, S: Bruce Jones, Julie Brown, Ricky Tomlinson, Gemma Phoenix, Tom Hickey

Northern England. Bob, an unemployed man, and his friend Tommy steal a mutton on a meadow to try to sell it to a butcher, but he warns them that only sheep meat sells. Indeed, they earn little trying to sell  meat at a pub. Even worse, Tommy left the keys in Bob's van, which gets stolen. Bob, a devout Catholic, is desperate because he needs 105£ to buy a dress for his daughter Coleen's First Communion. His wife Anne tries to help by applying for a sewing job, but is fired. Bob tries a job as a bouncer at a night bar, but is fired. Bob borrows money from a loan shark, Tansey, who arrives one day at Bob's home and forces Anne to give him her wedding ring and other valuables to repay Bob's debt. When Bob returns back home and hears what happened, he becomes angry, takes a wrench and follows Tansey. Bob attacks Tansey at the parking garage. Tansey flees in panic in his car, hits a concrete pillar and dies. Bob confesses everything to a priest, but he advises Bob to not tell anyone and resume his life. Bob enjoys Coleen's First Communion.

Ken Loach's parable on people who take desperate measures to find a solution out of their desperate situation, "Raining Stones" is both emotional and 'rough', never allowing to present the working class in idealized fashion. Loach's often screenwriter Jim Allen shows a lot of sense for the mentality of these people, so much that the viewers can easily identify with them, whereas they both find a wonderful support in the main actor Bruce Jones in the role of Bob. The protagonist is presented as a flawed hero: he wants the best for his little daughter Coleen and her First Communion, but is too 'rustic', clumsy and heavy-handed in his choices. A lot of freshness arrives from the surprising humor, which livens up the rather grey mood—in one sequence, Tommy tells Bob this joke: "Did you hear about that kid from Liverpool in the bloody wheelchair they took to Lourdes? ... And when he came out of the water, they all had a look at his legs. And his legs were still twisted. But the wheelchair had two new tires on it!" In another sequence, while Bob wants to buy an old van, Tommy has this exchange with the seller: "How many owners has it had?" - "Owners! Only one!" - "Who was it, Ben-Hur?" Everything here is dirty, raw and difficult, to be as a close to the experience of reality as possible, whereas Loach never preaches nor falls into sentimentality—the advice and reaction of the priest in the finale, when Bob confesses what he did, is a true surprise of pragmatism. The structure of the storyline feels a bit episodic, random and aimless, some moments seem fake (for instance, the illogical sequence where the daughter just let's the loan shark into their house, who demands money from the mother, even though he never presents Bob's document with borrowed money), whereas some characters deserved better treatment, for instance the underwritten role of Bob's wife Anne. Still, even though Anne's presence is sparse, she has one of the most poignant, philosophical lines in the film that say a lot about people feeling trapped by determinism and rigid fate: "It's funny how we start off, ain't it, with all these big ideas. And then you realize that things aren't going to change. I'll live and die in that flat, and nobody will ever know."

Grade:+++

Sorry We Missed You

Sorry We Missed You; drama, UK / France / Belgium, 2019; D: Ken Loach, S: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor

Newcastle upon Tyne. Manual laborer Ricky decides to try out a new job as a delivery driver who delivers boxes with items that people ordered via internet. His boss Maloney tells him he is "self-employed", but that he must pay a 1,000£ for a van. Ricky thus works 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. His wife Abby had to sell her car to afford Ricky's van, so she now takes a bus to work as a home care nurse. Their teenage son Sebastian is a troublemaker who one day steals spray cans from a store, so Ricky takes away his mobile phone. When Ricky's van keys vanish, he assumes it was Sebastian and slaps him, but it turns out it was their 13-year old daughter Liza Jane. One day, Ricky is attacked by three thugs who steals his boxes. Since Maloney will not reimburse him for the lost barcode scanner nor pay for his recovery, an injured Ricky drives off the van to continue work.

Ken Loach's penultimate film, social drama "Sorry We Missed You" is almost a shock therapy to all those idealized Hollywood films showing middle class work as pleasant and comfortable. The protagonist Ricky assumes he will get an easy job as a delivery driver, but he suddenly faces sobering problems along his way: a customer says he didn't order anything; a parking enforcement officer threatens to write him a fine for parking with his van in the middle of the street; Ricky has to urinate in a bottle because he has nowhere to stop with his van; he works 14 hours a day, six days a week... Loach simply poses an uncomfortable question—is there any dignified type of work left for the ordinary middle class? The film is a bit didactic and too schematic, presenting everything a bit too rigid and standard, since Loach often avoids cinematic technique or some more creative style to focus on the sole story and present reality as grey as it is, without any "make up", but the insight it shows into work over-exploitation and lack of any social welfare or solidarity creates some strong messages that make you think. Loach luckily never preaches, and instead just let's the story take its flow. Some of the best bits are when the characters' personalities come across as more important than the theme: in the best moment of the film, parents Ricky and Abby are arguing in their bedroom during the night, while all of a sudden they hear the knock on their door—it's their daughter Liza Jane, who tells them: "Stop it! No fighting!"

Grade:++

The Impossible

The Impossible; disaster film, Spain, 2012; D: J. A. Bayona, S: Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Ewan McGregor, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Geraldine Chaplin

December 2 0 0 4. Maria Bennett travels with her husband Henry and three children Lucas, Simon and Thomas to Khao Lak, Thailand, for a vacation. They enjoy their stay at the hotel and spend the Christmas there. On 26 December, the Indian Ocean earthquake causes a tsunami which reaches the shore and sweeps away the hotel and the guests. Badly wounded, Maria is able to find Lucas and a boy, Daniel, and climb up a tree in case of another tsunami. Locals find them and transport them to a hospital. Henry finds that his mother's bed is taken over by another patient, and cannot find her, until the staff leads him to her, who has undergone surgery, but is stable. Henry, Simon and Thomas also survived, and manage to find and reunite with Maria and Lucas in the hospital. They are then evacuated to Singapore. 

One of the first film depictions of the catastrophic 2 0 0 4 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which killed 228,000 people along the wider area of the Bay of Bengal, based on the real-life experiences of survivor Maria Belon, "The Impossible" is an intense, terrifying and strong blend of disaster and survival film. The director J. A. Bayona takes care of the authenticity, allowing for the story to contemplate about the notions of fragility of life under threat from random disasters of the harsh, cruel universe, whereas the leading actress Naomi Watts is excellent as Maria. The film does not waste time—the tsunami occurs already 14 minutes into the film, and this segment is its most impressive accomplishment: tourists are happily walking along the swimming pool, when all of a sudden Maria's paper is carried away by the wind and stops at a glass wall, as she and others turn around to randomly see palm trees falling down along the horizon. Cue to a random 12 ft tall wave of dirty, brown water which simply sweeps everything in sight, from tourists to the hotel building. It all just happens in 20 seconds, and they simply don't have time to react at all. Maria hangs on to a tree, and the water stream is all around her, she let's go to try to swim after her son Lucas, but she is pierced when she is carried by the water into a random tree branch. This whole sequence is incredible and one wonders how they managed to film it. The rest of the film is the aftermath segment, which encompasses the remaining 2/3 of "The Impossible's" running time, but it is of lesser intensity and falters a bit in interest. Having Maria and Lucas wait at the hospital is simply not that engaging, which is why the director even uses the cliche of father Henry almost not finding Maria in her hospital bed and is just about to leave in the truck when something happens, which is banal. The storyline clearly needed some better written dialogue or cinematic inspiration for support in this post-tsunami segment. Nonetheless, "The Impossible" is a valuable depiction of the disaster, showing how it looked like and what its effects were. If there is one villain here, then it is chaos; if there is one protagonist, then it is life trying to survive and live in peace and stability.

Grade:+++

21 Grams

21 Grams; drama, USA, 2003; D: Alejandro González Iñárritu, S: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Danny Houston

Jack, a former convict who now turned into a Christian preacher, accidentally hits a man and his two daughters on the street with his car. Jack panics and drives off, leaving the three there to die. The deceased man's wife, Cristina, is now both a widow and a mother who lost her two children. Her late husband's heart is transplanted into Paul, a mathematics professor. Paul finds out about the life of his donor and makes contact with Cristina, starting a relationship. This, however, means the end of Paul's relationship with Mary, who wanted to have a baby with him. Cristina persuades Paul to kill Jack, but he let's him go. Jack later enters into their apartment and demands to be shot, but in the chaos, Paul shoots himself and dies. Jack turns himself to the police, claiming he shot Paul, but is let go because the investigation finds out it is a lie.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2nd feature length film, and his first in the US, is a contemplative, ambitious and artistic achievement, but the problem is that it is basically a melodrama—just with better cinematography and presented in nonlinear narrative. The dialogue and plot points are bland and standard, thereby making the storyline limited, without much creativity. Another problem is that Inarritu already used this trick of disjointed narrative, with scenes being shown randomly out of order throughout the film, in his better debut "Amores perros"—and peculiarly, even in his next film, "Babel". The aesthetic images are thus applied as a "make up" to try to improve the routine story, and this works, actually. However, the main highlight are the three excellent lead actors who give outstanding performances, playing their roles with enthusiasm even in the most pale scenes. The standout among these three standout actors is Naomi Watts, who gives another stunning performance as Cristina, finding herself in a peculiar situation where she has a relationship with Paul, who has the transplanted heart of her late husband. The character of Jack (Benicio del Toro) is also fascinating: he was an ex-convict, reformed, became a Christian pastor who tries to convert juvenile delinquents (he is even ready to engage in a physical fight with one punk to convert him!) and implement religious teaching literally (when his son slaps his daughter, Jack forces her to "turn her other cheeck", i.e. allow her brother to slap her other hand), perpetrated a hit-and-run accident, and now lost his faith (and purpose in life) again. The vague ending feels incomplete and unfinished, leaving the whole point of "21 Grams" somewhat elusive, yet Inarritu shows his talent by making it more enlightened than expected.

Grade:++

Dinosaurus!

Dinosaurus!; science-fiction adventure, USA, 1960; D: Irvin Yeaworth, S: Ward Ramsey, Alan Roberts, Kristina Hanson, Gregg Martell

Engineer Bart and his team are triggering underwater explosions along the coast of a Caribbean island to clear the seafloor to build a harbor. Accidentally, they stumble upon a frozen Brontosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the sea and pull them out on the shore. Bad idea: a lightning bolt hits and awakens said dinosaurs, and they now roam the island. A Neanderthal is also awakened and becomes friends with kid Julio. The local 'island master' Hacker wants to kidnap the caveman and sell him to an exhibition. The Brontosaurus sinks in quicksand; the caveman dies by holding up the beam of a collapsing mine while Julio and Betty, Bart's girlfriend, escape. Bart uses an excavator to push the T. Rex into the sea.

"Dinosaurus!" once again proves that there are so few dinosaur movies, and even fewer of them that are good. A silly oddity, Irvin Yeaworth's film is a harmless 'guilty pleasure' that indulges the human fascination with giant monsters, but it aligns with one unwritten rule: in these kind of movies, human characters are often bland and boring, while only the scarcely shown dinosaurs are interesting. Indeed, already in the opening, the viewers sense that the main (human) protagonists are not only one-dimensional, but also wooden and stiff: engineer Bart and his team are launching underwater explosions off the coast, while Betty for some reason is heading with her boat right towards them, even though they are waving a red flag to not go near them. Didn't she hear all those explosions just a minute ago? Why didn't they close the coastline around them while they are blowing up the seafloor? When Bart arrives with his boat towards her, she suddenly starts taking her clothes off, revealing a swimsuit, saying: "I'm going down to Davy Jones' locker for my mother's portable icebox, in which I had stashed all sorts of goodies for you guys to eat, and which I intend to eat whether you're hungry or not." Whoever wrote this dialogue needs to have it read back to him. Would a woman really dive deep into the sea to get food from a sunk refrigerator on the seafloor? Is she that hungry? How about going to a supermarket? The rest of the movie is equally as strained and illogical, but the dinosaur sequences, created thanks to stop-motion animation, are a bit better. At 28 minutes into the film, there is an elegant camera pan from the head of a lying Brontosaurus up to his tale, which moves. The battle between the T. Rex and Bart operating the excavator is solid, a forerunner to Cameron's battle between the Alien Queen and an exoskeleton in "Aliens", whereas the comical moments involving the caveman are at least partially amusing: for instance, the caveman sees food on a table through the window, but is surprised that he cannot touch it because of glass, and when a woman with a wacky facial mask sees him, they are both scared from each other and run away. 

Grade:+

The Friend

The Friend; drama / comedy, USA, 2024; D: Scott McGehee, David Siegel, S: Naomi Watts, Bing, Sarah Pidgeon, Carla Gugino, Bill Murray, Noma Dumezweni

New York City. Iris, a writer, is surprised when she is informed that, following the suicide of her mentor and ex-lover Walter, she is assigned to take care of his giant Great Dane dog, Apollo. Iris is stressed because her superintendent doesn't allow dogs in her apartment, so she wants to get rid of him, but nobody is ready to adopt the dog. Walter's daughter Val helps her out. Iris decides to drive Apollo to Michigan dog shelter, but then changes her mind and decides to register it as an emotional support animal. Upon the advice of a psychologist, she writes a story where she confronts Walter about his suicide, scolding him for not talking it through with others. Iris stays at Walter's Long Island beach house for the summer with Apollo.

Based on the eponymous novel by Sigrid Nunez, "The Friend" is a peculiar film contemplation about suicide, accepting loss and processing emotional turmoil in the allegorical depiction of the heroine Iris taking care of a big dog. It has several jokes based on suicide, ranging from Samuel Beckett's quote: "The day you die is just like any other, only shorter", up to something a character who committed suicide, Walter (Bill Murray), said: "The more suicidal people there are, the less suicidal people there are." Nonetheless, except for that, "The Friend" is surprisingly measured, respectful and emotionally honest, showing the aftermath of friends of someone perpetrating suicide. Still, the film doesn't have that much of an inspiration, creative lift-offs or ingenuity to justify this complex concept. It is too light and thin, but it once again confirms that Naomi Watts is an excellent actress who is able to carry a film and make something more out of it: the highlight is definitely her emotional reaction in front of the psychologist in the finale, where she processes her own grief and makes her own closure by writing a story where she confronts the dead Walter about why he perpetrated suicide. It is not clear if she had a more romantic or formal admiration towards Walter, which leaves the writing lacking. Still, the dog, Bing, is amusing: he first starts out as a nuisance and troublemaker sleeping on her bed, but then she realizes he is also in grief, and thus becomes a comfort for her. 

Grade:++

Lone Wolf McQuade

Lone Wolf McQuade; action, USA, 1983; D: Steve Carver, S: Chuck Norris, Barbara Carrera, Robert Beltran, David Carradine, Dana Kimmell, L. Q. Jones, Daniel Frishman

Jim McQuade is a Texas Ranger in El Paso, nicknamed "Lone Wolf" because he lives alone in a hut in the wilderness with a pet wolf, ever since he divorced his wife. His boss assigns him a new partner, Hispanic officer Kayo, and McQuade starts a relationship with Lola. McQuade is shocked to hear that his daughter Sally was injured when her car was pushed off a cliff, and her boyfriend was shot because they witnessed Mexican mafia smuggling US Army weapons across the border during the night. McQuade investigates the dwarf mafia boss Falcon, discovers an arms depot in the desert, controlled by Wilkes who defies Falcon and kidnaps Sally. In the shootout, Lola is shot, so McQuade throws a grenade at Wilkes hiding in a depot, which explodes. Sally is saved.

One of Chuck Norris' best films, "Lone Wolf McQuade" is a surprisingly simple and effective action investigative film that defies clichés, and was so influential and genuine that it even inspired the TV show "Walker, Texas Ranger". The director Steve Carver refuses to show the title hero as a one-dimensional good guy: McQuade has flaws, is divorced, and even scorns his lover Lola for vacuum cleaning his home, throwing away his beer and replacing it with vitamins, but then apologizes. One slow-motion scene where they playfully embrace on the ground, with the water hose running, is even wonderfully romantic, whereas the opening sequence where McQuade is observing horse thieves with binoculars from a cliff, without any dialogue, is so expressionistic and sharply focused that not even S. Peckinpah would have been ashamed of it. Naturally, several cheesy 80s lines are amusing, staying true to the action genre they appeared from—when McQuade is observing the attractive Lola riding a horse, his friend cannot resist as to comment: "How would you like to bite that in the butt, develop lockjaw, and be dragged to death?" When one of the villains hits McQuade's partner Kayo, throwing him on the ground, he says: "Remember me?" Cue to Kayo taking his gun and shooting him while lying down, replying: "I never forget an asshole." Lola, played by Barbara Carrera, is a surprisingly energetic and three-dimensional character, who refuses to remain passive. In one sequence, while she is sitting with McQuade in a bar at a table for a date, a random punk approaches her and says: "How about a kiss, baby?" McQuade wants to react, but Lola just gives him a sign to remain seated, as she stands up—and slaps the punk herself! The finale loses ground to the typical martial arts fighting and the cliche of the villain shooting someone the hero loves to motivate him to fight even more, which is weaker than the rest of the film. Nonetheless, "Lone Wolf McQuade" shows that even seemingly ordinary stories can be executed in a few refreshing, extraordinary ways.

Grade:++

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie; computer-animated fantasy comedy, USA, 2026; D: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, S: Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, Charlie Day, Benny Safdie, Jack Black, Brie Larson

Kid Koopa Bowser Jr. uses a spaceship to kidnap Princess Rosalina from her observatory, and use her magical powers to fuel his giant weapon. Princess Peach and Toad leave the Mushroom Kingdom to save Rosalina, while plumbers Mario and Luigi stay behind and find a green dinosaur named Yoshi. The shrunk Bowser Koopa grows back to his huge size and meets up with Bowser Jr. Peach, Toad, Mario, Luigi and Yoshi reunite and travel in a spaceship by Fox McCloud to Fossil Falls galaxy where they battle and defeat the Koopas, whereas Peach discovers Rosalina is her lost sister.

One of the more routine sequels of the decade, "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" divorces itself completely from its cinematic obligations and instead aims to be only a feature length promotion for video games. The result is thus tired: the frenetic pace is inversely proportional to its style and inspiration. It is just a fast, random collection of different lands every 5 minutes, characters falling, running, kicking or fighting, but without any essence to it. They are empty vessels in the wrong medium. It is a pity, because the 1st film had at least some effort and care to set-up jokes with a punchline, unlike here. This is an improvisation, not a movie. The authors needed better jokes, because simply empty rushing a hundred miles an hour to nowhere does not suffice. Some tiny bits are at least partially amusing (a Toad drops ice cream from his cone, so Mario uses his ice superpower to create him an even bigger snowball on said cone; Mario and Peach jumping over a bridge over lava near the castle, while Bowser Jr. watches them on the screen, where they look like video game characters; the Minions cameo...), whereas one moment is an unexpected expressionistic blast (Luigi uses Bowser Jr.'s paintbrush to draw a black silhouette, Mr. Watch & Game, who simply hits Bowser with an animated hammer on the head, Looney Tunes-style). The rest is below expectations. Yoshi is underused, but when you think about, all the characters are underused: they are nominally there, but their playful spirit and fun are absent. 

Grade:+

The Hunt for Red October

The Hunt for Red October; thriller, USA, 1990; D: John McTiernan, S: Alec Baldwin, Sean Connery, Sam Neill, Stellan Skarsgård, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, Peter Firth

In 1 9 8 4, the Soviet Union dispatches a ballistic missile nuclear submarine Red October in the Atlantic Ocean, heading towards the US. Its commander is Lithuanian Marko Ramius. Soon afterwards, other Soviet combat submarines follow it. The US military staff in Washington, D.C. assume an attack on the American east coast is imminent, but CIA analyst Jack Ryan has a different theory: Ramius wants to deflect to the American side. The Soviet ambassador lies that Ramius has gone crazy and wants to strike, telling the US to sink their submarine. Ryan boards US submarine USS Dallas and sends signals to Ramius, who evacuates his staff from Red October feigning technical problems, and allows Ryan inside, seeking US asylum. A Soviet submarine fires a torpedo, but thanks to skillful maneuvering by Red October and USS Dallas, the torpedo is lured to strike the Soviet submarine and sink it. 

If you want to see Sean Connery playing a Lithuanian submarine commander who kills a Russian official named Putin, "The Hunt for Red October" is the right film for you, one of the last Cold War thrillers before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The competent director John McTiernan crafts a stylish, polished and suspenseful thriller thanks to aesthetic colors and a stunning, crystal-clear cinematography which make the film modern and fresh even today, whereas the charismatic Sean Connery is excellent in the role of Marko Ramius—in the first third, the movie keeps the viewers deliberately guessing, in uncertainty, as to what Ramius intentions really are: does he want to attack the US with ballistic missiles or just deflect to seek asylum? Alec Baldwin is also good as Jack Ryan, in his first film adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel, though there is not much of a character development or deeper psychological exploration than just that what is necessary for the bare minimum to keep the story going. Nonetheless, the story works at least for one engaging viewing, with some clever moments (the American submarine fires a torpedo at Red October, but then Greer (James Earl Jones), Deputy Director of CIA, presses a button and destroys said torpedo halfway, saying to a Navy official he was never there; the finale where the Red October and the USS Dallas maneuver to avoid a torpedo fired at them from a Soviet submarine, trying to destroy Red October so that its technology want fall into American hands, which reminds even a bit of the finale in "Star Trek VI"). A conventional, but effective and fluent thriller, so smooth that it will engage even viewers usually not that inclined towards these kind of films.

Grade:++

Toto the Hero

Toto le héros; tragicomedy, Belgium / Germany / France, 1991; D: Jaco Van Dormael, S: Michel Bouquet, Thomas Godet, Jo De Backer, Mireille Perrier, Gisela Uhlen, Sandrine Blancke

Thomas, now an old man in a retirement home, recounts his life: as a little kid, Thomas lives with his sister Alice and brother with a Down syndrome, while their father disappeared on a plane during bad weather. Thomas imagines that he was switched as an infant in the maternity ward with his neighbor boy, Alfred. Thomas is infatuated with Alice and jealous of her affections towards Alfred. Alice wants to prove her loyalty by burning Alfred's home with a gasoline canister, but due to an accident, she dies in the fire. As a grown up, Thomas meets Evelyne who looks remarkably like Alice, but she is Alfred's wife. In the present, Thomas wants to kill Alfred. While hiding in a shack, he overhears that a gangster will assassinate Alfred in his home that evening. Thomas thus locks up Alfred, takes on his clothes and appears in his house. The assassin shoots through the window and thus kills Thomas instead of Alfred. 

The feature length debut film of the Belgian cinematic hope of that time, Jaco Van Dormael's "Toto the Hero" is an unusual and creative film presented in a dispersed nonlinear narrative that flip-flops between the childhood, adulthood and old life of protagonist Thomas, but it still seems as if he "polished" and improved this concept more in his later film "Mr. Nobody". The episodes involving these three timelines in Thomas' life are interesting, though somewhat inconclusive in the end without a stronger point. The best bits are surreal comical scenes which, together with this storyline told out of chronological order, make this ordinary story more extraordinary and fresh (the mother is seen with blood dripping from beneath her hat in a grocery store, the people all gather around her and call the ambulance, but then the clerk takes her hat off—and it is revealed she was hiding a piece of raw meat on her head; when her dad's plane disappears, the 13-year old Alice goes inside a church and threatens a statue of Holy Mary (!) by saying: "We came to warn you! If our dad isn't found, you'll have to answer to me!"; the old Thomas attaches a lightbulb with a metal foil on a lamp, and when the security guard turns it on, it explodes, causing a short circuit in the retirement home, thereby allowing Thomas to escape). The "twist ending" isn't that well thought out (the viewers are led to believe one thing already in the opening scenes, only for Van Dormael to have this subverted) whereas a couple of 'autistic' ideas and situations make the film less comprehensible than it should have been, though the director has talent and skill, showing jealousy, confusion and disappointment in life from cradle to grave, never allowing to compromise and create a pleasant 'feelgood' film.   

Grade:++

My Life as a Dog

Mitt liv som hund; tragicomedy, Sweden, 1985; D: Lasse Hallström, S: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Manfred Serner, Melinda Kinnaman, Lennart Hjulström

Ingmar (12) is a problematic boy who either fights with his older brother Erik or causes mischief at home, stressing his sick single mother. To help her relax, the relatives send Erik to one part of the family for the summer, while Ingmar ends up living with his uncle Gunnar. Ingmar joins the association football and boxing club, where he meets the tomboyish girl Saga, who likes him. When his mother dies, Ingmar stays permanently with Gunnar, but he also hosts a Greek couple, so Gunnar's his wife arranges that Ingmar stays living with the old Mrs. Arvidsson. During a boxing match, Ingmar barks like a dog, so Saga tells him his dog, which he left behind at his mother's home, is dead. Ingmar runs away and hides inside a summer house, as the double loss takes a toll on him, and Gunnar comforts him.

"My Life as a Dog" is an overrated coming-of-age film, but still has merits in depicting how sometimes people make stupid mistakes in childhood, which they regret later in life. The main stumbling point is that the protagonist, the 12-year old Ingmar, is insufferably annoying in the first half of the story, which makes the task of enjoying the movie difficult, since, through his mischief and peculiar behavior, he acts as an autistic Dennis the Menace: for instance, Ingmar accepts to put his penis inside a glass bottle, on the behest of his older brother Erik, but when it gets stuck, his mother has to break the bottle by smashing it on the wall; Ingmar randomly splashes his face with a glass full of milk during breakfast, and when his mother wants to wipe the table, she finds his bedsheets hidden inside the kitchen cupboard, wet from his urine, but she still uses it to wipe the table; while arguing with Erik who holds a gun at their dog, Ingmar spills a bowl of batter on the floor, the mom chases them both, and then they hold the door of her bedroom so that she cannot open them to get to them. Considering that their mother suffers from some sort of terminal pulmonary disease, and this stresses her out even more, this is hard to watch. The second half of the film thus becomes Ingmar's self-realization of his missed opportunities and errors, though he is still too passive to undergo any kind of redemption ark. The mother's death is handled remarkably subtle and unemotional, with Ingmar only being invited by a relative to talk to him in private, but without showing any melodrama. Yet, in the end, as Ingmar remembers both his late mother and dog, he realizes the only joint memory he will have of her will be how he caused her anguish and misery, as he was not mature enough to improve in time, which causes his emotional collapse in a very touching ending. A small standout is Melinda Kinnaman as Ingmar's tomboyish semi-girlfriend Saga, though it is weird as she is around 13 years old, but still shows him his bare chest in a controversial scene. The director Lasse Hallstrom injects the film with a lot of humor to ease the tragic subject, yet he is rather conventional, except in a few more imaginative scenes (Ingmar runs on the football field to kick the ball, but before he does he is shoved away by another boy who kicks it instead).  

Grade:++

Kanal

Kanał; war drama, Poland 1957; D: Andrzej Wajda, S: Wieńczysław Gliński, Tadeusz Janczar, Teresa Iżewska, Tadeusz Gwiazdowski, Stanisław Mikulski, Emil Karewicz

The last days of the Warsaw Uprising, World War II. Lieutenant Zadra leads a Polish military unit of 43 people, down from 70 just three days ago, among the ruins of the Mokotov suburb of Warsaw. Among them are also Jacek "Korab", composer Michal and Madry. They rest in ruined buildings, but then the Nazi German army attacks and encircles them, so Zadra reluctantly accepts to evacuate 27 of his remaining unit down in the sewage. Down there, some are lost and escape when they think they smell poison gas. A girl, Stokrotka, helps guide a wounded Jacek, staying behind the main group. They reach the end of the sewage, but the exit is closed off with bars, so Stokrotka lies to a half-dead Jacek that they made it. Meanwhile, Madry climbs up a manhole, but on the surface is met by a Nazi soldier who sends him towards corpses of other Polish soldiers. Zadra exits on the other side and shoots his Sgt. Kula who lost all his soldiers behind them, and then goes back into the sewage.

Rarely has there ever been a director who anchored his film stories so firmly in Polish history as much as Andrzej Wajda, ranging from Nazi to Communist occupation. His 2nd feature length film, "Kanal", is one of his best achievements, a black classic that depicts the failed Warsaw Uprising during World War II, and thus the whole tone is bitter, dark, depressive and lyrical to the end, illustrating that time period of Polish history where everything seemed lost and hopeless, like there was no future awaiting. In the opening scenes, as the military unit walks pass the camera in Warsaw in ruins, the narrator briefly describes most of the soldiers ("Officer Cadet "Ark", dreams of a hot bath; "Slim", "Ark's" aide, wants to build planes after the war..."), before grimly concluding: "These are the tragic heroes. Take a good look. These are the last hours of their lives." Everything is already elegantly established and foreshadowed in the first 5 minutes of the film.

In one sequence, the Polish Army reaches a wounded woman lying on a stretcher, and a soldier asks her: "Are you badly wounded?", and she replies with: "No, it's nothing", as the medics lift the stretcher, the blanket falls down from her, revealing her right leg has been amputated. In another sequence, with the soldiers resting in a devastated building, composer Michal asks Lt. Zadra to make a phone call towards his family, and Zadra has this exchange with a man on the other end: "You have no windows? I forgot what they even look like!" In these and other small episodes, Wajda is able to efficiently show the psychological state of Poland during World War II, where people were dying, getting wounded, all the infrastructure was damaged, whereas the quality of life was basically zero. The first half of "Kanal" shows the Polish soldiers on the surface, while the other half shows them descending into the sewage, to try to escape via underground from the Nazi encirclement. There is no patriotism, nor heroism here—this is real life, unglamorized, de-propagandized, with civilians on the surface accusing the soldiers of abandoning them like cowards, showing war as dirty and heavy, in an explicit allegory of soldiers walking through the sewage water full of excrement. This underground sewage thus becomes a symbol of Dante's Inferno from "The Divine Comedy", a literal hell for soldiers trapped and outnumbered in a war against a stronger enemy. The most memorable episode revolves around a woman, Stokrotka, helping a wounded Jacek walk through the sewage, as she says two unforgettable lines: "My life story is longer than this tunnel!" and: "Do you think we will get our lives back?" As the movie asks: is it worth it to fight for justice and freedom even though you know it is hopeless and you will not survive? "Kanal" follows the people who said yes.

Grade:+++