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)

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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:++