The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner; drama, USA, 2007; D: Marc Forster, S: Khalid Abdalla, Homayoun Ershadi, Shaun Toub, Atossa Leoni, Saïd Taghmaoui, Zekiria Ebrahimi, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada

Kabul, 1 9 7 8. Amir (10) is friends with Hassan (8), whose father is Ali, servant of Amir's father, Agha Sahib, a wealthy man. They fly kites. Amir feels his father never forgave him that Amir's mother died at childbirth. A bully, Assef, and his two associates threatens them, but Hassan stands up to them. As a punishment, Assef rapes Hassan in an alley, while Amir observes everything but is too much of a coward to intervene. Plagued by guilt, Amir wants his father to fire Ali and Hassan from their household. After the Saur Revolution, communist takeover, and the Soviet invasion, Agha and Amir flee the country to a Pakistani town, and later to California. Amir wants to become a writer and marries Soraya, daughter of former Afghan general Taheri. Agha dies. Amir travels to Peshawar, where he finds out Hassan was executed by the Taliban, and that he was his brother, since his father Agha had an affair with Ali's wife. Amir is childless, but he travels to Kabul, finds Sohrab, Hassan's son, adopts him and brings him to California.

Excellent adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's eponymous novel, "Kite Runner" is a bitter depiction and chronicle of Afghanistan's dark ages, from the communist to Taliban takeover, seen through the eyes of a refugee from that place who settled in the US. The director Marc Forster shows all these painful, sometimes unpleasant themes in a very sensitive, emotional and humanistic way, though, thereby imbibing it with sophistication and intelligence. The first half, playing out in Kabul of the 70s, is a rare reconstruction of Afghan life before the madness, showing several details (women without veil, people owning music records, cinemas playing "The Magnificent Seven"...), and friendship between the two boys, Amir and Hassan. One little dialogue between them is already a philosophical contemplation on the futility of cruelty, when Hassan asks Amir about the story he wrote: "Why did he have to kill his wife?" - "Because he will cry, and each of his tears will turn into a pearl." - "Yes, but why couldn't he have simply smelled an onion?" Problems already arise along the ethnic lines, as Amir is Pashtun, while Hassan is Hazara, which will lead to betrayal. 

The potentially gruesome scene where bully Assef, with the help of his two associates, rapes Hassan in an alley is done with maximum measure and subtlety possible, never showing anything explicitly and lasting only 10 seconds. But it becomes a turning point, since Amir observed this the whole time, but was too much of a coward to intervene. His guilt will follow him and shape his life for the rest of the film, until he undergoes an attempted redemption. The standout performance here is by the brilliant actor Homayoun Ershadi who plays Armin's father Agha, who has integrity, honor and ethics. For instance, he is staunchly against religious fundamentalism of the mullahs, who claim drinking alcohol is a sin: "You'll never learn anything of value from those bearded idiots... They do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book written in a tongue they don't even understand... All this talk about sinning is making me thirsty!", as he triumphantly drinks his brandy to finish the conversation. When an Afghan truck filled with refugees is stopped at a border, and a Soviet Russian soldier asks for "half an hour alone" with some man's wife in exchange for letting them pass, Agha again stands up and protests against this lack of morals, showing his sense for justice even during crisis situations. The second half, playing out in the US, shows a grown-up Amir maturing to understand his behavior he could not comprehend as a child, showing remorse. Forster directs the whole storyline with remarkable elegance and fluency, with several sharp observations (gender apartheid in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan; bully Assef growing up into a paedophile, but having complete immunity because he aligned himself with the Taliban, showing their moral hypocrisy; the clash between civility in civilization and barbaric primitivism in extremism...), all leading up to an impressive achievement that finds its ideal balance even during scenes that could have been controversial, but ultimately weren't.

Grade:+++

Point Break

Point Break; action, USA, 1991; D: Kathryn Bigelow, S: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Gary Busey, Lori Petty, John C. McGinley, James LeGros, John Philbin

Los Angeles. Four men, disguised in masks of ex-US Presidents, keep robbing banks, and then escaping in a car. FBI agent Johnny Utah is sent on the case, and his more experienced colleague Angelo Pappas has a theory that the four robbers might be surfers. Johnny thus decides to take on surfing lessons from Tyler, falls in love with her, and gets befriended with many surfers, including the unusual Bodhi. When it turns out Bodhi is indeed the boss of the gang, he kidnaps Tyler, and thus blackmails Johnny into robbing a bank with them — but without a mask. When the gang wants to break into the safe, a security guard and police officer shoot some of them. Bodhi escapes, Johnny follows him, they both enter a plane, but Bodhi escapes by jumping from the plane in a parachute. Years later, Johnny finds Bodhi somewhere along the Australian coast. Bodhi goes to surf on a wave during a huge storm, and disappears in the ocean.

"Point Break" is the darnedest thing: its aesthetics and style is a 10/10, but its story and characters are a 4/10. It is thus difficult to rate this film as a whole, since the viewers more inclined towards the former will like it more, while the viewers more inclined towards the latter will like it less. The most unusual ingredient in the rather standard action story is its villain, Bodhi (Patrick Swayze), who does not rob banks for selfishness—rather, the perplexing thing is that he robs to be able to live out his spiritual lifestyle, surfing, without having to be part of the capitalist lifestyle. This makes him different from other villains, but, alas, the movie really needed better character development and more philosophy. And some plot holes bother (for example, why does Bodhi take his mask off during the bank robbery at 93 minutes into the film? It makes no sense, since the cameras are recording the entire room). Nonetheless, the director Kathryn Bigelow and cinematographer Donald Peterman take a step towards advancing the new cinematic aesthetics established since the 80s, which have not been improved in the decades after "Point Break", meaning they have reached the optimum of cinematographic looks. Four moments are outstanding, two of which are "impossible" scenes, yet they filmed them anyway—these are the intense 5-minute long chase sequence across the streets, gardens and houses of Santa Monica, as Johnny is running after the robber wearing a mask of Ronald Reagan; and the scene where a character goes to surf into a giant wave during a storm. But the two "impossible" scenes are unforgettable: both involve the protagonists jumping from a plane, "gliding" during skydive, while the camera follows them and observes the coastline below. One of these "impossible" scenes is even more "impossible", as Johnny is left alone in the airplane after Bodhi escaped, but he still takes a gun and jumps out, without a parachute (!), falling until he reaches and grabs Bodhi skydiving, in a scene that is of such perfection, such passion and untrammeled imagination that it sends shivers down your spine, something modern Hollywood rarely reached, and thus this unbelievable highlight overshadows any flaws, sweeping all omissions away with its majestic momentum.

Grade:+++

Night Train

Pociąg; drama, Poland, 1959; D: Jerzy Kawalerowicz, S: Lucyna Winnicka, Leon Niemczyk, Zbigniew Cybulski, Teresa Szmigielówna, Roland Głowacki 

Numerous passengers board a train heading towards the north, the Hel peninsula on the Baltic Sea. Among the passengers are surgeon Jerzy, whose patient died during surgery and who forgot his ticket, and Marta, who bought a ticket from a stranger at the train station; they have to share the same compartment, even though it is reserved for men. They talk and exchange ideas, while Marta admits she is followed by her ex-boyfriend, the crazy Staszek. Other people include a lawyer and his wife, as well as a train conductor. The train stops unexpectedly and several police officers enter, arresting Jerzy under the suspicion of being an escaped murdered, because he is in the compartment that the suspect booked. However, Marta shows them the stranger who sold her the ticket, the real murderer, who runs through the train, presses the emergency breaks, and flees in the countryside. Dozens of passengers chase and capture the murderer, beating him up, after which the police takes him away. The train resumes its trip. The passengers exit at the last stop, including Marta who abandons Staszek.

Voted in a local poll as one of the 13 best films of the first hundred years of Polish cinema, Jerzy Kawalerowicz's "Night Train" is still a step below all this hype, a slightly overrated, but still good achievement. assembled in the form of a road movie set inside a train, where the passengers travel during the night, it is a cozy, competent, fluent film, but a one that is simply not that engaging nor interesting to the fullest. The main ingredient—the conversations between Jerzy and Marta, who have to share the compartment—is only sporadically inspired. One really good dialogue has Jerzy asking Marta, a meteorologist, what her job is, and she ironically replies with: "My job is predicting the future". The other is when Marta is looking in the camera in a close-up, pondering: "Nobody wants to love. Everybody wants to be loved". The drama segment is rather underwhelming (except for Zbigniew Cybulski playing the wild Staszek, Marta's ex lover), and thus the crime subplot revolving around a murderer hiding among the passengers, emerging in the last third of the film, is much more interesting, reminiscent of a variation of "Murder on the Orient Express", except without the detective part. The scene where the murderer pulls the emergency breaks, stops the train, runs into the meadow, while a dozen passengers run after him, one even throwing mud chunks at him, is the highlight of the film, entering a more intense, more focused territory. An assembly of several characters, "Night Train" attempts a kaleidoscope of Polish mentality, but its enjoyment value is today rather limited.

Grade:++

The Experiment

Das Experiment; psychological thriller-drama, Germany, 2001; D: Oliver Hirschbiegel, S: Moritz Bleibtreu, Justus von Dohnányi, Christian Berkel, Oliver Stokowski, Andrea Sawatzki

Taxi driver Tarek applies for a strange add in which 20 people are supposed to play prisoners and guards in a fake prison for two weeks, for the sake of a social experiment led by University Professor Thon and his assistant Jutta. The reward is 4,000 DEM each. Tarek takes on glasses with a secret camera on them for a journalistic report. Once inside, the relaxed mood quickly disappears and is replaced with more and more tension from the people playing the guards, mostly by Berus and Eckert who resort to cruelty to impose their discipline. Tarek befriends fellow prisoner Steinhoff, an Air Force pilot who secretly monitors the experiment for the German military. Exploiting Thon's absence one night, Berus and Eckert order the guards to beat up an inmate, Schütte, who dies from bleeding; place Tarek in a solitary confinement, and kidnap and imprison Jutta. When Tarek and Steinhoff escape and release the prisoners, they end up in a bitter fight with Berus and Eckert, after which the latter dies. The experiment is aborted and the police arrest the guards.

"The Experiment" is a dark and bitter contemplation on how social laws prevent the worst aggressive impulses from emerging among even ordinary people—and how sometimes the border between playing a role and reality can disappear. It is inspired by the famous Stanford prison experiment led by Philip Zimbardo, but the movie unfortunately takes it very loosely—so loosely, in fact, that it seems more like a Hollywood action film exaggerating everything for pure sensationalism and unearned thrills than an intelligent European film. A little bit more of the latter would have been better. The first half is the best since it still has a sense for measure: the introduction of the characters is effective, and it is ironic watching how the guards of this fake prison are actually seemingly benign characters (Eckert is a professional Elvis impersonator; Berus works as an executive for an airline), but the role of guards gives them that illusion of power, authority and dominance over others, a sort of fake sense of significance. Soon they will start abusing the "volunteer prisoners", already revealing their dark side (an inmate says he cannot drink milk because he is lactose intolerant, but Eckert insists that all of them must eat their meal to the end, until their plates are empty, without exception, so Tarek defuses the situation by simply drinking the man's milk himself). The prison guards are not allowed to use violence, so Berus decides to spray them with a fire extinguisher, take the beds from their cells, strip them naked and leave them like that for the night, since, in his own words, "humiliation in control". There are some thought provoking issues touched upon here, such as situational context, the hidden urge for absolute power among some people (hinted at as an allegory of the Nazi dictatorship), empathy, and the limits of following orders even when it is not "worth it", but the second half becomes just a cheap action and fight collection, with highly unconvincing cliches (the Professor is at first absent, and then when the whole situation goes out of hand, he storms in alone, without any assistants to help him end this), which reduces the film's quality.  

Grade:++

Mob Psycho 100 (season 1)

Mob Psycho 100; animated fantasy action comedy series, Japan, 2016; D: Yuzuru Tachikawa, Takefumi Anzai, Katsuya Shigehara, Tomoaki Ota, S: Setsuo Ito, Takahiro Sakurai, Miyu Irino, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Akio Otsuka

Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama is a secluded teenager with telekinetic powers, which can be upgraded to explosive levels if his anger levels reach 100% capacity. Mob works for Arataka Reigen, a swindler running a psychic agency which exorcises evil spirits from tunnels and schools. When one such evil spirit is defeated, Dimple, he assumes a form of a green ball and becomes Mob's sidekick. When Mob's brother Ritsu also obtains telekinetic powers, he is abducted by the evil Claw organization, which kidnaps people with special powers with a plan to use them to rule the world. Mob, Teruki (a bully he defeated) and Reigen infiltrate the Claw headquarters, destroy it, and release all the prisoners, including Ritsu. 

Warning: do not give up after watching only the first episode of this anime, because it improves later on. The character designs are too bland, but "Mob Psycho 100" excels in a wacky blend of humor, post-modern style, coming-of-age teenage story, discovering your potentials, and egalitarianism (in the finale of the first season, an evil organization wants to establish a world supremacy based on people with telekinetic powers, but the protagonist, himself having these special powers, rejects it and believes everyone should be treated equal). Several bits are simply creative and bursting with ingenuity. For example, in ep. 2, Reigen is arguing with a high school girl on the phone over whether Mob should join her club, and a stylized split screen shows the two of them shouting, with Reigen’s part of the screen moving towards the right side of the screen and taking more “space” when he is arguing more, and then retreating, whereas the girl’s screen is pushing to the left when she is more energetic in arguing. Ep. 3 has a hilarious plot of Mob being solicited by a random masked woman to join an underground sect led by a man called LOL, who can all make them laugh and thus happy. When Mob decides to leave because he is not interested, the cult leader warns him: “You are missing out on life!”, as Mob simply laconically turns his head and counters: “My dad said that people who’ve never smoked before are missing out on half of their lives. It made me realize that everyone has a different idea of “missing out”. 

The leader then challenges Mob to a bet that he should stay in the cult if one of the members make him laugh—specifically, Mob and a member are instructed to both take a full sip of milk, hold it in their mouths, and then try to tickle a chuckle out of each other: the one who laughs and spills milk from his mouth first, loses. This leads to some highly comical bits when one man makes grimaces by pulling his nose up, but then just instinctively laughs himself—and spits milk on Mob's face. After several such outcomes, Mob is tired of always "winning" and ending up with people spitting out milk on his face. Other ideas and sight gags are also amusing, such as when Mob takes a dumbbell with his telekinetic powers, but when he hands it to his own hand, he drops it to the ground since he is physically too weak of holding it; or when he cannot eat curry because spoons keep "bending" Uri Geller-style, while he holds them. The problem and a big flaw is when the story simply gives up on comedy and suddenly switches to an action and martial arts genre in episodes 7-10, as people with telekinetic powers are fighting, which undergoes a sort of undue "Dragonballization" of sorts, since these fights all start looking the same. Luckily, the final two episodes get the story back on the right track, resuming its comedy tone, mostly thanks to the return of Mob's boss Reigen, who is such a swindler that this leads to some unexpected big laughs. The way Reigen simply dismantles the narcissism of two out of three leaders of the Claw organization by demotivating them in episode 12, is deliciously refreshing; even the dialogue of the third leader with Reigen is a riot ("We are special! We are superior lifeforms to the rest of humanity!" - "I'm sure you have to believe that to even go on. But sadly, society has no interest in you"). "Mob Psycho 100" is an acquired taste—but once you get a hang of it, you get addicted, and wonder why that flavor is so rare to find.

Grade:+++

Dick Tracy

Dick Tracy; crime action, USA, 1990; D: Warren Beatty, S: Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Madonna, Charlie Korsmo, Glenne Headly, James Keane, Charles Durning, Dustin Hoffman, Michael J. Pollard, Seymour Cassel, William Forsythe, James Tolkan, Kathy Bates, Catherine O'Hara

A yellow trench coat is his trademark: police detective Dick Tracy works tirelessly to build a case and arrest "Big Boy" Caprice, the mob boss who united all other mob bosses under his rule to control the city and impose a racket on every business. Tracy adopts a little boy who witnessed the murder of gangsters by Caprice's gang, but his inclination towards Caprice's showgirl Breathless Mahoney costs Tracy his relationship with girlfriend Tess. An unknown masked man frames Tracy for murder, but the police still allow him to attack Caprice's headquarters. In the finale on gears, Caprice shoots the masked man, and in the ensuing fight, Tracy throws Caprice down a shaft to his death. The masked man turns out to be Mahoney. Tracy reunites with Tess.

Warren Beatty's 3rd feature length film as a director, "Dick Tracy" is an untypical choice for him, a comic-book adaptation with cult status that could go in a double bill with Burton's "Batman" released a year earlier: squeaky colors (especially yellow and green which are almost fluorescent), over-the-top set-designs, cartoonish villains with impossibly looking faces ("Little Face" has a face as wide as a pumpkin; "Pruneface" looks like The Thing from Fantastic Four) and exaggerated action all form elements of this peculiar achievement. It shows organized crime and mafia in a very specific, childlike way, whereas Beatty himself is pretty good as the title hero. However, after the viewers get used to this opulent world, the storyline becomes somewhat stale, routine and standard, without much inspiration or higher creative lift-offs, which is why the "wow" effect starts to melt away exponentially in the second half. For a homage to old crime and film noir films, "Dick Tracy" needed more snappy dialogue, such as the exchange between Tracy and Mahoney (Madonna): "Whose side are you on?" - "The side I'm always on. Mine." The best was achieved from the excellent Al Pacino as villain "Big Boy" Caprice, who "chews the scenery" and enjoys hamming it up big time, without ever losing the realistic, grounded touch. In one of the funniest scenes, where Caprice has rounded up all mob bosses and demands that he becomes their boss, "Pruneface" interrupts him to lament again: "I say we kill Tracy now!" - "I say you say nothing!" Dustin Hoffman, on the other hand, is wasted as bizarre caricature henchman "Mumbles", since you cannot make out what he is saying. "Dick Tracy" is an effective and attractive film, it is only that the people behind the set-designs showed more creativity than the authors behind the camera. 

Grade:++