My Uncle's Legacy

Život sa stricem; drama, Croatia, 1988; D: Krsto Papić, S: Davor Janjić, Miodrag Krivokapić, Alma Prica, Branislav Lečić, Anica Dobra 

A writer in his 50s, Martin Kujundžić, is visited by his terminally ill uncle Stjepan, who begs him to forgive him and bury him in religious customs. After Stjepan dies, Martin recollects what happened: 30 years ago, after World War II, Martin was a young lad studying at a teacher's academy in Istria, while his uncle Stjepan was a local communist official. Martin observed how the communist system didn't work and wrote a letter to Stjepan, expressing his doubt about it, emphasizing how the peasants carry the biggest burden. Martin secretly slept with girlfriend Marta, who came from a rich family. After Stjepan informed the academy authority about the letter, Martin was humiliated in front of students and expelled, while a gun shot fired at him castrated him. Marta gave birth to his child. 

Nominated for a Golden Globe for best foreign language film, one of Krsto Papic's most critically acclaimed films, "My Uncle's Legacy" was made in a time when the Yugoslav censorship significantly decreased and allowed for such a story where the state Communist system was implicitly labeled as a failure. At times, the film almost seems like a political pamphlet: in one sequence, Martin and his uncle are walking across the countryside until they arrive at a farm. The uncle tries to persuade his old father to give his land to the state, for collectivization, instead of trying to plow with his horse at his age, but the old man refuses, saying he already gave his best land to the state, but that he wants to rely on himself. Martin and the uncle then walk a few yards and stumble upon the state farm, where there is a completely different situation; the lazy workers lying around, spoiling the harvest because they don't value it as their own land - yet Papic managed to coat the symbolic story into a clear film language, creating a bitter, but intelligent parable about oppression, whereas the entire cast is in top notch shape, especially Alma Prica. 

Grade:++

Moulin Rouge!

Moulin Rouge!; musical romance, Australia / USA / UK, 2001; D: Baz Luhrmann, S: Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, Richard Roxburgh, John Leguizamo

Paris, 1 9 0 0. Young writer Christian writes about his tragic love story. A year earlier, he moved to an apartment in Montmartre where he stumbled upon Bohemian artists led by Toulouse-Lautrec who wanted to put up a play about love. They brought Christian to the Moulin Rouge hoping he would persuade courtesan Satine to star in it and attract the financing of Rouge owner Harold Zidler. She fell in love with Christian, but Zidler needed financial support of the rich Duke and thus already promised Satine to him. The Duke invested into the play and wanted to kill Christian because of his love with Satine. Christian showed up on the stage during the play and it becomes a hit. Satine confessed his love to him but died due to a disease.

By taking only the positive sides of Bollywood musicals, director Baz Luhrmann created a bizarre, hermetic, often messy experimental musical that at times seems almost like patchwork, yet its best parts are so good that you forget all the flaws and simply enjoy in it. "Moulin Rouge!" is "over-edited" since it has more cuts than all of Ozu's films put together, but also has a reason for such a method: namely, the authors wanted to conjure up a world in 1900, when people did not know about electricity, and thus Christian's first entrance into the glamorous Moulin Rouge must have been an extraordinary experience for him, while the means of editing "transformed" it on the viewers - a green fairy (Kylie Minogue!) shows up; Zidler is flying while the courtesans inside are singing Christina Aguilera's "Lady Marmalade". Its a rush of the senses and you immediately know "anything goes". It's kitschy and it's too much, but it has artistic merit whereas Jim Broadbent simply steals the show as the hilarious Zidler who can even trick the Duke into thinking that courtesan Satine is "confessing", while singing Madonna's "Like a Virgin" in a sequence that bravely borders on deliberate (auto)-parody.

Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor are both fabulous in the two main roles, sympathetically singing like amateurs, which is why they will be the strongest reference point to the viewers who find everything else problematic in the film. Every once in a while, you realize that a good movie must perform something unique to prove that it has something to show. And here it performs something almost impossible in the 3-minute so called "Elephant Love Medley" sequence: McGregor sings one song, but Kidman sings it false, to emphasize how she is rejecting him; he then changes only one refrain and moves on to a different song, and so on and on until they both sing in synchronicity at the end, together, kissing. The fact that the authors crammed some dozen songs there in only 3 minutes, from Lennon's "All You Need Is Love", through Phil Collins' "One More Night", U2's "Pride (In The Name Of Love)", "Don't Leave Me This Way", to Bowie and Eno's "Heroes" and others and blended them all so full of harmony and perfection, can only cause a "Wow" effect. Luhrmann's style falls sometimes into mannerisms and loses overview, yet because of the above mentioned virtues the film still has charm.

Grade:+++

Video V. Poetry: Inhale

Video V. Poezija: Udah; Short, Serbia, 2010; D: Natalija Ž. Živković, S: Slavica Marković, Slobodan Aleksić

A girl, dressed in a white robe and wearing a wreath on her head, walks through a city with a basket full of letters. The narrator speaks about the meaning of words and its effects on everyday life. The girl is suddenly in a forest. She is back in the city and helps "unglue" a man from the wall. Then, the man finds himself in the forest and smiles.

This 5 minute short film shows an inventive way how modern poets attract an audience by converting their written poems into visual poems. It's video poetry that stimulates the intuitive side of our brain and in doing so it fulfils the criteria for quality in both art forms, movie and poem. The image of a girl in white robe walking through a city might be a symbol for the beauty of simple nature that was forgotten by the modern people, who thus feel an emptiness in their life. The girl is there to let people inhale the positive and exhale the negative side of life. "And I feel fulfilled. As if I'm telling words full of air. As if I'm reciting a very important song...And I feel...healthy.", goes one nice sentence of the narrator. "People are grey. The real images are in the forest. But our convulsive hearts see them rarely.", says the other, wherein director and author of the poem Natalija Z. Zivkovic nicely shows the free spirit at the end.

Grade:+++

The Big Lebowski

The Big Lebowski; black comedy / crime, USA, 1998; D: Joel Coen, S: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, David Huddleston, Steve Buscemi, Tara Reid, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Elliott, Ben Gazzara, Peter Stormare, John Turturro

Los Angeles on the eve of the Gulf War. Jeff Lebowski, called "The Dude", is an unemployed and lazy guy who likes bowling and lives from social welfare. One day, two thugs urinate on his rug in his home demanding money for "Lebowski's wife's debts". It turns out they mistake him for the old wheelchair-bound millionaire Jeffrey Lebowski and his young wife Bunny. After she disappears and Mr. Lebowski receives a ransom note, he presumes she was kidnapped and hires Jeff to exchange the ransom money. However, his militant friend Walter blows the exchange. Bizarrely, it turns out Bunny was just away for a vacation and that the Nihilists who wanted the ransom money never kidnapped her in the first place. Jeff's friend Donny dies from a heart attack.

The 7th feature length film directed by the Coen brothers, which subsequently gained cult status and turned into one of their most popular achievements, comedy of the absurd "The Big Lebowski" seems almost like a weird parody of self-abduction for profit from their previous film "Fargo". More often than not, the Coens made movies about camera tricks and not about humans, alas their visual style is once again the strong point (the unusual camera angle that exploits bowling is the one where they placed a camera inside the bowling ball, allowing it to observe how the world outside "rotates" when it is heading down the bowling alley). The highlight is the great supporting role of John Goodman as the absurdly right-wing Walter, who is a hilarious parody of director John Milius, and steals the show with every line ("Smokey, this is not Vietnam, this is bowling. There are rules!"). However, the leading character of Jeff Lebowski is simply uninteresting, a tiresome slob who is too frustratingly inept to lead the story.

Unfortunately, the Coens' highbrow style doesn't blend in with the lowbrow content of the film, some of which even tends to pass the limits of taste (clips from a porn; Maude hanging half-naked from a swing while painting; swearing; a pointless dream sequence; a pederast bowler called Jesus...); the pseudo-kidnapping story is a mess and all over the place; while numerous episodic characters are pointless (Maude especially). Still, some jokes are simply terrific. The cut off toe idea is rubbish, for instance. And ultimately, the story leads nowhere, and feels almost like an exercise than a real effort from the Coens. In another sequence, the oblivious Donny shows up in the middle of Walter and Jeff's conversation and wants to know what it's about, upon which Walter asks him: "Were you listening to The Dude's story? " - "No, I was bowling." - "So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know... "

Grade:++

The Limits of Control

The Limits of Control; art-film, USA / Japan, 2009; D: Jim Jarmusch, S: Isaach De Bankolé, Paz de la Huerta, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, Bill Murray, Alex Descas, Youki Kudoh

A Black Stranger gets an assignment at the airport and takes a flight to Madrid. He stays at a hotel room and goes to an open cafe where he orders two espressos. One after the other, people sit at his table - a man who talks about violins, a Blond cowgirl who talks about film, a man who talks about bohemian life and a Mexican hippie who talks about "reflections in the mirror looking more real than the original" - and all give him a box of matches containing a note with instructions. Finally, the Stranger arrives inside a maximum security outpost and eliminates the American who tells him "he can't eliminate the control by eliminating him". The Stranger then leaves.

"The best movies are like dreams you're not sure you ever had", says the cool Blond cowgirl (Tilda Swinton) to the main protagonist (De Bankole) at one point. That metafilm line hidden in "The Limits of Control" itself gives a guideline how to perceive this unusual-hermetic film that is heavily abstract: 90 % of the running time has no dialogue and unravels in silence, observations, turning into Jarmusch's most minimalistic film he ever had to date. It turns practically into an anti-film, closer to Bresson than a linear, loud assassination action flick that could have been its Hollywood twin. "Limits" are a dreamy experience that floats in your subconsciousness and relaxes you, whereas some of its lines are poetry, from the already mentioned cowgirl's line, the Universe line ("Space has no center or edges, reality is arbitrary") and the violin monologue ("Guitars, violins and others instruments remember the music that has been played on them"). However, the film is still too overstretched and too thin, especially in the last third which seems like an empty walk, to engage completely.

One of the interpretations could be this: the Stranger is a person who is controlled by the rigid, restrictive view on life that has been imposed on him his whole life. He wears a fancy grey suit all of the time. But there is a psychological battle inside him. He is visited by "free" people who stimulate his right, intuitive side of the brain and reject the limitations. After seeing a painting of a violin in the museum, he is visited by a man who speaks fondly of music. After seeing a painting of a naked woman in the museum, he finds a naked girl in his hotel room, but doesn't want to sleep with her. The cowgirl is enchanted by movies, the Japanese girl by science, a man by 'bohemian life'. They awaken the long dormant imagination in him and he confronts the figure that restricts him, the American (Murray). He gets inside his compound because it is a part of his mind. The American clearly says: "And I suppose you believe that by eliminating me, you will eliminate control over some artificial reality", referencing all the encounters the Stranger met. By eliminating him, the Stranger changes his clothes, and his previous worldview, and embraces the right, free side of the brain, showing that there are limits of any control the society can have on every individual. An overall solid art-film, but only to a certain limit.

Grade:++

Blood and Wine

Blood and Wine; Crime, USA, 1996; D: Bob Rafelson, S: Jack Nicholson, Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Caine, Judy Davis

Alex Gates is a wine merchant married to Suzanne, who lost her husband, and has a stepson, Jason. Alex has a mistress, Gabriela, who works as a nanny and plans to bring her family from Cuba to live in the US. After Alex and criminal Victor rob the house of a rich man, they plan to sell the stolen diamonds. But when Suzanne finds out about this, she knocks him unconscious. When Alex wakes up, he and Victor chase after Suzanne and Jason, who have the diamonds. In the chase, there's an accident and Suzanne dies, while Jason lands in hospital. Jason has an argument with Alex over Gabriela. He tells Victor that he handed over the diamonds, upon which the criminal has an argument with Alex. Alex kills Victor. Jason uses a boat to crush Alex's legs. Gabriela shows up and Alex throws diamonds in the sea.

The fifth and last collaboration between director Bob Rafelson and actor Jack Nicholson is an interesting 'light' noir film "Blood and Wine" that stands well on its own feet, except that it doesn't have something special to tell. The authors tried to complicate the situations as much as possible to pass their point across, how crime can destroy a family, though it still seems slightly overstretched and mild. Likewise, the relationships of the characters remain slightly unclear, which causes a few illogical situations (for instance, why would Victor trust Jason more than his partner Alex?). Still, the film should be seen at least for the interaction between Michael Caine and Nicholson, whereas Jennifer Lopez made a surprisingly good performance in her feature length debut film, which assured her further roles. All in all, "Wine" is not nearly as good as the best Rafelson-Nicholson film, their first collaboration, "Five Easy Pieces", but it is competently made.

Grade:++

Star Trek

Star Trek; science-fiction adventure, USA, 2009; D: J. J. Abrams, S: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy, Winona Ryder

In 2233, James Kirk's father is killed by a mysterious time traveling Romulan spaceship, Narada, under command of Nero. Kirk grows up into a rebellious young lad in Iowa. However, to honor his father, he joins the Starfllet. At the Academy, he meets Uhura, half Vulcan-half Human Spock and Dr. McCoy. When Narada shows up again and attacks Vulcan, the young students are sent to the Enterprise to help. Narada places a black hole inside the Vulcan, which swallows the planet, killing Spock's mother. Because of his rebellious outbursts, Kirk is sent to the ice planet Delta Vega, where he meets the old Spock. He tells him that he is from the future, where he tried to save Romulus by eliminating the threat, a supernova, but the red matter accidentally destroyed the planet. As a revenge, Nero went back in time to destroy Vulcan and every planet is the Federation. Still, Spock returns back on Enterprise and manages to send Narada into a black hole.

7 years after the last "Star Trek" film, "Nemesis", J.J. Abrams decided to return the series back to its roots and directed a prequel to the original franchise. Despite critical praise, the 2009 "Star Trek" film is bombastic, pompous and cheaply humorous-melodramatic, trying more to be "hip" and "cool" than to capture the essence and charm of the original that made "Star Trek" so popular and sometimes even quite intelligent back in its time. The characters all seem wrong, as if they came from "Dawson's Creek" - James Kirk is a rebellious womanizer who likes to drink; Uhura is shown in her undies whereas Chekov is a nerdy teenager. Only Spock is spot on, until the infamous scene where he beats up Kirk. The story is written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who penned "Transformers" 1 and 2, and, unfortunately, it shows: the structure is "illogical", as Spock would put it. Namely, the bad guy Nero shows up from the future in his spaceship to take revenge on Spock by destroying his home planet Vulcan. Why? Because in the future, Spock tried to save his planet Romulus from a supernova using "red matter", but accidentally destroyed it.

So, Spock is punished for trying to help. That would be as if a geologist would show up in a village built on an active volcano and try to stop the eruption because the people don't want to evacuate, but he would be helpless, lava would destroy the village and the surviving villagers would hunt him down all his family members to take revenge on him, not on the volcano? Also, if Nero can travel back in time, wouldn't it be far more logical for him to warn his people on Romulus of the disaster? This is all so inconceivable. Also, the film is filled with other kinds of plot holes. For instance, is Vulcan so defenceless and the Starfleet so under capacity that students from the Academy have to go to the Enterprise to be sent to Vulcan to help it? Why would Spock deport Kirk from Enterprise to an ice planet, where his life is at stake? Doesn't the Enterprise have a prison cell? And what are the odds that Kirk finds not one, but two crucial people on that isolated place who will help him save the day? A few plot holes could be overlooked, but a whole bunch of them is something that is difficult to ignore. The special effects overkill is also a nuissance, though the film is at least fun. It is indicative as much as it is ironic that the only genius moment is the 5-minute cameo by the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy, because that is the only part where the film established a connection to the quality of the original "Star Trek".

Grade:+

Alpha and Omega

Alpha and Omega; CGI animated adventure comedy, USA, 2010; D: Ben Gluck, Anthony Bell, S: Justin Long, Hayden Panettiere, Christina Ricci, Danny Glover, Vicki Lewis, Dennis Hopper

Humphrey is a wolf who is secretly in love with Kate, but he is an Alpha wolf while she is an Omega wolf, and that difference in hierarchy is a problem for a relationship in their society. Kate's parents, Winston and Eve, arrange a marriage for her with Tony's son Garth, also an Alpha. However, one night local rangers tranquillize Kate and Humphrey and deport them to a different national park, hoping they will repopulate it. Using the help of a French goose and a duck, Kate and Humphrey board a train and return home. There, Kate decides to be with Humphrey, while Garth falls for Lilly.

CGI animated adventure comedy "Alpha and Omega" is a harmless fun, a moderately amusing and easily watchable film that doesn't offer much (that hasn't already been seen before), yet at least it should be congratulated for reducing the cheap cliches - like "hero saved in the nick of time" or "problem after problem after problem" - to the minimum. It's a mild comedy with jokes that are not that engaging or imaginative - actually, the only magical moment shows up in the opening, where Kate and Humphrey accidentally "stumble" upon each other in the air and hug each other, wherein the CGI animation marvelously shows their smile and how there is a natural sympathy between them. Likewise, the only excellent character is the shy-insecure wolf Lilly, voiced brilliantly by Christina Ricci, though Kate and Humphrey are also characterized good. A too simple, thin film, "Alpha and Omega" is nonetheless a correct viewing experience, being Dennis Hopper's last film.

Grade:+

Happy Country

Sretna zemlja; Documentary, Croatia, 2008; D: Goran Dević

The film follows two poles  of opposites - the extreme right and the extreme left - on two bus excursions. In one, it follows a group of nationalistic neo-ustashas and their heirs who take a bus from Zadar to Bleiburg, to commemorate the Bleiburg massacre. On the other, it follows a group of old partisans and their heirs who take a bus trip to Kumrovec, to celebrate Tito's birthday and lament how life in Communist Yugoslavia was much better. Despite the fact that these trips were filmed on different location and time, they both overlap on some issues, mostly with how the bus drivers treat them like little children because they are afraid they will be late or how they both rigorously defend their political beliefs.

In "Happy Country", director Goran Devic achieved another absurdly funny documentary that works as a satire on human stupidity. Supposedly, when it was shown on some Dutch film festival, the viewers asked: "Wait, there are two buses?", displaying how it was hard to distinguish those two groups, the extreme left and the extreme right. The film is abundant with surreal-humorous moments: two sexy ustasha girls pose dressed all in black (one even wearing a black short skirt); a fly is walking on the photo of dictator Ante Pavelic whereas the film even accomplished a parallel montage of two similar rants - in one, a 90-year old ustasha is talking this to his supporters gathered around him: "Only 2-3,000 people died at Jasenovac. But they were all terrorists!" The film then jumps to Kumrovec, where an old partisan says this into the camera: "Only 17 people died in Bleiburg! And of those 17, it is unknown how many were killed by the British, how many killed themselves and how many died from a heart attack!" You listen to those monologues and can't believe what these people are taking about, but Devic followed the documentary rule and delivered a neutral film, leaving everything for the viewers to figure out. Though, one common theme is clear: these people are stuck in the past and cannot live in the present, which tells something about the lack of some parts of society to move on.

Grade:++

Imported Crows

Uvozne vrane; Documentary, Croatia, 2004; D: Goran Dević

Director Goran Devic and his film crew visited the town of Sisak to interview people about the supposed "crow pandemic". Almost everyone in town is against those birds: some say the late Norbert Weber, who founded the local ironworks, imported crows from Siberia to get rid of some plant parasites, but his black flying friends managed to spread throughout. Some lady even believes the crows are actually those "Hitchcock's crows", lamenting how the birds "hide in bushes and then pluck your hand until they dismember your flesh". That never happened to her, "but to her mother". One of the most bizarre things that was captured on film is that some guy from the Mountain Rescue Service is actually assigned to knock out and destroy the crows' nests from trees using a long pole.

Devic's first film is, by his own words, so full of mistakes and holes that you can poke it like cheese, but precisely such charming imperfection makes this short documentary so accessible and easily watchable, as if it was made from the people for the people. Devic himself said: "A good film has 100 flaws, a bad film only one, it's not good". A lot of humor originates from the interviews where people say such insane things they immediately mock themselves with such backward attitude. For instance, one madam, a member of HDZ, is saying how she is helping commemorate Palm Sunday, which "celebrates peace", and in the same sentence she adds nonsense, how "those crows should all be exterminated". Even though "Imported Crows" are a documentary, Devic manipulated reality a little bit - he himself admitted how he told that guy from the Mountain Rescue Service to work near the church on Palm Sunday - but he nonetheless achieved a great, bitter point to the film in the finale where dozens of religious people are following the priest in a queue to the church, but don't even bother to react at dead baby crows falling in front of them, showing how they are only merciful when someone "programs" them to be.

Grade:++