Remedy

The cadence of the jokes and catchphrases is really killer in some parts, gotta give it that. I'd hate to rate The Millers as "a film with a tired theme that's perfectly crafted and acted", because I really had a great time the whole time, and it's actually very briskly shot – there are practically no dead spots. I kind of took the honeymoon under the fireworks and the pathetic speech about the family in front of the Mexican drug dealer with a grain of salt and it didn't affect my overall impression in any significant way. The Millers is a fresh comedy in the true sense of the word.

The immense power of this work lies primarily in its immensely evocative delivery and its relentless final impact on the viewer's emotions. Who is actually the biggest fool here is a very difficult question for each viewer to answer for themselves. Just writing the review here now and recalling snippets of this immortal Forman flick brings tears to my eyes once again. Miloš Forman has transformed all the apparent drawbacks (the closed setting, the limited space for Nicholson, the overall feeling of detachment) into major strengths that result in a gripping emotional spectacle with Jack Nicholson in the role of a lifetime. It's hard to say who is the king of this film, Forman or Nicholson, but what is certain is that this is an exceptional film whose intrinsic value will only increase with time. What is remarkable is that such a seemingly "small", human, intimate, and actually low-budget film has managed to appeal to such a wide spectrum of audiences and academics. Ultimately, this is a "great" film, a film great in its ideas, its production, its brilliant cast, and its absolutely breathtaking conclusion.

After a while, I thought Clint had pulled off this story split many times better in Changeling. If the whole movie had fleshed out the first part and been based on "Bradley chasing Ryan", it might have felt a lot more coherent in the end result. I'm not saying that the other two really separate stories don't make sense, but I had a definite problem with their delivery. If you’re supposed to take away from this that "all your shit will catch up with you one day anyway, and you can't escape it no matter how hard you try to be nice and human" then maybe let them, but for me it doesn't represent any kind of wisdom or "evocative movie experience". Blue Valentine was more intimate, more evocative, and a lot less intrusive.

A remarkable portrait of a man who stopped at nothing and no one in pursuit of his goal, who didn't give much of a shit about anyone, to put it plainly, and who was ultimately destroyed by his own ego, greed, and a gnawing sense of his own exceptionality and perfection. One can even admire him for that stubbornness and "single-mindedness" (not in a completely normal way, but you develop something close to admiration, however perverse it is). Moreover, when such a portrait is created by Oliver Stone, Brian de Palma takes the directorial reins, and Al Pacino gives one of his best performances (if not his very best), the result must be worth it. The overall impression is fantastic, Scarface is an incredibly epic, raw, and gritty drama dominated by the portrayal of the main character, which even with its truly lethal length is incredibly suspenseful and never bores you for a single second. Moreover, de Palma conveys the whole story in a very evocative way – as Tony Montana gets into bigger and bigger shit and gets more and more fed up, the viewer (at least I certainly did) feels an anxiety proportionate to his gradual fall and the fact that it plainly and simply cannot turn out well. This adds a thriller dimension to the whole film, which combined with Al Pacino’s unrivalled charisma leaves you with few reasons not to root for Tony :)))

Baz Luhrmann has an amazing ability to turn Moulin Rouge into an unusually intense, emotional, "original", (non-)kitsch spectacle that is just very hard not to succumb to. And I loved the grace with which Moulin Rouge teeters on the edge between total kitsch and riveting emotional spectacle. The choreography, the sets, the costumes, the music, the boldness and inventiveness of the direction, the hauntingly beautiful Nicole Kidman... plainly and simply the prototype of a film that can provide an intense emotional experience from beginning to end. A year earlier, Lars von Trier also made a wannabe musical "his own way", which I coincidentally also gave full marks. The difference is that I was still quite nauseous for a few days after Dancer in the Dark and to this day I have no desire for a second viewing. With this film, I know I will want to watch it again very soon and I definitely won't be nauseous in the "Trier" sense :-)

David Fincher had a hell of a time with his third Alien – following up on basically Scott's and Cameron's then-already alien classics was next to impossible ("some sucker Fincher, who made music videos, wants to make a sequel to Alien...") I certainly wouldn't consider the third Alien to be a "typical Fincher film", although the camera tweaks and that sleepy-depressed atmosphere are already there. Even so, Fincher already confirmed his VIP status in the 1990s with two other immortal films, and he certainly has nothing to be ashamed of for this contribution to the Alien saga. It's certainly a "different" 5 stars than the first and second, but Fincher definitely deserves it for his debut.

Carrey at his "face-making" best, i.e. there really are few actors with such brutally sophisticated facial expressions (Ryan Gosling is the opposite extreme). I'd leave the "seriousness" of the story completely aside and make do with the claim that this is a breezy comedy with some memorable moments and sometimes pretty killer lines. The trio of brothers was unbeatable in this regard.

This "fatally colorful" film could, of course, be read on two levels – either as an attempt at the most perfect audiovisual orgasm of recent times or as a tale of unhappy love, which logically also contains some criticism of society as a whole, especially hypocrisy, opportunism, and cowardice. What I personally found most striking, and what I readily applaud Luhrmann for is the fact that he manages to present these two levels in such a way that they both end up generating the same emotional pleasure – ironically, perhaps, the level of longing for an audiovisual orgasm is even more emotionally compelling. It strikes me as a kind of silly fashion nowadays to talk about the visual sophistication of some films "at the expense of script quality, character credibility, or some sort of resonance", because I just hear it over and over and the essence remains and sticks somewhere else (in my humble opinion). The formal perfectionist Luhrmann does take his time before launching into a "play on emotions" and on feelings, but what precedes it is so impressive that it is impossible to get bored with it, plain and simple. As a result, this modern adaptation of The Great Gatsby is more of an audiovisual kaleidoscope than a "pure drama", but it should also be taken into account that we have moved on in time and that such "modernized" adaptations of classic literary works will increase in the future. Instead of the jazz and music typical of the period in which Fitzgerald's novel is set, Luhrmann opts for a soundtrack of mostly hip-hop and R&B hits, which combined with the impressively filmed parties, provide a truly delightful experience for the eyes and ears. Everything goes as it should: the lights, the music, the sound, the sets, all the actors look fantastic in period costumes and do what they need to do. What most of the viewing or reviewing community seems to have a problem with (that when the "real plot" kicks in, it feels disjointed, and as a result fails to honor Fitzgerald's premise and comes off as something completely different) wasn't apparent to me in any way, and I even read the novel twice. But as I wrote earlier, Luhrmann simply took his own take on it and somehow preserved the most essential ideas that Fitzgerald imprinted on his famous novel. As I mentioned in the introduction, it worked for me on both levels. Perhaps because I approached it in a way that it was definitely not a "pure" adaptation and that it just needed to be approached a little differently. And that Lana Del Rey made me cry. WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME WHEN I'M NO LONGER YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL?

Again a pure cinematic symphony of harmony and visual imagination. But still, when I've seen something from that Sion Sono, it doesn't have the wow effect like the first time. Still, I admit that no one else could possibly have made it similarly evocative (or simply piggishly explicit?) – or at least I can't think of anyone else at this moment. I'm not saying it's self-serving from start to finish, there's certainly an interpretation to be offered here along the lines of sexual frustration and how "anything can happen" when it comes to "awakening" and how far the initial desire for the occasional shag can go (plus, if the right people hire you, right...). It's a vastly different creation from Europe or America, which has its own rules and doesn't bother with any boundaries at all. I've always appreciated the breaking of established practices and conventions and the art of shocking or disgusting the viewer (whether through direct visual means or through psychological terror), but here I sometimes felt that it simply needed to shock at any cost at the expense of greater plot sophistication or greater overlap. Still, it's a kick in the ass. :)

The technically precise Mendes unfortunately made mere pawns out of his characters in Road to Perdition, who wear very nice suits and can pull the trigger at the right/wrong moment, but that's really all they can do, to put it mildly. As an "action academic film" it's perfect; as a "fatalistic and classic gangster film" it fails, especially in the psychology of the characters. Sam Mendes, in my opinion, struggled with this "phenomenon" in his first two films (in American Beauty it was still the wow-effect and so a lot of the imperfections faded in the background), Road to Perdition is unfortunately now completely marred by it (which is a shame, because the potential to become a classic was definitely there). Since the days of Jarhead I have no significant problem with Mendes, on the contrary I consider him one of the most imaginative filmmakers of our time (yes, I liked Skyfall a lot). His range is simply wide and he can be far above average in any genre – whether it's social drama, gangster film (even despite my criticisms), an incredibly fresh and in its own way timeless account of war, a maximally heated romantic drama, an almost family drama that is also but terribly sweet and human, and last but not least a Bond film that he directed really precisely. On the other hand, I have to say that even though Road to Perdition is rather mediocre in the context of his entire oeuvre, when compared to most of his other output it's still a very above average work.