Matty

Johnny Guitar is a western from another world occupying the allegorical space between reality and a bad dream (or do we find ourselves squarely in the characters’ subconscious?). It is at times a tense psycho-thriller (the opening scene with a spinning roulette wheel and the wind howling outside), at other times a satanic horror flick (a night-time lynching, obviously reflecting McCarthy’s witch hunt), and at its core a heavy melodrama, but one in which it is not entirely clear until the climax who longs for whom. The cynical and mentally unstable protagonists (as in most of Ray’s films) are a representative sample of post-war American society, with Vienna as an emancipated woman to whom a man, ignorant of the new conditions, returns from the war. The crucial motif of the circle (roulette wheel, chandelier), the colour symbolism emphasised at the boundary of camp (Crawford constantly changes costumes), the formalistic virtuosity and the riveting pace of the narrative. This is a film in which so much happens and that can be "read" in so many different ways that the first viewing will be just the beginning of a beautiful friendship for any lover of the dark side of classic Hollywood. 85%

“You know it's bad when the French feel sorry for you.” Where to Invade Next is basically several episodes of a casual travel show like No Reservations slapped together, except that the (self-)ironic host doesn’t discuss the cuisine or historical sights of the individual countries, but rather examines the benefits of their respective social systems. At the same time, the way he manipulates facts and emotions is much “edgier” (interviewing the father of one of Breivik’s victims, cutting to the beating of black American prisoners). Of course, this is an extremely simplistic view of some constituent benefits, taken out of the larger political-historical-social context, which Moore occasionally realises, though he more frequently gets carried away with what he hears and doesn’t ask (himself) follow-up questions that would undermine his thesis. Furthermore, he does not consistently adhere to his chosen concept, as he also visits Tunisia in addition to the European countries inhabited by white people that he mentions in the introduction and, despite his resolution to pick only “flowers” and not “weeds”, he cannot resist the temptation to bring up Germany’s Nazi past during his visit to that country (if only to support the idea of the necessity of accepting both defeats and victories). In comparison with Moore’s previous films, this one is relatively laid-back, with playfulness outweighing cynicism, and tries (mainly) to encourage Americans to open their eyes, look beyond their borders and admit that the ideals on which the US is based (freedom, equality) have been put into practice much more effectively in other countries. From this perspective, the chosen argumentative strategy can be accepted as adequate for the target audience and the film can be enjoyed as a demagogic comedic road movie conveying the American view of the world. For Europeans, Where to Invade Next unfortunately does not offer much food for thought about what they could do differently and better. 70%

Reitman chose a direction opposite that of his role model Alexander Payne, who in The Descendants tried to find out how much conciliation towards the characters the audience could tolerate before coming back down to earth after flying safely in the clouds. Though Young Adult is wrapped up in the same neatness, it certainly doesn’t gloss anything over or conceal the fact that life is sometimes ugly, that it includes lying, frustration, cynicism, breast enhancers and stretched-out Hello Kitty pyjamas in addition to nice and pleasant things. In the film, Mavis Gary, an author of books for young adults (the level of mental maturity at which she confined herself), sets out to reclaim what she considers to be her property. Her crusade actually has more in common with an escape from a future that terrifies her and a present that, despite all of her efforts, she can’t seem to get away from. The goal is clear but rather atypical for the protagonist of an American tragicomedy: she wants to break up the marriage of her ex-boyfriend, the only man with whom – as she convinces herself – she was ever happy. Amoral behaviour, leading to the contempt of others, helps Mavis to overcome a creative block, thus separating the professional and personal storylines, whose resolutions are otherwise tightly intertwined. Mavis is egocentric, irresponsible, callous and infected with consumerism, and she does not appreciate what she has achieved. Her poorly disguised shortcomings are laid bare by the benevolence of the characters around her, who don’t own much of anything, but at least they outwardly appear to be content. Despite all her bitchiness, Mavis deserves some sympathy, since we don’t have anyone else to give it to and her behaviour is authentic. The fact that she does something wrong and is far from being right about everything makes her the easiest character to identify with, which strikes me as an act of endearing subversion on the part of the director and screenwriter. The same can be said of the cheesy style of literature for teenagers used in the voice-over. The question of where stylisation ends and the author’s reflection on her own inner self begins is wisely left open, thanks to which the conclusion defies unambiguous interpretation. Young Adult, which in many ways is more mature and truthful than Juno, had to redeem its causticness by suppressing its likability and thus reducing its audience appeal and commercial potential. Despite that, I hope Reitman and Cody’s collaboration does not end here and I am curious as to the direction it will take. 80%

Laurel, Hardy and the mystery of the lost porn film. Gosling has never been so funny and so irresistible at the same time. Though his nihilistic private detective is a bit of an imbecile and very much an alcoholic who confuses dream with reality and “eunuch” with “Munich,” every once in a while, when the muse enlightens him, he is capable of leaving those around him momentarily speechless. In a film driven mainly by verbal shootouts between two or three characters, something like this logically does not happen often, but the wordless (splatter) slapstick scenes put Black’s growing directorial mastery on full display. There are some very funny situations (e.g. the opening scene with the speeding car) that don’t grab our attention, but instead leave us to find them in the shot on our own. Black also shows the same confidence in the viewer’s intellect in the unexpected conclusions of expected scenes. People die without any warning, characters often behave with more recklessness or brutality than is normal in Hollywood genre films (there is even violence against children) and they make a wrong or even utterly stupid decisions and have to bear the consequences. Essential revelations are made thanks to chance or the incompetence of the characters rather than through focused data collection and analysis. The sudden yet convincing changes in tone will also make you care about Gosling and the other characters. Black knows when it is appropriate to put on a serious face and thus reinforce our sympathy for the protagonists, yet he hardly ever moralises while snuffing out any inclination toward pathos or subordination to the demands of the individual characters’ backstory (during a serious dialogue about heroism, for example, one of the characters unashamedly cracks up), and offers only the line “At least you’re drinking again” as a band-aid on a disillusioning (and thus properly noirish) climax. I am not at all bothered by the fact that Black has been writing basically the same thing since Lethal Weapon, which is to say comedic noir detective stories about a duo of cynical cowboys whose lives are in shambles and they are forced to get their shit together, as long as it continues to be as entertaining and distinctly different from whatever else Hollywood is churning out, which – with a few honourable exceptions (e.g. Deadpool) –  has yet to attain a similarly mature capacity for self-reflection that doesn’t draw interest away from the characters. From a commercial perspective, The Nice Guys will probably be a negligible intermezzo for Black before the Predator reboot. From the perspective of the pleasure that it brings to cinephiles, however, it is the film of the year so far. 90%

“I will never forget how it tasted.” Some relationships are like fast food. Eat quickly and move on. There is no time left for conversation, people’s lives are merely canned goods. The world offers so many flavours that there is a natural need to try more and more new things. But what do we achieve by that? Emptiness and the recognition of how much the same thing can be seemingly different. The surface, which so fascinates Wong Kar-wai with all of its screens, neon colours and mirrors, is deceptive. It doesn’t reveal what is hidden within, nor do the inner monologues of the multiple narrators. We have to seek the truth between slow and long shots here, fast and short shots there. Between moments of silence and moments of deafening gunfire. With the film’s irregular rhythms and slapdash alternation of its objects of interest, Wong prevents us from watching Fallen Angels like any other relationship film working with a particular set of narrative conventions. Like the protagonists, the narrative is governed by its own rules, forcing us to be alert and find our own path to understanding the story. Like love, the beautiful thing about Wong’s film is that it cannot be entirely understood. Because of that endlessly elusive “something”, there is no point in hesitating to dig in. 80%

Everything for the family. Uncle John is a wonderfully morbid paraphrase of Uncle Buck with John Candy, who would also do everything for his loved ones (and who one of the characters reminisces about). For the most part, the film is a serious drama with a very intense thriller atmosphere (similar to movies from Borderline Films) and comes closer to Park Chan-wook’s Stoker and William Friedkin’s Killer Joe in the exaggerated depravity of its climax, when a small death and a grand death occur in parallel. If the final dialogue over the “campfire” doesn’t strike you as funny, you should work on your cynicism. As a directorial and screenwriting debut, Uncle John is surprising with its focused narrative, which doesn’t lead viewers by the hand, doesn’t tell them everything they want to know and leaves them in a state of uncertainty for longer than is usual in more conventional thrillers. Not only is the essential information not repeated multiple times, sometimes our attention is required to even notice it, which corresponds to the style consisting of long overall shots, from which we have to pick out what is important for ourselves. In order to build tension, the film conversely cuts quickly between close-ups of faces, which don’t allow us to see much that would cause us to fear for the characters’ safety. The two-hour runtime for a low-budget film by a group of unknowns arouses caution, but it has its justification in the narrative structure, which develops two seemingly unrelated stories in parallel with a feel for realistic details. We know from the first minutes that something bad could happen, but at the same time we can’t guess when, who or what that might involve, because we logically assume that Ben, who outwardly inhabits a completely different world in terms of genre, will in some way be involved in the whole affair, which in the end is and isn’t true. It was very important for the chosen concept of two intertwined yet, in genre terms, practically incompatible stories (because, unlike a romantic film, thrillers rarely have a happy ending) that the film should also work as a family drama and an intimate relationship film, which it succeeds in doing thanks to the civil dialogue and natural actors. The result is an intoxicatingly absorbing game played with the viewers’ (unfulfilled) expectations and emotions, which are as unstable as the plot is morally adrift. It’s been a long time since I got such pleasure from how cleverly a film evoked ambivalent feelings in me. 90%

I’m surprised by how a film about a film can age so badly. The chapters focusing on the military training of actors, the composition of music combining electronic instruments with North African motifs, and the bringing of a realistic impression to completion with the use of digital effects are still worthy of attention, but a solid hour of this documentary is spent defending the US military in response to the invasion of Afghanistan. The actors and filmmakers attempt to convince us of the occasional unavoidability of war and sing odes to the heroism of American soldiers. It is understandable that militant pro-American propaganda would crop up in a film about a film made in collaboration with the Pentagon and, furthermore, in a climate of intensively building up the national security apparatus, but it could certainly have been dealt with less aggressively.

Charles de Lauzirika is a guarantee of high-quality “making of” films, as he usually charts both the development and the actual shooting and post-production phases. Vengeance is Mine is no exception, though it is not on the same level as Ridley Scott’s films, compared to which there is more verbal fluff and pseudo-deep analyses of what the filmmakers wanted to convey. Particularly noteworthy are the opening sections about the multi-year development of the screenplay, which Scott originally wanted to film before Top Gun, and the methods employed by the actual kidnappers. Skip the long segment focused on casting, as the actors just praise each other and Tony Scott’s laid-back approach. Conversely, the chapter on visual style, including a detailed analysis of the kidnapping scene, is excellent. Among other things, you will learn what Scott bases the aesthetics of his films on and why he chose to use a crank camera from 1910 in this case.

This movie could just as well have been called Avengers 3 (if you forget about the Hulk and Thor). However, the misleading title is the least of its problems. Civil War is dragged down by the myriad characters between whom the brothers fail to ignite and sustain the same spark as Joss Whedon. With many of the actors, it is patently obvious that they are here only so that they can play a larger role in any of the future Marvel movies (WTF cameos from Marisa Tomei, Martin Freeman and William Hurt, each of which barely covers half a minute). The most important antagonism, nourished in each of their film encounters, i.e. the animosity between Stark and Rogers, is fully played out only at the end, albeit skilfully enough to make you at least hesitate for a moment about who to keep your fingers crossed for. The last act, when the various narrative formulas (teamwork, whodunit, political/espionage thriller) come together to form a relatively well-ordered whole, greatly improves the final impression, despite the significant idiocy of the villain’s reasoning (or why do things the easy way when you can base your plan on the assumption that a certain character will behave in a certain way after certain information has been revealed). Much more so than in the relationships between the superheroes, the brothers are sure-footed in the action scenes, which are satisfyingly varied and clearly constructed, and in the well-thought-out concealment and revelation of information (so something will still surprise you by the end of the movie, even if you’re familiar with the needlessly revealing trailer). On the other hand, the action scenes always last longer than is necessary and the most epic scene is inserted into the film solely as a reward for fans who have seen all of the previous movies from the Marvel Universe. After a while, it all becomes a tediously long superhero showreel (particularly Ant-Man and the new Spider-Man show off everything that they can do) that even the actors don’t take too seriously, as they apologise to their opponents for every hard blow just to be sure (only poor Rhodes ends up a little worse for wear than would have been appropriate for the overall concept of the scene). The main thing is that innocent civilians, whose existence the Avengers have finally taken into consideration, don’t die in the course of the scene. After the preceding films, this hint of humanity comes across as an insincere attempt to meet a demand that changes according to society’s mood. And Civil War is nothing more than an honest effort to fulfil that demand. Aside from the greater demands placed on viewers, who this time have to find their bearings among the motivations and goals of a truly LARGE number of characters, the Marvel Universe is enriched especially by the additional characters, but less so by unique sources of inspiration (and stylistic choices) and the unexpected organisation of the narrative (like Captain America: The Winter Soldier). 80%

Can a war criminal be a good person? This time Lindholm asks more such questions without any unambiguous answers. In fact, it seems to me that the main purpose of A War is not to present a character study of a man losing his moral integrity or an account of a war that has no winners or losers, but rather the creation of a complex situation without a simple solution, as the film was apparently shot in response to the increasingly frequent (and dangerous) translation of serious problems into emotional rants and simple slogans. As is his habit, Lindholm, for the purpose of maximum authenticity, first builds a believable setting (though the film was shot in Turkey, Jordan and Spain, most of the soldiers were played by men who had actually served in Afghanistan and the natives by Afghan refugees from Helmand province) and subsequently has the actors react to the situations that arise (based on actual events). The director and the rest of the professionals on the crew thus found themselves in the position of outsiders, which may have partly contributed to the humble approach to the theme. With the exception of a few scenes that attempt to convey basic information (showing how far Denmark is from Afghanistan on the map), Lindholm does not try to (overly) explain the world depicted in the film or to ascribe any kind of meaning to it from the outside so that it could easily fit into some sort of narrative template. Drama is thoroughly subordinated to the realistic effect. At the same time, the film manages to draw in the viewer with its focus on the course of events. We are constantly kept in a state of anticipation as to what the depicted trial will lead to. As the opening explosion indicates, banality can at any time turn into a fight for life. We feel these twists very intensely thanks also to the camera glued to the actors throughout the entire first half, crouching like war reporters at ground level during a firefight, for example. The camera maintains a greater distance from the characters in the second half, when viewers also find themselves in the role of the judge who is supposed to pass judgment on Claus based on the previously provided “evidentiary material”. We may or may not agree with the verdict reached in the film – with the way the scene is shot, Lindholm himself does not judge, but rather leaves the decision up to us. As with his earlier films, we are forced to reassess events in light of things that happen later. The juxtaposition of those events, presupposing our willingness to think beyond what is explicitly stated, gives the film an element of powerful ambiguity. 80%