Othello

If there's anything ironic, it's that the gender indulgence of the superhero genre that is Wonder Woman is shot like a 1950s Roger Corman production. But it's not the means (though many of the special effects, which the film doesn’t save on, are relatively lame), it's the unapologetic naivety, the abandonment of the details, and the irrelevance to the main theme. Whenever the question of "How?" or "Why?" comes to your tongue, you're in for a very rough time, believe me. The question is, who on earth expected that in such a random, context-free world, anyone would care about anything relevant them that involves more than idle banter or over-the-top action. The action scenes themselves thankfully work, at least until WW tries to throw a tank, and is greatly aided by the divine Gadot, whose physical attributes build a certain sanctity of their own and some of her kicks you'll actually believe. The usual superhero problem then arises, however, in the madcap finale, whose only interesting detail is the final takedown of the bad guy, which takes place in such a way that suddenly the screen goes completely white under a barrage of tricks and effects and we see nothing at all. This is nicely brought to a head by the usual cluelessness of comic book writers over how to make the final confrontation against the villain even more drawn out, resulting in an overwrought inferno. In this case, that hitherto overblown hell culminates in a climax that is already so over the edge that it was not meant for human eyes. And so we see only whiteness. Oh, and by the way, the movie is desperately uninventive in almost every way, and doesn't try to go beyond doing things that have already happened, but three times as big. Pluses: Chris Pine, Gal Gadot, the action scenes, the cringe effect.

Luke Scott made a movie the same way I wrap a tent into its bag. I presume there must be some methodology to packing it more simply, more sensibly, without risk of damage, but in the interests of saving time I always find myself stuffing it in with my knee anyway, stomping on it with my foot, always managing in the end to cram a four-person shelter into a small carry-on, and with the last zipper unzipped I breathe a proud sigh of relief and feel like I've accomplished everything that was asked of me. Well, Morgan is the result of the same thinking, only in a film. This system can pay off if you’re pulling together a dynamic thriller with clear points A and B (The Gamer, Running Scared), but not if you’re trying to build a constant atmosphere of moral-ethical ambivalence with a big ba-dum-tss at the end that even the biggest Jindra Hojer figures out before the halfway point. Then suddenly, all the supporting characters are reduced to two or three simple expository scenes before the plot explodes, so the second half degenerates into a simple slasher ending (geez, in my last review I wrote the exact same thing about Alien Covenant, I guess it must be a raised-on-Ridley Scott thing) with the obligatory B-grade fight scene like in the golden days of Renny Harlin. It's probably obvious that if I had the desire to make a sci-fi about identity, an artificially created new evolutionary link, the road would be longer and muddier.

Poor Scott, he wants to make a philosophical, weighty, and ironic trilogy about questions of existence, anything, and everything, and instead he turns out a first-rate camp film on A-grade funds. And it's camp with all the right stuff, from the retarded "oh, a mushroom, I'm gonna kick it" character actions to the unguarded pomposity, culminating in a unique scene where two androids blow whistles to each other with the help of lines like "Gently blow into the hole. Let me do the fingering. Oh bravo!" This allows Covenant to at least minimally entertain, and is helped by the excellent effects and monster design that the film doesn't skimp on, though in complete contrast to the original Alien. It's just that when you want to make a big work of art and all you're left with afterwards is a relatively entertaining New Year's Eve slasher, it's not a bad idea to start scratching your head about who you are. And that's a question you don't want to answer through high-flying androids playing patty-cake with newly hatched aliens, let alone when you've kicked the visionary young creative that is Blomkamp out of the director's chair for it.

As much as Farhadi seemingly articulates his love for theatre through the interweaving of the film's story with the contained play Death of a Salesman, he doesn't disguise the fact that The Salesman is a play itself. It masks this with a cracking opening, but immediately afterwards it moves fluidly into "people talking to each other in a room" mode, with even that setting becoming part of the mood of the scene (see the final, interminably long climax in an empty apartment full of cracks). I'm actually quite surprised that the director has suppressed the ambition to write a rather theatrical play that contains yet another theatrical play. But I understand that as an acclaimed Oscar-winning director, touring the film around festivals is simply a temptation. Incidentally, when I look at the recent enthusiastic reactions of festival juries to films from the Romanian New Wave, the contemporary Dardennes, or even that Farhadi, I am slowly becoming offended by the apparent ageing of the academics who represent them. I want films that tell a story through imagery, experiment formally, provoke and revel in the endless possibilities of post-modernism. Not just strong theses, boringly shot in a way that a deserving octogenarian in his 80s would be able to navigate.

I guess it's the four months of retakes and frantic reshoots after disastrous test screenings, but if it weren't for the occasionally inventive eye of cinematographer Libatique, this would be an utterly unbelievable failure of almost every factor involved in the making of the film. Taking the characters' crazy behavior, hiccupping motivations, or Emma Watson's epic lack of charisma (again) are just the tip of the pile of twisted corpses. The concentration of all of the story's kinks into three corporate lectures, where the protagonists say things and the hyperactive seated crowd reacts to them depending on what stage the film is in at the time, is a major bummer. It's just that since the film doesn't provide the viewer with any more information than anyone else in it has, we actually find ourselves in a situation where all the elements of the film are acting in ways that are meant to scare and outrage us, and yet they see the same things we do. And a movie where everyone knows everything we know, and we're supposed to be terrified of what's going on in it while its actors don't get it, creates nothing but the feeling that we're watching a total bunch of manipulated idiots, and there's no reason to want any other outcome than an asteroid crash the size of Texas that ends this whole fictional world and all the morons in it.

This isn't a movie, this is a thesis. The characters are sloppy, the dialogue is good at first, the camera works with only one layer all the time, always conveniently perched in the center of the frame, and the proclaimed social civility probably works on Cannes bourgeois who have never had the need to visit a small-town clinic or encounter its problems and patients.

To start with, it must be said that there’s a lot of crap and piss at Cannes; and now we can get to the film. The long tracking shots, stoic characters, unspoken motivations, and only haphazardly defined motivations suggest that Bonello is working with deliberate detachment so as to create an untenable and broadly generalizable bit of bleak social reflection. And in some respects he succeeds, because all the guesswork as to their motivations, the ruthless behavior of the characters, the hermetic claustrophobia of the shopping mall mannequins and the problematic police intervention at the end are uncomfortably thought provoking and certainly raise questions. But the problem isn't primarily that he's unwilling to answer them, even outside the confines of the film, but that he hasn't grasped that he's making a pure thriller, and one that, whether you like it or not, has its own rules for achieving a suitable impact. While in many stretches Paris Is Happening may resemble Van Sant's Elephant (though that falls into its own category of "film space"), it rather runs up against the same thing that last year's formulaic one-take Victoria does, which is to be unable or unwilling to take formal shortcuts. Victoria had the problem that it simply had to be shot in a single continuous take, so there wasn't much that could be done with it; Paris Is Happening chose to be that way voluntarily, which is why, as much as the film has all the premises of a thriller (it takes place over a few hours, the characters are taken out of their world, they act in extremes and, above all, make very human mistakes and don't behave rationally, but it's understandable given the situation), it refuses to embrace the genre, probably to avoid devaluing itself in its own eyes. And yet this often turns it into a pompous bore with irritating protagonists with no one and nothing to latch onto.

I was reminded of the dialogue from the sitcom Black Books: "Do you remember who all was at that dinner?" "I don't. Him and his friends. You know, the sort of people who talk about salad for five hours." Which indirectly captures the problem with Perfect Strangers. I didn't care about the characters. With one bright exception, it's just a bland gathering of upper-middle-class Italian hypocrites whose standard topics are food, drink, vacations, health, and each other's relationships. What then happens to these two-legged Elle catalogues as a result of their own boredom and disenchantment is truly irrelevant. So what can you do with them. Moreover, the whole thing is really just a stage play, with the film format bringing absolutely nothing extra to the table. For a truly bitter tragicomedy that can work formally within the limited space of a single apartment, I'd instead invite you to join the Hajdu family party in It's Not the Time of My Life.

I'll admit to having a sadistic weakness for these low-budget B-movies that try to be terribly serious and an ambitious director vehemently tries to weave a whip out of manure, but the manure falls through his fingers, crumbles to the floor, and when it sticks together, doesn't snap at all like it should. Vengeance: Never Go Full Retard Name has some spectacular, uncompromising scenes and shots that make it clear that, unlike the rest of the crew, at least the director was taking the whole project at least a little seriously. So the opening (and otherwise completely unnecessary) shot of the villain or the execution of the last villain, for example, will having you nodding your approval. The rest of the film is a terrible mess, with terrible direction of poor quality actors (whoever cast the mother of the rowdy brothers should surrender his casting card), a bizarre order of scenes, and absolutely no gradation. But seeing Nicolas Cage in something like this again after a long time is a treat comparable to visiting a museum of torture instruments, so I'll live with it.

Somehow I can't get along with the Romanian New Wave. It bothers me that once again the film becomes a movie in the last act, when before it was just an exposition of the bleak relationships and conditions in contemporary Romania. And this is shot in a raw, civil method with very few clues, where the only thing that holds your interest is the promise of an ending where everything comes full circle. While this method has its perks, here capitalizing especially on the scenes of the horrific relationship between the protagonist and his wife, it makes each scene lack anything more than that first layer, where the two figurines pass on information that will be useful in the final reckoning (which, fortunately, doesn't come, which is quite nice). Moreover, it seems to me that contemporary Romanian cinema is floundering in the same "desperate, stupid people in a desperate, stupid country" morass over and over again and not really going anywhere. Which actually makes the film thematize itself in an arch way. Isn't that fun? Well, actually, not much.