JFL

In direct and provocative contrast to the idyllic and uplifting story of Wings of Desire, Christoph Schlingensief created an absurd farce about the derangement, decay and depravity of the climax of the Thousand-Year Reich or rather the final moments in the Führer's bunker. His film thus wallows in exalted madness, the absence of logic and hedonistic brutality. 100 Years of Adolf Hitler was the first in Schlingensief’s series of confrontational carnival rides in the context of which it represents the director's most accessible (though not necessarily best) work, as it is the least burdened by the phenomena of the time or rather it cites them directly, whereas his later films, particularly the next two parts of his German trilogy, are heavily burdened by the contemporary context and today come across as being very cryptic.

Thanks to the generational cult status of his films and their significance in the context of the development of coming-of-age movies, John Hughes is surrounded by an aura of a timeless classic, which, in turn can leave today’s viewers unpleasantly surprised at the problematic aspects of his films. On the other hand, that also highlights the fact that each of his films is a product of its time and in a different era we will inevitably perceive it outside of its context and, conversely, through a thoroughly modern lens. Today, therefore, the insularity of white suburbia, the clichéd motivational elements of the main characters and, in particular, the gender conservatism and extremely disturbing behaviour of young men towards girls can elicit deserved outrage. Despite the audience’s occasional discomfort, Hughes’s films retain their charm, energy and, primarily, empathy for their characters, thanks to which they remain entertaining and hugely rewarding for viewers, something that certainly cannot be said for most of the teen movies that came before, at the same time as and after Hughes’s film. Sixteen Candles was Hughes’s first screenplay on the subject of adolescence to be made, and it obviously follows the trend of teen comedies at that time, such as Porky's, which were based on puerile adolescent optics, frat-house jokes, sexual innuendo and the fetishisation of female bodies. Hughes’s directorial debut represented a revolution in the genre, as he retained the structure of episodic gags and the framework of an out-of-control party, but instead of the usual exuberant and self-confident guys, he constructed the entire narrative around an adolescent girl and her world concurrently composed of school and family. Primarily, however, this film stands on the foundations on which all of Hughes’s subsequent work was built, which are empathy for all of the characters and, above all, revealing the personalities behind the formulaic façade of a pigeonhole on the social ladder. Though the hierarchy of the group and its individual castes may, in the better case, be disappearing today, or rather male and female students care more about at least outwardly fitting in with the uniform mass and thus standing out less in public, in past decades this dynamic was the be-all and end-all of growing up. Unlike other films, which pigeonholed characters as the asocial geek, the handsome jock, the prom queen and the athletic amazon and reinforced the lines of demarcation between them, Hughes conversely showed the inner lives of the characters beyond their superficial surface. Sixteen Candles does not delve as deeply as the later genre milestone The Breakfast Club into revealing human characters hiding their true emotions, personalities and private lives behind the armour of the roles that they assume. However, that’s not even possible because, in contrast to the intimate minimalism and constricted melodramatic framework of the later film in which seven characters completely sufficed, in his debut feature, Hughes composes a complex Altmanesque mosaic of nearly twenty characters, most of whom he allows to show themselves in a different light than that in which we see them at the beginning (which is a dramaturgical principle that the best modern coming-of-age films, including Whip It! and Booksmart, have borrowed from Hughes). The same applies also for most of film’s problematic elements and the statements of some of the characters. --- SPOILER START --- Though Long Duk Dong initially comes across as a frighteningly stereotypical character, over the course of the film he is given fundamentally larger space and broader characterisation than such characters in most other films and even becomes a proto-McLovin. For Caroline, Farmer Ted and Jake, the development of the evening and the morning after also receives an empathetic resolution in their final settling of accounts, even though it is at times terrifying in its treatment of the girl as an object and her abuse. --- SPOILER END --- High-school movies inevitably age, but the best of them at their core resist the ravages of time and can thus be a wonderful portrait of modern civilisation, which will never be flawless but is gradually learning to be better. In the case of John Hughes, the sad fact that even the most sensitive among us can sometimes do incredibly shitty things and be very insensitive, especially when we are still finding ourselves (even though we think we are already tremendously mature), becomes that much more obvious. Though it would be nice not to do such things at all, that's not how humans work, so it is mainly a matter of whether we learn from those mistakes as a civilization and as individuals. Hughes laid the groundwork for more timely and even more sensitive portraits of adolescence and composed a variation on Sixteen Candles himself with Pretty in Pink.

This documentary about Highlights, a magazine intended for children ages 6-12, progressively focuses on a full range of questions and challenges associated with creating content for children, especially the sincere ambition to provide quality, through the arc of creating a new issue and filling up its sections. The film thus opens up numerous topics arising from the pillars of creativity, responsibility and progressivity, while relating them to the connection with contemporary norms and trends, which are generally contradictory. At its core, 44 Pages shows a unique private medium owned by a family business, which, thanks to strict adherence to tradition, lives up to the ideals and qualities associated with public media. The documentary shows Highlights as a phenomenon where the corporate structure comes into symbiosis with values, as well as with creative intuition and a personal code of conduct, which we usually find rather in small production companies and not in companies with global representation. The film succeeds thanks to the fact that it focuses on the small group of people who put the magazine together in the homey environment of the former family-owned company and no longer venture into the open-office wasteland of the corporate headquarters that house the inhuman machinery of distribution, marketing, new media and foreign localisation. Thanks to this, the film can remain focused on the story about creative people with a sincere interest in stimulating children’s curiosity and imagination in an ever-changing, problematic world. The insight into the challenge for the magazine’s individual creators to stimulate children in a positive manner without the necessity of closing their eyes to difficult and problematic reality, to help them find their bearings in this world without foisting something on them or lying to them, remains particularly inspiring.

Netflix unleashed Michael Bay and gave him (within its limits) apparent freedom with all of the good, and bad, which that entails. So, here we have a film that generally does not make much sense and lacks coherence and causality. However, that is quite possibly due to the fact that Bay simply blew most of the budget on the best action sequences of (not only) his filmography. The introductory scene in Florence is a formal and logistical masterpiece, for which it would be difficult to find an equivalent in terms of topographic breadth, variety of formal elements, the number of production ideas, and the narrative and spatial trajectories of the individual characters, as well as the detailed planning and shooting. It may seem that Bay has become enchanted with the style of Tony Scott’s late creative period, but that is not entirely true. As a devotee of superficiality, Bay never slips into genuine experimentation with alternating formats and framerates. He merely adopts the concept of a cubist collage of scenes, which allows him to flawlessly map a particular moment, whether action or the state of mind and mood of the characters. At the same time, he discards the existing definition of a money shot as the single moment with which an entire sequence culminates and instead stitches together dozens of such scenes one after the other or, better said, for each moment of action, he finds the most perfect field of view, from which he creates the money shot. Everything is subordinated to the maximum wow effect, not only at the level of the overall collage, but also of its individual fragments. Bay stages breathtaking, logistically demanding shots with several action plans (which is true of both large units and numerous half-details) and with tremendously well-thought-out filling of the frame with movement and energy. It is reminiscent of the aesthetics of John Woo at his absolute creative peak (think Hard Boiled), just hypertrophied into a wild chase through the historic centre of a European metropolis instead of shoot-outs in studio interiors. ____ The rest of the film typically does not offer anything to match the opening sequence; rather, it comprises mainly static dialogue scenes and action sequences set in spatially limited locations. Let’s also acknowledge that, in many respects, 6 Underground is a painful illustration of its director’s limitations, whether in the overarching bombastic idea that only a dandyish billionaire can save the world from evil or in the inability to depict the suffering of war refugees in a manner other than embarrassing kitsch. All masters have their limitations and some are not even respectable people, but that does not diminish their virtuosity in their respective fields. 6 Underground is a bombastic project not just because of Bay, but largely because that is exactly what Netflix wanted from him in order to show off in grand style. Despite the impression of its own uniqueness, Netflix merely repeats what Cannon Films did a few decades previously and the main B-movie studios did long before that, when they attracted distinguished filmmakers to join them with the promise of absolute creative freedom, so that they could earn respect in Hollywood while feeding their distribution platforms with filler trash flicks. Just like those predecessors, Netflix will also turn out a handful of top-rate productions among its original projects, as well as quite a few half-baked films which, conversely, would greatly benefit from the intervention of a producer and script editor. However, 6 Underground raises the question of whether it is actually a badly made film as a whole or, conversely, a perfect product of Netflix algorithms. Due to its episodic narrative and frequent recapitulations, it does not work according to standard dramaturgical rules, but it is perfectly suited for fragmented viewing on mobile devices on the way to work. It is also evident that the entire project is intended to be the start of Netflix’s own blockbuster franchise. After this spectacular kick-off, let’s hope that Netflix approaches it in a similar manner as Mission: Impossible once did and hire a new director with a distinctive style or approach to the genre for each subsequent instalment. ____ Either way, the fact remains that Bay put forth his audio-visual masterclass here and 6 Underground will go down in the history of the genre. And so what if that’s thanks only to a single sequence in an otherwise forgettable film. After all, it will not be the first in that respect; it suffices to recall Bullitt (or, better said, let someone try to remember anything from that film other than the iconic car chase).

The Stunt Woman begins as a Hong Kong variation on Truffaut's Day for Night, but later abandons the ode to stuntmen who put their bodies and lives on the line for the amazement of viewers. Ann Hui did not intend to celebrate movie magic, but rather to tell the story of the title character and the two men in her life (as indicated by the two intertitles with their names embedded in a film bearing the name of its female protagonist). Through this film with a touch of melodrama, she offers an eloquent depiction of the status of women not only in the film industry, but also in Hong Kong society as a whole. The crucial elements for the portrayal of the stuntwoman Ah Kam are not only her physical abilities on set, but also all of the other female characters, from her promiscuous roommate to the call girls at the bar that she runs for a while to the various wives, mothers and widows who are briefly glimpsed or only mentioned in the narrative. Ah Kam always remains different, refusing to conform to any formulaically predefined role, because of which her life may sometimes seem unfulfilled from a traditional perspective, but she always remains unrestrained and her own person. As such, however, she can never escape from being forced into and perceived through the lens of a standard pigeonhole due to her circumstances. After all, this becomes apparent in the shift in meaning of the distribution titles – while the original title is simply the Shakespearean Ah Kam, foreign distributors came up with the restrictive title The Stunt Woman, which expresses only a small part of what the heroine and the film itself are all about.

An often implemented concept receives a superb treatment, wherein all of Waititi’s merits are put to use – playful imagination based on reality but unhindered by realism, immeasurable fondness for total outsiders and the asocial, brilliant comedic timing, pleasure in the local New Zealand motifs, particularly those from the world of the lowest social classes, and a perfect feel for the use of non-actors. In combination with the popular humoristic novel, it is no wonder that the result became the most successful New Zealand film of all time in terms of viewership. Like, for example, Stephen Chow in Hong Kong long ago, Waititi manages to render gags of the lowest register with peculiarity and sophistication. This is not idle, thoughtless humour, but rather perfectly crafted entertainment built on precision timing and flawless mastery of the filmmaker’s art. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd knew that everyone could fall to the ground, but only a master can do it perfectly for the camera. No matter that some viewers are unable to understand that.

Excellent premise, hopeless execution, sleep-inducing result – these words can describe not only A Touch of Genie, but also practically every film made by Joe Sarno, one of the most overrated hustlers in the field of erotica and porn. Not that he doesn’t occasionally go off and make a surprisingly watchable film, such as Young Playthings and Bibi: Confessions of Sweet Sixteen. However, these seem rather more like wrong turns in an otherwise consistently futile filmography, where most of the entries confirm Sarno’s hopeless inability to tell a story and his dyslexia in the area of film language. A Touch of Genie could be a splendidly entertaining mix of Allen-esque comedy and porn, but due to its half-baked script, obviously cheap production and Sarno’s somnambulant style, it unfortunately remains only a futile promise and, at the same time, hopelessly wasted potential, which is evident in the fact that porn actors Harry Reems and Eric Edwards prove in their scenes to have far more acting and comedic talent than the lead actor.

A merciless look at the basic principles of interpersonal relationships and, at the same time, an unprecedented view of an author’s willingness to sacrifice anything for his own vision – for example, to have his own flat demolished, soiled and pissed upon.

The Bees proudly follows in the footsteps of Ed Wood and his goofy naiveté, fanatical ambition and charming creativity despite the limits of the budget. Like the master of dreck, his successor, Alfredo Zacarías, cooks up a bombastic vision of a catastrophic spectacle with an engaging idea, in which he vehemently plunders the image archives and has the actors deliver phantasmagorical dialogue. In this respect, trash fixture John Saxon heroically excels, but he is vehemently matched by the manic John Carradine, who seems to have subordinated his speech to a decision to combine the wildest aspects of Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price in his performance. The screenplay is absurdly disjointed and contains twists from a world beyond the seven corners, so that it seems that it has already gone through live dubbing at the Shockproof Film Festival. It could be said that the highlight of the film is the episodic and seemingly random attacks of killer bees, which are fascinating due equally to their DIY execution and their silliness. But we would then be unjustly highlighting only a single aspect of a film packed with WTF elements – from the conspiracy of the confectionery and cosmetics lobbies to the whole storyline involving attempts to decode the language of bees.

Cameron’s previous films already bore his signature and put his talent and craftsmanship on display. But The Abyss is the first full-fledged Cameron movie. He was not limited here by budgetary compromises (as in the case of The Terminator) or by a connection to a foreign franchise (as in the case of Aliens). Mainly, however, we already see here the classic attributes of his entire later, personal body of work with simple, almost banal stories about the clearly defined sides of good and evil, his ambition to push the possibilities of what could be done in the medium, and his personal fascination with the underwater world. In addition to that, The Abyss is impressive due to both its well-thought-out female characters, who were very different than the contemporary norms, and their male counterparts. Cameron is a masterful creator of illusions, as he is able to unfold and present to the audience a world that has been thought out to the smallest detail. Though he tells a thoroughly traditional story involving the central couple’s reunion, he succeeds in holding the viewers’ attention all the way to the kitschy climax, thanks to the non-formulaic dynamic of the two central characters and their gripping peripeteias. In a certain respect, the unfairly neglected The Abyss is the absolute pinnacle of Cameron’s filmography. Since computer graphics were still in their infancy at the time, he couldn’t rely on the “crutch” of animation as he has done in his most recent films, where his imagination no longer has any limits, whereas here he made every effort to create the least compromised equivalent of his space visions within the seemingly restrictive boundaries of shooting on film, with live actors and on locations. Thanks to this and his ambitious shooting, The Abyss has a fascinating realistic dimension that no digital technology can convey. The abyssal darkness encompasses the characters on the screen and merges with the darkness of the screening room, thus drawing the viewers in and letting the fascination and ever-present threat of the world beyond our everyday experience take hold of them. Thanks to its brilliant symbiosis of all of film’s means of expression, The Abyss, like Das Boot before it, succeeds in evoking an incredibly claustrophobic atmosphere even in a large screening room with only a handful of viewers. As such, we can say that the whole film actually exists for the purpose of making its climactic sequence work at the highest possible level. That sequence is one of the most dramatic and physically most intense moments in the history of the medium thanks to the fact that all elements, narrative lines and the vision converge within it and are used effectively. Cameron is no Bergman or Tarkovsky, and his descent into the abyss does not reveal any great truths about the human condition or the disturbing recesses of our minds. All of his narratives are entirely simple and actually even naïve, their core consisting of relationships and bonds between people. However, Cameron uses all of his masterful craftsmanship to bring us to our knees and convince us once again of the validity of the concept of love.