Matty

Tin Star is a modern noir western with gradually rising gangster elements (Several times I was reminded of Anthony Mann’s dark westerns and Cronenberg’s A History of Violence). Rowan Joffe previously wrote the excellent The American and the rather lousy thriller Before I Go to Sleep. Tin Star shares an existential heaviness with the former and a fondness for B-movie plot twists with the latter. Of course, Joffe is largely aware of the trashiness of his own work and manages to deal with the clichés he uses in an original way, so there is no lack of desired (perverse) humour. As the headline of one IMDb review says: "enjoyable but silly". Nevertheless, I can imagine that for some viewers, who require a (psycho)logical explanation of what they see and hear at all costs, the odd tone of the series (excellently captured in the title of the first episode, “Fun and (S)laughter”) will be too "silly" and not so “enjoyable”. ___ The story is based on well-known situations (the sheriff comes to restore order in a town under the control of a corrupt oil company; a recovered alcoholic starts drinking again; a father avenges his son's death), but those situations develop in unexpected directions or are combined in imaginative ways. Perhaps no character, regardless of how much of a caricature he may appear to be at first, is so unambiguous and predictable in the end. Almost all of them are hiding some dark secret whose gradual unveiling, together with the exemplary cliff-hangers, forces you to keep watching. ___ I also appreciated the degree of patience with which the whole series is directed, including the care put into the composition of every shot. Many of the shots are unusually long, based on the gradual revealing of new information, or rather on the fact that we don’t have access to certain information because the camera follows a single character. A number of scenes start earlier and end later than is necessary to say what needs to be said (which sounds like a terrible banality, but it has a fundamental impact on the atmosphere of the series). The occasionally ostentatious incorporation of landscapes into the narrative is reminiscent of westerns and the visual leitmotif comprises shots with the characters placed precisely in the middle of a symmetrical composition, which feels unnatural and adds to the protagonists’ unease. ___ On the other hand, ten episodes are too many. Some less-essential storylines are developed in the second half and draw attention away from what the series does best, thanks in part to the indefatigable Tim Roth – an honest portrayal of a self-destructive man who takes control of his life through what is simultaneously destroying it. If the characters were not forced by the script to make sometimes rather stupid (and, with respect to their characterisation, inconsistent) decisions and let themselves be controlled by their emotions, the series would probably be more balanced and cohesive. Due to my concerns that this dilution will continue, I’m not looking forward to the second season (which, due to the open ending, seems highly probable) with overly high hopes. ____ However, I'd definitely give Tin Star a chance, at least the first three episodes (the third one is clearly the best thanks to the ingenious alternation of two different time planes), especially if you like gritty westerns and Tim Roth.

I am not able to rate this film, but I basically don’t have a problem with the statement of a man who summed it up after a midnight screening with the sentence, “Definitely better than Cries and Whispers.”

After a few solid but not outstanding episodes, this episode of Rick and Morty is a return to form (thanks, among other things, to the shocking final revelation referencing the Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind episode from the first season) that finally fulfils the promise of the darkest season (in the context of the preceding events, the most depressing part is the paradoxically laid-back post-credits). It is brilliant social and anti-capitalist satire (about class conflict and the struggle with one’s own potential) with a mix of hard-boiled detective story, political thriller and King’s Stand by Me, taking the locution and a world composed of two kinds of people to a tragicomic extreme. With the masterful alternation of narrators, the episode is reminiscent of Robert Altman’s multi-perspective dramas, of which it is also reminiscent in its depth of thought. And yes, I realise I’m comparing the work of a five-time Oscar-nominated legend of American cinema to a twenty-two-minute episode of an Adult Swim animated series dubbed by a single actor. But if I make a year-end list of the best TV-series episodes, this one will definitely be in the top five.

Forget about Shirley Clarke, John Cassavetes and Barbara Loden – this is the purest example of independent American filmmaking. Though it is de facto a narrative film, it’s nearly a structural film. The film’s dominant aspects are shots/sequences lasting many minutes, multiple takes with a static camera, alternation or rather combining of black-and-white and colour images, loose causality (scenes do not necessarily follow each other in the order in which we see them), improvised acting, compression of time (a fifteen-minute uninterrupted scene in a bedroom covers a longer period of time than would correspond to its length), repeated shots, long scenes in which the image recedes into the background (because we see only the darkness or the passing road) and country ballads. The aesthetic radicalism is in part the result of guerrilla filmmaking. With a budget of barely three thousand dollars, this road movie was written, directed, shot on an eight-millimetre camera (all sound was thus added in post-production) and edited by Jon Jost, who also composed, recorded and performed the music. His critique of masculinity coping with new social challenges is even more forceful than in some New Hollywood films (Taxi Driver, Fingers). If you can find within yourself enough empathy to recognise something likable about a homophobic misogynist with opinions straight from the settling of the Wild West (“all women are pussy”), the shocking conclusion will convince you of what a big mistake it was to try and understand this boorish cowboy. Like Gary Gilmore, whose life loosely inspired the film, Tom resigned himself to integration into the system and came to terms with his role of being socially rootless. Western iconography points out to us that his aggressive and sexist speech represents an update of the values on which modern America was built. The film thus manages to disconcert the unprepared viewer even more than does its experimental form, emptiness of plot and one disturbing shot with a rabbit. 70%

“They’re going to know what we want them to know.” Logan Lucky is an inventive and humorous mix of a social drama from working-class life and a heist film, a prison-escape flick and a movie about swindling, where mainly the viewer is the one being conned. There is no traditional antagonist whom the protagonists would try to outwit. It is not until the final act that the narrative is enhanced with a character who goes for the throat of the gang around Jimmy (and who is played by an actress famous enough for you to suspect that she won’t simply give up), thanks to which the film is thrilling even after the action. Soderbergh doesn’t cut directly to the chase and, in the opening part of the film, spends a relatively long time on developing the characters and fleshing out their social environment (thus the two-hour runtime makes sense), which he puts to good use in the emotionally charged climax, when I found myself alternating between emotion, amusement and (eventually) dismay in quick succession. Thanks to meaningful “backstories”, understandable motivations and a well-chosen cast, Logan Lucky, unlike other crime comedies, doesn’t lose its persuasiveness even when it asks us to sympathise with characters who sometimes say and do strange things, but for the most part, they are not one-dimensional comedic characters and their behaviour is relatively consistent throughout the film. Even charmingly bizarre, mostly unexplained moments, such as the password “cauliflower” and the taking of a bag from the “bear’, and moments that are entertaining because they are explained in too much detail (making a bomb out of gummy bears) fit flawlessly with the poetic nature of the film. As usual, Soderbergh takes extra care to ensure that nothing that happens in the film comes across as random (without motivation). As gradually becomes apparent, the film is well thought out down to the smallest detail. Soderbergh very skilfully utilises the protagonist’s favourite song, the character of his former classmate, the fact that he doesn’t own a mobile telephone and the special “salt” that Joe Bang sprinkles on his boiled eggs. The careful composition with very clever distribution of information goes hand in hand with Soderbergh’s patient direction of individual scenes. He knows exactly when to cut (and, conversely, when to stay in one place with the camera), where to place the camera so that the shot not only tells us everything important but is also funny, and how to shoot action so that we don’t lose our bearings in the given space. Logan Lucky may appear to be a mere first-class genre movie, but it offers so many premium “services” that I have no problem giving it a full five-star rating and ranking it among this year’s most satisfying cinematic experiences. 90%

American Made is a very straightforward crime comedy without any major stumbling blocks and it makes no effort to face us with any difficult moral dilemmas. It conspicuously imitates the style of Scorsese’s films (pop songs, a narrator intervening in the story and determining what we see and how we see it, attention-grabbing camerawork and editing) and cashes in on the popularity of the TV series Narcos, so it comes across as unoriginal and predictable, but thanks to the smooth (albeit slightly mechanical) narrative and Cruise’s charisma, it is entertaining from start to finish. The position of the main protagonist is unusual (for a Hollywood movie), as he lets himself be dragged along by circumstances and merely accepts outside offers and follows orders dictated to him through almost the entire film. He can demonstrate his ingenuity only in the way he carries out deliveries of certain goods, not in what he actually does. It would almost be possible to interpret him as the embodiment of American pragmatism, the ability to adapt to the given situation and make the most of it for himself, but we know too much about him (compared to the other characters, who are really only types) to perceive him in such an impersonal way, and relatively strong emphasis is placed on the family storyline (which, however, the film handles much more carelessly than The Wolf of Wall Street, for example – you will probably care as little about the protagonist’s wife and children as you did for Barry). Of the films that “comfort” us with the fact that people may be bad, but their governments are worse (War Dogs, American Hustle), this one gets bonus points in my eyes for taking the procedural side of things into greater consideration and for not pretending to be anything better. It’s simply light summer macho entertainment that does everything possible to keep the viewer from getting bored for even a second and, unlike Atomic Blonde and The Hitman’s Bodyguard, it does that very well. 70%

If I were twelve years old and saw this movie on basic cable on a Saturday night, I would be thrilled. But I’m not twelve anymore and I saw it at the cinema. Shane Black, who fundamentally influenced the form of modern buddy movies, understood that if you want to make movies like Lethal Weapon today, you can’t take either yourself or the film seriously (see the third Iron Man and The Nice Guys). There are tendencies toward self-awareness in The Hitman’s Bodyguard (though there is sometimes a very fine line between “it’s terribly stupid, you know it’s terribly stupid, and we know that you know” and simply “it's terribly stupid”), but the film handles them terribly inconsistently. Besides the almost parodic scenes (the apocalypse is unfolding behind Michael while he calmly continues his monologue) there are moments of simple exaggeration that are supposed to be touching or, in the worst case, to tell of pseudo-fictional war crimes (given the context, I found the storyline with Dukhovich to be rather tasteless). The characters suffer from the same identity crisis. They sometimes behave like people educated by genre clichés, but in a number of other respects, they just predictably follow conventions and make stupid mistakes. The narrative repeatedly loses momentum due to the unsuccessful attempt to humanise the two characters through their relationship with the dear better half and a more or less serious explanation of how they became the people they are (the flashback to Darius’s first murder, for example, is simply out of place due to its reverent tone). This constant relationship-counselling philosophising, even in moments when the protagonists are clearly short on time, is not skilfully integrated into the ongoing action and serves only to extend the runtime – the main storyline grinds to a halt so that the men can wallow in their feelings and whine a little. The pace is thus fairly uneven and the film seems to be much longer than it actually is. The level is raised significantly by the long action sequences in Amsterdam and The Hague, which have the appropriate verve and wit, even though they are horribly edited and don’t really move the narrative anywhere (well, except when the characters move from one place to another). But then comes the haphazard (in terms of special effects, the screenplay and the acting) final act, which basically negates the preceding hundred minutes (in the end, everything is resolved in a completely different way than what the story had been leading up to the whole time) and the whole film goes steeply downhill. The Hitman’s Bodyguard could have been an excellent high-concept action movie with a pair of charismatic actors (of which Jackson is the dominant force in the film) and a ’90s feel, if it didn’t so clumsily defend its overwrought B-movie nature and add importance in a way that takes all of the fun out of it. 50%

Despite Baby Driver’s occasional stumble and inconsistent perspective, I consider making an action film in which almost everything happens to the rhythm of the music that the protagonist is listening to or based on the current mood or occasion to be a great way to revive the musical genre (and, at the same time, to subversively foist it off on viewers who otherwise ignore musicals and for whom the year’s best film so far this year is Fast & Furious 8). We can reproach Wright for not being stylistically distinctive (he previously edited The World’s End), for not being capable of working with female characters, and, unlike his great filmmaking role-model Quentin Tarantino, for remaining, even in his forties, an immature nerd with a weakness for autotelic fetishisation of movie references (the road passing by like in Lost Highway, damaged sunglasses like those worn by Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde) and repeatedly telling the same story about protagonists who have to grow up but can continue to have fun in essentially the same way, inhabiting their escapist worlds while being tremendously cool. Or we can simply enjoy an original summer blockbuster with a great soundtrack and some incredibly high-octane action scenes. Since I have no plans to grow up yet, at least in relation to pop culture, I choose the second option. 85%

The Longest Day is a lavish war spectacle whose multi-perspective, novel-like structure presents an extraordinarily complex picture of the famous landing. From the beginning, the film cuts in parallel between men of different ranks and nationalities, each of whom has access to different information, which significantly helps to build tension. On the one hand, we don’t want the Germans to know when the Allies are going to attack, while at the same time we hope for the members of the French Resistance, for example, to be informed of the invasion in time. Victory can be achieved only with proper synchronisation. Thanks to the film’s long runtime, we can be gradually introduced to all of the main characters (although you will later recognise them by the famous faces of the actors portraying them rather than by their names), but emphasis is placed primarily on the operation itself and its individual steps, not on the psychology of the characters and their emotional lives. This is a similarly fascinating procedural ensemble war-movie event as offered by The Guns of Navarone a year earlier and Where Eagles Dare several years later. In comparison to those films, however, The Longest Day focuses more on conveying historical facts as faithfully as possible (within the limits of the genre and Hollywood narrative), thus anticipating the docudramas that would come into fashion somewhat later. Thanks to the focus on what is essential, the film is also action-packed. Something important is happening, or at least about to happen, at almost all times. Some of the mass scenes, obviously shot with hundreds of extras running around on the beach, are breathtaking not only in their sweeping scope, but also in the virtuosity of the direction (one continuous aerial shot of fighting taking place on both sides of the river is especially outstanding). The occasional comedic moments (the passing nuns) and the dialogue scenes between the soldiers (which don’t push the “big story” anywhere) thus provide viewers a welcome chance to catch their breath. Due to the nature of the project and the time when it was made, the concept of war is relatively black-and-white. In particular, the American soldiers are flawless heroes, killing is inevitable and does not evoke ambivalent feelings, and the nihilistic epilogue in the form of the final bit of dialogue comes too late. But even a strong allergy to John Wayne and heroic celebrations of virility won’t stop you from enjoying how skilfully the film is constructed and how its construction is in some ways reminiscent of (among others) Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. 80%

Though Nolan’s previous films were more refined in terms of narrative and intellectually more ambitious, their ostentatious structure often overshadowed emotion. Dunkirk, which stays more grounded in a number of respects, is his most functional prototype of the epic movie that Hollywood currently needs, a major film that you will want to see not only in a technically well-equipped cinema (preferably IMAX), but also repeatedly. Thanks to Nolan’s focused direction, everything in the film is subordinated to the maximum sensory experience, the intensity of which rises with each viewing, as you become better oriented in the temporal relationships between the individual storylines and can experience more while working less on solving the narratological puzzle. Dunkirk is intoxicating, dizzying and unrelenting in its intensity from start to finish. (Viewed three times in the cinema, of which IMAX twice.) 90%