Matty

Rohmer’s friendly films are neither aggressive like Godard’s films, nor do they invite us into their world with the thoughtful warmth of Truffaut’s works. You either want to spend a few dozen minutes with them or you don’t. So far, I have found each of them to be pleasant company. Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle is divided into four chapters on the director’s favourite subjects (morality, art, faith vs. science) and its core traditionally comprises lengthy polemics without reaching any clear conclusions, which means that you can continue with them even after the credits have rolled. The film also features Paris and that traditional attraction of the city on the Seine – the arrogant waiter. 75%

What saves this film from deteriorating into a banal tear-jerker about how a proper Christian mother would never give up her child is the objective directing and realistic acting performances. Several decades of the protagonist’s life and the major “transgression” that has haunted her since her youth are presented with brutal simplicity in just a few opening shots. With its story structure comprising three separately unfolding plot levels, Mother and Child is reminiscent of the more drastic dramas of Alejandro González Iñárritu, the film’s executive producer. The non-romantic physiological approach to the sexual act brought back memories of the series Tell Me You Love Me, one of whose episodes was directed by Rodrigo García, which I hadn’t previously known. García also directed several episodes of In Treatment, which could explain the psychoanalytical nature of the film. Major dramas play out in long shots filmed with a camera that barely moves at all. But not melodramatically, at least not on the surface. The characters don’t have to scream at each other and go through terrible agony (seriously, Alejandro) in order for us to understand how they are fiercely trying to find their place in life and how they are tormented by their inability to do so. Whereas other films irritate me with their female protagonists’ carelessness in seeking and offering physical pleasure, the sex in Mother and Child struck me as a natural part of the plot development grounded in psychology. Though the final tying-up of loose ends is not 100% believable (there are somehow too many coincidences all at once), the film contains enough authentic moments, when I fully sympathised with the characters, to forgive the screenwriters for their soft-heartedness. Fate is not so merciful. 75%

A brutally minimalistic drama about a family in which communication has somewhat stagnated, which of course we don’t learn from words, but from the placement of the characters in the given space. The well-though-out long shots, when merely filling in the empty spaces in the image evokes specific emotions, are captivating. This beautifully flowing film breaks down only in its final third. However much the dream sequence and the tragicomic interlude with the robber revive viewers’ waning attention, they seem to have been taken from a completely different film. Fortunately, the restrained ending punctuated with fantastic music represents a return to the quiet atmosphere of the preceding minutes, and the previously unsettling silence takes on a new meaning. 75%

The first season is excellent. A cop whose total inner conflict borders on ancient tragedy and whose confrontations with the seductively psychopathic Alice are reminiscent of introspective glances in a mirror that reveals what you would rather keep buried deep underground. On top of that, we have unpleasantly realistic crimes, which are rather more an impetus for psychological games between the investigators and the investigated (the most frequent victims are police officers) than for the standard revelation of the killer’s identity (which is soon revealed in most cases). And of course, the devastating finale, escalated almost as intensively as the end of the third episode of Sherlock, which takes the protagonist’s unhappiness to the edge of creative sadism. With its undiluted seriousness and intensified brutality, the second season steps over that edge. It too frequently and obviously assumes that the villain will act in a certain way and, lo and behold, that’s really how the villain acts. The series’ creators make use of perhaps every cliché from super-dark crime shows, which are disparaged in A Touch of Cloth. It’s as if it was enough for them that Luther is fucked and they can no longer be bothered with further developing his character. So, they replaced Alice with a different off-the-rails yet much less interesting female character, who could at most be the protagonist’s daughter, not his dark side. Luther’s demons were more or less pacified (in the final episode, he behaves simply like a headcase, not like a man fanatically devoted to his principles) in the interest of scenes that powerfully reek of sentiment. However, the truth is that Elba, who incidentally is blessed with exactly the kind of charisma that an actor needs to play Bond, consistently hands in a phenomenal performance and some of the unpleasantly confrontational, voyeuristic shots of brutality call for a more extensive study of the depiction of violence in television detective shows. 80%

A musical treat that made me believe a few times that it’s cool to be a girl. Unfortunately, it sits a few comedic octaves below Bridesmaids, for example. Pitch Perfect doesn’t do a very convincing job of pretending to belong in the company of that film and others like it. The filmmakers attempt to use the university setting to obscure the fact that it’s just another variation on the high-school comedy for teen viewers. It’s nice that the film faces the same struggle as the protagonist (be yourself vs. go with the crowd), but it is unfortunately a very one-sided battle in which mediocrity easily overwhelms originality, whose arsenal comprises pop songs, one likable actress and dozens of seconds of intense effort to build humour on a foundation of vomit and autoeroticism. I’m giving Pitch Perfect a better three stars for its careful ridicule of the nerd cult and for Anna Kendrick. I would like to see her in a more grown-up film, something self-sufficient enough that it wouldn’t have to rip off the unrivalled The Breakfast Club and sufficiently self-confident that it wouldn’t be ashamed of its own predictability (which is a feature of the genre and you can’t save the situation if you draw attention to that fact through the mouth of one of the characters). 70%

For the first time in a long time, I found it very difficult to find in a film flash of value added, a release from stultifying intellectual dullness. Because it’s seriously not enough that this Lif of Pi is in colour and 3D. The book is not an intellectual masterpiece either, but at least it leaves a lot more room for our imagination and does not immediately cut dead the offer of an alternative interpretation by using an idiotic summary of which animal represented whom. Compared to the film with its single narrator, the book is also more distinctly structured as a contemplation of the reliability of storytelling, on the infinite adaptability of “our” stories (3.14...). In the book, we are encouraged to exercise greater caution in our judgment if we get from a given person only information that fits their version of the story. The beginning of the book, when Pi prepares the groundwork for what he will tell later, thus makes much more sense than in the film, where the beginning is basically used only to present the multiplicity of paths to higher knowledge (including ordinary earthly love, which is absent in the book and which gives the film an unnecessary melodramatic aspect). Whereas there are several narrators in the book and each of them can pursue their respective goals, e.g. “you will believe in God”, the film lets Piscine do all of the talking and thus leads us to a “religious” interpretation, which is further supported by the unambiguous, magical-realistic visual aspect. While reading the book, which doesn’t skimp on descriptions of the brutalities that man commits against animals in the interest of survival, my head was definitely not inundated with so many colours. The absolutely most powerful moment of the film is fittingly its most visually pure, when Pi merely retells the second version in words and it is up to us to imagine it in colour. Though other scenes (the sinking of the ship, the initial confrontation with Richard) are breathtaking in their execution – long shots, the rocking camera that stays in close proximity to the protagonist – they seem uneven and don’t resonate. In the end, the film offers mainly a visceral experience rather than intellectual or emotional enrichment, which is simply not enough, and the painfully high price of a 3D movie ticket doesn’t help. 65%

I understand Tarantino. It’s impossible not to love a film in which a taciturn character in a long black coat pulls a machine gun out of a coffin and mows down thirty bad guys in a matter of minutes. (In addition to that, an “ear-cutting” scene appeared in this film long before Reservoir Dogs.) Cinephilic value wins out over craftsmanship here, but not by a wide margin. Corbucci knows how a spaghetti western was supposed to look, though he adheres perhaps too conscientiously to the advice that Leone gave him during shooting, and the story – like the earlier A Fistful of Dollars – is just another variation on Yojimbo. With his pragmatic goals in a one-horse town, where only a gravedigger has a steady job, the protagonist unleashes a miniature war between two clans. In the meantime, it suffices for him to fool around with the only “available” woman in the general area (a prostitute, naturally), get brutally tortured and throw out a few lines that are drier than the throat of a cowboy lost in the middle of a prairie. The extreme depth of some shots (often dolly shots) and the building of tension for the sake of tension are not exactly evidence of a distinctive creative signature. Likewise, the soundtrack is reminiscent of Morricone and Nero looks like Eastwood, but the film is still incredibly stylish and, for its time, an incredibly brutal treat for the eyes and ears of every viewer whose creed is cynicism. 75%

A melodrama that is afraid to fully submit to its melodramatic nature. By rendering the mise-en-scéne in a theatrical manner, the film’s creators established a perfect alibi in the event that anyone wonders why they would adapt a novel about sincere love and the search for mental balance in our cynical age of virtual relationships. After all, they can defend themselves by pointing out that the whole thing is just theatre of the Russian nobility, an insular world of grand feelings. However, I have no idea how they intend to justify the degree to which this bold stylisation is superficial. The decorations, lighting and camara movements mostly serve the purpose of nonverbally expressing what has already been said in the dialogue. The duplication of information makes the film overly simply and longer than the utilised portion of the book needed to be. Also, it seems that the selection of situations from the book was subordinated to the formalistic aspect. Every pretext for more dynamic movement (dancing, ice-skating, horse races) was employed, some more than once (the unforgettable grain harvest). ___ The action on the surface draws attention away from the peculiar emotional coldness between the characters, especially Ann and Vronsky. Keira’s role suits her, even though she is too young, too slender and her hairstyle and costumes and the spotlights illuminating the stage do most of the acting for her. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, however, was cast completely against the type of the protagonist that he has to portray. No charisma, no body, no respect. His amiable smile evokes the impression of a cub, not a lion of the salons. It’s also his fault that the tension within the intellectual rather than directly amorous triangle doesn’t work, because in his lack of boldness he definitely fails to embody unbridled passion, the opposite of the settled family life from which Anna turns away for little apparent reason. The fundamental weakness of the central romantic relationship, however, lies in the filmmakers’ cluelessness in how they present Anna’s moral lapse in a way that today’s viewers will understand. They don’t want to egg her on, but they don’t want to judge her either. As a result, they show her as being emotionally agitated, not knowing what she actually wants, and consequently heading for ruin. In the book, her motivations and those of the other characters are much clearer, which is in part due to the constant “switching” of points of view, though from today’s perspective they come across as somewhat old-fashioned, which is still better than Wright’s pseudo-modernism. ___ As long as Konstantin Levin’s storyline, which is given priority even over Anna’s storyline in the book, is factored into the film, it deserves to be fleshed out to a greater extent. The quick postscript, aided by the simplest symbolism, comes across as very banal, and the male protagonist, who should have undergone the most complex character transformation, ultimately gives the impression of a well-meaning farmer who has suddenly been enlightened. Despite that, Levin’s relationship with Kitty is more convincing than Anna’s love for Vronsky. This is paradoxically due to the visually simple scenes, when the camerawork settles down and the lovers don’t even have to say anything in order for us to understand what is going on between them. In that moment, the film is actually and honestly about repressed, inexpressible love, and it doesn’t try to excuse its melodramatic nature with a theatrical arrangement. ___ Due to its preoccupation with form, regardless of how breathtaking and reminiscent of the camera dances from Ophüls’s opuses it may be in places, the film unfortunately greatly reduces the intellectual potential of the book, which is sometimes shifted to absolutely inappropriate tones (in the genre of vulgar sex scenes) in an effort to be outwardly impressive. While Tolstoy’s contemplations take the form of trivialised symbols in the film, Anna Karenina is inspiring in its new theatrical “rewrite”. The release of Levin, and briefly Anna, into the more authentic outside world, which involves more than just romantic relationships, essentially casts doubt on the meaningfulness of all sentimental dramas. Though the transitions between the inner and the outer are not handled very imaginatively, I consider the admission that there is something outside of this gleaming melodramatic aquarium to be a very telling sign of the times in which we live. Even in a film about emotional problems, those problems are no longer perceived with the same sense of urgency as they were before. ___ In the end, this Anna Karenina belongs more to Stoppard and Wright than to Tolstoy, and I’m afraid that if the director hadn’t had the foundation of a solid screenplay, he would have played around even more with the visual aspect and would have told even less of the story. All I ask is that next time he doesn’t abuse a book that still has something to say even without the forcefully added visual frills. 75%

Whereas a chamber ensemble was previously enough for Sirk, he brought a full symphony orchestra into his last American film. Imitation of Life is to classic melodrama roughly what The Searchers is to classic westerns. Crisis follows crisis, men dictate the roles women are supposed to play (sometimes literally), mothers suffer, daughters hate them, and bedposts are by far the most well-worn objects in bedrooms. If the film contains even more emblems of the genre, watching it becomes a health hazard. It is primarily a colourful textbook on how to use Hollywood style to deliver subversive messages (which resonate much longer than the explicit messages of thesis-based “films about problems”). Sirk supplemented the traditional dyad of class and gender incompatibility with the theme of racial differences. Whereas, thanks to career advancement, a white mother can give her daughter everything except maternal love, we can see in the relationship between a black mother and her daughter that the greatest maternal love is not enough in a socially unequal society. The first woman loses her daughter’s favour due to her own self-realisation; the extreme selflessness of the other woman, whose skin colour prevents her from achieving self-realisation, causes her daughter – who denies her own racial origin – to turn away from her. Both paths – career-focused and family-focused – are dead ends. Each storyline sceptically complements the other wherever a sign of hope appears. The result is a maximally disillusioning picture of a society that survives thanks only to a misguided perception of its own strength and invincibility. At the time, radical social changes, for which Imitation of Life could easily serve as a modest model in an alternate universe, were only a few years away. 90%

“Psychopaths sell like hotcakes,” Joe Gills said sixty years ago. It’s evident that Hollywood’s affection for psychopaths has only grown since then. Seven Psychopaths is an original postmodern pun (the only film I can think to compare it to is Kitano’s Sonatine) about which probably no one can offer better commentary than Martin McDonagh, who does so through the mouths of his characters. The film’s main value added, the ceaseless self-reflective revealing of the rules according to which films about psychopaths (i.e. a significant part of American cinema) function, raises doubts about how seriously the serious moments should be taken. Whereas In Bruges was gripping as both an existential drama and a brutal black-humour thriller, Seven Psychopaths doesn’t stick around long enough in either genre for the scenes to have a proper emotional effect. The transitions from serious etudes on the topic of “I kill people, but otherwise I’m also human” to gore farce are smooth and the actors play their roles in just the right way that you sympathise with them a little, laugh at them a bit and kind of want to kill them. However, these transitions are constant and sometimes are obviously added in only so that the film doesn’t just go with the flow and come across as ordinary. A drop of normality in this ocean of madness could serve well as evidence that the film’s creator means something seriously and as an emotional point of reference that elevates the film above the level of an evening’s entertainment. However, this is still first-rate entertainment of the with many levels and boasting one of the best (multi)genre screenplays since Inglourious Basterds. 80%