JFL

This inconspicuous jewel of the Hong Kong New Wave may not shine as dazzlingly as the genre experiments or social dramas of other key filmmakers, but it is an even more essential work for Hong Kong society. Allen Fong masterfully deceives the viewers by seemingly offering them a nostalgic melodrama about growing up in Hong Kong in the 1950s and ’60s. But behind the façade of shenanigans and vignettes of the everyday life of the lower social classes, who pounded studiousness and diligence into their children’s heads, which gave rise to the middle class, there is a bittersweet indictment of the patriarchy, which survives as a system across generations, sustained by the broken dreams and lost opportunities of individuals. The trickiest yet most eloquent aspect of the film remains the character of the father, who is not depicted as a despot, but rather as kind and caring. This is an ingenious and chilling variation on the subgenre of melodramas about the relationship between fathers and sons, which was popular in the 1950s. In those films, the idealised fathers sacrifice themselves for their sons and families, who then show them gratitude. Father and Son, on the other hand, shows that sons and especially daughters – who are intentionally yet meaningfully side-lined in the film, as they were in their lives – sacrificed their dreams, talents and futures for fathers who stubbornly sought to fulfil the role of patriarchs who provide for their offspring (not in the material sense, but in terms of career). The classic values of Hong Kong society, with familial solidarity and diligence at the fore, thus take on a touch of bitterness.

Besides several endangered and rare species, Planet Czechia presents us with one species that is unfortunately overly abundant. This is the aggrieved Czech guy with an inferiority complex. The film’s marketing is artfully deceptive, because instead of nature and animals in the Czech Republic, the documentary is more about the Czech Republic itself and the Czech guy documenting its natural environment. So it really pisses him off that some foreigners came long before him with projects like Planet Earth and thus stole his thunder. We also learn that everyone at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts considered him to be a weirdo who shot scenes at home by a pond on old black-and-white film stock and his daughters don’t show enough respect for his passion. But as we know from the subsequent success of Planet Czechia in the cinemas, everything has a happy ending, because that guy made a movie with which he outsmarted everyone else, struck a chord with both eco-liberals and conservative nationalists, made a boatload of money and showed what a great dad he is. In addition to all of that, the film also contains some very nice shots of animals and a few arguably simplistic bits of trivia passed off as ecology. Only the repetitive shots of copulating animals make the whole thing a bit more of a bizarre spectacle. Couldn’t there be a special edition in which it’s really just nature and optional scientific commentary instead of the egocentric oration of the filmmaker, which paradoxically makes it clear that, for him, nature takes a back seat to his own recognition?

I wonder if Disney, following the example of certain video-game developers that built into their games extra bugs that are activated only in pirated versions, released into the world an intentionally faulty version for those who will watch its VoD flagship elsewhere. Otherwise, I can’t explain the fact that, while most people root at the fan-service trough, I – despite expectations – saw a series of absurdly pathetic scenes cobbled together by an unprecedentedly hopeless screenplay. If the aim was to return to the trashy fairy-tale roots of the oldest trilogy, then Favreau overshot the mark by several galaxies into worlds where Ed Wood and David A. Prior are considered to be refined masters of sophisticated narratives. Sure, I see the inspiration of spaghetti westerns and samurai films, as well as variations on ensemble origin flicks spread out across the series, but that really doesn’t add anything beyond the framework in which viewers can feel terribly clever because they recognise it. The Mandalorian focuses on superficially cool and cute moments, genre allusions and hinting at races and worlds to such an extent that it completely forgets that it should have at least a somewhat functional screenplay, not in terms of structure, but purely in terms of internal causality and logic. The load of hokum, which a five-year-old would be embarrassed by when making up a story for a battle between his action figures, only cuts the rug out from under the series’ feet with illogical twists for the sake of twists and lets the characters behave like retards. I imagine the genesis of this project, wherein Disney’s big kahunas came together in a wild orgy of bullshit and began to brainstorm what it would look like if Andy Sidaris, James Nguyen, Donald G. Jackson and Charles Band got their hands on Star Wars. They came up with the whole thing and then the next day they found the scenarios that they had sweated out during their coke binge. But they decided to have them shot by normal, skilled filmmakers. And therein lies The Mandalorian’s greatest failure – if it had been shot by the aforementioned directors, it would have at least been properly unintentionally fun, and not just appallingly stupid. At least Gina Carano, Werner Herzog, Richard Ayoade and Taika Waititi can make rent for a while and perhaps do something proper thanks to their involvement here. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper of baby Yoda. This is the way.

At the first fleeting glance, Cold War is the opposite of Ida. Though it could seem that Pawlikowski, following the success of his inconspicuous breakout film, is banking on festival success and awards, Cold War is surprising in how it differs from Ida in every respect, except for the basic foundation of a purely personal theme and the reflection of Polish historical and moral tragedy through that theme. Nevertheless, this level lies rather on another plane this time and the screen belongs predominantly to a destructive yet elemental romance. It cannot be denied that Pawlikowski has Cold War thought out in detail, thanks to which he does not slide into mannerisms or mere copying of Ida. The storytelling through music, linking the romantic and socio-political storylines with the central motif of music, and the conceptual use of the classic format and primarily the interplay of all of the above-mentioned elements in the interest of the work’s dramaturgy and its narration prove that Pawlikowski is a brilliant director who has matured in the course of his own creative renaissance. Of course, the question arises as to what he will come up with next and whether he will go in a new stylistic direction, or if he will continue to stand at the fore of festival nostalgia following the peak era of auteur filmmaking (at which Marhoul’s The Painted Bird also stands). However, it is also necessary to recognise that Cold War (like The Painted Bird) cannot be viewed in a limited way as a mere assemblage of allusions, as these represent the absolute last of the merits of this refined and emotionally pulsating film.

The case of Pawlikowski and Ida shows in practice the validity of the age-old maxim that talent without a theme is nothing, or rather that the most impressive works are created when the creators look into themselves and focus on personal themes. Before Ida, Pawlikowski was a solid, but in no way essential, filmmaker with a long career in essayistic documentaries for the BBC and in independent genre-festival circles. Ida reflects his own renaissance as a man and artist in connection with tragic events in his family life and the apparent balance of his own identity and existence as an emigrant whom his mother took from Poland to Great Britain when he was an adolescent. Pawlikowski conceived Ida as a reflection of Poland with its ethically problematic history and injustices perpetrated against others, which, unlike the film and its heroine, the country has never dealt with. Through the personal dimension, however, Ida does not fall into the historical thesis of guilt, but instead remains an intimate film about freedom, the crossroads that one comes to in life and the power of personal choice, regardless of how impermissible that choice may seem with respect to categories. At the same time, the chosen stylisation with the use of a classic format and black-and-white picture is an open tribute to cinema at the time in which the film is set, while concurrently using the existing expressive lexicons for its own ends (as is clear not only from the conceptually meaningful use of static and moving shots, but also from the claustrophobic framing, which gradually transforms into details at the close of the film). It remains a paradox that following global success and an Oscar victory, Poland appropriated as its calling card a film about accepting and coming to terms with the past, and thus discovering new strength for one’s own life, i.e. things that Poland’s society and government essentially refuse to do.

When Kevin Smith, who has been making increasingly inferior films for the past 20 years, jokes about Kevin Smith making pointless films, he is far from committing an ingenious act of self-reflection by marching out his former collaborators and recalling sequences from his successful films. Rather, the self-reflection here is as toothless and superficial as Smith’s musings about Hollywood, comic-book blockbusters, franchises and reboots, as well as the vulgar humour found here. Paradoxically, the only thing appealing about this class reunion following his heart attack is Smith’s unusually touching thoughts on parenthood and what it has to offer.

As a declared metaphor for power relations and exploitation across ethnicities in the context of society, Mundruczó’s White God is too ponderous and naïve. It could even be said that the project got out of control like the dogs in the film and the director got swept away by the challenges of implementing it and the potential for spectacle at the expense of the message. But what if the thing that some criticise Mundruczó for is actually the essence that he is increasingly working toward achieving. What if he is indeed the European equivalent of Cuarón, who does not deny his humble roots, but is rather gradually working his way up to ever more ambitious and elaborate projects? His earlier films already contained the seeds of high-concept art, to which he has added a blockbuster production dimension in his more recent projects. Whereas White God is embarrassing as an Eastern European festival film, it is sufficiently subversive and though-provoking as a Euro-art variation on the Hollywood dog melodrama. Primarily, however, it remains an absolute phenomenon and, in terms of production, an outstanding work that fascinates with the tenacity of the analogue rendering of its sequences, which anyone else would have immediately rejected or handled with digital effects. Even a solitary work can look like this.

After all of those painfully generic, would-be serious comic-book movies abounding with pathos and artificial CGI sequences, we finally have a properly entertaining flick from the superhero universe. Let’s just admit that only Nolan has managed to deal with superheroes in a truly complex way and everyone else is merely pretending to bring depth to the genre. And that clownish Deadpool, with its insipid “bloody R-rating” mythos is not an alternative, but just the other side of the same coin. Fortunately, salvation has come in the form of Harley Quinn’s solo movie, which is everything that comic books have traditionally been, without being what comic-book movies have been for the past twenty years. Here we again finally have a trashy, colourful and superficial farce with crackpot characters in a maniacal world. Furthermore, after those decades of CGI blockbusters (especially comic-book flicks) pushing action movies out of cinemas, Birds of Prey marks the return of proper kinetic and physical action spectacle (thus capping the trend started by the Mission: Impossible and John Wick franchises). Whereas other comic-book blockbusters have completely superficial action that is never memorable, Birds of Prey offers up several imaginatively designed and magnificently executed sequences with astonishing choreography by Chad Stahelski – the police station sequence is the highlight, but the carnival fun-house passage at the end is also great. This film does not entirely refrain from indulging in some tediously shallow CGI scenes, though fortunately only at the level of simulated exteriors. On the other hand, the film’s main virtue consists in the good, classic analogue work done by the people in the make-up, costume, set and action-choreography departments, as well as in the casting, of course. I very much hope that the incel whiners don’t win and that Harley Quinn gets another movie, because this is exactly what the contemporary bland production of comic-book flicks needs: A cheeky girl who isn’t saving the world in another dull spectacle, but just saving her own ass in a playfully trashy and boldly colourful fairy tale, a girl who knows how to swing a baseball bat and fire a grenade launcher, and who mainly loves an egg cheese sandwich (which, incidentally, is an essential defining moment for the character, as well as a great contribution to the home recipe book).

On the one hand, this stiffly sympathetic project deserves praise for the fact that, unlike a number of documentary films with a similar focus, it does not attempt to squeeze itself into pre-standardised runtime. Thanks to this, the filmmakers also manage to incorporate a full range of aspects of their subject, such as the VHS era and the subsequent transformation of action films in the 1990s and 2000s, though a lot of things still apparently wound up on the cutting-room floor (particularly Hong Kong and Asian action films, which were mentioned in the trailers but are only marginally covered in the documentary itself). The filmmakers do not conceal their fanhood, which makes their their work pleasing, but on the other hand it offers nothing new or rather nothing that hasn’t been said in greater detail elsewhere (with a few exceptions). In the end, what is left is an excursion into the bitterness and sorrow of the stars of third-rate straight-to-video productions such as Matthias Hues and Cynthia Rothrock, while the minimal inclusion of Al Leong is regrettable and it is absurd how much space is given to the hack Sam Firstenberg and his overblown exaggerations. On the other hand, however, the accounts given by Carolco founder Mario Kassar are outstanding and Scott Adkins rightfully comes across as the nicest guy around. If we are satisfied with the fact that this is intended to be a melancholy tribute to the big and small hits of the 1980s US strain of the action genre or the filmic result of one fan making himself happy and visiting most of his stars, then the result can be satisfying. For those who also want some informational value or inspiring insights from a documentary, there is the French project on the same topic, ’80s Blockbusters: When Hollywood Played Tough, which characteristically offers the commentary of more film critics and historians.

Only a malevolent saboteur or hopeless amateur could turn an all-star action film into an exercise in missed opportunities. Unfortunately, Jesse V. Johnson has written himself into the memory of martial-arts film fans as an incompetent who buried the film that was supposed to be the most spectacular hit of the new millennium. Furthermore, it actually could have been just such a hit because, unlike the geriatric and senile The Expendables, this film brings together the biggest names and strongest talents of the West and Far East who are martial-arts practitioners themselves. If this had been put into the hands of someone who knew how to shoot fight sequences, such as Isaac Florentine, let alone Chad Stahelski, it would have been adrenaline nirvana. Johnson, however, completely wastes both the skills of his actors and the work of the chief choreographer when he incomprehensibly sets the film’s climax in the dark and focuses more on his backlighting gimmick than on the attraction of the martial arts on display and the pairing of the stars against each other. Furthermore, here and in other scenes, he holds the camera too close, so that the skills of those involved and the dimensions of the scene cannot make a sufficient impression.