JFL

The most inventive manoeuvre of this renowned Danish public television series consists in the fact that it draws attention to an impartial look behind the scenes of politics and the media, though it doesn’t actually show what politics is, but rather what it should be. It is up to the viewers to work out the contrast of the political storyline and the approach of the series’ female protagonist toward real politicians. At the same time, however, the screenplays never slide into naiveté, but rather allow Birgitte Nyborg to follow a fundamental arc from idealist to an uncompromising politician hardened by government wrangling and frequently forced to undertake compromises that are incompatible with her original beliefs. Whereas its genre cousin House of Cards is built on the preconceptions of the malevolence and corruption of politics, thus justifying viewers’ distancing of themselves from politics, The Fortress is by contrast essentially political at its core and motivates viewers to take a closer look at the political situation and to be more active as voters. At the same time, through individual political problems addressed in individual episodes, which are didactically presented from both sides of the argument, it shows viewers the contrast of moral, well-considered approaches and blind attitudes. In the third season, the storyline follows the same principle in focusing on the world of the media, particularly according to the legal statutes, and meaningfully shows the plague of contemporary government by managers who assess everything on an absurd scale of performance. In so doing, the series basically builds on a compelling drama, thus drawing in even those who had previously been completely indifferent to politics and the media.

The story of Lída Baarová holds the potential for a great historical film, as well as for reflection on the essentially Czech and still unaddressed issue of the moral considerations of life under totalitarianism, or rather the national guilt of ethically ambivalent everyday existence under the past regimes. However, none of that comes across in this highly ridiculous yet soul-crushing mess. In the few scenes where the film touches on the life of Lída Baarová and her career in Nazi Germany, it offers up an insipid illustration in the best case, though it rather relies on superficial exploitation of the audience’s prejudices. The Nazi leaders, the Czech collaborators and finally the unhinged mother and the young journalist are probably intended to be great roles, but they never rise above the level of ridiculously stiff caricature. In addition to the passages with Goebbels, which go far beyond the boundaries of camp thanks to the overwrought acting, writing and directing, the film contains nonsensical sequences that take Baarová’s story into unexpected genre realms. Of these, the one that stands out the most is the etude that seems to have been cut out of a vulgar teen comedy, which is appropriately highlighted by the casting of Jiří Mádl. The narrative is another story. It takes a step toward the concept of an unreliable narrator, but due to its haphazardness, it ends up being a mere pile of nonsensical, impotently literal and boorishly phantasmagorical scenes that reek of paper, cocaine and stupidity. As a result, The Devil’s Mistress is neither a great biographical film nor powerful Nazisploitation, nor an ethical drama, nor just ordinary trash. Rather, it’s just a disarming fiasco whose main constants are poor judgment and incompetence. On the other hand, the project apparently had at least some ambition to show a controversial figure of 20th-century Czech history in a different light than as a demonised collaborator (though the image of a starlet blinded by love and her own fame is barely more flattering). Paradoxically, the film itself became a subject of controversy in modern Czech culture due to the involvement of neo-Nazis, the expenditure of enormous sums, which was definitely not apparent on the screen, and the strange sell-out in the form of a VIP-studded premiere, which in line with the phrase “life imitates art” mirrored the scene of a premiere with Goebbels in attendance. But perhaps in a few decades, the case of Renč, Hubač and Landa will serve as a preview for a similarly disorderly film that will show them as tragic greats blinded by their love for tyrants and themselves.

The tense and overwrought nature of its peripeteias, characters and twists found in The Absent One goes beyond the boundaries on common genre trash to the level of superficially gloomy and coarse comic books for would-be adults. And that’s not even to mention the exploitatively poisonous venting of aggression toward the golden youths and higher social circles, which are depicted here as a rabble of amoral perverts and sadists that make the bad guys from Garth Ennis’s cult films look good. The narrative agitatedly piles up their deviant excesses so viewers can vent their anger in a properly plebs-satisfying medieval spirit.

One of the commonly stated advantages of modern series over films consists in the possibility to better structure the narrative on a longer framework and, in connection with that, to develop the characters and depict them in a much more comprehensive manner than is possible with the limited runtime of a feature film. For this MTV-produced post-apocalyptic fantasy for teenagers, that principle is turned on its head, when the overall dramaturgy and the narrative structure are shaped according to the broadcast or, said more precisely, the placement of advertising blocks. Instead of the concentrated and conceptually escalating narratives of high-quality TV, we have here individual episodes divided into short films separated by advertising blocks, which have to roll out a single twist and end it with a cliff-hanger, all in the space of ten to fifteen minutes. In addition to that, the highlighted large budget for one episode seems rather ridiculous, when it is quite evident that instead of the contemporary blockbusters that the creators want to approximate at least in terms of the promotional element, the series has more in common with the Corman school of trash. The few CGI units soon become hackneyed, when it becomes apparent that it’s the same landscape, only with different camera movement and the money thus squandered is offset by shooting in generic exteriors and two or three interiors (or why nearly ever dialogue scene takes place by the elves’ tree), and that’s not even to mention the general dragging out of the runtime with blathering as opposed to the promised attractions and spectacles.

Among the films riding the coattails of Star Wars, the Roger Corman-produced Battle Beyond the Stars is entertaining, yet surprisingly self-conscious meta trash. Everyone knows that Lucas borrowed the essential elements of his story from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, so this time the filmmakers helped themselves to the master’s greatest classic, The Magnificent Seven, i.e. Seven Samurai ;). They did not conceal the model they followed and thus the central planet is called Akira and the cast even includes Robert Vaughn from The Magnificent Seven, who almost literally copies his character from the classic western. In addition to that, Battle Beyond the Stars is as entertaining as a naïve fairy tale tacked together in a frenzy which, instead of the epic and spectacular nature of Lucas’s saga, places its bets on hackneyed clichés, a handful of superficial jokes, attempts at pathos and, primarily, an absurd squad of characters. The cast itself is a source of considerable amusement, when the more deserving, or at least more experienced, actors such as Robert Vaughn, John Saxon and George Peppard coast along, while naïve young performers like Richard Thomas, star of the TV series The Waltons, and Sybil Danning dressed in silly costumes act as if their lives depend on it, because they think this will be their big break. The most surprising thing is the momentary flashes of creative ingenuity, which, thanks to the disjointed episodic narrative, come completely unexpectedly, such as the motif involving Sador’s hand. The film’s primary weakness is the space combat scenes, which, despite the ridiculously zealous acting of all involved, simply lack a spatial concept, since Corman did not splash out on the budget, so action shots couldn’t have more than one ship at the same time. In the end, as with a number of other Corman films, it is appropriate to remember that the king of B-movies actually built modern Hollywood – the future renowned animator Jimmy T. Murakami, John Sayles, James Horner, James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd first came together behind the camera on the set of Battle Beyond the Stars.

IgamOgam, an animated series created in the Welsh studio Calon, is one of the most original and playful shows for young children. At first glance, the openminded viewer will get inventive animation combining the technique of stop-motion animation with minor elements of cartoon animation and computer post-production. The main benefit consists in the overall presentation and development of the characters, led by the titular heroine, who is not a venomously pink princess, but a properly cheeky and mischievous little girl. The individual episodes focus on mastering the interaction of children with their parents and their surroundings, but the creators approached this theme not from the perspective of despotic parental rationality, but from the perspective of children who, like IgamOgam, are carefree and playful, as well as stubborn and egocentric, all at the same time.

As a wiseman once said, the problem with satire is that there are too many idiots who take it as a validation of their way of life. Married with Children is brilliant swipe at the lifestyle of the lower middle class and gender stereotypes in particular. In later season, it is also ingeniously self-reflective and caricaturises not only the stereotypes of "the American way", but also the media pillars that shape it.

Michel is an absurdly dadaist, deadpan series that shows that being normal is nonsense, while the ideal embodiment of this principle is everyone’s favourite titular hero – a croaking, furry, little green being with four eyes, who really likes to feast on shoes and pigeons. You know, it’s for kids.

This grand homoerotic epic show that the military is not a nanny opens up the taboo topic of the inner suffering of generals who must stay in the rear and cannot plough through the waves of pathos and indulge in torturous heroism with the soldiers they sent into battle. Stylistically, this North Korean war/action film stands astride the crushing didacticism of propaganda (always virtuous and exemplary heroes of Kim’s army versus unkempt South Korean villains who smoke and hit the bottle in every scene) and the popcorn of trashy Italian war films like The Inglorious Bastards, which evidently strongly inspired its creators.

Hell on the Battleground is a pure distillation of David A. Prior. It is evidently a film that he had always wanted to make and, following the success of Deadly Prey, finally got the funding for it. For the first and, peculiarly, last time, he came up with his own story uncontaminated by genre rather than a mere paraphrase of recent hits and bizarre pastiches. This time, he presents a story straight from his own crazy green heart about the fact that war is hell, though it also makes heroes out of men and gives their lives meaning. With the characteristically intended seriousness and impassioned tone of the project, Prior sets aside the overall framework borrowed from Buster Keaton, which he brilliantly utilised in Deadly Prey, and rather conceives the narrative with often Bresson-like purity. He transforms his ensemble of trashy non-actors led by the Holy Trinity of Fritz Matthews, Ted Prior and David Campbell, into archetypes of war epics. By limiting the expressions of his “models”, which he allows to be heard in long shots of non-verbal reactions, always by all members of the unit in succession, he emphasises the automatism of the difficulties of war, which he further thematises with numerous sequences of random mechanical gunfire. Like the French classic, the patron of trash also intersperses his most significant work with sacral motifs – from the colonel’s prophetic monologue to the symbol of the cross as a representation of hope and protection, as well as redemption. Hell on the Battleground is not a run-of-the-mill variation on Platoon; instead of that film’s literalism and emotional appeal, it is a film that should be felt, not understood. Following the iconoclastic anti-war cri de coeur by angry veteran Oliver Stone, the Republican military fan Prior brought pathos and heroism back to war with his film.