Matty

Ridley Scott no longer knows how to come up with something new. He intensively copies from Alien and subtly quotes other masters of the big screen (Kubrick, Lean), but he doesn’t manage to put together a sophisticated mythology from a lot of enigmatic allusions. The more consistently straightforward, less ostentatious final third of Prometheus, when broken bones, flamethrowers and heroic gestures take the place of tautologies that go nowhere and the attempt at philosophical sci-fi rapidly morphs into an intergalactic variation on rape-revenge movies (by which Scott again shows himself to be a filmmaker capable of unusual feminine empathy and very clever use of gender stereotypes). The change of approach to the material is so sudden and unexpected that it gives rise to the hypothesis that perhaps the director was playing a cruel joke at the expense of the excited viewers. It’s as if he thought, “fine, they wanted something spectacular, so I’ll really prepare them for it at the beginning, but then I can more brutally bring them back to reality with a guilty-pleasure genre movie.” However, I rather see the reason for that in the necessity of cutting the film short than in the director’s sense of irony, which means that we will have to wait for the full-fledged Prometheus to arrive in the autumn, when the director’s cut will be released (after Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood, I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t actually a clever marketing move – to give viewers the feeling that a distinctive creative work was butchered by evil studio bosses and if they want to see the film as it was originally intended, they will have to spend more money on the DVD). Prometheus is a breathtakingly unstylish product with an unclear purpose. Because it doesn’t offer a satisfactory answer, both its suspense and its stumbling block consist in the prolonged uncertainty triggered by the advertising campaign. I’m afraid that the film’s “point”, which is very funny in its own way, will neither make anyone angry nor elicit a sly smile on the second attempt. If the aim of the film was to cause embarrassment, it accomplished its mission, but it doesn’t offer satisfying summer entertainment. By that, I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy it. I did, but similarly as I did with Pitch Black, in whose case the price-performance ratio was significantly different. 75%

(Though I think there isn’t much room for SPOILERS in this case, you should rather see the film before reading this review.) Neither a fairy nor a dragon. This modern rendering of the archetypal story epically spans the territory of Game of Thrones (the would-be harsh rural setting, the incestuous relationship between siblings), The Lord of the Rings (numerous “wandering” money shots), Disney movies (the fairy forest), Besson’s Joan of Arc (including an inappropriate spiritual dimension), and video-game fantasy (spectacular, bloodless vanquishing of enemies, and partly Snow White’s resuscitation, which is of course present in all versions). Other than the somewhat incomprehensible feminist subtext, the film’s modernity does not lie in reinterpreting a familiar story or putting it in a different context. Rather, the screenwriters merely stretched a simple story into a feature-length epic film, so there’s nothing left for us to do but successively tick off familiar situations. Our immediate recognition of the source material and firm knowledge of how everything will turn out in the end naturally draws our attention away from the content to the various treats for the eye (most of the scenes with the queen) and the ear (the dwarves imported from England). Unfortunately, the fairy-tale black-and-white distribution of power is not in any way relativised and if you want to cheer on Charlize Theron’s emancipatory struggle against the patriarchal order instead of the anaemic princess, the film will do nothing at all to support you in this. ___ The queen’s paranoid defence of her hard-won position, accompanied by her need to be the fairest of them all, could have been used beautifully to express a timeless commentary on gender inequality, to which the traditional (and the film’s chosen) ending conversely contributes.  It’s worth noting that whereas the docile Snow White comes to understand “her” position without authoritative guidance, but surrounded by macho men, the more aggressive queen was, judging from the fleeting hints of her disdain for the male sex, guided by the upbringing she had from her mother and obediently accompanied only by her effeminate brother. Snow White’s climactic act of defiance follows a series of hardships culminating in her clinical death, when she is wearing asexual armour serving to deflect both arrows and the male gaze (thus creating the opposing figures of Snow White as being “butch” and the Queen as "femme", thus further confusing the already uncertain sexual orientation of the characters). Snow White paradoxically gains her exclusive position among men by becoming one herself in terms of her appearance (the exact opposite of the queen’s constant self-beautification). However, it’s possible that today’s girls (not necessarily just Twilight fan) are looking for this type of heroine, who must “suffer” in order to gain the victory that she believes she deserves due to her princess-like nature. The men faithfully follow Snow White only after her suffering reaches its peak (though anyone who has seen Martyrs might object to her lovely collapse to the ground). Unlike in melodramas, the topos of the suffering heroine here does not primarily elicit “unproductive” emotions, but rather conditions the active struggle. Paradoxically, it is the struggle for an abandoned home, where the possibilities for women’s emancipation are limited on principle. The film leaves answered the question of the extent to which Snow White’s rule will be dependent on men. There are multiple ways to interpret the symptoms of this new film version of Snow White, but I’m afraid there will be few that clearly favour women. ___ Snow White and the Huntsman is an outwardly appealing film, but with every layer that gets peeled back, it becomes less and less convincing in what it wants to tell us. 65%

The most meticulous preparation, more than generous production resources, 120 collaborators (including Albert Speer, chief architect of the Third Reich), eighteen camera crews – Leni Riefenstahl filmed the second part of her Nuremberg trilogy in royal conditions, thus a bit beyond the reality that the film does not reflect. The editing composition (cutting between close-ups and long shots during speeches – the cheering crowd must be seen in order to multiply the emotional impact of the shots), the well-thought-out rhythm (more spirited martial and “physical” x more lyrical architectural and folkloric passages), the “strategic” placement of Nazi symbols in the mise-en-scéne. Triumph of the Will was filmed with such (militaristic) zeal and sense of grandeur and edited with such confidence that you probably won’t even register its lies at first (cuts to shots that were clearly filmed at a different time and in a different place). This is Hitler as he wanted to be seen (and seen constantly, independent of what else was happening in Nuremberg). Whatever the director said after the war, Triumph of the Will is not an objective documentary, though scenes from it later appeared in a number of non-Nazi, non-propaganda documentaries. Triumph of the Will is a brilliantly perverse work. 75%

Kitano again tempts death, again is lethally funny in several places and again doesn’t play by the rules. He simply plays. He doesn’t place his bets on standard dramatic plot construction. He gives priority to mood-setting shots over the distribution of information that would advance the plot. The gangster setting is presented as unexcitingly as the shots of the sea, the director’s favourite place for beginnings and endings. The non-action-packed bank robbery, partially shot with a silent security camera, is the height of apathy. The protagonist comes across as equally quiet, calm and at peace. Except, of course, at those moments when he pokes someone’s eye out with chopsticks. Perhaps no other director can transition from laughter to death in a fraction of a second. The incursions of seemingly unrelated shots and “blink and you’ll miss it” moments of gore disrupt the continuous melancholic flow and cause the film to be ambiguous in terms of feelings and characters. In contrast to the rest of the action, the depiction of an almost wordless relationship is a beautifully non-aggressive assault on the senses and the heartlessness of the world. If you want to see it as an ordinary linear narrative, you will probably find Fireworks as unreadable as its protagonist, a stoic man who is absolutely at peace with everything and who may have gone over to the dark side and perhaps just stopped distinguishing between black and white. In any case, the film has a lot more colours (due not only to the images through which one of the characters tries to establish a dialogue at least with himself). 80%

No revolution (not even a reboot). Just OK action with one-liners, perhaps more one-liners (or just plain chattering) than politically incorrect shooting at aliens (not counting the lady from the prologue, all of the negative characters are “different”). In other words, it’s mostly about the characters and the relationships between them and since the women here are either in a negative role or a non-action-oriented boss, the relationships are strictly heterosexual in accordance with nerdy romances. The nostalgic recollection of the years when truth and love were not yet empty concepts and there were still events that could also bring the American people together, not just divide them (as the media’s memory tries to convince us), is unusually intense and even unintentionally funny towards the end (the little boy and the sea). Due to the excessive tugging at heartstrings, the film’s creators are not too successful in piling on audio-visual attractions and references to 1960 pop culture to conceal the fact that it is actually a cowardly escape from the present. The coarsest jokes, or rather the only two coarse jokes with Warhol and Jagger, are the comedy highlights of the film, which is given more juice by Jemaine Clement in the unexpected role of a truly hideous villain. But not even his diabolical laugh can drown out the impression that Men in Black 3 is needless and empty and that we’ve seen it already many times before. 60%

The naturalness of Linklater’s (or even Rohmer’s?) chatty, strictly rational films has been sidelined in favour of introspection so thorough that it defies rational comprehension, thus making the film more like some of Allen’s excursions into the world of fantasy. In a roundabout way, Delpy brings a Faustian motif into the plot with a sold soul and Vincent Gallo remained himself this time (which doesn’t mean that he was less weird than usual). I see the contradictory conclusion as a logical shift in the protagonist’s development. Furthermore, it is a shift that takes into account the society-wide atmosphere of uncertainty. Marion no longer relies on support from the outside world (i.e. from her partner). She has come to understand that she has to discover redemption within herself. The film’s spiritual level is not prevalent, as it merely extends the story beyond the scope of an independent conversational comedy in an interesting, albeit not entirely elegant way. As in the earlier 2 Days in Paris, the driving force of this sequel is still the aggressive exchanges of dialogue enriched with an element of miscomprehension based on differences in language. The hyperbolised impertinence of the French visitors brings the humour to the edge of tastelessness. They have no inhibitions and remain themselves, which makes them likeable and unbearable at the same time. The same could be said of the film as such, but not of Chris Rock, who surprisingly doesn’t go overboard and whose character turns out to be the most sensible of the whole cast of weirdos. Even when he’s having an impassioned conversation with a cardboard Obama. 75%

The reason that this film is overwrought, which can be ignored until the climax rendered in the style of “since we don't know how to elegantly finish this, let’s just set it all on fire”, is not its excess of comical characters whose eccentric behaviour will generate accompanying jokes, of which there are two times more than would be necessary. Rather, the problem consists in the attempt to offer each of the characters a respectable amount of space and to briefly clarify what their problems are and how they intend to resolve them. Even that could be dealt with in the space of two hours. With a screenplay that intertwines the individual storylines and justifies, for example, why the title sequence (which, based on my conservative approach, should be determinative) promises that we will be initiated into the mystery of the Collins family through the disinterested gaze of a visitor from outside, though a pale dandy immediately becomes the star of the evening. ___ Rather than the goals of the protagonist and the others being clear from what they do, we can only more or less guess at what they may be. At every moment, emphasis is placed on a different motif, to which the characters' actions are subordinated. Barnabas is obviously out for revenge, but why not forget about that for a moment when there is a possibility to enrich the film with a few lascivious shots of Eva Green, particularly her legs and cleavage? Ghosts, green vomit, a Chevrolet Impala and Alice Cooper were incorporated into Dark Shadows according to the same logic, i.e. we have an attraction, now let’s come up with a way to shoehorn it into the plot. Everything happens as if in stand-alone episodes, with no internal order, without a more organic interconnectedness. ___ Due to the narrative’s lack of cohesiveness, a good two-thirds of the film is spent waiting for things to finally get going. The filmmakers can’t conceal the fact that the source material was a soap opera with twelve hundred episodes, i.e. part of a television genre whose modus operandi is the endless dilution of nothing. ___ Burton probably wanted to revive the time of his childhood as he perceived it through the lens of an outsider kid. This would explain making the undoubtedly remarkable political context taboo, because at the age of ten, you are more interested in Scooby-Doo than in the bombing of Cambodia. However, that is not an excuse for the degradation of the gothic restyling of the visual aspect into an easily marketable brand, mainly so that it looks “Burtonian”, and letting the camera nicely sell it in colour-coordinated shots that are short on plot. Another best-seller is the heavily made-up Depp making unnatural movements. It’s not necessary for his vampire to be characterised by gestures and grimaces that are different from those of the several dozen movie vampires that came before him or for him to utter truly funny lines; it suffices entirely to come up with enough situations in which he will look like a fish out of water, which is another of Burton’s mechanically repeated trademarks. ___ Unfortunately, the inappropriateness involves more than just the situations in which Barnabas finds himself. Scenes that would be suitable for a serious gothic horror movie or a tragic romantic epic are placed alongside scenes bordering on exploitation trash or parody. Sometimes the transition from the comical to the serious even happens within a single scene (the sit-down with the hippies). The uncertainty as to what will come in the next shot has a parallel in the uncertainty of how Barnabas is actually supposed to be perceived (to go even deeper, this is a reflection of the society-wide uncertainty that was as characteristic of the 1970s as it is of today). At one moment he is an amusing fop and then he acts like a regular horror-movie monster with whom it’s impossible to sympathise despite one’s best efforts. ___ Thanks to this, and because of it, Dark Shadows does not correspond to the fairy-tale division of roles into good and evil. It is not a fantasy world turned upside down in the Burtonian manner, where the traditionally bad guys are the good guys. The confusing fact that neither good nor evil has a clearly defined and stable form is a manifestation of insufficient creative control over a film that, without the rushed ending, might have worked as a series pilot, but in and of itself, it is a film whose attractive surface only draws attention away from the skeleton of the narrative, whose sole purpose is nothing more than to carry that nice-looking skin to market. 60%

Veteran director Gerardo Naranjo captures the Mexican drug war not from the point of view of criminals or cops (categorised here in the same group of vermin), but through the eyes of a disinterested and uninvolved person viewing it from the outside. However, the term “point of view” should be used more cautiously here, as the chosen form of filming could be called “dependent objectivity”. The camera is bound to the protagonist, but it avoids adopting her perspective in the traditional form of shot/counter-shot and cuts depending on the point of view. Perhaps only once in the whole film, it breaks away from the protagonist and shows us what we would like to see (a close-up of a newspaper headline). Documenting how quickly one can grow up in present-day Mexico (at the cost of losing one’s illusions, dignity and future prospects) is thus not subordinated either to Laura’s point of view or to the demands of the viewer expecting the provision of missing information according to standard narrative conventions. The shots lasting several minutes go against not only expectations, but also against the essence of beauty pageants like Miss Baja (the “Bala” in the “mangled” title means "bullet") – they are definitely not pretty and superficial beauty is not their goal. Due to their length, with no possibility of escape/avoidance, these shots make the viewer a victim like Laura. At the same time, they create the impression of continuity of events. One is followed by the next almost in real time and everything happens extremely quickly, so no time remains for more sophisticated action. This partly explains Laura’s self-destructive passivity, or rather the thoughtlessness of her initial efforts to change her lot in life, which precede her complete submission. She shows a certain resistance only shortly before the end, when she briefly gives vent to her pent-up desperation. Whether this indicates a change in her nature or a last gasp before the perceived end, we will never know. The prolongation of the protagonist’s suffering is made possible by a conspicuously large number of coincidences. As if in a spiral, Laura repeatedly falls back into the role of a powerless victim whom no one can help. Those who could help her are either corrupt or dead. This hopelessness keeps the narrative in constant motion and clearly corresponds to the current mood – at the same time, it detracts from the film’s credibility and even though actual events served as inspiration, it’s impossible to resist the feeling that it is contrived for effect. In spite of that, however, I want to see Miss Bala again and savour how much the captivating camerawork tells us, or rather conceals from us. 80%