Matty

A better four, five and four stars. The confrontational asking of questions that we probably don’t want to know the answers to, but we can hardly pretend that they don’t concern us. Each of the three stories is based on a dilemma that humanity has not had to deal with YET, and each also addresses the degree to which we are still able to maintain our healthy judgment when we come face to face with the “black mirror”. On the surface, there is no reason for media content to be subject to different moral criteria than lived reality. But the media, especially television, is based on the presentation of distant worlds that do not concern us and that we will probably never encounter (sometimes unfortunately, sometimes fortunately). A dose of raw reality, images that not only touch us directly, but are in part created because of us (if only because we couldn’t say “no”), a harsh, unfortunately brief look into the world behind the mirror, into a world that is nevertheless harmless. At its climactic moment, the second story also draws attention to the post-modern disparagement of all values. As soon as there is any hint of something serious, it must immediately be turned into part of a game whose rules are broadly accepted. The absorption of the oppositional voice into the uniform flow of television thus makes real and lasting change impossible. It’s all just for fun and anyone who doesn’t take it that way doesn’t understand how the game is supposed to be played. Though it’s still above average, I rate the third episode as the weakest due to its intimate scale (thanks to which, however, it has a chance to burrow deeper into the viewer’s mind) and the experience-recording technology’s similarity to the device in Strange Days, where it was a means of more far-reaching social change. 90%

Bad Day at Black Rock is a western in terms of its setting and character, a post-war psychological drama due to the time period in which it is set, and a Cold War thriller thanks to the time when it was made. The film can be interpreted in various ways, but because of Sturges’s reputation (it’s true that he made his best films later) and Tracy (who, conversely, could already choose the films that he wanted to appear in), I don’t believe that it was supposed to be merely an atmospheric movie with captivatingly “framed” shots and without a political-social reach. Only the symbolic taking of responsibility by young people… 75%

 – May I ask? – They’re not playing. A timeless portrait of a young man at a crossroads and a statement on the cyclical world of intergenerational misunderstanding. Forman’s first collaboration with Papoušek (and third with Passer) offers a series of beautifully unforced semi-improvised dialogue scenes (or monologues by the father, the model old-school patriarch). We could criticise Black Peter for its uneven rhythm (which, for example, Menšík took charge of in Loves of a Blonde), but the agony of awkwardness and embarrassed silence, which has no end, fits in with the effort to show youth without idealisation, as it really was (and probably still is) – hesitant, dependent, without ambition. The young protagonists don’t have role models whose example they could follow and they are unable to motivate themselves to do anything, and they don’t have the capacity to make decisions on their own. Petr either can’t or doesn’t want to be a store security guard watching over customers or a hardworking labourer. The only thing he’s interested in is Aša, who isn’t much interested in Petr (unless she needs some pickles from the store). With its dramaturgical laxity (several loosely connected episodes without any significant development of the plot or of the protagonist), the film goes as far as some experiments of the French New Wave (e.g. Breathless). However, the resulting effect is diametrically different – an approximation of reality, not destruction of it. The termination of the cycle of Peter’s minor embarrassing situations leading nowhere and his father's grand moralising speeches with a freeze-frame shot (disrupted by one peculiarly apathetic look), similar to the “freezing” of the characters in Intimate Lighting, is worth a thousand words. 90%

Mark Cobden, English teacher, year of birth 1964. He killed a man while driving drunk. As punishment, he has been sentenced to spend four years of his life in an underfunded British prison among inmates who don’t have to go far for a punch or a kettle of boiling water and sugar (many of whom would obviously need psychiatric care rather than time behind bars, but there is no capacity for that). From the moment he enters the prison, we follow his efforts to settle into an environment that he is absolutely not cut out for and to come to terms with his guilt, which is never in doubt. In parallel to this, the drama of a guard being blackmailed by one of the prisoners unfolds. There have already been so many stories set in prison that I didn't expect much from Time. However, it is an outstanding psychological study of how prison can fundamentally transform an individual (for better or worse) and, paradoxically, how difficult it can be for both prisoners and guards to behave morally in an environment where one should be getting rehabilitated. The two main characters, convincingly played by Sean Bean and Stephen Graham, repeatedly face difficult tests of character with no ideal solution. Whatever they do, either they or the people they care for will most likely find their lives in danger. Through gritty, suspenseful and moving situations that reportedly reflect the reality of the British prison system (the indirect criticism of which is an undercurrent of the narrative) quite authentically, the show’s creators depict the more general themes of guilt, punishment and forgiveness, and ponder over something that perhaps all of us have considered – what does it mean to live a good life? There are no clichés or – with the exception of one parallel montage with an improbably precise synchronisation of events – no artificially created drama. Rather, there is simply a credibly depicted prison atmosphere and several believable characters with their own demons and ethical dilemmas.

Martin Scorsese and Eric Roth have taken a muddled, mediocre book and turned it into a great American novel in film form. Killers of the Flower Moon is a monumental, multi-voiced and timeless chronicle of the fall of a community whose lust for wealth is stronger than love, even though its members are aware that they are preparing the next generation for the future through their own behaviour. The film is dark and slow and feels longer than The Irishman, for example, but that length is justified, as it makes it possible for us to gradually get into that community and see at first hand how greed and cynicism gradually and inevitably spread to the country, become entrenched and consume the characters. Throughout the film, we find ourselves in close proximity to a confident and seemingly all-powerful, yet essentially banal and sometimes comically obtuse evil whose proper punishment seems rather unlikely, which is exactly as frustrating and exhausting as Scorsese most likely intended it to be. By comparison, the voice of goodness is weakened by sickness and the “medicine” administered, and it is limited to naming the one who died (which is something of a Scorsese trademark). Despite that – and thanks to the dignity that Lily Gladstone radiates – it has a central, evidentiary role in the narrative. Killers is primarily an indictment of the murderers whose existence should ideally have been erased from American history (because many still profit from their crimes to this day) and an emphatic demand to give back a sense of humanity to those whose lives were reduced to a few thousand dollars decades ago; the director’s closing cameo leaves us in no doubt about this. ___ Scorsese directs his lament with the surehandedness of a master. This time, he economises on the spectacular dolly and Steadicam shots, instead relying on the actors and Thelma Schoonmaker’s feel for rhythm. As a message about the substance of American capitalism, his plunge into the darkness could eventually become an equally essential work as Giant (1956), Once Upon a Time in the West, The Godfather and There Will Be Blood. At the same time, the intense hopelessness and the atmosphere of irreversible decline reminded me of Tárr’s films. No, that won’t come easy in the cinemas for this proof that you can still make your magnum opus in your seventies. 90%

If Joe Wright could tell a story as effectively as he directs, Darkest Hour would be a much less painful viewing experience. Unfortunately, the ambitious British filmmaker again proves to be a great purveyor of kitsch, for whom the main thing is that every scene looks good and is not boring at all costs, not that it has meaningful content and is somehow helpful to the narrative. Visual gimmicks such as shots from a bird’s-eye perspective, slow-motion shots and close-ups of the second hand on a clock mainly give the impression of being manifestations of an almost panicky fear of being ordinary, which I would rather expect from a debut filmmaker trying to demonstrate what he learned at film school. The rather ordinary scenes, relying solely on well-chosen composition and Oldman’s acting (very solid, but you still can’t escape thinking that you are watching a thin actor under a fat mask) are much more impressive, because the ideas in them are not concealed by effects. Besides the occasional victory of form over content, the film is hindered by its unbalanced rhythm (after the brisk first hour, the pace slows significantly before Operation Dynamo), breaking history down to key decisions of great and infallible men, the desperate lack of sound judgment (even if the scene in the underground is based on reality, that does not change the fact that it is terribly unconvincingly constructed and written – I don’t remember seeing anything so dumb even in British interwar propaganda films, where it would be more at home) and insulting leading of the viewer. Through the supporting characters (especially the frightened secretary), the film constantly tells us how we should see Churchill, what to think about him, so that we don’t start to doubt his genius. There is a whiff of believability in the scenes of Churchill with his wife, which the screenplay does not prescribe, only for her to marvel at his penetrating intellect and laugh at his bon mots. Unfortunately, the better work of the actors and makeup artists (and costume and set designers) cannot save what the screenwriter (Anthony McCarten also wrote The Theory of Everything, which suffers from similar shortcomings) and the director neglected. Darkest Hour is an empty, naïve and fake lesson in patriotism, which for two hours laboriously tries to convey the same message that Christopher Nolan was able to put across with much greater impact in the last ten minutes of Dunkirk. 45%

Rain, eternal night, a has-been cop, a city bathed in turquoise. Welcome to neo-noir. The division of the narrative into cop and criminal storylines is reminiscent of Heat, compared to which, however, Creevy’s film is less complex and psychologically much more superficial. Based on the provided information, the characters could be described in a single sentence at most (the quick removal of the only significant female character who doesn’t use her body to play relationship games that slow the story down, but solely for her work – writing notes – is regrettable). The characters could be described on the basis of the information provided in one sentence at most (the quick dismissal of the only significant female character, who uses her body not to play frustrating relationship games, but purely for work - to write notes, is a pity). Welcome to the Punch wagers more on a gloomy atmosphere. The web of corruption that the director attempts to weave during the film’s ninety minutes is not the most solid. The individual powers (police, politics, media) clash only a few times rather than always being in a clinch. The attempt to define the characters through the mood of the setting and to see connections between things quickly becomes prevalent after the transition from words to actions. The essential elements are handled through chases and shootouts, in which the impression of action is achieved predominantly through editing and sound. The dull straightforwardness of the video-game-like “light-hearted” action scenes and the surreal escape abilities of Mark Strong (who could break down walls with his glare) clash with the greater realism of the rest of the story. The varying degree of realism is not convincingly justified by the content of the narrative. The relativisation of the line between good and evil suffers from the same lack of justification. It seems deliberate, without a better connection to the characters’ actions and motivations. Ultimately, the film’s most positive aspect is its use of London’s noir potential. However, the fact that movies by South Korean filmmakers (Ajeossi, Dalkomhan insaeng) are the most reliable sources of ambivalent feelings in a crime package was not in any way refuted by Welcome to the Punch. Appendix: The Punch in the title has a similar metaphorical meaning in the film as Chinatown in Polanski’s film. 65%

The Red Turtle is a captivating magical-realistic robinsonade with an environmental subtext. It is a concise, stylistically pure film packed with symbolic imagery and based on the idea of the interconnectedness of the individual components of the living world. For communication with the viewer, the film primarily uses images that are both concrete and symbolic, and gradually reveals to us the unique yet universally comprehensible inner logic of the fictional world. Thanks to the cyclical repetition of situations, we get the impression of the organic interconnectedness of everything. If something happens to an island, then naturally something must happen to the people who inhabit it. Cleansing simplicity is a feature not only of the story, but also of the visual stylisation, which may remind comic-book readers of the work of artists such as Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Georges “Hergé” Remi. Thanks to its unusually beautiful animation, the film is enchanting even at moments when nothing particularly dramatic or lyrical is happening. At the same time, the artistic aspect, which straddles the line between magical and realistic, leads us to the same realisation as the film’s plot – we don’t have to understand the natural order, but we should respect it. 80%

Thanks to its music and actors, Kawasaki’s Rose is an emotionally consistent drama (without a modifier, which isn’t usual in Hřebejk’s case), despite the fact that the film never “settles down” – new characters constantly appear, there is no clearly defined narrator and the story jumps around. Apparently inspired by investigative documentaries, this structure doesn’t always completely serve the drama, but sometimes breaks it down into a number of fragments, though it also enriches the film with a certain element of veracity. The film is easily believable, though a few lines were obviously conceived in the screenwriter’s head rather than in the heads of the characters speaking them. Kawasaki’s Rose is Hřebejk’s most meaningful film in a long time. 75%

Donner’s original Superman was open to New Testament interpretations, so it is not surprising that Snyder didn’t hesitate to use the budget for Man of Steel to make a modern Biblical epic. The apocalyptic climax, which evokes the feeling that two ideologies have clashed and the whole world is facing destruction, is merely the inevitable spectacular culmination of an epic story that follows the successive inceptions of Kal-El, Clark Kent and Superman. The other two narrative units are deliberately “broken up” by numerous flashbacks (like the whole Watchmen film), which hold our attention by clarifying new facts and aiding character development (at least for our basic orientation in space and time, we have to keep in mind from where we have jumped back to the past). In addition to rhythmising the narrative, the flashbacks also help to exploit the storytelling potential of the supporting characters, who are not entirely overshadowed by the main protagonist thanks to comprehensible parallels (Lois cannot write the truth about Superman; Superman cannot boast about his abilities). Lois Lane, who represents an unusually strong female protagonist (not only in the comic-book adaptations), undergoes the most significant change. Though she does let herself be led by a man (or the voice of God?) in the film’s least spectacular (and, in my opinion, best) action scene, she otherwise definitely does not just dully wait around to see what will happen to her and who will rescue her, and thanks to what she knows, here presence is even a necessary condition for good to triumph over evil. Man of Steel doesn’t say much that’s new (only the concept of Krypton – which incidentally resembles the art of H.R. Giger – as an “ideal” Platonic society, which Superman, as an “American hero”, ultimately rejects in favour of American democracy, is elaborated upon to some extent), but at least it gathers together and distributes old information in an original way. Like Batman Begins and Skyfall, Man of Steel goes back the roots of a heroic myth, while at the same time attempting to confront it with reality, of course within the realm of possibility that the genre offers. Besides the pseudo-realistic indie style of the directing, this is apparent particularly in the loss of the previous films’ sense of levity. Of course, Superman is still a guy who can fly and lift a school bus, but now he has to flex all of his muscles, grit his teeth and work up a proper sweat. Thanks to the fact that the film’s air of ancient tragedy is actually believable, Cavill’s strained expression during the difficult physical performances is not unintentionally funny. Thanks to its actors, the emotions that it evokes and especially the pathos of which it is not ashamed, Man of Steel is, in my opinion, the blockbuster highlight of the year so far, as it superbly finds a balance between the silliness of Iron Man and the nerds of Star Trek with its heartfelt earnestness. 85%