Lima

Alan Pakula's All the President's Men is one of my favourite political investigative dramas, and this film, two years younger, takes a slightly different approach. The investigative journalism is still there, but the investigation is more straightforward, more of a life-and-death levitation, the solo of one embattled journalist who gets himself in mortal danger a few times. The paranoia of a conspiracy by a major corporation and its connected government circles is palpable, two years after the Watergate affair, and it culminates in an ending so provocative that I wouldn't hesitate to call it as bold an auteurist vision as, say, Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. For me, the unexpected highlight is the psychological acceptance test at the Parallax headquarters halfway through the film, a five-minute (!!) sequence of images, categorised as 'dad-mom-god-home' etc., designed to evoke certain associations in the protagonist. I have to say, I haven't seen anything stranger in a movie in a long time.

At times it reminded me of the last two seasons of Lost with its cluelessness, including the hatches that also lead somewhere. There are mysteries, unpredictable situations, but it doesn't lead to anything meaningful. For about half an hour or so, I was amused to see how dumb the whole thing was, like watching some exotic animal in a zoo that nature had "done" to in a way that would make Richard Attenborough weep. The characters behave irrationally, they have unnatural dialogues, and at the end, it builds up so stupidly and with such a futile point that it gives you a headache. The only thing that made me happy was the yellow Aratinga, because I love parrots. And in the case of Ishana Shyamalan, I can only think that the apple rolled far away from the tree and was never found. Meh.

It could almost be called "Two Musketeers and Eva", because everything revolves around D'Artagnan and his efforts to save his beloved and then Athos (a magnificent Vincent Cassel) and his "skeleton in the closet"; the other two are neither interesting nor essential to the plot at all, apart from their awkward jokes at the end. The enchantment of the flawless production design, as in the 1st episode, stayed with me here though, the guys are properly dirty again, it has a fine unpolished patina of the 17th century, beautiful cinematography, beautiful castles, but I, having been bitten by Richard Lester's version and a pretty decent overview of the content of Dumas' novel, was surprised by the sidelining of Richelieu and unpleasantly shocked by how the political correctness pushed on me left an unpleasant aftertaste. I am referring to the character of the black prince Hannibal, who always appears at the right moment and helps the Musketeers out of their predicament with his selfless intervention. Dumas, who never once mentioned this character in his novels, must have been spinning like a propeller in a blender, but mostly it was given to the current quota, and now that I mention it, a person who has never addressed the woke agenda in films, that's really saying something. Sometimes you really don't need to push so hard, filmmakers. PS: The ending in the burning building is spectacular, but too "Hollywood" for me.

A middle-aged American writer corresponds across the Atlantic with an antique shop assistant in London, the whole film based on a rather original concept where we hear both actors reading the letters and at the same time their content is visualised by the scenes. In fact, the whole film is a constant reading of letters across three decades, and there is a minimum of dialogue where the two actors talk to each other. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it's a concept that only lasts about half an hour before it becomes repetitive and monotonous. The film does have a lively feel to it, thanks mainly to Anne Bancroft's enthusiastic acting, but otherwise I don't think the story is interesting enough to not be tiresome by the end. I've seen Anthony Hopkins act better in many other films, too. But I can say from my own experience that this movie is very much liked by women, my 60 year old sister loves it, my friend does too. So I guess it's my fault :o)

After Khrushchev's exposure of the Stalinist cult of personality, the ice began to break very slowly, the building ethos in the films of the late 1950s began to gradually disappear, and Czech filmmakers tried to gradually "tread the terrain" and test what they could get away with. Lyricist Václav Krška came up with a theme that would have been completely unthinkable 5 years earlier: the clash of youth with the law. He invited his court actor Eduard Cupák, who together with Jana Brejchová was probably the biggest acting star of the young generation of the 50s. And everything came together nicely: the story of one crime and the subsequent gnawing guilt, the appealing atmosphere of the Holešovice harbour (seeing what Prague looked like 70 years ago is an experience in itself and it adds an extra layer to the film), and a nice period pop song by Josef Zíma, the impressive acting of the main duo, with Tonka (Jana Dítětová), interestingly combining decisiveness and over-sensitivity, and Freddy (Cupák) being a proper dork on the wrong track, who scolds Tonka, who is a few years older than him, while he teases him like a little boy. Perhaps only Josef Vinklář occasionally overdoes it with the expressiveness as the villain, but we're used to that by now. The open ending resonated with me, even though I didn't want it to.

I hadn't given Boo! rating in 3 and a half years (!!), and now I’m doing it with gusto. Nunsploitation, the naughty stuff the Italians used to regale us with in the 1970s, a genre that, together with Nazisploitation, is one of my only two hated ones (otherwise, at the age of 52, I can swallow anything), a monstrosity that was resurrected by Michael Mohan – I saw an interview with him on YouTube, where he wondered why nobody goes to see his film, since he made it so wonderfully (his own words). Yes, indeed, the 2nd half is proper Nunsploitation splatter as if from the pen of an Italian production, but I'm more annoyed by the ideological framework of the whole thing. No, I have nothing to do with the Church machinery, I'm agnostic, I'm bothered by the opulent property of the Catholic Church, including those lavish cathedrals that were deliberately intended to appeal to the emotions of the commoners, but I resent when nuns are made out to be some kind of Satanic evil. I know a few of these women personally, specifically the nuns in Štěken, and they are honest hard-working ladies who do not in any way parasitize society, women pure in spirit who have chosen their path in life because they are convinced of it deep down. It's utterly stupid to mock that, to make stupid jokes about them, and it's utterly perverse to demean their approach to life, or even to put them in the role of absolute evil, as this film does. I'm a tolerant person, I would even say that nothing is sacred to me and I can make fun of everything, but I have my limits too and this is one of those uncrossable ones (along with other crap like animal violence or holocaust denial for example). Those ladies have my respect.

Some good revenge flick has spawned a child with Slumdog Millionaire and emerged with a confident directorial debut that is anything but a simple action flick for housewives to iron their laundry. Dev Patel also approaches even the usual scenes in his own original way, so that even an ordinary training montage is brimming with ideas that won't soon get stale, and the action sequences themselves, which the film spares, demonstrate imaginative choreography. The cinematography is brimming with over-stylised colours and I liked how the mental processes in the protagonist's face are originally portrayed through cartoonish images. But where the story of the monkey man breaks out of the usual genre pigeonholes is its socially critical feel. India, though beautiful, is actually a harsh country with huge social divides where even within the same neighbourhood you can find luxury and abject poverty side by side, and Patel beautifully highlights and critiques this. There is the luxury of modern skyscrapers and right next to it a neighbourhood of dingy slums with crowded, cramped alleys. But the poor here are not in the position of those who bemoan their status, but as someone who has a rich inner life with faith in their Indian deities. Unexpectedly, you learn more about Indian society from this film than the shallow fairy tale of the aforementioned Millionaire, which also wanted to be a social probe, but stuck with the fairy tale. Sure, not everything Patel does is up to scratch – for instance, the elevator fight to the completely unsuitable accompaniment of Boney M is one of the most bizarre things I've seen in the action genre, and I don't mean that in a good way. But those are minor things, Dev otherwise handled it with flying colours.

I'm not really into Saleka Shyamalan's shallow pop for teenage girls, but who I absolutely enjoyed was the fan-tas-tic Josh Hartnett. Every look he gave, every twitch of his face, was completely telling of the momentary situation he was in. Great performance. And M. Night Shyamalan proves once again what he's been strongest at his entire career. Namely, coming up with a completely original, unorthodox concept that he has always alternately managed to follow through with. And that's true here too. The first half, about the search for an exit from the encirclement, is a great piece of screenwriting, but unfortunately, after the twist in the middle and Lady Raven's involvement in the plot, it stopped being interesting. Firstly because of the haphazard logic and also because Shymalan's daughter simply doesn't have the acting skills to pull this off. But all things considered, after the terrible Glass, when I had already broken my stick over Shyamalan, I actually liked his last two films quite a bit beyond my expectations. It's not a return to the limelight, more like a light echo of his great beginnings.

A detective story of the absolutely classic old-fashioned style, like from Agatha Christie wrote, the kind our grandmothers loved and read before going to bed. At the end, when Maigret gathers the suspects around a table to uncover the villain, I smiled with satisfaction, this is exactly what my old-fashioned soul needed. Commissaire Maigret, or my favourite charismatic Jean Gabin, has swapped the darkened streets of Paris for the countryside, and he is just as good as he was in the previous film. That former was much more dynamic, with more "cinematic" camerawork, whereas the latter goes for explicit dialogue with more sedate shots, which the current younger generation may find unappealing, but I had a great time. It's completely pointless to compare this to Bruno Cremer (I like him too), as many others here do. Each took the role in a completely different way, and in the cinematic Maigret universe, the two complement each other perfectly.

Nowadays, good visual effects are more of a standard, not extraordinary as they were in the 90s, so the initial fascination is no longer there. Twister didn’t have many iconic shots (the flying cow), and when you remember it today, it feels “overdone”, so this film won't impress or surprise you with anything. And neither is the clichéd plot that brings nothing new and where you guess every scene ahead of time. The only saving grace is the central cast, who have a nice chemistry, although I have to say that I'm starting to get tired of Glen Powell's "wannabe sex appeal", and I've only seen him in three films so far. Maybe in his case it wouldn't hurt to try something different.