YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING
Recommended. The first 1,5 hours of this nearly 3-hour documentary are a bit tedious - the couple bomb the director and, indirectly, the viewers with their love. The place they were renting was a big house on the ocean shore and the con artist's husband offered director Nathan Fiedler pink pineapple - a luxurious snack. While you can ponder where the line between hopeful promises and lying is when pitching a project to investors and having big blue loving eyes is not a crime, the now-mother-of-two and her partner met in a peculiar way. Whether she was really scratched on her face by a husky puppy - their dog is not a husky and I don't know how the scratch was possible - him finding her doesn't seem accidental, especially taking into account his later actions. Also, was she really wearing dark glasses on the day? He's talking about her mesmerising gaze as if he was looking in her eyes. The second half brings in a range of surprises. As I see the whole thing, they're both narcissistic psychopaths but only he is malignant. As for the discussion whether she was aware of the money or not, my impression is she's giggling, as if she couldn't help laughing when she's assuring the director at her place that she's not. What I trust in is her love of her family - even narcissists love their children, they're an extension of themselves. She also seems infatuated by her partner. He is a big question mark, the most ambiguous character and part of the puzzle.
THE SOCIAL RECKONING
Recommended. Aaron Sorkin's follow-up on Facebook hasn't brought as many viewers as "The Social Network" in 2010 - the movie's going off the cinema screens after just 2 weeks. And the movie is much better than the previous one. Mikey Madison (the one from "Anora") as Frances Haugen and Jeremy Allen White as Jeff Horwitz are both alluring, sexy and perfect for the dramatic parts. Jeremy Strong acts even stiffer than Mark Zuckerberg. The plot makes a great job of showing both points of view - taken Facebook's scale even 1% drop in more than 2 billion worldwide users is considerable. But Zuckerberg's right-hand man, acted chillingly boldly by Billy Magnussen, has no qualms and leaves no sympathy. The drama is gripping: it follows a double career story of Frances and Jeff parallelly and the political developments gradually move from the background to the foreground. Though the opening scene is a political one already - with superb Portia Doubleday in a smartly written episode. The movie leaves you pondering to what extent your own life depends on social media algorithms. The claim they have twice bigger power than a state is terrifying, especially coming from the horse's mouth.
STREET FIGHTER
Watchable. Based on a game, the movie mixes anime sequences with live action. It's totally 90s: the look, the music, the plot with sexism and dictator Bison's security staff resembling Muammar Gaddafi's female bodyguards in military uniforms. A female protagonist gets branded by the dictator, which brings to mind the NXIVM cult, though the action takes place 5 years earlier i.e. in 1993. The storyline is simplistic. Taken how over the top the whole thing is, I believe it was meant to be a mockery but it fails to amuse, it's too dumb for that. Sound effects and music sometimes surround you. But the main attraction is alluring Andrew Koji as Ryu and the sassy actresses.
CZAS, KTORY NIE NADSZEDL (THE TIME THAT NEVER CAME)
Recommended. This Polish science fiction thriller is based on the concept that a remedy for old age turns people young but with a deadline, whereas those who opt out are imprisoned. The vision of the country in such a reality is truly creative, the fugitive story gripping. Aging is tackled from many perspectives but this profound question doesn't obstruct the action.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
CINEMAFORUM 2026
While I didn't go to the retrospective screenings, the festival program inspired me to look up Robert Zemeckis' first student film:
THE LIFT (1972)
Watchable. This black and white short film has aged visibly, strictly technically but the tale where a man who's got plenty of modern automated devices at home working perfectly can't call the lift which indirectly leads to his death when his body is taken down by a lift knows no time boundaries. I was astonished how many electric kitchen devices there were before I was even born.
Seen online, cinematic reception might differ.
MLODE HORYZONTY FESTIVAL 2026 ONLINE
MOMO
Watchable. Based on the book by Michael Ende, this fantasy/sci-fi movie tackles time thieves, forcing people to do two things at the same time, but in this children's movie the thieves are real characters. Shot in Croatia and Slovenia but most of the time you see greyness - the visuals and the story are no match for "The NeverEnding Story". The action is unhasty, repetitive, with slow music. Yet the subject is much thought-provoking. What are we constantly saving time for?
CINEMAFORUM 2026
INTERSECTION AND Q&A
Before the screening both Nowak brothers i.e. the scriptwriters and the director introduced their production as a film for a demanding audience since the film requires paying attention. They want viewers to still think about the movie a week later.
Recommended. Enigmatic, keeps you in suspense. Costumes by Natalia Rejszel are spot on for the genre and topic - the futuristic fashion is not crazily divergent from the present. The film's polished in every detail: mesmerising cinematography and visual effects with superimpositions and reflections, music by Alan Bucki, the growing assimilation of both men. The future world offers a background where a beggar has a card saying: "replaced with an android". The job interview with an apple test which is the test of knowing true from fake is a contemporary version of the Biblical allegory.
Marek Nowak graduated from Collegium Civitas where he met Edmund-Wnuk Lipiński. Stanisław Lem was another inspiration to treat science fiction as the sociology of the present. The last scene was written first - when Adam was in a waiting room with his daughter. The writer thinks we socialise through nursery rhymes so AI uses them. The shark symbolises the boss who feels old so he looks at artificial starfish. They created different versions of the script: in some the protagonist was rich, in others he wasn't. "Indie film-making has always been creative" due to limited resources. According to cinematographer Michał Wiśniowski: "each limitation forces creativity." They made computer previsualisations of how wide the walls, especially of the job interview room, needed to be. Storyboards were everywhere - Adam Nowak and Michał are fans of pre-production. Like the bumblebee that scientifically can't fly but doesn't know about it and does. The microbudget equalled 1 million zlotys net, the movie took 16 shooting days. Adam had sent some SF movies to Agnieszka Kawiorska but she decided to build her android character from scratch.
BAFTA SHORTS
TWO BLACK BOYS IN PARADISE
Watchable. While this awarded doll animation plays with your perceptions - the opening turns out to be something different later on, the stop-and-search is highlighted and the gay trope feels put in the plot just because it's fashionable. A piece of moral preaching.
THIS IS ENDOMETRIOSIS
Recommended. Seeing is believing - the disease is real, patients aren't believed in how badly they suffer. Most shocking of all - burning out the tissue causes even more pain than the disease, excision is milder but still the poor girl had to undergo four surgeries - I wonder why hormones weren't used instead. Still, the awarded documentary is informative in terms of how impossible normal life becomes for the sufferer. Tear-jerking.
MAGID/ZAFAR
Recommended. Interesting form: kitchen work mixes with engagement news and with a jilted lover. It's all fast-paced, emotional - about Pakistani Muslim gays.
NOSTALGIE
Recommended. Aidan Gillen is wonderful as a washed-up 80s star now 40 years on and he superbly imitates singing "Nostalgie de la boue" and a handful of other 1986 songs by Dan Smith - you fall in love with the music and with the rest of the cast - all great no matter how big or small the role. It's a tricky story where the protagonist realises who his audience are and that coming to terms with it is next to impossible.
TERENCE
Recommended. A warm story, with Terence Nzaji Egnie just perfecly cast as a person everyone else relies on while he hides his internal pain.
MLODE HORYZONTY FESTIVAL 2026 ONLINE
FANTASTIQUE
Recommended. A documentary about a Guinean girl dreaming of becoming a world top acrobat. Fanta Turpin has got a raw deal in life: she has to do domestic chores like pounding food, washing clothes with a washboard, carrying water, has to take care of her ill mother, go to school and attend trainings every day and she's only 14, but, when you see the life conditions, it's easy to understand the drive to get out of there. Frequent blackouts, a goat looking over her shoulder when she eats, being discriminated against as a girl just because of cultural expectations. Also, the men have dropped school, she hasn't. Hard African life forms tough people. It's incredible how these acrobats can contort their bodies. And Fanta could do so at the age of 8. Most of all, the film makes you understand Africa and why so many athletes come from the Third World.
CINEMAFORUM 2026
CLOSING CEREMONY
Whereas I disagree with most awards, e.g. "Wszystkie miały na imię Anżelika" ("They Were All Named Anzhelika") had fabulous editing but didn't win, although the Audience Award for "Spiritus Sanctus" doesn't surprise me, the ceremony itself was fun. Not only usual Błażej Hrapkowicz's sense of humour, but that of some winners, made me laugh a few times. Though the whole gala could have been shorter if only Maciej Dominiak and some other staff hadn't been so official and boring. Dreadful, jazzy music with jarring saxophone and all too loud heralded each winner. Drinks-only reception followed but at least this year alcohol-free alternatives to rum or whisky were available.
MLODE HORYZONTY FESTIVAL 2026 ONLINE
DANTE
Recommended. A delightful animation about a smelly rat living in a house at and off a scrapyard who's a crime movie fan and turns detective to help a newly appointed bank director framed for robbing the vault. Distinct characters, a few moral lessons about friendship and recycling. Pure fun.
TABU. EGON SCHIELE (TABOO: EGON SCHIELE)
Recommended. In spite of numerous literary insertions, the documentary manages to explain Egon Schiele's art through his life with no fail. The film places selected years of his life on a timescale listing what happened that year all over the world. It tells about the decadence of Vienna and other towns at the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The informative part of the film starts with Egon's father dying contorted in pain of syphilis - the sort of bodies he keeps painting to his untimely death in 1918, at the age of 28, when both his pregnant wife and he die of Spanish flu. An avid painter, from an early age he created plenty of artworks on a daily basis. Their meaning is described by a handful of art historians from all over Europe. He's repeatedly compared to Franz Kafka, his contemporary and compatriot, in how truth shines through their absurd and distorted work. The film is an excellent introduction to Schiele's body of work (pun intended).
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
DIGGER
Watchable. Before the movie you get a note not to spoil it to others - rightly so because there are two major twists of action which reveal another bottom. It's over the top and theatrical, absolutely ludicrous but... spot on. Even if often vulgar, the satire is merciless: a corporation and a country run by white men destroy the world. They care about extending their pets' lives while decorating the villas with hunting trophies. To them narratives shape facts, not the other way round. Tom Cruise, unrecognisable in the leading role - the opposite of his athletic self, gives an Oscar-worthy performance. The finale is true science-fiction. Frog croaking accompanies the end credits.
WOZU GIBT ES FANTASIE? (WHAT ARE OUR IMAGINATIONS FOR?)
Recommended. This short documentary states that according to a Harvard University study we spend about 8 hours a day daydreaming, that's half of our waking hours. It helps us anticipate most of all, e.g. to gauge whether to cross the street or not. It's a basis of empathy as well and of venting steam in our minds only. It also aids invention, because, as Albert Einstein put it: "Imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited."
The documentary was available on Arte TV.
LA FILLE DANS LES NUAGES (GIRL IN THE CLOUDS)
Watchable. This French animation takes you to and fro between Paris, black Africa and all the way in between. With some magic, a cute and smart Guinea pig, fun characters of a writer, monks, a witch, flamingoes eager to prosecute for everything - the Guinea pig turns out to be a great advocate, an inventor uncle is just an icing on the cake. Only some protracted scenes detract from the fun. In Poland available only dubbed, with a Polish song in the film and a French one during the end credits. There's a brief mid-credit with the uncle.
MLODE HORYZONTY FESTIVAL 2026 ONLINE
MOOMINVALLEY - SET: THE SCARECROWS' WEDDING, MOOMIN VALLEY EP. STARSTRUCK, MOOMIN VALLEY EP. THE COMET
Watchable. The first one, without Moomins, is actually the most creative, the true-blue ones are pleasant but lackluster. Domhnall Gleeson as scarecrow Harry O'Hay is obscured by the Polish voice-over, the other two animations, the Moomin ones, are dubbed in Polish so no chance to hear Rosamund Pike as Moominmamma.
VERITY
Recommended. A gripping psychological thriller based on the book by Colleen Hoover, with Anna Hathaway and Dakota Johnson as crime writers and Josh Hartnett as a husband and a cameo by the book author as Lin Murphy. Closer to the end come big twists, shocking ones. But the movie's memorable also for the setting, the architecture of the house. It's all stylish, the setting fairy-tale, but with a dark finale.
WAKSY: NOCOWANKA U DZIEWCZYN, HALLOWEEN EPISODE 2025
Both recommended. Hilarious, with secondary school students' adventures, all perfectly acted with quality special effects.
Seen and available on YouTube.
STREET FIGHTER
Watchable in the dubbed version. Bartek Fukiet translated it superbly so it feels a bit funnier than the original, though, still, the whole thing is a trashy debrainer. At least this time I spotted a few more details in the movie and noticed in the end credits that Jason Momoa is one of the producers, apart from appearing as Blanka. As it ends in 6 protagonists going hunting for Lord Bison, a sequel looks likely. There's an early brief animated mid-credit.
500 MILES
Recommended. Based on a book and entirely fictitious, it's a warm family story, with a pleasant lateral character of the coach driver, acted by Eoin Duffy, and with Irish music, which, in the finale, turns into a dark psychological drama. The revelation is powerful.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
THE DEVILS (1971)
Switched off. Awfully theatrical, with 1970s hairstyles, screeching music and a trashy plot where everyone is obsessed with sex. Often perverted.
Seen online, cinematic reception of the restored copy might differ.
HORROR MARATHONS
A selection of 6 horrors I picked from 3 Halloween marathons. None of them was truly scary, each was different.
OPI
Watchable. A Polish movie, based on Kashubian folklore. First it's a psychological drama about a single mother who regularly punishes her daughter by sending her to spend a night in the cellar, then it's still a limited-space family drama about discovering your identity and learning tradition. It's gory and brutal. But also unclear, poorly acted, especially by Wiktoria Kruszczyńska as Trina - her protagonist acts like a retard whether meant to be frightened or frightening. The editing is odd: slow sequences and blackouts. Most importantly, it's hard to grasp what the truth is which means nothing scares you, maybe just the psychological violence in the family a bit in the beginning.
EVIL DEAD II (1987)
Watchable. Awfully trashy. Bruce Campbell both co-produced and starred in it as Ash. But apart from him acting weird and normal with no clear explanations for the changes, it's all gore, deformed monsters, weird ghosts, peculiar 80s special effects. At least no styrofoam falling out of dolls like in part one. The 80s style is the most alluring but the movie's trashy as hell.
SPIDER ISLAND
Watchable. Shot on Mauritius, it entices you with the view of the island and the sea. Environmental issues, influencers, greedy management. Who lives and who dies doesn't quite depend on whether the character is a goodie or a baddie. One of the influencers wears fabulous glitter outfits that match her perfectly. The cast is a mix of actors and influencers too. Summer fun, brainless rather.
CLAYFACE
Recommended. Mike Flanagan has written another masterpiece. While the original Bill Finger and Bob Kane comic book character was a B-list actor, the movie changes him to an A-lister - Matt Hagen is a Hollywood top: an Oscar nominee, a heartthrob, representing a rags-to-riches life, he mentions coming from the gutter of Gotham, this is where he physically ends up. But the story is complex, true to how careers work, how easily your reputation can be damaged, how you have to outsmart everyone, how managers and friends can be bought or threatened or both and, most of all, how your face is all your value, especially in the glitter world. It's all perfectly acted by everyone he melts into. You root for him.
THE SHINING - DIRECTOR'S CUT
Recommended. Both versions amaze. The extended one adds some back story to the janitor character and to the Overlook hotel itself. It's a bit explanatory, a bit terrifying. But it's the amazing acting trio of Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd as the family that make this movie so captivating and memorable. The movie's well-paced and mysterious. A classic masterpiece.
BEWARE BOIUNA
Watchable. It has a plot, rooted in real life problems of the Amazon and Columbia, like environmental issues or gang crime - it's also shot in the Columbian Amazon - it's only the second half with the giant snake attacks that neither makes sense nor arouses any interest. Who lives and who dies doesn't quite depend on whether the character is a goodie or a baddie.
WARUM LIEBEN WIR HORROR? (WHY DO WE LOVE HORROR?)
Recommended. Lots of creepy images surround the scientists so this short doumentary is really for horror lovers. But, though I'm not one, it has informative value. The conclusion is: children and generally people up to the age of 25 better avoid horrors because such a fear can become pathological in them, leading to sleeplessness, nightmares, PTSD even. In adults however, controlled fear, followed by the release of endorphines once we've lived through it, is a perfect training resulting in lower anxiety when real danger strikes.
The documentary is available on Arte TV.
SYRENKA PICASSA
Watchable. The opening explains who is who and sets the scene perfectly well. Later some parts, like all the female bosom ones, are cringy, but the whole thing is humorous, especially the character of neighbour Stefan Radomski, whose elderly version is wonderfully acted by Andrzej Seweryn. He's the joint element of three, intertwining timelines: contemporary, 1956 and throwbacks to 1948 when the Mermaid was drawn. The communist period looks neat, better than they did in reality and it brings the humour of visiting groups from all over, especially the sudden invasion of North Koreans is funny because the flat dweller just forgot to close the door. The modern one is one of corporate and emotional exploitation. The least engaging origins of the drawing turn out to be the most important - this is where the final twist of action originates.
I FEEL LOVE - GIORGIO MORODER & DONNA SUMMER
Recommended. You learn how Giorgio Moroder (from Italian Tirol - the German-speaking region), Pete Bellotte from London and Donna Summer from Boston became producers and a singer, how Donna got her stage name, how they all met in Berlin. Further you get to know the details of the creation of "Love To Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love". Musical and social history form the background. The subsequent hits of Donna Summer, like "Hot Stuff", "She Works Hard For the Money", "This Time I Know It's For Real" are skimmed over, as is Giorgio Moroder's American movie career with an Oscar for the "Midnight Express" soundtrack with "Chase" based on the "I Feel Love" melody, with another Oscar for "Flashdance" with its "What A Feeling" song, "Scarface", "Top Gun", "Superman 3", "The NeverEnding Story", he even produced movies, cars and had his own line of prosecco. Pete Bellotte concludes he followed with 40 years of laziness.
The documentary was available on Arte TV.
UKRAINA! FILM FESTIVAL 2026
This year's festival offered 5 films with audiodescription - at the opening a blind man was present and said he had been satisfied, everything had been comprehensible to him.
KLARA AND THE SUN
Recommended. Taika Waititi's AI flick has it all: beauty of the heart, a science fiction tale with a backstory, great actors - all of them, brilliant lines, like the one about "an artificial mother", profound questions about what makes us human and about our priorities, it makes you smile, giggle, shed some tears, upsets you a bit with what happens, but most importantly moves you. And all of it in Waititi's unique style.
UKRAINA! FILM FESTIVAL 2026
MARIINKA
Watchable. A documentary following the fate of a few young people in the little town of Mariinka in Donetsk for 10 years. It's chaotic, goes to and fro in time so it's confusing who is who and at what age. A clear timeline would help. But it shows daily life at war and juxtaposes it with peaceful life in a gun-handling, hunting, religious family in the US. At some point it's hard to tell what is a computer game and what is the true warfare. Dogs running freely are another overlap of the two worlds. It shows both sides of the war since two brothers fight at two sides so e.g. you see the Russian side shoot and then a Ukrainian wounded. It also clarifies that people who get involved in risky operations, whether military or e.g. smuggling, are the ones who've got nothing to lose. War is ruins, wounds, scorched bodies. And the loss of home keeps them fighting endlessly - no place to go back to even if the war ended.
The film a few days later won the festival's best documentary award.
EVOLUTION
Recommended. Basque animation with extraterrestrial berries, a scientist mum, a corpo lazybones dad, a bunch of animals and a troublemaker daughter. Brilliantly translated by Bartosz Zimiński so the Polish version is superb but songs (one in the movie, one along the end credits) stay in English.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
DJ AHMET
Recommended. Set in a very conservative and traditional Turkish village in North Macedonia: Islam, patriarchy, sheep and raves. Hilarious, e.g. when the muezzin turns on his computer on the loudspeaker and when the shepherd finds a sheep of his dyed pink. The groom and his father are brilliantly acted. A very humorous story.
FREAK SHOW
Recommended. Asymmetry in nature makes a rose unique and valuable, in art is commonplace but in people makes you a freak. Hence a group of artists, each with a different disability, don't find themselves less able. Creativity lets them use their non-standard bodies to their advantage. Inspiring, insightful, unusual, especially the gory Halloween show. The documentary intertwines their conversations, mostly about how they're perceived by others and a bit about what medical procedures they went through, with excerpts from their shows.
WHALEFALL
Watchable. The sound of the ocean waves comes together with the opening credits. If only they did away with the toxic father - his environmental comments could stay - and all the psychological violence towards the son, the main story, about being swallowed by a whale, keeps your adrenaline level high enough. Hard to say how much of what he does makes sense and how much doesn't since the main attraction is how unusual it is. Austin Abrams is brilliant in the role, though his talking to himself while trying not to breathe in toxic gases ruins plausibility. It's also hard to make out which parts of the whale he's in at each point. But for an adventure movie, the main storyline is great.
THE LAST WHALE SINGER
Watchable. The sound of the ocean - a mix of waves and bubbles - comes together with the opening credits. If only it weren't for protracted scenes, with the brilliant lines, wonderfully translated into Polish by Jakub Kisiel, it would be pure fun. The end-credits song is in English.
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Recommended. A true movie about love: nearly everyone has a dog. The true actors, though, are people. George MacKay and Daisy Edgar-Jones are wonderful as the lead couple in love but all performances, however big or small the role, are captivating.
WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2026
ARVA (ORPHAN)
Walked out. Nothing much happens and there's nothing to look forward to, no suspense, just daily life in communist Hungary.
UKRAINA! FILM FESTIVAL 2026
СЛІДИ (TRACES)
Watchable. Chaotic. Just verbal testimonies, limited, of a few women. No larger context of how widespread it is. Still, it's shocking very young men rape women the age of their mothers or grandmothers. The sexual violence at war strategy could be explained as well. Instead, the documentary is a Sema Foundation commercial. Not enough for the Ukrainian Oscar candidate.
WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2026
EFFONDREMENT (COLLAPSE)
Watchable. The slow-paced narrative is dull and doesn't match the rhythm of the war machinery constantly heard in the background - it's a bit like "The Zone of Interest" in that respect, though the shock comes rather from listening to the settlers' perspective: how they're going to claim the "leased" land back. On the other hand, the documentary maintains the balance of atrocities on both sides, e.g. the field of Israeli flags where youngsters were killed at a musical event is a powerful image. The whole thing is decent, informative, but the monotony of the commentary prevents you from feeling any stronger emotions.
RAMAYANA: PART 1 AT IMAX 3D
Recommended. The 3D varies: some scenes are flat, some 3D, in some objects are thrown in your direction, at one point even Rawana's head - altogether it's worth choosng this format. Imax is perfect to marvel at the splendour of colourful clothes, jewellery and magical creatures or the flying machine. The mythical story's clear-cut, based on the values of honour, keeping your word, respecting whoever matters in the ancient Indian hierarchy, which sets action in motion each time. Hans Zimmer and AR Rahman created music which stays with you after leaving the cinema.
Part 2 is scheduled to come out at Diwali 2028.
HUMAN DOC FESTIVAL 2026
NUISANCE BEAR
Watchable. The documentary subtly presents polar bears chased away from the touristy town of Churchill, where people come to see them but the bears are scared away with raucous flares if they keep coming too close. The next town north is an Inuit one where bears are hunted and used up in whole, feared as they happen to kill people. Inuits claim the bears lose their hearing due to human noise. The bears, though, form a beautiful background, together with blue snow, to the grudge the Inuits feel towards whites and the whites' prejudice. No bigger context or clear message as to what needs to be done.
WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2026 VOD
THE LAST SPY (2024)
Recommended. A former CIA agent, one who started with OSS and developed the predecessor and the very CIA himself, tells how and why it fought communism. Then it moves on to the US overstepping its credentials. Ousting Prime Minister Mosaddegh in Iran because he wanted to nationalise a British-American oil company equalled removing democratically chosen authorities. Guatemalan dictatorship was brought back in order to keep benefitting from slave labour on banana plantations which resulted in a 30-year-long civil war. Luckily they failed in Indonesia when Sukarno was nationalising the country. Peter Sichel left in 1960 on moral grounds. Rivalry is at the core of American mentality - it's good to have an enemy, as the protagonist sees it. It's a shame such a person resorted to a wine business. The film opens your eyes.
UKRAINA! FILM FESTIVAL 2026
театр ветеранів (THE VETERANS THEATRE)
Walked out. Lots of performance preparations where the actors are mostly disabled, crippled by the war. Dreary.
How is it even possible that this film won the audience award?!
ЗА ПЕРЕМОГУ! (TO THE VICTORY!)
Walked out. A movie about shooting a movie where nothing much happens in either. At some point it becomes obscene.
That movie actually won the festival in a professional jury vote.
PRIMETIME
Recommended. Robert Pattinson, who co-produced the movie, does all the acting with his face and is amazing at it. He's also much more handsome than real life Chris Hansen. He's surrounded by great supporting cast, especially Merritt Wever as the producer and Phoebe Bridgers as the girl/boy decoy. Alex Winter has a great episode as Bill Conradt. Excellent, a bit experimental at times, cinematography adds layers to the engaging plot where pedophiles are caught on TV. But the plot is the least important, it's Robert Pattinson that makes the movie.
FORGOTTEN ISLAND
Watchable. I got to the screening 4 minutes late so can't comment on the opening. While the set-up, where the protagonists are Filipinas, is refreshingly new, a Na'vi-like vampire or photos disappearing together with memories seem inspired by "Avatar" and "Back to the Future" respectively. Jo is too crazy for a plausible girl character. Horror elements detract from the fun. It's definitely for teenagers, not younger children. But the whole movie is entertaining. In Poland it's available only dubbed in Polish, though with all songs kept original, still you won't hear Dave Franco as weredog Raww. On the other hand, the action being set in 1990, the music is very pleasant 80s, especially "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds. The final credits end in a brief Polish song telling you it's the end.
PRZEPIS NA SWIETA
Recommended. Beautiful, engaging, with fun, distinct characters, especially the zealous orphanage director, wonderfully acted by Adam Woronowicz. The protagonist who wants to make confectionery inspired by art history makes for truly creative cakes. But that's just a charming background to the touching drama of errors - it's sweet rather than amusing, all well acted, whether by adults or kids. Delightfully filmed.
HEART OF THE BEAST
Watchable. However beautiful the story of the relationship between the man and the dog, it lacks a clear storyline. Brad Pitt doesn't glue you to the screen as effectively as the dog does - the canine acts spotlessly. J.K. Simmons makes a great cameo in the beginning. The finale's the best part of the movie though.
DUE CUORI E DUE CAPANNE (LOVE IN SEPARATE BEDS)
Switched off. Supposed to be a romantic comedy but not funny, instead on the political side - since the woman is a leftist and the man a rightist. Worst of all, the movie's overtalked. It's constant blabber about the above.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
GOHAN
Recommended. This Thai actors' film with animated insertions towards the end charts the life of a dog from puppyhood to death with lots of real life problems dog ownership entails, with months in a shelter that will horrify anyone, with some lessons on how to care for a dog. Distraught people protagonists highlight the commonality of fate of animals and humans. Whatever happens to the dog or the people taking care of him - or pretending to - ring painfully true. The movie made me laugh once - when Pelé gets bitten, and I shed some tears, together with the rest of the audience, towards the end. The most joyful part is the first act, once the Japanese man is gone, life's never fully good for Gohan - named by the Japanese retiree after "cooked rice". Yet the whole story is very considerate for dogs, including the 3 dog actors that play him at different stages of life, and tackles a number of human issues too. Sappy but wise and touching you genuinely. The moral climate around dogs seems to have changed worldwide.
RUNNER
Watchable. A solid actioner following all the rules of the transporter/runner subgenre where pieces of a not-so-complicated puzzle are revealed piecemeal. Keeps your adrenaline pumping, music surrounds you at times, the movie theme starts with the chords similar to the "Rocky" theme, though the rest of the piece is different and slower. The hospital showdown is over the top. But the movie's truly engaging fun.
