Movie reviews

Looks like I've finally managed to sort the remaining posts so here comes the missing part from late April till last Thursday. A new post is coming tomorrow and then one the day after etc.

AFRYKAMERA 2016

L'AFRIQUE VUE PAR RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI

Watchable. I had great respect for Ryszard Kapuscinski for several years. What struck me in the film was his claim that muslim terrorists are no real danger and it's not a war. Well, that was several years ago which led me to accepting the fact that, while his observations were often to the point, they have only historical value nowadays. You can't generalise on what he said. You can only get insight into what the world looked like at his time.

THE GHOST PEOPLE

Recommended. Harrowing stories of albino people being hunted down for the assumed magical properties of their body parts. A documentary.


DOBRA ZENA (A GOOD WIFE)

Watchable. The topic of a wife discovering her husband's war crimes deserves better: a better script, directing and acting. An interesting idea got diluted in ordinariness.


AFRYKAMERA 2016

FACTORY GIRL

Watchable. The actors are neither good-looking nor acting well. Yet, a story of unrequited love involves you in the way that you just want to see where it leads.

UM GHAYEB: MOTHER OF THE UNBORN

Watchable. Made by an Egyptian in a French way - the camera follows the woman whining about her infertility and about several superstitious cures that didn't work. The kind of documentaries I hate. I mostly watched in disbelief and sympathy how the poor in rural Egypt live.


DER STAAT GEGEN FRITZ BAUER (THE PEOPLE VS. FRITZ BAUER)

Recommended. A great thriller. Keeps you on the edge of your seat.

KRIGEN (A WAR)

Recommended. Partly a realistic portrayal of every day peace-keeping forces' work in Afghanistan and moral decisions involved, partly a gripping courtroom drama.

FUOCOAMMARE (FIRE AT SEA)

Watchable. Told slowly. Still, the film highlights the contrast between the typically middle-class Italian lifestyle and the experiences of refugees arriving in Lampedusa. The Italians work 9 to 5, listening to the music on the radio at work, discuss how to prepare meals or how to treat a non-life-threatening eye problem. The refugees have suffered imprisonment, hunger, thirst, few of them got to the island alive.


AFRYKAMERA 2016

LAMB

Watchable. A sad story of an underdog kid - abandoned by his widowed father, bullied by his uncle and by better-off kids in the town. Slightly optimistic as he manages to protect his lamb from slaughter. Very colourful - cinematography is the biggest asset of the movie.

EXCUSE MY FRENCH

Watchable. Supposed to be a comedy but not really funny. Annoying commentary. Mildly interesting as it portrays multicultural Egypt in which the kid decides to convert from Christianity to Islam to better his social standing in a state school.


WALSER

Watchable. Luckily it's only about 70 minutes long. About a clash of cultures and communication modes. Unfortunately with no scientific grounds. Totally implausible.

PEACEABLE KINGDOM. A JOURNEY HOME

Recommended. A heart-breaking documentary about what normally happens to young farm animals and about how it's impossible to save them on a larger scale.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR AT IMAX 3D

Watchable. Great music and 3D, Tom Holland's heart-warmingly English accent. The film follows a fight-talk-fight-talk sequence. My favourite scenes are: Iron Man recruiting Spiderman and Iron Man's youth when his father finds him relaxing on the sofa and asks: "Who's the homeless on the couch?" Like all recent superhero movies it's half an hour too long. In fact it has like 15 endings in the film plus one after the first and one after the second credits.

FAN

Watchable. Shahrukh Khan is excellent in the double role, action takes you round the world, the fan's strife is perfectly accessible on the human level too. Music could be better though. No great hit here.

NIGHT FILM MARATHON - THE NIGHT OF HORROR

I skipped "The Other Side of the Door" and "Bone Tomahawk" - both seen before and I just saw:

THE CANAL

Watchable. Moderately scary. Good ending. Set partly in an abandoned loo. Nothing new.


ENTRE LA GLACE ET LE CIEL

Recommended. An astounding documentary on the history of work at Antarctic polar stations and the discovery of the global warming. The scientist's plight to warn the world is totally convincing.

DESDE ALLA (FROM AFAR)

Watchable. Very gay at times but with a twisted story thrown in. Neither of the protagonists is attractive so there's no erotic tension whatsoever. Just communication issues and cynicism.

LA VANITE (VANITY)

Watchable. About the right for making the most vital decision in life - the one about own death. Protracted but will make you laugh and cry a few times each.

MOTHER'S DAY

Watchable. Not very funny, even the comics doing stand-up within the film. More like an awfully politically correct drama about parenthood and how it is the worst thing in life. As if I didn't know already. Ugly toddlers abound. It's mostly the trope of being left for a younger woman that kept it all together. And all that cheese is remarkably well acted by Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, name it. In all it's a standard Hollywood fare which you just swallow without thinking much.

NEIGHBORS 2: SORORITY RISING

Watchable. The comedy is silly and a bit vulgar but it's quite an interesting take on the generation gap.

COMOARA (THE TREASURE)

Watchable. Showcases human foibles and hopes.

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE 4D

Watchable. Very health and safety minded - Quicksilver protects the back of the neck of the people he transports and very PC - no Islam is mentioned, while Christianity, Orthodox Church and Buddhism are. Various actors' attempts at Polish range from incomprehensible to hilarious (Michael Fassbender's American accent). The sword-wielding woman from "Batman v Superman" appears here as well - cross-film character placement's rife. The whole film looks as if the makers couldn't make up their minds whether they're making "X-Men" or "Avengers".


JEWISH MOTIFS FILM FESTIVAL

AKA NADIA

Watchable. What attracted me to the film was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - that turned out boring. The woman's feelings for both her current husband and her rebel ex were enough not to walk out.


NIGHT FILM MARATHON - NOC X-MEN (THE NIGHT OF X-MEN)

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

Watchable. New fantastic body-morphing mutants, some history mixed in. A bit too long and much too superficial throughout. Doesn't evoke the same emotions as the earliest parts of the franchise. Great music during credits ("Love love" by Take That).

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

Watchable. The "Inception" actress teaches about utopian architecter in Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters. Time travel. Unfortunately new mutant characters are lousy (visually), there are too many plots and virtually all characters are too stereotypical.

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

Watchable. The initial rollercoaster ride through history is a good idea poorly enacted. Polish inadvertently sounds funny. A few jokes, e.g. "It's changed my life. I'm still living in my mother's basement. Everything else... is pretty much the same." Health and safety put to work by Quicksilver is remarkable. The first "X-Men" with a religious motif. While it lacks Islam portrayed, may it be that the evil born in Egypt epitomizes ISIS?


ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS AT IMAX 3D

Recommended. No worse than the fabulous first instalment. Anne Hathaway has never been more beautiful. Again, full-colour amazing visuals, stunning costumes and make-up. Endearing animal characters. A must see. At least once.

EIN LETZTER TANGO (OUR LAST TANGO)

Watchable. Protracted yet quite an involving story of love, relationship-building, dancing and artistic development. Pleasing to watch dance scenes by internationally-recognized dancers.

BASTILLE DAY

Watchable. Mundane fights and shootings. Ingenious plot with a few good twists of action and tongue-in-cheek dialogues. Jose Garcia is brilliant as Victor Gamieux.

MAANAM BYC PIEKNIE

Watchable. Too much John Porter and his foul language. At the same time a history of Maanam with a number of their songs set against political history of the past decades. Too much voice given to musicians who are neither educated nor eloquent.

THE IDOL

Watchable. Child actor Qais Attallah is an upcoming star. The film is a story of an extraordinary effort put in becoming a singer and of how a humble boy from Gaza, Mohammed Assaf, became a pop idol. His best songs are not in the film. You get a peek behind the scene of the "Arab Idol" show.

OJCIEC

Watchable. The film is nonsense. Random scenes showing off a sickly dizzying variety of filming styles. A few parallel stories add to the confusion. Pathologies which grow building up tension but stay pathologies only: birthgiving, a crying newborn, a 16 y.o. hooker, a guy pimping his sister, a chap photographing dead bodies, an old fellow whose son wants to poison him tells stories about pervert sex orgies in a concentration camp, lots of drugs and cigarettes, a sex murder and a mass one.

THE GIRL KING

Watchable. Quite good but also quite gay as the queen is a lesbian. But the film gets better and better when her tragic love affair threatens the country. You follow both an emotional story of unrequited love and politics in the making. All in all it shows how a ruler's sexual orientation can change the course of history. I wonder if it was her who set the grounds for modern gender equality in Sweden.

LOLO

Watchable. It's French and about love meaning lots of talking about sex. In spite of that the situation humour is quite good, at some points I laughed aloud. Dany Boon in the lead role.

ME BEFORE YOU

Recommended. Very British, including the aversion to watching subtitled movies. While it has some funny moments (like the girl chasing her runner-boyfriend on a bike shouting: "I'm supporting you!") but in a large part it's deeply moving and tear-jerking. It's also studded with very clever lines and to-the-point puns. Fantastic cast too, including Sam Claflin ("The Hunger Games"), Joanna Lumley's ("The Wolf of Wall Street") cameo, Charles Dance ("Alien 3"). It's a fairy-tale love story which doesn't end well.

W SPIRALI (INTO THE SPIRALE)

Watchable. Gripping but feels protracted and is poorly made (cinematography, make-up). The "solution" is predictable.

A WALK IN THE WOODS

Recommended. A brilliant satire on aging. Bill Bryson made into a full-length movie. Full of quotations and Bryson-style jokes.

CONJURING 2

Watchable. Set mostly in Enfield, North London this time. Based on actual events, shows the real people's pictures over the credits. Btw, no scares follow the payroll! While I've always considered James Wan the master of horror, here you feel more of Hollywood workshop than the hand of the master. Like in a standard American horror the scares start early, are of the startling variety and are evenly interspersed. It's a bit too long too. In the first installment tension was being built up till the audience shrieked together in sheer (sic!) horror. It also gave me sleepless nights. This time you get scared over the whole film but to a lesser degree. The bloke who reportedly died of a heart attack during the film must have not seen part one.
It's another of Warren's cases so my guess is the 3rd film is coming.

ABLUKA (FRENZY)

Watchable. Very heavy, especially for dog lovers. I'm not too sure what's it about and it's slow.

PIPER

Watchable. A short film preceding "Finding Dory". It's lovely but without words and I'm not sure what it's about - a hungry bird?

FINDING DORY 3D

Recommended. A lovely little fish with big eyes is desperate to find her parents. Deeply moving. About family, friends, animals, helping the handicapped ones. It also gently reproaches kids who touch everything. There's an after-credits scene.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP

Watchable. It took me long to get used to the oldfashioned language of Jane Austin. But it's a well-acted satire on posh people of her time. A good joke about 12 commandments.

W SPIRALI (INTO THE SPIRALE)

Watchable again. I liked it better at the second screening. It's interesting how the road they drive back unwinds the spiral. Good music, sound and sound effects.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP

Recommended after seeing for the second time. Still funny, including the 12 commandments. Delightful classical music. Some historical insight (peas being a novelty). Brilliant lines, to the point and so-Englishly indirect.

TOISET TYTOT (OTHER GIRLS)


Watchable. Very Finnish culturally. About typical teenage girls' problems - easy to identify yourself with but nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, what hinders watching is the form: an ordinary film gets interspersed with animation or girls' off-screen philosophical comments.

NOUS TROIS OU RIEN (ALL THREE OF US)

Recommended. Laugh-out-loud funny, with plenty of situation humour in spite of the serious subjects of dictatorships, tortures and community work in a crime-ridden neighbourhood.

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE

Watchable. I needed de-braining after a tough day and I got just that. In all other situations it would have been too annoying: poor acting, lame jokes and lines like "I don't normally hold grudge but you killed my parents." CGIs are class B too.


NIGHT FILM MARATHON - THE NIGHT OF HORROR

I skipped both "Conjuring" films as I had seen them earlier and I saw:

BEFORE I WAKE
THE BABADOOK

Watchable. Neither of the movies is very scary, in fact the horror part is quite stupid. The realistic - psychological layer is much better in both.


UN HOMME A LA HAUTEUR (UP FOR LOVE)

Watchable. First of all, Jean Dujardin is not a real dwarf. Secondly, even though it's a drama about how small we are in our superficiality, the dwarf is rich and a true gentleman so the main message seems to be: if you're unattractive, be rich and superpolite. The dog scenes are still demeaning but laugh-out-loud funny.

THE LEGEND OF TARZAN 3D

Watchable. Full of cliches. But at the same time with a handful of africanist flavours ("Chief Mbongo, I presume?", warriors whose faces and bodies are whitened, a fictional Bantu-like language, George Washington's letter to King Leopold II politically correctly altered to convey a strictly and strongly anti-slavery message, African customs and music). Christopher Waltz brilliant as ever. I have some objections to the cinematography though - while the jungle is dark due to the lack of sunlight, here open space is brownish-dark too. Equatorial Africa is colourful in reality and in the film it got darkened and browned for no reason. Poor 3D. One endearing scene is the lions' greeting - incredible what current CGI technology is capable of.

TINI: THE NEW LIFE OF VIOLETTA

Watchable. Shot in Almeria, Spain as well as Taormina and Catania on the eastern coast of Sicilly, Italy, it's a perfect holiday movie. The plot and events are silly. The characters are cute. Long-legged Martina Stoessel is lovely in the leading role. Everyone around her is charming and the holiday spots picturesque. Unfortunately in Poland it's shown in the dubbed version only. The music is just something light holiday-style but it stays with you.

THE BFG 3D

Walked out. For children only and for slow ones in that. Dubbed.

FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS

Watchable. Appears to be a remake of "Marguerite". This one made me uneasy too - it's like being forced to laugh at somebody's misfortuene. Still, this one is more humane than the French one and with less sex of course. Hugh Grant looking old and Meryl Streep act just fine but the greatest role is the one of little known Simon Helberg as the pianist Cosme McMoon.

CHOCOLAT

Watchable. It's similar to the Polish TV series "Bodo" - from rags to riches and to rags again, with a stint in prison. Omar Sy is great both as a clown, when he resembles young Eddie Murphy, and in the more dramatic part, when he fights for racial equality. It shows how you can make an interesting film about any obscure character because every human being can be a subject. Still, the story is quite grim and about some circus and theatre actor so basically not my cup of tea.