Movie reviews

JESZCZE DZIEN ZYCIA (ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE)

Recommended. Hits you to the core. The story's moving on a quite human level, especially the charismatic female soldier who talks about her plans for after-the-war - she gets killed shortly and it just breaks your heart when you realize she won't have the children or her dream job as a nurse, or any other for that matter. The war is different than contemporary African warfare. Children didn't fight then. Kapuściński remembered a war from his childhood, he knew no other reality so he thought that was what the world looked like. The animation creates emotions, footage from present and past Africa provides facts. Kapuściński's words are the most important here. There's no banality. Telex cost so Kapuściński had become a master of terseness. It's also his war since he was the only reporter for 50 countries.

Now there's also just one Polish war correspondent abroad yet for different reasons. Nowadays journalists are shot at so it's impossible to travel through a war-torn land the way Kapuściński did.

SERCE NIE SLUGA

Watchable. I'm surprised it was scripted by a woman (Karolina Szymczyk-Majchrzak) since it's so sexist. It follows a typical Polish rom-com pattern where the guy sleeps around and the woman forgives him - two such men in this film alone. It's not fully a comedy though. While the comic bits are funny, e.g. "Nie widzi pan, że ja tu cierpię?!" "Nie może pani cierpieć gdzie indziej?" ("Can't you see I'm suffering?!" "Can't you be suffering somewhere else?") or "Jeśli to dziewczynka, to ty jej wybierasz imię. Basia byłoby ładne." ("If it's a girl, you give her a name. Basia would be nice."), it's tear-jerking in the ending. Paweł Domagała as the male lead is superb as always. But the plot, even though engaging, is pointless.

SMALLFOOT

Watchable. A very pleasant wintry tale full of fluffy yetis for some reason released in September. About interlingual and intercultural misunderstandings. Most of songs have been translated into Polish, only the two final ones are in the original. Dubbing by Channing Tatum, Zendaya, Danny de Vito in the original and a similar rank of Polish actors in the translation.

BBC EARTH EARTHFLIGHT 3D
BBC EARTH AMAZING PREDATORS 3D

Recommended. Both films are amazing, with the bird one slightly better due to the air-view shots making you feel like one of the flying creatures in a flock admiring a fascinating route of the landscapes below. Yet both documentaries captivate with their unique wildlife pictures. Shame in Poland they'll be available only at special screenings for schools, not on the general release.

UNGA ASTRID (BECOMING ASTRID)

Recommended. The story's poignant, intimately shown, with plenty of close-ups, but, most of all, shocking. Partly because of her religious family and partly due to the times her youth fell on, she had very little freedom as a teenager and, when she got pregnant at 16, she was forced to part with her baby. Her son at first didn't acknowledge the fact she was his mother. But, owing to her writing talent and diligence at work, she both made a living and created a home for her child. Her meeting Sture Lindgren, her future husband, is shown subtly and beautifully.

WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL

SZTUKA MONTAZU (THE ART OF EDITING)

This year Cezary Grzesiuk talked about film editing and film making, much in the context of his own documentary "Niebieskie Chachary" ("The Blue Scallywags") which took 10 years in the making and 1.5 years in post-production. During that time for between 1 and 3.5 years some of the protagonists were either imprisoned or sanctioned by the police which meant the director had no access to them. Getting funding was a pain in the neck. At some point a bank salesman offered him to present his project to the bank CEO if he helps him sell new bank accounts. So the director went to the capo di supporters and he got a promise of... 3 thousand bank accounts: "Ile chcesz? Tysiąc, dwa, trzy tysiące. Tylko im powiem, to założą". ("How many do you want? A thousand, two, three thousand? I'll just tell them and they'll set them up.") But the bank president did not support the movie due to the topic. Football fans are too infamous. At the time of shooting Cezary Grzesiuk was a single father taking his son with him to work: "Myślałem, że zostanie kibicem. Teraz on nie chce słyszeć o piłce nożnej." ("I thought he would become a fan. Now he doesn't want to hear about football.") He witnessed what the journey in special carriages for football fans looked like in reality. The bald guys in fact  throw away all alcohol on the train on which the supporters travel to away matches for more than 10 hours - that's however not in the film, they didn't let him film it. Right after the festival premiere he had a funny situation with a table in a bar he and the big bald guys went to to celebrate. First they collected a table and some chairs and moved away from the crowd. A waiter objected so one of the bald guys challenged him: "Chcesz nam zabrać ten stolik?" ("Do you want to take our table away?") The waiter turned back with no word. Then he returned with security stuff. Seeing that, the bald guy sat on the table and challenged the security guys: "No to zabieraj!" ("Take it now!") The football fans ended up sitting there all night. Sadly one of the protagonists, Kmicior, didn't live to see the film. The director/cinematographer discussed technical difficulties too. Sometimes he had to go with no preparation and no equipment so later he dealt with different resolutions and formats, e.g. he had to worsen HD. The film lasts 90 minutes, just like a match duration, out of 300 hours of material. Another story is of a riot caused by one guy who peed behind a Toi Toi cubicle, to skip a 100-metre queue. He knocked the Toi Toi and eventally... half a stadium burnt. As no one wanted to finance his project, Grzesiuk had to change the script. He wanted the voice of football fans, not of those who had had the voice so far, i.e. the police and the media, but the producer's condition was to present both sides to the conflict. It turns out the police get their expenses reimbursed only if guns are used which encourages them to resort to violence or even provoke it. The cinematographer experienced it himself. The law allows filming the police on duty. Yet the director's camera, worth more than 10 thousand zlotys, was smashed with a police baton. The police have never refunded him. I asked who usually decided on the length of a film and heard that very often it was the distributor. EU law defines the length of breaks between screenings in multiplexes since the air needs time to get exchanged. So, in order to have many screenings, they want movies to be short. Polish Television, very national nowadays thought of a way to screen it: "żeby to było o wyklętych albo żeby chociaż przodek był żołnierzem wyklętym." ("If only it were about the cursed soldiers or at least an ancestor had been a cursed soldier.")

SLEPNAC OD SWIATEL (BLINDED BY THE LIGHTS) - EPISODES 1-3

Recommended. Kamil Nożyński looks like Daniel Craig. Cezar Pazura acts surprisingly well, especially taken his extravagant protagonist. The music is amazing both in its own right and matching the plot. The cinematography glues you to the screen. Even the opening titles are great - submarine shots with whales and manta rays are superimposed on Warsaw. The Betlehem club looks like no-longer-existent Nowa Jerozolima. The constant cliff-hanger is Kuba's leaving Poland, presumably for good. Jakub Żulczyk, whose book the serial is based on, co-wrote the script. English subtitles are handy since the Polish drug dealers' slang isn't exactly transparent to the general public. At least I didn't get some bits in Polish.

SUSPIRIA (1997)

Watchable. Not scary nowadays but must have been then. Contains plenty of elements widely used in horrors nowadays: an amiable dog becoming a killer eating human flesh, maggots, gore, a witch from a centrury ago possessing a murdered girl's body, clawed fingers sliding through the door, a spirit visible only through a veil, sinister servants. In spite of the premise being a school of dance, it features no dancing.