MILOSC I MILOSIERDZIE (LOVE AND MERCY)
I attended a meeting with the two lead actors and the producer before I got the chance to see the film. Kamila Kamińska, the lead actress, simplified the script since her first impression was that such a spiritual person wouldn't have talked so much. She also prepared for the role spending time with nuns in a convent where her life comprised of joyous simple activities and next in another one, with the rule of silence, which gave her an opportunity to rest and sleep - in St. Faustyna's House in Ostrówek. It was then that she started to understand St. Faustyna's diary and discovered what attention to details Faustyna paid. The nuns helped her achieve the required look. They "can always recognize if the robe has been adjusted by a make-up artist, not a professional nun". Nowadays nuns' habits are more comfortable but she wore the old type for the movie. Michał Sopoćko, the priest presented in the film, who later became a saint, felt no sanctitude in himself. He was very down to earth in real life, e.g. once a woman was banging on the chapel door: "Duch Świety kazal mi tu lezec krzyzem w kaplicy i adorowac przez 3 godziny" ("The Holy Spirit has ordered me to lie prostrate here in the chapel and adore for 3 hours.") He resolutely responded: "O ktorej godzinie byl u pani Duch Swiety?" ("What time was the Holy Spirit at yours?") "O 10." ("At 10.") "Aha, bo u mnie byl o 11. i odwolal." ("Aha, because he was at mine at 11 and cancelled it.") The painting created according to St. Faustyna's instructions squares with the Shroud of Turin in the main 8 points. Since there are white and red rays in the picture, it's treated as very Polish. Now the painting's owned by Lithuania. Two versions of the film have been shot. The English one was presented in Vatican. It's going to have a wide distribution: April-May 9 countries in Europe, September 800 screens in the US, also South America, the Philippines and South Korea. As for Lithuania, it's planned to be screened there in one month. At the end of the meeting someone asked the makers a biased question. He wanted them to reassure him that this movie is the true picture of the Church, unlike "Kler" ("Clergy"). The guy was upset when Kamila Kamińska answered that it was good that this one showed "the other side of the Church".
BASIA 2
Watchable. The houses in the town in this animation look like a few separate layers, ignoring the existence of 3 dimensions in buildings. But it's filled with bright colours. The stories are pleasant and while not exactly captivating for an adult, very appropriate for young children whom they teach important life lessons.
Friday 29 March 2019
Thursday 28 March 2019
POWROT (BACK HOME)
Recommended. Austere. Very religious family, stern and strict - no wonder the teenage daughter wanted to run. A seagull flying away at some point is a good metaphor. The mother's religiousness is well justified too. The family is very hierarchical, traditional. Even their breakfast looks like in communist times.With time hypocrisy becomes apparent. What the mother did towards the end gave me creeps.
Recommended. Austere. Very religious family, stern and strict - no wonder the teenage daughter wanted to run. A seagull flying away at some point is a good metaphor. The mother's religiousness is well justified too. The family is very hierarchical, traditional. Even their breakfast looks like in communist times.With time hypocrisy becomes apparent. What the mother did towards the end gave me creeps.
Tuesday 26 March 2019
THE MULE
Recommended. Beautiful flowers in blossom are an unusual start of a story, inspired by true events, of a 90-year-old smuggler. However, the crime intrigue is gripping and the old chap totally lovable. Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper and Laurence Fishburne pull off convincing and heartfelt performances. Not so predictable either. Nice clean shots.
MONUMENT
Watchable. By Jagoda Szelc but much better than her earlier "Wieża. Jasny dzień" ("Tower. A Bright Day"). Uses a lot of bluish light, the colour which is later carried onto blue plastic wrapped round the monument. But it all looks less eerie than the events. It'a as incomprehensible as her previous film but more attractive due to the uncanny character of a morbidly obese woman in the basement and strange behaviours of the more and more confused staff. Comfortingly no animal parts were used in the scene of cutting meat.
Recommended. Beautiful flowers in blossom are an unusual start of a story, inspired by true events, of a 90-year-old smuggler. However, the crime intrigue is gripping and the old chap totally lovable. Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper and Laurence Fishburne pull off convincing and heartfelt performances. Not so predictable either. Nice clean shots.
MONUMENT
Watchable. By Jagoda Szelc but much better than her earlier "Wieża. Jasny dzień" ("Tower. A Bright Day"). Uses a lot of bluish light, the colour which is later carried onto blue plastic wrapped round the monument. But it all looks less eerie than the events. It'a as incomprehensible as her previous film but more attractive due to the uncanny character of a morbidly obese woman in the basement and strange behaviours of the more and more confused staff. Comfortingly no animal parts were used in the scene of cutting meat.
KINO FRANKOFONSKIE 2019 (FRANCOPHONE CINEMA 2019)
MOKA
Recommended. A gentle psychologic drama/mild thriller about cornering the killers of a son. The slow but steady progress in the woman's investigation makes for a pleasant watching through and for a hard-hitting ending. The fact-finding is intriguing too.
CHARLESTON
Walked out. A comedy drama which neither touches nor amuses. Terribly slow-paced in that.
MOKA
Recommended. A gentle psychologic drama/mild thriller about cornering the killers of a son. The slow but steady progress in the woman's investigation makes for a pleasant watching through and for a hard-hitting ending. The fact-finding is intriguing too.
CHARLESTON
Walked out. A comedy drama which neither touches nor amuses. Terribly slow-paced in that.
Sunday 24 March 2019
CIEMNO, PRAWIE NOC (DARK, ALMOST NIGHT)
Watchable. Disarrayed weirdness. Huge chaos which makes sense only after 80 minutes (out of 111 minutes). Theatrically overacted. With consensual adult sex and some oedipal nude scenes for no reason. A protagonist also blinds himself like Oedipus. Lots of violence, murders, incest, paedophilia. But most of all weirdness. The dark imagery makes sense as the form of children's coping with the experience of sex abuse. Lots of heavy string music. However a number of events and characters from the 489-page-long novel by Joanna Bator are squeezed into the movie unnecessarily. I'm still not sure if I fully got it. The book clarifies the movie plot, though the order of events in the novel is slightly different than in the film. Still, such incomprehensible weirdness, whether in literature or movies, only in Poland.
EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE
Recommended. Phenomenally acted and perfectly structured. Zac Efron is amazing as Ted Bundy. The murderer was told to be attractive, something I could never understand because in pictures and interviews he looks quite average. It was only Zac Efron who, impersonating him, spread such charm around the serial killer, demonstrated his acuity, intelligence, exuded eroticism that I finally realized why all women would fall into his web. The actor was so convincing I only hope he didn't kill anyone while preparing for the role. Still, when I compared charming Zac Efron with cocky, aggressive Ted Bundy from a documentary... maybe the actor overdid the lure? The actual people are shown in documentary footage at the end. They look better in the Hollywood film than in real life however. The shocking volume of admiration for the murderer is one of surprisingly funny fragments. The film is an excerpt of his life, skipping his psychology studies and focusing on his education in law. His statement that "killers live among us" is some food for thought.
Saturday 23 March 2019
16TH DOCS AGAINST GRAVITY FILM FESTIVAL
It takes an entire year to organise. Once one festival is over, the next one begins to be prepared. So here comes a breakdown of what the organisers say about the 2019 one. This year one more city will host it - Katowice. And in Warsaw and Wroclaw, in one cinema each, audiodescription will be provided. The jury will include Michał Marczak of "Wszystkie nieprzespane noce" ("All These Sleepless Nights"), Hanna Polak and Layla Hosseini. Peter Jackson's first film since "Hobbit" will be screened. It will talk about WW1 soldiers and is formed from coloured black and white pictures which renders it more realist and surrealist at the same time. Cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska's own, directed by herself, documentary "Marek Edelman... i była miłość w getcie" ("Mark Edelman... and There Was Love in the Ghetto") is coming too. Croatian "Srbenka" will tell about a a girl who was raped and the perpetrators got no punishment. Polish "In Touch" is about Polish migration to Iceland. Apparently 1 million 200 thousand Ukrainian smartphones are registered in Poland - the Ukrainian immigration constitutes the topic of "Jazda obowiązkowa" ("Compulsory Figures"). "Talking About Trees" deals with the Islamic dictatorship which ruined expat students' film-making ambitions on return to Sudan and Tchad. On 11th May "Symfonia Fabryki Ursus" ("Symphony of the Ursus Factory") will premiere with a splash, including a show of tractors driven in front of the cinema. Ecology will be covered in "Soyalism" - about monopolising the food market. The Science Non-Fiction section will talk about AI. Letizia Battaglia, the protagonist of "Shooting the Mafia" will be a guest. Apparently she's famous not only for photographing the Sicilian mafia but also for her much younger lovers, e.g. 20, 30, 40 years. In Herzog's "Meeting Gorbachev" they talk but weird bits thrown into narration abound. "Jean Paul Gaultier Fait Son Show" ("Jean Paul Gaultier: Freak & Chic") is a colourful show. "Bellingcat - Truth in a Post-Truth World" showcases citizen journalism. Not-formally-journalists found the guilty of the MH17 Malaysian plane shootdown via Facebook and proved the crime. Bastian Obermayer, the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" journalist who revealed "The Panama Papers" will be the guest after the film. 9 Polish films are to premiere at the festival. That includes debut "Diagnosis" which talks about the city of Łódź as if of a human psyche. Another screening with a guest will be around a film about a Jewish landlord of a tenement in Złota Street, Warsaw who really cares about his tenants, yet his tenement will be probably taken over by Jaki's commission. The film will feature the inhabitants and different views of the situation. Loznitsa will be hosted as well. His documentary "The Trial" tackles the issue of engineers and economists put on Stalin's trials. Another guest is Alan Tieger who was one of the prosecutors at the trial of "the Butcher of the Balkans". Another invited documentary film protagonist is Doris Wagner who started the #nunstoo movement. There are going to be debates, among others after "Anthropocene: The Human Epoch" and after "Push" - this one will focus on the housing space and flats treated as goods or as a human right. Other curious films are: "Anders, Me and His 23 Other Women" - about a handsome Swede with a calendar and "Buddy" - about human-dog relationships.
AQUARELA
Watchable. Interesting but feels a bit lengthy. Shot at 96 frames per second and in Atmos 7.1 sound, it's a 89'-long painting of water in its 3 states of matter: solid, liquid and vapour. From Lake Baikal in Siberia and Saqqak in Greenland, through the Atlantic Ocean to the tropical zone, ending at Venezuelan Salto Angel. With sounds of nature as well as rock music and a classical score. Its main focus is on accidents and natural disasters and in this matter it does its utmost to put the viewer, partly through the state-of-the-art Atmos 7.1 sound, right in the middle of the elements. Some images are like nothing I've seen before, some are simply awe-inspiring but several feel protracted and just yawn-inspiring. The focus is clearly on climate change, as indicated in the remark about ice getting too thin to drive on 3 weeks earlier than usual. Still, the film's a painting extended in time rather than a cautionary tale.
It takes an entire year to organise. Once one festival is over, the next one begins to be prepared. So here comes a breakdown of what the organisers say about the 2019 one. This year one more city will host it - Katowice. And in Warsaw and Wroclaw, in one cinema each, audiodescription will be provided. The jury will include Michał Marczak of "Wszystkie nieprzespane noce" ("All These Sleepless Nights"), Hanna Polak and Layla Hosseini. Peter Jackson's first film since "Hobbit" will be screened. It will talk about WW1 soldiers and is formed from coloured black and white pictures which renders it more realist and surrealist at the same time. Cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska's own, directed by herself, documentary "Marek Edelman... i była miłość w getcie" ("Mark Edelman... and There Was Love in the Ghetto") is coming too. Croatian "Srbenka" will tell about a a girl who was raped and the perpetrators got no punishment. Polish "In Touch" is about Polish migration to Iceland. Apparently 1 million 200 thousand Ukrainian smartphones are registered in Poland - the Ukrainian immigration constitutes the topic of "Jazda obowiązkowa" ("Compulsory Figures"). "Talking About Trees" deals with the Islamic dictatorship which ruined expat students' film-making ambitions on return to Sudan and Tchad. On 11th May "Symfonia Fabryki Ursus" ("Symphony of the Ursus Factory") will premiere with a splash, including a show of tractors driven in front of the cinema. Ecology will be covered in "Soyalism" - about monopolising the food market. The Science Non-Fiction section will talk about AI. Letizia Battaglia, the protagonist of "Shooting the Mafia" will be a guest. Apparently she's famous not only for photographing the Sicilian mafia but also for her much younger lovers, e.g. 20, 30, 40 years. In Herzog's "Meeting Gorbachev" they talk but weird bits thrown into narration abound. "Jean Paul Gaultier Fait Son Show" ("Jean Paul Gaultier: Freak & Chic") is a colourful show. "Bellingcat - Truth in a Post-Truth World" showcases citizen journalism. Not-formally-journalists found the guilty of the MH17 Malaysian plane shootdown via Facebook and proved the crime. Bastian Obermayer, the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" journalist who revealed "The Panama Papers" will be the guest after the film. 9 Polish films are to premiere at the festival. That includes debut "Diagnosis" which talks about the city of Łódź as if of a human psyche. Another screening with a guest will be around a film about a Jewish landlord of a tenement in Złota Street, Warsaw who really cares about his tenants, yet his tenement will be probably taken over by Jaki's commission. The film will feature the inhabitants and different views of the situation. Loznitsa will be hosted as well. His documentary "The Trial" tackles the issue of engineers and economists put on Stalin's trials. Another guest is Alan Tieger who was one of the prosecutors at the trial of "the Butcher of the Balkans". Another invited documentary film protagonist is Doris Wagner who started the #nunstoo movement. There are going to be debates, among others after "Anthropocene: The Human Epoch" and after "Push" - this one will focus on the housing space and flats treated as goods or as a human right. Other curious films are: "Anders, Me and His 23 Other Women" - about a handsome Swede with a calendar and "Buddy" - about human-dog relationships.
AQUARELA
Watchable. Interesting but feels a bit lengthy. Shot at 96 frames per second and in Atmos 7.1 sound, it's a 89'-long painting of water in its 3 states of matter: solid, liquid and vapour. From Lake Baikal in Siberia and Saqqak in Greenland, through the Atlantic Ocean to the tropical zone, ending at Venezuelan Salto Angel. With sounds of nature as well as rock music and a classical score. Its main focus is on accidents and natural disasters and in this matter it does its utmost to put the viewer, partly through the state-of-the-art Atmos 7.1 sound, right in the middle of the elements. Some images are like nothing I've seen before, some are simply awe-inspiring but several feel protracted and just yawn-inspiring. The focus is clearly on climate change, as indicated in the remark about ice getting too thin to drive on 3 weeks earlier than usual. Still, the film's a painting extended in time rather than a cautionary tale.
Wednesday 20 March 2019
CAPTAIN MARVEL AT SCREENX
Watchable twice. At the second watching I found it just less funny but still engaging thanks to decent twists of action. Altogether it's fun. Written by two women and one man and directed by a woman and a man therefore very feminist, but men, at least some, enjoyed it too. A number of funny bits, especially with the cat. Also 90s computers and Internet access are mocked. A humanitarian message is apparent too. Samuel L. Jackson is superb. You get to see the early career of Nick Fury. The Tesseract, the communication device from the ending of "Avengers: Infinity War" and the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization appear too. And Stan Lee's cameo (he was one of the producers). There's a mid- and a post-credit. The ScreenX adds no extra info. The only advantage of the three screen panels is the extension of peripheral vision, e.g. when the central screen shows people taking files, the side ones present the rest of the archive room. Only 42 minutes of the 2 hours 5 minute long movie use the technology meaning only some scenes do.
As for the new Korean technology of ScreenX itself, it's a disappointment and an overstatement. There are 3 ways of shooting ScreenX: filming a scene with 3 cameras at once, shooting extra scenes for ScreenX or adding scenes after shooting the movie. But it doesn't enhance the movie. What's worse, the side panels are too dark and are separated with what looks like black columns where the screen "bends" so instead of one extended picture you see three separate ones. All that for 8 zlotys extra. If you go, the best seats are on the side!
I asked Cinema City representatives for Dolby Atmos at my local cinema. Got only vague answers though. A Disney representative told us about a 1 million $ screen in their center at Burbank where black and white colours gave the impression of a spaceship sitting right on his nose when he was 20 meters away from the screen. So that's the future of cinema.
KINO FRANKOFONSKIE 2019 (FRANCOPHONE CINEMA 2019)
LA PASSION D'AUGUSTINE (THE PASSION OF AUGUSTINE)
Watchable. Optimistic, with good music but lacks a true bite. It's oversimplified. The superior nun's motives are unclear. Altogether it's just fine.
SUPERJHEMP RETORNS
Watchable. Pleasant though not funny. It mocks both the superhero genre and the country cleverly: the "Superman" music theme is used, the country is called Luxusburg, its refugees receive food rations in golden boxes and one of characters remarks: "Once something is happening in my country, I'm on the Belgian coast." Still, to laugh at it, I guess you need to be a Luxembourger yourself.
THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER
Recommended. An unusual and thought-provoking psychologic drama with serious social undertones. Do we need artists? What does the society do with our talents? How far can we go to protect what's rare? What do we value in ourselves, in others and the society as such? Do our school scores matter for our adult lives? Who and what determines our life success? Can we cope on the personal level when the younger generation surpasses our skills? Last but not least, what makes us happy? I felt so moved and saddened that I left crying.
THE AFTERMATH
Watchable. A totally engaging and plausibly acted love story, even if predictable and a few scenes are overly melodramatic. The background presents the cinematically unchartered territory of the temporary post-WW2 British settlement in Germany (due to the army stationed there). The dormant hostilities, sanctimony on the Ally Part and suspicions on both sides as well as varying ways of coping with the loss of the loved ones by the four protagonists and the societal backdrop of the victors and the defeated could form an intriguing thriller or a psychologic drama on their own. Instead we get a softened version resulting in a mawkish love story.
Watchable twice. At the second watching I found it just less funny but still engaging thanks to decent twists of action. Altogether it's fun. Written by two women and one man and directed by a woman and a man therefore very feminist, but men, at least some, enjoyed it too. A number of funny bits, especially with the cat. Also 90s computers and Internet access are mocked. A humanitarian message is apparent too. Samuel L. Jackson is superb. You get to see the early career of Nick Fury. The Tesseract, the communication device from the ending of "Avengers: Infinity War" and the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization appear too. And Stan Lee's cameo (he was one of the producers). There's a mid- and a post-credit. The ScreenX adds no extra info. The only advantage of the three screen panels is the extension of peripheral vision, e.g. when the central screen shows people taking files, the side ones present the rest of the archive room. Only 42 minutes of the 2 hours 5 minute long movie use the technology meaning only some scenes do.
As for the new Korean technology of ScreenX itself, it's a disappointment and an overstatement. There are 3 ways of shooting ScreenX: filming a scene with 3 cameras at once, shooting extra scenes for ScreenX or adding scenes after shooting the movie. But it doesn't enhance the movie. What's worse, the side panels are too dark and are separated with what looks like black columns where the screen "bends" so instead of one extended picture you see three separate ones. All that for 8 zlotys extra. If you go, the best seats are on the side!
I asked Cinema City representatives for Dolby Atmos at my local cinema. Got only vague answers though. A Disney representative told us about a 1 million $ screen in their center at Burbank where black and white colours gave the impression of a spaceship sitting right on his nose when he was 20 meters away from the screen. So that's the future of cinema.
KINO FRANKOFONSKIE 2019 (FRANCOPHONE CINEMA 2019)
LA PASSION D'AUGUSTINE (THE PASSION OF AUGUSTINE)
Watchable. Optimistic, with good music but lacks a true bite. It's oversimplified. The superior nun's motives are unclear. Altogether it's just fine.
SUPERJHEMP RETORNS
Watchable. Pleasant though not funny. It mocks both the superhero genre and the country cleverly: the "Superman" music theme is used, the country is called Luxusburg, its refugees receive food rations in golden boxes and one of characters remarks: "Once something is happening in my country, I'm on the Belgian coast." Still, to laugh at it, I guess you need to be a Luxembourger yourself.
THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER
Recommended. An unusual and thought-provoking psychologic drama with serious social undertones. Do we need artists? What does the society do with our talents? How far can we go to protect what's rare? What do we value in ourselves, in others and the society as such? Do our school scores matter for our adult lives? Who and what determines our life success? Can we cope on the personal level when the younger generation surpasses our skills? Last but not least, what makes us happy? I felt so moved and saddened that I left crying.
THE AFTERMATH
Watchable. A totally engaging and plausibly acted love story, even if predictable and a few scenes are overly melodramatic. The background presents the cinematically unchartered territory of the temporary post-WW2 British settlement in Germany (due to the army stationed there). The dormant hostilities, sanctimony on the Ally Part and suspicions on both sides as well as varying ways of coping with the loss of the loved ones by the four protagonists and the societal backdrop of the victors and the defeated could form an intriguing thriller or a psychologic drama on their own. Instead we get a softened version resulting in a mawkish love story.
Sunday 10 March 2019
KURIER (THE RESISTANCE FIGHTER)
Watchable. Interesting pictures inspired by old photographs but in varied palettes. Painstakingly recreated reality of WW2. The spy intrigue slowly becomes comprehensible to an outsider like me. Swift twists of action towards the end, decent dialogues. Poor, wooden acting, including the lead male (Philippe Tlokinski).
LAZZARO FELICE (HAPPY AS LAZZARO)
Watchable. Wise but slow-paced. Feels lengthy for the first hour, the second is easier due to its predictability, you just watch to see if the situation's how you expected. And it is. The downtrodden ones are always at the bottom of the society. Aristocrats and the rich take advantage of them and the clergy takes them for granted. The great fraud was one element that prevented me from leaving the cinema initially. The leap in time was better still. The slave work auction of immigrants and the extremely poor locals equals both groups as the abused ones. Disturbingly it's the destitude ones who end up saving the rich and in fact protecting them.
Watchable. Interesting pictures inspired by old photographs but in varied palettes. Painstakingly recreated reality of WW2. The spy intrigue slowly becomes comprehensible to an outsider like me. Swift twists of action towards the end, decent dialogues. Poor, wooden acting, including the lead male (Philippe Tlokinski).
LAZZARO FELICE (HAPPY AS LAZZARO)
Watchable. Wise but slow-paced. Feels lengthy for the first hour, the second is easier due to its predictability, you just watch to see if the situation's how you expected. And it is. The downtrodden ones are always at the bottom of the society. Aristocrats and the rich take advantage of them and the clergy takes them for granted. The great fraud was one element that prevented me from leaving the cinema initially. The leap in time was better still. The slave work auction of immigrants and the extremely poor locals equals both groups as the abused ones. Disturbingly it's the destitude ones who end up saving the rich and in fact protecting them.
Sunday 3 March 2019
WELCOME TO MARWEN
Watchable. Sappy. Chaotic at first but deeply touching throughout. Too mushy though. Battle scenes are over the top which makes it hard to take it seriously. The fact it's based on real events from a living artist's life came as a big surprise. But it shows a true artist will always find a way to create, even with physical limitations. With cute, not looking 50 which she is, director's wife, Leslie Zemeckis, in the lead female role of the protagonist's love interest.
마녀 (THE WITCH: PART 1. THE SUBVERSION)
Watchable. I expected fantasy, turned out to be science fiction. The opening credits are important plot-wise. As the whole, the picture is too schematic, with over the top gore and unnatural movement in CGIs. At first it's not certain what genre it's going to be - might be crime. Info is revealed gradually which is a nice game with the viewer and engaging. In spite of the movie's numerous shortcomings I'm looking forward to part two.
Watchable. Sappy. Chaotic at first but deeply touching throughout. Too mushy though. Battle scenes are over the top which makes it hard to take it seriously. The fact it's based on real events from a living artist's life came as a big surprise. But it shows a true artist will always find a way to create, even with physical limitations. With cute, not looking 50 which she is, director's wife, Leslie Zemeckis, in the lead female role of the protagonist's love interest.
마녀 (THE WITCH: PART 1. THE SUBVERSION)
Watchable. I expected fantasy, turned out to be science fiction. The opening credits are important plot-wise. As the whole, the picture is too schematic, with over the top gore and unnatural movement in CGIs. At first it's not certain what genre it's going to be - might be crime. Info is revealed gradually which is a nice game with the viewer and engaging. In spite of the movie's numerous shortcomings I'm looking forward to part two.
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