Movie reviews

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.