Movie reviews

NIGHT FILM MARATHON - THE MARATHON OF JOHN WICK

JOHN WICK

Watchable when seen for the 2nd time. The bottle next to John Wick in Aurelio's garage says "peligroso" ("dangerous"). Air views of NYC add space. The casual remarks exchanged between the hitmen are highlights. Pounding techno and guitar riffs enrich the climate. And both pups are cute. As for "a man of focus" his missing targets a few times is annoying and his swerving the car stands in contradiction to the focus too. His tattoo says "Fortis fortuna adiuvat" ("Fortune favours the bold").

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2

Recommended this time. Visually stunning. The soundtrack and plot quality like in part 1. I was dying to see how it ends. Chapter 2 and 3 enjoy Atmos sound.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM

Watchable. This part is tongue-in-cheek. Music has got even better, there are also some spectacular visuals, e.g. combat accompanied by Vivaldi's "Winter". Judo and karate aplenty. Apart from martial arts, it's a bit more brutal than previous parts. My fave joke was: "He killed my dog!" "I get it." Though the irony and combat are overdone at times.


16TH DOCS AGAINST GRAVITY FILM FESTIVAL

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

Recommended. About the position of women in Hollywood. Directed by a man but made by a team consisting of women in 75%. A female director of a high-grossing film with 2 Oscar nominations couldn't land a job for 9 years afterwards. The most terrifying though is the visualisation of movie funding. Normally 99,5% of movie funding goes to men. It's like having 100 cookies on a plate where men grab 99,5 cookies and women fight for the remaining half a cookie. No horror recently has scared me that badly.

The audience at the screening was over 90% female.

Letizia Battaglia's photography exhibition at Iluzjon was interesting though not as striking as what she said about living in Palermo when people were murdered daily and she received death threats and was spat on. Also, a curious fact is that heads of the mafia "were bossy at the time" meaning: they're not any more, "they acted like they ruled the court" and instigated great fear in her. 

BELLINGCAT: TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD

Watchable. I didn't understand who or what certain people and some organisations were or what the cases were about but all the more I'm strongly impressed with those citizen journalists' skills. They often solve complex high profile cases faster than specialized agencies. The documentary proves Russians were the ones behind shooting down MH17 and shows how fake news is used by that same country, e.g. video game footage presented as real or when people lied down after a staged explosion. Social media, personal posts, Google Earth and other publicly available websites turn out to be more credible than what politicians spin.

SOYALISM

Watchable. A depressing documentary about international devastation brought on by offshore hog-growing and soybean plantations both resulting from the Chinese eating increasingly more meat. Also on how smelly it is to grow animals in large numbers. More detail than necessary, too long interviews. And the final message nearly goes missed since it's only said briefly that we can feed the world only if we go vegetarian.

I went to the meeting with the director and a protagonist of "Diagnosis". Making the film took 6 years from research till the end and was distressing till the last day of editing. The director only felt relieved when she passed it on to the sound technician. Then he got depressed. 


WIATR.THRILLER DOKUMENTALNY (THE WIND. A DOCUMENTARY THRILLER)

Watchable. Nothing special. Just everyday lives of a handful of people in Podhale (Zakopane and around). Meant to be limited to those who feel some connection to the halny wind so the topic is forced. Shot with small Sony Alpha - easy to carry around. But it has resulted in the pictures being dark. Feels lengthy so I don't really recommend it. 

ZLOGONYE (THE WITCH HUNTERS)

Watchable. It's not fantasy! It's slow and mundane in the first part. Later it gains some psychology. All in the movie world where all adults are kind and caring to all children. But even within this genre, I've seen better films.

GLORIA BELL

Watchable. Pleasant, cheerful, uplifting. Follows in the footsteps of "Roma" in the way it tells about a strong woman and an irresponsible man. With light 80s and 70s pop music and in colour. Set among people in their fifties burdened with families so the setting is like a different world to me. Julianne Moore often appears naked in it and she produced it so I guess she wanted to show off her young-looking body. And mostly for that reason, it feels a bit sad she needs a movie to feel better about herself. 

ALL IS TRUE

Watchable. More form than substance. Kenneth Branagh has slowed down recently. His previous film, "Murder on the Orient Express", was bland. Here, with the same pace and scarce contents, the first hour is terribly boring. On the other hand, the scenography and costumes render details of the period and a peculiar kind of cinematography makes each shot look like an old painting. The director impersonates Shakespeare. Amazing acting, also by the young: Kathryn Wilder and Lydia Wilson, attracts you to the screen and compensates for the directorial and plot shortcomings. The plot, in the second hour, when it becomes clear the movie's onto something, under the guise of Shakespeare times, tackles the widely discussed contemporaneously issue of women's value in the society and in the family. Or at least such was my first impression. The 58-year-old director and the 60-year-old scriptwriter claim to have made a film about one's creative heritage, the passage of time and the place of the family in an author's life. They probably don't realise themselves how feminist a message it conveys.

UGLY DOLLS

Watchable. A heartfelt tale about lovely monsters and loving ugly dolls and about the loneliness of the world of the pretty. It's cute when it needs to be and suitable for nursery and primary school children. Pitbull and Ice-T dub the English version, songs are by the likes of Nick Jonas in English and by nobodies in Polish. 


10. PRZEGLAD NOWEGO KINA FRANCUSKIEGO (10TH SCREENING OF NEW FRENCH CINEMA)

LA DOULEUR (MEMOIR OF WAR)

Watchable. The topics of a relationship with someone first incarcerated, then severely changed by a concentration camp and of psychologic consequences of the loss of loved ones in the result of an ideologic purge are fascinating but here get nearly ruined because the movie drags and the philosophic commentary, presumably taken from the book it's based on, dissipates the emotional part through overintellectualizing it.


THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR

Watchable. A sappy teenage love story set in picture-perfect New York and with excellent music. On a (slightly) deeper level it deals with destiny versus creating your life history, preserving traditions after emigration and making the most of a day. A tear-jerking flick.

HERETIKS (THE CONVENT)

Watching. First, due to an error, I arrived half an hour late. I thought the movie had just started and was surprised to see spooks straightaway. After finding out I missed 1/3, I went to see the beginning again. To my amusement, scary images appear already in between opening credits. Lisping whispers, gore, gouged eyeballs and colour lights in eye sockets, including in the post-credit. Nearly all nuns get slain one by one. Next, even their corpses are slain. It's an engaging story in spite of all. And set in England in 1619. The lead's name is Persephone - like the goddess of nature abducted to the underworld. 

RED JOAN

Recommended again. Gripping again all the same. Great attention is given to detail, e.g. Tom Hughes as Russian Leo pronounces "think" like "sink".

DE DE PYAAR DE

Watchable. A very pleasant romantic comedy mixed with a comedy of errors. I did not laugh but I was smiling all the time. Well-paced, you can't take your eyes off the screen. Pleasant music, lavish residences and beautiful garments typical for Western-targeted Bollywood which I enjoy the most. What detracted from the pleasure was the sexism of the script: a man's betrayal is forgiven.

CAVAD XAN (JAVAD KHAN) (2009)

Walked out. This Azerbaijan picture looks and sounds as if it had been shot 50 or more years ago. Poor cinematographic quality and official speeches.