HAP (HOPE)
Watchable. I'm impressed with Norwegian health service - patient and dedicated doctors available 24/7, procedures on the same day. To Polish people it looks like a fable even when you're dying. Having said that, I detest movies about cancer - it's such an exploited topic. This movie luckily is set up in a big, loving family, mostly over a festive period. The family atmosphere and their Christmas spent together were so suggestive, I expected to see snow outside my windows afterwards - silly, it's September and 20 degrees Celsius. The actors cast in the leading roles, as passionate lovers among others, aren't convincing, mostly due to the visibly huge age difference: Andrea Bræin Hovig is 47 and Stellan Skarsgård is 69. And the movie, however warm, is annoyingly slow.
Watched online so cinematic reception might differ.
MULAN 3D
Recommended in this format too. In 3D it's even better. You can marvel at the meticulously created set, including Mulan's home village, now perfectly round, or be amazed by a spider dangling in front of you. Set pieces are shot from a few angles, where especially wall-walking sequences are impressive. But so is the cinematography as such, e.g. dimmed light or snowy mist add to the combination of varying emotions during watching.
SWALLOW
Recommended. Mesmerising from scene one, mostly due to the glossy cinematography showcasing the riches the young woman has married into. Haley Bennett is superb as the "doll" located in the isolated, posh, lavish but emptish house and kept there like decoration. The title is loaded with meanings: from physical ones - and does Hunter swallow stuff and metaphoric. The callousness of the emotionally frigid wealthy for who everything and everyone has to be just right constitutes economic violence. Later an issue from the woman's past overlaps her picture-perfect cold marriage and she swallows all the insults new and old. The story's fictitious but based around a little known disorder, existing in reality. It's solidly rooted in scientific facts behind such cases. And it serves the film well, since the story's so extraordinary, physically and mentally, from the beginning till the end. I had never seen anything like it before. And I watch a few hundred movies per year, mind it. And Haley Bennett deserves an Oscar.
Watched online so cinematic reception might differ.
WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL
Half the usual audience will be able to attend due to the Covid-regime. At the same time there's a long list of very promising movies. "Big Boys Don't Cry", "Unidentified" and "Droneman" seem particularly intriguing - after narrowing down the top-notch cinema options. For technical reasons though, movies won't be shown online (they lack stereo mixing), only at the cinema. I'm not planning on going but I bet that if I did I would find lots of fascinating productions.
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