Movie reviews

FALLING

Watchable. A simple drama about a patriarchal family with an abusive father where childhood memories intertwine with latter-day caring for the parent with Alzheimer's. Well acted so engaging enough. Quality sound and colours merit viewing it at the cinema. The song over the end credits is perfectly surrounding. The whole thing is, surprisingly for the topic, soothing, mostly owing to the cinematography and set decoration.

MOJE WSPANIALE ZYCIE (MY WONDERFUL LIFE)

Watchable. Łukasz Grzegorzek, the writer/director of "Córka trenera" ("A Coach's Daughter") now has come up with both a teacher's daughter and a teacher's son for his new offering. Once you start, you want to know when it blows up so you keep watching yet another exhausting Polish drama about a dysfunctional family. I just felt frustrated with the number of little pathologies: A woman is burdened with taking care of all her family members who persistently exploit her but she puts up with her husband's put-downs and her son's and daughter-in-law's presumptuous requests running away into an affair with a man less attractive than her husband. The school where they both work fails to cope with unruly teens and she teaches them her imperfect English. As requisite in Polish dramas, a family member is terminally ill. It does blow up eventually but there's no value in seeing this film whatsoever. Better not to start. Or if you do, look for the school janitor - it's director Łukasz Grzegorzek himself. The soundtrack is a combination of quality dreamy instrumental pieces and a number of covers of hackneyed Polish songs from the 70s and 80s - unenticing. The whole thing is tenuous and utterly devoid of fresh ideas. Just a dreadful piece of work

撞死了一只羊 (JINPA)

Watchable. One to see ethnographically for Tibetan customs. The desert expanses traversed by Jinpa look dull and that's pretty much the first half of the film. The second half is awfully sexist, both waitresses cosy up to and attempt to endear themselves to male customers and the men, on top of being self-absorbed, are aggressive or are expected to be. 

Seen at piecsmakow.pl/wdomu, cinematic reception might differ. Small white subtitles, sometimes cursive, make reading difficult even sitting right in front of the computer. The volume is good but the dialogues Tibetan.