TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA
Watchable. "Friday the 13th", "Black Phone 2", "Videodrome" appear to be direct inspirations, as are wokism and corporate bahaviour. The film about a lesbian director fascinated by a queer "monster" in a cult horror series has a clear-cut, sensible plot. This horror mockery plays with the genre as it starts with extremely shaky camera images and ends in the two protagonists dripping with blood while shopping for junk snacks. Characteristic actor Patrick Fischler is great as the shop assistant foreseeing "doom". There's a post-credit with him and another character like his. The whole thing, with a lucid storyline, is engaging enough, yet neither scary nor funny, the humour attempts, especially queer ones, are cringy. It's also a film about preparations to shoot a film and movies about making movies are rarely fun.
LE CANNIBALE DE MILWAUKEE (THE CANNIBAL OF MILWAUKEE)
Recommended. A dark documentary about serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer who killed 17 men. French-directed, all English-spoken, set in the little town where he used to live. The town is filled with light, unlike Jeff's childhood room which had only slit windows. His school friends: a comic book writer, a musician and a handful of others remember him and realise that while his alcoholism drove them apart right after school, this abandonment by everyone led him to killing people and filling his house with their heads. The film is relatively light visually and in the tone, as are the protagonists, yet the backdrop to why anyone's interested in the town where nothing ever happened until Dahmer is grim. As are their thoughts in the finale. A number of Dahmer's pictures help you imagine him as a living person. A brief interview excerpt lets you not just hear his voice but realise how smart deep inside he was. Depressing yet enlightening.
The documentary was available on Arte TV.
ARNIE & BARNEY
Watchable. A pleasant tale from the "Maya The Bee" universe. Maya appears only in episodes. The main protagonists are two dimwit ants. The story depicts effects of a drought quite vividly and those are the best bits. The rest is an intrigue with a hypnotic mosquito. Available only dubbed in Poland, where the protagonists' songs are in Polish too, the background ones in English. There's a post-credit.
FLAVIA
Recommended. An engaging family detective story set shortly after the war, with vivid characters. Hard to guess, complex. Very English too.
HISTOIRES PARALLELES (PARALLEL TALES)
Switched off. Asghar Farhadi's French film says it all. it's long and people-centred like the Iranian director's previous pictures, yet overly discussed and slowly presented visually like French dramas. And one of the protagonists is a writer - much too common a trope in French cinema. What's worse, that adds a spoken narrative (as the author reads her writing) to an already protracted story. Even her publisher is bored with it in the movie. What worked when the director presented another culture to Europeans, fails to engage when he deals with the French. Also, old-fashioned voyeurism doesn't excite these days. Wrong place and time. Profanities in the language and a mention of a rotting corpse juxtaposed with the smell of an attractive man put me off further.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL
THE DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET
Recommended. I had to pause the movie a number of times - the documentary's about such a horrible mutilation - and that's the "gentle" version, "not like in the old days", done right at the time of filming, not just in back stories, so you see the force used and hear the girls' screaming. There's also a lot about never saying 'no' to a husband, being married off at 10 to old men, about female circumcision tradition believed to come from Islam, whereas it comes from the Pharaohs rather, about the Church opposing it. The court ruling in the finale gives hope. But, throughout the film, the men, the mothers and the young girls want it - most of them anyway.
Reviewed from the organizers' screener, cinematic reception might differ.
PRACTICAL MAGIC (1998)
The re-release was preceded by TV show excerpts with the two lead actresses nowadays, where Nicole Kidman claims that people were asking for the sequel.
Watchable. A protracted mish-mash of genres: fantasy, black comedy, crime, horror, romantic comedy, family drama, musical - well, for a comedy it's not really funny but it's not a serious horror either. The set-up is silly. Sandra Bullock is great, Nicole Kidman's fine, the cop and the black character pass the test. But so many genres don't enliven (nomen omen) the action.
SUPERMARSU JA SUURI HUIJAUS (SUPER FURBALL AND THE LYING SQUIRREL)
Recommended. Each language has a different version of the title, Polish being the worst - out of line with the plot, yet the movie itself makes sense and you don't feel it's dubbed - it seems so natural. This family/school/evil developer/superhero flick offers a number of fantastically built and played characters - good and bad, adult and child and a wonderful squirrel. The duel of the campaign is engaging, the dying animal tear-jerking. But it's Finnish so it all ends well.
ODZYSKANY
Watchable. I thought I'd have a break from the huge number of horrors at cinemas these days but... 29 minutes into this religious drama a bandit throws a dog out the window, killing the pooch. I had to take a break from watching. When I continued, a few minutes later another character tells how his father died run over by a train. The young protagonist faces debts, gangsters, eviction, mother's death, father's alcoholism - not only is it a freaky accumulation of misfortunes, no problems are solved - the action jumps 4 years forward and the young man is miraculously living in a wealthy home. There's but one joke in this otherwise grim picture: "Najlepszy był Boniek. A Włodek Smolarek krążył niczym elektron wokół jego jądra." ("Boniek was the best. And Włodek Smolarek circled like an electron around his nucleus/testicle" - based on the double meaning of 'jądro' in Polish)
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
PRIMAVERA
Recommended. An amazing period drama inspired by Vivaldi but featuring music not only by him, especially dynamic background tones in one scene are riveting. The plot, about the fate of female orphans in Venice, about how the orphanage was financed, about how rich people acted and about Vivaldi himself is eye-opening. It starts with a brutal scene where newly born kittens are drowned in a canal, another canal sees slaughter blood poured in - splashing on the passing boat passengers. The human fate, for girls, often abandoned by living mothers, was grim too: chastity was their main value - examined by a male doctor, even older than the men the girls were sold to. Vivaldi was despised for part of his life and venerated for another, sick throughout, I also didn't know he had been a priest. The platonic love between him and one of the musician girls is wonderfully presented, both actors: Tecla Insolia as Cecilia and Michele Riondino, with a dog-like look and enticing eyes, as Antonio Vivaldi are perfect, as is the rest of the cast. Venetian interiors and exteriors showcase life as it was long before tourism. The whole film is magnetic.
THE DOG STARS AT IMAX
Watchable. Western music accompanies the opening, setting the scene for Wild West advernture - the movie's postapocalyptic 2035 which takes humanity back to such days. A wonderful dog is the centre of the action for the first half an hour, then he gets killed - how could anyone possibly love the movie? I was sobbing for most of the remaining film. The rest is slow but it's a necessary character introduction which takes about an hour. Frequent throwbacks to Hig's life before the epidemic build the narrative, albeit slowly. Then the story takes you from Erie to eerie Grand Junction - the creepy inhabitants are the best part - and back again. Funny occasionally, e.g. when Hig is gawping at Cima's bum and her dad Pops remarks: "Maybe you wanna concentrate on the stones?" Gripping when needed. Story-based with decent visuals but Imax is unnecessary. Some shoot-outs and a bison stampede are loud and intense in audio but bearable. The movie conveys a pleasant message that survival depends on co-operation, friendliness and goodness, yet portraying all sorts of psychos taking advantage of the civilisational collapse as well.
L'ENFANT DU DESERT
Recommended. Mostly Morocco-shot, this true story about a boy lost in a sandstorm at 2 and raised by ostriches, while befriending a dog-like fennec fox, is filled with the love of nature and freedom. A beautiful tale. Deeply touching. Most of all, the pictures of the boy carrying the fox or cuddling ostriches are mind-blowing.
KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL
ПАСХАЛЬНИЙ ДЕНЬ (EASTER DAY)
Recommended. This Ukrainian short film is a fiction inspired by true events. It keeps you in suspense for the first few minutes when you hear a conversation where two men in a car analyse passersby as if to kidnap someone. Turns out they look for army recruits. The rest tells you about ordinary life in Ukraine in a light tone since the guy turns out to be really decent and the military guys co-operative. Multidimensional and inspiring.
LA BALEINE ET LE MUSICIEN (THE WHALE AND THE MUSICIAN)
Watchable. Rone (Erwan Castex) is an electronic musician synthesising whale songs into his pieces. His idea of communicating with whales through music is inspiring. But the way the story is told, showing the wait for the whales and bland discussions with his companions made me break up the viewing into parts to be able to finish. The information from the talks was important so not to be missed but distracted from the main aim and plot. The documentary rambles instead of using more music and more cetaceans rather than talking about technicalities.
Reviewed from the organizers' screeners, cinematic reception might differ.
FRANCES HA (2012)
Watchable. A mumblecore drama not only written by, but also with Greta Gerwig in the lead role, her movie parents are her actual folks too. That's also one movie where the final disclaimer about the characters being fictitious got me thinking - so real they feel. Especially Frances, first happy-go-lucky, then still a kidult but getting growingly surrounded by responsible, well-off professionals who sometimes get pregnant, while she is still trying to find solid ground in her life. First I hated her: smoking, irresponsible, annoying. But it becomes easy to feel sorry for her and sympathise when she's always second best in her job search, has to move places a lot - much like me back in the day. Great pop music fills passages preventing them from becoming boring. The main downside is the lack of colour. Literally. The movie's black and white. I bet the dancing, the cityscapes, Christmas lights, nature would look so much more alluring in colour.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
AREK.MAMA.PANORAMA
Recommended. Arek Pasożyt, 36, is a zany artist whose arguably best works are irreverent, funny makeovers of holy pictures. His search for the Holy Grail of the long lost enormous panorama of the Tatra mountains, one I've first heard of, intertwines with his conversations with his girlfriend on the one hand and with his parents on the other. The family relationship is the biggest fun. His mum bringing him more things to pack is hilarious. This personal film unwititngly builds a portrait of the whole Y generation aka Millennials.
Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.
КУЗЬМА: СТРАШНО ВЕСЕЛИЙ (KUZMA: FEARLESSLY CHEERFUL)
Watchable. Whether it's the dynamic edit or Kuzma's charisma, you can't take your eyes off the screen. I've never been a fan so I just viewed it as a human story. An average man, with mediocre music skills, little flair for dancing or sense of style formed a long-lasting band. Nothing special about him, yet his passion for playing and singing, where money never mattered, brought him fame in Ukraine. Lots of last century music is monophonic, which feels archaic. Grainy footage magnifies that impression. The detailed history of the band will appeal to Скрябін (Skryabin) fans rather. The political level of this documentary was more interesting for me: from the time he discovered Polish and western music played by Polish radio stations - since he lived close to the border and a mere mountain pass cut him off the Soviet media, through his support for Yanukovych - turns out many musicians had attached themselves to parties during elections since the 1990s, to his financial and organizational support for the army once the full-scale war broke out. A fun fact is his family would make trips to Poland to trade goods in the 1990s. What strikes you in the film is how sincere and straightforward he was - that must have been a large part of his allure. A perennial kidult, still crazy in his 40s when he died tragically in an accident. I shed some tears at the ending.
