JFL

Ben Wheatley set out to pick mushrooms in the forest during the lockdown and made a film containing two paradoxes. The first is that he is unable to free himself from the context of the pandemic, even though it doesn’t add anything, but rather comes across as utterly unnecessary. The second, and clearly more tragic, paradox is that In the Earth is a supremely sensory work that can fully make an impact only in the cinema, where it is possible to completely surrender to its perceptions, but nobody has been able to properly see it on the big screen.

Barry Humphries again put his variety characters on the big screen. Alongside the iconic Dame Edna Everage comes another caricature personification of the exalted tastelessness, mediocrity and boorishness of the Australian middle class in the form of diplomat Les Patterson. Unfortunately, this carousel of vulgarity, oafishness and cross-dressing veers too far into the genre of spy adventures. Les Patterson Saves the World thus only in places achieves the same liberating, unbridled and satirical energy as Humphries’s best projects, particularly the pair of simple plebeian farces about Barry McKenzie. On the other hand, however, after Humphries’s earlier projects shit on the idea of hippie London and then on the tradition of European horror movies, it is no wonder that he wanted to apply the same verve to skewering the global cult of that prim dandy James Bond.

Running Time is a fine low-budget indie flick that remains intriguing today thanks mainly to the casting of Bruce Campbell in the lead role and comes across as one of those post-Tarantino films in which we watch criminals in their free time chatting about life, pop culture and their own small-time dreams, and which give their genre and the medium of film itself a sense of immediacy. In this case, this happens thanks to the gimmick consisting in the illusion of the narrative taking place in real time and as if in one shot, with the addition of literally announcing key deadlines and tasks for the characters. In comparison with other indie flicks of the same period, such as Floundering (1994), American Strays (1996), The Grave (1996) and even Tarantino’s films of the time, Running Time sets itself apart with its bold playfulness and levity. It does not wallow in the sullen and existential angst of an aimless generation, nor does it ostentatiously show off its sophistication. It simply takes delight in implementing the chosen one-shot concept. This is due in large part to the fact that Josh Becker is not actually part of the 1990s wave of independent filmmakers, but as a contemporary and collaborator of the Raimi brothers, he rather belongs to the earlier generation of film enthusiasts who picked up a camera and were defined by their more pop, genre and non-confrontational sensibilities.

In the context of the comic-book movies made so far, Spider-Man: No Way Home is a miraculous phenomenon. Unlike other superhero movies, it doesn’t conform to the dad ethos of aging fanboys, but instead exclusively targets millennials and younger viewers. What’s more, it even adopts their values and, on top of that, confronts them with the essentially evil and instructively corrosive black-and-white duality of older films. Like today’s (or any) younger generation, the Spider-Man of No Way Home is rashly hyperactive, naïve and idealistic. Besides its hypermedia nature and the motif of friendship, a more fundamental shift is manifested in the transformation of Spider-Man’s values and message. Though there is the inevitable facetiously adult proclamation “with great power comes great responsibility”, Holland’s Spider-Man does not have to give up his youthful view of the world within the coming-of-age story arc. Rather, his view permeates the whole film and underscores the central motif of its narrative, which is the effort not to fight the bad guys, but to find ways to help them.

If we disregard the enthusiastic exclamations of gore-hounds and lovers of extremes (and the director’s friends on IMDB), The Sadness first and foremost elicits a feeling of deja vu. In The Sadness, the aesthetics and ethos of the 1990s wave of German amateur gore films are mixed with ambitious work with the genre clichés of Asian low-budget horror flicks from the same era. It is necessary to acknowledge that, unlike the self-indulgent and often unintentionally ridiculous video works of Andreas Schndaas, Olaf Ittenbach, Heiko Fipper and Uwe Boll, the Taiwan-based Canadian expat Robert Jabbaz has a significantly better background in terms of craftsmanship. Like those other filmmakers, however, he would also love for his exhibition of intensifying brutality to shake viewers and give them the impression of something more serious and deeply revealing. Unfortunately, aside from the flimsiness of Jabbaz’s essentially naïve half-truths about the dark sides of the human subconscious, his already unsteady work continually falls on its face due to the totally predictable screenplay and blatant exploitation of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the ostentatiously disturbing scenes and the frantically luscious and creatively deviant scenes, the film rather elicits stand-offish amusement, crowned by a burst of laughter when it all ends with the mandatory onslaught of dark metal over the closing credits.

Unsurprisingly for its time, Schlöndorff's second film appeared in cinemas supported by an exploitation-tinged campaign that tried to sell it as a shocking and outrageous work that mirrored the moral decline of the younger generation. The distributor perhaps intended to evoke similar attitudes among older and conservative viewers in order to make the film an event and a scandal. It is thus even more pleasantly surprising that Degree of Murder is not exploitative at all, nor does it involve any opposition between generations in any significant way. Schlöndorff made a film that is infectiously young in spirit and approach without having to make that ostentatiously apparent, as was rather the habit of young filmmakers and new waves. On the contrary, he attempts to diegetically anchor all formalistic tendencies, such as theatrical lighting and allusions to kabuki theatre, in the murder scene. Though this reduces their surface effect, it also gives them a civilly grotesque dimension. In Schlöndorff’s hands, the film’s subject matter, taken from a newspaper article (which is quoted verbatim in a scene in his debut film, Young Törless), is transformed from a dark chronicle to a playful celebration of life in the constant shadow of death. The film relates this essential duality to the aimlessness and rootlessness of young people’s lives in the process of the urban system of the service economy which, like the entrenched and glum older generation, is peculiarly not very apparent and, like death, leaves them to resonate alongside, in the background. Conversely, it focuses on the temporary relief of leisure time and the fleeting illusion of freedom and boisterousness. Instead of a task and work, the attempt to remove the body of a former lover killed in an unfortunate accident thus becomes the equivalent of a free evening or a weekend trip with all of the related amusements, including casual sex, manic merrymaking, random discussions, daydreaming and arguments, disputes, hangovers and the unavoidable return to reality. Besides its concept and formalistic treatment, the film’s new-wave style and vitality is enhanced to a significant extent by its cast, led by the captivatingly vivacious Anita Pallenberg, who perfectly personifies the emotional wavelength of the film as a whole.

This original work by a group of San Francisco drag queens led by the versatile Doris Fish is delightfully imaginative in its individual constituent parts and the concept is tremendously likable, but in the end it fails to overcome its own limitations as a purely niche movie. The costume spectacle about secret agents in the guise of women infiltrating the court of the queen of Vegas in Space is mainly an excuse to show off drag outfits and scenery. The first half of the film nicely sets the mood with a series of playful one-liners, cute self-reflective jokes and a campy fusion of sci-fi and detective flicks. The rest of the film, however, unfortunately settles into the ordinary context of an opulent drag party with a parade of queens decked out in space garb and the mandatory lip-syncing show. On the other hand, Vegas in Space never had the ambition to be anything more than a proudly papier-mâché, uncompromisingly idiosyncratic and colourful project from drags for grags and, as such, it remains immune to any surly remarks or reproaches. “The real world is rather colourless.”

In direct and provocative contrast to the idyllic and uplifting story of Wings of Desire, Christoph Schlingensief created an absurd farce about the derangement, decay and depravity of the climax of the Thousand-Year Reich or rather the final moments in the Führer's bunker. His film thus wallows in exalted madness, the absence of logic and hedonistic brutality. 100 Years of Adolf Hitler was the first in Schlingensief’s series of confrontational carnival rides in the context of which it represents the director's most accessible (though not necessarily best) work, as it is the least burdened by the phenomena of the time or rather it cites them directly, whereas his later films, particularly the next two parts of his German trilogy, are heavily burdened by the contemporary context and today come across as being very cryptic.

From a simple premise involving four people trapped in an elevator, Carl Schenkel managed to draw out not only an excellent suspense thriller, but also a surprisingly layered depiction of masculine crises and frustrations. The elevator shaft becomes a minimalist metaphor for the capitalist system of lifelong careers and the three men of different ages mirror different phases of “productive” life, which inevitably collide through assertions of masculinity. Much more than the stuck elevator, the trapped characters are threatened by their blindness, touchiness, vanity and weakened self-assurance. The film’s sole female character finds herself trapped between the egos of these men, but despite the initial impression that she gives, she definitely does not prove to be a one-dimensional victim. Schenkel maintains the suspense and shifts the dynamic between the characters by gradually revealing their personal motivations and backgrounds. Beyond that, Jacques Steyn’s impressive camerawork also deserves praise. In addition to some remarkable exhibition shots, it manages to flawlessly escalate the atmosphere and develop the intensifying drama through effective framing in the confined space.

The fourth Matrix comes with the ambition to show what has happened in all of the worlds since Neo’s seemingly last breath, i.e. not just the cinematic worlds inside The Matrix and the Matrix, but also the filmmaking and audience worlds outside of it. However, what the new film presents inadvertently proves to be much more thought-provoking than what it literally presents in particular instances of dialogue and scenes. Much has been made of how Lana, with her presumed absolute creative control, took the liberty of making a cheeky joke at the expense of Hollywood and its contemporary trends and pursuit of viewer comfort. Despite all of that, however, The Matrix Resurrections is not the rumoured anomaly, but in the end it largely remains merely another manifestation of the system. The greatest expression of creative freedom within the Matrix franchise remains the third instalment, which, in spite of everything, follows its own lighted path of techno-new age ethos and aesthetics in the style of The Watchtower. Conversely, the new Matrix notably ignores all of these levels. Instead of spirituality and philosophy, it dawdles over purely secular issues, and virtual ones at that. Whereas for some viewers this will be a confirmation of the fall of today’s world from the heights of thought into a self-indulgent presentation of its own would-be sophistication, from a step farther way, the effort to awaken that world may appear. Religionist interpreters of the original trilogy, according to whom its individual episodes correspond to the stages of awakening, contradiction and enlightenment, may see this as a step backward, whereby the franchise returns from nirvana to earthly matters, back to the marketing-heralded beginning. That may just be exactly what the world needs today. Not to accept an old messiah from a long-ago age, but to understand that the current stage of society is still not perfect, that true progress – technical and intellectual – never ends or, in the better case, we are still only at the beginning, only with a starting position that has shifted. It’s a similar case with everything that viewers expect from the new Matrix, at least in the sense of our expectations and, conversely, what Lana Wachowski is aiming for. Those who associate the three preceding instalments with innovation or progress in the area of action scenes will be disappointed or utterly pissed off by the confrontational ridicule that the fourth film offers. However, those who expect the Wachowskis’ work to go in new directions (through assimilation of the progress made by others before them) will not be disappointed. The Wachowskis have long been interested not in action scenes, but in the possibilities of narrative and the depiction of movement, and ideally the combination of both. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that The Matrix Resurrections makes very little use of Reeves’s impressive physical skills from years of working on the John Wick franchise. Some of the action scenes even feel completely haphazard. From the overall perspective, however, it can rather be said that they correspond to Neo’s gradual recollection of his abilities and it’s no longer about making the action an attraction, but they have already done that. The film is even more fascinating in the key dialogue scene and the variations thereof spread out over time and space, where the revolution in means of expression takes place. In many respects, the fourth Matrix is an even more inconsistent and, in its individual aspects, problematic work than the Wachowskis’ projects that immediately preceded it. But, again, it’s true that it offers something new, unseen before, fascinating and thought-provoking.