JFL

Tarantino imitated The Taking of Pelham One Two Three not only in the way that he named the gangsters in his debut after colours, but also in the way the dynamics between his characters in Reservoir Dogs in many ways resonate with those in this film. Primarily, however, Pelham is a masterclass in building suspense and in the topography of the narrative, from which most later urban thrillers combining various elements of the security and transport infrastructure – from Runaway Train to the Die Hard franchise (and not only the three films obviously inspired by Pelham, but also the previous two instalments) – draw inspiration. Joseph Sargent very aptly anticipated that the excellent screenplay would benefit from taking the action out of the subway and into the streets. Thanks to that, Pelham isn’t about only a kidnapping, but about New York as a pulsating organism populated by superbly sketched and cast characters. Thanks to the continuous alternation of perspectives, with even the most minor character becoming the protagonist of his respective sequence at any given moment, the film remains tremendously absorbing, unpretentiously dynamic and at times both appropriately tense and likably  laid-back throughout its runtime. This is the essential difference between the original and the remake directed by Tony Scott, which is constructed as a battle of wits between the hero and villain, which in turn completely overshadows everyone and everything else.

This paraphrase of the old Brothers Grimm doesn't really succeed as a horror movie. But that’s not what it's supposed to be. On the contrary, Rumpelstiltskin, reworked by the co-creator Scooby-Doo and director of Leprechaun, offers gleeful entertainment. This is beautifully, deliberately goofy trash in the guise of typically '90s schlock that puts absurd one-liners in the mouth of an appropriately monstrous fairy-tale creature, which it enthusiastically places in scenes openly copied from the first two Terminator movies and Spielberg’s Duel.

Czech Dream for the 15-to-25 demographic in open beta version. Back in 2004, Klusák and Remunda released a documentary mapping the course and impact of a marketing prank with the aim of opening the audience’s eyes to the deceitfulness of marketing and Czechs’ fanaticism when it comes to getting a discount. Kazma and Co. conversely released into cinemas a marketing fake product, which is in itself just another load of marketing promises. In comparison with Czech Dream, The Movie is not even a false façade of a promised shopping mall in a field, but rather an advertisement for it that runs only in cinemas instead of on television. So, how far have we come in the intervening 19 years? People were angry at Klusák and Remunda back then for making them unwitting participants in the prank, for causing them to push themselves in front of the camera and for daring to force on us a view of marketing as a business of lies. Now everyone is enthusiastically flocking to The Movie with the vision that they will be part of the prank, at the end of which the demigod Kazma, armoured in a sizable portion of reputation laundering, will confirm what everyone clearly knows, which is that marketing is a lie and everything is a prank. In doing so, he will pull a pile of money out of them and this won’t bother anyone, because it’s a flex and instead of some annoying, time-consuming catharsis, simply saying “meta, lol” will pass for reflection.

The script is noticeably shaky, the spy lore is sloppy and the first half of the film is made up of needlessly drawn-out exposition. Fortunately, however, it is saved by its framing through a session with a relationship therapist and a second half that comes to a magnificent culmination, which is memorable not only for its superbly played action/relationship scenes, but ultimately also for the dynamic of the couple dynamics and the chemistry between the protagonists, which is completely absent in the first half. The action sequences come only in the second half and their strength consists in the fact that they combine money shots with the evolving relationship of the titular couple. In spite of that, however, it’s very difficult to dispel the notion that, despite its obvious ambition, Mr. & Mrs. Smith can’t hold a candle to True Lies.

Nolan made a bold move when, after Tenet flopped because of the coronavirus pandemic, he spectacularly cut his long-standing ties with Warner Bros. and played a game of “Do You Want Me?” with other studios. Universal can thus now call Nolan “my darling”. All the studio had to do was fork over the money for a project that doesn’t fit into the currently preferred pigeonholes of Hollywood production. Oppenheimer is thus interesting as a marketing challenge. The first steps led through the elevation of the project itself to the high-concept tagline “Nolan makes an atomic bomb”. Subsequently, the elevation of analogue was brought into the mix, which, in combination with the detonation of the bomb, helped to evoke the impression of an event. Finally, the phrase “70 mm IMAX” helped to complete the suggestion that a three-hour biopic about a theoretical quantum physicist would be an epic spectacle. The most remarkable thing about this is the fact that the premium projection format is employed not for a visually bombastic spectacle, where it would be obviously justified, but for a dialogue film that is mostly composed of shots of actors in suits or uniforms delivering their lines. On the other hand, the myth of 70 mm film stock previously was used in the exact same way to promote Tarantino’s interior dialogue-heavy The Hateful Eight. Even more than in the case of Tarantino’s film, this time the PR spin doctors managed to create the impression that for every film fan a visit to an IMAX cinema is the equivalent of a pilgrimage to Mecca. This is a commendable approach in the interest of achieving a return on the funding invested in Oppenheimer and securing future Nolan projects. Despite the whole PR circus, however, I will venture to say that we don’t need the biggest screen to fully appreciate this film. Excellent sound, yes, but not IMAX. Oppenheimer will not rivet viewers to their seats with the spectacle of its scenes. However, it does offer excellent screenwriting that brilliantly holds the viewer’s attention and succeeds in clearly and thoroughly examining the title character. I write that as someone who has trouble remembering names, so a lot of films with numerous characters don’t work for me, because I easily get lost in them. That is not the case with Nolan’s Oppenheimer, because of how it is told, or rather how it layers not only the timelines, but also the images and sound. It’s as if Nolan has gone back to his roots, when he didn’t have huge budgets and captivated audiences solely with the power of the ingeniously composed narrative in Memento. Except that, unlike his youthfully ambitious hit, the non-linearity in Oppenheimer doesn’t come across as a gimmick. With an unpretentious purposefulness refined over the years, it makes it possible to dissect and, in a way that is fascinating for viewers, piece back together the disparate roles that Robert Oppenheimer played in his life, as well as the professional, personal and moral questions tied to his personality, work and position in the context of major historical events. Thanks to the film’s structure, which constantly places details aside in favour of the bigger picture and distances the context and point of view from the dramatic appeal of the moment, Nolan’s portrait succeeds in avoiding the minefields of poster glorification, tabloid scandal and philosophical ponderousness. Not by dispensing with them, but by constantly bombarding them with particles of other points of view. In Oppenheimer, the standard phrase “complex portrait” is an uncompromising maxim.

In terms of its production quality, Master & Commander is a spellbindingly impressive project that’s beautifully anachronistic in relation to the trends of the time when it was released. Because of that, however, it inevitably fell short of box-office expectations and failed to become the start of a film franchise, but that doesn’t change the fact that its qualities have stood the test of time. Especially today, when digital effects have long since lost their wow effect, the stubborn authenticity on display here is breathtaking in its immediacy and physicality. In line with the book series whose name the film bears, the narrative focuses on depicting the battleship as an organism and all aspects of life throughout the hierarchy of its crew. To heighten the drama, the individual peripeteias represent the best of the events of the naval battles. The ingeniously constructed screenplay flawlessly connects the two storylines. To the same effect, the individual cut sequences and dolly shots help to map the topography of the ship while constantly illustrating the real dimension of both ordinary tasks and the chaos of battle.

Though this three-hour epic may be held up as an essential milestone of kung fu and wuxia movies, its relationship to them is analogous to that of Tarkovsky’s Stalker to post-apocalyptic action flicks. King Hu created a phenomenal, unique work that towers over the whole world of martial arts and itinerant swordsman movies. Many other films in these genres, though made after A Touch of Zen, attempt to incorporate the philosophy of martial arts alongside physical attractions, but they mostly do so in an utterly literal way. Conversely, Hu used the then popular genre to create a captivatingly lyrical film that employs Taoist motifs to make the audience feel, together with the characters, a touch of Buddhist awakening and even Zen enlightenment. The radical nature of Hu’s vision becomes apparent in a comparison with the frequently recalled “literary source work”, which is a classic short story with supernatural and spiritual elements. Hu completely turns these on their head, or rather he unmasks their Taoist basis with rationality and a broader Buddhist perspective. His film remains out of line with the narrative standards of the time and even of today. The original Matrix trilogy has the closest thing to the structure that he uses here. As in the Matrix films, Hu presents viewers with a narrative that takes us through various ways of viewing the world (though in comparison with the Matrix films, he does so less literally and on a two-fifths scale). From the Taoist path of harmony of personal existence with the immediate surroundings, nature and the supposed energies and spirits around us, we set out through a vision of the wider world, a broader context and our own role in its web of relationships to the final enlightenment, which, however, is peculiarly not afforded to the protagonists, who are only witnesses to it during their own awakening. Accordingly, the narrative of A Touch of Zen also gradually changes the central character or focuses on various interrelated characters (unlike the Matrix films with their western-style individualistic ideal of “the chosen one”). The original title establishes a valiant lady as the central character, whereas the narrative places in the foreground an ordinary scholar who is not a hero, but rather serves as a guide for viewers. To a significant extent, his perspective conditions the film’s captivatingly impressive style and literally justifies the stylisation of many sequences, particularly the fight scenes. That stylisation is derived from the symbolist and dance tradition of the Beijing opera and differs from the then standard of the choreography and aesthetics of Hong Kong martial arts films, which were taken from the routines of particular martial arts schools and the bloody literalism of popular samurai movies. Western viewers may find A Touch of Zen enigmatic, which is largely due to its essential connection to Chinese culture and Hu’s work with its traditions. Despite this cultural barrier, however, A Touch of Zen is able to captivate properly open minds at least with its formalistic brilliance, particularly in the areas of editing and its work with colour and camera compositions.

The second of unfortunately only two movies (the first being Unmasking the Idol) with ninja super-agent Duncan Jax and his faithful sidekick, a fighting baboon, is surprising in comparison with its predecessor due to the fact that it takes a different (sub)genre path, though it retains the overarching exaggeration while keeping a straight face and contains many of the elements known from the first film. This actually comes down to the practice of E.O. Studios, where all of the previously built sets and purchased props were always recycled in completely different productions. In The Order of the Black Eagle, viewers see not only the same cars used by different actors, but also, for example, a futuristic set that in this film constitutes the bowels of the villain’s laboratory, whereas in Unmasking the Idol it served as Jax’s base and, before that, originally constituted the bowels of a spaceship. Based on the approach described above, Duncan Jax returns to action, but he no longer has an army of ninjas with him. After all, he has traded martial arts for firearms and sophisticated disguises in the face of which Ethan Hunt pales by comparison. His variations of Bond’s M and Q also return, as does the baboon, but instead of engaging in martial arts, this time the ape spends most of the film on the sidelines before making a spectacular return in the bombastic climax. The more complicated yet consciously cheaply absurd and trashily overwrought screenplay sends the hero into action against neo-Nazis who are planning to conquer the world using a giant laser, while also intending to awaken the cryogenically slumbering Adolf, and who are also headed by Baron Ernst von Tepisch. When Jax’s original plan fails, he runs into an old acquaintance while escaping the bad guys’ base. Following a western diversion, the two of them attack and take over the base with the help of a dirty half-dozen, or rather walking genre clichés. And this is all as wonderfully and magnificently stupid, spectacularly flashy and childishly goofy as the description indicates, while also exhibiting competent craftsmanship. Each of the supporting characters has a different, distinctive fighting style, which they demonstrate many times. And that includes the baboon, which is equipped with his own mini-tank. The pyrotechnics department went especially nuts and, in conjunction with the stunt team, came up with a number of spectacularly physical attractions for viewers. A film in which a baboon makes fart noises at everything with its mouth and flips the bird and in which the credits include the entry “Adolf Hitler as himself” cannot be bad. And not only is it not bad, but it’s damn entertaining. I have to say again that it’s a huge shame that the duology of Duncan Jax movies regrettably remain so little known. They belong in the pantheon of 1980s action trash flicks and, with their good humour, levity and straightforwardness, overshadow many of the other more disproportionately exalted titles of the period.

“Calling all guards, be on the lookout for trespassing ninjas!” It’s one thing that the independent B-movie production company E.O. Studios, which focused on cheap action flicks for drive-ins and the foreign video market, created a deliberately exaggerated paraphrase of Bond movies as its most ambitious production, but Jesus, did it turn out to be the ultimate 1980s action trash flick in which absolutely everything is naïvely over the top and played with a straight face. The hell with James Bond and Ethan Hunt and the rest, because none of them can measure up to Duncan Jax, who is not only a secret super-agent, but also a ninja! And he has a kung fu baboon! Of course, he also has his own M in the form of a prim major-domo and his own Q, who is an easy-going Asian smartass who keeps the protagonist on guard, much like Cato from The Pink Panther did for Inspector Clouseau. Needless to say, women fall into the hero’s arms, but he always finds time for teambuilding with his female comrades-in-arms in the hot tub. In Unmasking the Idol, the first of unfortunately only two films featuring Duncan Jax (the other being The Order of the Black Eagle), he and his army of black ninjas, with the substantial assistance of a baboon, must overcome an army of red ninjas on a remote island who serve the most evil villain of all time. How else to describe a masked villain whose exposition consists in throwing a couple of disabled pensioners shipwrecked on his island to the piranhas? And he has two henchmen with costumes straight out of Flash Gordon. There’s also a pile of gold and a submarine manned by a German with gold teeth. But the whole second half of the film is mainly composed of a fights, shootouts, explosions, helicopter rescues, an amphibious invasion and, finally, a spectacle involving hot air balloons. On top of all that, most of the action sequences are based on visibly physical and contact attractions, with masked stuntmen and athletes giving absolutely as much of themselves as the low budget would allow. I consider it a tremendous shame and a historical injustice that this franchise is not better known (which is due to the way the studio approached distribution in the interest of remaining independent), because the attractions here easily overshadow anything with Norris, Seagal and other overrated action heroes of the ’80s. And, in the mould of Arnold’s best movies, Unmasking the Idol doesn’t take itself seriously at all, conversely making fun of the whole genre.

Garbage pile fire: the movie. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is a typical phenomenon of film production that was possible only in the 1980s – a film adaptation of collectible cards, which originated as a parody of popular dolls, with straightforwardly humorous and mostly disgusting scenes and a bit in the spirit of Mad Magazine. However, the film is nothing more than a futile paraphrase of children’s movies of the time, as it attempts to give its characters some sort of genesis and lore in the style of Gremlins while framing everything in an absurd narrative about a little boy who tries to pick up a teenage girl who likes sewing but hangs around with boorish goons. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as unrestrained as the video-game movies of the early ’90s, which had a similar style and ethos, but everything in them was multiplied by the cocaine-fuelled exuberance of the time.