JFL

It’s ridiculous and sad when one reads the reactions to the second instalment of The Hunger Games with a constant stream of disparaging comments because the film is primarily targeted at girls, even though those same people uncritically praise Marvel comic-book movies. In comparison with those, the positive aspects of Catching Fire are readily apparent, dispensing with the prejudices associated with the “chick flick” genre and even showing that, thanks to such books and films, today’s adolescents have much more complex and enriching role models than previous generations. Catching Fire uses the same production concept as top-tier comic-book flicks, so it also has a generous budget, a director who is rather more associated with dramatic titles than with a distinctive creative signature in terms of handling action scenes, and excellent or at least solid actors who give the characters individuality solely through their presence. Whereas in comic-book movies this is a way of humanising half-tone characters who never had more complex character traits but rather represented certain heroic or mythic ideals, here truly ambiguous personalities with far more thoughtful and non-formulaic natures are brought to life. Similarly, whereas comic-book movies draw their sophistication from relating to their own canon, traditional myths and the contemporary socio-political atmosphere, The Hunger Games does not thematise the heroic side of heroism, but its relativity and artificiality, thus revealing that the heroes of today are mere constructs or personalities exploited in the interest of a certain ideology (whether ruling or revolutionary) and then chewed up and spit out by PR specialists and the tabloid press. The heart of The Hunger Games is its central character, Katniss Everdeen, who is not a demigod from another planet, a billionaire dandy or any other kind of privileged pseudo-personality, but an ordinary girl with ambiguous personality traits who came into a world where she is forced to play a certain role. While plans for revolution are cooked up around her and grand speeches about destiny are made, she has her own motivation: an entirely anti-heroic, egocentric effort to ensure that she and her loved ones can get out alive and live their own lives. The conflict between the private and public worlds and between real personalities and marketing constructs form the core of Catching Fire’s narrative, which is strictly defined against the world of superficiality and fleeting glory. That can’t really be said about the stories of privileged heroes living in splendour. Of course, even in The Hunger Games, this criticism is relative and doesn’t reach the harshness or vitriol of biting satires or openly anti-consumerism pamphlets. But that’s not the purpose of the film. Rather, the aim of the film is merely to give young people – not just girls – a positive role model who frees them from the fallacies foisted on them by lifestyle magazines and dully conservatives films and series.

Though it may (wrongly) seem that Disney has an unassailable position in the field of animated television series, the transformation in style that Disney’s animated TV shows have undergone over the past decade indicates that the company is aware of the competition from Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, which have been poaching viewers from Disney in large numbers. Even before the studio found the ideal balance of traditionally designed characters and their relationships and the boisterousness and free spiritedness picked up from the competition in Phineas & Ferb (Disney’s biggest hit of the new millennium), it came up with the exceptionally distinctive Dave the Barbarian while in the process of opening itself up to new trends. As in the case of Gargoyles, which was created in response to Warner’s Batman and in some ways surpassed it, this crazy series from Doug Langdale with its Dadaist logic can boldly measure up to cult classics such as 2 Stupid Dogs, Cow and Chicken, Grim & Evil, SpongeBob SquarePants and Catscratch, as well as newer titles like Adventure Time and The Amazing World of Gumball. As a nonsensical paraphrase of overwrought fantasy (sword and sorcery), its foundations lie in the consistent inversion of standard genre elements and their subordination to the Dadaist logic of completely free association (it is thus in no way surprising that the ancient evil with the desire to enslave the world has a combover and is a deity not of blood, war or pestilence, but of excessive punctuation). Within this structure, each individual episode has a deranged premise that provides more absurdist peripeteias, as well as subversive reflections on the workings of classic genres and narratives – in this respect, the best episode of the series is that in which The Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Pig enslaves the show’s narrator and thus also seizes control over the direction of the narrative.

It’s a shame about the routine C-movie rendering and amateurish performances of the actors portraying the adult characters, because the concept of this horror film about murderous children, and especially the splendidly disturbing and repulsive performances of the child actors, could have been the basis of an excellent horror movie. In places, Bloody Birthday has the chilling and disturbing attributes of the Spanish film Who Can Kill a Child?, but the overall impression that it gives is that its creators tried too hard to please the mainstream audience or subordinated the film to the norms of trash filmmaking at the time. Besides the boorish and counterproductive sequences with nudity, this is unfortunately manifested in the need to add some rationalisation to the scenes, thus eliminating any unease through some sort of overwrought genre element that goes beyond the real world. Unfortunately, the ridiculously absurd astrological nonsense that frames all of the action fundamentally diminishes the film’s effectiveness.

A plush toy on a quest and eyes brimming with tears. Animator Ushio Tazawa’s directorial debut is characterised by its melancholic atmosphere and distinctive moody shots of landscapes and urban environments, which indicate the influence of the filmmaker’s previous engagements, particularly his work for Makoto Shinkai (he also worked for Studio 4°C).

With Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-ho confirms his status as a maker of completely unique films who is able to brilliantly combine magnificent and intense spectacle with a unique vision and a supremely creative approach. Although Snowpiercer is based on the motifs of a French comic book, Bong took inspiration only from the source work’s basic premise, into which he inserted his own story (as in the case of his previous films, this time Bong is both the director and screenwriter; American screenwriter Kelly Masterson was responsible only for adapting the dialogue into English). Bong again builds the narrative on opposing principles, the combination of which gives rise to a unique, multifaceted work. In specific terms, we have a depressing Kafkaesque parable about our world and the individual caught in the gears of a rigid system presented using the blueprint of a seemingly Hollywood-style (but also Eisenstein-esque) tale of rebellion, conceived as a “blockbuster project with a devilishly unpredictable plot”. Together with the protagonists, the brilliant narrative gradually reveals to us the various levels of the hierarchy and the components that ensure the functioning of the microcosm, while concurrently and seemingly inadvertently giving us clues that much later will fit into the overall picture of a world founded on fear and anxiety. This world is in the form of a train, which, like a perpetual-motion machine, runs on tracks that do not have the form of a line with a beginning and an end, but an endless loop with regularly repeating cycles. Change is an illusion within this system, from which there is only one way out, but it is as intoxicating as a drug and as terrifying and final as the apocalypse. The common creative principle in Bong’s previous films, which we can describe as the subjugation of the direction of the original genre story through ambiguous and complex characters, is brought to its maximum level and meta-reflection in Snowpiercer – the ideal of the folk hero and rebellion against the establishment is gradually twisted as an increasingly complex view of the film’s world, of which the characters are integral and essential parts, is revealed to the viewers. _____ In the context of the narrative ideas contained in Snowpiercer, the story of the film’s distribution is paradoxical. What was supposed to be a magnificent story about how a distinctive filmmaker from South Korea created an international hit ultimately turned out to be a cruel slap in the face by the calculating Weinstein pigs who ruthlessly prevented any early international releases of the film (with the exception of France, where the rights had been sold earlier and where the film appeared at a few minor festivals and eventually on Blu-ray, which became the source of the copies that flooded the internet, thus significantly limiting the chance of earning box-office revenues in other countries, where the film is finally appearing after many months of haggling). Following this thorough reminder of where their place is in the global market, it cannot be expected that the disappointed director and the majority production company, CJ Entertainment, will attempt another project that goes beyond the Asian market and limited release abroad any time soon (more information on this affair is available here).

Despite its wonderful playfulness and impishness, this animated film doesn’t conceal the fact that, instead of children, it is targeted at young environmentalist parents and hipsters, even though it is screened in the children’s sections at festivals. In the context of the film, the flowing “vintage” animation with fidgety lines and hand-colouring comes across like a telling quirk aimed at evoking sentiment for authentic non-series products. The inclination towards adult viewers is further confirmed by the caricature-style drawing, which delights in emphasising bodily proportions. The animation, where emphasis is placed on the expressive movement of the given parts, is reminiscent of the animated films based on the Werner comic-book franchise by the comics author Brösel. After all, the vegetarian animated movie and the beer-soaked German comic-book series have a lot in common and the two works essentially differ only in the particular lifestyles that they glorify. Whereas Brösel manages to imbue his characters with a sizable portion of self-irony and satire, Aunt Hilda does an exemplary job of keeping the agitprop flowing.

Even though this children’s adventure movie set in East Germany at the end of the communist regime seems rather boisterous and playful, it is at its core extremely problematic it its trivialisation of history. The film’s main drawback consists in the fact that the child protagonists are not merely participants in major historical events, which could thus be connected with personal stories in the mould of Forrest Gump, but – as in the case of the insipid Czech film Tender Waves, set in the period of normalisation in Czechoslovakia – they rewrite history in the form of anecdotes taken out of context. In particular, the fall of the Berlin Wall is shown as an incidental side effect of a pseudo-scientific apparatus devised by the children based on a fictional series (which apparently must have been Star Trek). However, the period has no real influence on the narrative (the uncle’s escape across the border is presented in such a way that children will not understand from the narrative where he went or why, so the film could just as well have been set in the present and the uncle could have gone abroad for work). It definitely cannot be said that the film familiarises children with history in this way, or rather that children wouldn’t be able to bear a realistic depiction of the era. For comparison, it suffices to recall the children excellent What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?, which has the clear purpose of presenting major historical events to young children, but with respect for history and the intellect of children, which it does not underestimate, and superbly balances accessibility and comprehensibility with seriousness. Mission: Sputnik does not present history to children in an instructive form, nor does it put the adventure story in the context of history, but merely shows history as a fairy tale in which historical events do not anchor the narrative in reality, but are instead transformed into a fantasy element that loses its primary meaning.

Whereas other Japanese directors whose names became fixed in the consciousness of western film enthusiasts at the turn of the millennium have since transitioned into the mainstream or have stagnated or even gone quiet in their work, Shion Sono still has the mark of a non-conformist filmmaker and, furthermore, he has not let up in the pace at which he releases new films. Though it cannot be said that every one of his new films is a masterpiece, and he is also apparently swayed by demand on occasion (Guilty of Romance), he still regularly makes films that captivate with their distinctiveness. Even in the context described above, Why Don't You Play in Hell? is surprising as a work characterised by extraordinary broad-mindedness. It takes the same approach as its subject, a group of enthusiastic amateur filmmakers who simply want to shoot a movie and not bother with any norms or rules. Here we have a refreshingly unpredictable eruption of ideas, though it remains a work exhibiting professional craftsmanship and a reflection on popular genres polished over the course of years – the result is a perfect hybrid of techniques that one would associate with the otherwise contradictory worlds of enthusiastic novices and seasoned veterans. In terms of genre, Sono conceived the film as a muti-layered reflection on yakuza movies. He pits one gang, seemingly cut out of 1960s ninkyo yakuza flicks (virtuous heroes, poetic ideals, a historical setting, sword fights), against the other, looking like something out of video productions of the 1980s and ‘90s (loutish goons, bosses as businessmen, wild shootouts). The narrative then culminates in a classic nagurikomi climax (a raid on the enemy gang’s headquarters) and everything is recorded in the de facto journalistic style of the revisionist jitsuroku yakuza movies of the 1970s. Instead of Tarantino-esque eclecticism, however, Sono doesn’t combine old elements into the ultimate yakuza film, but instead creates a farce in which he places inappropriate characters in classic situations. At the same time, however, Why Don't You Play in Hell? is a melancholic ode to a classic film subject and a celebration of film as a medium for making dreams come true. Sono’s distinctiveness is apparent also at this level, as he shows the power of film at the level of enthusiasm and idealism that unites revolutionary masters and new talents, as well as dabblers and amateur fans – as David “The Rock” Nelson said: “If you got a video camera, stick a blank tape in that machine, and film the dang thing!”

The Visitor is wonderful to write about, but the viewing experience that it provides doesn’t live up to the bizarreness that one would expect from a mere recitation of this indefinable film’s various aspects, which should be a guarantee of an entirely extraordinary experience. Here we have an evidently generously funded production from the golden era of Italian genre cinema, directed by Federico Fellini’s assistant and featuring a number of notable award-winning stars such as Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, John Huston, Shelley Winters and Lance Henriksen, as well as Franco Nero as the cosmic Jesus, and even director Sam Peckinpah, who by then was so worn out that his lines had to be dubbed over. The plot is a phantasmagorical mix of a cult leader’s diary entries and The Omen, enriched with inspiration from The Birds and Carrie, as well as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and THX 1138. With its polished form and unsettling atmosphere, The Visitor is stylistically closest to Lucio Fulci’s best works, such as The Beyond, which push the envelope of rationality and expose viewers to an almost hallucinatory derangement outside of the traditional narrative concepts seen in both mainstream and arthouse contexts. Yes, that perhaps sounds too good for it to be functional in at least some sense. After watching The Visitor, it’s possible to believe the rumours that the director refused to explain his vision to the actors and the members of the crew during filming, because everyone involved actually looks like they have found themselves in a different world, where they carry out programmed actions against their will. It’s hard to say whether The Visitor was supposed to be an off-the-wall work of a deranged fanatic like Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard (or rather John Travolta) or a caustically consistent contribution among the Italian copies of Hollywood hits at the time. In either case, it definitely works not as a serious film, but only as a boisterously campy flick in which you will thoroughly enjoy every other WTF moment. After all, The Visitor evokes the Italian horror tradition only in its formalistic techniques. With its bombast, excessiveness and playful use of mechanical and optical tricks, however, it has much more in common with the Hong Kong burlesque attractions of Lam Ngai Kai.

We all get older and nostalgically look back at the days when things were clearer and more straightforward. In Skyfall, the “humanisation” of Bond has veered in the direction of John McClane-style (along the lines of Live Free or Die Hard, to be precise) ridicule of today’s overly sophisticated and extravagant glorification of the good old straightforward ways. However, Bond is not the only one who is aging; we viewers are too, so we can join the hero in turning up our noses at the constant references to the Bond canon. Let’s acknowledge that the spectacular proof that the filmmakers spent hours reading the relevant wiki before writing the script is no longer a sign of superior dedication or self-reflection, but one of the main formulas for creating new contributions to old franchises. Besides that and the simplified oedipal storyline (if his adoptive mother had come out with the villain to raze his birthplace filled with the traumas of adolescence, there could have been peace), Skyfall also restores to the postmodern Bond movies the campiness of the earlier classics, which is manifested in the charismatic derangement of the villain, the ridiculousness of his nonsensically overwrought plans, the money-shot surrealism of the action sequences and, mainly, the climax, which evokes Scarecrow, Home Alone and Sightseers in equal measure. Thanks to that, we can grumble together with Bond about the over-cleverness of contemporary blockbusters, but regardless of that (or perhaps even because of it) we can simply enjoy the film as viewers.