Matty

Parkourists have my respect, but this rehearsed exhibition (for the camera, not for the joy of physical activity) is in direct opposition to the meaning of the phrase “free running”.

“Children who see it will grow up to be scientists and engineers.” I’m concerned about what I will become. There is more such nonsense in this utterly unnecessary documentary. Why go over the truthfulness of an essentially untruthful work? It’s enough to thumb through an elementary-school physics textbook to find out what is presented here as a major revelation.

“There is always a crisis in our country’s education system, so the world has finally caught up to us.” What made Sedláček’s previous films stand out – actors inhabiting their characters, psychological veracity, the courage to show the flaws in our society, needlessly unrefined, matters precisely defined in the dialogue – framed by the complex story of the time in which we live (now) and the facts for which we live (generally). The film gets to the macro through the micro and the intimate is framed by the general. The characters do not simply live in a social vacuum, they don’t live (exclusively) with personal pseudo-problems and the blame for their misery is not attributed only to external circumstances. Whether the unexpectedly expensive-looking scenes are, in terms of their content, more akin to a thriller, a satire on the “state apparatus”, an existential drama or an adventure movie about the characters leaving behind their petty everyday problems and getting back to their roots, they are connected by a strongly bitter tone in the sense of “we fucked around and found out” (the unforgettable scene with the slivovitz in the jerry can, mason jars and a goat). In the end there remains just a family, though it’s better not to look for what holds them together. In fact, unlike in other Czech films in which questioning the patriarchy is not allowed, in this case the woman is rather more the head of the family. The wife, who doesn’t butt in, but doesn’t stay silent either, speaks up and has to take over responsibility for practical matters from her husband, who is temporarily occupied with rearranging his own list of values. Though few scenes could be shortened and a few (the solely comedic scenes) could be cut entirely, Long Live the Family! is phenomenal and I will want to keep it in my head as long as possible rather than forgetting it as quickly as possible as in the case of other contemporary Czech films. 90%

It’s impossible to prepare oneself for Melancholia and the end of the world. Von Trier manages to capture that mood when there’s nothing you can do with a similar sense of urgency as Bergman. But he angers more people and additionally has Earth destroyed. Melancholia is a logical follow-up to Antichrist, which involved a clash between a man and a woman. This time, the clash is between two sisters, two approaches to life and ultimately two planets. The depressive Justine passively accepts her fate. She knows that she can’t change anything. At the same time, she represents extreme individualism. She would rather stay at home alone than submit to social conventions. Claire cares more about others. She doesn’t resign herself to the situation, but she wants to have it under control. Only at the end they switch roles and one finds understanding for the other. In its own way, it is a happy ending that, at the same time, shows how we spend our whole lives running away from the thought of death into magical caves, which can take different forms for everyone, but in the end they are of little help. Melancholia is also a biting polemic on American disaster movies, which conversely try to convince us that tragedy can be averted with human action and ingenuity (and Bruce Willis). Instead of a saviour, von Trier only offers two possible ways to accept the inevitable. On top of that, he forces us to spend the last hour before the end of the world with decadent representatives of high society who are definitely not bearers of noble qualities and have enough problems of their own. He thus doesn’t offer many reasons to wish for the end not to come, which I find more honest than the Hollywood approach. 85%

As Woody Allen sees it, walking and lounging around in Paris is mainly a pleasant experience. Fortunately without unbearable sweetness and with a willingness to admit that the appealing genre veneer merely provides refuge for a sabre-toothed bitch called life. A declaration of love for the former intellectual and artistic heart of Europe, Midnight in Paris begins with a picture-postcard prologue that inspires comparisons to Manhattan, which of course was filmed at a time when Allen’s jokes were more polished and the conclusions he arrived at were more sceptical. Together, the two films are able to make you take this idealised portrait of the big city as your own and, particularly in this case, declare “Paris, je t'aime“ after the closing credits have rolled. Owen Wilson “became” Allen unexpectedly smoothly; in line with the comedic potential of his face, he toned down the intellectualism and added some – reasonably subdued – grimaces. Unlike flowing romantic comedies, Midnight in Paris is more deliberate and restrained in terms of style (the actors walk nicely in long shots), only reinforcing my fears that Allen has either definitively given up on trying to make a more ambitious film with more layers of meaning and a more sophisticated narrative or he has simply run out of themes that could be developed beyond a pleasant anecdote. 80% Appendix: I most enjoyed the encounter with the surrealists (the charmingly excited Brody) and the affirmation that it took Buňuel just as long to digest the initial situation of The Exterminating Angel (roughly 30 years) as it will take an unprepared viewer to understand its satire.

Woman on top. Haynes’s miniseries shows what the period melodramas avoided. Physical details, the faithlessness of the capricious characters, authentic poverty. Everything is converted into money, the easiest means of achieving the success that the characters either desire or are pressured to pursue. The characters realistically talk about how much things cost, which other films from the same period wouldn’t bother with. ___ Mildred’s social position, as it is seen by society and not by the protagonist herself, is best described by the Vedic saying “we are not in any way exceptional”. The question is thus: How to become SOMEONE? How to be a lady and still maintain one’s dignity? Let oneself be supported as a companion or take a menial job? Who controls whom, who gives the orders to whom? ___ With the protagonist’s emancipation, after she begins to drive in both the literal and figurative sense and after she becomes an outwardly confident lady, the setting and the emphasis placed on existential concerns also change. Financially secure, Mildred no longer has to worry about ensuring that her daughter has enough to eat, as she newly seeks her favour. Simply stated, she paid a high price for her freedom – she got money, but she lost love. The series undergoes a transformation from socially critical drama to melodrama (and almost to ancient tragedy, which the opera arias evoke). Compared to Curtiz’s film, the crime storyline and film noir elements have been suppressed, though the ending is even more ambiguous and doesn’t come close to establishing a satisfactory status quo. The post-war crisis of male identity has been replaced with a more intractable crisis of values intrinsic to both sexes. Not only are there no women that can be relied on, but no men either. ___ The setting in the crisis-ridden 1930s is not ostentatiously shown externally. By eliminating the formalistic excesses of modern series, Mildred Pierce gives the impression that it was actually made in the depicted period (except for the colours of the intentionally slightly dull visuals). ___ The complicated role of a woman who is unable to stop loving her greatest burden and, at the same time, the only constant in her life was an opportunity for Kate Winslet. She did not disappoint. She is not afraid to go to the edge, even at the cost of ugliness and accusations of revelling too much in the protagonist’s suffering, and to show the grand emotions that are simply a part of great drama. She reveals every bit of herself, not only during the bold and believable erotic scenes, whose purpose is not only to show her nude body, as they show that Mildred doesn’t have to hide anything from Monty (at first) or wear a uniform. Winslet plays an unhappy woman who doesn’t seem relaxed even when she laughs. Momentary joy can’t drown out all of the problems around her. Not this time, not in this miniseries, which is bolder and more honest than other films and series that enable us to escape from our concerns for a few hours. Mildred Pierce, a symptom of the ongoing economic crisis, brings them directly to us. 85%

An unusual noir film (going back to the past, a voice over, murder, chiaroscuro) that goes so far into the breakdown of a family that it pits a daughter (femme fatale) against her mother, who is guilty of trying to achieve the American Dream on her own. The message is clear and, like in other noir films, not very kind to persons of the gentler sex: women abandoned during the war should stop playing around and go back to their men. Unlike Cain’s book on which the film is based, the film does not emphasise the social dimension of Mildred’s situation – the plot was shifted from the time of the Great Depression to the 1940s and instead of a woman without hope, it presents an aggressive woman, a vamp in whose case we spend most of the film wondering whether or not she committed the murder that opens the film. The denouement doesn’t change anything with respect to who is guilty, but only to what they are guilty of. The traditional noir irreversibility of the initial situation is highlighted twice. The film does not ask for our compassion and the melodramatic idyll in it is always only ostensible and reinforced by ulterior interests. In spite of that, we can take Mildred Pierce, a feminine noir film, as an example of the incomprehensibility of this genre (genre?) of post-war American cinema. 80%

The gentlemen capture the genius loci of the capital of the Nouvelle Vague without the idyll of Paris, je t'aime, and seemingly just incidentally. It is similar to the way that someone perceives their surroundings when pursuing a particular goal. The longer-term goals of the individual stories’ characters are neither clear nor important. What’s important is the laconic point, which repeatedly brings to mind the endings of films by Eric Rohmer, whose contribution to Six in Paris paradoxically struck me as being the least Rohmer-esque (again dealing with moral responsibility, but with the protagonist being a bit taller and less clumsy, I would think this is secretly a Jacques Tati film). Most of the stories are based on antagonism: man and woman, experience and immaturity, foreign and local, noise and silence. The incompatibility of the opposites ends with a sudden change of the situation. We have to figure out for ourselves what will happen afterwards. The most easily recognised creative signatures are those of Chabrol (caustic ridiculing of the bourgeoisie), Rouch (the reactions of a quarrelling couple observed with the patience of an anthropologist) and Godard (rotating camera). Taken as a whole, Six in Paris is quite well balanced, but it doesn’t contain a segment bold enough to make me want to see it again. 75%

In Coming Attractions, we hear the accurate opinion that everyone in Hollywood covets the same money, so trailers are becoming more and more similar. And I would add that films are becoming increasingly similar to trailers. This two-part documentary about North American marketing strategies (and thus primarily about trailers) from the invention of the cinematograph, through Hitchcock’s teasing of viewers, to the current method of filling in the same template, relies more on its expansiveness than on an analytical approach to the topic. On the contrary, the documentary’s creators very much remain on the surface and they aren’t helped at all by the large number of interview subjects comprising people who worked in the field, are still working in the field or are doing research about the field at the university level. Though the last two sub-chapters involving a test screening and the actual making of contemporary trailers are the most inspiring with respect to further reflection on the topic, they come across as mere appendices tacked onto the main film.

At the start of Friends with Benefits, director Will Gluck bids adieu to the protagonist of his “Hughes-ian” Easy A (a surprising cameo by Emma Stone), thus transitioning from an immature schoolgirl to adult characters who take sex as a natural part of life and a condition for their own contentment. I would highlight “their own”, but there are no feelings involved and the mere satisfying of physical needs is the reason why Dylan and Jamie end up in the same apartment and in the same bed. Unlike the protagonists of more conservative romantic comedies, they aren’t shy about openly saying what they want from each other. Long gone are the days when THAT, always hanging in the air, was never mentioned (the “Lubitsch touch”). With its wild pace during the first half, Friends with Benefits is nevertheless reminiscent of classic screwball comedies (including the nice work with contrasts both between the sexes and between New York and LA), though the filmmakers’ intention was probably to nostalgically recall the sexually guileless hippie era. Seemingly flown in from that era is the wacky mother played by Patricia Clarkson (who somewhat repeats herself; see Whatever Works), and the 1969 open-relationship comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice runs on the television in Jamie’s apartment. The film’s ending is predictably far from being any kind of (sexual) revolution, but the likable actors get to it with their heads held high despite the aptly depicted, though shoddily constructed, relationship obstacles placed in their path. (I concede that they rather stumble toward the end.) Yes, even Justin Timberlake, whose acting I promise not to make fun of anymore. 75%