Matty

Homecoming is a movie version of Iron Man's remote-controlled suit (which also shows up here). On the outside, it works flawlessly and gives you everything that you expect from it (even though it is mostly just a goof; the film goes by rather quickly), but on the inside it is empty and lacks distinctiveness. Except for the scenes with Michael Keaton, whose cartoonish Walter White entertained me far more than Spider-Man’s dilemma of how to ensure world peace while hooking up with a sexy schoolmate. Vulture deserves a solo turn in which his skilfully constructed story will not be hindered by the (mandatory) references to 1980s pop culture or a teenager struggling with his hormones. I was surprised by how conservative the film seems despite its targeting of younger viewers (roughly the same age as the YouTubers whom Peter’s opening video diary addresses) who might have a rebellious streak in them. Homecoming is a veritable anti-Deadpool. The characterisation of Aunt May begins and ends with the acronym “MILF” and the other more prominent female character is here only so that Spider-Man has someone to save. Of the two people’s heroes, only the actions of the one who acts with the blessing of a huge corporation (and with the help of its super-modern drone-like technologies) are correct, though he strenuously tries to convince himself and those around him that he doesn’t need Stark to have his back, which is underscored by two impassioned scenes of last-minute epiphanies. The only touch of anarchy, which the film unfortunately does not take into account at all, is Spider-Man's reckless destruction of other people’s property (and the likely killing of dozens of civilians in the climax), which repeatedly results from his efforts to do heroic deeds. It is also for this reason that the pathos-free civilian level works much better, the dialogue scenes reminding us that Peter is, at heart, just an ordinary kid off the street who knows where to get the best sandwiches in Queens, but he cannot help you resolve serious moral dilemmas. If the filmmakers had not forced him to be responsible and had not attempted to make his action fit within the template of superhero epics, the new Spider-Man could have been much more compelling. Pro tip: take a sheet of paper containing the names of your favourite characters from the series to the cinema and mark down every time Atlanta’s Earnest Marks, Broad City’s Lincoln Rice, Silicon Valley’s Bertram Gilfoyle or Better Call Saul’s Nacho Varga pops up on the screen. 70%

The Putin Interviews is pro-Kremlin propaganda mainly for those who have formed an opinion in advance or haven’t seen every episode. I am not asserting that the documentary does not contain factually inaccurate, misleading or false information that would not make one stand up and walk away. It has all of that, and a lot of it, but a critically thinking viewer who does not rely on a single source of information and verifies the facts instead of rejecting them out of hand should be able to recognise and accept them as different points of view (different from that conveyed by most domestic and generally liberal media outlets). I could be wrong, but I think this is the essence of the dialogue. ___ Stone gives Putin the opportunity to present his vision of the world to (mainly) American viewers and, in addition to blatant obsequiousness, asks him rather provocative questions (to which a visibly nervous Putin responds defensively), though he obviously agrees in part with the interviewee more often than he disagrees (but perhaps it is not prohibited to be politically engaged and have an opinion, albeit an unpopular opinion, and stick to it). If Stone had taken a sharply confrontational tone from the start instead of slowly sizing up his subject, the documentary would have lasted not four hours but four minutes and the interview would not have touched on any serious issues (persecution of homosexuals, the conflict in Ukraine, surveillance of Putin’s own citizens, cyberattacks). ___ Unlike the pro-Kremlin trolls, Stone is very knowledgeable of history, though he often cherry picks from it only what fits into his interpretive framework, and he consistently views events in their historical context. I wouldn’t shy away from saying that he was considerably better prepared for the interview than many journalists would have been, thanks to which he is able to pose uncomfortable counter-questions (at one point, for example, he counters a statement by Trump making claims about Russian hackers that are the exact opposite of what Putin, who had praised Trump only moments before, believes). ___ At the same time, Stone, as a visual-oriented filmmaker, does not rely only on the spoken word, but on numerous meanings that sometimes go against what Putin is saying, while also using accompanying images that supplement the context (e.g. the parallels between Stalin’s and Putin’s respective cults of personality during a military parade, to which Stone returns in the final episode in an effort to find Putin’s place among the other great men of Russian history). In this context, I consider the self-reflective beginning of the final episode, in which Stone directs (which is the key word) Putin so that the shot has depth, to be relevant. We are not watching a raw account of reality, but an admitted interpretation of it conceived to, among other things, amplify the dramatic effect (the interviews are thus not arranged chronologically – Stone saves the best for last, even though it comprises words recorded earlier). With its visuals (opening credits, the font used for the names of people) and the choice of events it highlights, The Putin Interviews emphasises Putin’s Cold War perception of international politics, which he himself outwardly rejects. In short, Stone’s post-production interventions not only illustrate what Putin says, but also polemicise against it.___ Although it is not such an audio-visually dense history lesson as The Untold History of the United States, I don’t understand the comments about it being boring, as it is an extraordinarily dynamic affair with layers of meaning, with constant cuts, varying camera angles and settings, animated maps, news footage and film clips that, in the documentary’s best moments, directly become a part of the dialogue in the form of a shared viewing of Dr. Strangelove. If nothing else, Oliver Stone has presented one of history’s best cinematic satires of a cocooned Russian tsar who is convinced of many deeply disturbing “facts” (such as “It’s almost impossible to scare the Russian people”), which is no small feat. 80%

“I don’t know what you’re smoking in that pipe, man.” That's exactly what I missed in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur – a three-headed robodragon! Michael Bay has never known moderation, nor has he ever had any reverence for narrative logic or respect for the limits of good taste, but he ostentatiously mocks them only in The Last Knight. However, he only rarely attempts to mask the imbecility of his ideas with self-parodic exaggeration and a knowing wink at the viewer. It is not enough to show him a drunken medieval wizard. He has to make him say something along the lines of like “I’m drunk” and turn up the bottle. One of the few hints of self-awareness is Cade’s remark about the striptease outfit worn by Viviane Wembly (a name straight out of a Moore-era Bond film), a holder of three academic degrees with perfect body proportions, who is dressed and photographed through most of the film so that we notice her legs, ass and breasts (expensive sports cars are traditionally also the objects of similar fetishisation). ___ The screenplay was apparently based on a recording of a conversation among a group of teenagers about everything that they would like to see in their dream movie. An update of the Arthurian myth with robot knights? Sure. The watch that killed Hitler? Why not? Dinobots breathing fire and vomiting police cars? You got ’em. Anthony Hopkins acting like an adolescent? Of course. This literary jumble was subsequently entrusted to a hyperactive child named Michael Bay, who has enough trouble sustaining an idea and maintaining causality between individual scenes, let alone across a two-and-a-half-hour narrative. Even though I conscientiously took notes throughout the film and paid maximum attention to what the characters were saying and doing, I cannot reconstruct the plot a mere hour (let alone a day) after the screening so that there aren’t numerous gaps in logic and a number of unanswered questions such as “how did character X get from point A to point B?”, “what role did characters Y and Z play in the narrative?”, "what made anyone assume that anyone else would act that way?” I really don’t know what John Turturro and a teenage girl with a robot conspicuously reminiscent of WALL-E were doing in the film, or why a Transformer named Hot Rod attempted to speak with a funny French accent (if we ignore the fact that Bay apparently finds national, ethnic and gender stereotypes funny). I suppose the filmmakers didn’t know either, assuming that the target audience (kids up to the age of 15) would not ask similar questions. ___ At the same time, however, I spent the whole time wondering if perhaps Michael Bay was ahead of his time and made an avant-garde masterpiece, the most technically sophisticated bit of Dadaist art ever, which viewers will admire in a few decades just as much as we admire Man with a Movie Camera today. If The Last Knight can evoke anything other than a feeling of apathy and intellectual defeat (because you have failed in your attempt to find any meaning or order in it), it is amazement at how it looks from start to finish (at least in 3D and IMAX). It remains true that few people are able to direct such epic, uncluttered and breathtaking 3D action scenes like Michael Bay, who can no longer be bothered to take the story into consideration. And why should he? Story is dead, long live the cinema of (purely non-intellectual) attractions! It was astonishing and I was royally entertained, but if I had to watch it again, my head would explode. 60%

Though it is similarly short on laughs like Baywatch (only Kate McKinnon’s Australian accent and Peter’s troubles are consistently amusing), Rough Night is objectively better directed, which is apparent in its smoother and tighter narrative, steady pace and meaningful positioning of characters in space (or, in other words, someone thought about where and why a particular actress would sit/stand). Rough Night has almost no dead spots that don’t serve the narrative in some way (the only superfluous moments are the sex scene in front of the security camera and most of the other scenes with the lustful neighbours), but it’s just much less funny than you would expect from a film backed by the makers of the excellent Broad City. I find it most inspiring to watch Rough Night as a female remake of Peter Berg’s morbid comedy Very Bad Things, which is based on the same premise (though it’s the boys’ rather than the girls’ night out that goes fatally off the rails). We laugh at the protagonists of Berg’s film because they are terrible imbeciles and we don’t care how far out of control the situation gets. Conversely, the makers of Rough Night try to humanise the female cast and justify the women’s behaviour in various ways, which doesn’t fit well with the cartoonish gags. As the storyline with Peter shows, the film is funniest when it doesn’t in any way spare the protagonists and doesn’t try to make them sensitive human beings (because, due to the runtime and the nature of the plot, that would necessarily involve a half-hearted effort). Similarly, Rough Night could be compared to, for example, The Hangover, which is also much more uncompromising towards the protagonists. It seems that, in comparison with television channels, Hollywood movie studios do not have the courage to present female characters who will overstep the limits of social norms, whether with a creative (Broad City) or destructive (Daisies) result, without apologising for it. (Another typical aspect is that when the women talk about penises, menstruation or HPV, they do so among themselves or in private, so as not to offend those around them, which conversely is often the basis of the humour in Broad City.) However, Broad City’s uniqueness consists in the fact that the women behave in a manner that is contrary to the expectations of (patriarchal) society and thoroughly enjoy doing so. 55%

When the muscular men aren’t diving into the water in slow motion and the beautiful women aren’t emerging from the water in slow motion (the film never rises above the level of how male and female bodies are depicted in subverting gender stereotypes), two or more characters stand/sit on the beach and, in unimaginatively shot scenes, spend a tiresomely long time dragging out an adolescent joke about, for example, the age of Efron’s character (“Where did you come from, One Direction?”) or a sidekick’s inability to form an articulate thought when coming face to face with a person of the opposite sex. As a star vehicle for Dwayne Johnson, this two-hour celebration of virility and heroism based more on physical strength than on intellect works particularly well when it exaggerates the protagonist’s perfection to the edge of deliberate parody. Unfortunately, it does so by repeatedly using the same template, with a laziness that is characteristic of how the whole film is written (piling up supposedly humorous asides instead of developing the joke) and directed (poor timing of the bumbling action scenes). In the second half, which is mostly focused on a rather insipid crime plot (serving mainly as an excuse for The Rock to punch someone in the mouth), the film is not only short on humour (rather, it is unironically affected), but it also runs out of ideas, loses pace and doesn’t have a proper build-up. Among other things, this is due to the fact that the main star disappears from the film for quite a long time, thus taking away the only reason to suffer through this comedy targeted mainly at boys under the age 15 (and apparently written by people of the same age and gender). 40%

The funniest thing about this film is that Brakhage spent roughly a year on its production.

My favourite cat video.

Billy Crystal's boyhood. Those who want a classic load of jokes will be disappointed. 700 Sundays is more than just a stand-up set; rather, it is essentially a two-act play for one actor (who, of course, brilliantly portrays a wide range of characters). Crystal does not try to be funny at any cost when talking about his family, childhood and relationship with his father. The ending is much more sentimental, but that does not detract from the performance’s entertainment quality, as it is brilliantly written and acted from start to finish (and understatedly supplemented with home videos and lighting that adds meaning). Instead of offering up profound wisdom, Crystal lets the insights that he has gained in life flow gently from the stories that he tells. Even in life’s worst moments, we should not forget to laugh. 700 Sundays is an excellent way to remind ourselves of that and have our spirits lifted at the same time. 85%

The speed with which several years in the characters’ lives are spanned corresponds to the director’s effort to adapt the narrative structure to the twists and turns in the characters’ lives. There is a large gap between the initial phase of falling in love and the mutual waning of interest, when outwardly nothing has happened except the birth of a daughter. The inability to see the benefit of the relationship in anything other than Lily is perhaps the reason that Maggie begins to consider divorce. In examining the private lives of free-thinking urban intellectuals, Rebecca Miller exhibits a talent for observation and courage to speak openly about relationships and sexuality similar to those of Lena Dunham (with whose Girls this film has more in common than with Woody Allen, from whom we probably would not have seen references to the Occupy movement, Pussy Riot or Slavoj Žižek). Miller obviously loves her characters and tries to find understanding for their shortcomings by placing them in a broader context (the protagonist’s obsession with control over her own life may stem from her unstable family background and her effort to make only 100% correct decisions, which comes from her upbringing according to Quaker principles). Only Georgette comes close to being a caricature at first, but the second part of the film is focused on humanising her, when Maggie conversely becomes a comic figure. The willingness to view the characters from different perspectives and to present multiple models of a satisfied life through their stores differentiates Maggie's Plan from comedies that more unambiguously declare which path to happiness is the right one. Even though the film also thematicises the shift of attention from Maggie to John and Georgette in the dialogue scenes (life as fiction vs. life as confusion without a fixed order), it is formalistically inconsistent and rhythmically unbalanced. In the second half, the film loses its initial spontaneity and momentum, as it becomes more sedate and predictable, and the dialogue, which spirals like the characters’ relationships, doesn’t do much to enliven it. Though the attempt to offer audiences two films for the price of one is not entirely successful, Maggie’s Plan is still an extremely clever and mostly believable mix of screwball and remarriage comedy with a smart and self-sufficient female protagonist (which is something exceptional in and of itself). 75%

“This is between me and the vegetable.” This is most likely the best adaptation of a stage musical that was itself an adaptation of a cult B-movie. And it is definitely the best movie with a singing carnivorous plant. Oz’s film has more in common with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, another bit of rock lunacy drawing from the aesthetics of American sci-fi and disaster movies from the 1950s (Ashman’s source of inspiration was obviously monster movies and the post-war American lifestyle), than with Corman’s works. However, the narrative of Little Shop of Horrors, combining a Faustian motif with criticism of (predatory) capitalism (the consequences of which are fleshed out in the director's cut with a very dark ending), is much more consistent and the style of the film is more sophisticated in the way it goes against the formalistic and thematic conventions of Hollywood musicals. The songs do not serve as an escape to another world (and if they do, it’s rather a grotesque variation on the “American way of life” according to advertising brochures). Instead, they ironically spell out how and in what the protagonists live. The mise-en-scene is dominated by poverty, ugliness and filth. There is not a single character who is not a headcase, a sadist, a masochist, a loser or all of the above. Thanks, however, to the campy overacting and cheerful melodies, this inversion of values (pleasure from pain, death with a smile) is perverse in an endearing rather than revolting way, so that in the end we paradoxically get the same viewing satisfaction as we would get from more refined musicals in the classic mould. Due to its sincere lyrics, well-though-out shot composition (without excessive editing) and great building up of the scenes, the film offers more complex emotions alongside laughter and disgust. Due to its many little jokes, Oz’s film, much like RHPS, cannot be exhaustively viewed in one sitting. For example, you might notice how the colour of the costumes worn by the three-member chorus that accompanies the narration changes depending on the atmosphere and content of the given scene (purple for death, green to emphasise the sci-fi elements, and so on). In any case, the most compelling argument for repeat viewing remains, in my opinion, Steve Martin’s sadist without a cause, but with a drill, a motorcycle and an Elvis parody atop his head. 90%