Matty

Rated in comparison with Gone Girl, which in book form was different in genre and form, Dark Corners is a total fiasco. Even if we overlook the name and reputation of the author (who didn’t write the screenplay this time, but only gave the director her blessing, whatever that’s supposed to mean), it’s still a disappointment. The source material had already “dramaturgically” suffered from an overabundance of narrators, which served to form a complex, fully non-nostalgic portrait of rural America in the 1980s (where amorality and violence could be seen not only as a means of escaping from poverty, but also as a metaphor for the demise of the local agrarian way of life). However, four hundred pages of text is not the same as one hundred minutes of film. Dark Corners is rushed and agitated, with no atmosphere or suspense. Though starting the film with a murder promises a detective story, at the end of which the killer will be revealed, the investigation is too predictable and tedious to arouse our curiosity or to leave space for us to get involved in the investigation ourselves. The numerous flashbacks rarely add to the detective storyline, nor do they raise or answer questions about the identity of the killer; rather, they tell us in advance what Libby will learn from the next witness she visits. In short, they are redundant. Gathering and assessing information are set aside in favour of Libby’s character transformation as she changes from a passive woman who based her “career” on the assigned label of victim into an active woman who takes actions more or less without the help of men (in the book, Lyle is even more of a burden). Charlize Theron impressively (and with restraint) portrays this transformation, but because of the constant jumps in time, we don’t spend enough time with Libby to get into her inner world as thoroughly as we do in the book, which works much more with the heroine’s cynical commentary and does it better. The alternating between empathetic character study and reserved crime thriller causes the film to fail on both genre levels. Equally lacking in concept (or out of tune with the director’s concept) is the work of Greengrass’s cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd. Though he manages to accentuate the bleakness of the plot with the right lighting and muted colours, he applies a raw documentary style (shaky handheld camera, zooming) even in scenes where a calming effect would be desirable and where making it obvious that someone is holding the camera and spontaneously reacting to the action only draws attention away from the dialogue. Similar doubts are raised by the work with colour in relation to various flashbacks. Whereas grainy black-and-white is justifiable in the memories of the murder, which are very reminiscent of a semi-amateur 1980s horror movie on an often-watched VHS tape, why are the memories of other characters and memories that are supposed to be objective filmed in black-and-white (though no longer grainy), but the flashbacks tied to the point of view of Patty and Ben are not? Whereas the director turned the often caustic and brutal novel into a restrained, slightly sentimental psychological drama, the cinematographer understood it as a variation on Capote’s groundbreaking true-crime novel In Cold Blood. Because of that, the viewer is best served by reaching for the book instead of going to the cinema. 55%

The reason that this film is overwrought, which can be ignored until the climax rendered in the style of “since we don't know how to elegantly finish this, let’s just set it all on fire”, is not its excess of comical characters whose eccentric behaviour will generate accompanying jokes, of which there are two times more than would be necessary. Rather, the problem consists in the attempt to offer each of the characters a respectable amount of space and to briefly clarify what their problems are and how they intend to resolve them. Even that could be dealt with in the space of two hours. With a screenplay that intertwines the individual storylines and justifies, for example, why the title sequence (which, based on my conservative approach, should be determinative) promises that we will be initiated into the mystery of the Collins family through the disinterested gaze of a visitor from outside, though a pale dandy immediately becomes the star of the evening. ___ Rather than the goals of the protagonist and the others being clear from what they do, we can only more or less guess at what they may be. At every moment, emphasis is placed on a different motif, to which the characters' actions are subordinated. Barnabas is obviously out for revenge, but why not forget about that for a moment when there is a possibility to enrich the film with a few lascivious shots of Eva Green, particularly her legs and cleavage? Ghosts, green vomit, a Chevrolet Impala and Alice Cooper were incorporated into Dark Shadows according to the same logic, i.e. we have an attraction, now let’s come up with a way to shoehorn it into the plot. Everything happens as if in stand-alone episodes, with no internal order, without a more organic interconnectedness. ___ Due to the narrative’s lack of cohesiveness, a good two-thirds of the film is spent waiting for things to finally get going. The filmmakers can’t conceal the fact that the source material was a soap opera with twelve hundred episodes, i.e. part of a television genre whose modus operandi is the endless dilution of nothing. ___ Burton probably wanted to revive the time of his childhood as he perceived it through the lens of an outsider kid. This would explain making the undoubtedly remarkable political context taboo, because at the age of ten, you are more interested in Scooby-Doo than in the bombing of Cambodia. However, that is not an excuse for the degradation of the gothic restyling of the visual aspect into an easily marketable brand, mainly so that it looks “Burtonian”, and letting the camera nicely sell it in colour-coordinated shots that are short on plot. Another best-seller is the heavily made-up Depp making unnatural movements. It’s not necessary for his vampire to be characterised by gestures and grimaces that are different from those of the several dozen movie vampires that came before him or for him to utter truly funny lines; it suffices entirely to come up with enough situations in which he will look like a fish out of water, which is another of Burton’s mechanically repeated trademarks. ___ Unfortunately, the inappropriateness involves more than just the situations in which Barnabas finds himself. Scenes that would be suitable for a serious gothic horror movie or a tragic romantic epic are placed alongside scenes bordering on exploitation trash or parody. Sometimes the transition from the comical to the serious even happens within a single scene (the sit-down with the hippies). The uncertainty as to what will come in the next shot has a parallel in the uncertainty of how Barnabas is actually supposed to be perceived (to go even deeper, this is a reflection of the society-wide uncertainty that was as characteristic of the 1970s as it is of today). At one moment he is an amusing fop and then he acts like a regular horror-movie monster with whom it’s impossible to sympathise despite one’s best efforts. ___ Thanks to this, and because of it, Dark Shadows does not correspond to the fairy-tale division of roles into good and evil. It is not a fantasy world turned upside down in the Burtonian manner, where the traditionally bad guys are the good guys. The confusing fact that neither good nor evil has a clearly defined and stable form is a manifestation of insufficient creative control over a film that, without the rushed ending, might have worked as a series pilot, but in and of itself, it is a film whose attractive surface only draws attention away from the skeleton of the narrative, whose sole purpose is nothing more than to carry that nice-looking skin to market. 60%

An uncomfortable film. Long, ugly, noisy. Without a story and without a narrator. Without certainties such as: we are watching fiction, not fiction within fiction that turns into a documentary for a moment. Instead of logical sentences, the characters utter learned slogans or recite poetry. Still, no one listens to them, no one notices them. Dysfunctional relationships, a dysfunctional system (the school is merely a cheerless parody of an educational institution). The people have learned to live for themselves and their only way out at a moment of weakness and exposure leads to irrationality and absurd behaviour. They don’t know what will happen; they have no one they can turn to. They are like malfunctioning machines whose mechanised way of existence has seized up (repetition of lines, indifference, unpredictable reactions). Sadism directed at the characters, sadism directed at the viewers. Kira Muratova and her brutally honest depiction of the social climate of glasnost. 80%

Fashion hell done a little differently. What makes In Fabric an exclusive film is also its biggest weakness. Events do not develop, but rather repeat with the regularity of rituals (which surrealists love so much). Sheila returns to the department store, whose staff try to charm her with baroquely elaborate phrases. She goes on dates via ads. She learns details of her son’s love live. Again and again, without anything going anywhere or so that we better learn the past of dresses that cause washing machines to commit suicide or, as the case may be, we understand the bizarre laws of this fictional world, which gives the impression of being simultaneously modern and archaic. Thanks to tactile imaging of surfaces, clever work with colours and the use of avant-garde stylistic elements (e.g. overlapping shots during a love scene, when not only bodies but also layers of the image intertwine), it is seductive and intoxicating, but that is not enough for a feature-length film. Therefore, at the midpoint of the film, an unexpected change occurs, followed by a variation not of a particular situation, but of the whole first hour of the story (stylistically reminiscent of British social dramas rather than giallo films). Instead of strengthening the atmosphere, the film turns to disintegrates. It loses its momentum and cohesion, and is no longer able to say much of anything new about the central theme of capitalistic fetishisation of merchandise, to which we attribute magical properties under the influence of marketing. Throughout its runtime, In Fabric is a very stylish, likably exaggerated affair that is difficult to compare to anything else in contemporary art cinema, but next time I would prefer to see one excellent film than two passable stories. 70%

In addition to virtual relationships, in the introduction Stiller also cautiously raises a middle finger to corporate capitalism, which strips people of their individuality and transforms individuals into pawns who are willing to do anything to hold on to their jobs. A person’s own body – or rather mind – thus becomes his or her last refuge. The liberating power of the imagination allows one to at least dream of doing noble deeds worthy of great romantic heroes, who were long ago displaced from reality and put into epic Hollywood fairy tales. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is not ashamed to admit that it is itself such a fairy tale whose message justifies its numerous spectacular scenes. The second half of the film is made up of a series of stirring adventure stories whose aesthetic concept is consciously inspired by magazine covers, since Walter escapes from his daily routine into photographs from prestigious magazines. Though the special-effects sequences blur the line between dream and reality to such an extent that the difference becomes irrelevant (instead of creating a certain tension), they also gently complement the characteristics of the main protagonist. Even though the romantic subplot seems superfluous on the surface and the film may seem like a self-improvement handbook for men who don’t know what to do with their lives, other people (his girlfriend, Sean O'Connell, his mother and, indirectly, even his deceased father) directly and indirectly support Walter in his solo adventures and compel him to continue in them throughout the film. In the current “contactless” era, a very welcome feature of this film is its effort to convince viewers not to live only in the virtual world and to not be afraid to realise their dreams, to not be selfish and to not stop thinking of others even in the most difficult moments (due to which the film seems more conformist than the roughly similar anarchistic action flick Wanted). Walter Mitty demonstrates that Stiller is able to suppress his eccentric comic nature in favour of a relatively serious idea. However, that seriousness is fortunately never taken so far that the film would completely step outside the realm of feel-good entertainment for the big screen and for the whole family. With the benefit of hindsight and in all seriousness, I wouldn’t hesitate to call Walter Mitty the most positive movie surprise of last year. 85%

What appeared on paper to be vanilla banter turned out to be a nicely biting, albeit not quite entirely rhythmically refined satire. Two well-off members of the middle class are confronted for the first time with a system that hasn’t yet caused them any bother and because they have no intention of living below their station in life, they set out on the path of Bonnie and Clyde. Unlike that pair of proletarian outlaw lovers, however, they have no idea how things work in the world of the working class and short-term concerns, and the film derives most of its humour from that. As in the case of Bonnie and Clyde, the start of Dick and Jane’s criminal career is subconsciously driven by sexuality. Crime has the effect of a defibrillator on their languishing love life. Dick reaffirms his masculinity with a gun, which he always keeps concealed somewhere in his crotch. As evidenced by the excellent scene involving the purchase of condoms, his embarrassment before the first robbery is a reminder of his insecurity before his first sexual experience. In order to give his rapidly cooling marriage the passion that it once had, he has to again take on the traditional role of breadwinner, though this time in a roundabout way, and start to come up with money by alternative means. As a criminal, he gradually transforms from a dull conservative into a man open to the most bizarre impulses. His ability to regain a management position depends on his reckless conduct outside the law, which we can see as caustic commentary on the transitional period between the hippie and yuppie eras. 70%

Based solely on the first impression, Clara Bow plays the dictionary definition of a girl who has “it” and who wants “it” (the concept of the “it girl” arose from this film). She is turned into a sex object personifying That Which Every Heterosexual Man Desires mainly by men who are incapable of accepting her as anything other than a cute imp. A longer-term relationship with such a girl just for fun is unthinkable for them. If she became their wife or the mother of their child, she would lose “it” and would no longer be the unattainable personification of secret desires without her own subjectivity (the id would turn into the ego, if you like). Therefore, Cyrus loses interest when he sees her as a mother (though a fake mother, which he doesn’t know). The rejected Lou returns to her life as an obsessive thought (of “it”), as a bad conscience, in order to take revenge by reversing roles. The hunted newly becomes the hunter. Lou realises that her power consists in the fact that she can refuse what a man desires without being his girlfriend (whether at work, where she receives money from a man for her various services, or outside of it). This is just the mutual recognition that without “it”, they are free, not controlled by lust, not forced to play the expected roles, and capable of a fulfilling relationship. With its ambiguous intertitles, the amount of exposed (female) skin and the open thematisation of sexuality, It is raunchy entertainment that rivals the pre-Code films of the talkie era. 75%

L'amour fou as the boldest motif of a film that is otherwise intentionally “broken” and devoid of narrative points of reference. Why waste time on the narrative when all you need to put the better society at unease are individual scenes and gags that seem to be taken from rather coarse slapstick? (I consider the kicking of the dog and the shooting of the boy, though gratuitously shocking, to be the peak of Buñuel’s feats of anarchy). Buñuel also dealt with the obstacles that civilised society places in the path of natural human needs in his later work, but he gave them a more modest form and subtly hid the phallic symbolism beneath the surface, whereas here he puts it front and centre with obsessive thoughts of sex. As his method he adopted entomological observation, with which The Golden Age begins. He limited direct interventions in the image and held back with the visual assaults (Un Chien Andalou begins with one such unforgettable assault) in favour of more subversive provocations such as bending genre rules, concealing what’s essential and exaggerating what’s marginal. Still, I wouldn’t condemn The Golden Age as the cold class (and generational) rebellion of a once hot-blooded Spaniard. No one has yet shot a more accurate scene about the fetishisation of the human body. 75%

No country for young men. I hope my retirement will be as leisurely, undramatic, painless and soothingly predictable as this film. At the same time, however, I hope that it will have more humour and less lounge singing by Diane Keaton. Our parents and grandparents deserve more imaginative films than this; Diane Keaton, Michael Douglas and Rob Reiner deserve a more inspiring screenplay. 40%

How much must a woman sacrifice in order to be heard? The piano, a symbol of advanced society, gives Ada a privilege, thank to which she becomes, in the eyes of men, a woman from another, mysterious world, by which the traditional battle of the sexes is enriched with a no less determinative clash of cultures that has a slight whiff of anthropology. While Baines longs to have deeper knowledge of Ada’s world, her husband wants to control it, to colonise it. At the same time, the large musical instrument, which is dragged along like a burden, represents for the protagonist an opportunity to escape into her inner world. Thanks to Baines, she gradually discovers music outside of the realm of her own playing, though at the same time she is distancing herself from her daughter, whose loss would be a greater blow for her than being abandoned by her husband. Whatever she decides, happiness does not await her; at most there is only more pain and humiliation. Though the core of the film comprises a classic love triangle and Ada serves as a magnet for all suffering in accordance with the rules of melodrama, Jane Campion did not make a banal melodrama. Most obviously, her feministic bending of the genre’s rules (for example, she much more clearly demonstrates that a man treats a woman as property that he can trade as he pleases) is evinced by an unexpected evasive manoeuvre just before the end of the film. A strong statement about emancipation emerges – with considerable pain – from a love story about a woman, a man and a piano. When I think about the beautiful music and camera work along with the strong emotional experience and Holly Hunter’s acting, for which I have no words, the highest rating seems to be adequate. But in too many scenes, The Piano offers nothing but that music and nice images, and the director’s concept frequently takes precedence over credibility in the characters’ actions. In this respect, it is unreservedly melodramatic without being subversive. 80%