gudaulin

Of all the creators of the French New Wave, I have watched the most from François Truffaut, and I also understand him the best. I have to say that within his work, Shoot the Piano Player does not represent anything significant, let alone a masterpiece. It is rather a plaything where the director tested the possibilities of combining several genres. While watching it, I felt that he mostly improvised and followed his current intuition. I don't see any order, well-thought-out, and coherent plan in it. Unfortunately, the script is far from perfect, and Truffaut's intentions were realized much more successfully in later decades by directors like the Coen brothers or the creators of modern multilayered TV series such as Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad. These creators are able to mix often seemingly contradictory genres more cleverly and effectively for the audience (without being cheap or superficial). Truffaut's experiment from the early 60s falls short by two classes. Truffaut's directing and the cast are interesting to me, but if the story doesn't absorb you and the characters are more or less irrelevant to you, you can't consider giving it a four-star rating. The selection of genres also harms the result. Truffaut truly didn't understand thrillers, and he should have avoided them altogether. What ultimately emerged will probably appeal much more to an art-house circle of viewers than to regular fans of genre productions. Overall impression: 60%.

I saw three essential Hallström films 15 years ago and I highly appreciated them. They were, after all, his showcase in the form of Chocolat and The Cider House Rules. Then I took a long break and now, with a significant time gap, it was time for The Shipping News, which, to put it kindly, leaves me puzzled. Hallström should have never gotten his hands on this material. It contradicts his nature and filmmaker vision. It is too sweet and sunny for a story set in the harsh nature of Newfoundland. It fails to work with the atmosphere and add the necessary elements of rawness and pain. The result is an insignificant "something" that evaporates from one's mind in a few hours. The protagonist, Quoyle, is one of those passive losers, whom I thought existed only in the world of Aki Kaurismäki's films. The catastrophic marriage (the end of which any reasonably sane man would welcome as liberation from hell) would fit more into the genre of a crazy comedy than a romantic drama. Quoyle is, in any case, a character to whom negative or positive things "happen." While I consider Kevin Spacey an excellent character actor, this is not the type of role that suits him. The cast is strong, but it can't save the unhealthy foundation. Overall impression: 40%.

I am struggling to find an adequate rating for Basov's series. Basically, any rating is possible because I have many objections. Naturally, we cannot avoid the necessary dose of propaganda while watching it, the black and white characters, the fact that the Soviet action elements, which are very rare here, are laughable, and we can end with the fact that furious female Nazis in the film are played by actresses with typical Slavic features, in which even a shortsighted person could reliably identify their Russian origin. The pace of storytelling and the characteristics of film language have, of course, fundamentally changed, but it is still interesting that even though the series is long, it contains a lot of nonsense and in the end, the individual characters and their adventures are depicted inadequately. The fragmented storytelling is also influenced by the large time span because the four-part series takes place in the entire first half of the 1940s. Overall impression: 35%. It is almost amusing how the official Soviet policy affects the series, with individual characters often declaiming the relevant political stances. It is an "international" series, intended for the market in the friendly countries of the Warsaw Pact, so the partisan unit is multinational and composed of members from countries with whom the Soviet Union had the best experiences. Due to the existence of the German Democratic Republic, a surprisingly large number of German anti-fascists appear in the series.

I consider Steven Spielberg to be one of the best storytellers in the world of film, regardless of how many stars I give to Schindler's List. He is an excellent craftsman and storyteller. Some voices in the community of film fans sometimes argue that he is too commercial and that they only take Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan seriously from his work. I have the exact opposite feeling. Spielberg has always told fairy tales, whether for children or adults, and they are perfectly suited for relaxation and genre projects. Sci-fi, adventure stories, or fantasy from his workshop are usually treats. It's worse when he tries to enter the realm of high art and wants to do timeless, more serious work. Spielberg still uses similar or identical means as in his relaxation projects. In Schindler's List, several quite serious things bother me. First, the whole story is based on an artificially created myth, and even though its core is true, it ultimately sounds like Radio Yerevan reports. The facts are upside down here. Oskar Schindler was an adventurer, a Nazi not out of conviction but based on hard calculation, a manipulator, and a ruthless exploiter. Much negative can be said about him, and it would be much more accurate to despise and condemn him rather than admire him. Historical films usually approach the interpretation of historical facts languidly and only take from them what they need to achieve their goal or a partial effect. And usually, if it concerns distant history, viewers don't mind – except for historians and fans of historical science. But here it is so striking and concerns such a sensitive topic that it fundamentally bothers me. Schindler's real role has already been mapped by historians and completely contradicts everything Spielberg portrays in his film. In the labor camp, prisoners were mainly selected from the ranks of the Jewish police, collaborators, or those who had to pay. The conditions in the camp were very harsh, and its only advantage was that it was not systematically exterminationist, meaning that there were no gas chambers. Schindler was completely indifferent to the prisoners, and all he cared about was how to monetize their slave labor. By the way, neither Oskar Schindler nor anyone else saved any human lives. For those who were taken to the Protectorate, other prisoners had to be selected for liquidation… Another problem is Spielberg's typical squeezing of emotions, where possible, emotional manipulation, moving, blackmailing, and behaving like a typical blockbuster producer. Despite all this, he managed to convey the horrors of the Holocaust to the widest audience at a time when many decades had passed since the events and eyewitnesses were dying out, which is not insignificant. At the very least, the scene of the ghetto liquidation belongs among the memorable film moments. Overall impression: 60%.

Everyone who has ever read a novel by Kurt Vonnegut knows how difficult it is to translate his literary template onto the film screen. His works are multi-layered, consisting of the thought processes of his characters, various places and times that intertwine with each other, and most importantly, they contain various dream passages and hallucinations. The attempt to make an equally successful film based on his work usually ends in a disaster, such as Breakfast of Champions. For a long time, I believed that the only film worth seeing was Mother Night, and only now do I realize that George Roy Hill's film has almost the same quality. Slaughterhouse-Five, like the novel, is absurd, tragicomic, strange, and provocative. Several scenes are among those that film fans will remember for life. The main character's encounter with victorious Soviet soldiers or the end of his best friend are certainly among them. Overall impression: 85%.

A legendary film about one of the last colonial wars, fought with extraordinary tenacity on both sides. A markedly political film in the best traditions of Italian neorealism. The film's success was due not only to the director but also to screenwriter Franco Solinas, a well-known writer. The film is crafted using a documentary approach to create the impression of an authentic documentary. One of the co-producers was Yacef Saadi, a direct participant in the uprising.

Movies by Pedro Almodóvar are not for everyone. The selection of characters and situations in which they find themselves is influenced by his sexual orientation, so homosexuality, transvestitism, and various sexual deviances are more than common in his work. In Bad Education, his personal experiences and fantasies play a crucial role. The destinies of four men are intertwined, and although the film starts slowly and the viewer is left guessing about the personal motives and behavior of the main characters, the whole film is effectively concluded with a clever and impactful point. The excellent acting of all involved, especially Gael García Bernal, is a strong point. Bad Education is not so much a detective story as it is a psychological drama with a somewhat similar tone to Woody Allen's famous drama Match Point. Overall impression: 80%.

Small Time Crooks belongs to the simpler, or rather straightforward, part of Allen's work, oriented more toward the public audience. Perhaps that is why it became Allen's most commercially successful film in the United States. It happened just in time because producers were slowly losing interest and critics were talking about a fading star, long past his prime. While Allen's films traditionally excelled in Europe, it was exactly the opposite with Small Time Crooks. Compared to his best works from the 70s and 80s, it is clearly a decline, but as part of his later work, it is a decent film that, thanks to its comedic, essentially popular theme, has a good chance of appealing to a wider audience. The inept thief with big ambitions is among Allen's most gratifying film roles, and Allen as an actor, I think, outperformed Allen the director and screenwriter this time. The lesser-known Tracey Ullman is also interesting as the contemptuous wife, a successful pastry chef dreaming of being accepted into "high society." In the second part, the film changes its theme and deals with the unexpected enrichment of typical members of the American "white trash" and their rise among New York's snobby elite. As a typical representative of the local intellectuals, Allen had this area well-mapped, having observed the behavior of the newly rich and jaded members of high society through his participation in various vernissages and social events. He found in Hugh Grant an actor who perfectly matched Woody Allen's idea of this social group. Overall impression: 70%.

It doesn't make sense to pretend that the high rating of the film is closely related to its strong theme and subject matter, which directly calls for empathy toward the main character with disabilities and for turning that empathy into a maximally positive rating. On the other hand, I don't understand the critical voices claiming that the film is boring, stereotypical, and far from exhausting its potential. It is necessary to realize that the film deals with nothing less than the human soul imprisoned in a paralyzed body, and the only possibility for the communication of the main character is through his eyelids. At that point, one has a very limited range of expression options. I believe that the screenwriter and director dealt with it excellently. Of course, The Intouchables is much more entertaining, The Sea Inside is dramatically more intense, and Inside I'm Dancing is more optimistic, but Schnabel's film is strong, thoughtful, and deeply human, and it never slips into the realm of cheap sentimentality - even though there are many possibilities for that. It is a dignified representative of a group of films about disabled people and their struggle with illness, themselves, and their surroundings. Overall impression: 80%.

Schmitke is a semi-finished product, which is disappointing because the creators only half-opened the door and hesitantly stepped in precisely where they needed to rush in and unleash properly. Schmitke does not lack ideas, and the budget is not a serious obstacle this time - the good and functional aspects of a film do not make money. The problem is the lack of courage and patience to bring the film to its final form, to refine its style. Which, in practice, would mean rewriting the script about 4 times. In it, there is a bit of Kafka, a little Lynch, a bit of a road movie, and a reminder of the old raw Sudetenland by Jaroslav Rudiš, but together it is not sufficiently unique. You don't need to compare Alois Nebel's story to anything, as its world is so unique that it represents only a regional film but it is also a brand of its own. Schmitke doesn't lack just an ending, it lacks much more. But yes, even this fragment is likable, but I mainly consider positive reviews as an expression of the desire to finally see Czech cinema in a better state. Overall impression: 55%.