JFL

Under Michael Bay’s direction, Transformers has gradually crystallised into a supremely atypical contribution to the current line of franchise blockbusters. All of the other films based on comic books or toys take heed to offer adult fans a spectacle that, though childish at its core, is supposed to give the impression of being grown-up and serious in its overall execution (from the screenplays and casting to the style of promotion). Conversely, Bay serves up the exact opposite – ultra-unserious, openly irreverent and ridiculously overblown spectacles packed with affectation and kitsch. Even though this is indeed largely due to his bombastic, egomaniacal and macho nature, this is not some sort of desecration of the original franchise’s original form, but rather a faithful return to its roots and a reminder of what those who were weaned on the original series no longer want to admit. While the comic-book producers are rewriting history with new reboots that erase all of the inadequate aspects of the earlier incarnations, Bay’s Transformers seems to make a point of accentuating all of the haphazardness, degeneracy and problematic aspects of the 1980s that the nerds have already blissfully erased from their memory. But that’s actually how Transformers used to be. Only the question remains of whether Bay’s grasp of the franchise, which accentuates all of those residual ills, represents continuity with conscious subversiveness or whether Bay simply and fundamentally personifies them by coincidence. ____ There has been much discussion about how unfortunate acting icons and prominent character actors, like Sir Anthony Hopkins in this case, are forced to demean themselves (in return for a generous payday) in Transformers movies by cartoonishly making faces and delivering absurd monologues. That fits beautifully into the image of Bay as a desecrator of all values, but again, we can also see this as part of the franchise’s heritage. Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles took turns at the microphone for the first animated feature, while giant robots danced to Weird Al Yankovic’s “Dare to Be Stupid” and the movie’s most epic moment was underscored by Stan Bush’s cheesy rocker “The Touch”. ___ Bay can be seen as both a mainstream John Waters and a Hollywood version of Czech trashmaker Zdeněk Troška – a perverted admirer of conventional vulgarity and consumerist gluttony, but also a self-proclaimed promoter of traditional values. As in Troška’s case, in Bay’s works the authorities and scientists take the form of hysterically incompetent jacks-in-the-box, while the arrogant earthy heroes seemingly save everything, but are also portrayed as equally ridiculous, aggressive and sociopathic characters who treat each other with disdain. We associate Bay’s films with rampant ridiculousness, but are executed with an almost obsessive degree of craftsmanship. It’s thus all the more surprising that the coarseness and vulgarity of the preceding films is not present this time, at least not in such an obvious form. This surely has something to do with the fact that, for the first time, the screenwriting has caught up with, or even surpassed, Bay himself. From one instalment to the next, the series goes more against the grain and becomes gaudier and more absurd. Previously, it was enough for Bay to employ his own whims – whether shots of the Transformer’s testicles, the appendage reaching around the car and hitting a soldier in the face, or the malevolent objectification of Megan Fox in the first film, which successfully degrades the only positively depicted and active character in the whole series simply by how she’s captured on camera and how the other characters react to her. This time, however, the screenplay finally cast off the shackles and comes up with a phantasmagorical alternate history of the Transformers that is so wonderfully boorish that not even Bay can vulgarise it any further. Thanks to the screenplay, the film breaks away from the run-of-the-mill globetrotting nature of blockbusters, where photogenic exotic locations are supposed to bring the desired wow factor to the action. Instead of moving through space, it goes against the flow of time and, what’s more, does so without the shackles of reality and causality. Whereas Avengers: Endgame used this technique to express sentimental reverence, Transformers sets out like Monty Python to disparage (Stanley Tucci as the overwrought Merlin is extremely reminiscent of John Cleese’s acting performances). Paradoxically – judging by the reactions – viewers are willing to celebrate Tarantino’s playing around with historical figures and periods and to have fun with alternate histories like Iron Sky and even Wonder Woman, but for some reason they unreasonably demand realism and seriousness from Bay and his movies about giant robots financed by a toy company. ___ Under Bay’s direction, the ultimate perverse power of the blockbuster emerges in a work that devours itself to the point of being execrable. Except that Bay’s fifth Transformers is no mushy turd, but rather a turd with flawless structure, density and shape. Yes, it’s overblown, bombastic, megalomaniacal and silly, but thanks to that and the extent of those essential qualities, it is also perfect and beautiful. As it explosively blasts through the boundaries of corporate product, the fifth Transformers is the most unrestrained and, at its core, the most original blockbuster of the new millennium. Though there is some truth in the notion that Michael Bay has only been making variations of the same model throughout his career, we see in the level of craftsmanship of the scenes here that he is still stratifying his experiences while outdoing himself with new challenges. Much has been said and written about Bay’s editing and camera compositions, but little is made of the fact that, despite the tremendous amount of CGI, he creates the bulk of the action on set, thanks to which his action scenes have such an amazing physical dimension and tremendous wow effect. ___ Michael Bay is actually the anti-Nolan. While the creator of Inception and Tenet offers viewers intellectual blockbusters in which the spectacle is both sensual and cerebral, Bay delivers an overwhelming, bombastic overload of polished and ambitiously executed stupidity, shallowness, kitsch and pathos. The fifth Transformers completely bypasses the viewers’ rationality and values and aims straight for the depths of the unconscious to absolutely satisfy their needs with maximum degeneracy and gluttony. Bay serves us pure blockbuster bacchanalia.

The fabulous pre-credit sequence sets the bar damn high in terms of escalation and, primarily, the combination of bloodletting, gore and humor. It is a pity that it is followed by a terribly average film that will probably be enjoyed more by fans of the series than by casual viewers. Furthermore, the rest of the film has a different budget and level of craftsmanship than the opening sequence, to the point that it looks like someone else shot the opening scene. Or it was a proof-of-concept that was intended to attract investors, but not much money was raised in the end, so the filmmakers had to work in conditions other than what they had planned. After all, the rest of the film contains no spectacular splatstick such as that seen in the opening sequence.

Happy! is a grandiose symbiosis of the styles of Grant Morrison and Brian Taylor. Taylor’s hypertrophied stylistic excess and pop-cultural meta-genre focus is exactly what Morrison’s comic-book canapé needed not only to rise above its would-be gritty mediocrity, but also to fully reach its potential. From the original fragment of an idea, the series becomes a surprisingly multi-layered spectacle in which Taylor’s cheeky boisterousness meets a deeply felt narrative about both the power and harmfulness of fantasy, the traumas of childhood and cynicism, as well as the hopes associated with Christmas.

“When we wanted to explain something to each other, we could say, ‘We want it to be like in this or that film,’ because I think we know films rather well,” director Jiří Sádek said of the creative collaboration behind the camera. How many times and in which stages of working on The Noonday Witch did they say, “We want it to be like in The Babadook”? Viewers who have not managed to avoid that essential horror movie of recent years will inevitably get a sense of permanent déjà vu from this film. The similarity of particular motifs, elements and formalistic techniques is so strong that it is impossible for it be a coincidence. While other young Czech filmmakers copy the formalistic techniques of foreign titles, the work of Sádek, Chlupáček and Samir borders on plagiarism. If we take that to the extreme, it can be said that while others use a familiar form to appeal primarily to viewers who are also well versed in cinema, The Noonday Witch is conversely targeted at unknowledgeable viewers, to whom it can pass itself off as an original work. At the same time, the filmmakers manage to superbly utilise local elements, which come across as lively and natural even though they draw on the standard contrast between the city and the countryside. Furthermore, the basic concept of a modern non-literal reworking of a canonical poem, built on the motifs of the unhappy aspects of motherhood, has great potential. Paradoxically, however, The Babadook is not only more refined and stylistically cohesive, but also a stronger and more faithful adaptation of Karel Jaromír Erben’s book on which The Noonday Witch is based.

The “tear-jerker” category demonstrates its animacy beyond the surviving gender formulas. Their Finest brings to the classic love triangle a motif of emancipation, which conditions the reversal of clichés and roles that are ascribed to characters on the basis of gender. The plotline about the promotion of women in positions and in sectors previously awarded to men corresponds to this. Through well-developed male characters, the film also offers identification models for the male part of the audience, the result of which is a spectacle in which everyone can weep in an emancipated way.

First of all, the effort to make a film in a genre that is noticeably absent in the Czech Republic, not in the sense of a parkour film, but a teen film (not to be confused with teen comedies) is worthy of admiration. Like the German film Parkour, the makers of In Your Dreams use sport as a metaphor for a certain time in one’s life and the issues and challenges associated with it. Regardless of the fact that parkour does not have an age limit, Oukropec and co. chose a more appropriate parallel in adolescence and in the themes of unrequited feelings, emotional turmoil and defining oneself, which sets them apart from their German counterparts. Nevertheless, the dream storyline gives rise to doubts, as it seems slightly inappropriate for the female protagonist’s age and brings too much literalness and unambiguity into the film. At the same time, it is a functional device with a number of imaginative elements, but one cannot help but feel that the filmmakers used it as a screenwriting crutch, especially when, in other aspects of the film, they succeed in combining specific symbols with more general meanings (the rope motif) in a realistic storyline. In Your Dreams has several elements that evoke ambivalence and pull the film out of the realm of otherwise stylish fiction – this refers primarily to the dialogue, the formulaic plot twists (a sprained ankle) and the studio interiors. However, these are offset by even more significant elements of things left unsaid and situations that are significant in terms of meaning or important for the development of the characters. The conceptual grasp of parkour itself is also pleasantly surprising, as the filmmakers do not attempt to mimic hyper-spectacular performance videos, but rather employ a down-to-earth style to illustrate the main coming-of-age storyline without drowning it out. And as a final bonus, there are natural non-actors among the parkourers, especially the lead actress, who gives her character naturalness and, primarily, physical prowess. 7/10

The mastery of directing, or how to turn a nationalist spy drama into a spectacular for viewers using solely formal processes of film language.

Whereas in Li’l Quinquin Dumont took the genre of police procedurals to task and subjected it to a deconstruction of baseness and dementedness, this time he took aim at delicate midcult costume dramas. This is connected with the deviation from realism that is associated with Dumont and was rejected and misunderstood by most viewers. While police series play on realism and Dumont’s absolutism laid the foundation of his previous project’s subversiveness, there is no realism to be found anywhere in Slack Bay, as the genre does not work with it at all. The film’s subversiveness thus derives from a caricature that emphasises certain features of the target on which Dumont sets his sights. Though Slack Bay is descended from a line of French costume dramas, it has a perfect reference point in the British television hit Downton Abbey, a moving melodrama about empathetic members of the upper class and the servants who love their lordship above all else that wallows in its sumptuous high-mindedness, while allowing viewers to dream dreams about love bridging social chasms and to experience an emotionally extortionate drama in which criminal motives intrude on the idyll. Dumont flawlessly follows these outlines, but he boldly and vulgarly disparages the aforementioned caricature. The upper crust is thus composed of degenerates, retards, psychopaths and inbreds, while the servants merely live off of them, literally. It’s not so hot with love either, since even the most likable character from the ranks of the nobs still has a deformed core. Dumont even recalls miraculous plot twists and moving exteriors that essentially belong to Downton Abbey. An excellent aspect of his variation on Downton is the casting of the cream of grimacing acting greats led by the marvellously and hysterically hen-like Juliette Binoche (those who find her performance inadequate have never seen Elizabeth McGovern’s unbearably obtrusive facial expression in Downton) and setting against them Dumont’s typically asocial non-actors with their bizarre ticks and unique faces. Fans of Dumont as the masterful great of festival films will be very disillusioned with Slack Bay, because instead of a weighty epic, they will get an iconoclastically sophisticated farce that inclines more toward the splendidly demented faecal-humour of the creative duo Christian Clavier and Jean-Marie Poir than toward the laurels won at Cannes. Could it be that with advancing age, Dumont would follow the career trajectory of Takeshi Kitano, who one day also recognised that he’d had enough of the foolishness on the red carpet and began purposefully attacking his audience with absurd freaks of the coarsest grain? If so, keep it up!

When a sixty-year-old animator receives an offer that the Ghibli studio will sponsor his feature-length debut and ensure that he has creative freedom, nothing else can be made but a film from a different world and a different time that does not fit into any contemporary categories.

“I'm too old for this shit.” Like the comic book, the film version of Deadpool is a victory for the marketing and corporate machinery that cynically passes itself off as a cool, non-conformist and rebellious work of outsiders. Significant credit for this is due to the enduring myth of the R-rating category (M, in the case of comic books) as a putative mark of radicalism and defiance of censorship. Is it actually a measure of quality if a few profanities and some drops of blood appear in a film? The fact that Deadpool became a major blockbuster only serves to confirms the uniformity of the mainstream of the new millennium. In the eighties or nineties, it would be only one of the dozens of films with cheeky catchphrases and a few action scenes that competed monthly on the shelves of video rental shops for the attention of teenagers and children.