Matty

This review is licensed to SPOIL. “Were you expecting an exploding pen?” Whereas Bond learned to use his memory in Quantum of Solace, now he uses his memories to delve much deeper into his own inner self (which the filmmakers subsequently use to delve deeper into MI6). His journey back to himself typically begins with a descent into the depths (the title sequence from the great beyond) and the subsequent retreat into the darkness (the action scenes contain frequently suspicious falling). Most of the film takes place underground and/or at night, like in one of the good old noir flicks that Mendes quotes from a few times (The Lady from Shanghai, The Third Man). The whole opening action sequence recalls earlier times, serving together with the following minutes as a final farewell to the straightforwardly action-oriented approach that was a guarantee of guilty-pleasure entertainment. That is surely no coincidence, because thanks to its atypical length, excellent gradation and the number of vehicle replacements, the prologue could easily serve as the film’s final attraction. The circular dramaturgy, with the beginning functioning as the end and the end functioning as the beginning, comes to fruition in the final act, which is surprising due to its static nature compared to the extremely dynamic start. ___ The defensive character of the final action sequence has its justification in the next task that Bond is confronted with – he must literally defend his old-fashioned methods against geeks, bureaucrats and the white-haired devil, who wickedly attacks one of the guarantees of the agent’s immortality, namely his manhood, which is thematised throughout the film. The astonishingly subversive (to the heterosexual majority) torture scene lasts an unusually long time compared to previous such scenes, and the homosexual innuendos in it are delivered comprehensibly enough to elicit defensive laughter from cinema-goers. As is customary for ambitious blockbusters, Silva has questionable motivations and it is very difficult to capture the evil of his jellyfish-like character (jellyfish-like shapes can be seen not only in the title sequence, but also during the shadow-play action set in Shanghai) and, at the same time, he is a complete antithesis to the positive protagonist (though he dresses in white, while Bond wears a black suit). He shares a notional mother with the orphaned Bond, and whereas Silva is in the role of the rejected son, James is the prodigal son. Though the name (M) remains the same, the mother is replaced by the father, from whom the fatherland is derived, which explains the greater emphasis on the “Englishness” of the film (the row of coffins draped with British flags, Turner’s painting, the Tennyson quote, the proud shots of London) and in which Bond finds the meaning of his other activities – in service to his country. The archetypal conflict between Cain and Abel is thus added to the motif of the Odyssean journey. The more daring among us could interpret the film as a family melodrama – it is probably the first Bond movie in which we see 007 not only with a bottle of beer, but also with a tear in his eye. As in the previous films, the women are melodramatically presented as victims, though they are no longer entirely passive. ___ Skyfall is rich in meaning not only in psychoanalytical terms (MI6 as the superego, Silva as the dark subconscious and Bond serving as the ego between them), as specialists in cultural studies can surely also find something for themselves in it (this time, the exotic landscapes are replaced by a symbol of modern China and the former colony). Mainly, however, Skyfall is an intelligent psychological-spy thriller. With captivating establishing shots to set the mood, clearly executed action scenes (a pleasant change after Marc Forster’s orgies of editing), non-black-and-white characters and a powerful soundtrack (though it’s a shame about the uneconomical use of John Barry’s musical motif), delightfully unobtrusive allusions to previous Bond films and some other celebrated works of cinema (Bond’s arrival in futuristic Hong Kong is reminiscent of the long car ride in Tarkovsky’s Solaris; the drive to Skyfall is filmed like the prologue to The Shining). The shots between action and reaction, when Bond is only just discovering new locations, best represent the filmmakers’ attempt to bring the agent closer to the real world. The opening shot is repeated multiple times; when we enter uncharted territory with Bond with the camera behind his back, a new world literally opens up before us (and Bond). It can be assumed that 007 will even more openly address the problems of today’s world in subsequent films, after he has dealt with his own private traumas. 90%

Unusual self-reflexive techniques of the Barcelona film school in the service of vampire horror. High-contrast black-and-white 16-millimetre shots from the filming of Jesús Franco’s colour Count Dracula is accompanied by disturbingly rash and inappropriate music by Carlos Santos instead of the original soundtrack. The result is a “rewrite” of the original work at the moment of its inception. The timely revealing of the utilised tricks demolishes the illusion and turns the horror movie into a dark comedy. The film is not allowed to scare us, as we see how it intends to deceive us. The context of the origin of avant-garde subversiveness adds a political dimension – Dracula here represents the seemingly indestructible, repressive Francoist regime, which, however, appealed to Spaniards in its completed, more terrifying form. Portabella thus casts doubt on two forms of power: the power of film over the viewer and the power of Franco over the Spanish people. Both the medium of film and the dictator must create illusions to draw attention away from the internal mechanisms. Vampir rejects both types of deception. Together with the director’s Catalan origins and the fact that Portabella was involved in the production of the banned Viridiana, this was one of the reasons that for a long time only a lucky few were able to see the film in Spain (and why the filmmaker was unable to personally present it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1972). 70%

The Five-Year Engagement has a similar problem as a half-dozen other films produced by Apatow: it is needlessly long and coarse. Like Funny People, for example, it pays a price for the raised expectation of madcap entertainment in which there will be a lot of funny lines and someone will humorously fling themselves down on the ground here and there. However, Nicholas Stoller and (co-screenwriter) Jason Segel had bigger ambitions; perhaps too big, given the barely innovated romantic-comedy format that they chose to work with. They decided to create the ultimate engagement comedy and, before the wedding itself (which, furthermore, is not in any way guaranteed to happen) to summarise not only the pre-wedding problems, but also the problems that come with lifelong cohabitation. Unlike in most mainstream romcoms, it is likable that the two protagonists behave like reasonable adults who think over their relationship problems and choose to talk about them instead of making unbelievably grand gestures (we’re breaking up now!). Stoller exhibits similar patience with his grasp of humour. The jokes are not superficial and are sometimes derived from the – in a certain sense – self-destructive use of montages. The romantic atmosphere in the rather somewhat ordinary scene of rolling in the snow is disrupted by a shot of a deer being killed. The occasional sacrifices to the god of base humour (a disgusting scene with food and other implicit and explicit sexual jokes) are thus doubly surprising. Nevertheless, I was not repelled by that to such a degree that I would lose my desire to watch the film and think about it a bit. What I found particularly interesting was the multiple reversals of “traditional” roles. The choice between career and work is not made by the man, but by a relatively emancipated woman, whose career growth and intellectual maturity her fiancé attempts to face through a total regression, a return to the primal human essence, i.e. hunting, in one of the most critical phases of their life together. Their journey to mutual understanding over the course of several years enables Tom and Violet to explore the countless forms of love and what could fittingly be described as a parody of love. However, the rules of the genre do not allow them to remain with substitute partners who give each of them what she/he has already/not yet received (intellect in her case; somewhat more superficially, beauty and youth in his case). In the end, the woman must, in a somewhat old-fashioned way, come to the realisation that relationships cannot be conceived of as social experiments; at the same time, however, she is the one who takes on the man’s role as the more creative of the two in the end. Some might defend The Five-Year Engagement by pointing out that it is just as clumsy and unfocused as interpersonal relationships, which is as weak an argument as the film’s attempt to encourage us to take a more serious view of the implementation of the “sociological” storyline with university experiments. Despite that, the film’s less defensible flaws do not in any way diminish the sincerity in the depiction of problems faced by people in a long-term engagement. The film carries a lot of ballast, but it contains even more truth. 75%

The nice self-ironic start in the vein of The Kid Stays in the Picture is followed only by ordinary recollections of loved ones and historians who obviously lack critical distance. On top of that, there are recollections about the creator of lousy and meaningless sexploitation films (not porn), who gained fame mainly because of his friendship with Ed Wood, a director of even worse films. In short, it’s a nicely wrapped tabloid documentary. American exploitation ends up being the last thing about which you will learn something interesting. For that purpose, I recommend watching Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies or American Grindhouse. 50%

The problem with this documentary with such a bold title is its inability to tell us how exactly Cleopatra changed Hollywood. Though the opening minutes promise a look at the broader context (the twilight of the studio system due to the Paramount Decrees and the rise of television), but the film soon switches to “making-of” mode and the emphasis is placed on the production history and stories from filming (while the source of most of the complications, as they are presented, is not the unprofessionalism, greed or wickedness of those involved, but external influences that people can hardly control, such as the weather and illness). In the case of Cleopatra, there was enough of both to fill up a full two hours. Those who don’t know the details of the film’s creation will not be bored. However, it’s a shame that in the case of a film that perhaps didn’t change Hollywood but at least accelerated certain changes, more attention wasn’t given to the state in which the major studios found themselves at the beginning of the 1960s and which later facilitated the rise of the go-getting Movie Brats.

From The Shining, by way of Evil Dead and An American Werewolf in London, to From Dawn till Dusk (horror aficionados can add better-fitting films to this list after viewing Game of Werewolves). The makers of this quick, entertaining excursion through various forms of the horror genre would rather exaggerate than wager on only what is perceived, and are thus inclined toward the branch of Spanish horror represented by, for example, the films of Álex de la Iglesia, not their colleagues who put more emphasis on atmosphere. The film goes from one extreme to another, without its pace easing up for even a moment. The mandatory historical explication (a centuries-old curse and such) is provided while the opening credits are still rolling, so the remaining ninety minutes are mostly devoted to exaggerating genre clichés, non-Hollywood black humour and allusions to Spain’s Francoist past (which the conservative rural folk want to get rid of even at the cost of spilling more blood). If you are not averse to the mixing of horror with farce, don’t hesitate to watch Game of Werewolves. 75%

The early part of Buñuel’s career as a director culminated with a documentary that isn’t a surrealist amalgamation of dreamlike images or the thematising of sexual fantasies, but an attempt to change the established order with its political subtext (which he did not even come close to achieving due to the fact that the film was banned in Spain). The impoverished Las Hurdes region serves here as a symbol of the backwardness and class conflicts of Spain as a whole, where many people still subsisted in very primitive conditions at that time. Due to a certain respect toward the local people, Buñuel doesn’t assault viewers (and preferentially the “responsible” representatives of the Spanish bourgeoisie and the Church) with the aggressiveness of his two previous films. A feeling of unease is evoked more slowly by fostering certain expectations and then demolishing them. Buñuel capitalised on the conventions of travel documentaries, ridiculing their inauthenticity and superficiality (like Flaherty, for example, he did stage some situations for the camera). The film reveals the director’s interest in people who have been overlooked and ignored, a theme to which he returned in The Young and the Damned. As in that film, in Land Without Bread he sympathises with them, but he captures their lives without any sentimentality. Brazen in its time, still raw and bold today. 75%

The maker of this adaptation of the Broadway musical probably believed otherwise, but the truth is that calling a cliché a cliché doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a cliché. The hackneyed plot follows a girl from Ohio who is trying to make it in Hollywood. Though one of the characters makes fun of the familiarity of this situation right at the beginning, Rock of Ages does not in any way draw more attention to its faithfulness to naïve stories grounded in the 1980s. It only responds to the current crisis of values in an utterly calculated way by dusting off the American Dream in its purest form. ___ The path to fame thus isn’t disparaged because of its predictability, but it isn’t followed consistently enough to give nostalgic lovers of ’80s retro what they want. In conflict with the overall impression that the film aims to make, some scenes are entirely derisive of the symbols of the 1980s and the episodic narrative is “impure” in its modernism as it constantly and nonsensically switches focus from the protagonist to other characters. The film thus points out that it wasn’t made to tell a story, but to exploit the commercial potential of the idea of “let’s put together a bunch of rock ballads and a few famous actors.” ___ The songs are frequently used only to be heard, not as a means of commenting on the action and the famous faces are given space because it is (occasionally) fun to watch them,  not because their subplots would somehow sensibly complement the core of the story. Neither Cruise, Zeta-Jones, Cranston (whoever can justify the presence of the S&M scene for me will receive a guitar pick signed by Stacee Jaxx) or the duo of Baldwin and Brand are important enough to the main storyline to justify the amount of time that they are in front of the camera. Unfortunately, not only their characters, but also Sherrie and Drew, who should have been the primary focus of the film, are vacuous caricatures, mere wax figures from a museum of ’80s rock (an impression that is intensified by the large amount of make-up on their faces and spray in their hair). ___ So, why watch this film? Truthfully, no compelling reason comes to my mind. Shankman is not a capable enough director to capture the essence of an era or to convince viewers who know the rock hits used in the film only from playing Guitar Hero that living in the 1980s, wearing leather pants and listening to rock music was damn cool. This is the exact and only thing that Rock of Ages attempts to convey with its undisguised adoration of that decade’s culture and its slight criticism of what happened in the music industry with the rise of MTV (died-in-the-wool rockers might argue that real rock ‘n’ roll experienced its golden age a decade earlier). ___ With the values that it highlights and thematisation of the fight against the corruption of rock music, the film seems very out of date (which is absolutely true of the homosexual parody interlude). In terms of form and content, it has nothing that would drag it into the present. It constantly falls out of rhythm, the timing of the jokes is just bad (and you will know most of them from the trailer) and their coldness is dazzling (they are merely moronically tasteless), the offstage musical numbers are broken up by chaotic editing and the onstage numbers desperately lack a sense of drive, the young actors lack charisma and Cruise’s voice is resonant enough to make you believe he’s a rock legend. ___ Though a promising spectacle on paper, Rock of Ages is ultimately a musical celebrating a style that it fails to take entirely seriously, which causes me to accuse its creators of the same falseness that afflicts the film’s protagonists. The dominant impression is artificiality. Next time, it would be a good idea to focus more on what’s in the characters’ heads and why rather than what is on their heads. 50%

4-in-1. Four stories differing in style and setting (or rather culture). An old German legend, an oriental adventure, an intrigue-packed Italian drama from the time of the Renaissance, and Chinese comedic fantasy (peculiar also due to the casting of non-Asians in the roles of Chinese). Each story is strongly rooted in the tragic romance of a young couple, but the glue that holds them together is not strong enough in the end. Three tales stand out from the film. Given the time when it was made and the level of cinematic “erudition” among viewers at that time, however, I have to marvel at the boldness of such a narrative experiment. In his use of montage, Lang does not achieve the mastery of Griffith, for example, but he superbly uses the space in front of the camera, the depth, breadth and height of the shots (vertical movement is unusually frequent, but understandable given the theme consisting in the intermingling of the worlds of the living and the dead). The characters run in all directions, thanks to which the picture seems very textured (unlike many theatrically flat films of the time). The stylistically cleaner Metropolis enchanted me more, but Destiny serves equally well as evidence of Lang’s genius (and megalomania). 80%

A documentary that still has the power to give Prague residents pride and courage, and the rest of the nation confidence. 80%