JFL

Aronofsky’s audio-visual approach makes use of absolutely all of his medium’s means of expression in order to totally and mercilessly overwhelm the audience. One of the many fitting aspects of this film consists in how long everything is seemingly fine in the lives of the characters and then the sudden realisation that they’ve been treading water in an ocean of hopelessness. We are all dependent on something and we create delusions to justify and even feed our dependencies without having to see the reality around us. It’s easy to find everyone or at least a reflection of someone close to you in the four lives depicted in Requiem for a Dream. During the closing credits, there is nothing left to do but curl up in a ball and keep dreaming your dream. Though first contact with this film is unrivalled in terms of the intensity of its impact, seeing it again after roughly two decades is no easier or more merciful, because then you know what awaits the characters.

Midnite Spares epitomises the ethos of Australian automotive white-trash culture in a bizarre mishmash of genres. In the characteristically physically tense and superficially raw style of contemporary Australian genre movies, it combines elements of rebellious romances, teen comedies, social soap operas, racing films, crime movies and action flicks with stunt scenes. The film is thus inhabited by too many characters who individually relate to the above-mentioned categories, but they unfortunately don’t get enough space in the hasty, fragmented narrative to fulfil their potential. Midnite Spares will thus be remembered primarily as a notable genre portrait of the social and ethnic minorities of Australia at the time. Or as a precursor to both the Fast & Furious franchise and Prušinovský’s Grand Prix, but without the spectacle of the former and the consistent depiction of the characters and setting found in the latter.

Absolute love. The campy charm of Starcrash isn’t derived from ironically ridiculing it or seeing it as a guilty pleasure, but from its endearing enchantment with guileless naïveté and genuine enthusiasm. It’s easy yet entirely ignorant to simply disparage the film as a cheap knock-off of Star Wars and to accuse the filmmakers of ineptitude and plagiarism, or even of debasing the sci-fi genre. But that would be inappropriate, as Luigi Cozzi loved fantasy genres, wrote sci-fi stories and contributed to the prestigious magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He longed to make a sci-fi movie according to his own ideas and his chance came when the calculating producer Nate Wachsberger commissioned him to make a variation on Star Wars. Despite what he led the producer to believe, Cozzi hadn’t even seen Lucas’s hit and tacked the screenplay together based on the novelisation of that hit, which he had hastily skimmed through. Like Lucas, Cozzi admired classic sci-fi trash. However, his ambition was not to make a sophisticated movie with ground-breaking special effects that could evoke the equivalent of childlike wonder in adult viewers by attempting to achieve seeming believability. Cozzi rather loved sci-fi in its naïve pulp form before the genre was legitimised in the eyes of the general public and film studios by serious movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Star Wars. The absurdly impractical weapons, naïve spacecraft designs, theatrical costumes, bombastic sets and cosmic expanses abounding with all the colours of the rainbow comprise an intentional homage to the classic covers of sci-fi novels by the masters of dime-store romanticism like Earle K. Bergey, Richard Clifton-Dey and Frank Frazetta. With the central fearless and scantily clad heroine, Cozzi professed his adoration for Barbarella (both the film and the comic book) and his preference for stop-motion effects is a tribute to the beloved Ray Harryhausen. Starcrash is a fanboy pastiche made long before such things were cool. Unlike the modern ones, however, it remains refreshingly free of the ambition to justify its childish obsessions by pretending to be earnest and passionate. On the contrary, everything here is dominated by exuberant naïveté, exalted unreality, sincere sloppiness and even operatic papier-mâché sets. But that is far from a complete list of the elements that can be enjoyed in this film. Here we have casting that will warm the heart of every trash fan, an ambitious soundtrack by John Barry, cringy acting and a ridiculously simple screenplay packed with childishly fateful twists. Starcrash is not artless dreck, but a magnificently endearing campy gem.

At first glance, one might say that this is a typically cheap, thrown-together sequel from the given era that repeats the promises of the first film but fulfils them with a smaller budget. The narrative, in which Hercules has to return Zeus’s lightning bolts, comprises episodes conceived along the lines of video-game levels and filled with stunts and special-effects sequences. As in the case of Cozzi’s first Hercules and his legendary Starcrash, naïve stylisation, colourful sets and primitive effects are combined with stiff acting to form a unique style that’s easy to love. Cozzi doesn’t make any attempts at hyperrealism or believability, as he was a lover of the handmade effects, cardboard and naïve fantasies of Ray Harryhausen, Ishiro Honda and Georges Méliès. Unfortunately, due to the hastiness and cheapness of the production, The Adventures of Hercules II is rather only a vague reminder of the virtues and distinctiveness of Cozzi’s best works. _____ On the other hand, in light of the film’s frantic genesis, the result actually proved to be a major miracle and a testament to Cozzi’s skill. When he was editing the first Hercules for Cannon Italia, S.R.L., the Italian offshoot of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’s legendary trash factory, the company’s first Italian effort, The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, was being completed in parallel. Golan was so horrified by the result that he immediately fired the directors and the head of Cannon Italia, and asked Cozzi if he could salvage the fiasco by re-editing it and shooting some new scenes. He agreed with Ferrigno that the latter would make himself available for two-weeks for one-tenth of his usual fee (because if anyone saw Gladiators without the touching-up, it would ruin his career), and Cozzi wrote and started shooting new scenes. But then Cannon’s bean counters figured that instead of salvaging this shit, it would be better to write it off and get a completely new film for a negotiated fraction of the cost. Cozzi thus had to come up with an entirely new screenplay for the new sequences and it was kept secret from Ferrigno that a new film was being made instead of just repairing the existing one. Cozzi agreed to take on this project only because he had been promised that Cannon would finance his dream project, Sinbad of the Seven Seas (though the making of Sinbad turned out to be even more terrifying in typical Cannon fashion). In the context of the frantic production conditions, throttled budget and irrational supervision from above, Cozzi demonstrates considerable flexibility and ingenuity, as he managed to squeeze the most out of the whole situation and even made a relatively cohesive film. Because the agreed time for the supposed touch-ups had expired, Ferrigno was no longer available for the final scenes, so Cozzi animated the final duel using rotoscoped sequences from the first film. In the first movie, he was able to have a field day with his beloved stop-motion animation and indulge in a variety of different miniatures, effects and studio sets (which are recalled through recycling them in the properly drawn-out opening credits of the second film). This time he had to do without all of that, so he handled everything with punk filming in the woods and on publicly accessible ruins around Rome. The various monsters and supernatural creatures were again created by means of rotoscoping, which he further saved money on by having the animators trace over shots from their favourite fantasy movies like Mothra, Forbidden Planet and King Kong instead of using new material as the basis of their work.

What is the recipe for the success of Cameron’s films? As in the case of Pixar’s top projects and all of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies, there is no secret to it; on the contrary, it is banally uncomplicated, though not simple or obvious. Cameron creates fantasy worlds with the ambition to maximise the viewers’ immersion in them and he achieves this by being absolutely demanding and making no comprises. Cameron’s essential asset as a master director is his complete understanding of the technological possibilities of the medium and his ability to push those possibilities in a visionary way. But what receives little emphasis is the fact that Cameron subordinates to this immersion not only the demands of executing the special effects, but primarily his formalistic signature. He doesn’t create money shots, fool around with the camerawork or editing, show off with flashy long shots or otherwise let the film exhibit itself to the audience. When he goes for a slow-motion shot, he does so in the interest of working with the dynamics and build-up of the whole sequence, not with the aim of making a cool picture. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t set challenges for himself. His films contain a lot of difficult shots and each of his projects is actually a major campaign with the objective of conquering new territory for cinema as a medium of illusion. But, again, all efforts remain subordinate to the audience’s immersion in the given world he has created. This maxim also guarantees that the narrative isn’t cluttered with anything that would break the fourth wall, whether references nodding at fans or characters and artefacts that serve only as intrusive advertisements for associated merch. Unlike Star Wars and the Marvel movies, Cameron’s films don’t offer corporate-calculated webs of stories that would lend themselves to fandom fetishisation. Instead, Cameron simply creates fictional worlds that entice viewers with their fantastical nature and the promise of their settings and characters. Cameron himself says that his screenwriting process comes from two directions. On the one hand, there are the characters and their relationships. On the other hand, there are the specific scenes and settings that Cameron would like to see. Writing the screenplay then involves coming up with motivations and peripeteias that connect these two pillars causally and logically. Then, of course, there is Cameron’s own imagination, which shapes the particular worlds. And that’s all; there is nothing else behind his success (well, except for effective PR, which in turn relies on the potential that Cameron creates). It then invites further reflection on what it says about the state of blockbusters and Hollywood as a whole when the above is not the norm but a celebrated anomaly. ______  In light of the above, the only weakness of Cameron’s films is his screenplays. Or perhaps it’s only the perspective of viewers who aren’t completely captivated by them. Compared to the first Avatar, the narrative shifts in the sequel may not sit well with some viewers. Conversely,  some will be irritated by the excessive similarity between the two films and the repetition of motifs. Still others will have an issue with the apparent lapses in logic (even if they are transgressions against the opinions of the respective viewers and not against the rules of fiction). Other people won’t be able to get past the wall of their own cynicism and accept the new-age environmental ethos, naïve mythmaking, post-colonial romanticism or Cameron’s characteristic melodrama. Personally, I was saddened mainly by the evoked impression that I had already seen several times. For one thing, Cameron again builds on the first film’s love story with the story of a family on the run and a coming-of-age motif, just as he did with Terminator 2. The story of parental love that turns into anxious criticalness and the necessity of giving adolescents their freedom regardless of what mistakes they make as a result because they can grow only by making those mistakes fortunately remains universal and fundamental enough not to seem derivative. Furthermore, its likable in that it irritates the parents in the audience and appeals greatly to younger viewers. Apart from that, however, memories of key sequences in Titanic and The Abyss inevitably creep into one’s mind at particular moments in the film. On the other hand, the idea that Cameron is merely ripping himself off can be quickly dispelled by recalling the work of George Miller, who also works with variations on certain motifs in the Mad Max films. Cameron also uses similar situations simply because he likes them, knows their dramatic potential and enjoys recreating them. ______ After all, personal passion and imprinting one’s signature on a film are essential attributes of a director’s work. Cameron most clearly projects into his films his often mentioned fascination with strong women and warrior mothers, as well as his fascination with the undersea world. With respect to the latter, the second Avatar is perhaps his most inward-looking project since The Abyss. In multiple storylines, he expresses the desire to merge with that alien world which is so close, actually within reach, but the limits of the human body constantly make its strangeness and unattainability felt.

Jeanne Dielman is a cinematic paradox in that it forces the audience to look at what they usually run away from in films. The stiff compositions emphasise ordinary, everyday life in all of its horrible uninterestingness and soul-crushing triviality. The titular Jeanne, into whose inner self we don’t have even the slightest insight, shows how all of our actions, when free from our inner voices and thoughts, outwardly appear to be only the drudgery of mindless routine. Chantal Akerman shows the invisible and overlooked actions that are bound to the maxim of making sure that everything is as it should be – according to others and for others, of course. Potatoes don't peel themselves, the dishes don’t wash themselves, the bed doesn’t fold out of the couch already made, shoes don’t shine themselves in the morning and that lost button doesn’t just reappear on a coat. The somnambulistic narrative stimulates the desire to rebel, to break free from the dictates of roles imposed based on gender. But life goes on and is just as merciless and hopeless with each passing second. I would like to say that we have come a long way, that housework and cooking are a shared field outside of the obsolete gender dictates, and that we are even able to enjoy it – after all, it can be a lifestyle and the basis of a stellar career. However, this cinematic excursion into the flipside of that ideal can show us that, at the absolute core, the only thing that has changed in the past fifty years is how caretaking has been subjugated and transformed by capitalism for its own purposes, or how we have less space to think about our daily routine. The frightening nature of the world presented in the film is derived primarily from the total absence of distractions and from resigned apathy. But is it really so different from our present, which is more sophisticated only in the way constant distractions help us to not see the depressing insignificance of our existence and adopted roles? It’s no coincidence that advertisements tell us, “When your life flashes before your eyes, make sure it’s worth watching.” Conversely, Chantal Akerman allows us to watch 202 minutes of seemingly nothing. Thanks, however, to her record of ordinary housework, we get a chance to break free from the hasty effort to soak in new perceptions, to play multiple appropriated roles and to fulfil ourselves through consumption. We may even find ourselves surprised that we actually envy Mrs. Dielman for her moments of apathetic boredom. While she waits until she is able to fulfil her adopted role with the ringing of the doorbell or the sound of keys in a lock, we merely scatter our thoughts in the smog of media and social networks. Despite cynical and overly clever expectations during the three days condensed into the film’s three hours, Ms. Dielman fulfils one of the essential aspects of feminism. Prompted by both seen and merely intuited circumstances (among other things, Akerman pointedly formulates the horror dimension of the screaming infant and expands the pantheon of merciless movie villains with the addition of the grandmother who has taken the protagonist’s usual place in the café), she steps out of her shell of accepted passivity and takes action. But catharsis and liberation remain only a momentary distraction. The next day, there will still be cars passing by the windows and those porkchops aren’t going to fry themselves. So, let’s stave off the gloom with some gossip and get back to the machines, or as they say on FilmBooster: 87% and an extra star for the towel.

In Monkeybone, Selick brings the silliness of 1990s animation to a magnificent conclusion. But unfortunately for him and the film’s reception, the whole project was outdated by the time it reached cinemas. At the turn of the millennium, everyone was singing the praises of computer-generated animated movies for the whole family, while animation targeted at adolescent and adult audiences became the domain of cable channels after several failed attempts to break into cinemas. Monkeybone comes across as an amalgamation of the ambitions and styles of the ’90s – from the wild creativity of MTV and Cartoon Network series and the cunning humour of Doug TenNapel’s work, to the meta-genre nature and subversiveness of Ralph Bakshi’s last feature film, Cool World, and the bizarre mix of bleakness and warmth in Selick’s previous stop-motion projects. Monkeybone deserves attention at least with respect to its craftsmanship and the combination of live actors and animation, as well as the variety of ideas used in the execution of the project. The filmmakers sometimes worked with post-production composites of shots of the actors and stop-motion animation, while at other times they had the actors interact with life-size puppets. Some of the fantastical characters were created with the help of actors or puppeteers controlling mechanical masks, as well as with a combination of ingenious costumes and post-production deletion of body parts in greenscreen suits. The story of a comatose cartoonist who not only has to find his way out of the great beyond, but also reclaim his body, which has been taken over by a malevolent ape from his imagination, serves Selick’s purpose of creating and populating a deranged netherworld, as well as stylishly bringing reality and animation together. His main partner in this is Brendan Fraser, who shows tremendous acting chops and dedication to his expressively physical portrayal of the ape (many years before he captivated everyone in The Whale).

Terry Tong’s first autonomous feature-length project is part of the less exalted, but actually dominant lineage of the Hong Kong New Wave, the core of which comprises thematically and stylistically iconoclastic contributions to traditional genres, as well as personal and social dramas. The main asset of the young generation of filmmakers, who came from the television environment and came of age studying film abroad, consisted in the professionalisation and stylistic renaissance of their craft on the one hand and, on the other hand, the transition from studio interiors to the real settings of the British colony and presenting them together with everyday motifs and themes. In the first half of the 1980s, most of the filmmakers had been assimilated into the mainstream, but they transformed it with their style and perspective. Together with a number of other New Wave genre contributions including, for example, films produced by Dennis Yu, Coolie Killer foreshadowed and co-established the above-described trend of genre films in New Wave garb. From today’s perspective, the conventional story of a group of hired killers whose rivals are breathing down their necks becomes the perfect space for formalistic exhibition due to its banality, or rather its easy understandability as a genre movie and its minimal dialogue. Everything that is now praised in the technically progressive action movies of the new millennium was put to use in Coolie Killer. The action is not merely an attraction for its own sake, but serves for the characters’ development and advances the narrative. Each sequence takes place in a specific photogenic location whose layout and strengths are fully exploited. All of the film’s locations are real and the lens of the New Wave court cinematographer David Chung simultaneously highlights their authenticity and seeks out the most impressive compositions within them. In addition to its stylistic merits, Coolie Killer is also a key genealogical entry for classics that came later. The film’s narrative about a tragically cursed killer and the mutual professional respect between him and a police investigator, as well as the stylistically romanticised depiction of the world of crime and the overarching cool pathos, were adopted by John Woo for his milestone The Killer at the end of the decade.

An entirely essential artifact for the study of the Hong Kong New Wave. Film as a Way of Life is a TV documentary made for Channel Four in which film critic Tony Ryans maps Hong Kong cinema of the period. Particularly valuable are the interviews with contemporary young Hong Kong critics and filmmakers, to which a wealth of information about the specifics of the local film industry and viewing habits adds context. In addition to this, there are a handful of now paradoxical curiosities that are both amusing and surprising with respect to the time in which they occurred, though they reflect the atmosphere and ethos of the transformation that took place during the given period (e.g. Aces Go Places is not spoken of as a blockbuster, but rather as an independent film, because the then newly established company Cinema City was a new young fish in the existing system before it turned out to be one of the big sharks).

Pakula once again shows himself to be a brilliant amorphous filmmaker who has no definite, fixed style of his own with which he would work with various stories and genres. Thanks to that, however, he is able to piece together an ideal form for each work, which is created in collaboration with other members of the creative team. In this case, that’s the brilliant cinematographer Gordon Willis, who was given maximum space for his characteristic manner of capturing characters in space. Specifically, this means that the characters here do not stand out against their surroundings, but are enveloped by them. These mostly industrial and urban spaces, or rather areas (which also open up to the view outside from the interiors) intensify the gloomy atmosphere, while also illustrating the overarching idea of broader contexts and connections that lie beyond the individual’s insight. At the same time, the narrative seems deliberately reserved, as it denies viewers an absolute omniscient view of the given situations and the central story. It shows us only fragments, pieces, situations seen as if inadvertently, whose meaning we initially cannot comprehend. The meaning is thus all the more impactful and disturbing when it comes with a twist, usually harshly presented with a sharp cut. The Parallax View is an ingenious paranoid thriller that denies viewers the traditional illusory absolution of the genre’s conventional films and the essentially comforting embrace of conspiracy theories. On the contrary, it perfectly captures the unease, elusiveness and bleak helplessness of America plagued by political assassinations in the late 1960s and early 1970s.