Filmmaniak

Through most of its runtime, this socially critical genre hybrid cuts between several themes and characters. It primarily points out the loopholes in the system in which various post-communist countries have become places where Western capitalist firms engage in nefarious activities. It does so by looking into the environment of construction workers illicitly working in dangerous conditions and their heartless employers, who exploit them while deceiving foreign developers. To connect these two worlds, the film uses the protagonist, a morally ambiguous executive manager who has long been trying to provide for her family and is the mistress of her real-estate broker boss, and she is pushed further and further beyond what she is willing to tolerate in her work. The film also jumps to the character of a simple-minded young man who is planning to move away with his girlfriend after his work as a laborer is finished. With bold satirical elements and an ironic title (and a few stumbles in the performances of various supporting actors), this realistic film begins as a social drama and ends as a thriller. In between, it is transformed several times into a black comedy in which lazy and drunken workers do everything they can to avoid having to work. The film thus comes up with several thought-provoking motifs, which in some cases are almost chilling, but it also takes almost until the final act to get its footing in those motifs, tie them all together and finally properly engage the audience.

In the first half of Elvis, emphasis is placed on, among other things, the rebellious Elvis’s clashes with the censorship board, which considers his gyrations to be obscene, whereas the second half focuses primarily on Presley’s conflicts with the people close to him, whose expectations he either refuses to meet on principle or, to his own disappointment, he is unable to meet. A running theme throughout the film consists in Elvis’s steadfast effort to preserve his own exceptional personal and musical identity, which is the only key to the artist’s success and immortality. The charismatic Austin Butler, a gifted singer in his own right, is absolutely excellent in the title role. He is not only able to captivate without batting an eye during the fantastically filmed musical numbers, but he also manages to naturally and sensitively convey a broad range of emotions even in the quieter moments. Most of the supporting and peripheral roles are also well cast according to type. Of course, the great Tom Hanks has the most space in the film as Presley’s manager and as the narrator, who in his commentary repeatedly tries to convince us that he always meant well by his charge, but his actions, captured by his image, tell us the opposite is true. His perspective as an unreliable narrator naturally complements Elvis’s perspective and the film is based substantially on the transformations of their friendship and family/business relationship. The story adheres to a precisely rhythmized structure, in which Elvis’s performances always comprise the climax of individual segments and time periods. Director Baz Luhrmann does his best work since Moulin Rouge and he also excels as a phenomenal audio-visual storyteller and master of the edited montage, who needs only a few two-second shots and appropriate musical backing to instantly capture the right mood of the given moment, setting and circumstance with unparalleled brilliance. In the genre of biopics about music legends, Elvis is a gem that presents its title character in many different situations and styles, engages your interest regardless of whether or not you know his life story and songs, and simply cannot conceal the identity of its director thanks to Luhrmann’s many recognizable trademarks and filmmaking techniques. From the opening scene onwards, it is an audio-visually riveting and engaging film that demands to be seen on the big screen.

In the weakest instalment of the franchise, Johnny English is a secret agent of the analogue old school who is suddenly confronted with modern digital technologies such as smartphones and virtual reality. Nevertheless, his bitter conflicts with modern conveniences are only sporadically present in the film, so most of the humor, which draws significantly from the previous two instalments, is again conveyed by means of classic “Bean comedy”, in addition to parodic plays on the spy movie genre. However, the hackneyed scenes with physical gags that are long past their sell-by date (the protagonist’s nose gets caught in a cocktail umbrella; he gets scared by the fire while flambéing shrimps and spills them on the floor...) come across as very stale and predictable. The totally routine and listless directing definitely doesn’t help with its insufficient feel for comic timing. Besides that, the filmmakers appear to be conservative technophobes who present new technologies as instruments of evil that are not understood at all by most of the film’s characters, including the protagonist, whose inability to adapt to anything modern is extolled as a virtue – in the climax, he is even dressed in medieval armor in order to further emphasize that he is a hero of the good old days. He is a hero who is generally considered to be an incompetent fool that always ruins everything and always achieves success only by accident thanks to the random aligning of circumstances, yet he is praised by the prime minister in the final scenes as a representative of proper British values and qualities. Though Rowan Atkinson is usually able to put things right with his facial expressions, this time making funny faces was unfortunately not enough to salvage such a lazy and half-baked comedy with no imagination and with weak, unimaginative and trite humor.

Compared to the original, this spectacular revival of the classic musical benefits from its outstanding modern rendering and is thus catchier and has a generally quicker pace. The actors are great and the song-and-dance sequences are phenomenal. And the songs – not only about love and celebration of life, but also about discrimination and violence – have not lost their power and relevance even after all these years. Furthermore, they are performed in service of this great film, which boldly matches the qualities of its predecessor, showing us that the motif of racial conflict still remains a relevant social issue today.

On a certain meta-level, the film’s protagonists excuse the fifth Scream for being a mere recycling of several worn-out formulas and motifs (which it is), because that’s what devoted fans want. And it is possible that that might actually be enough for fans of the genre, particularly fans of this franchise. Nevertheless, such a hackneyed film that serves viewers practically the same thing as its predecessors and has no need to distinguish itself in any way is hardly saved by the fact that its creators are aware that it’s worn out and humorously point that out in places. The protagonists can endlessly make snarky comments about the various rules of the horror genre and all of the mistakes that horror-movie characters make, but what good does that do if they themselves can’t avoid making the same mistakes? To a certain extent, however, there is still some entertainment value in the game of guessing which character is the killer while the possibilities gradually dwindle. Otherwise, neither the new (and not particularly likable) characters, the return of old familiar faces nor the gory (though unimaginative) murders hold much appeal.

In the context of the digital essence of the whole Matrix franchise, it more or less makes sense to approach the new instalment as a “reboot of the system” after an eighteen-year hiatus and to supplement it with a modern upgrade that fundamentally distinguishes the film from the previous ones in terms of both the overall atmosphere and the formalistic aspect. The result, however, nonetheless spawns a number of doubts. The fourth Matrix will undoubtedly receive mixed reviews, as the reasons justifying its existence are derived primarily from the fact that it is not so much a good film, but rather a film that is narratively interesting, bold in terms of filmmaking, very unconventional in the context of sequels to celebrated franchises and practically unique in its approach to itself and to the whole Matrix phenomenon in whose footsteps it follows. On the one hand, the film is disappointing in its poor execution of the action scenes, its relationship storyline involving the main characters of the original trilogy is surprisingly emotionally hollow and the further development of the fictional mythology seems disjointed and half-baked (including several dead ends). On the other hand, however, it also rather entertainingly combines multiple narrative styles, from a playful and ironic self-aware meta-approach to nostalgic reminiscence and tendentious action to sci-fi romance, thanks to which it is possible to see Matrix Resurrections as a conceptual film that progressively presents different and stylistically distinct beta-versions of the way it could be tied to the Matrix trilogy and combines them into a single narrative whole. It can thus be recommended not necessarily for its totally variable and questionable qualities, but for its remarkable and stimulating narrative form.

No Time to Die is a worthy conclusion to the pentalogy in which James Bond is believable not only as an action hero saving the world, but also as a melancholic, torn and vulnerable man who longs for loving closeness and a stable supportive environment. Fukunaga is self-assured in the action scenes and in his emphasis on the melodramatic relationship storyline, in which Daniel Craig’s acting qualities are on full display. Despite the well-done psychological delving into the protagonist’s inner self, however, this subtle intimate level doesn’t make as an emotional and satisfying impression as it could have because of the slight naïveté of the screenwriting and the occasional hollowness of the dialogue. The bland character of the main villain is utterly disappointing, as his complicated personality is neglected in comparison with the protagonist, making him merely an uninteresting and incomprehensibly behaving tool in the diabolical plans. In contrast, the agent played by Ana de Armas, who appears only for a moment, is great, but she deserves to be featured throughout the film. There is an obvious intention to shoot the conclusion of the Bond saga with everything that involves, so the familiar trademarks are again dusted off, but when Bond utters sarcastically humorous lines as he eliminates enemies, it somewhat counterproductively diminishes the attempt at a more sensitive and realistic concept of the character. Though in terms of its overall style, the film does not especially deviate in any way from the standard of the previous instalments starring Craig, its creators did not lack the courage to come up with one or two extra elements that significantly disrupt the conventions of Bond movies, thus elevating the experience of watching No Time to Die to the category of unforgettable despite its several shortcomings.

Set in a 17th-century Italian convent against the backdrop of a plague epidemic, this erotic film about nuns is a rather uneven attempt to raise its B-movie foundation, drawing primarily on the tradition of Italian exploitation flicks with nuns (so-called “nunsploitation”), to the level of a top-tier festival film. Paul Verhoeven threw into it his trademarks and favorite obsessions including, for example, caustic irony, sadism and perversion, and feminism, in this case spiced up with a mocking critique of the Church as a hypocritical institution controlled by power interests and standing in the way of sexual freedom. We follow the story of a young nun, who is experiencing very vivid visions of manifestations of Christ and undergoing a lesbian awakening with a newly arrived novice, from her childhood in a series of sacrilegious escapades, whose true origins are shrouded in mystery (perhaps a divine miracle, maybe just an act with a profit-seeking objective) and are the driving force of the entire film. Through most of its runtime, the film veers between a low-brow black-humor farce about the abuse of believers’ gullibility (with flatulence, defecation, playful pornographic motifs and the figure of Jesus Christ in the role of protector, who fearlessly decapitates enemies and beasts) and an agonizing serious drama with classical music and naturalistic violence, dealing with a delirious woman prone to self-harm and the negative impacts of fanatical faith. The clash of these two tonally contradictory approaches is quite problematic and unsatisfying, but perhaps that doesn’t matter to Verhoeven, as he probably just wanted to have a good romp and be a bit provocative and outrageous, which he succeeded in doing. Because of that, Benedetta falls into the category of borderline guilty-pleasure entertainment suitable for midnight festival screenings that will divide audiences, and in which the acting highlight is not the performances of the actresses portraying the lesbian couple, but that of Charlotte Rampling in the supporting (though essential and noteworthy) role of the sceptical mother superior.

This film’s focus is on the unexpected understanding reached between a middle-aged theatre director and a young private chauffeur, who could be his daughter and has been assigned to him against his will by the theatre company. Thanks to the trust that is gradually built between them, they are able to confide in each other their traumas and secrets, which are part of a complex, multi-layered story about, among other things, the relationships of couples and lovers and the pain of losing a loved one. The whole movie takes place against the backdrop of rehearsals for Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a multilingual version (including South Korean sign language), while dialogue from the play is often present in other parts of the film. Despite the fact that the plot really gets going only after more than 40 minutes (when the opening credits finally appear), the length of the film is not a hindrance at all. Drive My Car is superbly written and directed from start to finish and excels not only due to its emphasis on the formal, genteel communication between the characters, but also for its many remarkable and imaginative scenes and the inclusion of several fascinating dreamlike micro-stories.

A prologue, twelve chapters and an epilogue in the life of the almost thirty-year-old Julia, who is searching for her place in life and trying to come to terms with herself, her emotions and her romantic relationships. This relatively successful attempt at a generational statement, which also attempts to touch on several other serious issues, is captivating with its electrifying directing and likable humor, in addition to the natural performances of the actors playing the three main characters. The smartly written dialogue occasionally comes across as being slightly too clever and the narrative falls apart a bit not only because of its division into chapters, but also because of excessive flitting between the individual motifs, especially towards the end. Therefore, the film is strongest in several very effective and bold details and passages, such as the one with the innocent spark verging on infidelity at a party, the scene of spending a day with the love of a lifetime in a city temporarily frozen in suspended animation, and the one with tripping on mushrooms. The intended poignancy at the end doesn’t happen and the film’s two-hour runtime may be too long due to the slowly waning pace, but even so, spending those two hours with The Worst Person in the World is a pleasant and rewarding experience.