Matty

In recent years, Alexander Payne has been filming the same story about aging white men who discover rather too late that they have wasted most of their lives and so they set out to find something that gives their empty lives meaning. Set in a world where people can be shrunk down to roughly six inches in order to improve their lives and save the planet, Downsizing is basically no exception; it just has a more ambitious scope and, in addition to the crisis of the individual, attempts to also address the crisis of western society, or rather the whole world, to which Payne adapted the genre and narrative structure. ___ At the beginning, the film switches from an individual point of view to a global perspective and subsequently applies the same technique to Damon’s physiotherapist character, who finds the solution to his problems by becoming more interested in the world around him so that he comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to start with smaller goals (i.e. local, not global). The core of the film comprising a bitter comedy that questions faith in the American dream and never-ending American prosperity is supplemented with a sci-fi satire and (melo)drama with a relatively explicit political-environmental message. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if a scene was supposed to come across as sardonic (because a character says something terribly kitschy and literal and Christoph Waltz smiles like a simpleton) or touching. ___ A bigger problem is the fact that Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor are at times unable to decide whether they are more interested in the characters or in the downsized world they invented for them and whose laws we are now discovering together with the protagonists. The whole idea of downsizing seemed to me like a gimmick serving more or less only as scathing commentary on what people are willing to go through to improve their social status. At its core, this is a variation of a well-known Payne story that could happen even in the real world. I see the sci-fi level mainly as a way to facilitate the work and to more quickly confront the characters with the dilemmas that the screenplay is intended to address. __ The resulting hybrid holds together primarily thanks to Matt Damon, who is just as convincing as a paunchy forty-something with mild depression as he is as secret agent with lethal skills. The genre transformations that the film undergoes partly reflect the development of his character, toward whom Payne is far too indulgent in comparison with his earlier films (often at the expense of stereotyped female characters). ___ In many respects, Downsizing is a rather problematic film and definitely not perfect, but it clearly made an impression on me. And perhaps the real reason I feel the need to defend it instead of maligning it is the laughing Christoph Waltz as a Serbian smuggler named Dusan Mirkovic, who is ably supported Udo Kier. 75%

A Fantastic Woman begins where most melodramas end – with the death of one of the partners. For Marina, Orlando’s death initiates a multi-phase process of defending her own identity. In front of the doctor, the police investigator, and members of Orlando’s family, she must defend everything that shapes her self – her name, her body, her voice. Almost no one is interested in what Marina wants. No one asks how she feels. Others see her not as an equal, but as an anomaly, a threat to the status quo. Each of the characters who judge Marina also represents a certain institution, by means of the which the story of one farewell takes on a political dimension. Marina is not defending only her right to live a full life. She represents everyone who doesn’t seem sufficiently normal to people like Orlando's ex-wife. ___ Lelio bases the narrative more on parallels and variations than on a causal chain of events and plot twists. We perceive Marina’s nudity during her lovemaking with Orlando differently than during the compiling of police documentation or the sauna scene. When she embraces an unknown man in a nightclub, the moment lacks the warmth of her earlier dance with Orlando shot with by a similar camera approach. The protagonist’s search for a strong voice is motivated not only by her desire for equality, but also by her dream of a singing career. Lelio’s directorial skill is perhaps even more evident in the natural blending of the individual and emancipatory stories than in the scenes where he abandons the dominant realistic style and allows the protagonist at least an imaginary escape into a world where she can be herself. ___ A Fantastic Woman is one of those films in which every shot excels by being well thought out. The colours, the framing and the objects in the mise-en-scène bear meanings and provide commentary on the life situation in which the characters find themselves. For example, Marina wears a necklace in the shape of a semicircle through most of the film. When she realises that she cannot base her identity on the absence or presence of a compatible other half, she replaces the half-circle with a key. It’s not the most subtle metaphor for finding the key to one’s soul, but Lelio isn’t going for subtlety. Like the main female character, his bold film, precise in its details and uplifting in the end, does not conceal anything and is not afraid to meet the audience halfway. At the same time, it doesn’t pander or beg for sympathy. Furthermore, it doesn’t force you to accept Marina in all her diversity. The final realisation that you would have liked to spend a lot more time with this fantastic woman is thus all the more valuable. 90%

Jim & Andy is not just a film about the making of Man on the Moon, but also a fascinating study of method acting taken to the extreme. Jim Carrey, whose talking head forms the basis of this documentary along with previously unreleased footage from filming, very openly talks about why it was so important for him to bring Andy Kaufman to life at that stage of his career and how the role transformed him. On the one hand, it is surprising that Miloš Forman (whom Carrey does a superb impression of, by the way) didn’t replace Carrey, who was a pain in the ass par excellence, with someone who would be easier to control. On the other hand, it’s possible that if Carrey hadn’t undergone the transformation into Kaufman/Clifton and back and thus recognised the full extent of his acting abilities, we would still know him only as a funny, rubber-faced screwball and not as a sensitive and thoughtful actor. Or rather, this is the “lesson” we should take away from the documentary, depending on which storyline it emphasises the most. Jim & Andy works best as a biopic revealing a life-changing period in Jim Carrey’s life while attempting to point out the parallels between the two comedians and the rules of movie marketing (the shots of Carrey released from handcuffs were originally made for the EPK). You may or may not believe it. Like anything associated with Kaufman/Clifton. 75%

Stronger is the third ambitious film focused on the terrorist attack during the Boston Marathon, following Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing and Patriots Day. Instead of a mosaic reconstruction of the event from different perspectives, Gordon Green chose to take a more limited approach and shot a very intimate portrait of one man. ___ The first hour in particular is excellent, as it depicts, in a very raw way almost in real time, the medical procedures that Jeff has to undergo (thanks to Gyllenhaal’s acting, the removal of the bandages is one of the most painful scenes I have seen this year). We see the various stages of his treatment and his deepening depression, the incomprehension of his loved ones (who, unlike in similar films, are not always kind and helpful in every way) and his ingratitude (as he is humiliated by his dependence on the assistance of others), and we get a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations for triumphant moments like the opening of an NHL match. Instead of the pathetic celebration of heroism that was presented to the public, we see pain, shame, fatigue, uncertainty, resignation (in its thematisation of what makes a man a hero and at what cost, Stronger is reminiscent of some of Clint Eastwood’s later films). ___ Most sick-flicks tell the story of protagonists who, thanks to their loving friends and family and solid material security, don’t have to struggle with anything other than their medical condition. As a member of the working class whose girlfriend isn’t sure if she wants to stay with him (they had basically broken up before the attack), Jeff has a lot of other things to worry about and instead of gaining strength and spreading love, he’s sliding to the bottom. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt makes extensive use of (physical) close-ups and shots with little depth of field, so, like Jeff, we don’t properly know what’s going on around him; his and our “reach” is severely limited, which deepens the frustration. ___ The second half of the film isn’t as cohesive, as Green fails to find the key to connecting the three levels of the narrative (Jeff as a man with personal trauma, Jeff as a partner, Jeff as a man who inspires others), and the final minutes are filled with a cheap pathos that this otherwise likably factual film had mostly managed to avoid. Manchester by the Sea thus remains the most complex and truthful drama about relationships and trauma of recent times, but if you want to be moved without feeling that someone has taken advantage of you, Stronger is also a good choice (and Gyllenhaal deserves at least an Oscar nomination, which he should have gotten for Nightcrawler). 75%

The flawless fulfilment of a simple concept: 108 (not 114) restored Lumiére films in their original format, ranging from “classics” to curiosities that you will search in vain for on YouTube, divided into eleven thematic blocks (e.g. origins, people at work, children, comedies). We see each of them from beginning to end accompanied by Frémaux’s commentary. He delivers a humorous and informative account of the history of the individual films and of cinema as such, and where necessary, he explains who and what we are seeing, offers an in-depth analysis of the compositions (the popular division of the picture into multiple plans), the “acting” (the overacting guy slaps his knees to make us realise that the given scene is supposed to be funny), the timing of the action (everything had to have taken place in approximately 50 seconds) and how it was staged (the use of diagonal lines, movement in the background), points out details that the viewer might not have noticed otherwise and which are sometimes rather important and sometimes serve mainly to entertain (here 5,000 soldiers are marching, three of them don’t have moustaches, this one, this one and this one; in the bottom right-hand corner we see a bottle of cognac, so this is obviously a French breakfast). By the end, you will have a solid overview of what the Lumiéres (and their cinematographers sent out into the world) filmed and you will realise that they spent significantly more time, for example, figuring out where best to place the camera than the seeming primitiveness of these films would suggest. For cinephiles, Lumiére! is a film in the “I've seen it and now I can die” category; for film students, it is a useful teaching aid; for everyone else, it is an hour and a half of little films that are so short they can never get boring. 90%

When it comes to love, words can be just as unsatisfying as the climax-less sex with which Claire Denis’s new film begins (and which is not the only kind of sex found here). Following the example of Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, we find out why the protagonist’s emotional and love life is unsatisfying from an episodic series of her encounters with both familiar and newfound lovers. They differ in appearance, intellect and class affiliation. Some of them are not self-assured at all, others are overconfident. Isabelle is an attractive woman who draws the attention of men with her short skirts and tall high-heeled boots. However, few of her partners are able to correctly decode the signals that she sends as an expression of need for understanding rather than for unsatiated lust. However, Isabelle herself doesn’t know exactly what she wants and, in some ways, seems as thoughtless as her partners. It’s no wonder she can’t maintain her happiness even when she meets a man who doesn’t push his ego (like a dung beetle pushing a ball) in front of himself and with whom she apparently feels good. It seems that Isabelle can only be honest with people from whom she receives no promises and to whom she is not afraid to expose herself completely, at least with words. When asked a polite question by a man she regularly runs into at the fish shop, she truthfully replies that she is not well. Similarly, she is not afraid to tell a taxi driver that she is unhappy. The cyclical nature of the situation in which she finds herself and which stems from the fact that she constantly seeks validation from others (who doesn’t?) is humorously summed up in the final conversation with the clairvoyant, who turns out to be another egoist acting only in his own interest. The entire film follows the protagonist’s failed attempts at successful communication in which the partners speak the same language and are able to tell each other (even without words) what bothers them, what they like, what they desire, what they want from each other. Denis maintains a slightly ironic distance not only from the relationship problems of the Parisian bohemians, but also from her protagonist, who confides to a friend that she stayed with a possessive banker mainly because she was turned on by the idea of sleeping with an “old scumbag”, thus basically blending fact and fantasy. But a relationship based on an illusion is not sustainable in the long run. Sooner or later, there must be an awakening, expressed in the bar scene by the slow movement of the camera away from the two actors (contrasted with the briskly flowing dialogue based on the conscious acceptance of a certain role, shot by panning between the two actors instead of using the traditional shot/counter-shot technique). Let the Sunshine In is not a typical French comedy with broadly accessible humour that wraps its ideas up in nice phrases, but a maximally unobtrusive, beautifully sad comedy of manners (with a touch of class satire) in which (as in the discourse of lovers) every gesture, every word and every pause bears meaning. It is thus important that the actors, especially the amazing Juliette Binoche, are able to sum up a long list of reasons for their contempt or the multi-year history of one interrupted stint of living together with an almost imperceptible change of expression or with the way they say certain words. Thanks to the accuracy and matter-of-factness with which it depicts the various phases of coming together and breaking up and how relationships can be both fulfilling and frustrating, Let the Sunshine In is one of the best films about love and communication.

My Son is unintentionally funny trash with dubious morals masquerading as a psychological drama. Characters on the verge of a nervous breakdown are shown only through crying, screaming or wanting to kill someone. When you need some sort of information, use brutal violence. When you want to get a loved one (or two) back, kill a few people. Any instalment of the Taken series is more entertaining and more honest. The second star was added for the one (final) scene in which Mélanie Laurent is not hysterical and for Canet maniacally screaming “’I’m going to bake your leg!” 35%

In a mere ninety minutes, this documentary attempts to accomplish a number of tasks for which not even a ten-part series would be enough. The main objective seems to have been to map the history of film music, starting with the obligatory declaration that “silent films were never silent” and ending with Zimmer, who appear here in a maroon jacket and striped socks, reminiscing about the legendary composers who influenced him. Other contemporary artists sing the praises of both their predecessors and their living counterparts. In addition to that, they utter phrases such as “music is the heart and soul of film” and try to convince us that the soundtracks of today’s blockbusters are increasingly experimental, whereupon we see a clip of the recording of the music for Minions. OK. Brian Tyler appears in the film as a progressive young artist whose work I find rather excellent evidentiary material for a video essay on the forgettable nature of Marvel movie scores (The Marvel Symphonic Universe). The mention of the crushing deadlines within which some contemporary composers have to complete their work is then wrapped up with the acknowledgment that, thanks to outstanding technology and the professionalism of everyone involved, this is not a problem. Basic concepts such as the musical motif (and the ways it can be used) and the difference between melody and rhythm are explained in very simple terms and we are given a brief presentation of the creation of a soundtrack, from the first meeting with the director to recording in the studio (a fascinating process that deserves its own dedicated documentary). As if the great thematic breadth, leading to even greater shallowness, wasn’t enough, a scientist and Moby (no kidding) discuss what happens in our brains when we listen to music. Though this is a rambling, self-regarding, self-indulgent and marginally revealing documentary (especially if you watch a bit of the bonus material on the DVD or have read the excellent A History of Film Music) that also gives the impression that, with the exception of Morricone, there are no major composers working outside the Hollywood mainstream, it can be accepted as a quick journey through the history of (American) film music. But you would be better off finding videos like “Steven Spielberg and John Williams talk about the soundtracks for E.T. and Jaws” on YouTube, of which only brief examples are used in SCORE. You'll learn a lot more from them.

Following the example of Preston Sturges’s later work, Clooney attempts to reconcile two seemingly incompatible positions. He interweaves a very slowly escalating, darkly humorous (if you can laugh at the fact that someone drank coffee laced with lye), Coen-esque thriller about a crime that has gone awry (because the characters are mostly incompetent idiots) with a serious critique of racial intolerance. An African-American family terrorised by their white neighbours is rather left in the background of the narrative (we only know their last name and we almost never hear them speak), which seems to be the point of the film. The members of the majority are frustrated because of the problems they have brought on themselves (which overshadow the more serious problems of society as a whole) and are looking for someone to take their anger out on. Minorities are the first to be targeted. However, the film is quite clumsy in establishing causality between the two types of violence and turns to it relatively late (the closing dialogue does a lot to salvage the situation at the last moment). Furthermore, when we don’t yet know the characters’ true intentions at the beginning, we are led to sympathise with the same protagonists whom we will later despise, which in retrospect strikes me as mere screenwriting trickery that does not in any way help to convey the central idea. The choice of a child’s perspective also comes across as a half-baked idea that is not employed very consistently. Particularly the scenes from Nicky’s perspective heighten the feeling of danger, so that we vicariously experience what a black family goes through. I appreciate what Clooney is trying to say about the mood in today’s America (and not only there), as well as the fact that he didn’t choose the easiest path, but the result is noteworthy particularly for why and how it doesn’t work. 65%

Nice work with plot motifs, narrative formulas and the iconography of the western, whose romanticism clashes with the unsentimentally depicted social reality of contemporary Europe, where borders that had been erased are being redrawn. Instead of cowboys conquering Indian country, a group of German workers colonise a Bulgarian village (flying the flag, saddling up on someone else’s horse, getting close to a local woman). The theme comprising the clash of two cultures is crucial, except it is more of a clash between East and West than between civilisation and wilderness. The members of the two sub-worlds between which the protagonist moves actually understand each other less than they outwardly appear to. An ambiguous loner for whom freedom is evidently more important than family. Despite that, however, he clearly wants to belong somewhere, to be accepted by others (but it’s hard to say what exactly he desires, as concealing his emotions is part of his nature). For my taste, however, there were too many mood-evoking shots of the wandering protagonist holding a cigarette, the frequency of which probably has something to do with the looser structure of the story, which gives the impression of having been created “on the fly”. In terms of style and narrative structure, the film reminded me quite a lot of a long line of other festival dramas (the veristic shooting style, the final violent clash followed by catharsis), and the theme of western companies (and the possessive mentality) expanding into the “developing” countries of Eastern Europe was more aptly addressed in Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann. 75%