Malarkey

I feel as if the people living in Norway are merely a bunch of anti-social folks who may be living in touch with nature, but who are totally screwed socially. Elling seems to give you the idea. Nevertheless, it is a great social comedy which – I don’t know why – reminded me of The Art of Negative Thinking. Fun, great actors, funny situations. In total, it is a lovable Norwegian surprise and probably one of the legendary comedies in Norway.

Amy Schumer is making fun of herself again, but it’s sort of no longer funny.

Well this is a hell of a wacky show. The crime show taking place in Svalbard turned into a phantasmagoria that has barely anything in common with a crime show anymore, but that isn’t far from being talked about as the biggest screenwriting fuck-up of the past few years. I personally did not understand it. Dan has turned into a super-human being, there is no logic to anything and there isn’t a single character, apart maybe from the drunkard Quaid, with whom you would form some kind of relationship. That’s a pity… at least the beautiful shots of Iceland haven’t changed.

Quite a success on this one by the Americans! It’s the 60’s, Cold War is climaxing and they sort of poke fun at the political situation with a story about how their computers went crazy and launched a series of nuclear missiles onto Moscow. Quite a rough topic for that time and it may not be for everybody. On the other hand, there are precise dialogues, great acting performances and moments about which you can be sure that things may have happened something like that. This is no satire like Dr. Strangelove, but a film that stirred quite the sensation at the time.

A totally brutal emotional rollercoaster from Spain which, wherever it can, grabs at everybody’s soul so that we would all be properly devastated by the movie. Normally, I can sort of handle similar movies, but the sick child in this one is not for everybody. I know that not everybody can handle movies like this one… but in this case I guess they would shit their pants. The little girl’s performance is so unreal that I couldn’t comprehend how she was able to play being OK at one moment, then sick and then on her deathbed. One of the few stories that I had a really hard time watching.

Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix are probably the best thing this strange movie has to offer. Strange because it takes place in the near future but looks no different from our times. I said “looks” on purpose because what might happen later is that you are travelling on the escalators in the subway and you have to step over dead bodies pretending like nothing has happened. The thing is that the movie takes place in some sort of dystopia that explains nothing… and it could maybe explain a thing or two every now and then. Fortunately, Joaquin is a great actor and Claire looks great, so if nothing else, you will be watching two great actors who are stumbling from the pole to the wall and it’s sort of like… nothing.

Probably the most brutal piece of self-criticism by German filmmakers regarding their national legacy – World War Two. It is shot so well that it took a lot of work to find anything negative about it. Robert Schwentke is evidently a professional in every sense of the word. On the artistic side, he decided to make it in black-and-white using such great cinematography that I haven’t seen in a long time. The atmosphere is so thick that it could be sliced with a knife and at moments I felt that the dialogues were snatched from a Tarantino flick. The scene at the farmer’s where young Will Herold builds a special platoon deserved not five, but six stars. In terms of story, the movie is quite intimate, but it was actually enough. Willi’s unbelievable journey from an ordinary private to a captain happened in such a flash that I just kept staring incredulously at what finding a uniform can do to a soldier at the end of the war. The fact that everything is based on a true story simply confirms the fact that war brings out hidden human qualities and shows what can be found inside a human being. Even though none of us would be willing to admit that, let alone understand that. The Captain is an unbelievable movie. Good quality cinematography, a great theme and a whole lot of brilliant ideas including the final scene or the single shot in color proved that this is one of the best war movies I have had the chance to see in the past few years.

Comparing the atmosphere of this film with David Lynch is a bit off the mark. The movie is actually not as strange as it looks at first glance. It’s rather a wannabe thriller with noir elements where people behave in strange ways mainly because they are simply weird. Andrew Garfield plays probably the weirdest role in his entire career and it would probably be better if he didn’t have it in his portfolio. For over two hours, something is going on that portrays the human vanity in Hollywood and it does so in such an inconspicuous manner that I don’t think the locals will understand that the movie is referring to them. The entire time, I was waiting for something a bit more meaningful to come out of it, but the good-for-nothing ending cut that off and essentially confirmed what this movie is about. It’s actually about nothing at all.

Koreans know how it’s done, don’t they? From all of Asian cinematography, they are actually closest to Europe. The only thing that is quite unusual is the Korean language, but you can get used to that as well in the end. The filmmakers in Korea are incredibly talented and they can unite good cinematography with a great theme and perfect acting performances. Marathon is exactly like that. That boy actor put up such a great performance as the autistic boy that it made me think that he must actually be autistic in real life. But he actually acts in a great number of movies. Even though the movie is a drama, it makes you smile to yourself for the two hours and root for the boy, so it makes you feel you are watching a respectable family story rather than a movie about the hard life of a Korean boy. I liked it a lot. The Koreans sure know how to mesmerize you.

It’s great when filmmakers feel like they can make an intimate drama and thanks to good dialogues they actually manage to pull it off. In this case, all they needed were two completely different characters and proper Russian Siberian taiga. The relationship of the two guys isn’t really special in any way, but the movie is shot so well that the final scene must knock out even the toughest viewer on the face of the earth. I say it is a good movie to watch once; I enjoyed it.