The Departed (2006)

USA/Hong Kong
directed by: Martin Scorsese
written by: William Monahan + Felix Chong and Alan Siu Fai Mak (original screenplay)
starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen
commented on 29th July, 2018

This is a film from the 20th century, both in its themes and its execution. (And since it was not made in the 20th century, it's a bad thing.)

For some reason I instantly started hating this film straight after its release and for some reason I then went on watching it at least once a year to figure out why I hate it so much and what it is I am missing that makes the critics go wild about it (apart from the fact that the Academy thought they had Scorsese waiting long enough for some of them golden statues of glory and the film in question wasn't particularly important).

During this year's annual rewatching "the faithful departed" caught me in a benevolent mood and I finally got to appreciate the adorable heart-attack-inducing cat-and-mouse game presented by gentlemen Leonardo and Matt. (Although the softest spot in my heart was occupied by Marky Mark, surprisingly.) And I also finally uderstood what irritated me so much about it before, and it's the Jack Nicholson part, of course.

Nicholson is said to have described his character as "an incarnation of pure evil" but he really must be going bonkers if he believes that is what he achieved. Not only does his primitive mafioso get way more leeway that the character actually needs in terms of the story, but more importantly he feels like a one-dimentional caricature from a different genre and certainly not the evilest of evils. Compared with the absolute determination of his colleagues he comes off as laughable, and not in a good way. And in that regard I think the prologue was also not needed at all since it has very little to do with the film or its point.

And now that I've put names to those things that bugged me for years I feel liberated and hope to never see this film again. The end. (But I do want to watch the Hongkongese original, because I need to see Andy Lau and Tony Leung hatefully glancing at each other.)

-"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself."

The Big Short (2015)

USA
directed by: Adam McKay
written by: Adam McKay, Charles Randolph + Michael Lewis (book)
starring: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt
seen on 20th July, 2018

-"Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I'll have my wife's brother arrested." 

I had to fight the film's fidgety style all the way through, but its message softened my heart in the end. I would say this film has to be (morally) about five-thousand-times better than The Wolf of Wall Street, and yet/because of that almost nobody cares about it now and definitely nobody will care about it in a couple of years, while Leonardo will receive praise indefinitely, and golly gosh, that pisses me off so much.

Nevertheless, I still think that Adam McKay should sort of ease on those "though guy statements", at least in the beginning. And this also seems to by my favourite role of Steve Carell.

(I read there was supposed to be Scarlett Johansson under a waterfall instead of Margot Robbie in a bubble bath, and I would much prefered the first option, because Scarlett is an actress capable of expressing irony while Margot Robbie is not.)

-"The small investing he still does is all focused on one commodity: water."

Bridge of Spies (2015)

USA/Germany/India
directed by: Steven Spielberg
written by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Matt Charman
starring: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Sebastian Koch
seen on 7th July, 2018

I watched this film about a month ago and I kept saying to myself: "I've got to give it some time to make up my mind" and I kept saying it for so long I nearly forgot I even watched it, and well, that about sums up my opinion.

To be a bit more specific, I was actually deliberating whether the praiseworthy "oh the humanity" theme can balance out the disgusting pro-american/patriotic tone of the whole thing that maybe could find its place in the black-and-white 1990s but surely not in the cinema of the 21st century. By using these outdated optics Spielberg and his team, that surprisingly (for me) includes the Coen brothers, prove that they are not able to step outside their own shadow and reflect not only the times in which their story is set but also (and more importantly) the times in which they are making their statement. I will illustrate my displeasure on an example: The part I theoretically liked the most in this film was a connection between two shots framing (or rather summing up) the story: the first one is where Hanks rides the train "from one Berlin to the other one" and sees people getting shot down while trying to climb "the wall". The other one is of course the one where he rides a city train back in his home country and watches kids cheerfully climbing fences during play time. But how can they present this with a clear conscience as a symbol of "oppression x freedom" in present-day America, knowing full well what present-day America does to children and with walls and fences - at home, towards USA's neighbours and in a lot of other countries around the world.

I could also possibly enjoy the character of Abel as presented by Mark Rylance, but what good is such a brilliant minimalist performance in a film where manipulation follows sentimentality. I also found it amusing how is the introductory scene for mr. lawyer written to make him look like the biggest douchebag imaginable (For some reason I kept imagining Quentin Tarantino in the role: "Not our guy, a client of our guy." I believe that could be the mark of a Coen.) but since he's being played by Tom Hanks he later on displays no signs of these character traits presented during this exposition and forever keeps on acting and talking like the best gosh darnest man in the world and its history. And that's about all I remember about this film.