Bowling For Columbine (2002)

USA/Canada/Germany
written and directed by: Michael Moore
starring: Michael Moore, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Manson
seen: 10th October, 2008 - comment: 21st October, 2015

Seven years ago I wrote about this documentary that I found it entertaining. Now as the only truly entertaining thing remains the statement that bowling might be as much a plausible influence on the shooters as anything else.

Moore probably has good intentions, but I'm not sure about the direction of the road he's paving with them. A lot of the situations look like they could have been handled differently... and mostly more smartly. The thing that hasn't changed during the years I had to think about this film is that I still consider the couple of sentences Marilyn says to be the intellectual (and most likely argumentational) peak of the film, and since he didn't even got to say that much, that paints a pretty accurate picture of the film's depth.

The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

USA
directed by: Mel Gibson
written by: Mel Gibson, Benedict Fitzgerald
starring: James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci, Rosalinda Celentano
seen: 25th March, 2008, comment:  27th August, 2017

I've been thinking for some time what to write about The Passion because I could only come up with negative and agressive opinions and for once I felt I shouldn't invest energy into such thoughts. And when it comes to this, I like to compare said films to other creators who aspire to achieve similar goals and do it better, in my opinion at least. The ultimate film about the ordeal of Jesus Christ made for modern audience (when I skip over The Life Of Brian and Jesus Christ Superstar, for obvious reasons) is Jesus from Montreal: A fool/outcast is, in the middle of emptied vanity, trying to create something real with a meaning, while fighting the feeling that he himself is just a tool/an empty vessel. It's a spiritual film about faith and inspiration. The Passion never gets to such abstract concepts, God forbid it should get to confronting ideas.

Mel Gibson described his chosen theme like this: "This is a movie about love, hope, faith and forgiveness. He [Jesus] died for all mankind, suffered for all of us. It's time to get back to that basic message. The world has gone nuts. We could all use a little more love, faith, hope and forgiveness." I don't understand why he sticks so much to depicting evil, instead of inspiring good. He is literal and superficial and resorts to ideological, visual and musical kitsch. I find Rosalinda Celentano rather spellbinding, but one of the films biggest problems for me is the decision to personify evil/temptation into the character of Satan, walking around Earth and de facto absolving sinners of responsibility for their actions because he is the absolute source of all evil. Gibson simply doesn't understand the colour gray and doesn't want to leave anything to individual thinking evaluation.

The Passion Of The Christ isn't a creation of a spiritualy awakened person, but of a dogmatical fanatic. It concentrates on all the wrong and insignificant details and doesn't realize that this process irretrievably deforms the idea that might have been a model in the beginning.

Babel (2006)

France/USA/Mexico
directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu
written by: Guillermo Arriaga
starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza
seen: 3rd February, 2008 - comment: 24th July, 2017

I wasn't that impressed with this film when I first saw it as a rebellious teenager, but I was under the impression that maybe I just don't understand it right and that after some time my understanding will change. Well, it's been ten years and something unprecedented happened: I understand it even less now and it seems that more shallow to me.

I am not able to determine on my own what's this film even about and the way it's shot and presented makes me very unpleasant. One example for all is the obtrusive and tacky Mexican wedding sequence. And the film's soundtrack was very irritating with its poseur emptiness.

The only scene where I felt truly moved occured when the little boy smashed the Winchester rifle.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

USA/Germany/France/Spain
directed by: Paul Greengrass
written by: Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, George Nolfi
starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen
seen: 29th January, 2008, comment updated 24th March, 2018

With each new viewing the film becomes less and less engaging. A few more rounds and I guess I'll think it's a stupid flick. (And I feel the need to add that it's simply depressing that the storyline of "the Ultimatum" is just a mosaic of essential plot points from both previous films and doesn't bring almost anything new to the mix. The core example of this is when Bourne causes a car crash to get rid of "the terminator" chasing him, confronts him at gunpoint and then decides to spare him in order to be more human himself - that's exactly the same freaking thing that happened in "the Supremacy", except that Karl Urban is replaced by Edgar Ramirez in the part of the pretty psycho-killer. That's pure impertinence to recycle a scene like this, to use old emotions instead of evoking new ones. As far as screenwriting goes, this is unforgivable.)

But because of the hearbreaking stare of Daniel Brühl (about whom I have briefly forgotten that he even shows up in this film because I'm always admiring the plants in his film appartment, mainly the ficus by the window and the bonsai at the door) I have decided to list some positives as well and to not end my review on such an angry note. The scene with the journalist at the London train station is truly spectacular and probably my favourite sequence of the whole trilogy. And I guess it's kind of cute how he sends the entire agency out for a walk in New York. But the final act is so unsatisfying in throwing everything away and starting to target irrelevant emotions that I always end up losing interest. And even the final Moby beings to sound a bit worn out.

-"Get some rest, Pam. You look tired."

My Fair Lady (1964)

USA
directed by: George Cukor
written by: Alan Jay Lerner + George Bernard Shaw (play)
starring: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Jeremy Brett
seen: 23rd December, 2007 - comment: 23rd April, 2017

I guess I just don't understand the purpose (point) of classical movie musicals. At least this particular movie musical. It seems to be a slavish adaptation of the Broadway play and doen't really seem to want to translate itself into language of cinema instead of theatre. Other thing that bothers me is the singing style concoction - Higgins and Pickering are talking their way through their singing parts using their normal voices, Eliza and Freddy are dubbed over by professional singers exhibiting their stylized prowess, and father Doolittle is using down-to-earth folk singing. And what should I make of the fact that on one hand I get extremely elaborate numbers like the Ascot sequence (which I actually like a lot) and on the other I see numbers like Higgins walking around his library for five minutes or Freddy standing alone in the street doing nothing for the whole song?

And while I'm at not understaning stuff, was there a particular reason we needed to hear the lengthy wedding song of father Doolittle and watch his innocent cavorting with pub floozies? His entire presence in the movie baffles me the most, probably because of the same reasons that kept me from finishing reading Colas Breugnon by Romain Rolland. I think I understand why G. B. Shaw put him in the play, but the movie uses social criticism as much as another cardboard set piece in the non-political spectacle and nobody expects it to actually mean something in the world outside of entertainment. I mean, the biggest uproar it caused was gossip as to why wasn't Julie Andrews cast.

To me, the most valuable thing about the movie is that Eliza herself decides to come to the professor because she would like to improve her life. And that's why it pains me that the film-makers dismiss the character the same way Higgins does. She's supposed to be the crown jewel of their work but literally everything else will get much more attention than her. Most of her character development happens off-screen. Instead of her voicing her feelings about the qualities she found in herself we get a shot of her walking down the stairs, contrieved and dolled up, with men gazing at her.
This approach to the leading lady seem very antediluvian to me. Other filmakers of early sixties are putting out works about relationships of men and women like Onibaba, Repulsion, Woman in the dunes, Red desert, and I am supposed to be amazed by a beautiful woman looking even more beautiful with diamonds hanging all over her?

(And let's not forget that 1964 is the year of A Hard Day's Night when it comes to music.)
In short, My Fair Lady is not a film for me.

The Shining (1980)

USA/United Kingdom
directed by: Stanley Kubrick
written by: Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson + Stephen King (book)
starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
seen: 4th October, 2007 - comment: 27th April, 2017

-„All day work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.“ Every time this movie comes up my dad says great great, Nicholson is a manic genius, but everybody should also read the book, because that's the real place to learn why and how it's all happening and that King is going deep into the history of the hotel and its former ganster owners and so on. I'm telling to myself that if I read it I might find that problematic because King often doesn't know when to stop. And I'm telling to my dad that Kubrick is opting for something else. He's translating words into feelings and feelings into images and the resulting movie doesn't need any additional information to achieve its goal (which in my case is to trick me and scare me to death). And it's done so beautifuly that a mere "Tuesday" title is able to make me jump.

I love that Kubrick himself mentions Kafka in one interview when describing his decision to be realistic and believable in adapting the material: „His (Kafka's) stories are fantastic and allegorical, but his writing is simple and straightforward, almost journalistic. On the other hand, all the films that have been made of his work seem to have ignored this completely, making everything look as weird and dreamlike as possible.“ I only read the interview after I stumbled upon a terribly long and etremely thorough fan analysis of the movie. (The analysis consists of 21 chapters, some other files with research notes and several hours of additional videos.) For example, the author speculates about the real meaning of a stepladder placed in a hallway in the beginning of the movie (and amongst other things compares it to the pyramid on one dollar bills) or insinuates that Jack Torrence in fact represents president Woodrow Wilson. You see, the two people standing behind him in the enigmatic final "1921" photograph vaguely resemble Wilson and his wife Edith and the woman in the photo even wears a brooch that could somehow look like a dove and real life Edith Wilson got a diamond Peace Dove brooch after WWI. Coincidence? I don't think so! I don't usually read director interviews or explanations because I believe I should be able to get everything I need to know from the movie itself. But after reading this analysis I needed some calming down and Kubricks way of thinking certainly did the trick and allowed me to disregard doves and pyramids. Anyway, back to my own review.

Realistic (but subversive in his own right) approach is what leads to the smallest of details bearing the most frightening qualities. I, for one, thought from the first time I saw The Shining many years ago that maybe the biggest problem is Nicholson looking like a crazy guy even before he officialy goes crazy. And just recently a creeping thought came through that that's actually the case. Jack didn't change at all after coming to the hotel, he was already bad on the inside and the hotel just showed him a very particular way to release his anger. And that's cruel. That's evil. I mean, listen to the things he says to the bartender. "Just a little problem with the old sperm bank upstairs." He's such a disgusting person that waving an axe seems like one of his softer sides coming out. And it affects me deeply because Shelley Duvall's Wendy is one of my favourite on-screen mothers and Danny Lloyd's Danny is one of my favourite on-screen sons. When they are running together through the maze, holding hands and smiling, I am shedding reall tears of joy at how beautiful relationship these two have. It would be absolutely inhumane if they didn't have at least each other, given the circumstances. And I especially love that the boy gets as much attention as his parents, is smart and quick-witted, and plays an active part in ongoing events. Meaning: He doesn't suffer from the usual maladies of young children in (american) movies and that's just lovely.

And I leave with a thinking excersise in mind: I wonder what it's like to see bits of past and future, not knowing which is which, what already happend and what is yet to come.

Ghostbusters (1984)

USA
directed by: Ivan Reitman
written by: Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis
starring: Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver
seen: 29th November, 2006 - comment: 2nd May, 2017

Comedy that did not make me laugh. Maybe it's because I first saw this film when I was older (meaning not a child) and I already had my own criteria for humor set up differently. Where Ghostbuster's fanbase seems to be affected by a huge cloud of collective nostalgia I'm confused as to what they love so much about it and why does it have its cult status. First and foremost, there's not that much happening in the film. Instead of being entertained I have time to wonder about rules of the fictional world it happens in. Those titular ghosts - are they ghosts of the deceased? Demons from hell? Gods from parallel realities? Weird green blobs with hot dog cravings? All of the above? What kind of mishmash is that? (And because I am about to talk a bit about the 2016 movie later, I will state right now that I don't understand that in the re-telling either.)

Another thing I don't get, and I wonder if that's because of the conventions of '80s film-making, because maybe it is, that the screenplay pays little to no attention to its characters and their relationships. We get a few one-liners like "I collect spores" and "This reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head", but we don't know anything else about them. They don't have any lifes of their own and their friendship is fictional as well, it's assumed they are friends but the movie doesn't really show it. We get pointless filler like montages of generic ghostbusting with glossy music instead of something relating to the plot or to the characters. For example, the Ernie Hudson character is written in without any explatanion and without any qualification. And he really doesn't need to be there because the poor fellow does nothing specific, unless you count playing second fiddle. Bill Murray's character is the one that gets most alone screen time but it's rather unfortunate because he's a total creep and potentially a sex offender so while I might be entertained by his stoic approach I am more disgusted by his pervy behavior and general doucheness. That leaves the demon with a good picks for gatekeepers and keymasters as the most sympathetic character because he just wants to enter a rotten world and destroy it and that's understandable. And the whole movie is just weirdly sexual, including the agitated singing of Ray Parker jr., and it gives off a "horny teen movie which accidentaly included only adults in its cast" vibe.

And when I say that nothing much is happening, I mean the unintetional parts. It's cool when heroes encouter an unexpeted opponent on their way to victory - stairs to the 22nd floor without a functioning elevator. But what about the previous sequence? Ghostbusters are arriving at the scene, the building has a portal to hell or somewhere worse opened up at the top and there are people and reporters all around. They are crazy about the four dudes' celebrity status and don't seem to be conderned with the impending apocalypse . Ghostbusters are gloating and enjoying the praise. With all of my professional respect the only comment that comes to my mind is WTF? And then the road cracks, the four of them disappear in the crack, a moment of suspense ensues, they climb out and stay for another round of applause and cheers before leaving to check out the problem upstairs... wtf? Did the production have a script editor that would prohibit the comedians from doing whatever they wanted like stroking their egos in place of an actual well worked-out entertainment product? I can honestly say that the most entertaining thing asociated with Ghosbuters is the Epic Rap Battles Of History episode which has Ghosbusters rapping against Mythbusters and it truly is epic.

And now comes the genuine blasphemous part. I went to rewatch the movie  recently so I could write a comment longer that the first sentence and I was aware of the fact that they made a female reboot last year. I said to myself: "Oh yeah, I don't like the original one, I won't probably like the reboot, I should watch both of them in one session  and then try to describe why I don't like them both and recommend to internet trolls to base their hate on the finished product and not a casting notion." And bippity boppity boo, against all odds, I enjoyed the new one quite a bit! Probably because it's not really that similar to the one from 1984. It has its own flaws (my biggest complaint would be about the heroines being so shouty all the time - it feels like Melissa McCarthy doesn't have a single line without a raised voice) but it also has a lot of original (and funny) ideas. The movie offers more thought-out and functional world, properly introduces all of its protagonists, shows off their powers in action, and knowingly incorporates their friendship into the story, oh, here come the happy tears. And what is the most important thing, none of the Ghostbusters gets their clitoris licked by a ghost, which is something that, sadly, cannot be said about the 1984 movie.