Category: Film Review

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 2h 11m, rated 8.1 by 1,600 cinematizens.

DNA: Czech & Slovak.

Genre: Docudrama.

Verdict:  Remembered. 

Tagline: 20 August 1968.

Mirroring the macro in the micro, the film covers the last days of the Post War Communist regime, the short-lived Prague Spring, and the Soviet repression.  The microcosm centres on a technician employed by National Radio, who has tenuous custody of his younger brother after the accidental deaths of their parents.  His aim is to keep younger brother out of a state orphanage in the workers’ paradise, which institutions are more like labour camps than schools. 

Trying to protect his younger brother from his own foolishness, older brother gets enmeshed in spy-and-counter-spy. All the individuals are trying to survive in the whirlpool, or even to protect others, but, well, it just isn’t possible. (The only cardboard characters are the thugs, and, as always, there is never a shortage of such ‘willing executioners’ per Christopher Browning.)

To the regime, having a cookbook in French is suspicious, kind of like having a tattoo or writing a school newspaper op-ed.  One hopes hours were spent trying to decode the recipes for proof of treachery. (In East Germany the Stasi did just that.)

The film integrates archival footage very well at several points.  I caught glimpses of many places we visited in Prague a time ago. One of the sites was the Monument to the Victims of Communism, which is regularly defaced by those who lament the passing of that regime.  That vandalism seems to emphasis the point of the memorial.  

During the Cold War, Czechoslovakia had the reputation of being the most tolerant of the Warsaw Pact regimes.  Even so between 1948 and 1968 there were 18 re-parenting wellness camps for tens of thousands of political prisoners who did forced labour, some in uranium mines free from nanny OHSA regulations to be sure. None of the camps were in El Salvador. The following data cover the 20-year period 1948-1968 by this lenient regime against a population of 9-millions.  For political offences: 

205,486 arrested,

170,938 forced into exile,

4,500 deaths in prison,

327 shot while trying to escape, and 

248 executions for political crimes, including a defiant school teacher, a woman.  

See Jana Rehab, Czech Political Prisoners (2012) for many more gruesome details. 

It is worth remembering that this horror story followed on the heels of the Nazi occupation and dismemberment of the country with attendant genocide, slave labour, and forced relocations.  No doubt some thought these to be the good old days, too.

I viewed the film in part in juxtaposition against the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal.

***

I made the acquaintance of some of these 1968 displaced persons while I was in grad school.  What was curious was that the 1956 Hungarian refugees resident in the vicinity, were hostile to the 1968 Czechs for reasons only they knew.  But the hostility was evident even to this outsider. 

Now and again I try take advantage of the Dendy Cinema multiplex nearby until I review at the screenings.  However this one was part of a Czech & Slovak Film Festival and not the usual Hollywood sound and colour pablum, so off I went.  We are going to see another, lighter entry soon.  

By the way, it was a full house in the largest theatre so the event was a success for the organisers.  Well done.  

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2h and 9m, rated 7.0 by 20,000 cinemtaizens.  

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Verne.

Verdict: Fun.

Tagline:  What waits below?  

Pretty sure I saw this on the wide screen as a boy, and marvelled at it.  The character studies stand the test of time even if the special effects don’t. James Mason is, well, James Mason. He can’t act but he doesn’t have to.  Arlene Dahl can and does. Then there is Pat Boone in his underwear.  Something for everyone. Though I thought the villain wouldn’t scare fourth graders.  

Declaration: I have tried to read Jules Verne and found his prose impenetrable. So mannered, so stiff, so roundabout, so ponderous, so unyielding that I did not make it past page 10 in either 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or Five Weeks in a Balloon.  

There is a genre of JCE films. I count more than dozen on the IMDb using that exact title, and many others with variants.   

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1h and 30m, rated 4.1 by 2,000 extended family members.  

Genre: JCE

DNA: Verne. 

Verdict: Uncle! I gave up.

Tagline: Bore. 

A consistently tedious rendering of the Jules Verne story.  Made for television to eclipse a big budget version due out later that same year. In this mishmash, a corpulent child (actor) plays the romantic lead, disbelief was disbelieved right there. Later he is superseded by another as if the producers also disbelieved the early scenes.  

Declaration: I didn’t make it to the end.  

There is a cottage industry of JCE films.  One day I might try to watch a few of them for a comparative perspective.  Or I might hit my foot with a hammer instead.  Hard to decide which would be less painful.

Return to the Batcave; The Misadventures of Adam and Burt (2003).

IMDb meta data is 1h and 30m, rated 6.5 by 2,300 batfanatics. 

Genre: Docucomedy. 

DNA: Nostalgia.

Verdict: Batusi!  

Tagline: Kapow! 

Senior citizens Adam and Burt attend a charity fundraiser at a car museum, where the Batmobile is stolen right out from under their….selves. ‘Holy grand theft auto, Batfans!’ The elderly duo set off in pursuit of the krim(s) by foot, by car, by bus with the help of citizens they….reminisce about the good old days between popping ibuprofen. 

Check that utility belt! It is a good natured reprise which it is hard not to like though the New York Times reviewer at the time managed to not like it.  What a fuddy-duddy!

It is certainly more diverting than the ever so self-important retakes of the Caped One, Citizens.

Jupiter Ascending (2015). 

IMDb meta-data is 2h and 7m, rated 5.3 by 198,000 cinematizns. 

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Hollywood.

Verdict: Oh hum.

Tagline:  It cost so much to make, it must be good!  

An insipid blend of Dune and Star Wars. I tried to like it, really I did, but I failed.  I tried because a trusted source recommended it, then I realised this same source had recommended the shrill Valerian (2017) and the somnambulant The Tangle (2019). This makes three strikes; the trust badge for this source has been revoked.   

A similar but much cheaper, less pretentious, more amusing telling of a like story is Vagrant Queen (2020) rated 5.4, which probably cost less than the catering budget for Jupiter Ascending.

Out of Time (2021)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 32 m, rated 5.6 by 1,500 cinemtizens.

Genre: Sy Fy. 

DNA: Area 51.

Verdict: Paul was not alone.  [Either you get it or you don’t.]

Tagline: Cop and Aliens. 

Three body-hopping aliens are on a mission to confuse the viewer.  Pursed by a staunch agent from 1951 they collide in 2021 Los Angeles.  Agent teams up with Tiger, and off they go.

Yes, it is a mismatched buddy movie with a few bruises between them, too.  I liked the way Vernon came back into the story, and the final alien tot.  

It is well worn material, but played with conviction and unexpected twists and turns including jumping jacks with some clever asides.  Moreover, the acting all around was superb. It rewarded my patience with the mystifying opening.  

On the down side the direction was s-l-o-w, and some scenes were attenuated beyond their value. Get that editing done.  

Later I also watched a hour of Sender (2020), IMDb 1h and 50m, rated 3.9 by 97 cinematizens, which exhausted my comprehension and interest long before the hour was over. Though I had a perverse interest in watching one of the characters play Freeze.  I noticed several comments on IMDb and You Tube proclaiming Sender to be the best movie ever made, and thought….  You know what I thought, now don’t you.

The Aliens (2017)

IMDb meta-data is 1h and 45m, rated 6.5 by 93 cinematizens.

Genre: Drama.DNA: USA.

Verdict: A labour of one man’s love. 

Tagline: We are (not) alone.

Admission: I let it run with the sound so low I seldom heard it while I finished the weekend crossword puzzles.  My plan was to switch attention to the film if and when the aliens appeared.They did.

Back up. Dedicated UFOist waits in the south western desert every Tuesday afternoon and night for a return visit from the aliens who contacted his dad there forty years ago as he promised his terminally ill father he would do. He is well known to the Border Patrol officers who stop by for a drink of the cold water bottles he always has in good supply. Ditto the local sheriff who calls in once in a while to break the tedium’s of lonely patrols.He spends most of the rest of his time either sitting with his mute father in a hospice or at a pub drinking soda with two other equally inept UFOists.  No job seems to detain him. His ahead-flank-speed sister tries to set him up with women, but…the desert seems safer than a blind date.  Then one night as he keeps his lonely vigil he hears something, and…  Well, there are aliens but not the kind that causes A.I. to mark the film as science fiction, as has happened in some places it seems, judging by the comments on its IMDb page.  Ditto You Tube where I came across it. Thereafter it is a kind of love story with twists and turns that I shall not go into but it is a conflict between the humanitarian and the venal.  No doubt I missed many explanations in the suppressed dialogue, but in another way I did not miss them, since I have no doubt they were the usual clichés.  He finds out, slowly, very slowly, that he is not alone.

 ****

I kept watching it first to await the aliens and then when they appeared I continued to watch, so I guess I could say it is ‘watchable,’ but I would never let that neologism pass my lips.  The players absolutely reek of sincerity and I found that interesting given the veneer of so many actors whom you just know are holding up a mask.  Oh, I liked the way the ubiquitous water bottles pay off.  There are some repetitions that should have been cut to trim it to feature length of 90m.  But the one-man band could not do that. 

Existir (2021) To Exist

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1h and 22m, rated 5.0 by 152 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Argentina.

Verdict: Less can be enough.

Tagline: Only the Shadow knows.  

Seven diverse individuals from around the world are gathered, abducted, and….   Meanwhile in Buenos Aires, She and He, after some preliminaries, started following clues that appear on her telephone screen to find Third who disappeared a couple of years ago, driving off in a huff after a spat, never to reappear.  Third’s friends assume he has moved to another city to leave his disappointments behind and they get on with their lives, though what they do off camera remains unknown.

The clues lead them, after the necessary tropes, to a field (yes, of course there is a crop circle within), guarded by a geriatric and a stereotyped general with a Mad Scientist in tow. 

All expense was spared, and we soon realise the other couple we see through the looking glass living a perfectly normal life are the writer and his supportive wife.  Get it?

Meanwhile, in the story the hacker keeps sending clues to Her phone, and He and She keep on keeping on.  

***

The writer meets the written as the written meets the writer. Saw another version of this trope in Gosti iz galaksije (1982) Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy from Croatia last year.  But none equals Agnes Varda’s Les Creatures (1966).

Something comes from nothing, contrary to Lear, in this low budget production, making it a part of the story. Nicely done. Compare with John Sayles and Jean-Pierre Melville for cinematic alchemy to conjure something out of the air.

Black Box (2012) Boíte Noire

IMDb meta-data is 2h and 9m, rated 7.2 by 17,000 cinematizens.  

Genre: Mystery.

DNA: Gallic.

Verdict: Unusual.

Tagline:  ‘Ear that?’

Another French movie, another ear, this time on an acoustic analyst who works on the flight recorders from plane crashes, of which there seem to be many to keep him busy.  This hero is a super nerd, yet even so he has an attractive wife who seems to love him.  Strange.  Nerd boy is so introverted he folds up, the more so and often because of his acutely sensitive hearing that makes a reception excruciating, but it means he can hear a change of pitch in background engine noise on a flight recorder.  

I wrote an undergraduate thesis on regulatory capture, and that is what we have here.  The regulator works closely with the regulated, so closely that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.  His wife works for a manufacturer of airliners, and she is personally dynamic and socially adept as well as technically competent, unlike Nerd King who sits all day in a dark room listening to engine noises, she wheels and deals.  

The technical aspects are in the forefront, so unlike Hollywood, and these hold interest but as the aged and redoubtable André Dussollier (first credit 1970, and latest 2024) says, ‘with those toys you can make a recording say anything you want,’ and that seems to be what happened in the main event.  In reality André would have been pushed into retirement years ago in any public service. 

Of course, there is a deep and dark conspiracy that does not involve Boeing, but one thinks of 737MAX nonetheless, to approve a plane before it is foolproof.  And a fool proves it.  

The forensic detail certainly held my interest, though it was hard to take seriously the mismatched couple. Even harder to take was the disappearance of the chief acoustic technician, played superbly by Olivier Rabourdin, in the middle of the investigation and no one seems to notice or care, for some time.  

Good to know that greed, corruption, and stupidity are not limited to the Anglo-Saxon world, but sad to know that screen writers can only grasp bad will, and nothing more complicated. 

P.S. there are scores of films that use that title.  

Viking  (2022)  

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 44m, rated 6.8 by 892 cinematizens.

Gerne: SciFi, dramedy

DNA: Quebecois 

Verdict:  Low key, very.

Tagline: He’s Elizabeth.  

The milquetoast junior high school gym teacher gets an early morning phone call telling him, he’s a match. His answers to a stream of questions match those given by someone else.  Off he goes. It is so secret he cannot tell his wife, but she stands by her man.  

I cannot say much more without spoiling the plot and in this case the plot is all.  Suffice it to say that it is an absolutely deadpan comedy as role and player blur and combine.  

It’s Mars as you have never seen it before!