JFL

Malick lyrically trivialises American myths of freedom, rebellious outlaws and young love, and stands them up face to face with the baseness of violence and the immensity of the universe. His poem of impermanence is built on unspectacular contrasts – the emptiness of icons in comparison with eternity, the surfeit of meaningless words against the silent, dazzling glare of the world, cruelty without malice, the fading effort to make one’s mark on history against the apathetic indifference of time. The whole film is enveloped by the motif of innocence, or rather naïveté, not only in relation to love, the central characters and their view of the world, but also America itself, protected by unshakable legends that had long since fallen away by the time the film was made. Nevertheless, Malick strove to imbue the film with a dreamlike timelessness untethered from a particular era, even though it relates to time in many of its details and storylines. Similarly, in spite of the fact that it attempts to deromantisise and go beyond all of the legends of lovers on the run in a spiral of violence, Badlands itself paradoxically became a myth on which other such stories were founded and were also outright defined by the period – this is especially true of a pair of films written by Tarantino, namely Natural Born Killers and True Romance (the latter of which explicitly quotes Malick’s film in its musical motif). On the other hand, Malick – who dedicated his work to expressing identical motifs through different stories – knows very well that some stories cannot help but be repeated and thus prove their timeless relevance.

After nearly a quarter of a century since I last saw Jurassic Park on video, I am all the more amazed at how terribly well the film works even when nostalgia is taken out of the equation, especially on the big screen with 250 other people enthusiastically reacting to it. Spielberg crafted a sophisticated yet minimally ostentatious meta-film by approaching the narrative about an amusement park as the blockbuster movie equivalent of an amusement park – from the initial promise and fascination through disappointment and cringe to the genuine wonder and physically intense roller coaster. He takes us not only to the marked visitor paths and souvenir shop, but also to the technical facilities and inside the enclosures, where a pure yet dangerous adventure awaits. He takes a similarly self-reflective approach to special effects and the revolution then underway during the production of this film, when computer-generated images were displacing animatronic puppets and optical trickery (but without the necessity of throwing his ingenuity in people’s faces as something that they should notice and appreciate). Because of that, the first Jurassic Park also has a perfect dramaturgical structure that carefully shapes viewers’ expectations and lays the groundwork for individual money shots, whose brilliance consists primarily in their framing by means of the surrounding shots, thanks to which (not only in comparison with today’s usage) the film manages to get by with a surprisingly modest number of computer-generated/enhanced shots.

Hardcore Henry is a creative conglomeration of the tendencies of modern action films and various contemporary audio-visual platforms, from GoPro videos and ASMR channels to comic books and video games, and not just because of its superficial association with FPS games.

Bong’s brilliance consists in the fact that he is able to approach a complexly caustic and, at the same time, excruciatingly empathetic image of society as an extremely rewarding film that draws the audience in with a suspensefully initiated and superbly escalating premise. And above that, it elicits amazement through its precise directing and the sophisticated staging and camerawork of the individual sequences.

In the context of the action genre, John Wick: Chapter 4 is polished perfection. This carefully constructed gourmet treat manages to simultaneously evoke physically intense reactions and pure pleasure from the creativity and inventiveness of its choreography. The moment when Wick puts the nun-chucks around his neck brings you to the realisation that you have just witnessed perfection – it’s something like the first time you knowingly gaze at a van Gogh painting or let the music of Bach encompass you, or see The Rock raise an eyebrow. As foolish and faithless as I am, I momentarily doubted whether the filmmakers had anything else up their sleeve after that. But when the camera soars over the hero wielding a shotgun with incendiary rounds, my head exploded. This is where the wheat gets separated from the chaff. The fourth John Wick is a grandiose eruption of genius, talent and enlightenment. At the same time, its creators pay tribute to the entire previous tradition of cinematic martial arts and the greats of the genre – from Bruce Lee and Sammo Hung to Zatoichi. But by avoiding shallow imitation and fanboyish references, they set a benchmark based on their role models and predecessors that they want to surpass, though not arrogantly, but lovingly and with respect. Keanu Reeves remains a tremendous asset to the franchise, which is primarily thanks to his years of levelling up and his willingness to learn new things. Choreographers thus get an unprecedentedly malleable actor with whom they can vary the skills that he has already mastered while also setting new challenges for him. The same is true of the other renowned actors in the film. Other spectacular ensemble action movies of the past – e.g. The Expendables and The Fast and the Furious – got by with merely pitting stars against each other in the manner of wrestling exhibitions and letting them show off their iconic moves from other movies. In contrast to that, Stahelski’s team takes Hiroyuki Sanada, Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror and Shamier Anderson and transforms each of them into a delightfully distinctive character and gives them space to exploit their physical strengths, build on a classic tradition or icon and even go nuts with their acting. In addition to that, Chapter 4 makes absolutely magnificent use of the franchise’s own comic-bookishly overwrought world with its contrasting colour palette, weapons sommelier, style fetishes and surreally idealised clichés. This Downton Abbey with kung-fu and guns has roots embedded in the impassioned essences of genre flicks, ranging from the melancholic crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville through John Woo’s heroic bloodshed movies and the samurai dramas of Masaki Kobayashi to the postmodern cool of Cowboy Bebop. John Wick: Chapter 4 thus steers well clear of boastful, Tarantino-style eclectic exhibitionism. Like a true master of the martial arts, it humbly acknowledges its own masters, whose brilliance led it to establish a new pinnacle of the action genre.

This film about hidden feelings peculiarly chooses an aesthetic based on a precise yet tottering outward exterior. However, the seemingly mediocre and stiff shots are agitated to the point of resembling the work of Wong Kar-wai, offering us a rare and fragile glimpse into the characters’ inner selves as they let their minds dreamily drift to where they want to be despite their noisy surroundings. It’s too easy to dismiss Carol as just another standard romantic film about love against all odds. Todd Haynes and his collaborators created a flawless depiction of the lacerating tension that arises when the characters cannot express their feelings, mainly because of the period and its prejudices, but also simply because of their surroundings, the direction of their lives and their own caution and fears. Carol thus becomes a romantic drama built on reserved appearances and masks, which the film presents to viewers just as the characters present them to each other. Behind every seemingly indifferent gaze there is a silent longing and a troubling uncertainty, which is all the more powerful when its broken by fleeting glances and touches. Because of that, the dramaturgy plays an essential role in the narrative, as it emphasises the duration of those key moments when the couple can share a moment together in that hostile world.

This is how comic book adaptations should be done – going your own way to the sound of fanboys gnashing their teeth. With Constantine, the filmmakers understood that comic books – not just the mainstream ones but also the overground alternative ones –  are essentially a load of overwrought clichés, posturing and superficiality with a hint of something deeper. When this idea is appropriately grasped and executed, however, it can be tremendously entertaining, covering the full spectrum from camp cringe to unironic love. The casting of Keanu Reeves is a brilliant move, turning the existentially brooding hero into the greatest sufferer in blockbuster history instead of just another dark and gritty cliché. Whenever he lights a cigarette, utters a line loaded with fatalism or makes himself unavailable, you feel like hugging him. This is greatly supported by Rachel Weisz as a cool chick with a gun in a clearing surrounded by demons. Their chemistry together works magnificently, which delightfully enhances the plot to the point that you wish you could diabolically stop time and push them into a kiss. On top of that, the refined camerawork revels in those magnificent faces in unconventional widescreen compositions and the precise production design is part of fun world-building where something is ridiculously literal and something else is simply just happening. When Reeves first flicks open his Zippo, you get a silly grin on your face, which is surpassed only by the unadulterated pleasure provided by Tilda Swinton as the ethereally haughty archangel Gabriel and Peter Stormare in the role of Satan.

Contamination is a pretty horrible example of VHS dreck and overblown bubbles called video nasties. That famous list and effort undertaken by the delirious activist Mary Whitehouse can be seen as the most brilliant PR campaign in the history of cinema, because it still to this day brings absurd profits to distributors and producers of hopeless trash flicks. Contamination features about three truly impressive and spectacular splatter shots of exploding chests, but this paraphrase of third-rate 1950s B-movies about alien invasions is otherwise just an overly drawn-out, tiresome nothing. For that matter, it is more than obvious that the film was made as a typical VHS trash flick, where the only condition was to shoot a handful of attractive shots that could be slapped together into an enticing trailer and the rest of the film could be made up of any kind of filler. And that is exactly what happened in the case of Contamination, which is mostly composed only of uninteresting chatter and travelling somewhere. A female special-forces officer (appropriately dominant, but – in line with the requirements of the genre – confused and, of course, totally hysterical in key situations), a randomly recruited cop (a daddish hunk oscillating between the poles of boyfriend and comical character) and a former astronaut (a shadow of his former self, but of course still a total badass) set out on their own to find the origin of alien eggs on Earth. The essence of the film is boiled down into a would-be suspenseful sequence in which someone slips an egg into the officer’s bathroom, which is stretched out to a terrifying 12 minutes (!) that feels like half of the whole film’s runtime.

Strike Commando is the first full-fledged Mattei trash flick from the prolific – in terms of both quantity and camp –  collaboration of Fragasso-Drudi-Mattei-Gaudenzi, a quartet of trash fantasists and shameless plagiarists of Hollywood hits. The broad field of juvenile war fantasy, reeking of Rambo II, first spread out before video-rental store customers and the filmmakers managed managed to milk it for five more movies. The amount of naïveté, absolute frames and overwrought acting in Strike Commando is reminiscent of the unattainable pinnacle of delirious playing at soldiers, Deadly Prey, though in comparison with the Prior brothers, the Italian shysters had a significantly bigger budget. However, that budget was swallowed up by explosions of straw huts and archival footage of helicopters, so it fortunately couldn’t be put into the acting qualities or the sophistication of the screenplay, which is fascinating with its almost brilliant simplicity and straightforwardness.

Other than a few imaginative technical solutions for elements such as water, fire and smoke, one could almost say that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is simply an ordinary animated film in terms of craftsmanship and technique. However, the film’s brilliant atmosphere, which derives from the symbiosis of all of the formalistic components and mainly the director’s talent and feel for animation in the sense of bring something to life and inserting it into time, proves that Zeman was a true master of his medium.