DaViD´82

It’s as if a war correspondent visited these regular Czechoslovak guys in Tobruk and reported a couple of really interesting fragments of their day-to-day “boredom in the desert" on the evening news, setting off again on his dusty way afterward. It certainly isn’t a war story with cliché upon cliché, where they read out love letters like at a poetry club meeting, where they also make July 4th style stirring speeches. In this movie, we get a lot of silence and gazing into the distance over the stony desert. But this logically results in the problem of fragmentation and total lack of story. On the other hand, it works excellently on a completely other level. On an intimate, internal level - call it what you want. But the main thing is that it works. And it could have ended up looking much cheaper, despite the passable visuals and fantastic sound. But that wouldn’t have changed anything on the quality of Tobruk. P.S.: It’s funny that one of the sponsors of this movie was the Czech forestry corporation, when this movie takes place in sand dune surroundings.

I was expecting something more like The Fireman’s Ball. But not a chance. The Ballroom takes place one evening at a ball for singles/couples who are old and some are even older. Accompanied by a samba (or is it bossa nova?) soundtrack. Only about one third of the (too) many stories and snippets from the dancers’ lives were actually of any interest to me. This is maybe due to the problems that arose having eleven screenwriters working on the final version of the movie. Although I can identify the strong sides of The Ballroom, it doesn’t mean that I rate them. This is a movie targeted at somebody completely different. A completely different generation. But even so, I wasn’t bored, although I can’t imagine that I would ever waste another evening watching this Brazilian version of Come Dancing.

It had been a good few months since I felt such a pleasant chill in a movie theater as I did watching this at the Imax, flying through over mountain and through valley in the majestic Alps, accompanied by music by Queen. In the shadow of this I found it easy not to be annoyed by things like the simplified story of the origin mountain ranges for kids etc. And anyway, that is negligible in comparison with the main “storyline" about a mountaineer who returns to Switzerland to honor the memory of his father. He intends to do that by negotiating the north face of the Eiger, where his father died tragically. This, combined with a lesson in geology for primary school kids doesn’t work for one second. Not even in the worst possible Hollywood disaster movie can you hear so many variations on the words “love, duty, honor". It’s amazing just how many of them you can stuff into forty-five minutes of footage. Which is nothing in comparison with the end when this loving son eventually reaches the top and reads a “love letter" from his little daughter and wife who are waiting obediently in a meadow at the foot of the mountain. This is just a tsunami of aged declarations and sentences like “I had to climb up this mountain in order to realize everything I have down below". My girlfriend had to revive me right there in the movie theater. Indescribable hell. So in spite of the fantastic mountainside camera shots and the outstanding Brian May, I suffered like a mule with a load weighing a ton on my back. If I hadn’t seen it in the “wrap-around" IMAX, I would have given it far fewer stars than I did in the end.

When Wolker published his poem “Pokora" (Humility), he had no idea that a mere thirty-six years later a spirited reply to how it feels to become smaller and smaller would come from across the ocean. Well that is really rather unpleasant, Jiří. Especially if you have any pets, a cellar with a tarantula and a big snake. Arnold’s picture may have aged in technical terms (but very little, in fact), but in terms of suspense and entertainment this movie is still at the height of its strength fifty years later... And if the opening thirty minutes had been a little better, I would certainly have awarded this five stars.

I am sincerely terrified about (read: really looking forward to) what Woo wants to demonstrate in the second half. This movie alone is already on the very brink of what the human eye is still capable of registering in terms of units, doves and slow-motion sequences. On the other hand, the slow-motion sequences are so frequent that I don’t doubt that if they were at regular speed, both parts of this story would fit into one movie alone. And, to my satisfaction, the spiteful wisdom of all of the positive characters considerably outweighs the malicious distain of the others. I would have been happier with an adaptation of a historical event rather than the renowned Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Also the absence of Chow Yun-Fat is disappointing, but Woo’s new favorites don’t stand still for a second. For a mere prolog where nothing really happens, this is very impressive (at least for the megalomaniacs among us). John Woo has slipped out of the grips of Hollywood in the most pleasant possible way. Via a high quality movie. And I accept this his apology note with great pleasure.

One hour would have been enough. Then nothing could have stopped me awarding a full five stars to this cynical Hitchcock movie. But after the initial barrage of entertaining, keen-edged dialogs (the scene on the veranda with Sam, Jennifer and her crazy son is so ingeniously written that it can’t be described in words), the humor drops off considerably. It is replaced by a bizarre, but unfortunately already hackneyed Hitch movie about a body that keeps on moving about. Over and over. A huge shame that the Master didn’t sow more seeds of black humor here. What resulted from that would certainly have certainly done no harm to his filmography. The Trouble with Harry is cynical... proof of that. P.S.: Herrmann’s “jocular" musical theme is reason alone to watch Harry.

“Waiting for Godot” in (anti)western guise, which despite my fondness for this genre never appealed to me. Gary Cooper may be excellent, but out of this parade of "weak" characters, I can only trust Chaney to act.

The magic about “Hellboy" for me was always in its short, punchy stories. In longer stories, his strength, atmosphere and links with myths and legends fades, like it or not. Then it has to be scotch-taped together with a quickly thought-up mythology that is as dull as it is shameful. Unfortunately, Del Toro took the this path the second time around too. You can see that he concentrated on every last detail of this, but in doing so he forgot about the main thing. Entertainment. Despite action and humor aplenty, it just doesn’t work, even with a ton of tongue in cheek humor. If it weren’t for the central trio and the Ireland trip at the end (you see legends work better in myth-rich parts of Europe than on neon-lit Manhattan), so despite its pleasant visual aspect and a few nice ideas here and there (singing over a beer), it falls apart like Sparta Football Club did at Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona. It’s good to watch, you certainly won’t get bored, but when the final credits came up I found it hard to remember what in fact happened.

You can certainly feel the proclaimed “autobiographicalness" of this. Catherine and Marcello’s acting is outstanding. And the filming isn’t bad at all, either. So what’s wrong here? Nothing at all, in theory, but it just didn’t grab me one little bit. It seemed emotionally barren to me. While I’m sure that the author’s intention was exactly the opposite.

Val Kilmer is more Jim Morrison than Morrison himself. Every single hair in his mane flutters just the way it should. An incredible performance, but not the only one. For instance, Kyle MacLachlan doesn’t lag behind at all in terms of acting. Stone achieved the impossible and manages to put even the sober and un-spaced-out viewer into a psychedelic trance. And he leaves them to drift in the ocean of genius that are Morrison’s texts. Simply one genius takes a closer look at another genius, resulting in a work of genius that came so many horse lengths before its time that even seventeen years later it isn’t duly appreciated. And maybe it never will be, because maybe there is nothing timeless in the movie and only a couple of isolated viewers see it there. Who knows?