Wolfwalkers (2020) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): An enchanting animation film packed with wolves

Posted on December 27, 2020 by kaist455

Animation feature film “Wolfwalkers” is a sheer pleasure for your eyes. As a cell animation film full of mood and details, the film is packed with numerous gorgeous moments to dazzle and impress you in addition to being quite engaging in terms of story and characters, and the overall result is one of the best animation films of this year in my inconsequential opinion.

The movie is directed by Ross Stewart and Tomm Moore, who previously delighted us with his two wonderful cell animation feature films “The Secret of Kells” (2009) and “Song of the Sea” (2014). Like these good animation films, “Wolfwalker” is inspired a lot by the cultural history and background of Ireland as shown from its distinctive cell animation style reminiscent of those ancient murals, and one of the main pleasures in the film comes from how it deftly mixes its cultural elements into its story and characters.

The story is mainly set in the town of Kilkenny, Ireland in 1650. The town has been occupied by Lord Protector of England (voiced by Simon McBurney) and his army for years, and he recently ordered local woodcutters to cut the trees of a big forest outside the town, but the forest is filled with a bunch of wolves, which often threaten those woodcutters who simply try to do their job as ordered by their heartless ruler.

For exterminating these wolves once for all, Lord Protector already hired a hunter named Bill Goodfellowe (voiced by Sean Bean), but Goodfellowe has not got much result yet despite his skill and experience, and he is often more concerned about his only daughter Robyn (voiced by Honor Kneafsey), a little plucky girl who is more interested in hunting than taking care of their current staying place. Along with her pet falcon Merlin, she is eager to go outside and help her father, but her father, who has genuinely cared about his daughter’s welfare especially since his wife’s recent death, adamantly insists that she should stay at their current home instead.

On one day, Robyn manages to sneak out of the town while her father is busy with his work in the forest as usual, but, of course, she soon finds herself in a situation way over her head, and that is how she comes to have the first encounter with a strange little girl who seems to be living in the forest in addition to being quite friendly with the wolves in the forest. Her name is Mebh (voiced by Eva Whittaker), and, when Robyn later goes into the forest again, it turns out that Mebh is a ‘wolfwalker’. She can freely communicate with those wolves in the forest, and, above all, her spirit is lifted from her body and then is transformed into a wolf whenever she sleeps.

Not so surprisingly, it does not take much time for Mebh and Robyn to befriend each other, and Mebh gladly introduces Robyn to her mother, who is also a wolfwalker just like her daughter. Well aware of the threat coming from Lord Protector and his people, Mebh’s mother has tried to find a safe place for her daughter and wolves, but she has been in deep sleep after her spirit left to somewhere as a wolf, and Mebh has been desperately waiting for her mother’s return.

As spending more time with Mebh, Robyn comes to care more about Mebh, and she is certainly willing to help Mebh as much as she can, but the circumstance seems to be pretty daunting to say the least. While her father does not listen to her much in addition to being not so pleased to learn of how often she has been outside the town, Lord Protector does not tolerate her feisty spirit at all, and he promptly sends her to where he thinks she should work.

The situation becomes more serious and complicated than before when Robyn gets herself involved in Mebh’s problem a lot more than expected, but the film never loses its sense of fun and excitement as steadily building up narrative momentum as required. While there are a series of gorgeous visual moments which will impress you a lot for various colorful details on the screen, the film also provides several good action sequences, and I also particularly like how a certain kind of sense is visually rendered for us during a number of key scenes in the film.

Although the story and characters of the film are mostly as broad and simple as its animation style, the screenplay by Will Collins, which is based on the story by Moore and Stewart, keeps engaging us as never overlooking what is being at stake for its main characters. While the relationship between our two young heroines is convincing in its dramatic development along the plot, there is also some poignancy in the relationship between Robyn and her father, and the story even shows some understanding even to Lord Protector, who has his own integrity although he is the sole evil person of the story.

The voice cast members of the film are excellent on the whole. While young performers Honor Kneafsey and Eva Whittaker click well with each other throughout the film, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney, and Maria Doyle Kennedy are well-cast in their respective roles, and McBurney’s maliciously unflappable voice performance reminds me again that animation films are usually as good as their villain characters.

In conclusion, “Wolfwalkers”, which was released on Apple TV+ a few weeks ago, is an enchanting work to be admired and appreciated for many good reasons, and its mesmerizing beauty and imagination still linger on my head even at this point. Like any other wonderful animation films out there, this is for not only young audiences but also adult audiences, and I strongly recommend you not to miss this wondrous piece of work.

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La Llorona (2019) ☆☆☆(3/4): A little spooky horror film from Guatemala

Posted on December 27, 2020 by kaist455

“La Llorona”, which was selected as the Guatemalan entry for Best International Feature Film Oscar in this year, is a little spooky horror film which reflects one dark historical past via its effective ghost story. Filled with unnerving ambiance from the beginning to the end, the movie initially serves us those usual nocturnal moments accompanied with mysterious sounds heard from here and there in the dark, but that turns out to be mere reflections of those truly horrific real tragedies which have unjustly been suppressed and forgotten for many years, and we are both chilled and saddened by what is inevitably revealed around the end of the story.

After the opening scene showing a certain type of ritual, the movie gradually lets us gather the imminent circumstance surrounding an aging retired military general and his family and associates. Around 30 years ago, the general was one of the leading figures of a dictatorship ruling over Guatemala at the time, but now he and his associates are accused of numerous atrocities committed under their order and supervision, and it seems all they can do is keeping their head straight up while denying everything at the trial.

The movie does not specify their crimes that much, but a Guatemalan friend of mine, who happened to watch the film along with me at last night, told me that its local audiences can instantly recognize the real-life figures and incidents from the story and characters. As briefly shown during the first act of Gregory Nava’s great immigrant drama film “El Norte” (1983), thousands of Guatemalan civilians of Mayan heritage were killed or brutalized by Guatemalan Army soldiers during the conflict between the Guatemalan government and left-wing guerillas in the 1980s, and a general mainly responsible for this genocide, who was once the President of Guatemala during that time, was formally indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity in 2012, though he died several years later without punished enough.

While many people angrily demand truth and justice out there, things seem to be all right in the big house where the general and his devoted wife reside. While the general looks surprisingly calm about whatever will happen to him at the upcoming trial, his wife is always ready to stand by him while often strongly insisting that her husband did not do anything wrong, and their doctor daughter does not ask much while staying in her parents’ house along with her young daughter for a while.

However, we gradually come to sense a sort of implosion in the general’s household. At one night, the general wakes up as hearing strange sounds from somewhere inside his house, and that leads to an alarming incident. Although his wife thinks that her husband may become more senile than before, but the employees of the house, most of whom are incidentally people of Mayan heritage, have a different idea. They heard the sound of a weeping woman just like the general (“La Llorona” means “the Weeping Woman” in Spanish, by the way), and they strongly believe that the house has been haunted by some supernatural entity of pain and grudge.

As a consequence, all of the employees in the house except a faithful housekeeper and the general’s bodyguard quit their job to the annoyance of the general’s family, and then there comes a young woman of Mayan heritage for getting hired as a new maid. It is apparent to us right from her first scene that there is something suspicious about this young lady, but she is hired anyway because, well, the general’s housekeeper cannot take care of the house alone.

Meanwhile, the situation on the outside gets worse for the general and his family. He attends the trial as demanded, and his wife and daughter listen to the testimony of an old female survivor along with many other people. During this somber but powerful key scene, the camera just closely watches this old female survivor for a while, but her phlegmatic testimony gradually conveys to us to the horror of what happened to her and many other innocent people because of the general and his soldiers, and it is clear that her words strongly affect his daughter, who turns out to be more conflicted than her detached attitude suggests on the surface.

When the general manages to avoid justice later, lots of people hold angry demonstrations right in front of his house, and this further amplifies the accumulating tension around and inside the house. As the general comes to show more erratic behaviors, his wife begins to suffer a recurring nightmare, and his granddaughter also comes to show several disturbing behaviors as getting quite friendly with the new maid. The new maid seems to be docile and submissive as usual, but she also somehow comes to look eerier than before as the general and his family continue to suffer, and we come to wonder about her true intention.

Instead of resorting to cheap moments of shock and awe, the movie dexterously dials up the level of tension and spookiness along the plot. When everything in the story eventually culminates to an expected climatic scene, the movie fully reveals the trauma and sorrow hovering over the story, and his main cast members did a convincing job of delivering a cathartic moment of poetic justice, which resonates further with the very last scene of the film.

“La Llorona” is the third feature film of director/writer/co-producer Jayro Bustamante, who previously directed “Ixcanul” (2015) and “Tremors” (2019). Although I have not watched his two previous feature films, “La Llorona” shows us that he is a good filmmaker who knows how to handle mood, story, and character, and I guess we can have some expectation on whatever will come next from him during next several years.

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Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): She is back – with less wonder and excitement

Posted on December 26, 2020 by kaist455

To be frank with you, it feels like a long time ago when I and many other audiences were looking forward to watching “Wonder Woman 1984” early in this year. The movie was supposed to be released around the world in June 2020, but, alas, just like many other big Hollywood blockbuster films of this year, it was struck by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and then got its release date delayed again and again, and it was only released in theaters a few days ago here in South Korea while it came to be mainly available on HBO Max in US.

Anyway, I must tell you that the movie itself does not live up to our accumulated anticipation, but I must also admit that I had a fairly entertaining time with it. Yes, it has less wonder and excitement compared to its predecessor, and its story often stumbles due to several reasons including its weak and sprawling narrative, but, at least, it is still equipped with what makes the predecessor so special.

As reflected by the very title of the movie, the story is set in 1984, and its first act quickly establishes how Diana Prince / Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) has lived in Washington D.C. under the disguise of a respectable senior anthropologist working at the Smithsonian Institute. Although she happens to reside in a certain famous building associated with that infamous political scandal in the 1970s, Diana continues to pursue truth and justice as before, but she often feels alone and lonely while remembering her true love Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), who, as many of you remember, bravely sacrificed himself during the climactic part of “Wonder Woman” (2017). She certainly knows too well that he would have gone away from her in the end just like many other mortals in her long past, but she cannot help but yearn for being with him again because, well, she does have a heart despite being an immortal demigoddess.

And then there comes an unexpected thing into her life. Shortly after she does another public service as stopping a clumsy jewelry shop robbery, her new workplace colleague Dr. Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) is tasked with evaluating a bunch of seemingly valuable old artifacts discovered inside the jewelry shop, and one of them happens to draw Diana’s attention. According to the Latin inscription written on this artifact, it will grant one big wish to anyone holding it for the first time, and both Diana and Barbara do not take the words that seriously, but, what do you know, Diana later discovers how powerful it really is via Steve’s unlikely return to her.

To Steve’s viewpoint, everything in 1984 looks pretty strange and awesome to say the least, and the movie accordingly goes for a little more humor as Diana gladly shows Steve how much things have changed during last seven decades. Although he is actually occupying someone else’s body as a spirit coming back from the netherworld, he still looks same as before to Diana, and she surely feels happier than before as strolling here and there around Washington D.C. along with her dear lover.

However, it soon turns out that there is a catch in that artifact. As delving more into its history, Diana and Steve come to learn that it is quite more dangerous than expected due to its enormous magical power, but it has already been snatched by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a power-mad huckster who has disguised himself as a successful oil business tycoon and TV celebrity. He has been planning to use it for being on the top of the world forever, and, unfortunately, Barbara happens to get involved with his evil plan after experiencing a magical transformation via that artifact.

Although the screenplay by director/co-producer Patty Jenkins and her co-writers Geoff Johns and David Callaham sometimes loses some of its narrative momentum as trying to juggle too many elements together, the movie subsequently recovers when its heroine is on her full-action mode later in the story. Jenkin delivers several good action sequences as required, and Gal Gadot diligently delivers a number of electrifying moments of physical action with her graceful physical presence while never overlooking her character’s vulnerable sides.

The supporting performers surrounding Gadot fill their respective spots as required, and their results are rather mixed on the whole despite their good efforts. It is really nice to see Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen reprising their roles in “Wonder Woman” during the prologue scene set in Themyscira during Diana’s childhood period, and young performer Lilly Aspell is also solid as before as young Diana. While Chris Pine dutifully holds the ground for Gadot, Pedro Pascal chews his scenes as demanded as a villain who cannot help but driven by his inferiority complex to the end, and Kristen Wiig has some juicy fun with her character’s transformation along the plot, though her climactic showdown with Gadot unfortunately takes us back to that horrible movie version of a certain musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber in last year.

In conclusion, “Wonder Woman 1984” is one or two steps down from its predecessor, but it has enough entertaining elements to engage me during its 151-minue running time. I doubt whether it will really galvanize the gloomy current status of theater business around the world, but I am still eager to see whatever will come next after this, and I sincerely hope that I and many other audiences will be able to watch that in a far safer theater environment.

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Spaceship Earth (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): Behind Biosphere 2

Posted on December 26, 2020 by kaist455

Matt Wolf’s documentary film “Spaceship Earth” presents a fascinating story behind Biosphere 2, an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. The documentary is often amusing during its first half as delving into an interesting tale surrounding the origin and development of Biosphere 2, and then it becomes alternatively fascinating and disturbing during its second half, which focuses on what happened once that famous ecological experiment was begun in Biosphere 2.

In the beginning, we get to know how everything was started from a guy named John Allen, who established a counterculture group along with several other people including Kathelin Gray and Marie Harding in San Francisco during the late 1960s. In their own mix of science, art, and a bit of spirituality, these people eagerly threw themselves into many different activities including performance art and ecological research, and they eventually moved together to a ranch in New Mexico once they felt that San Francisco was too urbane for them.

Under Allen’s strong leadership, they continued to move from one spot to another after the considerable success of their ranch business. At one point, they attempted to build a big ship together, and, though they did not know that much about how to build a ship, they studied and worked together a lot before embarking on this project of theirs, and they certainly rejoiced when their ship turned out to be pretty successful.

While they did not exactly believe in capitalism, Allen and his group members were quite conscious of how to run their businesses well enough to generate more profit for them and then draw more investors out there. Fortunately, Allen happened to have a wealthy investor who is a member of one of the richest families in US, and, thanks to the full support of that investor, he and his group members could freely reach for whatever they were motivated to do at many different places ranging from London to Kathmandu.

As several interviewees admit in the documentary, Allen’s group felt a bit like a commune or a cult at times, though, as far as shown from the documentary, he did not abuse or exploit anyone in his group. While he certainly had some human flaws, he always exuded positive influence upon others around him, and the mood among them was not that far from that of many start-up companies in Silicon Valley. After all, you need some collective belief and motivation if you and others around you try to create something good and new together, and Allen was such a person capable of providing both of them.

As they kept advancing in the late 1980s, Allen finally decided to go for what he and others had aspired to achieve for many years. With the financial support from that wealthy main backer of his, he embarked on building an ecological science facility which could be self-sustaining for years within its closed system, and his ambitious project soon drew the attention of the media and the public.

Because this would provide a golden opportunity for ecological research, Allen and his colleagues and researchers did their best to create artificial ecological environments inside Biosphere 2. A series of archival footage clips show us how many different animal and plant species were brought into several individual sections of Biosphere 2 for creating a number of various ecological environments inside the facility, and we later hear about how they had to select those animals and plants carefully for approximating to the real ecological environments of the Earth, which was incidentally regarded as Biosphere 1.

In case of selecting eight persons to live and study inside for Biosphere 2, Allen chose them from a bunch of many different volunteers, and the selected people seemed to be ideal for his project. As smart and creative folks not afraid of challenges, they were all ready to let themselves cut off from the outside world for next 2 years, and they were also quite enthusiastic about whatever they would discover and learn during that challenging period.

When these eight people eventually entered Biosphere 2 and then began the first month of their project, everything seemed to be going well at first as they eagerly worked and collaborated with each other, but, not so surprisingly, there subsequently came small and big problems popping here and there. For example, though Biosphere 2 was supposed to be completely closed off from the outside, they often had no choice but to receive some support and supply from the outside, and this certainly made bad impressions on the public and the media.

Allen and his colleagues and experts tried to get things under control as much as they could, but things often got worse. When the carbon dioxide level of Biosphere 2 was gradually increased without any mitigation at one point, the people inside Biosphere 2 became far less active and productive than before due to this atmosphere problem, and this will surely remind you of the importance of the air we breathe at every second on the Earth.

Anyway, the project inside Biosphere 2 was not a total failure, and its participants came to learn a lot about not only ecological environment but also themselves, but the end of their two-year journey was followed by a very bitter moment for Allen and everyone working with him. Once his main financial backer let a certain deplorable figure enter the picture, everything was quickly collapsed, and Biosphere 2 was eventually sold to the University of Arizona in 2011.

In conclusion, “Spaceship Earth” is worthwhile to watch especially if you have ever heard about its main subject, and its cautionary tale will make you reflect more on what has been happening on our planet because of our irresponsible actions during several decades. So far, we still have only one self-sustaining biosphere which has worked well for several billion years, but we are still ruining it more in the name of more profit even at this point, aren’t we?

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A Hidden Life (2019) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): A meditative resistance

Posted on December 26, 2020 by kaist455

Terrence Malick’s latest film “A Hidden Life” is a meditative drama film which calmly and austerely explores its religious/spiritual themes via the real life of one ordinary man who chose to stick to his belief despite being aware of the devastating outcome of his choice. Although it may initially feel quite daunting to you due to its slow narrative pacing and long running time (174 minutes), it will soon engage and interest you via its dazzling visual poem of life, faith, and humanity, and it surely shows us Malick at his finest since “The Tree of Life” (2011).

That real-life figure in question is Franz Jägerstätter, a plain Austrian farmer who is played by German actor August Diehl in the film. As told to us at the beginning of the movie, many Austrian men were drafted to the Nazi German army during the World War II, and their first requirement was to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hilter and the Third Reich, but Jägerstätter adamantly refused to do that. He was eventually put on a military trial and then sentenced to death in 1943, and he was executed several months later.

Full of calm pastoral mood all over the screen, the early part of the film phlegmatically depicts the daily life of Jägerstätter and his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner) in their mountain village St. Radegund around the late 1930s. Although it seems that the war has already begun, things are still quiet and peaceful in the village while they and other village residents work and live as usual, and we also get a series of glimpses into their happy married life with their young daughters. Although it is implied that there was a time when he was young and wild, Jägerstätter has been a benign dude with deep religious devotion probably because of his wife’s warm and gentle influence on him, and we sometimes see him doing some maintenance jobs on a local Catholic church for free.

When he and many other able-bodied men in the village are later demanded to participate in the basic military training under the Nazi German army, Jägerstätter is not so bothered by that. Although he has not been comfortable with what has been going on in his country and Germany, it looks like the war will be soon over, and he has no problem at all with going through the basic military training while having some good time with his fellow trainees including the one played by Franz Rogowski, who, as many of you know, would be more well-known to us not long after the shooting of the film in 2016 (The post-production of the film took no less than three years due to Malick’s extensive editing process with his editors Rehman Nizar, Ali Joe Gleason, and Sebastian Jones, by the way).

Anyway, once France is fallen shortly after the German invasion in 1940, Jägerstätter and other trainees are sent back to their hometown, and his wife and children are certainly glad to see him returning without any problem, but then the situation is subsequently changed again as the war is continued during next three years. As having more doubts on whether his country is on the right side of the war, Jägerstätter becomes more conflicted than before, and he is certainly well aware of that he has to make a certain big choice if he is finally drafted again to the Nazi German army.

He naturally attempts to look for any solution for his ongoing matter of faith and life, but, of course, nobody around him can give that to him. There are a few folks who sympathize with him as sharing their growing concerns on the outside world, but most of village people including the mayor do not want any problem with authorities out there, and it does not take much for Jägerstätter to be regarded by others as an outcast or a traitor. A local priest seems to understand and empathize with Jägerstätter’s dilemma, but he indirectly warns to Jägerstätter on getting into a serious trouble for that. Not long after that, Jägerstätter is allowed to meet a bishop by played by late Michael Nyqvist for getting any counsel, but the bishop does not say anything helpful to Jägerstätter mainly because of the unstable current status of his church under the Nazi Germany regime.

As Jägerstätter keeps musing on what he should do, life still goes on around him as before, and Malick and his cinematographer Jörg Widmer often give us stunning visual moments to behold. As freely roving from one moment to another as if it were reflecting the stream of consciousness inside its hero’s mind as wells as that of some others including his wife, Widmer’s camera vividly captures not only small intimate personal moments but also awe-inspiring sights of nature on the screen, and the resulting mix of these sublime moments are further elevated by James Newton Howard’s gorgeous score and a number of notable pieces of classic music in the soundtrack including Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St Matthew Passion, BWV 244, Kommt, ihr Töchter”.

During the second half of the movie, the mood becomes gloomier once Jägerstätter lets himself get arrested and then sent to a prison in Germany, but Malick firmly maintains the meditative tone of his movie as before – even when his hero inevitably arrives at the ultimate test of his belief. While Diehl humbly holds the center as usual, Valerie Pachner ably carries the other part of the story as a wife who also comes to face her own difficulties on the outside, and Jürgen Prochnow, Matthias Schoenaerts, and late Bruno Ganz are also solid in their small supporting roles.

On the whole, “A Hidden Life”, whose very title is incidentally derived from George Eliot’s novel “Middlemarch” as shown from the quote appearing at the end of the film, is an unforgettable experience in many aspects, and it is a shame that I could not watch this superlative work on the big screen for appreciating more of its ideas and visuals. In short, Malick is back in his element after the disappointment of “Knight of Cups” (2015) and “Song to Song” (2017), and I hope he will continue to advance more at least during next several years.

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Undine (2020) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): An uneven misfire by Christian Petzold

Posted on December 25, 2020 by kaist455

Christian Petzold’s “Undine” alternatively frustrated and fascinated me when I watched it at a local theater during this afternoon. While I enjoyed its odd mix of romance and fantasy to some degree, I was also distracted by how its rather weak narrative often falters, and I was eventually left with lingering dissatisfaction even though I appreciated a number of good elements in the film including mood and performance.

At the beginning, the movie seems to be simply about the end of the relationship between a woman named Undine (Paula Beer) and her boyfriend Johannes (Jacob Matshcenz). Although he is quite frank about ending their relationship right from the beginning of their conversation at a cafe which is near to her workplace, Undine cannot accept this change, and she desperately pleads to him to wait for her at the cafe for a while as she has a job to do right now.

Undine’s workplace is a city history museum located in the middle of Berlin, and the movie calmly observes how she does her job in front of various visitors. As showing one thing after another, she gives them a succinct lecture on the history of Berlin, and the camera looks into the models and maps in the big hall of the museum from time to time. While this scene gives us some character background for Undine, we also get to know a bit about how Berlin was founded and then developed during several centuries, and that often resonates with the occasional brief shots showing the urban landscapes of the city.

Anyway, Undine is devastated when she returns to the cafe and then finds that Johannes is already gone, but then an unexpected incident happens to her. A man enters the cafe by coincidence, and, what do you know, they instantly feel something quite strong between them as virtually swept by what timely occurs around them. Although she does not know anything about him at all, Undine finds herself becoming quite attracted to him, and he also quickly falls in love with her as tenderly taking care of her accidental injuries.

And then we get to know about this guy and his job. His name is Christoph (Franz Rogowski), and he has worked as a professional diver. His latest job is fixing some underwater equipments in some rural river, and we are subsequently served with an uncanny moment when he happens to encounter something unbelievable in the middle of his underwater operation. Although this scene somehow took me back to those cheesy underwater horror films such as “Leviathan” (1989), Petzold and his cinematographer Hans Fromm maintain well the sense of awe and mystery on the screen, and the same thing can be said about the other key underwater scene in the film where Christoph takes Undine into the river for showing something special for her.

As Undine and Christoph get closer to each other, it seems she can lean on him more than before, but then Undine happens to come across Johannes while she happens to be with Christoph, and she briefly becomes unsure about whether she is totally finished with Johannes. To make matters worse, Johannes later approaches to Undine as showing his regret on walking away from her, and then it looks like Christoph somehow senses what is going on inside her heart and mind.

Now you may have some idea on where its story and characters are heading, but Petzold’s screenplay takes several unexpected plot turns as going further into the realm of fantasy. Although these plot turns do not entirely work, they provide to Paul Beer a number of nice opportunities to demonstrate her considerable acting talent, and Beer, who won the Silver Bear award when the movie was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival early in this year, is engaging while quietly but vividly conveying to us her character’s increasingly desperate state of mind.

However, the movie remains detached and distant without much emotional involvement, and that aspect is further exacerbated when it unfortunately puts more distance between us and its drama during its last act. In addition, several other main characters in the film besides Undine and Christoph are not particularly developed well, and that is one of the main reasons why the finale does not work as well as intended.

At least, Beer’s performance carries the film as much as demanded, and she and Franz Rogowski, who incidentally worked along with her in Petzold’s previous film “Transit” (2018), are effortless in those intimate scenes between their characters. Rogowski, who came to draw my attention for the first time via his good performance in “In the Aisles” (2018), shows us here again that he is indeed another interesting new talent to watch, and his sensitive acting complements well Beer’s showier performance throughout the film.

Overall, “Undine” is relatively less interesting and satisfying compared to Petzold’s previous works including “Phoenix” (2014), which I chose as one of the best films of the 2010s for its many powerful moments still lingering on my mind even at present. Due to my current doubts on whether it works well enough for recommendation, I give it 2.5 stars, but, considering that it took some time for me to appreciate and admire “Transit” and “Barbara” (2012), “Undine” may look better to me later, and I am willing to give it a second chance someday.

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Summer of 85 (2020) ☆☆(2/4): That tedious summer….

Posted on December 25, 2020 by kaist455

François Ozon’s latest film “Summer of 85” is utterly disappointing to say the least. As a coming-of-age queer drama, it is so bland and lackadaisical that, if you have admired and enjoyed some of Ozon’s works like I have, you may actually want to confirm to yourself that it is really directed from Ozon, who has been mainly known for a number of stylish works ranging from “8 Femmes” (2002) to “Frantz” (2016).

Set in one French beach town during the summer of, yes, 1985, the story is mainly told through via the viewpoint of Alexis (Félix Lefebvre), an adolescent lad who has slowly been awakening to his homosexuality at the beginning of the story. During the opening scene, he suggests to one of his friends that they should ride his small boat together, but his friend says no to Alexis’ suggestion because of some girl, and you can sense Alexis’ disappointment even though he does not say anything.

Anyway, Alexis subsequently rides his small boat alone by himself, but then he gets his boat capsized while a storm is approaching to him and his capsized boat from the horizon. Fortunately, there comes another boat at the right time, and he is soon rescued by David (Benjamin Voisin), a teenager boy who is around his age and is also as good-looking as Alexis. Once their emergency is over, Alexia and David come to feel something clicking between them, and David willingly takes Alexis to his house just because Alexis seems to need to be cleaned and then dried.

We see how these two lads get closer to each other. When Alexis is introduced to David’s mother, David’s mother is so enthusiastic about her son having a new friend around him that she is willing to help Alexis taking off his clothes before his shower, and we get a weird moment as she casually handles his rather embarrassing status right in front of her eyes. In addition, she has no problem at all with having Alexis getting employed at her local shop as offered by David, and Alexis gladly takes the offer because, after all, his parents have expected him to earn some money via any part-time job since his summer vacation began.

While happily working together at the shop during daytime, David and Alexis also have lots of fun time together during nighttime. At one night, after watching a movie together at a local theater, they come across a drunken lad who almost gets himself killed because of that, and that amusing encounter leads to an odd moment which reveals David’s rather morbid fascination with death.

In the end, Alexis and David come to move beyond mere friendship, but Ozon’s screenplay, which is based on Aidan Chambers’ novel “Dance on My Grave”, holds considerable distance from whatever is being consummated between its two main characters, and we come to observe their romance without much care or attention even though the screenplay attempts to generate a sense of mystery via going back and forth between two different time points. As shown from the opening scene, Alexis gets himself into some serious trouble not long after something happened to David, and we often see him trying to process his complicated feelings on David via writing about what eventually happened between him and David.

Sadly, the part depicting the unexpected conflict between Alexis and David is quite contrived to say the least. There is a British girl whom Alexis encountered early in the story, and it is apparent to us that she will inadvertently cause a trouble between Alexia and David when she enters the picture again later in the story. Without knowing anything about Alexia and David’s relationship, the girl allows David to flirt with her, and that certainly hurts Alexis’ feeling a lot.

Around the narrative point where we finally get the answer to the mystery at the center of the story, the movie goes for a series of melodramatic moments, but most of them feel bland and unimpressive in their execution. In case of a scene where Alexis comes to disguise himself as a young girl for a certain morbid purpose, it is so silly and outrageous that we cannot possibly empathize with whatever he feels during this heavy-handed scene, and the same thing can be said about what is supposed to be the emotional climax of the film. Instead of being liberating or cathartic, this scene looks merely clumsy without any substantial emotional effect, and the following epilogue scene is hollow and superficial to say the least.

The main cast members of the movie try as much as they can, though most of them are not successful in their attempt to overcome the weak characterization of Ozon’s screenplay. While Félix Lefebvre and Benjamin Voisin are regrettably deficient in generating any sense of passion and desire, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Philippine Velge are hopelessly stuck in their one-note supporting roles, and Melvil Poupaud, who previously collaborated with Ozon in “By the Grace of God” (2019), is criminally under-utilized as Alexis’s compassionate schoolteacher.

In conclusion, “Summer of 85” is quite underwhelming compared to Ozon’s recent works such as “In the House” (2012) and “By the Grace of God”, which was relatively more restrained but still impressive for its humbly powerful drama about the survivors of sexual abuses in the Catholic Church in France. I must tell you that my condition was not that ideal when I watched the film during this afternoon, but I do remember well how often I was bored and disinterested during my viewing, and I do not think I will soon revisit it for any reevaluation.

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More Than Family (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): Her matter of pregnancy and paternity

Posted on December 25, 2020 by kaist455

South Korean comedy film “More Than Family” surprised me more than expected. At first, it seems to be merely depending on one absurd comic story premise, but then it comes to show more depth in terms of story and characters, and then it surprises us again as handling its story and characters with considerable common sense and thoughtfulness without never losing its comic momentum at all.

Kristal, a popular South Korean entertainer whose real name is Jung Soo-jeong, plays To-il, a young female college student who recently decides to go along with a big change in her life. During last several months, she has been romantically involved with a high school student under her private tutelage, and that leads to her unexpected pregnancy (Don’t worry – he has already entered his adulthood), but she is not bothered by this happening much. Having been pregnant for more than 5 months, she is determined to give birth to her baby, and she has already planned everything including her future career plan as well as how to marry and live with her boyfriend.

Of course, her parents are not so amused when To-il and her boyfriend announce the news of her pregnancy to them. While To-il’s stepfather tries to be calm and reasonable in accepting this unexpected news, To-il’s mother comes to have a big argument with To-il on whether To-il’s plan for the next 5 years is sensible or not, and that makes an amusing contrast with her boyfriend’s rather eccentric parents, who actually accept her with genuine enthusiasm when To-il and their son break the news to them later.

Meanwhile, as wondering more about whether everything will turn out to be all right for her and her boyfriend in the end, To-il comes to feel a sudden urge to track down her biological father, who has never contacted with her or her mother for years since she and her mother left him shortly after his divorce. Assuming that he is still living and working as a teacher in her hometown, To-il checks the schools in her hometown thoroughly, and she eventually narrows down to three candidates whose names are same as her biological father’s.

Now this is surely a familiar setup which may take you back to “Mamma Mia!” (2008), but the screenplay by director/writer Choi Ha-na briskly moves from one narrative point to another instead of merely dwelling on that. After coming straight down to her hometown for finding her biological father, To-il visits the house of her maternal grandparents, and we get a little amusing moment as her maternal grandparents respond to her unexpected visit and pregnancy in each own way. As dropping by a local restaurant day by day, To-il comes to befriend a little girl who is the daughter of the owner of the restaurant, and this little girl naturally takes To-il back to those old childhood memories in her past.

It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that To-il eventually gets her wish, but then the movie continues to roll its story and characters beyond that crucial narrative point. I will not go into details here for not ruining your entertainment, but I can tell you instead that I was impressed by how the movie deftly dials up and down the level of hilarity as To-il and several other main characters of the film bounce together here and there. In case of one extended comic sequence, the movie simply observes the characters’ interactions without any interruption, but it gradually accumulates more comedy via the dynamic interactions among them until it reaches to the high point, and then we are served with a small nice visual punchline to be savored.

Above all, the movie works as a fabulous showcase for the acting talent of its lead actress, and Kristal is simply terrific as ably carrying the film with her energetic comic performance. While often impulsive and tempestuous in her behaviors, To-il is still a smart and plucky girl who is really serious about her pregnancy and other life matters of hers, and Kristal did a commendable job of bringing considerable humanity to her character while never overlooking her character’s brash and edgy aspects. As a result, To-il comes to us as someone who is as lovable and interesting as the young heroine of Jason Reitman’s “Juno” (2007), and we naturally come to root for her a lot as she eventually arrives at her sensible conclusion followed by the feel-good ending of the movie.

Furthermore, Choi assembles a number of colorful supporting performers around her lead actress. As To-il’s understandably concerned parents, Jang Hye-jin and Choi Deok-mon mostly play their characters straight as required, and they are complemented well by Kang Mal-geum and Nam Moon-chul, who surely have some silly fun as the eccentric parents of To-il’s boyfriend. While Lee Hae-young is solid as To-il’s biological father, Shin Jae-whi is hilariously naïve and slow-witted as To-il’s boyfriend, and Jang Haet-sal, Lee Jin-joo, Kim Mi-hyang, and Kim Sam-il are also well-cast in their small supporting roles.

Packed with uproarious moments equipped with witty and snappy dialogues as well as precise good timing, “More than Family”, which is the first feature film directed by Choi, is funny and entertaining on the whole, and it is certainly smarter and fresher than many of recent South Korean comedy films. Like “Lucky Chan-sil” (2019) and “Samjin Company English Class” (2020), the movie is one of the most pleasant surprises from South Korean cinema during this year, so I recommend you to give it a chance someday.

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The Painted Bird (2019) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): A gruelingly hollow piece of work

Posted on December 25, 2020 by kaist455

“The Painted Bird”, which was selected as the Czech entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar in last year (It was included in the December shortlist although it was not nominated in the end, by the way), is a grueling piece of work which made me cringe more than once during my viewing at last night. Relentlessly grim and brutal during most of its 169-minute running time, the movie tries to be something as harrowing as, say, Elem Klimov’s great war film “Come and See” (1985), but the overall result is more or less than a stylistic exercise on cruelty and misery, and you may find yourself wondering whether you should really endure all those numerous horrific scenes for a small moment of poignancy at the end of the film.

The movie, which is based on the controversial novel of the same name written by Jerzy Kosiński, is set in a deliberately unspecified region somewhere in the Eastern Europe around the time of the World War II, though the story of the novel is set in Poland. According to the IMDB Trivia section, director/producer Václav Marhoul, who also adapted Kosiński’s novel for his movie, did not want the story to be associated with any specific Easter European country, so he had his performers in the film speak in a fictional language which is a mix of several different Eastern European languages.

Anyway, it is clear to us from the beginning that the movie does not intend to be that realistic at all. After the opening scene featuring a very cruel act of animal killing, we meet a young boy who will function as the main center of the story, and the movie quickly establishes his rather fragile situation. He has been separated from his Jewish family for a while due to the reason most of us know well, and he has been taken care of some old lady in her house located in the middle of some remote spot, but, alas, he soon finds himself left alone due a couple of very unfortunate incidents.

The story of the movie consists of a number of chapters, and their respective titles come from the names of several different people with whom the boy happens to be associated during his following journey of hardship and mistreatment. In a local village which often looks medieval at times, the boy is savagely abused by its residents just for, well, being different from them, and he is eventually sold to an old female shaman. When the boy needs to be treated for some illness at one point, the shaman buries him in the ground up to his neck, and that subsequently leads to another cruel moment which will definitely make you wince a lot for good reasons.

Now you may need some drink, because this is just the beginning of more bad things to happen to and around the boy. During the part involved with a sadistic miller who lets the boy stay in his residence, the tension is built up on the screen as this angry and bitter man watches his long-suffering wife and a young employee of his with growing suspicion, and that eventually culminates to a very gruesome moment of physical mutilation. In case of an old man who kindly takes the boy under his wing, he happens to be quite close to a certain promiscuous young woman in a nearby village, and it goes without saying that a very bad thing eventually happens to both of them because of their connection.

After going through a series of horrific moments, the boy later comes to find some respite from a kind Catholic priest who saves the boy from his latest plight, but, of course, there soon comes another horror for the boy. When some guy in the priest’s parish offers a staying place for the boy, the priest certainly welcomes this offer, but, what do you know, this guy turns out to have to a heinous intention behind his back, and the movie thankfully restrains a bit from his evil deeds to the boy.

Around the point where the boy manages to be free from this vile dude, the world surrounding him becomes more violent and dangerous than before. We see several acts of atrocities committed by those Nazi German soldiers as expected, and then we also observe how Russian soldiers are equally cruel and ruthless. When the boy happens to be under the protection of a company of the Russian army later in the story, the mood becomes a little more relaxed than before, but then, of course, the movie slaps us hard with another very unpleasant moment of violence, and there is a chilling scene where the boy casually assists a Russian sniper shooting several civilians just for revenge.

Now I ask myself again on what is really the point of all those barbaric moments of human evil depicted in the film. Although the last act of the movie shows a little sign of hope and recovery with the indirect revelation of the boy’s real name, that looks pretty pale compared to what has been shown to us during the rest of the film, and we are only left with unpleasant impressions in the end without much emotional involvement in its story and characters.

While I am still not so willing to recommend it, “The Painted Bird” is not entirely without good things to be observed and appreciated. While the cinematography by Vladimír Smutný is often striking with crisp black and white images, young actor Petr Kotlár deserves to be commended for holding the center well despite being constantly thrown into one cruel moment after another during most of the running time, and the various main case members in the film including Udo Kier, Julian Sands, Harvey Keitel, Barry Pepper, and Stellan Skarsgård are mostly effective in their respective supporting roles. This is surely a well-made movie, and I must say that Marhoul and his cast and crew members show admirable commitment, but the movie merely jolted and shocked me without enough emotional effect, and that is all.

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The Education (2019) ☆☆☆(3/4): Two different young persons in need and despair

Posted on December 24, 2020 by kaist455

It took some time for me to accept what and how South Korean independent film “The Education” is about. At first, I felt quite frustrated with its rather dry and restrained narrative, but I subsequently came to see that the movie intends to present to us a plain but uncompromising slice of life accompanied with human need and despair, and I admire its several strong elements including the unadorned natural performances from its two lead performers.

In the beginning, the movie establishes the hard and difficult current circumstance of Seong-hee (Moon Hye-in), a young female college student who is soon going to graduate and wants to travel to Spain someday after her graduation. She has recently worked as a social service worker to take care of the disabled, but she is doing this job just because it is one of the requirements for her graduation and she also needs the money for her subsequent travel to Spain, so she has to keep working as usual even after getting seriously injured in her back some time ago.

Anyway, after arguing with her coordinator at a local center for the disabled, Seong-hee manages to get a case which looks easier for her in addition to paying her enough. Her latest client is some old disabled lady who has been mostly unconscious, and it seems all Seong-hee has to do is having this old disabled lady get some sunshine from time to time besides cleaning her body as expected.

While this latest job of hers turns out to be quite easy indeed, Seong-hee later comes across a little problem because of the old disabled lady’s adolescent son Hyeon-mok (Kim Joon-hyung). When Seong-hee and Hyeon-mook meet each other for the first time at the end of her first day at his residence, they are not very cordial to each other, and Hyeon-mok even demands to her that she should also clean his residence. Of course, Seong-hee flatly emphasizes that she is paid only for taking care of his mother, and then Hyeon-mok later attempts to force his demand upon her via making his residence messier on the next day.

Not so surprisingly, Seong-hee becomes quite exasperated about this. Although she does not raise her voice at all, her curt words are harsh and aggressive enough to make Hyeon-mok squirm in response, and the awkward tension between them is palpable to us even though the camera simply looks at them from the distance. In the end, he comes to take care of the mess in his own way, and that leads to one of a few funny moments in the film.

Anyway, Seong-hee and Hyeon-mok gradually get accustomed to each other as days slowly go by. While Hyeon-mok becomes a little more courteous to Seong-hee, Seong-hee helps Hyeon-mok a bit on his study for the upcoming civil servant qualification test although it is apparent that he is not so bright to say the least, and they later come to have a little nice afternoon time along with his mother outside.

However, this little improvement in their relationship does not brighten up either of their lives at all, and the screenplay by director Kim Duk-joong and Kim Mid-eum never overlooks how despairing their respective lives are despite a few respites between them. Although Seong-hee has aspired to get out of her suffocating daily life in South Korea once for all via leaving for Spain, her dream still seems to be out of reach no matter how much she works, and her back injury keeps bothering her as usual. While Hyeon-mok looks like really caring about his mother who has incidentally been his only close family member, he remains to be careless and thoughtless as before, and you may roll your eyes during a certain key scene later in the film where he tries to persuade Seong-hee not to call an ambulance despite a serious situation inadvertently caused by him.

Meanwhile, the movie also pays some attention to how Seong-hee and other social service center workers work for those disabled persons coming to their workplace. Seong-hee has been a bit friendly to one disabled woman who has a serious case of cerebral palsy, but both she and that disabled woman know well that their relationship will be probably over if Seong-hee really goes to Spain, and Seong-hee feels a little guilty about that, though that disabled woman casually reminds Seong-hee that she is not so bothered by that.

Around the end of the story, the movie suddenly throws a rough emotional moment at us, but this does not feel jarring at all because of what has been steadily built up by the director and his two lead performers. While quietly but firmly holding the center as required, Moon Hye-in, who previously played a minor supporting role in another recent South Korean independent film “Lucky Chan-sil” (2019), subtly conveys to us her character’s accumulating despair and frustration, and Kim Joon-hyung complements his co-performer well while never making any attempt to soften his pathetic character.

In conclusion, “The Education” is another typical South Korean independent film which grimly and realistically presents the hard social/economic reality of the young generation of the South Korean society, and it is worthwhile to watch mainly for its two solid lead performances. Yes, this is not surely something you can casually watch on Sunday afternoon, but you will not forget its two lead characters easily once you watch it.

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