Man on the Moon

I know that the 50^th anniversary of the first Moon landing is next year, but that shouldn’t stop us from commemorating the occasion. Besides, we are still months away from Damien Chazelle’s eagerly awaited First Man. So, without further delay, here’s a list of eight films to commemorate Apollo 11’s mission in no particular order for no other reason than they are really interesting movies.

My Alternative List of Ten Films to Commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution

This is an anniversary that I was really looking forward to since 23^rd October 1989. It seems Moscow doesn’t share my enthusiasm, so I have to do it for them – here comes a highly subjective list to celebrate the anniversary, but without the compulsory speeches, marches and re-enactments that so often were forced upon many of us before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In other words – we can be irreverent about it.

The list deliberately avoids Soviet/Russian films, and they are in no particular order other than some arbitrary editing philosophy that I came up with.

Sound Eroticism

For me this is something of a first: I have never reviewed a Hungarian film before, so I’m a bit nervous. When I write about American and British movies I can rely on shared cultural reference points of my readers and mine, and I can every now and then season reviews with interesting titbits about the impact of said films on Hungarian audiences or other amusing anecdotes. I firmly believe that no film stands by itself, that putting movies into the wider context of cinema history is, well if nothing else, beneficial for understanding the subject of our investigation better. So, here goes nothing.

Hopscotch

Now I know what you’re thinking, and you are right: who cares about a spy comedy from 1980 that nobody watched then or since? Does it feature a nasty torture scene? No. The most violent piece of action in the film is when Walter Matthau gags Sam Waterstone with a sponge and his tie. Does it feature a pair of juicy breasts then? Probably, but we don’t get to see them anyway. So does it at least have a lousy explosion of some kind? Yes, but only at the end, and it’s so tiny, Michael Bay wouldn’t even consider it to be reused in subsequent films. All right then, what about a car chase? Maybe one an a half, and it features a stolen Rover SD1 police car for a few minutes. And it’s full of classical music. And it’s most intense scene is taking place between two men, who sit in front of each other at a table. The Dear Reader might rightfully ask what the heck do I want to say about this film, which is obviously not an obscure Poliziesco or a forgotten horror gem and it wasn’t put together by a then-bright, bushy-tailed film-maker under the wings of legendary producer Roger Corman in a shed somewhere in the Sonora desert, but Ronald Neame (better known for The Odessa File, the The Poseidon Adventure and the hilariously funny Meteor.

The Man from Acapulco

Tags

comedy, france, review

It would be easy to say that the golden era of luxury air travel, the exclusivity of the jet-set is well and truly over and has been for some time, no small thanks to the Lonely Planet guides availability in full for iPad and low-cost airfares – and if you have spent any time at Stansted Airport you can attest to that. It seems to me that even the Bahamas has lost it’s ‘wow’ factor when Casino Royale came out in 2006, for some reason most people focused on the fact that 007 was driving the latest Mondeo rather than taking note of the breathtaking scenery of Nassau.

Bad Reviews

Tags

film critics, son-of-saul

As this is the end of the calendar year, lists of all kinds hit the Internet and the press regarding which films were the best – and worst – this year. And unlike previous years, I came up with a list of my own, which stirred some controversy among the comments. Not the whole list though – just the inclusion of László Nemes’ Son of Saul, one of the frontrunners of next year’s Oscars.

‘Mistress America’ and Confronting Prejudices

Tags

For Some Inexplicable Reason, Greta Gerwing, Mistress America, Noah Baumbach, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Vice-Folly-Humbug

It’s funny when someone looks his or her own prejudices and vices in the eye. I always followed – or at least, I claimed to have followed – the strict rules of reviewing films: keep an open mind, put mobile in flight mode, don’t eat popcorn. But it’s time to confess my sins; sometimes I have a very bad attitude towards certain kind of films. For instance I have a really difficult time to watch films about really poor and disadvantaged people, either in documentaries or in fiction. I feel bad – and not exclusively out of my middle-class-white-European-male-guilt but because on many occasions I felt like I was watching porn: having a very intrusive look into someone’s intimate and private suffering can make you feel as s loathsome, nasty and disgusting voyeur, and it made me think that the people I’m watching are being abased solely for the filmmakers selfish need to be admired and awarded – because as any decent ascetic can tell you, suffering sells.

Everything That is Wrong with the Car in ‘Vacation’ is Also Probably Wrong with The Movie

I never write about films that I haven’t seen, and what follows is merely a very strong suspicion that the latest incarnation of National Lampoon’s Vacation is not going to be a very good one. In fact I hazard a guess that it’s going to be completely and utterly unfunny. I know, declaring something in advance being unfunny and bad is not a very reasonable or just thing to do (I’m writing this about two weeks before the UK release) and it goes against the Code of Conduct. I watch all films with an open mind – however on this occasion I have no sympathy for the film makers, firstly them being part of the Hollywood Dream Machine, therefore they are already paid in full and secondly, I think the badness of Vacation will be another brilliant example of how comedy has been dead for over a decade now (at least in Hollywood), and finally, after almost a decade on I think I may have an idea about the cause of death.