Only God Forgives

Only God Forgive is about Julian, a drug-smuggler thriving in Bangkok's criminal underworld, sees his life get even more complicated when his mother compels him to find and kill whoever is responsible for his brother's recent death. 

What still puzzles me about this movie is the reception of it at Cannes this year. It was booed, and critics almost unanimously called it the worst movie of the festival. Surely, I did not have a chance to see Blue Is the Warmest Colour, the absolute winner this year which received an impressive amount of accolades and seals of approval from everyone. But the more I think of the movie, the more I see its ingenuity and, simply put, greatness.

Django Unchained

Former dentist, Dr. King Schultz, buys the freedom of a slave, Django, and trains him with the intent to make him his deputy bounty hunter. Instead, he is led to the site of Django's wife who is under the hands of Calvin Candie, a ruthless plantation owner.

There exist certain features which, if found in a movie, point out that the director is Quentin Tarantino. You can always tell the Tarantino film apart from the rest – he is absolutely unique in what he is doing. He is in love with films of 80’s and 90’s; he devotes a lot of time to the work with camera, and he is able to mimic the camera work of almost any era he wishes to; his characters are charismatic and memorable; he loves to think that he films the advertisement of Heinz ketchup by the looks of the amount of blood that is spilled. But most important of all are the dialogs – you will never find this kind of dialogs in a movie by other directors. They can be empty in substance, they may not convey any message or lead the plot sequence, but they are interesting to listen to, they are witty, smart, sharp and effervescent. The dialogs are Tarantino’s trademark, and his contribution to the cinema (at least for now) is definitely putting the art of writing dialogs to the next level.

Life of Pi

Life of Pi is a magical adventure story centering on Pi Patel, the precocious son of a zoo keeper. Dwellers in Pondicherry, India, the family decide to move to Canada, hitching a ride on a huge freighter. After a shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, all fighting for survival.

The film is based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, and it is difficult to think of a book which will be harder to transfer to the big screen. Life of Pi is so multi-faceted, so multi-layered, that it is just the question of how much is lost in translation rather than how to transfer everything accurately. And the real achievement of the filmmakers is that they managed not only to keep the atmosphere, the storyline and the main idea intact, but they actually enhanced the experience considerably.

Argo

In 1979, the American embassy in Iran was invaded by Iranian revolutionaries and several Americans are taken hostage. However, six manage to escape to the official residence of the Canadian Ambassador and the CIA is eventually ordered to get them out of the country. With few options, exfiltration expert Tony Mendez devises a daring plan: to create a phony Canadian film project looking to shoot in Iran and smuggle the Americans out as its production crew. With the help of some trusted Hollywood contacts, Mendez creates the ruse and proceeds to Iran as its associate producer. However, time is running out with the Iranian security forces closing in on the truth while both his charges and the White House have grave doubts about the operation themselves. (© IMDb)

The story is a dramatization of the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation, and this one is the best example of a situation when the real life story is much richer and much more fascinating than what film plots can offer you. And having the story ready to use, the suspense is the king. It is extremely easy to fall into the trap of retelling the story rather than giving an interesting spin to it, leading to a boring and difficult-to-watch-without-falling asleep kind of film.

Cloud Atlas

6 stories spanning into the distant past and even more distant future. The people who shape their present, not realizing that they actually shape the future for many years and generations to come. An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution. And simply a new movie from Wachowski, who gave birth to the Matrix, which became philosophical thought for many film-goers for years to come just as Star Wars did.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

One day, a curious Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, meets wandering wizard, Gandalf, who persuades him to share an adventure. Bilbo embarks on a journey to the Lonely Mountain with a vigorous group of Dwarves to reclaim a city stolen from them by the dragon Smaug.

Anyone who has read Tolkien’s beautifully crafted books might recall that “The Hobbit” is incredibly thin, especially compared to the classic trilogy of the Lord of the Rings. Thus I found it hard to believe hat Peter Jackson, the acclaimed director behind 3 Lord of the Rings movies, which won lots of different awards and made New Zealand famous, managed to collect enough material to make 3 movies out of “The Hobbit” book. Honestly, this looks more like a filthy attempt to steal the money from Tolkien fans around the world than a diligent way to condense the book which sets the scene for the LotR trilogy which still is the golden standard in fantasy writing. 

Amour

Georges and Anne are two retired music teachers in their eighties. Their daughter, Eva, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has an attack. The couple's bond of love is severely tested.

This is probably the most concise plot outline of the year.  Behold; there are no master plots to deceive or give a spin to some weird relationship; there are no unnecessary complexities of the modern drama; there is a pure emotion flying, that is, love. The plot outline, however concise, actually tells it all – and says nothing at the same time. Yes, it is the story of struggle. It is the story of a man who watches his love fading away. It is the story of a woman who suffers even more as she helplessly waits for her consciousness to leave her. It is the story of a woman who witnesses tragedy of love and can do absolutely nothing to help, forced to the sidelines to observe her parents in the battle against death which they are waging alone.

Quartet

Cecily, Reggie and Wilfred are in a home for retired opera singers. Every year, on October 10, there is a concert to celebrate Verdi's birthday and they take part. Jean, who used to be married to Reggie, arrives at the home and disrupts their equilibrium. She still acts like a diva, but she refuses to sing. Still, the show must go on... even though it is unclear whether it will.

Skyfall

It has been a while. 4 years since feeble Quantum of Solace, 6 years since solid Casino Royal, and finally, Bond is back on the screens, just in time to celebrate 50 years of Bond franchise. And it delivers, despite it not being, strictly speaking, a Bond movie. It is actually totally different from what has been done with Bond before.

Now, meet the biggest innovation in Skyfall: Bond movie finally has an atmosphere. Even though the film still is not even remotely as atmospheric as, say, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it is a giant leap for a franchise that has been infamous for the lack of real, believable characters and presence of cardboard environment. At last, you can see human beings in Bond movie, vulnerable, intimidated, desperate to survive, and this makes wonders: it actually forces you to follow the plot, rather than watching from fight to fight. It is possible to empathise to not-so-perfect Bond on his losing streak, as opposed to some flawless guy in tuxedo.

Looper

Time travel has been invented, but it is so expensive that only criminals can use it. So the new trade has appeared: in 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by transporting back Joe's future self.

There are two easy ways to tell whether the movie is good or not. Firstly, you should ask how many times during the showing you have been distracted from the storyline and the action. Good movie, quite obviously, will easily manage to grasp your attention from the start to the very end. Secondly, after watching a good movie one always realises how crappy the other movies recently watched were. That happened, for example, after watching the Artist: how awesome that movie was compared to all the other staff that went off the press previous winter?

End of Watch

The film follows the life of two young officers, showing us their work, fears, aspirations, love, rest, happiness and grief. They are marked for death after confiscating a small cache of money and firearms from the members of a notorious cartel, during a routine traffic stop.

The trailer to the film was very promising: one could not tell from those couple of minutes as to what was going to happen in the film, or what the film is about. It all looked just tense, bloody and sweaty ode to policemen – something to look forward to. The problem is that even after watching the movie I cannot tell what the film is about, or why on earth it appeared in the way it did.

The whole movie is done in the mockumentary style: at the very start the main character flashes the camera that he has, and then most of the film the action is shown “as seen” by him – all the talk, all the jokes. It was supposed to give the audience the intimacy and the from-the-first-hand feeling of actually sitting in the police car with the cops or joining them in their operations. Those casual cameras are everywhere: one in the hand of Brian Taylor, two on their uniform, couple in the car – the life of those fictitious cops has been carefully documented.

Resident Evil: Retribution

The story of the resistance of the only survivors of the catastrophic virus release continues. Alice fights alongside a resistance movement in the continuing battle against the Umbrella Corporation and the undead.

The fifth installment of the Resident Evil franchise is on the screens, and here is the peculiar thing: the plot outlined above could have been copy-pasted from the previous 4 parts. Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction and Resident Evil: Afterlife – just to remind you the names, because the stories were absolutely the same. Screenwriters just took the action to different places, gave Alice new weapons, introduced new super-bosses and here we go.

With the business idea like that, the rational thing to do would be to predict the soon end of the franchise. People could not watch the same staff all over and over again, one would say, there are limits to patience. But here is the second peculiar thing: despite the super-predictable movie, it is still good fun to watch.

Branded

I spent around a week trying to find internal strength and summon all my abilities to write a couple of words about this movie. I was pondering about deceitful marketing, lying trailers and tough destiny of ordinary picturegoers, who have to put up with the fact that you know nothing about the movie until you actually see it, and thus they take immense risks of watching something they won’t like. To cut the long story short, I was trying to come up with the way to explain why Branded is the worst movie I have seen in my life.

Should I talk about actors? Ed Stoppard is simply not good enough for this role, he looks lost; Jeffrey Tambor does not convince as the US spy; Leelee Sobieski only impresses in the undress scene. Style? The movie tries to copy Generation P (2011), lively and hilarious story about Russian advertising market in 90s straight after USSR broke up, but Branded is not even close in its emulation. Directors? Although there were two directors, I didn’t notice major contribution of either of them. If anything, they only ruined the film by amateurish execution.

The Bourne Legacy

Following on the previous three films in the Bourne Universe, the main character, Aaron Cross, finds himself targeted by the CIA people who are trying to contain the damage caused to the system by the actions of Jason Bourne.

Let’s start from the basics: why do producers do sequels? The most popular – and the most sensible – explanation is that they are trying to bank on the same, popular, liked characters, trying to get money from people who miss the universe and will be happy to pay to see the continuation of the story. This is why we see never-ending Twilight saga – producers (correctly) believe that 14 year old girls will be happy to see the next portion of adventures of Edward (ok, this is a massive stereotype).

So the idea of The Bourne Legacy as the movie was flawed from the very beginning. Bourne movie without Bourne? Seriously? 

21 Jump Street

Meet two very unusual in real life, but so common in the movies, friends: Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum). One is stereotypical nerd with no personal life whatsoever, and the other is…well, Channing Tatum. They become a pair of misfortunate cops, and their last chance to prove themselves is to participate in the undercover operation: they go back to high school to try to bust the drug-dealing ring.

To say that the preview sounds slightly unpromising is to underestimate the cause. We have seen it so many times in so many bad comedies: two good friends going back to school for some reason, with mandatory tear-squeezing moments of absolute reconciliation of everyone and everything. So yet another comedy about again same things did not give me any excitement of anticipation.

Moonrise Kingdom

A young scout Sam, bored with the performance at the church, escapes to the backstage, where he finds Suzy, a girl with whom a very romantic relationship is going to develop. Pair of lovers decides to escape from the town, triggering a chain of events that will put the whole island into disarray.

There are some movies which bring you some kind of warmth and unexplained happiness. Moonrise Kingdom is one of those. During the whole showing I was sitting with a silly smile on my face, feeling like I was drinking a huge cup of hot chocolate, sitting in a huge armchair near a fireplace. The movie is so comfortable and easy to watch, it reminds of Amelie or Hugo. All the ingredients are in place and appear at the correct time, playing to the overall impression of warm, velvety, irresistibly charming and cuddly atmosphere.

Snow White and the Huntsman

The fairy tale that we all know from our childhood. Beautiful princess, evil stepmother, dwarves – sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But here is the twist: take this story, add a lot of gothic style to it, pepper it with stunning visuals, make it slightly creepy, invite the most popular actors and actresses to produce dark story, which won’t even remotely remind of the original tale. This is Snow White and the Huntsman for you.

In a search for some interesting plots, the movie industry has gone crazy. Any story that can be turned into a movie is snatched at a snap of fingers and transformed. Sometimes this is good, and we see really exciting impressions of old stories, Watchmen being my best example. But I personally believe there are stories that should not be touched – and fairy tales from the childhood is just one of those stories. So I definitely did not like the fact that there are two (!) movies based on Snow White – this one and Mirror Mirror. And I am glad to admit that I was wrong.

The Dictator

Sacha Baron Cohen is in this again. After brilliant comedy Borat and absolutely terrible Bruno, he brings another comedy, where he plays Aladeen – the head of small Arab country, who opposes any kind of democracy and will never let anything looking like freedom to sneak into his kingdom.

Cohen got an absolutely unique niche in the entertainment industry. His characters become something more than just fiction. Borat was outstanding in some sense; the jokes from the movie were quickly learnt and quoted by almost everyone who bothered to watch the movie (despite the notorious quality of the jokes, which exploited practically only a couple of topics). Bruno, on the other hand, failed badly. Partly because of the high expectations, partly because of the poor plot, but the movie failed to amuse in the same shocking and provocative way. This is why I was a bit worried about the Dictator – the movie could have gone in both directions.

Marvel Avengers Assemble

The crossovers are the biggest fun that is there in the world of comics. Superman is fighting along with Batman… Wolverine takes on Spider-man… What can be cooler than that? Little surprise then that Marvel Avengers is one of the most awaited movies this year. It brings along almost all the heroes: Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man – only to fight for the good cause and bring some destruction along. No doubt this movie will be compared to the Dark Knight Rises and the Amazing Spider-man, which are soon to hit the screens. The year 2012 is pretty rich on super-heroes saving the world!

To start with, this is a good action movie. It does its best to keep us on the edge of the chairs with mouth wide open. There are fights, flights, a little bit of suspension, explosions, more fights. There are super-heroes, super-heroes and even more super-heroes. Sounds like the recipe for success? Well, it is all not so clear cut.

Hobo with a Shotgun

Initially, it was one of the fake trailers shown before the Grindhouse, the movie by nostalgic Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Inspired by the style of 70s, it was an ode to good old times of small cinemas, small screens and bad quality tapes. The trailers that were shown before were the masterpiece themselves. The fake trailers gave rise to two real movies: Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun, fully absorbing the ideology of Grindhouse, yet still being completely different.

To start with, Hobo with a Shotgun is still an ode to good old times. The movie looks like 70s, sounds like 70s, feels like 70s. Only true fans of the style were able to recreate it so close to reality, yet keeping it alive, rather than just a mummy. Movie is captivating, interesting and (sometimes) funny. But don’t get me wrong – there is nothing in the movie itself that is good. It is the atmosphere that it brings along, the characters it lovingly recreates. Take the main antagonists: they are cruel and scary, yet charismatic and charming – in their own way, of course.