Alex Garland. Civil War.

  An excellent and timely idea spoiled by cursory execution, partly to make a movie palatable--without De Sade-Cormac McCarthy-style scenes of unbridled sadism, partly to satisfy Hollywood political correctness censorship. 

    Good execution, and, probably an original idea was to remove any political hues in the contest of the warring parties. But Hollywood censorship bureau imposed the necessity to make the US Government side look like Trumpians -- third presidential term, disbanding the FBI ("intelligence community" is the darling of Hollywood neocons) and the only mass murder scene was obviously led by the MAGA men against immigrants and the people of color. 

    Henceforth, the movie incorporate an impossible "Western alliance" of Texas and California. The civil war situation strangely allows a practical exterritoriality to the war correspondents, even female. A realistic "Game of Throne" adage that "soldiers will f-[assault] anything with tits" of the Queen Cersei was too hard to swallow by the sissy US audiences. 

    A turning of a naive girl (Cailee Spaeny) into a fearless psychopath and a violence groupie is sublimely acted upon by Cailee and cast is not psychologically supported by other plotlines. Some psychopaths, like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Samantha Power or Joseph Stalin enjoyed mass murder but were largely averse to watching it and were quite cowardly. But there are also people, like Jungers -- whether Ernst or Sebastian, or Otto Skorzeny -- who are attracted to the gore and killing as to a drug, and get an additional kick from risking their own lives. 

      The war scenes are so XXth century -- as war in Ukraine demonstrates, an infantry movement without close air support by drones and even with it, over the enemy territory is almost impossible. So, a significant share of combatants have to stubbornly look into their phones and laptops. 

        Summary execution of the political elite is stupid. Wars must end with some form of the legitimation of the winning side. That's why, the Soviets did not execute Reich's military and political elite after the siege of Berlin and, moreover, offered them full protection against reprisals by their own soldiers, most of whom, in view of Nazi atrocities had ample reasons to do so. And, indeed, orderly capitulation procedures by the Allies precluded guerilla war and other manifestations of the failed state. On the contrary, unconditional elimination of the Iraqi and Libyan governing structures by the Americans paved the way towards a protracted civil war, lawlessness and partition of the respected countries. 

Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation.

     

            The subjects for this year are all elevating: uniformization of girls by Islamic society (Our Uniform), child molesting (Pachyderm), Holocaust (Letter to a Pig), death penalty (Ninety-Five Senses) and war (The War is Over). The best, visually, is the Letter to a Pig where most kids, listening to a Holocaust survival story themselves are animal-like brutes. 

Teacher's Lounge

     

      Teacher's Lounge is a nice movie. Nobody is raped, kidnapped or murdered. Only the six-grader hits and bruises his female teacher by a laptop. But it shows the degree to what fascism under the guise of "liberalism" and "democracy" proliferated in modern Germany. All human relations and even emotions are transgressions. All work relationships are regulated by administrative procedures or by laws, which do not always agree. 

    School is ruffled because of theft (happy are the Germans--no school shootings or rapes). Social workers -- a fixture of the Northern European movies -- possess undue power, even allowed to frisk six-graders, "voluntarily" [1]. Furthermore, the absurd rules of "democratic" representation presume that the confidential school meetings are attended by class "representatives" who are intermittently serve as the spies for teachers' and students' body. 

    But if the suspect belongs to minority, they are accused of racism even if a social worker is himself mixed-race. This is done by ubiquitous and self-righteous school newspaper, whose high-schooler editors take after British tabloids, with their prurience and demagoguery. And teachers are silent and cowed. 

    A robbed teacher videotapes a real thief -- a straight-laced administrative assistant and a single mother of the class nerd beloved by his teacher but ostracized by the class. But, instead the teacher and the school principal are threatened by a thief with a criminal lawsuit for violation of her privacy and parents of the students support her on social networks and not the besieged teacher. 

    The rest of the movie is a love-hate duet by the teacher and her student. 

[1] Juvenile justice system in the Nordic countries and Holland is obviously staffed by the types, which could be suitable for the Gestapo in olden times. In Germany, the situation, according to the movies, is slightly more benign. 

    

Poor Things.

       

     In Hollywood, it happens that an artists receive Oscar but not for the work they deserved it. For instance, Guillermo del Toro received "the bugger" (P. O'Toole's word) for the "Shape of Water" but did not -- for much more coherent and innovative "Pan's Labyrinth". 

    Equally, Emma Stone got it for pathetic "La La Land". But she is unlikely to get it for her brilliant performance in "Poor Things" if anything for absurd dozen or so sexual acts during the movie (obviously Yorgos Latimos loves filming E. S. naked). 

    The movie itself is a happy-end Frankenstein meeting Pygmalion by the way of the "Island of Dr. Moreau" further garnished by steampunk and even Fado. 

    Latimos tried to inject some verity in the sordid Belle Epoque prostitution with the question by the jilted fiancée: "Did you get checked for the disease?" and oddly repulsive characters of clients. Yet the model-looking hookers -- compare with the depictions by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec -- in designer costumes remain. Also remains a caring brothel madam. In all-cash society brothels had to be guarded by burly characters despising and abusing working girls. Alcoholism and drug addiction ran rampant and otherwise powerless girls had to vent their abuse on each other. 

The Boy and the Heron.

    Miyazaki did it again. As a non-member of Japanese culture, I could not understand half of the movie. There is a vague suspicion that there is a back story of "Old Japan", which disappears with the Tower vs. "New Japan" emerging out of the flames of war but this is the end of my understanding. The movie borrows the premise of a boy traumatized by the fiery death of his mother during American bombing of Tokyo and succumbing to living in the world of imagination from "Pan's Labyrinth" and grossly underappreciated "A Monster Calls". Dwarf-heron is a trickster connecting world of the dead (the Past) and the world of the living (the Present) provides some cohesiveness to the story to this Western barbarian. 

Bradley Cooper. Maestro.

    

         A remarkable feat by Bradley Cooper. A major American director is born. Furthermore, after Ridley Scott's ornate but listless "Napoleon", he demonstrated how biopics can be made without excessive stretching of a screen time or cursory scenes, not understandable without reading bad, plagiarized 1400 pp. long biographies. Cooper is brilliant as Bernstein. Carey Milligan as his much-suffering wife is perfect. Party dialogs, half-silenced by an ambient noise are perfect, camera work is perfect. I was not particularly touched by the movie, but again, this may be it was my jealousy for Irina Shayk. 😀 

Napoleon by Ridley Scott

     

     It is hard for me to understand the rave reviews of Napoleon. Equally hard for the viewers is to understand the origins of Napoleon charisma from the movie . The history is twisted and garbled. For instance, it were Russian-Austrian allies who took the heights above the Austerlitz battlefield, and Napoleon's camp was below. The uphill attack of the strong position by the French, contrary to all contemporary tactics, decided the battle. In the current political climate I would not expect anything smacking of fairness in showcasing his Russian debacle, which broke the backbone of the Napoleonic system. Yet, the omission of Trafalgar and Volkerschlacht ("Battle of Nations") at Leipzig, the whole 1813 German campaign does not make sense. The absence of Metternich is as awkward as would be a movie about American Revolution missing Adams, Madison and Hamilton. 

    The most enduring heritage of the First Empire was the Code Napoleon. It is absent in the movie. Instead, the sex of Napoleon and Josephine, doggie style, is demonstrated at least twice. Why?

    Joaquin Phoenix, a great actor, simply was not given enough substance to act. Alexander I, who was 30 during the meeting on the Niemen and 37 after the fall of Paris -- a quite mature man in then scheme of things -- is shown as a youngster. Contrary to the historical feat of two emperors meeting on the raft in the middle of the river, they talk in an unremarkable park. The only brilliant act is Rupert Everett's Wellington in (again) poorly shown Battle of Waterloo. The whole failure of the Napoleonic enterprise is attributed to Waterloo, which was elucidated in a much better 1970 movie with Rod Steiger as Napoleon. General Arthur Wellesley, not yet even the Duke of Wellington, sitting as the head of the table before two emperors and three or four kings, is as incongruent as the Orthodox Church scene in Catherine the Great. 

    The 1814 act of abdication is not clear at all. In fact, after the Russian Army took Paris, Napoleon did not consider his position as hopeless. The people of Paris, who were not very important, but also his marshals forced him to abdicate simply because of general weariness of more than twenty years of warfare.