A Polish American crime drama directed by Alexandros Avranas, starring Jim Carrey, Marton Csokas and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
A police detective is investigating a murder. He thinks that an author did it because he wrote about it in his book and has a girlfriend who used to work in the brothel where the murder took place.
Boring. This was supposed to be a thriller, but staying awake through it without being bored to sleep is difficult. There were no thrills. Seriously, it was about 98% people talking, 1% driving and 1% sex. There were 2 good things about it. 1 was Charlotte Gainsbourg (of Nymphomaniac (2013) fame) and the other was the drab video style. It looked like it was all shot right before a rainstorm or before sunset. There were grey and gritty city scenes and one scene with a foggy road outside the city that I thought were amazing. Camera-work was wonderful, but writing was absolute trash. I rate this poor because that last sentence describes it perfectly. You really should not watch this unless you have more of a thing for Charlotte Gainsbourg than I do.
A Polish American war drama directed by Yurek Bogayevicz, starring Willem Dafoe and Haley Joel Osment.
A jewish boy hides in a catholic family during World War II. He has various adventures with the other children of the village.
Normally, anything that includes "During World War II" is a terrible waste. It has all been done to death like jews in a gas chamber. This was not typical of the genre. What I found to be so different about this was first, the leisurely pace gives the viewer time to process what is going on. Having the plot revolve around a group of children during that most military of times reminded me slightly of Stand By Me (1986) and It (1990). Obviously, it lacked the carefree childhood innocence of Pippi Longstocking (1969 - 1973) and Tom Sawyer (1973). The only thing that really put me off was the amount of handheld camera shots. I prefer the stability of tripods, dollies and other supports for filming. I'm rating this awesome because it made me want to watch it again.
A Polish fantasy directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has.
A man goes to visit his father in a hospital where time has been tampered with. There he meets a strange assortment of characters.
This was nearly incoherent, but I could tell that it was intentional. The viewer is supposed to feel the disorientation of the main character. Trying to write about this in a normal fashion is a lost cause. Some of my favorite sections were the woman in the upstairs apartment, the boy with the stamps and the father's bird scene. The technical aspects, although primitive by today's audio/video quality standards, were done quite well. The use of and lack of color in scenes was interesting to me because it came from the sets, lighting and costumes, rather than technical specifications of equipment. The graveyard scene stands out because of this (picture). Overall, it's a crazy film that would need to be watched at least twice to gain any understanding of it. I rate this adequate.
An East German Polish science fiction directed by Kurt Maetzig.
After a cylinder containing an audio message is found on Earth, a spaceship and crew are set up and leave for Venus. Once on the planet, they have various adventures exploring the foreign world.
The antiquated ideas about space travel and outdated film production methods are apparent, but what is also apparent is that they were actually trying to make a good movie. The characters are identifiable and some of them even have some back-story. The plot is easy to follow and mostly makes sense. The sets are large and have some type of style and the special effects work with that same theme. I think that the overall quality of the film was low, probably due to an equally low budget and that the story itself may not have been the best. One thing that would have added a great deal to this film is an encounter with living beings on Venus. I'm rating it o.k. because they really tried to make a movie here.
