Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

What is the second commandment? Do you know the answer to this question? It says that Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. And what is this film about? Is it about appliance of religion in modern society? No, it isn`t. There`s Dorota who`s husband is in a very bad condition in the hospital and who wants him to get well once again. But she also has a lover, and she`s pregnant from him. She knows that if her husband will get well she`ll have to make an abortion, but if he`ll die she`ll lose him (logical, isn`t it?). Then there`s the Consultant - an old doctor who treats Andrzej (Dorotas husband) and who`s life isn`t a particulary happy one. He spends his time telling every day a part of his loss of his family to a woman that makes food for him and cleans his room. He`s not the kindest person in the world, but neither is the most unpleasant one. To end this review I want to say, that after having watched 3 parts of the Decalogue I`m still entertained and planing to watch more.

Quite for a long time I was preparing to watch this film. The expectations were high on one side and low on the other. I knew that this film was supposed to be a very good one - according to its reviews, to the peoples` opinion who had already seen it. But it also made me think - if the public opinion wasn`t wrong once again as it had already happened quite often (I don`t mean "wrong" as an objective word but wrong for me). In this film Jim Carrey plays Joel - a man who has decided to erase his former girlfriend Clementine from his memory (just like she had already erased him). And to achieve that he didn`t consume maniacal amounts of alcohol like most of us would do but visited specialists that provided erasing the memories by reliving them. But somewhere in the process Joel understood that he didn`t want to lose Clementine, despite all the problems they had in their relationship. And together with her he wanted to escape from his memories and return to the real world, but he never managed to succeed at that. But the ending was positive - Joel met her once again, without knowing who she was and they fell in love, after that they learned to know the truth about their past but decided that even the upcoming conflicts didn`t mean more than their love. A very beautiful film. A must see.

This film is a story of modern Russia about a modern Snow White. No, not really Snow White, that other one that had those two evil step-sisters. Two producers are left by their star singer so they take up a weird girl from the country and try to make a star out of her. The film isn`t really heavyweight, just a silly comedic flick, not too sugary though, for it ain`t no Hollywood, baby. The cast is ok, the music is ok, the script is ok, at some stages the whole thing gets a bit trivial but nobody says it`s high art. At least it`s not the worst thing to watch on a bus from Hungary.

After a long break I decided to give another chance to Krzystof Kieslovsky`s "Decalogue". This time I chose the part that told us not to commit adultery. It doesn`t mean that I was planning to do just that and to understand why I shouldn`t do it I watched the film. Anyway, there`s Tomek - a young boy who spends most of his free time when not working at the post peeking through a looking glass at Magda - a woman from a neighbouring house. She can`t do much without him noticing, he never misses her making love to Roman. Tomek uses every chance to meet her, but without much success. When he tells her that he has been peeking on her for quite a long time she invites him into her apartment. Magda tries to prove him that it`s not love what he`s feeling towards her, but she fails at that. Tomek cuts his wrists, and now it`s Magda who wants to see him. In the end his final words to her are: "I don`t peep at you any more". And I liked the film, it`s sad just like every part of the Decalogue is (as far as I know) but it`s very powerful in it`s minimalism.

Yuri Norstein, a Russian animator and animation director was the evil mastermind behind this cartoon. If you haven`t seen the "Hedgehog in the fog" you`ll have no idea what this is all about, but here you have a cartoon that for the most time looks like it was a moving picture by a great artist and not just a collection of images out of a comic book. Would you like me to tell you the storyline? I`d do that in a second if I knew where to begin. First, there`s a little wolf that watches everything and steals a piece of paper from a poet, but that paper turns into a baby. Then there`s girl playing with a bull. Then there`s a fisherman. There`s a baby feeding from his mom`s breast. But it all doesn`t make much sense. Oh, I forgot about a little boy eating an apple and dreaming of himself sitting on a trea and sharing his apple to crows. Damn, does this sound weird. I bet you didn`t get the story. Well, in that case you got it. It`s beautifully animated, it`s totally strange, it`s what soviet animation sometimes was like and its what American animation rarely managed to be. It`s ART.

Stanley Kubrick directed "The Killing" as one of his first major films. In my humble opinion this isn`t the grandmasters best moment, although it isn`t particulary bad as well. For example, this film inspired "the Reservoir Dogs" by Quentin Tarantino, and that says a lot. A group of people decide to rob the money from horse racing, and for that they use local workers, a professional sniper, a fight instigator, and lots of other stuff. Everything so to say goes great until the moment, when the money is in the hands of the robbers, for trying to get it all for themselves they fail. Most of them die except for one man and his girl who take the money to an airport trying to leave the country but this last plan also fails because the suitcase opens and all the money blows in the wind. So it goes, Kurt Vonnegut would say. For a crime/action film this is a nice entertaining piece, for Stanley Kubrick - it`s nothing particulary special.

Michael Moore is the director of "Bowling for Columbine" and in this film he still shows his documental style to criticize American government, and George W. Bush in person. Of course, Moore isn`t particulary neutral, you can simply feel how much he hates GWB and how much support he puts into the democratic party thus showing that there`s a choice between good and bad in the states, and I can`t really aprove it. But what the film shows is some cool things - starting from 2001/9/11, switching into the war in Afganisthan, over to Iraq and to Bushes interests in the Saudi Arabia - a country which brought Osama Bin Laden to the world. This film certainly is controversial, and it didn`t win the palm at the Cannes film festival for no reason, but in comparison to the Bowlind movie it isn`t extremely strong, for it lacks the horrorous feeling of watching something unexpected. Most of these things Moore shows in this movie are already known to a wide audience, and for me in person. But what was good - it was an American soldier singing "Fire Water Burn" by the Bloodhound Gang as a patriotic piece of music in order to keep the spirit of the soldiers up.

Ed Bloom was a mysterious man that told different strange stories to the people surrounding him and especially to his son. But when he grew up the young Will Bloom didn`t believe in anything his father told him anymore, be it a village where nobody wears shoes or be it a man in the size of a mountain. But when analysing his fathers tales more through out Will understands that they aren`t completely imagined, that there are facts which they are based upon but every storyteller adds a bit spice to his tales so they would be less boring. And Will learns to understand, what a really amazing person his father was and on his fathers dying bed he understands that it is up to him to keep the good name of the storyteller, or something like that. In the end we see the heroes of his fathers stories coming to his burial, and here they are - the giant is big but not huge, the twins aren`t siamese, but that doesn`t change the fact that Ed Bloom was a man of a great value, and that is what his son needed to learn. I enjoyed watching this film, as it has some interesting imagery, it is a fairy tale, that`s true, but how can you not love a fairy tale as beautiful as this one?

Woody Allen directed this little film here. The film isn`t only short in minutes but it also doesn`t show no big events, no showbiz` glamour, a very moderate and personal film this is. The action takes place in the dawn of the 20th century at a house in the country where three couples spend a vacation. There`s Andrew - the crazy goofy inventor (played by Woody himself) and his wife Adrian. There`s Maxwell - Andrew`s friend, donjuan, doctor, who has never lost a patient - got a few of them pregnant - but never lost one, together with his latest victim. And there`s an old doctor of philosophy Leopold together with Ariel - Andrew`s crush from the days of his youth. Falling in love, physical lust, you know how it goes. All men go crazy after Ariel, while Adrian tries to improve the her sexual with her husband (their marriage is referred as good but not working), Dulcy (Maxwell`s chick) seduces the professor and while making love to her, he dies. Of course, it sounds a bit like a soap opera, and it`s what it`s meant to be, and it`s what life is.

Macca wasn`t young back in 1991 when this set was recorded and it`s a thing you can surely tell. Among all those not so young musicians who love to perform songs they originally performed when they were much younger Paulie surely ain`t one of the best. Never having been a particulary great live performer he has only become worse over the time. He can`t sing that good anymore, which can be felt on tracks like "Blackbird", "And I love her" and others. Since all the material is performed in a somewhat unformal atmosphere one shouldn`t probably bother about the actual quality of all this stuff but man does he suck in comparison to Eric Clapton`s or even Nirvana`s unplugged.