Reviews

A rather curious movie hybrid with the ideas, themes, allusions, and references to films such as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Meet the Parents, The Stepford Wives and Being John Malkovich. It is billed as a horror film, but it can be described as a very dark comedy with elements of fantasy, horror, and satire which focuses on racial relations in the modern United States.

I was impressed with the directorial debut by Jordan Peele. He skillfully created a restless, even creepy atmosphere during the scenes where nothing terrible happens. On the contrary, everyone is nice and smiling at the main character Chris, a handsome black guy, surrounding him with attention and seemingly taking him in as a potential member of the wealthy and liberal upper-middle class white family. They live in a beautifully manicured country estate and warmly welcome a New Yorker boyfriend of their daughter who brought him over for a weekend to meet her parents and brother. Everything seems fine, but there is clearly a strange tension, discomfort, awkwardness, possibly related to the gazes of the couple of black servants, the gardener and the cook. They obviously can't take their eyes off Chris and behave with either charmingly old-fashioned, or, perhaps, a little frightening politeness.

If you did not like the first movie, the second one will not work for you either, but if you're a fan of ABBA songs and don't mind stepping into the same waters a second time, my, my, how can you resist it? The film unfolds in two parallel time spaces. Thirty years ago, Donna Sheridan, the protagonist of the first film and the original musical, is a young and beautiful Oxford graduate and lead singer of the pop group Donna and the Dynamos. She is traveling in Europe, looking for her special place on earth. Along the way, she meets three attractive young men, one of whom will become the father of her daughter Sophie. Nowadays, 25-year-old Sophie is restoring an old hotel on the island of Kalokari, the greenest and most picturesque island in Greece.

Like the first ABBA film, the sequel is bright and colorful, with ABBA songs sounding almost non-stop. Old friends will gather for a holiday. One of the best songs of ABBA "Fernando" will receive a worthy performance by a famous star who will turn out to be Donna's mother and Sophie's grandmother. At the end of the film, two memorable scenes will follow each other. One is sentimental but very touching and the last one is a final parade, where, indeed, all the characters from both movies, young ones and their grown-up alter egos participate in dancing and singing.

Both movies are good to watch in winter - they are warm and cozy. Expect from them no more and no less than they can give you - songs, dances, bright extravagant clothes, blue sea, cute characters, great actors who have nothing special to play, but who cares? They were on vacation and had a fun time that they generously shared with us.

Trent Reznor was born to write this song, Johnny Cash to sing it, and Mark Romanek to film it. " Bono, vocalist of the rock band U2

The author's interpretation of the song "Hurt" by Trent Reznor, founder and leader of the industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails, overwhelmed with the despair of the protagonist. He was lost in the drug fog of the "empire of dirt", crowned with a "crown of s**it" and causing himself physical pain, which became his only connection with reality. A huge screen was installed on the stage, onto which gloomy scenes of death, horrors of war, and nuclear bomb tests were projected. The triangular head of an unblinking serpent staring into the camera, zoomed in on the full screen, was eerily approaching. The fantastic bird completely swallowed a huge fish underwater. The decaying process of the fox's corpse was scrolling from end to beginning. Projector light caught Reznor's figure out of the darkness, and ominous hypnotic visions seemed to spill onto the screen from the underworld of his subconscious.

When Johnny Cash decided to record "Hurt" for his new CD, Trent Reznor was not sure of the success of the idea, although he was flattered by the attention of the legendary country singer to his work. But when Reznor saw and heard for the first time the video clip of Mark Romanek, filmed according to the version of Cash, he was moved to the core. Cash's interpretation of his most personal song, written in a period of loneliness and hopelessness, from the very first guitar chords caused tears in the eyes of the rock star, goosebumps, and a lump in his throat. Reznor recalled that he had suddenly realized that "Hurt" no longer belonged to him alone and experienced a feeling close to the loss of someone he loved. His song, reinterpreted by a musician from another era in a genre far from industrial rock, did not just recreate the original meaning, pain, and regret. It burned with the piercing sincerity of a person who managed to make someone else's song his own.

Johnny Cash's life unfolds in front of the viewer in the alternation of documentary shots of the past and images that captured him as 71 years old, during 2002 filming, at the end of his journey. The 4-minute video captures the story of a "man in black" who always played by his own rules, balancing on the edge of a ring of fire. A deeply devoted believer and sinner, stubborn and rebellious, he lived a bright, stormy life with creative triumphs, loud fame, love, but also an unequal struggle with drug addiction, pain inflicted on himself and others, a heavy burden of guilt, and irreparable losses. A special acuity to the performance came from the confessional manner of Cash. It was filmed in the house where he lived for more than 30 years with his beloved wife, singer June Carter Cash. She lovingly looks into the aged face of her husband and listens attentively to his cracked voice, summing up the past years.

By changing just one word in Reznor's song, Cash goes beyond the original design. He grieves about the futility of worldly achievements, and because everything passes and nothing can be changed. The singer reflects on the transience of life, on the immensity of death, on the Ozymandian collapse of arrogant ambitions, on the decline of the genre. Endless sorrow, search and disappointment, subtle observation, and wise sorrowful generalization all intertwined in the song. He would give everything to turn back time, correct mistakes, heal the pain caused to loved ones, but he was trapped in his own "empire of dirt", weighed down by a crown of thorns, which he placed on himself. A lonely keyboard note begins to sound like a disturbing dissonance. It repeats itself over and over again. Nearer. Louder. More persistent. Like the monotonous deafening blows of a hammer driving nails into the cross of the crucifix, into the lid of the coffin. As if fate, knocking on the door, lifted the veil over the future in front of the singer, and he saw that in three months after the completion of the shooting of "Hurt", death would take his beloved June. Where he would survive her by only four months. Where their house, filled with memories, will burn to the ground in a fire a few years later, marking the irrevocable departure of an entire era.

Johnny Cash's swan song, written not by him, ends with a heartfelt, mournfully enlightened shot. The aged musician slowly lowers the lid of the white piano, gently touching it with the fingers of his tired hands. The inevitable farewell to the most precious in life - music, love, home, becomes his litany, his requiem, and monumentum aere perennius.

The hauntingly sad melody of a tenor saxophone sounds over a littered alley in America's loneliest city in sync to the steps of an unkempt man in a long baggy coat. His name is Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke). He is a private detective from Brooklyn but not very successful. Most likely, Harry never heard of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita", otherwise he would have grinned skeptically at the title of the very first chapter, "Never Talk to Strangers." How would he find a client and get the job done if he doesn't talk to strangers? Such as a wealthy, sophisticated, and mysterious businessman named Louis Cypher (Robert De Niro). One fine day, Cypher made him an offer, which Harry did not refuse. The businessman tasked the detective to track down a once-popular singer named Johnny Liebling, aka Johnny Favorite, who disappeared without a trace many years ago. The businessman signed a contract with Johnny which the latter did not fulfill. The contract must be closed, and for this Cypher needs to find out what happened to the former pop star.

Several features distinguish "Angel Heart" from many similar films with a sensible private investigator who undertakes an undefined mission and immediately encounters corpses lining his path. The director Alan Parker successfully combines elements of classic noir films, such as dark lighting, cynical characters, hopeless intonation, and a fatalistic plot with a modern vision, which gives the picture its uniqueness. The atmosphere pulls in from the beginning to the last shot, which is helped by the soundtrack. It includes not only blues and jazz compositions but also a human heartbeat in the background that raises the level of tension in many scenes. Parker realistically portrayed the era of the 50s, not exaggerating the importance of details, but not in any way ignoring them. The careful composition reveals in each frame only what is necessary at the given moment to return later in a shocking flashback and reveal the full picture of what happened and how. The contrasts between windy winter streets, alleys, and avenues of New York Boroughs and hot New Orleans fit the story because climate change and setting reflect the beginning of Angel's true understanding of the case he is investigating, of himself and his own role in what is happening now and what happened many years ago.

Landscape filming, built on the screen opposition of two cities, penetrates at the visceral level. Gray and slushy New York in early January is freezing to the bone. When the investigation brings Harry to wet, stuffy, witchcraft New Orleans and its suburb of Algeria, the center of the ancient pagan cult of Voodoo, it is difficult to breathe and you wish for the rain that will clear the air, wash away the dirt from the broken asphalt of the streets, drown out the agonizing questions that persistently sound in the brain like the echoing beats of someone's heart, and will bring peace to the suffering soul. And the rain will come. A real tropical downpour, like the biblical flood. It will break through the leaking ceiling in a cheap hotel room and turn into streams of blood that will flood a squalid little room that has become a haven for two strangers, Harry Angel and Epiphany (Lisa Bonnet), a young Louisiana woman who might be a key to the secrets of the past. Tangled in a passionate embrace, they found each other for a moment in the labyrinth of other people's memories, blood, lust, betrayal, and death. But the rain will not bring purification nor hope. It will only plunge even deeper into the atmosphere of a nightmare with its unpredictable logic and the inability to wake up.

Following a cyclical rhythm, "Angel Heart" again and again returns to the same point. Shutters slam, fans growl, an elevator rumbles, heartbeats become more frequent, flights of stairs diverge into endless heights and transcendent depths, and there is always a figure in black on the bench that will never reveal the face. All of this evokes a sense of uncertainty of what is happening and the subtly enveloping ominousness that the viewer experiences along with the detective, who is desperately trying to close the case. Mickey Rourke is superb as Harry. Deprived of ambition, not caring about how he looks, unshaven, shaggy, with puffy eyes, awkward, but inconceivably charming with an amazing, slightly shy smile, Harry Angel is sympathetic from the first appearance. Rourke brings true emotions to the character of his hero: frightening, scared, distraught, or resigned, he is always realistic, and you sympathize with him to the end, even when Harry Angel discovers the true nature of his investigation.

The sinister tone of the movie is set by Robert De Niro with sharp long polished nails, a pentagram ring, fine manners, a slight grin, and elegant black suits. De Niro must have had a lot of fun preparing for the role of Messier Cypher: a neatly trimmed black beard, long hair slicked back and pulled into a bun at the back of his head, lighting and makeup tricks make him an uncanny Martin Scorsese's doppelganger. Considering what we eventually learn about Mr. Louis Cypher, this is a very peculiar and controversial dedication to the beloved director and close friend of the actor. At the same time, this is one of the manifestations of humor that is constantly present in a film which is anything but comedy.

A mystical thriller, allegorical parable, and horror film, Angel Heart is a bright, talented, and timeless exercise in the style and synthesis of cinema genres, in which Parker and his actors give their best, and the bold imagery keeps captivating even if you guessed pretty quickly where the investigation would lead Harry. Long after the old rumbling elevator leaves the lonely passenger at the final stop after an endless descent, the fan, the embodiment of inevitability, sighs heavily in the final revolution, and the beating of the human heart that accompanied the entire film subsides, the viewers will not be able to shake off dark magic of the film. They will reflect on the duality of human nature, on the endless struggle of the forces of light and darkness for the possession of the soul, on the roads that we choose, but which, in fact, choose us. They will think about the price that one must pay for the chosen path. About contracts that no one has the right to violate, the offers that are so hard to refuse, and about strangers from whom you need to run without looking back. But where to?

Dreams of becoming the great jazz drummer seem bring Andrew (Miles Teller) to the prestigious east coast conservatory where he catches attention of the celebrated but fearsome instructor and conductor Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons), who invited Andrew to join the school jazz band.

Critics and viewers alike praise Whiplash to the high heaven. It was nominated for five Oscars including Best picture and received three, with predictable best supporting role award for J.K Simmons as evil sadistic manipulative bully-jazz band conductor who thrives on terrorizing the students players, especially the main character, Andrew. It is not very often that my opinion about a movie would differ completely from the public opinion but the only impression I got in the end of the often-unwatchable Whiplash, that it proves an old joke: the best marriage is between a sadist and a masochist. They both get what they need but why has the viewer to suffer?

The movie is not very long and acting by J. K. Simmons and Miles Teller is excellent, - intense and selfless, but it is essentially the scene after scene of never stopping verbal, mental and physical abuse that take place during the student jazz orchestra rehearsals for upcoming competition. More than anything, it brings to mind the first half of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket with J. K. Simmons' Fletcher making Gny. Sgt. Hartman very jealous. While the Kubrick's movie was hard to watch, it was believable and true to the logic of the characters and the situations. The jazz boot camp in the prestigious music conservatory does not ring true neither as a realistic character study of obsession and pushing the limits in the pursuit of getting the dreams come true nor as an allegory of pure evil causing something good happen.

The film director/screenwriter Damien Chazelle based Whiplash on his own teenage experience as a member of the high school jazz band with very strict instructor but he did not want to make a realistic film. He wanted to carry on screen the feeling of dread that has haunted him for many years. Early on Chazelle gave Simmons direction that "I want you to take it past what you think the normal limit would be" telling him "I don't want to see a human being on-screen anymore. I want to see a monster, a gargoyle, an animal." Chazelle exorcised his own demons and most certainly succeeded in creating a pure evil. Yes, Simmons has never been better but what is the point of film? By pushing so much further, making Simmons' character a monster of manipulation, hatred and sadism, Chazelle stripped the film of humanity, of joy that creativity and music offer. It leads to a loss of interest in what was happening on the screen and looks more and more like a very bad dream or illustration in the psychiatry textbook. To call this movie "inspiring" is an insult to creative artistic people and their instructors, mentors, teachers. What could it possibly inspire?

Finally, the day has arrived and I can happily say that I have lived to see something that I almost lost my hope to see - a truly original, clever, beautiful, creative, funny and moving, modern American romantic comedy. Nothing is new in this world. It is impossible to come up with the new plot about love or possibility of love, or expectation of love or losing it but it is possible to look at the old story with a fresh eye and to make the movie as enchanting as 500 Days of Summer. The first time director Marc Webb has started on a very high note. His movie is charming (I know I use this word a lot but it describes 500 days perfectly). It combines many different techniques and succeeds adorably in following two leads and their 500 days of getting together and gradually drifting apart. Not often, I see the movie that makes me smile from the beginning to the end. I felt like that big silly grin was glued to my face and I did not mind at all. It is nothing Webb did that I have not seen before. He applies the broken narrative and jumping back and forward in time. His use of split screen technique creates the best scene in the film with many memorable scenes. He inserts a musical number that seems to come from a Bollywood movie and changes the real world into animation. Yes, we have seen this all before but together these tricks have mixed in something magical, delicately bittersweet and funny without being stupid, loud, vulgar, and pushy.

The big part of the magic is without a doubt an undeniable palpable chemistry between two leads, both known for their previous performances in the independent movies. Zooey Deschanel (Summer) was the best part of All the Real Girls (2003). As for Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Tom), now, eight years after 500 days of Summer, he has become one of the best actors of his generation.

Marc Webb's debut feature generated many positive reviews, and it deserves them. Time will tell if 500 Days of Summer becomes Annie Hall for the modern time. I believe it is that good. There were few things that I did not like very much, for example a clichéd smart-alecky rather annoying character of pre-teen sister of Tom. Nevertheless, the entire movie is so wonderful that I don't want to nit-pick and would recommend it highly.

P.S. Wherever you are, Jenny Beckman, I want to thank you for having inspired this movie.

Irina Palm is not the first or last movie about a middle-aged woman who would face the situation that requires to completely turn her life around and to make the choices and sacrifices she would never even imagine. What makes Irina Palm special is Marianne Faithful in the titular role.

The pop-culture legend and the muse of the legendary rock-musicians, the singer, the actor, the rare beauty, the symbol of swinging 60s, the center of media frenzy in her young days, the recovering drug addict, the 60+ years old cancer survivor and the grandmother of two, gives a brilliant Oscar worthy performance as Maggie/Irina, a 50 years old widow who desperately needs to find a job to help to pay for her beloved grandson medical bills. She throws herself into the movie, brings genuine emotions and humor to the rather grim and perverse story, and she owns the movie. Without her, it could have been just another small mildly interesting independent film with a quirky twist but she elevates it to the higher level. She is a fine actress and her performance as a loving grandma/reluctant sex worker with a magic touch is affecting, moving, funny, dignified, and memorable. Marianne Faithful and Yugoslavian actor Miki Manojlovic as Maggie/Irina's boss have the real chemistry together and make us believe that the mutual interest, understanding and attraction could exists in some very unlikely places, lead to love and (who knows) even happiness.

Quoting one of the greatest modern films, any time of the day is a good time for pie. Blueberry Pie. The Hong-Kong auteur Wong Kar-Way certainly thought so having made his first English language movie with the popular American desert playing an important role. My Blueberry Nights is a very beautiful, visually instantly recognizable Wong Kar-Way's picture even though his usual collaborator Christopher Doyle did not shoot it. Instead, Darius Khondji provided lush cinematography with lots of night shots and neon lights. The soundtrack is wonderful which is no surprise at all. Kar-Way was very impressed by the singer/songwriter's Norah Jones work and his idea was to make a movie around her voice, her songs and the mood that they create. He says that there is something exciting about her voice. It could be the blend of sensuality, melancholic longing, hidden passion, depth and obvious class that might have attracted the celebrated master of the modern romantic film. My Blueberry Nights is also a travelogue and the contribution of the Hong-Kong director to the American cinema. By his own words, he chose to make his American debut the road movie to learn more about America and to get to know her better.

The three stories of love lost, as the song in soundtrack confirms, have been told before. The main story concerns Elizabeth (Jones) who got dumped by her boyfriend and leaves the big city to get far away and to reinvent herself. She befriends Jeremy, the owner of the diner named "Klyuch", which means "the" key in Russian. He keeps the big jar on the counter where his customers would drop the keys for the ones they love to come back and start all over. Elizabeth's journey would bring her to Memphis, Tennessee, where she encounters the guy so crazy about his wife he could not let her go. Later, in Nevada, Elizabeth meets the gambler girl who longs to re-unite with her estranged father. The problem is not in the stories, anything but new, rather, in the simplistic, uneven and abrupt way they are told. In one of the scenes, Elizabeth says that sometimes things look better on the paper. Maybe it is the case with the film. There's nothing wrong with Wong Kar-Way's movie equivalent of Blueberry Pie. It's just... overly sweet and sadly, the impressive cast has not much to play. Perhaps, that's why the female characters in the movie were so forgettable even if played by Rachel Weitz entering the bar in slow motion and Natalie Portman in oversize sunglasses leaning against convertible. And with all due respect to Norah's talent as a musician, her acting debut was not memorable. On the other hand, David Strathairn's performance was impressive in spite of the short appearance and Jude Law was very likable as Jeremy. And there were Norah Jones' songs and the vistas of America the Beautiful as seen through the eyes of the most romantic modern filmmaker in his English language debut which is pleasant, good looking but simple, even silly and lightweight movie. It is very much akin to a first impression of the foreign tourist armed with all sorts of clichés who just started to explore the never seen before country.

I am proud to declare that I have seen (or thought that I have seen) every movie Woody Allen has been associated with, either as a writer, director or a star, very often all of the above. To my surprise, I realized just recently that I missed "The Front", very dark, rather tragic political dramedy about shameful part of the American history, the McCarthy-era Communist witch hunts with the blacklists that affected deeply lives of many Hollywood filmmakers, performers and writers. Creators of the film, director Martin Ritt; writer Walter Bernstein; and actors Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Lloyd Gough and Joshua Shelley knew about McCarthy-era from their own experiences. They were all blacklisers. Woody Allen who did not participate in directing "The Front" or writing the script delivers realistic and sympathetic performance as Howard, a small apolitical guy, rather a loser who wanted to help his friend, a blacklisted writer, by providing the front for the TV scripts with a little profit for himself to cover his own many debts. While doing so (and helping two more blacklisted writers), Howard soon realized how horrible, unfair and anti-human the blacklist situation was and he wanted to do something about it.

By reluctant pretending to be a writer, he becomes a popular and sought-after figure among the TV producers and actors and makes friends with the beloved TV comedian Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel) who was blacklisted because of the marching during the May Day parade in his youth many years ago. Howard witnesses firsthand the spiral fall of the man who lost everything he lived for because he was not allowed to do the very thing he was born to do - to perform on public, to entertain, to make people laugh. If nothing else, "The Front" introduced me to Zero Mostel, the very symbol of great comedian and the victim of the witch hunts in the 1950. Mostel effortlessly steals every moment he is in, and his last scene could make a stone weep.

If you are prepared for a comedy, The Front is most certainly not a regular one even though it's got quite a few jokes, the majority of which had to do with Howard (Allen) repeating that he was not a writer and could not even write a grocery list. Coming from a man whose next film would be "Annie Hall" that brought him two Oscars for writing and directing and who has received numerous awards and nominations for his work during several decades, especially, for screen writing, makes it for an excellent joke.

The film belongs to its time by giving very personal and honest account on what it was like to be on the notorious blacklist but it works fine for today audiences as well. It's been over 60 years since the dark times of the blacklists, the hunt for the dissenters, for those whose opinions, beliefs, preferences were different from the generally accepted but we all should know about the gross injustice that resulted in many broken lives and never let the dark era of paranoia, abuse of power, and hypocrisy prevail again.

"Beautiful girl and the unsolved mystery - good starting point for a noir film", mentions to the everyman Jonas, husband and father, the hero of "Just another love story", one of his friends, urging him to think twice before immersing into that mystery. And soon, the movie turns out as a thriller in the Hitchcock's and Coen Brothers' traditions with the main character taking the sudden choices in order to run from the stalled relationship that lost its initial appeal, from unfulfilling job, from life that leads nowhere to a romantic passionate love and exciting new possibilities.

Derivative - that's the word that majority of nay-sayers use when commenting on this film. But its writer/director Ole Bornedal does not hide throughout the picture that he has made a noir film, or, rather, Neo-noir: Danish style that characterizes by postmodernist self-reflection and consciously refers to the works of past and present. There are all ingredients here you would expect in a noir film: twists, turns, wrong or questionable choices the main character takes and where they would lead him. There are mysterious young woman with a dark past and a sinister stranger in bandages, gloomy deserted landscapes and long corridors with flickering neon lights. The scenes of killings and beatings are rather cruel and violent, erotic encounters - explicit, and the ending is thousands miles away from a Hollywood happy ending. But for Ole Bornedal, the creator of Just Another Love Story, the most important message that he wanted to convey to the audience was that everybody carries a dream and the need for a self-fulfillment in life - that life very rarely offers. His dark, violent, moody noir reflects on the wishes, fantasies, desires that seem have been lost as time goes on but never disappear and only wait patiently for a sudden spark to ignite them and to start unquenchable, all-consuming disastrous flames.

The film is over the top in its second part but by that time you have been already so involved in the story and glued to the screen that you are willing to forgive whatever problems and deep holes the plot has and how many films and books Just Another Love Story freely refers to. It could be described as Talk to Her While She Was Sleeping but remember not to mess with the Chinese Triads because this is No Country for Old Men. Ole Bornedal's neo-noir also brings to memory the mystery novels by French writers, the duo Boileau- Narcejac and Sébastien Japrisot. The former are the authors of the novels Les Diaboliques and Vertigo. Before they became the classics of cinema, they had been and still are highly popular books. "Trap for Cinderella" by Sébastien Japrisot tells about a young woman who has lost her identity due to amnesia in the fatal fire accident and does not remember anything that led to the disaster including the truth about being a murderer or a victim or both. The common feature of all mentioned novels and their screen adaptations is assuming somebody else's personality. But "No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main." And giving up your identity, pretending to be someone else, thus accepting their connections with this world however mysterious, sinister, dangerous those connections may be, inevitably leads to the devastating results. It is just a guess whether Bornedal is familiar with these books but the theme of Identity is the most prominent in his film, which is a riveting thriller, an impossible love-story, a social commentary on the middle-aged angst, as much as a philosophical meditation on the possibility/impossibility to live someone else's life, and accepting your own.

Time will tell whether Joel Edgerton joins the exclusive club of the famous actors turned talented and successful film directors or sticks to the acting career but his directorial debut, "The Gift", was a nice gift to the fans of the psychological thrillers in the Alfred Hitchcock's fashion or, rather, their new variety, "marriage thrillers" that follow the success of David Fincher's provocative Gone Girl. Edgerton, who gave a bravura performance in the fellow Aussie's, Buz Luhrmann's adaptation of Great Gatsby, hit the trifecta with writing the screenplay, directing, and producing The Gift, and also playing one of the three main characters.

Edgerton undoubtedly loves the good thriller and proves to know how to make one. The Gift starts with a married couple, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn Callen (Rebecca Hall), relocated from Chicago to a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood after Simon finds a new job outside the city that should propel him to the corporate heights. While out buying supplies for their new picture-perfect home, they run into Gordon "Gordo" Moseley (Joel Edgerton), a former high school classmate of Simon's who Simon claims to have completely forgotten about. Soon after, Gordo begins dropping in unannounced, usually when Simon is at work. He sends thoughtful housewarming gifts for the couple, neatly wrapped in the bright paper, with the bow attached, accompanied with nice handwritten card in the red envelope.

Without giving too much away, it should be said that whatever started as yet another retelling of the "Fatal Attraction" type story, turned out as the dissections of such ugly but persisting realities of life as bullying, human cruelty, unconscious desire for dominating that would start in someone's past and would cover all aspects and spheres of human communicating, including school, family, the workplace, and neighborhood. Main idea of Edgerton's film as shared by director himself during an interview is acknowledgment of one's past, admitting to the wrong doings in order to be able to build the future. But it brings a question: do we change as time goes by? Are we able to admit the guilt that went unpunished and to face the consequences? Can we predict to what extend will our words and deeds affect someone's life? Someone whom we won't even recognize if run across accidentally after many years?

Edgerton plays with the viewers' expectations and takes them to the unpredictable directions adding to the plot more layers and depths. The way he tells the story while building up the suspense and creating disturbing atmosphere is remarkable. He almost convinces the viewers that they could guess easily what would happen next yet when they expect it the least, he pulls the rug from under their feet. As a director, his use of the multiple glass surfaces is masterful. The heavily windowed houses in the nice South California area, Hollywood Hills, are as important to the plot as three main characters. Huge windows and glass doors seem to bring people closer but, at the same time, they stand as the walls of alienation and estrangement. Massive glass elements soon become gloomy threatening messengers of impending psychological horror which comes from the sins of the past that have not been acknowledged. Danger may lurk behind the misted glass door while you take a shower in the safety of your house. There is a silhouette disappearing in the air in the manner of Keyser Söze behind the thick matt glass doors in the hospital. The movie keeps surprising us by changing the viewpoints, by showing that what we see is not always what actually goes on in front of us. It makes us ask themselves, do we really know these closest to us, someone whom we think we share the intimate knowledge of ultimate closeness with.

One of the delicious surprises the movie provides is the characters development that drives the story and moves it in the different directions. Both, Rebecca Hall and Jason Bateman play real people, complex and alive, not just two-dimensional carton figures. Jason Bateman, especially, impresses by bringing out dark sides of Simon's confident, successful, charismatic persona. But the best gift Edgerton keeps to the very end. For the movie which important and repeated over and over image are nice wrapped gift boxes of the different sizes and shapes, the writer/director refuses to wrap up the ending and attach the colorful bow to it. The Gift's conclusion is open but strangely satisfying. What goes around comes around, and bygones don't want to be bygones.

La jetée (1961) aka The Pier is one of the best, poignant, and most unusual films ever made. The 28 minutes long collection of unbelievably rich, mesmerizing, still black and white images accompanied with the mourning score and sparse narration look inside your very soul while you look at them and they talk to you and reach to all your senses. This is correct - the film used a photo-montage technique but once stated watching, I was so enthralled that I did not think about technical part. The film is simple, poetic, philosophical, and profound. It is an anti war/post-apocalyptic science fiction documentary style and at the same time the ode to love, longing, and to power of memory.

Here is the paradox - how can documentary, made of the still black and white images tell the story that would influence every following film about time travel and be the true feast for mind and soul? Well, it has happened in La jetée, and while watching you forget what genre the movie belongs to because it defies the definitions of genres, and you just don't want it to end even though you know from the beginning that this movie will never have a happy ending. Like millions of fascinated viewers I ask myself how that much was achieved with so little. Like an unnamed protagonist of La jetée is marked for life with an unforgettable image from his childhood, the viewer is marked with the still images of the film, especially by only one animated image of awakening in the film that comes like a miracle.

I finished earlier this evening re-watching Terry Gilliam's excellent film Twelve Monkeys (1995) for which La jetée was the inspiration. Now when I saw both, I am sure that if it were not for the unspeakably sad, beautiful and moving short film of Chris Marker that suggests that "calling past and future may save the present" and provides the extraordinary emotional impact with the story of return to the most vivid childhood memories again and again, there would be no brilliant and dark visions of Twelve Monkeys. Both films are glorious in their unique way and should be viewed together to be appreciated fully.

It's been mentioned many times that A Serious Man (2009) is a retelling of the Book of Job. It very well could be - as only Coen Brothers could adapt the Biblical story to the screen. They placed Job, the Schlimazel of the Old Testament in Minnesota suburbia of their own adolescent. They named him Larry Gopnik, made him a physics professor in a local college, a nice, loving, and pious man, and let him watch hopelessly how his life was collapsing around him while he tried to make sense of what and why was happening to him and desperately sought after a spiritual help from his religious advisers, three rabbis - in vain. A Serious Man is not an autobiographical movie but it is set in the very atmosphere and spirit where two Coen boys grew up in the year 1967, the exact year Joel Coen turned 13 and was preparing for his own bar mitzvah - just like Danny Gopnik, 13 years old pot smoking Jefferson Airplane fan Larry's son whose Bar Mitzvah in the movie is a truly unforgettable event for many reasons. Now, as the experienced celebrated filmmakers who have proved (at least for this viewer) to be among THE best modern filmmakers, Coens look back at the place and time that shaped them as individuals, men, and creative personalities, and they ask eternal and often impossible to answer questions. Does life have meaning? What is the point of it? Or is there point at all? Why do bad things happen to a decent person who "did not do anything"? Is there any certainty in life or all we can do just accept the fact there is no explanation, no certainty, and no fairness, and the best is - "to receive with simplicity everything that happens to you."

I can understand how this film may be puzzling and even disappointing for many viewers even among the fans. A Serious Man is different and original even for Coens, always innovative and creative artists, but it is undeniably and unmistakably, their film, with their finger prints all over. Take for example the opening scene, the black/white prologue spoken in Yiddish and set somewhere in Eastern Europe back in the 19th or 18th century, in a small Shtetl. It involves a married couple and their mysterious visitor who could be a dybbuck, an evil spirit, believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. The scene certainly would stay with a viewer and make them try to understand its meaning. As one explanation, the husband and wife could be the ancestors of Larry Gopnik before his family immigrated to the USA and ended up in Minnesota. The encounter with the dybbuk could bring the curse to the future generations, and that may explain all assortment of "tsuris" that poor Larry tries to deal with. Coen's explained that they wanted to include a folk tale to set the tone in the film that explores among many things Jewish traditions, religion, faith, and character. They could not find a tale they'd like, so they wrote one and made a very stylish, ominously dark yet funny and mysterious opening to their film. As a perfect balance to the fairytale/ghost story opening, the final scene comes that literally can blow you away. As it has happened before in a Coens 'movie , the open ending has as many admirers as haters but I believe it was no other way to finish the film, and I found the ending perfect in the universe that Coens create.

The brothers' decision to cast mostly unknown stage actors in the main roles, proved to be successful one, and everyone was up to their job. Michael Stuhlbarg positively shines as Larry and he makes one of the most sympathetic characters in Coens' movie. Sari Lennick, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed as a seriously creepy man whom Larry's wife Judith wanted to leave Larry for as well as the rest of the cast are all memorable. The camera work by Roger Deakins', the longtime collaborator of Coens in recreating the long gone era of the late 60s in the Middle of America is above any praise. A Serious Man is beautiful, profound, and perfectly well made. It is funny, too. Seriously.