For some time, The Informant! appeared to be a movie from the same family as Erin Brockovich (Soderbergh’s again) – an exploration on corporate wrongdoing and the role of a conscious individual in exposing it. But at one point, the conscious individual in question – Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, a real-life high-ranking executive on the giant agricultural business corporation ADM – starts acting kinda weird… And the movie goes in a completely different direction. Corporate greed is just a part of it, but it’s more a movie about Whitacre himself – a funny, bipolar, even maniacal man with an honest devotion to the truth but an even more powerful obsession with lying. Whitacre is so fascinating that I was dragged in simply following his crazy path, juggling with secret listening devices, hidden cameras, his fellow executives, Japanese and French partners whose price-fixing practices he is trying to expose, and several layers of FBI professionals who build their case on his good will and watch it unravel as his own lies come tumbling out in the open. So the morals of The Informant! are not as straightforward to decipher, and by the end it’s much more difficult to say what(…)

“I want to make movies like the ones I used to like”. That’s what Peter Bogdanovich said shortly after completing his second feature, The Last Picture Show. He was 31 at the time, and had just achieved a feat to be respected. The Last Picture Show looks like a movie made in the 1930’s, due the choice of black&white as opposed to color. And due to the simple, even naive shot selection and montage. It’s like a classic created with the purpose of being a classic. The movie sat in my computer for several months, and I was somehow not attracted to watching it, until last night. And I saw it immediately after a very new and “quirky” American indie, World’s Greatest Dad, which aimed to be original (with some degree of success), but left me unmoved when I was supposed to give in to emotions. Just the opposite to the second movie of the double-bill night. Bogdanovich’s film has this star quality, this sense of timelessness and depth that is very difficult to find in modern films. The characters live in a very ordinary world, and are very ordinarily bored and lost and prematurely wasted. But they are larger(…)

Interestingly enough, I watched through this entire movie thinking I was seeing Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. Soderbergh’s film was released an year later, in 2009, and I’ve no idea who borrowed ideas from whom, if at all… but apart from unsuccessfully straining to recognize Sasha Grey (who plays the main part in The Girlfriend Experience), I had no doubt I was watching a Soderbergh film. Pietrobruno’s GFE has the same structural boldness and self-referential elements as Full Frontal, for instance. Made as a fiction-documentary, or better said, documentarised fiction, it centres on the dissolving life of a man obsessed with paid sex. In particular, with an expensive provider of special sex+emotions services, known as girlfriend experience (GFE). Pietrobruno has a background in documentary film editing, which probably explains to some extent the assuredness with which she tackles the unorthodox narrative form. The movie is interspersed with fake “re-enactments” – episodes in which the main character, Daniel, plays himself, while another actress plays the part of Adrian, his GFE love interest. So you get an actress playing the role of another role played by another actress… sounds a bit too complicated, but it’s basically a movie within the movie, and(…)

So, how far is a director’s responsibility supposed to go? Is one supposed to try to satisfy everybody’s tastes, expectations and moral orientation? I think these questions probably have more to do with Tarantino than with any other active director. The guy gets glorified, but then he gets slaughtered too. From what I’ve heard from him, he is smart enough to generally stay away from commenting back on the innumerable attempts to dissect his greatness/lameness. Maybe this is not only the best approach, but the single one he can have. You will never make the entire world happy, so you’d better just keep your mouth shut, and stick to making movies.

Tarantino’s latest, Inglourious Basterds, is no exception to the rule – the movie is adored and hated. I quite enjoyed it. Even more – coming out of the theatre, I thought “This will be an all-time great.” I’m no movie critic – when I write, I only do it to try to understand a movie better (hmm, this actually might make me a critic, I don’t know). I haven’t read or studied enough of film history or film philosophy or film aesthetics. So after I see a movie, I(…)

Tarantino once considered releasing Kill Bill as one whole movie, playing it as two two-hour parts with an intermission between them. He decided against this idea though. My own intermission lasted for several years, and as I watched Kill Bill Vol.2 a couple of nights ago, I had to strain to remember some of what happened in Vol.1, or even guess what must have happened during the previous stages of The Bride’s revenge quest. Anyway, I suppose separating the two parts as physically independent movies was a good decision by the director, as Kill Bill Vol.2 holds its own as a film of its own. Of course, it’s best to make sure you start at the beginning and see Vol.1 first, so that you get familiar with the intentions of this double header as a tribute to genres and pieces of cinema history that Tarantino has been in love with for all of his life… and as an attempt to create a mythical world that feeds on the classics but has a distinct personality and a life of its own.

I am one of the people who like the vignette style of Tarantino. Many slate him for various reasons, but(…)

Mr. Stone delves into the biopic genre once again. Third US president movie, first one on a president still in office. Starting with the technical impressions – the camerawork is very good. I quite enjoy the hand-held style, and here it’s accomplished, sharp, loose but at the same time spot-on with framing and emotional impact. I know this is to be expected in a big Hollywood production, but it still gets me… Speaking of big, this movie actually wasn’t that big – another project Stone was working on disintegrated, so he jumped into W. and completed it with a relatively low budget and a short shooting schedule that was aimed at premiering before last year’s presidential elections in the States. With this in mind, one might presume the film was designed as an electioneering, pro-Dem tool, but if anything, it’s actually the opposite. I loved the approach in trying to show Dubya in human dimensions, and in building his character as one that is very active, very motivated, and, in a way, very distanced from the popular preconception of him as a puppet with no personal will. On the contrary, Bush Junior is always the one taking the major decisions,(…)

I guess it’s quite safe to say any movie with Daniel Day-Lewis in it is a treat for eyes and mind. Respect to the man for taking his time with choosing every project he gets on, doing his research, not sparing his body and psyche anything… and above all, for his undeniable talent. There Will Be Blood… now he’s Daniel Plainview, an early 20th century business animal, tapping into the oil industry that is just starting to burgeon…a strong-willed, cunning and hard-boiled character, mercilessly pursuing the American dream, with all means allowed – or not – by law. That’s the facade I guess… but to me, his real, dramatic, inner conflict is with his responsibilities as a father to a boy he adopts after the real dad, a worker for Plainview in his early endeavours, gets killed under the oil rig. It’s not the last death or heavy injury sustained in the rough reality of the oil business, through which Plainview navigates his way with a bull’s determination. A driven man, he seems to have in him this little grain of humanity and tenderness, that is visible only in the scenes with the little boy. After another bad accident on(…)

I somehow missed all the hype surrounding Cloverfield… the smart trailer, inspired by Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, the mysterious nature of the force set on destroying The Big Apple, the online discussions, the origins of the film title, it being a J. J. Abrams project, the debut, the top dollar, the unusual point of view (the traditional monster flick – inverted)… So last night I asked Kalo and Rash if it was a good night-time, alone-at-home movie. They confirmed. So I watched. And they were right.

A simple, great fact to start with – it’s only about one hour and 20 mins long. As a true American would say: awesome! That’s a novelty in itself. And one good reason why it’s a good night-time movie – there is a lesser chance you would fall asleep. Another good reason might be the way it’s shot – seemingly through a hand-held camcorder all the way through (actually many cameras were used, some 25 klios heavy, but trust me, it doesn’t show). So if you put aside believability issues like how come the battery lasts for hours, and how come the filming character never quits filming, while all hell breaks loose… well,(…)

За Кабирия доскоро бях само чувал, най-вече покрай професор Делчев, за когото това ми се струва е любим филм…как иначе да си обясня, че кръщава свои творби на филма на Фелини. Ако Амаркорд ме разхвърля в различни посоки и ме остави малко объркан, а La Dolce Vita стилно и тежко претовари сетивата ми, Нощите на Кабирия беше едновременно лек и вълнуващ. Лек – вероятно защото Кабирия (съпругата на Фелини, Джулиета Мазина) играе като или поне напомня Чаплин, а лентата сякаш е нарочно, макар и почти неусетно забързана, т.е. навява на комедия от предвоенни години. А вълнуващ най-вече заради наивизма, който споделяш с героинята,

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