Matty

Fat Front is a wonderfully (body) positive time-lapse documentary about four young women from Denmark, Norway and Sweden who have accepted their bodies (or are on the right path to acceptance) and have decided to use them as their main weapons in fighting against fat shaming and objectification of (female) bodies. Like its main characters, the film does not evaluate or judge anyone and it certainly does not celebrate being overweight. If you feel comfortable with your weight, then it’s okay to be fat (an adjective to which the women in the film want to return its neutral meaning, so that it is not derogatory, but rather descriptive of a characteristic – just as when we say that someone is tall). While it is true that being fat is not healthy, spending a lifetime rejecting oneself and escaping into isolation because you want to avoid judgmental/disgusted looks from others is no better. This mainly involves people not being stigmatised and having to feel bad just because they do not conform to the contemporary, historically varying ideal of beauty (see, for example, the plump bodies in Baroque paintings). Though individual self-acceptance is fine, disdain for fat people, which creates numerous material and mental barriers (for example, the perception of a fat person primarily through the prism of his/her weight rather than character), is based on the social mindset, which takes a long time to change. Thanks to the number of situations depicted, the documentary makes it possible to understand in greater depth the struggles faced by overweight people, to see the world through their eyes and not to view them from the outside as victims deserving compassion. The film offers a history of the Fat Underground movement, childhood sexual harassment (leading to a major disturbance of one’s relationship to his/her own body), regret for wasting many years of one’s life waiting to lose weight and to be able to live a “normal” life, the ambivalent role of social networks, which offer, in addition to verbal bullying, a sense of acceptance by the broader community ... there are a lot of things to unpack, perhaps too many to cover in ninety minutes, but that is understandable in the case of a film that addresses such a multifaceted theme (or rather as one of the first to approach it without the usual clichés), and it’s a great thing that it does. 80%

In its reconstruction of 19th-century life and visual style of old films, The Lighthouse is an unprecedented curiosity made with great care and, in one view, makes perhaps as much sense (and is thus as carelessly blind) as a drunken sailor who has read Moby Dick and a few paragraphs of Greek mythology (particularly the story of Prometheus) and psychoanalysis (you reach the id only after pacification of the controlling superego). The plot stands on water, the relationship between the two men on alcohol. Instead of drama or any character development, there is only the building of an atmosphere which, in the end, leads to nowhere and serves no purpose; it is not legitimised by any unifying theme to which the film would adhere. It simply just is. The vagueness, eccentricity and signs of cognisance of the film’s pulpiness give the impression of being an intentional act on the part of the screenwriter, an attempt to sell a simple, self-regarding horror story to dramaturgs of A-list festivals. When everyone finds something in a film, that does not necessarily mean that there is actually something to be found in it. Due to the degree to which it depends on its two actors and sound effects, I would rather see The Lighthouse in the form of an absurdist stage play in which the riveting acting performances could overcome the terrible repetitiveness, predictableness and utter lack of flow. 55%

Director Bing Liu spent twelve years filming two of his friends from the skateboarding community as they grew up and attempted to come to grips with roles for which they were not prepared. For Zack, a life test comes in the form of the birth of his son. Keire, six years younger, is forced to take on a more responsible attitude following the death of his father. In parallel with the trajectories of their lives, we see the transformation of their relationship with the filmmaker, whose own family history has an impact on the shooting process. Despite the many intoxicating intermezzos in which the protagonists indulge in skateboarding, this bumpy ride is not a film about skateboarding, but primarily about the effort to overcome economic and social constraints and to enter adulthood as a self-confident and independent person who will not be limited by his class, family relationships or race. Minding the Gap is an intimate, intelligently constructed film that retains an element of lightness despite the gravity of the topics that it addresses. 90%

Not long after Greta Gerwig, another American actress associated with mumblecore, Olivia Wilde, demonstrated her directorial talent. In their debuts, which were patterned on films in which they had previously acted, both directors offer a humorous, sincere and casual look at a girl’s coming of age. While Gerwig's Lady Bird was an unpretentious, unsentimental indie comedy, Booksmart offers a less introspective and more stylised, though equally truthful portrayal of the uncertainty and concerns of women at the threshold of adulthood. At the same time, this humorous, clever, fresh and confidently directed generational film is a timeless indictment of pigeonholes and pigeonholing that is informed by, among other things, earlier high-school comedies. 85%

This outwardly realistic conversational drama/gay romance about a chance encounter of two foreigners is gradually “coloured” as a narratively ambitious story about the spiralling passage of time and people condemned to repeat the same mistakes in their relationships. Fin de siglo is a very well-balanced film that works at the “basic” walk-and-talk level thanks to its natural actors, unforced dialogue and consistent style of long, uninterrupted shots in authentic Barcelona locations. It is thought-provoking, compelling and open to various readings. 80%

Another of Ken Loach’s angry social dramas, Sorry We Missed You reveals level by level why precarity of work is one of the worst symptoms of the current economic model. The uncompromising and deliberately frustrating conclusion evokes compassion and anger, the combination of which both arouses interest in those who are paying the highest price for maintaining neoliberalism and provokes action. Therefore, this is an important film and, together with the Irish drama Rosie, one of the best films that have been made on the topic of workers’ lives in recent years. 80%

In his belated feature-film directorial debut, former film critic and documentary filmmaker Kent Jones offers a sensitive character study of a working woman from a small city who forgets to take care of herself as you she takes care of others. With every scene, this long-resonating, stylistically unobtrusive film is remarkably rich in meaning. Diane relies on a highly subjective narrative, the director’s sense of detail and the deeply felt acting of Mary Kay Place, which strengthens our affinity for the main protagonist while contributing to doubtfulness with respect to her mental health. The film is also valuable due to the matter-of-factness with which it states that at the end of our life story, no major point will be revealed, but only death in loneliness. 80%

Stunning shots that are more truthful than those with which series like Planet Earth captivate us (though we could discuss the paradox that lies in the attempt to show devastation in a manner that makes it look beautiful above all else), but what purpose are they supposed to serve? The monotonous accumulation of information about how humanity has thoroughly screwed the planet intensifies environmental grief, the feeling of helplessness and apathy. Films showing what can be changed and issuing calls to action are more necessary than those that penitently repeat over and over again everything that we have done wrong as a civilisation. We already know that.

Though two and a half hours may seem excessive, Lake of Fire never starts to become boring, which is due to the abundance of exotics, freaks, racists, homophobes and bigoted “pro-life” Catholics who preach about how homosexuals roast new-borns on a spit. For the same reason, despite the effort to constantly shift perspectives rather than offer a serious treatise on a serious subject, the film is reminiscent of a hysterical freakshow without a concept (which is not very surprising in the case of a film from a director with no previous filmmaking experience), a mashup of best-of moments from the television news, where those who cry the loudest generally end up. What matters is not whether the given person’s opinion makes any sense and offers something new opinion, but whether it is sufficiently extreme and offensive. This also corresponds to the lack of interest in the deeper motivation for the given belief system. We predominately hear shouts ripped from their context (though it is clear that many of the film’s subjects would give the impression of being psychopaths regardless of how much additional information we may have about them). Only a few older white men, who may have several academic degrees, calmly present their arguments, but – pardon my language - they don’t know shit about what a woman goes through before having an abortion (it is remarkable, though not very surprising, that the “pro-life” group is composed predominantly of men who are most likely terrified by the fact that a woman could freely decide on existence or non-existence). Tony Kaye attempts to make his film as attractive, or rather as shocking as possible, so you sometimes wonder whether you are watching an advertisement, video clip or exploitation horror film, which is also supported by the choice of the “artistic” black-and-white format, which distances us from reality rather than bringing us closer to it (e.g. the sight of blood is more disturbing when you see it in colour). The most substantial element is his epic, though certainly not “definitive” treatise on the ideological war around abortion in the calmest and seemingly most mundane moments when, following the model of the Verist school, he quietly captures rather ordinary dialogue through which the film finally brings forth something significant (the physician’s conversation with Stacey). Regardless of the many reservations we may have with respect to his approach, which gives preference to strong emotions over reasonable discussion, this sixteen-year-old film is a respectable work and is again particularly relevant in today’s climate, when whinging white men with a narrow range of knowledge and low intellect claim to be the masters of the world. 70%

“This is only the beginning.” Transplant Schorm’s The Seventh Day, the Eighth Night into the Brazilian sertão, add tropicalism, Italian westerns and American B-movies (especially action and sci-fi), political satire, electronic music, extreme violence, a carnivalesque blend of disparate elements, the (Bakhtinian) logic of excess, grotesqueness and corporeality, the lack of differentiation between the categories of “high” and “low” art, a mix of social criticism and a utopian vision of a community that preserves the traditions of Brazilian culture and Udo Kier... and you will have only a vague idea of the truly strange nature of this film, which – like the village that serves as its title – rebels against the seamless fusion of different cultures. One of the most striking and refreshing yet, at the same time, most difficult-to-describe film experiences of the year. 80%