Ella MaCay (2025) is about a female politician, likely a Democrat, who is smart but also harried and dissatisfied in her relationships with other people. Probably it could have been shaped into a palatable movie, but no: it’s insipid, dopey, sentimental, and pushy. James Brooks didn’t know what he was doing.
Would that Woody Allen were a major film artist. It would be good to have some artistically successful American comedies about how we live now, and that is not what Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, from 1986, is.
To begin with, it takes a long time for any of the movie’s humor to make us laugh (to make ME laugh, anyway, but I can’t imagine anyone finding the first 45 minutes of this film funny). Further, Allen is pathetically sloppy at writing dialogue, which is often thin and banal. And not all of the acting is good: Mia Farrow and Max von Sydow are dull, Allen himself dreadful. Finally, the film, though a comedy, is unpersuasively and even ludicrously optimistic. Michael Caine stops obsessing over and pursuing Barbara Hershey, and an infertile Allen actually impregnates Dianne Wiest!
Hannah and Her Sisters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
While viewing it, I was afraid the 2025 Paul Feig film The Housemaid would present a cruel, and thus grim, ending; but not so. In fact it was sort of inspiring. A thriller, the pic is adapted from a best-selling novel, and it itself is a smash hit. It deserves to be. It’s a dramatic dreadnought starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (both excellent) and Brandon Sklenar (good). It’s unerringly photographed by John Schwartzman. Not without nudity, not without Nina’s breast pump, Housemaid is plainly sensual. BTW, one reason I believe the film is so popular is that the eroticism in it is strictly heterosexual, not gay. Bon appetit!
The animated film Robot Dreams‘ world of humanoid animals contains Dog—a dog—who is lonely in New York City and so purchases a humanoid robot to become his friend. It is not unlike having an AI girlfriend. The two have a great time together, but loss begins to beckon. . . Directed by Pablo Berger, the longish movie is a 2023 Spanish-French production, very agreeable. It’s patently charming to see a baby bird looking at the robot for advice or encouragement as mother bird teaches it to fly. Or when a lollypop-sucking raccoon works assiduously to repair busted-up Robot by adding parts to it. Except for a comic scene where there are obscene gestures, RD is a family film (not a mere children’s film), with a likable story and some pathos.
Dark Blue World (2001) is a Czech World War II film with a nifty story and well-known themes. The dramatis personae includes Franta, a Czech pilot imprisoned by the Communists of his homeland because he fought German aircraft for the RAF and is now feared to be dangerously pro-freedom.
Flashbacks to the Forties exhibit Franta and his best friend Karel leaving Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for England in order to join the British armed services, and after a number of months they and other Czech pilots are allowed to fly missions. One of them leads to Karel having to bail out of his plane and meeting an English lady whose soldier husband has been missing in action for a year. Karel, liking her, puts the moves on Susan, the lady, but she is unattracted to him. As it happens, she wishes to ease her loneliness with nice Franta, who, though he knows of Karel’s love for Susan, acquiesces. The missing husband is forgotten.
What all this means is that Franta mistreats his best friend even after Karel valiantly saves Franta’s life in an air battle. When the truth about Franta and Susan becomes known, the friendship dies; Karel is unforgiving. There is, though, an instance of magnanimity which I must be sufficiently decent not to disclose. After the war Franta, the lost soul, returns to a different Czechoslovakia. It appears the pilot’s purgatory is right around the corner since he suffers in a Communist prison. 1951 is when Czech pilots like Franta were set free from the prisons, although the film tells us they perforce lived as outcasts. In truth, Dark Blue World honors them.
The movie was directed by Jan Sverak and written by Zdenek Sverak. Ondrej Vetchy, as Franta, is capable of force but has an easy manner. Krystof Hadek displays boyish anger and purity of heart as Karel. With now womanly good looks Tara Fitzgerald (Susan) is compellingly grave and as English as they come.
Dark Blue World (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
