On Window to Paris (which I’m not sure ever made it to DVD):

A Russian film, this, which came out in 1993 and which features a teacher affirming to his pupils, “You were born into a miserable, crooked, bankrupt country, but it is still your home.”  That is, post-Red Russia is still their home and, unlike Communist Russia, ought to be given a chance.  Paris, on the other hand, is not the Russian pupils’ home, just a dazzling locus the economically disadvantaged characters here happen to reach via a magical window in a St. Petersburg apartment building.  So, yes, Yuri Mamin‘s film is a comic fantasy, a very amusing one.  For me not all its humor works, but most of it does—and the movie as a whole works.

Mamin has purveyed a good story and intelligent concerns, and he knows how to direct.  It delights the spectator when those earthy Russians discover France’s prosperity, but it is worth remembering a point the critic James Bowman has made: that what these characters desire is “a way to enjoy the riches of the West at will, but then and always to return to dreary mother Russia.”  In other words, they want the impossible but, well, they’re only human and at least a love for mother Russia has never died in their bosoms.

(In Russian with English subtitles)

Well, the full title is Kick Ass 2 Prelude: Hit-Girl (2012), the second in the series of graphic novels by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.  

Hit-Girl is in the title since she—Mindy McCready—is the focus here: the young hero who calls himself Kick Ass takes a back seat.  And, no doubt about it, when I picked THIS up, I selected one hyperviolent, foul-mouthed publication; and the savage blowing-away of criminals is allied with a strong libertarian-conservative (both) outlook and anger.  When Dave, a.k.a. Kick Ass, unironically exhorts Mindy to watch TV shows about celebrities instead of Fox News—the better to get her to fit in with her peers—Mindy replies, “So how do I keep tabs on Obama and our record f–king deficit?”

There is nothing wonderful about the plot, but nothing wrong with the gutsy artwork either.  The book cover for Kick Ass 2 says it is “now a major motion picture” but, no, most of what appears here never made it to the screen.  It’s rougher and more felt than what’s in the adaptations.

Kick-Ass 2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every time he opens his eyes as big as saucers in 1945’s The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland performs in a mannered fashion, but it doesn’t prevent the film from being formidable.  It is a fine, non-signature Billy Wilder piece in which Milland plays a Renaissance man, a literate writer, who is relentlessly self-defeating because of alcoholism.  Don (Milland) is irascible and not really a charming drinker since it is always obvious he loves the bottle obsessively.

The ending is strictly Old Hollywood—Don should love Helen (Jane Wyman) enough to put his cigarette out in his glass of liquor, but would he?—but the movie survives it.  Wyatt, incidentally, is splendidly engaging.

The Lost Weekend (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I did not see The End of the Tour, Ex Machina, or Love & Mercy, but of those 2015 films I did see, here are the five best:

Two Days, One Night; Brooklyn; Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation; Spotlight; and Cinderella.

Honorable mention: Inside Out, Slow West, Furious 7, Phoenix. 

Matt Dillon‘s drug addict and thief in the 1989 film, Drugstore Cowboy, declares that no one can talk a junkie out of being a user.  The pic is so dark that apparently this includes the junkie himself: he is incapable of such a feat.  It is not so much the drug life DC‘s script is bleak about, although it is, as life itself, a vision director Gus Van Sant delivers with fey, carefree poetry and brittle humor.  It is the best Van Sant film I know of.  Only standard-issue acting emanates from Kelly Lynch and Heather Graham, but Dillon is outstanding.

Cover of Drugstore Cowboy