Alien: Romulus - 2024 - UK

Alien: Romulus - 2024 - 6/10

 
For Alien fans, this borrows from / plays homage to the whole franchise.
Including, as ever, Weyland-Yutani employees with the intelligence of sock puppets.
A large craft drifts toward a terraformed mining colony.
Overlooked by scientists & military, yet seen by young scavengers.
‘Hey, if there’s the tech gear on that, we might could escape this ole rock!”
The wayward craft turns out to be a huge research station.
And our plucky crew of scrap dealers land themselves into a dead teenager flick.
While this looks fantastic, the script is below derivative.
So much money lavished on a fan-service film.  Disappointing.

Strangled - 2016 - Hungary

Strangled - 2016 - 7/10
AKA - A Martfüi Rém

 
Réti stalks his girlfriend as she leaves the shoe factory, attempting to reconcile.
Not interested.  So he threatens her, smacks her, and the next morning her body is found.
After a few days of police interrogation he confesses and is sent to prison.  Case closed.
Except a few years later, a similar murder occurs.  Followed by another, then another.
Local police come under extreme pressure.
Communistic Hungary does not make mistakes!  There is no serial killer in Communistic Hungary.
In other words, investigators cannot let on there is a sex murderer loose.
Or that the State could possibly have made a mistake.
Political interference and restrictions enhance based-on-actual-murders series.

Son Of Saul - 2015 - Hungary

Son Of Saul - 2015 - 8/10

 
Hungarian film set inside camp Auschwitz during its gruesome height.
Told from the point of view of the Sonderkommandos, Jewish prisoners forced to assist the Nazis with “shepherding,” cleaning, and coverup.
One of the prisoners, when confronted with the death of a small boy, either has a breakdown or decides to act like a Mensch and give the child a proper Kaddish burial.
All manner of ugly things are ongoing in the background, out of focus or one only sees fragments.
One late night sequence is a harrowing view of living in Hell on borrowed time.
Interesting is the unseen order among prisoners, how they assist and blackmail each other.
Imaginative and fresh, dense with visuals.  Arresting sound design.

Dough - 2015 - UK

Dough - 2015 - 6/10

Contrived British comedy of Jewish bakery losing clients to relocation and the Reaper.
The Conservative baker has just lost his assistant to an expanding chain.
In desperation, he hires a young Muslim from Darfur as his apprentice.

 
Dynamics of old - young, Jewish - Muslim, small shop - big chain. mixed with calculated design.
The apprentice is also a low-level weed dealer who starts adding leaf to the dough.
The sleepy shop revives, though the old guy never notices green flecks in his bagels?!!
Pleasant, feel-good film, lacks believability.  Shot - not in London - but Budapest.
(Includes an intriguing trailer for a doc of Streit’s Matzos which went on my find-list.)

The Informant - 2022 - Hungary

The Informant - 2022 - 7/10
AKA - A Besúgó

 
Of all the luck.
1985.  Geri lands a scholarship to the university in Budapest.
On the train, alas, the secret police interrogate and soon blackmail him.
“You want medicine for your ailing brother?  You will infiltrate and spy on the pro-Democracy student group.”
Getting accepted by a wary group is one obstacle, dealing with a bullying handler is another.
Short Hungarian series mixes politics with mystery, psychological thriller with history.
Of the latter (history), a few Hungarian reviewers have mentioned that facts are a bit finessed.
Skillful blend of character types, most of whom one would encounter in any college.
Likewise student political activity, back then.  Lately, passions and protests have gone to dust.

Werckmeister Harmonies - 2000 - Hungary

Werckmeister Harmonies - 2000 - 7/10
AKA - Werckmeister Harmóniák

 
We follow our narrator / observer Janos around his village as a circus sideshow arrives.
The "show" consists of the carcass of a massive, stuffed whale, and an unseen ”Prince.”
Townfolk mill around, grumbling, discontent rising into fiery destruction.
I do not know my Hungarian history, but I will wander out on a limb and guess the whale represents a regime of sorts, and the Prince is a puppet figurehead.
Much of the conflict, late in the film, reminded me of the Bosnian War in the 1990’s.
Then there is Janos’ uncle, a creative soul (the intelligentsia) and the estranged aunt (the deal maker of rebellion).
A very heady film, where I was baffled numerous times, but never lost interest.

Kontroll - 2003 - Hungary

Kontroll - 2003 - 6/10

 
Loose narrative of shady ticket inspectors working Budapest subways.
They hunt an aerosol punk named Bootsie, as well as a hooded figure (resembles Banksy) who pushes passengers into oncoming trains.
Filled with dark humor and seedy nightlife, no office folks at all, let alone tourists.  Street people, pimps, alcoholics, bullies, lost souls.
Fairly accurate feel for the Hungarian underground, which is rightfully infamous among seasoned turistas. *
Inspectors cluster at main exits and generally target visitors.  There are always fines.
Worthwhile film, whether you’ve been busted in Keleti or not.

*  Note:  My bride was once busted in Keleti by ticket cops, I can vouch for the accuracy of this part of the story.

Félvilág - 2015 - Hungary

Félvilág - 2015 - 6/10
AKA - Demimonde

 
The wicker basket floats in the Danube.  Curious souls drag it ashore, open it, revealing a corpse.
Then … four days earlier …
A young girl, desperate, applies for a position as maid, cook, whatever.  She has no references.
Almost on a whim, she is hired, and enters a suffocating world.
The madam, once a courtesan at her peak, is now mistress to a powerful man, and her youth is fading.
She sees “something” in the girl, and despite the top maid’s warnings, the innocent follows into the cloistered world of cigar smoke, whisky tumblers, sheer lace, and discreet staircases.
Gorgeous film from Hungary, eroticism tightly restrained.

The Man From London - 2007 - Hungary

The Man From London - 2007 - 6/10

 
A railroad switchman catches a shady transaction that concludes in murder.
The killer disappears, as does the victim, yet the McGuffin bobs to the surface.  A briefcase, packed with English banknotes.
The switchman, sensing a life changing opportunity, takes the money.
Viewers either adored or loathed film.
Filmed in high contrast black and white, it strives hard to emulate Noir.
With maybe fifty lines of dialogue, this is almost a Silent film.
The pace is incomprehensibly slow.  Snail like camera pans, lingering on faces, expressions of stone.
Personally, I found this style mannered.
The story, based on Georges Simenon, is what drew me.  As adapted, it boils down to a trifle, a comatose trifle.

The Duke Of Burgundy - 2014 - UK

The Duke Of Burgundy - 2014 - 6/10

Maid bicycles up to the manor door. Waits. And waits.
The mistress of the estate finally opens the door with, “You’re late.”
Domination and servitude ensue, climaxing with passionate erotic grappling.
The tone is understated, muted, restrained. The color palette is dark. There are no males.
A group of females attend classes, hairstyles in tight buns, save for the mannequins in chairs.
Film is fraught with symbolism and “meaning” but it is heavy handed and lethargic.
Well crafted study of roles and power games, yet the resolution ebbed away and I ended up scratching my head, already forgetting threads and characters.

Budapest Noir - 2017 - Hungary

Budapest Noir - 2017 - 6/10

Fine Neo-Noir set in 1936 Budapest, as nearby Fascism and Nazism unmoor Hungary’s stability.
A journalist unexpectedly ends up paying for an attractive woman’s meal.
Two beats later, he is assigned to a nearby murder of a prostitute, who turns out to be the female earlier.
The reporter’s itch sends him to the morgue, where the body has disappeared.
Then the hunt. Why the cover-up? Why was she murdered? Most of all, who was she?
No new ground here, though for Noir buffs any new, good film is a quiet celebration.
Though shot in Budapest, the usual turista locations are absent.

Song Of Names - 2019 - Hungary

Song Of Names - 2019 - 7/10

The young violinist, unknown yet already heralded as a genius, disappears even as the audience fills the theatre.
Then there is nothing. Decades pass, he seems erased from the planet.
Via flashbacks, he arrives from Poland to England in 1939. September arrives, Germany invades Poland, Europe is engulfed in World War II. Blitz ravaged England becomes home to the prodigy.
Decades after the mysterious disappearance, the violinist’s childhood friend finds a loose thread.
From there, the reclusive history and fallout.
Time and again, when souls vanish, ofttimes they have their reasons. Private reasons.

Styria - 2014 - Hungary

Styria - 2014 - 6/10
AKA - Angels Of Darkness

Circa 1989, professor crosses into Communist Hungary, brooding daughter in backseat.
Old paintings from a long closed sanitarium have been found and are meant to be shipped to England.
The professor has a chequered brief, the daughter is a cutter, and mom … they don’t discuss mom.
Troubled female slips into their midst one evening, and the area slowly stumbles back 300 years.
The new arrival is named Carmilla, but apparently none of characters are familiar with Le Fanu.
Half-lit film, shot in Hungary, borrows from the classic book, but is updated and spins its own silk on the thread.
Much is seen from teenage Lara’s viewpoint, and she is confused and haunted.
Dreams contest with ill memory and sordid reality, not only in the sanitarium.