Reviews

On my last 1hr+ flight, I suddenly remembered I had downloaded this documentary off YT, and so its time had come. Half-Life was a pivotal game for a whole generation of gamers, who, probably like me, also faced the reckoning of two and a half decades passing since they were young(er).

As far as corporate documentaries go, this one's got a bit of heart, but it doesn't go into any serious depth. It does however manage to document the origin story of one of the greatest PC games ever made, with its chapter structure, a kudos to the game's own structure, easy to follow.

What makes it in some way stick beyond just a YT video is the time warp enjoyed with all the protagonists telling their stories, which are usually interesting details from the production process. The odd personal moments elevate what we're watching and I was left wishing there had been more of them.

Its limited scope doesn't allow the Anniversary Doc to shine, but it did leave me with a nostalgic craving. Or maybe I'll finally install Black Mesa.

The 1994 World Cup was a big thing for Romania. Not just the football watching part of the country, but pretty much everyone. It was the first time the country really took center stage in a positive way after the 1989 Revolution. The national team's performance had a wide ranging impact. And it has since become a footballing reference point we look back upon with affection and melancholy.

Claudiu Mitcu's documentary does well to catch some of the atmosphere and feelings of the times. Featuring many of the protagonists, we are accompanied through the years leading up to the 1994 WC and then the event itself. Even if the approach is less structured than I would have liked, it's hard not to get a sense of the emotions involved.

With the advantage of time passing on its side, the documentary coaxes more intimate introspection and revelation from those involved. This is something that usually eludes modern day sports documentaries, with active athletes loathe to say anything controversial. Florin Raduciou, the charismatic striker, is probably the most effective storyteller, entertaining, revealing and also emotional. Yet, there's a sense of honest rumination for most participants.

What drags the movie down other than the loose structure is the inclusion of too many talking heads. Not sure if it could have been better to focus on a few storytellers, as the wide spread isn't very impactful. That aside though, there's definitely no justification in including some of the most controversial figures of 90s Romanian football for colour commentary - impresario Giovanni Becali and former Football Federation President Mircea Sandu.

I would have also liked more of a parallel with the state of Romanian society, a deeper look into what it really meant at that time for people in the country. As it stands, the movie doesn't aim to do more than highlight the elation of victories.

I have no idea how this documentary hits for those who haven't lived the times. The cinema I went to was completely empty on opening day, hinting that the alienation modern day Romanian football fans feel has even seeped into our memories. That said, I do hope it finds its audience, because those times will be tough to recreate - if not impossible seeing how the gaps in sport are ever increasing between those with access to resources and those without.

This satire by Andrei Hutuleac wants to address dysfunctions of modern (Romanian) society, transfixed in its obsession with scandals and its deformed perception of justice and how these have been galvanized by internet culture.

Clearly, these are valid observations, that have been made many a time; often, without being memorably incisive, but on occasion with some flair. Radu Jude's 2021 movie that I can't name because my review won't be published is an example of the latter, but it feels crass to even mention it here.

#dogpoopgirl turns out as an opaque X-ray of no real value, that at best is unfunny and at worst is tasteless. The state of the nation is, indeed, more tragic than comic, but in order to successfully portray that in a movie, you can't just recreate familiar news reels and dump on a contourless lead. That's in spite of Andreea Gramosteanu's performance, which offers some dignity when her character has none.

Perhaps I'm being harsh - had the movie been a short, consisting of the intro/outro sequences, it would have almost worked. Altogether, though, even at a measly 78 minutes, this movie is an hour too long.

I love romcoms. I love the cheese and the absurd. I love the soothing predictability. I love the contrived plots. Alas, even as The Other Zoey ticks all these boxes, it is one of the worst romcoms I have seen in a long time.

When a football playing college guy has an accident and suffers from amnesia, he thinks a girl who is brilliant in many ways, but not an on-paper match, is his girlfriend...and she decides to fake her way through a weekend with him while angling for his cousin.

Sounds like a set-up that could be a lot of fun, if only the movie dared to do anything with this premise and embrace it. Instead, it simply follows the path of its forebears with little charisma or aplomb.

I'll just say that the performances and casting choices are passable, so objectively you can probably find worse movies. But if you're going to just do a variation on a theme, then you better have a banging script that's in some ways irreverent or witty. Instead, TOZ is a formulaic, unfunny, reductive, box-ticking waste of heart beats.

If this is the kind of romcom that younger generations have to watch, my friends, I am sorry to say, we find ourselves in the romantic post-apocalypse. 3.

Nora Iuga, a vibrant contributor to Romanian culture, is the focus of Carla Teaha's documentary, which parallels Iris (2014) in its exploration of a nonagenarian artist's life. The film, akin to a heartfelt tribute, showcases Iuga's journey through diverse historical contexts and her unique, intimate authenticity. It portrays a solitary figure, weaving a narrative of historical homogenization around Nora's distinctiveness, despite occasionally lacking context on her literary significance during different eras.

The documentary's narrative unfolds through a road trip to the Frankfurt Buchmesse, revealing Nora as a multifaceted individual, not just an artist. This journey, though modest in its climax, authentically portrays Nora's human complexities, from the challenges of old age to her youthful vitality. The film, while giving life to Nora's poetic work, doesn't dwell too much on identifying why new generations relate to her writing.

Despite its occasional narrative and contextual shortcomings, the documentary beautifully introduces Nora Iuga and her unique worldview. It intertwines with her ongoing life story, becoming a part of it, and is a work of affection, likely to appeal to a broader audience beyond literary circles.

One of the important funny men of the 70s-90s gets his own documentary from his friend Rob Reiner.

If you're not familiar with the stand-up by Albert Brooks, which I was not, you should know some of his movies - Modern Romance (1981), Lost in America (1985), Mother (1996), etc. And if you're not familiar with his movies, then perhaps with his performances - Broadcast News (1987), Finding Nemo (2003), Drive (2011), etc. And if you're still not familiar with him, geeze, I don't know how you've gone through life without seeing at least of these movies.

I've always held Brooks in my mind as a toned-down Woody Allen kind of figure, presumably because he did share some of the stylings in the movies that he wrote-directed-featured-in. He has worked on so many good films, regardless of his part in it, that it's hard to ignore him as an important artist of his era. Proof to that is the quantity and quality of talking heads who took part in retelling his story, from Stephen Spielberg to Ben Stiller to David Letterman (and many more). You get a good sense of the kind of guy Albert Brooks is and a taste of some of his memorable works, but a lot of the focus is on his irreverence as a stand-up comedian - which is probably where the value is in this, because the movies will always stand on their own.

Other than that, the documentary is traditional to a t, going over the career of AB while adding some context via a one on one interview between him and Rob Reiner. There's a fair amount of funny stuff in it, if not riveting, and a warm portrait of a guy who has left his own distinctive mark in "the business".

...and learn to stop worrying and love the bomb? Probably not, director-writer Radu Jude doesn't imply the unavoidable condition of our fate with his newest foray into social satire. It is rather an appraisal of this odd stage in history, where we've stepped a toe into the future of work and self-expression, but our day to day has cynical commercialism flowing through its veins. Given these underpinnings, why should we expect much? Jude finds a good balance in his latest work, which is seemingly crass, yet full of class (ahah, sorry), in a narrative and visual layering that flows freely and conjures a kind of complexity that's often hard to catch on film.

You should intuit this movie is something else as soon as you see its poster. Funnily enough, it's one of those things that make next no sense out of context and as soon as you get the context, it seems the most obvious choice. Add to that the almost three hour runtime, the international cast, which includes Nina Hoss and Uwe Boll (really spanning the breadth of German cinema there), and you get a sense of how Jude's new film has a specific kind of guts to it.

So what's the story? Our protagonist Angela (Ilinca Manolache) is a production assistant at a Bucharest-based film company that's about to shoot a public relation's bit for an Austrian business operating in Romania. Angela's job is your too typical sixteen hour shifter, that involves everything from shooting audition material, to delivering technical gear, to doing airport pick-ups. When she is depleted, the best she gets from her employers is a "have another Red Bull" suggestion. It's a taxing, soul-sucking, "useless job" as Jude called it, the kind of job whose real usefulness in the grand scheme of things is marginal. As an escape from this hellish drudge, Angela has created a social media character named "Bobitza", as whom, while hidden behind a face filter, she waxes lyrically as a cuss-dripping, misogynist alpha male. And to halfway contrast, halfway enhance this image of present day Angela, Jude juxtaposes scenes from Angela Goes On (1981), a communist proletarian movie about an eponymous taxi driver and her search for a partner.

So there you go, layers. For those who have seen Babardeala cu bucluc (2021), we do not find ourselves on completely foreign territory here. The End of the World is also set in and around Bucharest and it captures the same aggressiveness that's emblematic to living and, especially, driving around the Romanian capital. My main issue with it was that it took satire to the point of caricature, in a demonstrative way that detached it from reality - even from its reality. The experience in Jude's latest is more consistent, finding harmony in dissonance, even if it doesn't always make for a perfect fit.

Aside from Angela's work-related travails, she has to deal with the impending exhumation of her grandparents, as the cemetery they were buried in had illegally annexed land to its property. Now, real-estate developers had reclaimed it and, naturally, luxury condos need some air to breathe. In what is perhaps the most straight-out comedic scene in the film, Angela meets with a representative of the developer who assures her that they are the good guys, covering not only relocation costs, but also theological approval. As she exits the building, we understand in part who Bobitza is - a representation of the number one capitalist model in Romania of the 90s, Bobby Ewing of Dallas.

This perverse, exploitative capitalism is at the core of the movie, as Angela's "auditions" feature people who have suffered work-related accidents at the Austrian company - and the company mind-bendingly want to put-together a clip with one of these people promoting use of helmets and compliance to health and safety procedures. All the while, ignoring their own culpability. As Jude succinctly put it when asked about the vulgarity of Angela's alter-ego, it's all just part of the contrast between explicit and implicit vulgarity, the latter being the use of discretionary power at will behind the fake veneer of corporate civility. Which act is more vulgar, he asks of us.

While there isn't so much going on in terms of story, almost every scene is rich in context and implications. A main cause for that is that Angela defies categorization, she is a person trying to make it, cultured, yet crude, moralistic, yet immoral, she's imperfect - played perfectly by Ilinca Manolache. It really is the kind of movie you can take apart for a while, making ever changing conjectures and discovering commentary on things from historical disconnects to critical posturing. Wouldn't we all like to go for a round of boxing with our enemies, Uwe Boll style?

But what makes Jude's latest especially stand out is its defiance for traditional structure and style. The juxtaposition of two age-divergent movies, the grainy black and white present-day and the beautifully restored and coloured communist propaganda piece, the mixing of narratives between the two, the fixed, engrossing shots contrasted with the vibrant distortion of the social media clips, a fluent rhythm broken up with a multi-minute composition of memorial crosses from the side of the road, and a final forty minute shot with as much off-camera action as on-camera. It's something else, really, an originality of vision that's simply an experience to watch, regardless of how much you like it.

At the heart of the movie is also that tension between what's proper and what isn't. Or, rather, between the appearance of both. What is the difference between classical music and "manele" (a type of Romanian popular music)? Between the grand vision of life and society that is written of in mission statements and the grindy, noisy, repetitive reality of their manifestation? In a perfect world, Do Not Expect Too Much of The End of the World should do to the final movement of Beethoven's 9th what Aftersun (2022) did to Under Pressure. It should forever break it, cursing the viewer with the plight of irreversible trauma.

Like any good movie, this one will not leave you indifferent. It finds excitement in unlikely places and delivers with a kind of spastic energy that's best incapsulated by its meta-world. There is a truth to it that cannot be denied, even in its moments that feel more like performance art than "factual" observation. Sure, it's not for everyone, not only because it can be uncomfortable in terms of content, but because it embraces a kind of otherness that requires some adjustment. That's one of the things we ask of movies, isn't it?

I have recently been touched by the cat gods and converted to one of their own. So watching this lovingly made documentary about the cats of Malta was something I did not want to miss out on. It proved an endearing companion for a Sunday when the winds change, although it doesn't break new ground in its exploration.

In terms of structure and content, the movie is fairly similar to what you've (probably) seen in Kedi. But whereas Ceyda Torun's film took a more existential turn, with humans appearing as support characters rather than leads, Sarah Jayne's Cats of Malta is more practical and leans on the community of people that dedicate a part of their lives to caring for the very many cats of the island country. And it features a mighty beautiful poster, doesn't it?

There are supposedly about as many cats in Malta as there are in Istanbul, which is a crazy thing to think about, given that the Turkish metropole is thirty times larger in terms of population. Sarah Jayne's documentary focuses on the benefits, with colourful cats and colourful people filling the short runtime of her movie. Via a series of stories we get a sense of how pervasive felines are throughout the Maltese islands. People sing their odes to the joys of experiencing cats and how it enriches both their lives and the lives of others. From the neighbourhood cats, to cat shelters, to cat therapy and cat "idolatry", the movie canvasses the many expressions of love and care towards cats in Malta.

The cat generally appears as a warrior, with attitude and scars, a tribute to both territoriality and human expansion. As Malta is a major hub of real-estate development (the country has gone from 390k to 510k population in the last twenty years), it endangers the habitat of the little furballs and while the matter is not specifically tackled, there's little sense that any measures are taken to ensure a smooth and safe urban transfiguration.

Instead, there is a reliance on the willingness of people to take care of these cats, from feeding to sterilization and sometimes housing. It's a relationship that both brings people together, but also generates discord, with some less than grateful for what they perceive to be an "infestation". The film itself pleads for more action from authorities, support for NGOs and sterilization programs.

Beyond the practicalities of it, there is a lot of warmth to Cats of Malta, which makes it worth a watch. It is not as accomplished as Kedi and doesn't have the same ethereal quality, but should provide a purr's worth of satisfaction to cat lovers all around.

The melting pot that is present day Europe should be an inspiration for more uplifting stories about the things that bind us as people. I would be hard pressed to find examples for this, the focus, both in the news and in cinema, being foremost on tension and conflict. It makes sense, conflict drives storytelling and keeps us engaged. Yet, here we are, in the world of Bas Devos, where human connection springs eternal from the most unexpected of sources.

This is a conflict-less story. Or, rather, a story that's not really about the conflict. My namesake Stefan, a Romanian construction worker living in Belgium, is about to travel back home, but needs to get his car fixed before leaving. He also needs to clear his fridge, so makes a big pot of soup out of whatever he finds.

This haphazardly concocted soup then proves a wonderous lubricant of the human spirit, it opens doors in a Balkanic tradition, but also forges moments of connection and intimacy, the way sharing food so often does. Per chance, in pre-departure to and fros, Stefan meets Shuxiu, a Belgian-Chinese woman who works on her doctorate about mosses, while also helping out one of her relatives who runs a small restaurant. It's the unlikeliest of connections, but perfectly in the spirit that Here inhabits.

At just 82 minutes, the movie is strikingly short. Especially if you get into its mood, it will lull you before you even realize it's ending. We are so used to our urban jungles, that nature takes on ever more mystical qualities. In the world of Here, nature provides, in all its delicate simplicity. Stefan Gota and Liyo Gong play their understated parts in this symphony and we feel immediately drawn to them, to join them. We are traveling back to the roots of our quintessential sense of connection, in an almost idealistic form of said conflict-less world. But it's not really a world without conflict, rather one where it has temporarily ceased and made room for tenderness.

Here is a moment in time, the proverbial here and now, which is the most blissful place to exist in. It's mischievously elusive, of course, but Bas Devos somehow manages to capture its essence in this movie, that has all the chances of growing on you and showing you true North. 8.

The genre of medical movies is mostly populated with the struggles and romantic explorations of doctors and nurses, the two swathes of people we associate with it. Sages-femmes narrows that down to midwives and then applies a fairly stereotypical treatment to its story, but to very good effect. Léa Fehner's movie is an ode to the dedication of this mostly female staff, that rises above chronic underfunding, being overworked and managing complex situations, both professionally and personally.

We follow Sofia and Louise, friends and young midwives who are just starting out in their chosen careers. Their experiences differ wildly and soon create friction between the two, as Sofia eases into the role once given the chance, while Louise struggles. Things change after a difficult case where Sofia loses her self-confidence and their stories and travails are suddenly turned on their heads.

They are ultimately both victims to the wider environment, the underfunded and anxiously hectic hospital setting. It's a sadly never-ending tale, which we've recently seen, also on the labor ward, from a different angle in This Is Going to Hurt. To survive, you have to pick your fights and try to not let things get to you, which is a challenge that nobody should have to bear - particularly in life or death situations.

It's all fleshed out in the explosive first part of Sages Femmes, which is intense, fast-paced and mostly dire. The movie shifts at the halfway point and becomes more, let's say, humanistic, focusing on the fallout and the strength it takes to keep it all together.

To add to the veracity of its story, Sages Femmes captures a lot of the intimacy of childbirth, in a cvasi-documentarian fashion. Fehner filmed live births before re-enacting them with willing parents, making for an unusually naturalistic approach. It gets the most of these scenes, which are dramatic, beautiful, life-changing. Midwives witness them every day, many times over, and like all medical professionals, have to balance the roteness with the uniqueness these moments inhabit. The cast is exceptional at portraying this and even the characters that don't take up much screen time end up as established people in our minds.

This is ultimately a familiar, but well executed medical drama. Fehner indulges in dramatic excesses and only brushes against some of the endemic issues that are sadly common in the profession, which is another way of saying that this is a story that tries to find the silver lining(s). There's nothing wrong with that and Sages-femmes makes for spirited and hopeful cinema. 8.

More than a decade ago, Romania first took part in the football Homeless World Cup in Australia. Claudiu Mitcu documented the recruitment, training, travel and participation of the seven-men team - an experience that took them from surviving on the streets of various Romanian cities (including Timisoara) to far-away Melbourne.

It's not a movie that glorifies success, but one about the day-to-day wins of its protagonists, men of various ages that life has been less than generous with. At just 64 minutes, Mitcu only has the time to offer a window to a world that seems twice as foreign now than it would have done fifteen years ago. We see an honest portrayal of a handful of people who, in spite of struggling against the tides, still find some reward in life, with this trip an otherworldly expedition that quickly proves relatable.

The trick is that while you expect it all to be surreal, it really isn't - which does bring to mind how easily fate can push one way or the other. Tucked away on Romanian HBO Max, this one.

This was one of those rare occurrences of going into the cinema and just watching a movie you know nothing about and that movie actually proving to be a heck of a ride. Heikos Welt is a very enjoyable story with low stakes and bubbly rewards, that deserves more word of mouth - and some English subtitles.

I was in Dortmund a few weeks ago and identified the old-school Schauburg cinema as a target destination, only to find out it was so old school, that all movies were screened in German. Watching anything dubbed is so far out of the question, that no reasonable person would ask it, so it was time to put my 12+ years of German education to good use and risk it with a complete unknown.

Heiko, our titular character, is your average man going about his life - i.e. Single and living with his mother. His days regularly end in the local bar, with the usual fauna and the familiar beverages. What's unusual about Heiko is that drinking a few beers does miracles to his coordination, which unearths an unknown talent in playing darts. When his mother's eyesight begins to deteriorate rapidly, he's got to find a way to pay for surgery - and, you guessed it, a darts competition offers just the required prize money.

You'd think the movie is set for a beaten path, but an enigmatic romantic interest, a daring heist and some German schalgers ensure your expectations will be surpassed. Director-writer Dominik Galizia has a steady hand and put together a well-tuned story about a likable lead, portrayed with flair by first-timer Martin Rhode. Rhode's charm is the key ingredient to the success of Heikos Welt, ensuring you have someone to root for, in a (properly old-school) feel-good fashion. But it sure helps that all the supporting cast provides authentic performances, starting with Leyla Roy and ending with Franz Rogowski's inspired cameo.

It's just so great to find real escapist experiences, movies that transport you to a safe haven, where you can just forget about those pesky, festering existential wounds. Heikos Welt is a great specimen in this regard, nothing more, nothing less, which also gifts a zippy original song from Rocco Vice.

I feel a bit bad about recommending a movie that is pretty much unwatchable outside of Germany at this time, but teasing the appetite is a good thing, isn't it?

It's been half a decade since Cristian Mungiu's previous film, the excellent Bacalaureat/Graduation, and there's a bit of its thematic DNA in his most recent work. The movie goes beyond that though by exploring a real event which left its mark on Romanian society a few years ago, an event littered with prejudice and xenophobia. R. M. N. Is a bit messy and concludes in an unsatisfying fashion, but rewards the viewer with a layered experience.

From the get-go, there's a coldness to R. M. N. (Romanian abbreviation for Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that you can't shake - it's visual, it's seasonal and it's in the lead character, a monosyllabic bear of a man named Matthias. After an incident occurs while working abroad, he returns home, where more coldness awaits him, as he's met by a distant wife, an emotionally stifled child and a circumspect lover. His home village, set between mountains and forests, stands out by being multiethnic - predominantly Hungarians and Romanians, but also some Germans, like Matthias. The interaction between Mungiu's characters is fascinating to watch, as they transition seamlessly between languages, portraying a well-knit, burgeoning community. It is only after a couple of Sri-Lankan workers arrive to work at the local bakery that the the xenophobe's nest starts stirring.

The movie has a strong build-up, creating a tense atmosphere while setting all its pieces in place. Its characters are faced with more agency than one usual sees, working the underlying beliefs and attitudes onto the screen. And when things turn, they turn quickly and viscously, yet almost unexpectedly - feeding on a sense of unexpressed resentfulness, a feeling primed by our lead's emotional literacy. Similarly to another recent Romanian movie themed around prejudices, Radu Jude's Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, R. M. N. Climaxes at a town meeting, where all the paper-thin-arguments you're friendly Facebook neighbour would have shared are laid bare.

To me, this is where the movie wavers. Even as Mungiu tries to maintain a less than judgmental distance from its subjects, there's something so banal and un-cinematic about this kind of stand-off, that it simply cannot carry the burden imposed by the narrative arc. The scene works in spite of this, it works because of the little details and the (un)expected escalation, but it's not a worthy pay-off to what preceded it. And the conclusion that follows it even less so, being close to the absurd in spite of striving for symbolism.

Still, R. M. N. Shouldn't leave you unimpressed. It tackles big themes with passionate interest and concern, which makes up for any shortcomings, thereby proving a worthy addition to Mungiu's impressive catalogue of films.

Joachim Lafosse has put together a movie that's not easy to endure - which is a compliment, in this case, but also means it's not for everyone.

Damien is an artist who lives together with his partner Leila and their young boy, Amin, a seemingly blissful family life. The problem - Damien is bipolar, suffering from overwhelming bouts of mania, followed by the lethargy of heavy medication. It's fiercely uncomfortable to watch, thanks to the performances of Leila Bekhti and Damien Bonnard, and has such deep rooted compassion for its characters that it's impossible to be left indifferent.

There's little lightness and not much hope for a reversal of fortunes in Les intranquilles, but Lafosse's commitment to the film's reality proves a winning formula. Not one that's easy to forget.

Has it really been 20 years?

I remember the day my mother confiscated my keyboard, punishing me for one gaming excess or another. It was the day I first picked up the Harry Potter book I had received years before - and the next weeks were a blur, as every night was spent simply consuming the first four books, sleepwalking through school during the day. Harry Potter became a huge part of my teenage years, with hours on end spent on forums and make-believe Hogwarts role playing arenas, making many friends along the way.

The movies were mostly fun, if never as entrancing - inevitable, really, with such a burden of expectation. The only one I regularly rewatch is Prisoner of Azkaban, although I very much enjoyed the Goblet of Fire as well - and think the latter movies are perfectly serviceable, occasionally even heartbreaking, but I failed to really connect with them.

This documentary is quite the nostalgia rollercoaster, with most of the key players sharing some of their thoughts and experiences. Even after almost two hours of reminiscing, it felt like there was so much more left to be discussed and retread, but the documentary does stay focused on the bigger picture - how Harry Potter has been a part of so many lives, in such an amazing way.

And stepping back, it is indeed amazing that a cinematic series like HP has come about, carrying over so many characters and actors across a whole decade, while also giving life to a unique and beautiful world. Harry, Ron and Hermione are at the core of this story, roles that Dan, Rupert and Emma grew into so well, but it's the adult cast that immensely enhances the world they all inhabit, offering the nuance and complexity that ensures its timelessness.

Sure, the JKR debacle taints the proceedings a bit, irrespective of your feelings about it - but this just goes to show we'll never return to the simpler times of when Harry Potter was the center of our universe.

Lauren Hadaway's debut feature is what you'd expect to see if you zoomed into those rowing scenes during The Social Network and applied the Black Swan treatment to them.

Inspired by Hadaway's own experiences as a rower, the movie tells the story of Alex Dall, a college student who is driven close to self-destruction by her boundless ambition to gain a spot on the varsity rowing team. There's only drips of who Alex is beyond her all-consuming desire for improvement, a frame of mind that leaves little room for social niceties and personal growth.

It's going to feel like your being beaten to a pulp, while traversing flurries of intense montages, frequently contrasted by sweet tunes of the 60s. Hadaway's experience in the sound department goes a long way to articulate the inner life of the movie and its lead, the latter so vicariously portrayed by Isabelle Fuhrman.

There is this ultimate sense that Alex is not fighting against herself, or even against her teammates, but rather against the whole world - one where however good you are, there's bound to be many, many people who are simply better. A fight you can (almost never) win.

Definitely one of the best debuts of the year.

Coming from Manish Pandey, writer and executive producer on Senna (2010), this latest documentary on the lives, careers and intertwined fates of five memorable racing drivers of the 80s, 90s and 2000s is memorable, yet tough to take.

Parts feel distinctly staged, insights could have been more revealing, but the movie does very, very well in capturing the protagonists' states of mind and the emotions going with them. For me, it was indeed terribly emotional, as beyond the stories of Hakkinen, Massa, Mouton and Kristensen lies that of Michael Schumacher, to whom I attach so many of the joys and tribulations of my youth.

Pandey might not have Asif Kapadia's flair, but he shares the sense for tragedy and loss, which underlies almost everything in Heroes. Mandatory viewing for enthusiasts.

I never followed Nicolas Anelka's career with a lot of attention, but he's the kind of player who was always on your radar if you cared about football during the 2000s. His reluctance to be a superstar is supposed to explain the drama he brought wherever he played, but a documentary that sides so definitively with its subject is bound to feel unsatisfying in the end.

The first half of the movie is a well structured presentation/self-portrait of Anelka the player and Anelka the man, a complicated character who can, indeed, be easily judged as flippant and arrogant. The second half becomes mired in director Eric Hannezo's efforts to stick to his "misunderstood" subtitle, at the cost of sacrificing the documentary's chronology. That's why more controversial events of Anelka's career are brought forward, time spent at various clubs is conspicuously compressed or wholly ignored, and the story concludes on France's scandalous 2010 representation at the World Cup, with Anelka in the limelight.

In many ways, it feels like Anelka is a version of Ibrahimovic that was disliked. The documentary offers little insight as to why that might be, beyond pointing fingers at the media and managers, with some of the better insights coming from former Arsenal honcho, Arsene Wenger. So while there are definitely interesting facets to Hannezo's docu, the numerous exculpations make for a less than engaging watch, leaving too much unsaid - or unasked.

As far as sports romcoms go, this is an unusual movie, in that it's shot at the Olympic Village during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. This very real backdrop is fleshed out in a bunch of scenes with equally real athletes, capturing an unfamiliar flavour.

Starring alongside the established Nick Kroll is the movie's co-writer, Alexi Pappas, former Olympian, just like Gus Kenworthy and Morgan Schild, who also have small roles to play. There's a bit of a Lost in Translation (in sports) feeling to Olympic Dreams, which unfortunately doesn't get the chance to really catch on, as the movie stumbles to its predictable finale. The good thing is Pappas and Kroll are both likable on screen, and Pappas captures a bit of the forlorn solitude of elite athletes and the harsh realities of the Olympic cycle.

Not in enough depth to really make the movie memorable, but sufficiently to put a personal twist to a familiar tale.

Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell reunite after the excellent Everybody Wants Some (2016) in this low frills, high-chemistry rom-com. There isn't much to dwell on here, as 'Set It Up' proves the ideal low-stakes Friday night Netflix watch.

Deutch and Powell play Harper and Charlie, two young and ambitious characters working for a very special brand of pushy, domineering bosses. When they realize their common predicament, they set out to...set up their bosses, in the hope that it will lead to quality of life improvements for themselves. In an ironic twist, the ones being pushed around leverage their insights into personal scheduling and personal preferences to ensure the mis-match ends up matching. As is usual for mischievous do-gooders, there will be fraternizing and moral conundruming. And it will be fun.

Any successful rom-com hinges on the compatibility of its leads. Luckily, that's not an issue here, with both potential couples gelling or not gelling just as intended. It's the energy of all four key characters that keeps the movie alive, thanks to the odd piece of witty writing or amusing situation. I think I only rolled my eyes once at some ultra-corny moment that could have been avoided, but beyond that, director Claire Scanlon works gently and fairly with her characters. Everybody learns an important life lesson by the end and, surprisingly, it's a lesson I relate to, although I've never had the issue of overworking myself in order to avoid pursuing my passions. There are other, more pleasureful ways of doing it.

Corneliu Porumboiu's most recent work is a 'documentary-essay' about - well, the human condition. The director likes to focus on the question of how one can be truly free within rules and norms, but that was not the strong point that made me appreciate this work. Instead, I was fascinated by how well 'Infinite Football' captures the manner in which life shapes the ideas we hold and how, with the passing of time, we have the tendency to create our own narratives almost regardless of whether those ideas align or not.

We follow Laurentiu Ginghina, a 50-something administrative clerk whose story starts when he was in his teens and had his fibula broken while playing football. He describes it later not as an act of malice or an error of judgment on the part of the players or himself, but rather a failure of the rules that govern the sport. It is the rules that facilitate, even require, this kind of physicality. A mere year after Laurentiu recovers from his broken fibula, which doesn't even heal correctly, his weakened shinbone crumbles on a wintery day in a red December, leaving the man to limp six kilometers all the way home.

So what's up with this adversity? It's what sets the man on a more existential path, emboldening him to search for purpose. The purpose of his life - a rather mundane one, in spite of the odd experience abroad - was to improve football. His ideas to improve the game start out with a few radical changes, like turning the pitch into an octagonal shape, removing the offside rule and subdividing the two teams by restricting their movement between specific lines. As his ideas percolate and fail to find acceptance, they are tweaked and adapted, to the point of becoming more impractical or even redundant, in what is to be Football 2.0. Or if that doesn't work, Football 2.1, or 2.9 or...infinite football.

But Porumboiu's film isn't really about football. "The ball is free, but we are not" is our protagonist's mantra, who simply fails to bridge the distance between theory and practice in a strained effort to matter. Doesn't almost everyone have his one idea they never managed to bring to fruition? That's what makes the movie truly relatable, especially in that Porumboiu treats Mr. Ginghina with interest and attention. Perhaps this is the best that we can all do, being gentle with each other and our ideas, starting with a certain age where everything tends to become more immutable. The meta-analysis of our being free within norms and rules is a perfunctory one, which works to some degree, but never enthralls by gathering a weight of relevance.

I'm definitely a fan of these Herzog-ian documentaries wherein some boundary-blurring occurs between the real and the surreal. Porumboiu, by inserting himself into the movie, encouraged this experience. It might be too close to the fringes of the absurd for some, but I think it's a philosophically fueled movie that trims it's audience based on compassion. And whether they think Messi is better than Ronaldo. 8/10

Nobody can accuse Dascalescu's documentary of being without flair. I still recall, almost a decade ago, emerging from a forest road into Zlatna, a mining community some 200 km apart from Petrila: the picture perfect image of desolation was shocking. So to the extent that 'Planeta Petrila' celebrates the birth of some form of (artistic) life from such wreckage, it is a great success. However, it feels detached from the wider community of the town and in not taking an inquisitive stance on the viability of life in former coal mining 'colonies', it shies away from the bigger social and environmental questions.

Ion Barbu, ex-miner, or rather ex-mining topographer, current artist/activist/do-it-all is a veritable one man show. His distinctively spirited visual designs and Banksy-esque witticisms are plastered around Petrila, contrasting the dying pulsations of the coal mining industry. Alongside him - or rather, in a parallel universe - Catalin Cenusa leads one of the last mining teams to work the deep shafts of Petrila. The contrast between the two is stark and Dascalescu recognizes this, but never broaches the issue: Barbu is looking for Petrila's continuity beyond mining, while Cenusa is intent on working the coal for as long as possible. The latter's fight is a solitary one, with just one hundred people left of more than four thousand still earning their livelihoods from the Petrila mining exploitation.

The pressure to close the mines comes from the European Union, or rather the funds contracted by the government from the EU to 'green out' the area. It's somehow funny that in a documentary about mining, where the effect of mine closures are part of the focal point, I don't recall hearing the words 'environmental impact' or 'global warming' even once. If they were mentioned, it was more incidental. Instead there are clear indications as to what Dascalescu feels is the uninterested involvement of local and national authorities in the whole matter. Authorities are accused to have bypassed required consultations with communities of places like Petrila, in a desire to ensure European financing and, presumably, monetize some obscure vested interests in the greening and demolition process. The bigger issue though is not so much what the community wants to do, because the movie provides no sense of who the community is; it simply stays close to Barbu and to the involvement of out-of-town NGOs in preserving a cultural art space in some of the mine's historic buildings.

I have no idea what the artistic value of Barbu's work is, but it's soulful stuff. Planeta Petrila provides a melancholic frame for the bitingly ironic and rightfully frustrated artist, ramping his desire for cultural renewal to overdrive. Barbu's bubbling personality and sharp sense of humour lighten up the gray realities of the town. From colourful graffitis to underground theater festivals, it's all happening in Petrila for the first time in...perhaps ever. The strong attachment to the heritage of the place, its silent suffering and the inherent sadness when it is all about to end come into focus in the best moments of Dascalescu's movie. The footage from inside the mine shafts, where Cenusa (translation: "ashes") and his crew really shuffle off their mortal coils, strengthened by the satisfaction of their work and some self-deprecating humour, are a testament to the importance of purpose and of being good at your craft, albeit a tragically outdated one.

In all this, the documentary could have done with more focus, because it feels disjointed in its two protagonists and in its desire to establish itself as activist cinema. My main gripe with Planeta Petrila is that it propagates that against which it preaches: the imposition of foreign interests on socially impaired communities. The fact that Dascalescu does not portray a balanced view of events, with next to no input from political and administrative figureheads, is not an issue; a documentary need not be a factual debate. But a lot of the time it feels like the activism caught on camera is a cause in itself, a self high-five, if you will. Planeta Petrila never successfully makes the case it implicitly supports at the outset, as articulated by Barbu: art can be Petrila's redemption. It looks more like art can and is Barbu's redemption, whose stubborn persistence, supported by NGOs, ensures the creation of a cultural space to keep the once socially-defining mining heritage of the community alive. In terms of how the people of Petrila will go on, other than desert the place, there are no answers, because the question is not being asked. The community seems voiceless, with Barbu, whose son travels the world on a motorbike, too cosmopolitan a figure, and Cenusa too far in the background and too intent on ensuring his livelihood.

Perhaps my skepticism is getting the better of me here, but that's what I would have wanted to see more of, to elevate the movie beyond an expression of art for art's sake. For what it's worth, Planeta Petrila is distinctive and paints in beautiful colours against the grey backdrop that is (was) the mining industrial complex. It's the kind of place I would like to emerge into when next traveling the forests around Zlatna.

Netzer's follow-up to the excellent Child's Pose (2013) shares some elements with its precursor, but takes a different angle to the emotional roots and psychological ties of family life. A complex and layered film, it is framed in the present, but plays with the chronology of events to suit its thematic anchors: how relationships shape their protagonists and create inherent tension, abiding by no morality punch- card. While pertinent and polished in its construction, I found it hard to stay connected emotionally, especially as the characters evolve elliptically and the change in their dynamic feels abrupt.

Our couple is Toma and Ana, two lovers who meet during university and, more than anything, fall into a relationship. They are both cultured individuals and complete each other well, as Ana suffers from anxiety attacks and Toma is seemingly always there to support her. The movie proceeds to take us through the usual familial meet and greets, which prove traumatic and lay the groundworks for all the ensuing/existing psychological trauma. Those scenes have a sense of caricature about them, with 'traditional' values of partner screening proving funny and harrowing at the same time. But they prove to be just pieces of an ambitious human puzzle, which ends up taking us down an exploratory route devoid of superfluous emotion.

As an aside, some people in the cinema were taken aback by the explicitness of a sex scene, which I would rather deem justified, due to the Freudian aspects of Netzer's approach - and a meaningful character- building moment.

The attention to detail in fleshing out Ana and Toma provides the characters with a lot of depth. They are, as one would say, profoundly human in their imperfections and the manner in which this comes to the surface as their relationship evolves feels very true. The movie puts psychoanalysis at its core, turning it into an indirect plot device, which sometimes looks like a black box. More important though is how Ana and Toma react to change, in particular to Ana's gradual self- empowerment (thanks to a mixture of religion and psychoanalysis), which fundamentally alters Toma's role as 'the saviour'. It all becomes a matter of identity, of shaping and losing it, as defined by relationship roles, rather than intrinsic traits. Quite interestingly, the first scene finds the protagonists discussing Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil - the subjugation of morality to Christian dogma and the idea that good and evil are not quite opposites. By the end of the film, the overwhelming sense of some moral misappropriation between Ana and Toma can and, perhaps, should be seen through this lens, with no clear distinctions at hand for who is in the right and who might have been wronged.

While all this is intense and fascinating stuff, the chronological structure creates a bridge I couldn't cross. On the one hand, the technical execution of the to and fro was handled well - it's impressive how different degrees of a receding hairline can create a sense of time. Although some nuances are lost, that ends up challenging the viewer and keeping him engaged. On the other hand, because of gaps in time, Ana is difficult to grasp. She becomes a completely different person, which goes so far as her accent changing, and due to the elliptical nature of the story, she also feels emotionally like a third character in the relationship. Whereas Toma is more consistent throughout, Ana is fractured, making her feel foreign and inauthentic.

This is part of the reason why the second half of the film lost some momentum. Upon its conclusion, which tries a little twist and then goes one mile too far by trying to explain it, I wasn't engaged any more. It's a shame, because there is so much pain and sacrifice in Ana, Mon Amour that it really makes love feel like penance and weaves an exquisite psychological pattern to justify the claim. For the exploration it undertakes in what drives the two lead characters, both so well portrayed by Postelnicu and Cavallioti, it is commendable.