7 stars

(Μαγνητικά πεδία)

dir: Yorgos Goussis

2022

You could be thinking, based on the title or the poster, that this could be a documentary about legendary band The Magnetic Fields, but then that’s probably unlikely, because you’re way too smart to make that mistake. And if you were a fan of The Magnetic Fields, you would probably know there was already a documentary about them from 2010 called Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, and you probably watched it since with much enjoyment, and then went and listened to your favourite parts of their epic 3 part album 69 Love Songs.

That’s not what you’re going to get from watching this. If this wasn’t a Greek movie made during the start of the pandemic, you would think it was an American film made during the mumblecore era (2000s – 2010s) with no budget and a recommendation to the actors not to do too much acting in any given scene. Save it all for a screaming match at the end.

Most of the movie, like 99% of it, transpires on the Greek island of Kefalonia, a beautiful place that I’ve actually been to. But none of the point of this flick is to highlight any of that, because it’s not a none too subtle travel advert sponsored by the tourism bureau or anything like that.

If anything the flick is saying “if you’re bored and experiencing existential angst you could do worse than come here”. The whole flick has an experimental vibe, in that it seems like there’s a very loose premise, that the actors came up with their characters, possibly on the fly, and the overall flick has only a loose idea of where it’s going as it’s meandering along, at any given time.

That’s okay with me. I’m one of the few people on this planet films like this are made for. I don’t so much watch something like this thinking “is something interesting going to eventually happen?”, so much as “I wonder what nonsense these two will get up to next.”

dir: Luca Guadagnino

2024

Well. That was… something.

I’m not entirely sure what. I feel like I’ve been tricked by a film again, but I can’t accuse it of a bait-and-switch, because the bait was “hot young tennis players in steamy love triangle”, which was never that appealing, and the “switch”, given the ending, is “absolutely nothing.”

My one point of interest in watching this is that Luca Guadagnino is making interesting films, sometimes with Tilda Swinton, sometimes, like this one, without. I think there’s an aspect of the film that REALLY interested or energised him greatly, which is the relationship between Patrick and Art (Josh O’Connor who is trying to be in everything currently, and Mike Faist), there’s an aspect that somewhat interests him, being the motivations and machinations of le femme athlétique Tashi (Zendaya).

And then there’s… I dunno, a lot of hollow nonsense to fill out the already lengthy running time. This is definitely one of those films that feels longer than what the clock tells you. Though having said that, I wasn’t really bored, but I wasn’t really enraptured either.

This flick tells a story about three people in a non-linear way, having something happen in the “present”, then thirteen years in the past, and then it jumps all over the place with the lynchpin being what’s happening at a low grade tournament in New Rochelle, New York, proudly sponsored by Phil’s Tyre Town. It will then jump randomly weeks before, hours before, days before, a decade again, and you think it’s building towards explanation or meaning, but you realise the revelations of the past don’t really amount to much.

I mean, there’s info we want to know, somewhat. Like, we might be curious as to how and why Tashi went from a world-class player to a coach living through her husband’s success, when she was so driven and fixated on success. We wonder why Patrick is pretty much homeless, despite that charming smile and those sticky-outy ears of his.

dir: Alberto Corredor

2023

What a strange movie. Imagine your father dying, in a horrible seeming accident, and you find out you’ve inherited a pub from him in Berlin. Berlin! And not even a good pub.

And it’s not even an ongoing business, so you don’t even have to go to the trouble of disappointing the regulars by telling them you don’t want them coming around anymore, and that you want a better class of patrons to frequent the place, not you rusted on day drinkers and shambolic alcoholics. I don’t know if German people put bets on dog races, but it’d be that level of peeps.

And they’d be the types that would nurse a pint for over an hour, because they’re there just for the familiarity, the routine, and not the ambience or the 20 Euro cocktails or the loaded bratwurst.

Maybe you’d meet a local, or a rival pub owner, and after an hour and a half of rivalry and misunderstandings, maybe finally, someone would run somewhere just in time to stop the other from leaving forever, and they’d kiss passionately as the orchestra swells, the music builds (unfortunately it’s oompah oompah polka music with all the tuba you can handle), and the happily ever afters start as the credits roll.

This is not that film. This film is about evil things, not love. This is about grief, with no consolation. And it’s also about how young people with nothing will fall victim to any scam or scheme that will give them even a hint of money for their troubles.

dir: Takashi Yamazaki

2023

And none too soon, finally, the sequel to Oppenheimer.

A joke already old and stale (in 2024), but I felt obligated to go with it anyway.

In a world where the contemporary American version of Godzilla is wary best buds with King Kong as they fight with all manner of giant monsters for the benefit, somehow, of humanity, the Japanese filmmakers, with their OG Godzilla, have chosen to go way back in time, back to the dark days just after the war.

Like they didn’t have enough to worry about…

See, this is a bit fascinating to me. For people who know a little bit about Japanese cinema, especially post-World War II, it’s interesting to see something set just after the war, because in Japan at that time, the Americans were in charge for a good long while. One of the prohibitions they had in place was that Japanese film studios couldn’t make any movies about the war or about just how horrible the reconstruction of the country was. They didn’t want to risk audiences getting riled up with propaganda pieces about how noble the Emperor was, how great his armies, and how unfair it was that the Americans annihilated so many of them.

So that’s one of the main reasons why almost every Japanese flick from the late 1940s – 1950s was generally a samurai era set period piece (chambera, I believe the genre was called).

And then there’s Godzilla from 1954, seventy goddamn years ago.

Everyone and his or her dog has an opinion on what Godzilla represents, but let’s just forestall any more bullshit theorising – obviously the Japanese mindset was horribly impacted by having two atom bombs dropped on two of their cities, killing hundreds of thousands, and then even more over time. Godzilla doesn’t exist, even as a fictional character, without American testing of nuclear bombs (in the original it was ‘hydrogen bombs’, just to please the censors).

Godzilla is the unforeseen legacy of the atomic age. But in this flick Godzilla is the personal nemesis of one guy who was too cowardly to fulfil his mission as a kamikaze pilot.