On November 16, a number of films were released, including Anton Ermolin’s debut film “Niche,” shot in the style of magical realism, and Michel Gondry’s comedy drama “The Book of Decisions.” What to watch in the cinema this weekend – in the “Kommersant” selection.
Nisha Superbrain Book of solutions The Legend of Sambo Master and his muse Year of birth Possessed by evil Feelings of Anna Heir Next victim
Niche
- Director: Anton Ermolin
- Cast: Vladimir Svirsky, Elena Nikolaeva, Sergey Gilev, Mikhail Troynik, Mikhail Filippov
- Genre: drama, comedy/Russia/97 min.
- In theaters: from November 16
Film critic Yulia Shagelman:“Carpets are also a way of earning money for the wife of the main character of “Nisha” Vyacheslav (Vladimir Svirsky) Maryam (Elena Nikolaeva). She weaves them to order in her free time from working as a controller at the cinema. One day she receives a call from a mysterious man in a coat (Sergei Gilev) with a request to make a carpet with her own portrait and at first refuses, but then still gets to work. The stranger, flashing a dark shadow in the snow-covered courtyard, disappears, only to later reappear in Vyacheslav’s life as either a messenger of some mysterious forces, or a guide to the other side of reality.
Vyacheslav himself is an engineer by education, a furniture deliverer by occupation, and a psychic by vocation. With the help of dowsing frames, he collects negative energy in clients’ apartments, analyzes the biofields of passers-by (or even their dogs) while standing in a subway passage, and charges glass jars – not even with water, like those of the ever-memorable Alan Chumak, but completely empty ones. Naturally, his superiors and his wife’s relatives, who appear later, consider him not completely sane and certainly not adapted to normal life.
But Slava and Maryam have their own lives, quite harmonious, in which they see the same dreams and receive signals from invisible energy spheres. Here, everything matters: the chronicle of Soviet party congresses and demonstrations, going on in front of empty theaters in the cinema where Maryam works, a casual remark from her boss about the fact that there are moths in the chairs, the reasoning of fellow security guard Vyacheslav (Mikhail Troinik) about conspiracy theories, the collapse The USSR and the emergence of a new state entity on its ruins, text messages of one letter arriving on the hero’s phone, a sudden telegram “Maykop – Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky”. This feedback password finally opens Vyacheslav’s path to his true destiny.”
More details about the film can be found in the Kommersant materials “Every Thing Is Without a Carpet” and “Wings and Byak-byak-byak.”
Superbrain
- Directors: Paul Meyer, Gerhard Painter
- Genre: cartoon, adventure/South Africa/85 min.
- Slogan: “When aliens are in your head”
- In theaters: from November 16
Exhibitor Film Distributor:“Norman is an ordinary schoolboy who is passionate about comics about aliens and believes in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. One day, his fantasies become reality when a group of aliens connect to his head and ask for help. Intergalactic villain Superbrain is searching for new sources of intelligence, and his next target is planet Earth. Norman and his friends will have to turn on their heads and outplay Superbrain. After all, they will have to fight with a villain-genius.”
Book of Solutions
- Director: Michel Gondry
- Cast: Pierre Ninet, Blanche Garden, Francoise Lebrun, Frankie Wallach, Camille Rutherford
- Genre: drama, comedy/France/102 min
- In theaters: from November 16
Review of “Kommersant-Weekend”:“In the gallery of monsters that populate Gondry’s universe (and for him, it seems, every person is an awkward monster, a monster, a scarecrow), Mark is perhaps the most unpredictable. He instantly loses his temper, he can spend the whole day and the whole night – no matter what, he won’t remember the next day; he hates asking for forgiveness, but he has to, because everyone is constantly offended by him, he worries about everyone and turns the lives of those around him into hell, his thoughts fight with each other – and no, today he is also not going to watch his movie, he has no time for that . If he watches it, he will shit himself from fear or burn with shame. When Mark is asked how he feels, he replies: “As always – I’m sad in the morning, in the afternoon I feel like I’m being manipulated.”
There is a temptation to perceive “The Book of Decisions” as another pseudo-comedy about the director’s inner world or a story about what kind of rubbish comes from, especially since Gondry dedicated the film to his own aunt and is clearly writing a self-portrait – with love and all sorts of filth. Something like “Amelie”, who abruptly gave up pills. “Eight and a Half” is about a little fox and a hairdresser. A mini-version of Gondry’s “Kidding” series, only tougher, cleared of all external events. There is no outside world. Or no internal? Or no peace? Again this damn uncertainty. In fact, this is a portrait of a man with bipolar disorder, but where other directors are attracted to the depressive period, Gondry revels in the manic.
More details about the film can be found in the Kommersant-Weekend material “The Device of the Disorder” .
The Legend of Sambo
- Director: Andrey Bogatyrev
- Cast: Wolfgang Czerny, Dmitry Pavlenko, Anton Vokhmin, Alexey Shevchenkov, Olga Stashkevich
- Genre: < /b>sports, adventure, biography, drama/Russia/104 min.
- In theaters: from November 16
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Film distributor “Russian World Vision”:“Moscow Spartakiad, 1936. The strongest team of wrestlers has been invited. The decisive duel: someone will win, someone will be defeated, and someone will experience an unexpected turn of fate… Two martial arts masters. One, from childhood, studied the art of judo in Japan – Vasily Oshchepkov. Another, who went through the Russo-Japanese War and is developing techniques for self-defense, is Viktor Spiridonov. Both are obsessed with the idea of creating a national fight. This is how sambo was born. The tension of battles, the intrigue of competitions, the great era of discoveries and hopes – all this is intertwined with the destinies of the two great creators of sambo and their student Anatoly Kharlampiev.”
The Master and his Muse
- < li class="doc_board__post">Director: Dieter Berner
- Cast: Emily Cox, Valentin Postlmayr, Tatyana Paugofova, Anton von Luc, Wilfried Hochgoldinger
- Genre: drama, melodrama, biography, history/Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic/88 min.
- In theaters: from November 9
< p>Film critic Andrei Plakhov: “Kokoshka was considered a wild weed and stood out for his particularly eccentric, unbridled disposition. He was nicknamed the “Viennese Faun” and his works “syphilitic”; The film shows how the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, threatens to break the bones of a young impudent man for his paintings. A couple of decades will pass, and they will incur the ire of Mussolini and Goebbels: the latter will display them at an exhibition of “degenerate art” organized by the Nazis.
But this is already beyond the scope of the film, which does not turn into a standard biopic spanning decades, but provides an emotional clot of the destinies of two superpersonalities. They connected for a short period of time when the world was experiencing the shock of an impending world war; their stormy, suicidal passion resonates with the destructive hurricanes of the era. This passion gave birth to Kokoschka’s crowning masterpiece, The Bride of the Wind; To work on the film, the famous painting was even removed from the exposition of the Basel Museum. Fortunately, the director does not pretend to reveal “all the secrets” of the creative process, probably knowing that in cinema such attempts usually fail. And focuses on the psychology of love rather than creativity. Although Alma had ambitions in the artistic field, considering herself a professional composer, in the film this motif sounds more like a routine reference to the feminist agenda.
The main burden ultimately falls on the actors: Alma was played by Emily Cox, and Oscar was played by Valentin Postlmayr, whom the director had been looking for for two years and found after seeing his passionate and energetic Romeo in a Shakespearean play. Essentially, the film is a visualized dialogue between the characters, filmed with two cameras, as if from two points of view. Its culmination is the appearance of Alma, who has disappeared from Kokoschka’s life, in the form of a “copy” – a human-sized rag doll.”
More details about the film can be found in the Kommersant material “Careful about extravagance.”< /b>
Year of birth
- Director: Mikhail Mestetsky
- Cast: Eldar Kalimulin, Anastasia Talyzina, Yura Borisov, Dmitry Bykovsky-Romashov, Yulia Romashina
- Genre: comedy, fantasy/Russia/105 min.
< li class="doc_board__post">In theaters: from November 9
Review of “Kommersant-Weekend”:“Our days, dull, provincial Metallogorsk (the location is fictitious, but recognizable). In one of the rickety panels, Philip dreams of the beautiful Russia of the future – a passionate fan of the punk band “Egg Light”, which thundered in the nineties, but has since been happily forgotten by everyone. Philip turned his wretched apartment into a museum – numerous cabinets and mezzanines are filled with rare records, faded photographs and other much stranger artifacts. The fact is that the lead singer of “Egg Light” Soplya (a bright cameo by Yura Borisov) went to the very edge in serving music, once sawing off his head with a chainsaw at a concert. Philip also cataloged the suicide weapon with trepidation, not yet realizing that soon the chainsaw, like the gun on the wall, would be useful again. One day, Marina, the daughter of a regional tycoon who made his fortune in the meat industry, comes to visit him. The crazy plans of Philip, who dreams of organizing Woodstock in Metallogorsk and reviving his beloved city from the ashes, have a strong influence on her purely materialistic perception of reality. Now she shows her chosen one to her parents, and then to her chosen one – a positive pregnancy test.
The “Year of Birth” collision is as old as the world. And, in general, just as banal. Of course, Philip’s enthusiasm will encounter the cynicism of those around him, and the blossoming of his first love will be prevented by a complete lack of money. Building a family is not playing punk. And Philip will have to go among the people who don’t believe in anything other than the dollar exchange rate, even though most often they haven’t even seen this dollar.”
More details about the film can be found in the “Kommersant” material. Weekend” “A Tale of Speculative Time.”
Possessed evil
- Director: Demian Runa
- Cast: Ezequiel Rodriguez, Demian Salomon, Silvina Sabater, Luis Cymbrowski, Marcelo Michino
- Genre: horror/Argentina, USA/99 min. li>
- Slogan: “The time for prayer is over”
- At the box office: from November 9
Film critic Mikhail Trofimenkov:“A zombie mother eats the brain and entrails of her child. The possessed girl cuts a huge cleaver into her forehead over and over again. Under the mess of corpses of teachers killed by hellish schoolchildren, a monster rotting alive and dead is barely moving, begging to be killed. I haven’t even retold a twentieth of the on-screen delights yet. There are also devil-possessed goats, crazed dogs, and maddened autists going on a rampage.
And it all starts with a mere trifle. Hearing revolver fire in the surrounding forest at night, the gloomy brothers Pedro and Jaime set out the next morning to search. And they find the body of a character unknown to them, neatly cut in half, who had a set of strange gadgets with him. Something like a compass, something like a huge compass, something like, in short, something.
What is remarkable is the reaction of Argentine farmers to the eerie discovery. Nobody is hysterical. They're just wondering: maybe it was local landowner Ruiz who killed some outsider pepper. Well, then let him lie cut, as he lay. The agrarian question, you know…
One of Pedro’s children is autistic: a character relevant to world cinema. But the Argentines, such wicked people, are turning the politically correct situation against any correctness. It turns out that demons—the “rotten ones,” as they are called—are capable of burrowing into the brains of people with autistic disorders. Only they get confused, lose orientation, “unravel mental knots” and sometimes take possession of a darkened mind for several months. But when they master it properly, mom, don’t worry. The finale of the film is connected precisely with an autistic character who loves apple ice cream, and is nightmarish in its incomprehensible physiology. The only point of support in this crazy Argentina is a set of rules for dealing with “rotten” demons.”
More details about the film can be found in the Kommersant material “Some kind of rottenness in our pampas.”
Feelings Anna
- Director: Anna Melikyan
- Cast: Anna Mikhalkova, Timofey Tribuntsev, Oleg Yagodin, Ekaterina Andreeva, Ekaterina Novokreshchenova
- Genre: fiction, drama/Russia/130 min.
- In theaters: from November 9
Film critic Yulia Shagelman:“The film takes place in our time, but with a slight bias towards dystopia. There is still a pandemic going on here (not of Covid, but of some unnamed virus), a huge screen hangs above the bus stop with a counter of sick and dead people, people wear respirators and, when entering public transport, stop at the door to be treated with an antiseptic – however, while the mask is working , as in real life, everyone often slips under their chin, and by the end of the film the characters almost forget about them altogether. On TV, announcer Ekaterina Andreeva (playing herself) talks about the upcoming dispatch of volunteer colonists to Mars: when the main character arrives in Moscow, she will be greeted there by the banner “Mars is ours!” at the “October” cinema. A barely perceptible phase shift is emphasized by the black and white image, making everything that happens in the film conventional and timeless exactly to the extent required by its creators.
In this convention lives the most ordinary family: Anna (Anna Mikhalkova), whose job at a confectionery factory is to rake chocolate mass on a conveyor belt, her husband Sergei (Timofey Tribuntsev), who works at a sausage factory, and their two children. A teenage son (Fedor Butin) dreams of becoming a popular YouTube streamer, a daughter (Margarita Zubareva) is needed in the plot to highlight the parental emotional upheavals. Parents are not particularly tender towards their children, but the spouses have quite a loving relationship, and life in general, although boring, is stable and comfortable. She rolls along her usual rut, until one day Anna, having received an electric shock from a broken electrical wire, falls on the street, hits her head and stops sleeping at night – she becomes a “contactee” for extraterrestrial civilizations and records messages to humanity under their dictation… Posted on social networks the video where Anna reads all this out makes her a star.”
For more information about the film, see the Kommersant material “Space cards tucked into candies.”
Heir
- Director: Park Hoon Jung
- Cast: Kim Seon-Ho, Kang Tae-Ju, Kim Gang-Woo, Ko A-Ra, Ho Joon-Suk, Jung Ra-El
- Genre:action, crime/South Korea/118 min
- Slogan: “The chase has begun”
- At the box office: from November 9
Film distributor “Kino.Art.Pro”:“Young boxer Marco Khan – so-called copino, of Korean-Filipino blood – lived his entire life in the Philippines and never saw his Korean father. His mother is seriously ill, so, trying to save up for treatment, the guy grabs any opportunity to earn money and looks for Korean relatives. One day, lawyers come to him, claiming that his rich dad has finally found his lost little blood and is eager to meet him. Marco flies to Korea, but already on the plane the guy begins to be intimidated by a strange guy who calls himself his friend.”
The Next Victim
- Director: Jung Joo Ri
- Cast: Kim Shi Eun, Bae Doo Na, Jung Hwe Rin, Kang Hyun Oh, Park Woo Young, Choi Hee Jin
- Genre:drama, detective/South Korea/138 min
- In theaters: from November 2
Film critic Yulia Shagelman:“So Hee, in general, is no different from millions of her peers. She loves to dance, hang out with friends, and sometimes drink. Occasionally she gets into trouble because of her explosive temperament, but on the whole this does not prevent her from studying quite well without upsetting her parents. And it is her school director who chooses her to undergo an internship at the call center of a large telecommunications company. In fact, the direct employer will be a subcontractor, but this is still the first time that such an important potential employer has paid attention to the school, so it is very important that So Hee completes her internship with excellence and favorably recommends not only herself, but the entire educational institution…< /p>
The practice, however, turns out to be absolutely soul-sapping. The main task of So Hee and a couple of dozen of her colleagues – regular employees and fellow interns – is to answer calls from irritated clients who are ready to refuse the company's services, and to persuade them not to do this, fooling them with “exclusive promotions”, “special offers”, etc. . etc. Anyone who has ever had to have similar conversations on the part of a client will find it quite difficult at first to sympathize with these young women, but quite quickly we become convinced that they themselves are under constant pressure from their superiors, who are constantly raising production standards and are openly cheating with payment and allows himself to simply yell at those who do not show sufficient zeal.
Artless, almost documentary filming, faded lighting, and the dominant gray color in the frame, erasing all other colors, emphasize how So-hee feels in in this quiet corporate hell, how gradually, drop by drop, joy and interest in life flow out of her. However, it turns out to be impossible to escape from this trap.”
More details about the film can be found in the Kommersant material “Call Center Party.”
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