8 years ago
All posts by Michał Oleszczyk
“Joanna”
Aneta Kopacz’s Joanna, which was just nominated for the Best Documentary -- Short Subject Oscar, may be one of the most intimate portraits of a mother-child relationship ever. Inspired by a hit blog by the late Joanna Sałyga, who documented her struggle with c...
Read more →
Planet Boro: “Boro: Camera Obscura”
Nothing less than momentous, the DVD/Blu-ray box set “Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection”, released by Arrow Films in September and containing work of the famous Polish émigré artist Walerian Borowczyk, is already something of a Holy Grail among...
Read more →
For Your Reconsideration: ‘To the Wonder’
Reaching out is both the quintessential gesture and the central image of Terrence Malick’s films – his latest one being no exception. To the Wonder offers numerous shots of extended hands brushing against objects as different as rock, grass and a lover’s skin....
Read more →
Looking Back: ‘It Happened One Night’
We get so used to some movies simply being around that our own praise for them may itself become a cliché. The minute It Happened One Night is brought up, a handful of old chestnuts gets inevitably evoked: its classic status as the ultimate romantic comedy, it...
Read more →
‘Monsters Wanted’ is Too Dull of a Ride
Haunted houses have always fascinated me and I adored visiting them as a kid: there was something great about the mere idea of a ride that literally took you to a different world. I can still remember the first haunted house built in an amusement park near my ...
Read more →
Finishing the Cycle with ‘Rising from Ashes’
For all its speed and excruciating physical effort it requires, there’s an uncommon grace to cycling, which allows human beings to zap in mid-air as if they were insects. Riding a bike offers a fluidity of motion surpassed only by swimming. Movies as different...
Read more →
‘A Girl and a Gun’ Is Not Nearly Enough (Sorry, Jean-Luc Godard)
Opening one week after Paul Feig’s The Heat – in which Mellissa McCarthy kept her refrigerator stacked with firearms that she ultimately shared to our delight with Sandra Bullock – Cathryne Czubek’s documentary A Girl and a Gun comes in handy as an introductio...
Read more →
Having A Goofy Old Time with ‘Red 2’
There’s a devil-may-care quality to Red 2 that makes for fun summer entertainment. I would be tempted to describe it as ‘breezy’, but it’s too feeble even for that. It’s really nothing but a bunch of scenes on a preposterous string, rattled and flung into the ...
Read more →
Wojciech Smarzowski’s Powerful Rose Playing at MoMI
A
One of the strongest movies to come out of the Polish film industry in the past 10 years, Wojciech Smarzowski’s Rose plunges head-first into the inchoate mess of the immediate post-war period in Eastern Europe: a time so sensitive – not to mention banned...
Read more →