domnulx

I really enjoyed this film for the excellent performances by Sinatra, Grayson and Durante. There are also many many great musical scenes that go from Bach to boogie woogie and back again. Lawford was, as usual, little more than eye-candy, but it was fun watching him wiggle and bluster his way through a jive song! As a native Brooklynite, I expected the cringeworthy moments, and in this I was not disappointed. The borough itself is name-checked at least 100 times in the script and the depictions are duly corny, but Sinatra singing a love song to the Brooklyn Bridge did the trick - not exactly Tony Bennett in San Francisco but still excellent. I loved it.

The film "It's Hard to be Nice" directed by Srdjan Vuletic, looks at the postwar emotional landscape of Bosnia, where a collective post traumatic stress disorder has taken hold and defined the normal relations between people. The main character, Fudo, and his friends treat each other with utter contempt, cheating and violently confronting each other at the slightest offense. The outside world is seen with equal hostility, as robbers scan the home addresses of foreigners on extended stay in Sarajevo, targeting their home apartments in Germany and Holland for burglary by accomplices. He wants to be at peace with the world, but that's not so easy, when he is being beaten down by the people and circumstance around him. Almost at the breaking point, in the final scenes he stands bloody and enraged, and stares into the eyes of a young child, deciding what to do.

Sasa Petrovic's performance as Fudo is effective, and he won the best actor award in Sarajevo in 2007 for this role. This is not surprising, considering this is just the type of role that goes over especially well at Sarajevo. Daria Lorenci also does well as his wife Azra. The story is fairly simple, a week-in-the-life formula, and the conflict is on-going and essentially unresolved in the end. This works well, because it reflects the reality of life in Bosnia where an uncertain surreal peace fails to totally mask the wounds. Whether those wounds are healing or festering is still anyone's guess. Bosnian audiences respond positively to a story like this, because it brings these questions out into the open and suggests the possibility that this torn nation will heal through sheer force of reason. It is a pleasant film, but it doesn't really break any new ground. Worth seeing, but don't expect an epiphany.

The 72 hours before a comet strikes is just enough time to launch a cult film about the struggle of good versus evil. This film may not go far with the Euro-Film-Fest Seventh-Art crowd, but it will definite have legs to stand on for a long time.

3 Días or Three Days (US title) or Before the Fall, (international title), examines the actions of a man stressed almost to the breaking point by outrageous fortune. It is directed by F Javier Guttiérez, and written by him and Juan Velarde. This is a period of three days before the end of the world, in a small town in Spain. What would the general population do if they knew the Earth would be destroyed in three days? You'll have to do most of the imagining yourself, because the film only gives a glance at what is happening in the outside world. This film focuses on one man's efforts to save his family from evil of others in the microcosmic environment of an isolated area of the Spanish interior.

The film is very well made, but the philosophical incongruities of this film's premise undercut the experience for me. It is an odd study of human nature, that this man has no time to ponder his own life, his own personal disappointments and philosophy, but must spend the last 72 hours of existence in this primitive struggle against evil. However, despite the peculiarity and perhaps improbable behavior of the protagonist, it is filmed with subtlety. The land seems timeless, the sun searingly close and the wind explosive. The direction is also excellent, not only for the major characters but for everyone that comes before the camera, and the people are dangerous and inscrutable and very cinematic. In keeping with the apocalyptic theme, there are some bloody scenes, though none are particularly gruesome. The scenes of violence against young children, however, are difficult to take.

Victor Clavijo plays the part of Alejandro with amazing energy and emotional involvement. This is acting that is worthy of award attention, but although the film was considered in the pre-selection for the European Film Awards in 2008, it did not make it to the final round. It is the kind of acting that usually gets ignored at the European Film Awards: physicality and pathos don't play well across the European cultural divide. It was also produced by Antonio Banderas, an important figure in international cinema with the smell of Hollywood about him, not exactly considered an eau de cologne at EFA. Add to that its aura of genre film, kind of sci-fi, fantasy and El Mariachi cultish. It is easy to see why the film has been totally ignored for EFA awards in 2008.

The screenplay, written by the director Guttiérez and Juan Velarde, won the Best First Screenplay award at the Málaga Film Festival, and that, I would say, is about as far as the awards should go for this script, since the script is probably one of the weakest elements here. It effectively sets up the situation and develops the tension in an exciting way, but there are the usual lapses of logic that occur when a European auteur film has not gone through a thorough review. Who are the violent criminals in the early scenes? Why does the grandmother wander away? Why would the children accept this situation without question? These are irritating problems that could have easily been fixed with some more careful scripting.

In general, it is a satisfying genre film, an action-slash-slasher film in an unusual setting, and it serves to introduce Clavijo, a well known Spanish TV actor, to the international cinema. Though it is not my cup of tea, I think this film will continue to attract viewers for years to come as it spreads beyond Europe just below the radar.