trixie650203 Reviews

Johnson & Knopfler's Music Legends (2024– )

Travelling Geordie lads having a jolly good time

[10/10 · 15 May 2024]

Awesome series for music lovers, with epic jams and a lot of laugh in every episode. After Brian Johnson made a great interview with Mark Knopfler in his previous series 'A Life On The Road', they decided to team up and interview some of the other icons of pop and rock music. The very first episode with Tom Jones was a highlight but what I awaited the most was the episode with Santana. It was an unbelievable meeting with three of the greatest rock icons ever. If you are into Rick Beato you will find this one equally informative but much funnier with great inside stories from some of the icons of music industry. For me this series is an unquestionable 10/10.

Tirza (2010)

Read the book first. I warned you

[6/10 · 24 September 2012]

I recently read Arnon Grunberg's Tirza and found out that there was a film version to it so I was very curious how they managed to put it on the big screen. Well. A film is, as in most cases, unable to reproduce the whole body of a book, especially a complex novel like Grunberg's, full of psychoanalysis and stuff. Still it was quite a let-down for me. I understand that they had to completely cut the first two-thirds of the book, otherwise it would have been unbearably long. What you get is a mess of the plot with flash-forwards and flash-backs. I'm afraid, for one who has not read the book, it is completely incomprehensible. So I suggest that everybody should read the book first and then the film is good to (re)visualize what you imagined while reading.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)

Incredibly unique portrayal of post-communist countries

[10/10 · 26 November 2007]

I just saw this one yesterday evening on TV and I am still under its influence. I also read some of the comments and it is obvious that you guys in the West do not have the slightest clue as to what it is like in the post-communist countries despite 18-19 years of "freedom". The film has personally struck me because hospitals are pretty much the same in Hungary and so are the members of staff. Cynical doctors, exhausted nurses, underpaid assistants all around waiting for your money to be slipped in their pockets in the prerequisite envelope. I escorted both my father (Mr. Lazarescu even resembled him) and my mother in many hospitals here in Budapest, Hungary and had exactly the same impressions here. Of course, this is not a piece of entertainment in the strictest sense but I have never seen such a hyperrealistic film before. I could totally identify myself with the characters and the environment seemed so sadly familiar. I cannot but give it a straight 10 out of 10.

Az emigráns (2007)

Slow-paced account of the late years of a great writer

[7/10 · 3 June 2007]

Even those who are outside Hungary and do not know the great writer Márai (although his 'Embers' became a bestseller lately also in the English and German speaking countries) may find this film interesting albeit a bit slow-paced for some people's taste. The great writer emigrated to the US after WW2 and lived in exile until his death. He never wrote anything in English but, as he put it, the Americans 'took him in'. He lived there with his wife, Lola in modest circumstances, totally isolated from his mother country and audience. For those, who do not know the writer and his life story I recommend this film for the great portrayal of an elderly couple who live in their memories and reach toward the end. They would like to die together but this is unviable. One of the finest lines was this: "Dying starts when you no more feel that it is impossible that you're gonna die." For the Hungarian viewers, who read this, I found it a bit curious why the Hungarian conversations were consistently subtitled in English whereas the occasional English conversations were not translated into Hungarian at all. Could it be a concept ?

Wesele (2004)

No major improvement since the fall of communism

[7/10 · 7 May 2007]

I rarely comment on films but I have to respond to the American commenter who said that this film was an utter confusion. It's no wonder that someone from Texas does not understand this way of life, but we here, after 50 years of communism do understand it. Drinking, materialism, corruption, bribery, blackmailing, rape etc. These were the basics of our lives for decades and it is so sad to see that there is no improvement in Poland after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The events depicted are very similar to those that would take place in rural Hungary. The movie was quite amusing but very sad at the same time.

Konyec - Az utolsó csekk a pohárban (2007)

There IS life after you're 70

[8/10 · 21 January 2007]

I just saw this very funny road movie premiered in Hungary. I try to summarize it without any spoilers. There's an old couple, the man is 81, the woman 70, and they live in the post-communist Hungary like hundreds of thousand other pensioners do: in very modest circumstances to put it mildly. They are unable to pay their bills and threatened by the utility suppliers. One day the old man gets fed up and robs a post office with his 1958 GAZ, the one-time luxury car of communist party leaders. The old couple flees to the country-side from the police chasing them. There is a young couple of police officers, the woman being the boss of the man. They are assigned to the case. The movie is partly about the differences between (very) old-age couples and young couples today. In summary, it is a very likable comedy, a road movie understandable to any audience outside Hungary as well.

La novia de Lázaro (2002)

Interesting hand-held documentary-like dirty and sad love story

[6/10 · 24 September 2005]

This film follows the Odyssey of a Cuban girl, Dolores who follows her friend, Lazaro who immigrated to Spain and got imprisoned after trying to rape a girl on the street (actually in her flat after threatening her in her car with a saw pressed to her neck). Dolores visits Lázaro in the prison and even smuggles heroin in there for him. There, in a dirty cell each time they make love they do it so desperately as it were the last time. She lives by a Spanish woman whom she meets at the airport and who has a very messy life. In fact, we see only messy lives in the movie. Then Dolores applies for a sewing job at a good-hearted fellow named Paco and moves into his house. They get together and decide to make a family...

There are some very graphic lesbian as well as heterosexual scenes, be warned. Still I found the main characters interesting and original enough to sit through the movie.

Gyorgy Horvath, Budapest, Hungary