k1001bg

I was tricked into this show after watching the pilot, and unfortunately spent the next 20 or so episodes grinding my teeth and hoping for things to get back to where they started. They did not. The basic premises of Black Lagoon is fairly exciting - a bland Tokyo office clerk gets mixed up with a bunch of modern day pirates, who gradually help him find his real self and enjoy life. Not a lot, but mixed with a neat amount of gore and sexuality it could have worked. Unfortunately the show's biggest problem is that never really figures out what it wants to be about. Themes such as coming of age, finding love, loss of innocence, brutality of crime and the hypocrisy of the modern world get tossed around, only to be abandoned yet again as the characters indulge in another outrageous prepubescent fantasy action sequence, ridiculous in its unbelievability. Don't get me wrong, I am all about silly. And all about realism. It's just that for me, the two don't ever work together in the same episode. Or the same show. I call this the "Gungrave Syndrome". It seems like the writers did not believe they can have a successful show that is based solely on real-life physics and multi-dimensional characters. So they throw the whole one-man-killing machine thing, evil vampire twins, blade throwing women, bullet splitting samurais etc. etc....I AM actually grateful there were no zombies. I mean if you are going to make an Anime about ridiculous gunfights right out start it up as one, and maybe place it in some alternative universe, or at least far far in the future. "Trigun" worked exactly because of that. And because it had characters. Black Lagoon has two - Revy and Rock, but they struggle between ridiculousness and determination in such a pathetic fashion that midway through the viewer finally abandons all hope that they will ever care if something happens with either of them. Unsurprisingly, nothing happens. The rest of the players are barely worth mentioning, because all they ever do is more of the same. Over, and over, and over again.

All in all, the way I see it, this is a kiddie show disguised as an adult one. It could have worked, had they kept it simple and realistic, but a failed opportunity is all it is in its current form.

"Podgryavane na vcherashniya obed" is a noble attempt by a macedonian author to capture the turbulent times and the controversities the country has gone through in the last century as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through them. Since very early age Katerina seems to have always fallen on the wrong side of her time, supporting her Bulgarian heritage during Serbian occupancy in the thirties, helping communist fugitives during WW2, coming at odds with the communist's methods shortly after the formation of Tito's Yugoslavia and finally after the break up, when a movie about her memories threatens to expose her tormentors. Cinematically, the movie is an example of the better part of new Bulgarian cinema, featuring mostly young, less well known actors, decent camera work, and most importantly something that is missing in just about 90% of all movies made today in Bulgaria - good sound and music. Unfortunately the good ends here. As the other reviewer mentioned, the movie falls victim to its own sense of purpose and importance. Rather than telling a simple story with proper plot, development and most importantly, morals, it contains an almost incessant portrayal of suffering and pain. Epochs, occupants and torturers change, yet the main characters continue to suffer without any hope for better life anywhere in the future. "I want to die", Katerina's husband says to the director, "Die and be buried, so that no one can do me harm anymore". Evil, as pictured in contemporary Bulgarian cinema is endless, eternal and can not be stopped. Yet, all the garbage and stink Bulgarian (and Macedonian) history is filled with just can't justify the continuing depression Bulgarian movie makers (and writers) seem to all have fallen to. Paralized by the past, the creative minds in this country seem to have abandoned all hope for the future and have seized looking for way to instill it in the viewers.

Attempts like "Podgryavane na vcherashniya obed" are great portrayals of the injustices people in this region have suffered. However, without giving us a way ahead, way to fight evil and conquer it, rather than simply endure it continuously, the movie makers ultimately condemn the audience to live and die suffering the same way their parents and grandparents did before them.