lamps

After a seven-year hiatus, this peculiar dispenser of divine justice returns in a fairly routine sequel whose most likeable aspect is the vigour and ambition with which it recycles everything previously seen, including the emphasis on a final twist that turns the plot's course not on its head but literally inside out. Unlike the horribly messy third part, which I wish had ended the series, this episode makes a lot of sense and the last sequence rewrites the plot in a way that I didn't object to at all and that takes the logic of the narrative to an acceptable level this time. But in order to reach at least partially the level of the first part, the initial pace shouldn't be so sleepy, the characters so monotonous from the first scenes, and the violence so unrealistic and not very bold. And the omniscient killer and the narrative based more or less on a series of coincidences (although this time straightened by a twist), it's downright awful. 55%

At one end of the spectrum of violence in cinema we have sunday morning children shows and at the other ....... er, Tokyo Gore Police. I've seen films like Ichy The Killer and I've long held the opinion that many Japanese filmmakers are sick and twisted assholes addicted to soft porn, but this is just a schmaltzy bloody mess par excellence. The story is supposed to be some sort of social critique and a parody of expected narrative conventions, but nobody is interested in that at all and only unrestrained brutality and morbid exaggeration are brought to the fore. Although Nishimura rips off what he can, he does so out of pure love for the famous works of Verhoeven, Cronenberg and co, and what's more, sometimes he comes up with a really spicy and funny idea. Most of it, however, is just a pretty boring series of chopping, biting, shooting, cutting and tearing, and in the moments when the film wants to strike a more civil and serious note, it comes off as ridiculous as a guy shooting a mutant penis. There's no doubt that overall it's a retarded monstrosity with terrible dialogue and humour for the slightly mentally ill, but I can't give it less than 2* for the few great gore moments and the aggressive soundtrack. It wants to be guilty pleasure, and if the viewer can justify their own depravity while watching it, it's actually more fun than Rodriguez's Planet Terror. I had the special opportunity to see it in the cinema, I will never see so much red again.

The sheer joy of storytelling translated into the most creative depiction of a creative crisis, where time and space are hypothetical and the seemingly random order of scenes evokes the loss of the artistic and romantic soul in a sterile hierarchical environment. It could use a bit of editing (Fellini varies identical ideas too often in different situations, and in the last act he's kind of shooting in the dark), but the brilliantly composed music, the beautiful actresses, the energetically pulsating pace, and the wonderful work with off-screen space and camera movement around the mise-en-scène make it impossible to take your eyes off it. Fellini at his coolest.

The third Thor comes with completely new ambitions and a narrative direction that openly creates an entertaining and almost parodic equivalent to the previous Avengers stories, where the humour is definitely unleashed and the stylization of the fictional world and the refreshing management of the not-quite-classic plot take on multi-genre dimensions that we haven't seen in Marvel before. Waititi to me is the blockbuster director of the future.

A film worthy of its own stylistic and systemic analysis like no other from the 1990s. The definition of perfection of the popular concept of the manhunt, it’s unique both in its surgically precisely escalated plot, where the rhythm of the alternating scenes with the fugitive, the hunter and the key flashbacks is perhaps as melodic and balanced as any Mozart symphony, and in the development of the three-way battle itself (the falsely accused, the pursuer and the real culprit), who strategically chase each other, and have an unprecedented impact on the aforementioned escalation (first the pursuer goes after the accused, then the accused begins to search on his own for the real culprit, thereby drawing some of the pursuer's attention to him, and by the end the culprit is chasing the accused to avoid full disclosure). The performances of Ford and Jones are of course excellent and the music is top-notch, but The Fugitive is above all an absolutely stunningly constructed narrative that doesn't let up and plays with the viewer's expectations brilliantly, both on the level of the whole story and individual scenes (withholding crucial information to temporarily mislead the viewer into believing a threat to the hero like in Silence of the Lambs). A true gem of a film.

When I get tired of my wife, I'll take her to Chumlee, I’ll be the first person in history to pay to get rid of my stuff. Yes, it's all pre-arranged and staged (it's a reality show, not reality) and yes, the customers are beautifully ripped off in public (it's a pawn shop, not Who Wants to Be a Millionaire), but it's so much fun to watch that if I could choose what I wanted to do in life, the first place would be to work with this fun bunch and the second would be tasting new products from Czech breweries. The principle is always the same, but each episode offers a funny scene around a purchase or a family conflict, the viewer learns a lot of interesting things mostly from American history, and all four main characters somehow become endearing. When I don't have anything to do for 20 minutes, I don't put on The Simpsons anymore, I put on Pawn Stars. Chumlee's dubbing is genius in itself.

I was looking forward to it like few other films this year and in the end I can't say I was disappointed. Sheridan proves once again that he can create depressingly isolated fictional worlds where moral values are reshaped along with the experiences and beliefs of the characters, to whom the viewer either quickly finds their way or gets lost along with them. On these psychological scales, the script is confident and intelligent, relying on the act of murder itself as a simple symbolism of racism and the impossibility of getting out of a difficult life situation. We mostly sympathize with the characters and root for them on their journey. Unfortunately, however, the film is 100 minutes long, a good hour of which is devoted to the somewhat bland construction of the detective plot and repeated sighing about how life isn't fair (which isn't enhanced much by Renner's character's past, reeking of cliché a mile away), and for the rest of the runtime, the truth comes with an unexpected and smoothly scripted detour that essentially sidelines the existing detective storyline and emphasizes the psychological depression even more, but that again fizzles out quietly at the end without leaving a harrowing emotional wound. Big thumbs up anyway for the performances, the work with the cold snowy environment that I love so much, and the overall realism, culminating in a proper shootout that immediately aspires to cult status. Sheridan still has to mature as a director, and we can look forward to great things.

The new Blade Runner bravely tackles two, shall we say, existential problems. Firstly, it wants to be a good Blade Runner, and secondly, a dense, complex mainstream film able to turn a profit. While it fulfils the second "duty" almost without trouble, presenting a mature story edited with the precision of a pensioner checking a receipt after a purchase and narratively constructed into an ingeniously schematized dialogue with a repeatedly doubting viewer, who is pushed into later questioned interpretations (and the fact that the film hasn’t make that much money is only the fault of the dumb herd of ignorant fans of shaky audiovisual attractions), with the former, it flounders slightly, bolting its slow, sensible pace onto a cool narrative with a classical structure, albeit very skilfully, yet fails to produce the desired cathartic effect, and to subordinate and bend all the structural elements entirely in favour of the psychological and emotional development of the plot, which the original film (though I'm not really one of its devoted admirers and don't find it groundbreaking) undoubtedly did. Still, I can't help but be enthusiastic about the purely audiovisual spectacle, which simply makes up for all the shortcomings. The atmosphere is breathtaking thanks to the amazing cinematography and the incredibly intense soundtrack (Zimmer scores again with the chilling connection of the music to the diegetic space of the futuristic world), I haven't marvelled at such pure science fiction ideas (the physical connection with the virtual Joi) for a long time, boredom is the last thing I would have got from Villeneuve's inventive editing transitions and the conditioning of every beautiful shot to the overall narrative, and I would have chiselled the entire sequence from post-apocalyptic Vegas in stone and tattooed it on the chests of every beautiful woman on the planet (it would have been doubly a joy to behold). It's far from a perfect film, and I can understand the disillusionment of some fans of the original, but for me every second was like a Christmas present that I intend to give myself repeatedly and happily in the future. Gosling is very good, Ford for President. 85%

Mixed feelings. In its stylistic signature and finale, the film doesn't stray too far from the average of what intimate mystery fans are accustomed to, but by conceiving a story that is constructed in a non-classical manner, satisfyingly tackling the psychology of the characters and avoiding even the slightest complexity, Shults scores big and holds the audience's attention like a crafty filmmaker. I have to admit I was constantly tense and wondering what might happen in the next minute, and that doesn't happen every day with American productions. I'm keeping the fourth star for myself, because the second time around I probably won't have anything new to discover and the effect will wear off.

A hugely impressive mystery that relies not only on excellent performances and music, but more importantly on thoughtful direction that gradually builds up to a chilling finale that slams the door of accumulated depression and distress in your face, leaving the freaked-out viewer in the same room with characters. The clever structure of the plot and the gradual revelation and explanation of various motifs leaves no time to breathe thanks to masterfully executed time transitions, and Jack Gold manages to keep his characteristic authorial signature despite the constant work with expectations and genre duality. Plus Richard Burton in perhaps his most iconic role, and certainly his scariest. 90%