Goldbeater

Acting-wise and on a technical level this movie was a job well done, however, despite that, the central storyline of finding long-lost estranged family members then meeting and bonding with them is nothing we have not seen before. I am giving this an unenthusiastic thumbs up, although I am slowly getting tired of trying to evaluate and rate subject matter that has been done to death and rehashed a hundred times already just because the director’s feature debut is really beautifully filmed. [KVIFF 2021]

The movie Last and First Men is first and foremost an exhibition of the cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen's (Another Round) technical abilities, the compositional brilliance of Jóhann Jóhannsson, and only after that, is it a narrative piece. I have nothing against it - I felt hypnotically immersed in its audiovisual experience during the screening, however, despite that I cannot promise that I am going to look back on it as a comprehensive viewing experience. In any case, I am glad that I was able to enjoy this work in the environment of an appropriately technically equipped movie theater because watching it at home in terms of limited video and sound equipment would have completely missed the point of the movie. [KVIFF 2021]

Every once in a while, I come across a small movie in which the acting, camera work, soundtrack, screenplay, and direction, in general, are all in perfect harmony. They manage to communicate their message well, pulling the audience into its intelligent and intense narrative. First Reformed left me satisfied with the feeling that this movie has all the ingredients necessary for this. Perhaps Paul Schrader was inspired in part by the classic movie Winter Light, although Schrader hit the mark emotionally, where perhaps Ingmar Bergman left me a little cold. So in the end the fact that at times it is slightly reminiscent of that particular movie does not really leave me with anything to complain about. I am glad that Ethan Hawke brought this movie to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this year and that I had the chance to see it on the big screen. [KVIFF 2021]

The Phantom of the Convent is a movie with a very simple narrative that is a moral tale wrapped up in all the trappings of a gothic horror movie. The movie has very little in the way of a plot, so if you do not get lost in its mysterious atmosphere straight away, you are probably not going to find this very impressive. [KVIFF 2021]

Technically speaking, there is nothing wrong with The Land of Sons, and I do not want to criticize it too much. However, I have to say that plot-wise it is basically just a succession of things we have seen many times before in plenty of other far more compelling post-apocalyptic movies. So, in the end, it has very little new to offer the audience. Personally speaking, that was not quite enough for me. [KVIFF 2021]

I was pleased to see that the unorthodox formatting of the images was not just a random "conceptual" decision, and rather suited the narrative’s setting and plot very well. Plus, it was actually refreshing to see the work in an atypical context. However, I still had a fundamental problem with this movie because on the one hand Saving One Who Was Dead's message tries to portray the naked humanity and unadulterated reality of death, and on the other hand does so through characters who act and speak like robots and aliens taking delight in symbols and metaphors rather than behaving like human beings. So, in the end, the movie is completely devoid of humanity and does not generate much empathy from the audience. I did not understand this creative decision at all, and the movie seemed to want to be this kind of slightly weird and deeply profound conceptual work about life, death, and everything in between, and yet in the finale it came off more like the repetitive pretentious posturing of Little Crusader, although that was a lot more unbearable. I have to also mention that I found the choice of casting Vojta Dyk and Zuzana Maurery for the main roles was very disconcerting because they did not really look like mother and son (you cannot tell there is a sixteen year age gap by the way they look), and until it was explicitly stated in the movie, I thought they were siblings. Then, for the next half hour, instead of thinking about what the movie was trying to convey, all I was contemplating were the strange casting decisions. In addition, the scenes of a deadpan, stiff-necked Dyk staring down the labyrinth of hospital corridors were so bad they were actually funny. [KVIFF 2021]

Somehow I feel that since Paul Verhoeven turned eighty, he now has no need to please anyone, and so he just went and made a completely self-indulgent new movie. I think that the end result is a total nunsploitation B-movie rather than an A-grade art movie. The director once again shows off his great ability to be provocative and his black sense of humor. I am still a huge fan and therefore probably going to watch anything he makes, however, I know that Benedetta is definitely not going to be a movie for everyone. [KVIFF 2021]

During the first third of this movie, I was absolutely taken aback by the sheer exhilaration of the rapid-fire attack of preposterous jokes that almost brought me to my knees. The second third of this movie is filled with outrageous irreverent humor, although this is interspersed with moments where it gets a bit sloppy. In the last third of the movie, it all falls apart under the weight of the sheer anarchy with the screenwriting and ends up kind of going nowhere. Putney Swope is a movie that had me laughing much more than at other screenings in recent months, however, I still kind of felt like it did not really work as a coherent and complete movie, as it was just throwing one sketch after another at the audience. Anyway, I have nothing against this movie at all, it was really very entertaining and I am happily going to watch it again, perhaps in a different frame of mind. [KVIFF 2021]

After receiving many accolades from the Cannes festival, I perhaps expected a little more than I got from Compartment No. 6 in the end. It is such a sweet, guileless railway road-movie drama about two lonely souls coming together, and people are certainly not going to find it disappointing, although they are probably not going to find it that impressive either. Sadly, I just have to add that, even after enough of a break from the hustle and bustle of the movie festival, I found this screening just as long and exhausting as the maddeningly long train journey across Russia from Moscow to Murmansk. The one-hundred-and-seven minute running time feels more like one-hundred-and-forty-seven minutes. [KVIFF 2021]

This movie was shot in a single continuous take, hurtling along at a relentless tempo in a restaurant kitchen, where, as expected, everything that could go wrong goes wrong. The filming reaches a high standard, is quite dynamic, and most importantly it is very entertaining and engaging from start to finish. As I look at the ratings so far, Boiling Point was also a pretty significant high-point at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this year. [KVIFF 2021]