Lima

The premise with the mysterious and dangerous swimming pool is quite original, but unfortunately it doesn't provide enough material to fill the entire running time in any interesting way. It's an hour and a half long, and it's still too long. After half an hour, the escalating situations start to get repetitive and just boil over (sic!!), and by the last tense twenty minutes it starts to get ridiculous too, there's a lot of black liquid spitting and tearing, and the bland and young Wyatt Russell tries in vain to convey any emotion. Most of the time it didn't offend me with its stupidity, but I still don't understand the cinema release, this only belongs on stream. In the case of Kurt Russell, as well as, say, Clint Eastwood, it's true that their sons don't have much charisma or acting talent.

The omission of Penélope Cruz in the Oscar nominations is completely incomprehensible to me. Adam Driver is fine here, he doesn't try to overact with "Italian-style" expressionism, even in tense scenes his acting is nicely decent, and I even believed that grey hairpiece on his head, but the main star for me is Penélope. Not the cars, about which I know nothing, not the races, but this woman, tormented by emotions and doubts, fights an internal battle throughout the film, only to capitulate at the end, because the family business is above all. And related to this is Michael Mann's intention, he doesn’t try to approach Enzo Ferrari's life with some boring biographical description and ticking off the years, but to bring the marital discord of a prominent family to life in a short period of time. And the races are just a nice addition, though the production is nicely polished and the cinematography nicely dramatic. I'd have perhaps only two criticisms, I don’t think it’s necessary in a non-English speaking setting to adapt the English of the actors into some sort of accented pidgin, as happens here, and I would have preferred not to see those CGI cars flying through the air in such a nicely old-fashioned film.

A schizophrenic straddle between properly gory horror and something of a comedy, and I have no idea where the mistake was, coming from the maker of a very critically acclaimed debut, that neither the horror nor the comedy works. Yes, I was amused by the clumsy movement of the space scumbag, with the movement varying depending on what kind of "borrowed" (read cut off) head he was wearing at the time, the ridiculous rat in the soup scene made me laugh, and the homeless scenes were as decadent as in the cult classic Street Trash, but otherwise it's a waste, an unfunny and chaotic waste. How the scenes are composed (for example the utterly woeful final deal with the alien), plus the dull dialogue, it's not worthy of John McNaughton's reputation.

The trajectory of the quality of Liam Neeson's films in recent years has begun to dangerously replicate something that Nicolas Cage experienced some 10 to 15 years ago. Fortunately, here Liam remembers his better days. The genius loci of the Irish coast is unique, the film has a nice and catchy score, and even though the premise with the retired killer is a very stale, the presence of the IRA gives it all an interesting edge. And thanks to the dialogue, which isn't trite, you'll soon realise that this isn't your ordinary disposable consumer product. It's a serious drama of the old-school variety, just the way I like it. I'm not at all surprised at its inclusion in the Venice Film Festival. PS: Jack Gleeson, Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones was excellent here!

I found the first one better, it was more tightly plotted and somehow more engaging, more thoughtful in its introduction to the fantasy world of Arrakis, I understood more the motives of each of the characters. And yet, even there, Denis Villeneuve didn't forget the visual magic - the arrival of Leto Atreides and his long flight in an ornithopter was so visually sexy. Even the Hans Zimmer music was more interesting to me in the first part. The second part is actually quite different in that respect, especially plot-wise in the second half, BUT .... then Denis unloaded some iconic scenes, from the first worm ride, to the black and white arena, to the frontal attack of the worms, with the seated fremen and their flapping scarves, and he had me in the palm of his hand again. The first part was food for the senses and the brain, the second one only for the senses, but you know, I'm a simple person, even Villeneuve pulling excellent visual ideas on me like Houdini pulls rabbits out of a hat is enough to make me happy. Only that Zimmer has been feeling bit tired in the last years and instead of his typical rumbling it wouldn't hurt to reach for some compositional melodic ideas again.

The one that started the hugely successful Universal horror franchise. But it should be noted that Friedrich Murnau beat Tod Browning by knock-out, his expressionistic take from 1922 was much more suited to the lord of darkness and evil. Here, the plot rushes along like a stampede and all the potentially interesting stuff is reduced to a minimum. The scenes of Transylvania and Dracula's castle are done in 10 minutes, albeit with very nice sets (and armadillos instead of rats), the voyage to Demeter lasts 2 minutes, with only two shots alternating – on the deck of the ship, with the sea crashing over it, and a static view of Dracula – well, and the vast majority of the running time is set in the streets of London and boring interiors with enough atmosphere to fit under a mere fingernail. I also have a problem with Bela Lugosi himself. His demonic-ness here is created by the lighting of his eyes in the macro details, otherwise when he throws on his typical smirk I just expect him to utter his legendary "Beware. Beware of the big, green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys, puppy dog tails and big, fat snails." Yes, Ed Wood just ruined the demonic aura of Bela for me :o)

My journey through this film - from utter boredom and confusion to great satisfaction. For the first half you don't understand what the film is trying to tell you, where it is going, you just notice at the very beginning a pretty nice production design, Iggy Pop's voice as a radio DJ and Lemmy Kilminster in a small role of a taxi driver playing his Mötorhead hit “Ace of Spades”. With an hour and a quarter to go, you know the plot won't leave one apartment for the rest of the film and you wonder what else they're going to fill it with, given the simple premise. And then, with the robot attack, a geyser of visual creativity, visual personality and some pretty snarky gore is unleashed. There's a bit of Terminator, a lot of Tetsuo, a bit of Blade Runner, and gut-busting gore that would put Fulci to shame. Very, very unexpected indeed, how the film radically switches gears and goes from being a moribund B-movie to a visually distinctive piece that mixes genres in an original way.

Such is the daily routine of a family of ordinary, decent citizens. They grow kohlrabi and carnations in the garden, keep the house in perfect order, pet the dog and frolic in the swimming pool, and all this is provided by the head of the family, who goes to work every day in an exemplary manner and who - by the way - is the director of the most monstrous concentration camp. He is, again by the way, at work dealing with, for example, the more efficient incineration of Jews in ovens, and does it with the same emotional involvement as when you and your wife are deciding what to buy for dinner at the supermarket. And behind the walls of this middle-class family's property, behind those ominous walls, is a human-scale Mordor where the most monstrous acts against humanity are taking place, and you feel an immense oppression thanks to the ingenious sound work and the ominous visual details in the distance, such as the smoke from the ovens, or from the locomotives bringing in more and more human fuel. The film doesn't shove down your throat horrific imagery about how monstrous the Holocaust is, it does it on a subliminal basis, working with your subconscious, and that actually makes it all the worse. It made me sick, but at the same time I bow down to Jonathan Glazer for this bold cinematic experiment that says more about us humans than you'd expect.

Poster tagline: She drained men of their loves and lives!!! This should be featured at the the Shockproof Film Festival. A piece of work from the pen and director's chair of some chauvinist pigs. It addresses the theme of eternal youth, but ultimately demeans women. The basic premise alone – an endocrinologist wants to divorce his wife because she has wrinkles around her eyes (huh, what a horror!). She, therefore, understandably desires to rejuvenate herself to avoid the divorce, and the clue may be an old woman, a 142-year-old retiree, one of the doctor's patients (and in fact the chieftain of a black tribe in Africa) who, with the help of the secrets of the Nando tribe and its medicine Nipe (for God's sake), is able to bring youth and beauty back to the woman. There is one catch, though, a man must be killed in the rejuvenation ritual. So yes, it sounds like colossal shit, and it is shit. And it doesn't end with the ritual. You honestly laugh at the scene where, on a getaway from Africa, a guy has sex with the woman in question, and when Nipe stops performing the next morning and she has wrinkles again, the guy runs from her in terror and screams at her not to touch him. Yeah. And the beauty ride of stupidity continues even after we return to New York, where women are being murdered. P.S. The only good thing was the small role of the hugely charismatic Grant Williams (The Incredible Shrinking Man), who definitely deserved a better film career, but alas, no luck.

Okay, let's check it off. Willem Dafoe has nothing to work with - check, Mickey Rourke, chewing like a herbivore, has nothing to work with - check, and Elizabeth Mastrantonio is as far from a sexy femme fatale as a politician is from a truthful person. It starts off nicely enough, though, but after ten minutes you know that the whole thing is a beautiful example of the director's, or rather the screenwriter's, inability to tell a story in any meaningful way, to somehow engage and draw you into the plot. The plot is something you don’t give a fuck about, and towards the end, after the "cruel" revelation and the nonsensical twist, logic gave itself half a pack of rohypnol. And you might take some molly to get the "experience" going.