Isherwood

Nostalgia is powerful. It felt like twenty years ago and at times I found myself wanting to burst into tears. But this is no kitschy glorification of something that has grown into a national monument over two decades. It's a beautifully edited montage of the familiar and the unfamiliar, balanced on all fronts of the barricade, and with an incredibly light-footed rhythm, it puts even historical injustices in the same context as hockey rematches. Few films will offer such a full-blooded cinematic experience this year.

Johnson delivers on the premise for which he was hired at Disney, bombarding the saga from all sides, letting the rich history and modern hi-tech gadgetry take charge. It establishes its order right from the start in a monstrous action sequence, turning away from Abrams' dissolute geekiness to let the protagonists rather rant for nearly two hours, and tugs the threads of fatality to the edge of tolerability. Then, when the characters are sufficiently in control (Rey is more mysterious and Ben even more emotionally volatile), an action orgy breaks out that still makes it worth going to the movie theater to see big Hollywood blockbusters. This production treatment is far beyond what many other franchises can only dream of. It's no longer the primal feast for the eye that it was last time, but Johnson and Yedlin are more visually modest in order to then plant visual highlights exactly when their story, and especially their characters, demand it. Silent destruction and red salt are the cosmic symphonies of the image last brought to us by Interstellar. The only thing missing to complete perfection is the original 3-hour runtime. I really felt at times that there were a few moments that slipped through my fingers unnecessarily. Regardless, by the time the closing credits rolled I felt real physical exhaustion. An emotional experience like a festival indie soc-drama. PS: In the days ahead, nothing will be more entertaining than reading the words of conservatives over the age of 30 barking about the new generation of heroes and pining for the good old days.

When a hot dinner, a cold bottle, and an ironed shirt cease to be a daily staple because the baby's cries and used diapers begin to dwindle suspiciously, it is necessary to reach for the time-tested collection of the Old Testament and gut out a few apocrypha that did not bend so efficiently even in the days of the Inquisition. I don't fully understand the criticism that is being leveled at it, especially from the right. The female quintet behind the camera is very down-to-earth and sensitive. In fact, the social apocalypse is an almost intimate affair, with events happening in passing and the viewer praying to see more, but fearing that on a more global scale, it will fall apart. From my perspective, though, it takes the incredible internal dynamic from the fact that no other dystopia I can remember has gone so much to the root of the hypocrisy that automatically accompanies all totalitarian systems. It bubbles under the surface perfectly, but Jezebel’s visit definitely pushes it to a genre event that imagines the apocalypse without nuclear fallout.

Bigger, stronger, faster. It moves along without any major hesitation but is actually a bit too confident at times. I have no doubt that at the age of thirteen, kids could escalate their relationships even in the 1980s, and I'm a little sad about the cautious treading. Regardless, this year, even a little more so than a year ago, you can see how much of a Duffer child it is, which they understand best. The directorial crumbling is quite striking and it only really gets going at the very end. I flirted with the idea last time, but this unacknowledged cinematic portal into Black Messa is appreciated by nine Doctor Freemans out of ten.

This is total overkill in several filmmaking disciplines that hasn't been knocked into the dust by time or silicon by better-refined followers. It's all been said about it already, but the unwritten Cameronian dictum that action scenes must serve the story and not the other way around ages like a fine wine with every unnecessary megabyte of data generated, and it's a wonder that there haven't been many action blockbusters that work on a similar principle in the twenty-six years since. Personally, I'll always prefer the uneven trench warfare of planetoid LV-426, but I still very much understand why this fully holds up in the genre battle even after blowing away all the nostalgic overlay in this millennium. This will survive judgment day because it's... (see the beginning of my comment).

My Lord in heaven! A dark fantasy in a ball-busting visual barrage, where everything is so horribly over the top that I fully understand the viewers who sent it down the drain. This film takes all sorts of genre motifs and glues them onto a gritty story with the amount of gusto the director last had seventeen years ago. I was still a little hesitant at the intro with the gigantic elephants, but then in a brilliant cut Arthur grows up and I knew it was home run. This was because we got Ritchie's beloved staircase run with Pemberton's punchy underscore, and it doesn't lag during the special effects orgy when everyone knew they could break free from their chains, including the actors. Jude Law plays the villain in the same style as in The Young Pope, and it's an absolutely decadent blockbuster. And Charlie Hunnam? Even in Pacific Rim, I thought he had suspicious charisma for a sweet 20-something girl idol, and here he's taking advantage of it in the best possible way. I was pretty hesitant about going to the movie theater because the trailer campaign was very bland, but seeing that with a budget of 175 million, it has grossed (2 months after the premiere) about 145 million worldwide, it's clear to me that someone at Warner had cardinally screwed up. The best fantasy since The Lord of the Rings.

The idea seems terribly mixed and archetypal in the crime genre. A balding thug in a flowing shirt and a stuttering, sleek intellectual in a suit are searching for a sadistic killer. But Alfaro, despite his reckless fists, is a good guy, while Velarde is a light sociopath, and together they function in a sometimes incomprehensible symbiosis. Rarely do we see such a brilliant script that plays to the classic notes, but handles all the characters and situations in a completely different way than the average viewer is used to. Above all, the theme of the motif of the murder of old women is quite unusual and the director is not afraid to flirt with hints and explicit violence, serving up both exactly when you’re expecting the opposite. It's surprising, daring, and aptly black-humored in every way. From the scene with the abandoned kitten onwards, it then takes on an incredible momentum, which not only doesn't lose its pace when the cards are dealt, and instead multiplies, as the major plot twists happen only "by the way." If something like this emerged on the other side of the Atlantic, it would immediately be considered an "instant classic." I'm surprised Warner Brothers isn’t already shouting rumors of an immediate remake to the world.

My disappointment with the last film was so great that I avoided the trailers for the third one, feeling their uselessness. However, Reeves was either kept sedated or some brave producer really believed him, and I can hardly resist getting excited about arguably the boldest summer blockbuster in years. The opening action is still very forced, but then for the next hour, four monkeys, whose CGI rendering is a CGI reality approaching perfection, track a military unit through a snowy landscape at a slow but cinematically precise and deliberate pace. All the while, they are driven by the best possible cinematic engine, i.e., the desire for revenge. It was clear that all would be forgiven and I just prayed that it would keep going like this, as Michael Giacchino conducts the minimalist retro score and the cinematography flirts with the turn of the sixth and seventh decades of the last century. And that’s not all. Woody Harrelson varies the best possible creation of khaki madness spewed from the heart of darkness, and after the famous dialogue with Caesar, the film jumps on the dark wave of the erratic nature of desired good and the lure of ambiguous evil to bring it to an epic end. Even amidst the cheesy interludes and pathos of heroic self-sacrifice, it still keeps a grim face that relies on heroes who are no longer amusing apes who can do funny gestures, but solid figures whose emerging evolutionary supremacy is not to be doubted.

Three hours of informationally exhaustive retrospective in which one famous group of five comments on one unique filmmaking period of another famous group of five. From propaganda to the sentiment that after the war, some people were allowed in Hollywood and others were not. I was devouring every word and at the same time writing out a list of what I needed to see immediately. The most enjoyable part was that Netflix put the most essential movies right at the back.

It’s an audio-visually over-stylized, soft-spoken, yet more than eloquent fresco about the dark side of the eternal city that manages a quantum of characters, unprecedented violence, and metaphorical parables. Some of the threads could still use an extra knot at the end, but it is still an intense and exhausting viewing experience in the best sense.