Remedy

The hypnotic style with seemingly ill-fitting soundtrack pays homage to the master Refn and I must say that I don’t find much fault with director Franck Khalfoun. Maniac is a great portrait of a slightly brooding Frodo, who instead of his ring usually draws a rather handsome knife on the ladies and concentrates mainly on satisfying those highly specific desires of his that most of us find unacceptable. On the other hand, there’s no accounting for taste, and if practically the whole film is shot through the eyes of the main character (here again one is reminded of Enter the Void, which Gaspar enhanced with suggestive hints of the blinking and beating of heart), it increases the intensity of the final experience and one can empathize a bit better with the feelings of the mentally ill Frodo. A truly aesthetically decadent experience.

The Hunger Games is a film that is very purposefully made, and one that was already destined for commercial success – given the marketing frenzy that preceded its release, of course. An arena of death where children massacre each other – I don't know if that kind of subject matter is cruel, cynical, or just plain nasty, but it's still a terribly interesting topic for a film that so massively caters to audiences. I don't think there was any attempt at any resonance here, given the setting and the profile of the production itself. So I'm not going to evaluate the "seriousness of the content" in any depth, and others have already done that here in an informed way. The formal aspects, especially the visuals, are bombastic – the gorgeous setting and affluence of the Capitol contrasts brilliantly with the poverty that characterizes the vast majority of all the Districts. Despite the omnipresent "pomp and grandeur", I preferred the more human or personal storylines of the film – the central duo come across as likeable and very easily win your sympathy. Personally, I was expecting more pathos, more wringing of emotions and pushing the envelope, which in the end didn't happen. The question is whether to consider this a positive or negative aspect, because I really expected more of those emotions there. On the other hand, there was a moment that moved me (but that's probably because I'm an overly sensitive soul), and that was when SPOILER ALERT Katniss buries little Rue and holds up her fingers in tribute to District 11. END SPOILER It was such a beautifully touching human moment, almost unique out of the entire Hunger Games in its intensity. This is admittedly very subjective (though what rating isn't...), but given that I devoured the running time of slightly over two hours in one breath without pause, I have no reason to rate it differently, nor do I "feel" like I should :-) I respect all the objective criticisms, but they did not affect my final impression in the least :))

Judd Apatow confirmed his genius to me with this amazing film and, most importantly, disproved the myth that a great romantic comedy (even if at times it wasn't that funny) doesn't need to have a frugal running time "for the sake of its own success" if there’s a how and a what to tell. I probably would have snickered if someone had told me I would love a two-hour comedy (mostly a comedy.:)) whose central theme is unplanned conception. But Knocked Up isn't just any comedy, it's first and foremost a wonderfully human story with an well developed script in which two seemingly completely different people (sometimes hilariously, sometimes bitterly) who have very little in common gradually find their way to each other. Seth Rogen's fecal humor is brilliantly contrasted here with the delicacy of Katherine Heigl, who is wonderfully endearing in her sudden pregnancy and impossible not to love. The absolute pinnacle of the "romantic comedy" genre for the last 10 years.

Amores Perros, Magnolia, Crash + other actors playing "fatalistically" in their fatalistic mosaic pieces = The Air I Breathe. The remnants of the obvious inspiration in the story structure here is undeniable, but the acting is mostly good (Whitaker is excellent as usual), the visuals are pleasing, and it's still about themes that are undeniably attractive for a film rendering. In short, if you revel in onscreen suffering and feel mentally enriched by the culminating terror and misfortune that befalls the main characters, you will definitely not be disappointed.

There's this "90's vibe" that I can't quite put a name to, but it definitely had an effect on me throughout the film. Maybe it's because the exteriors were shot a little differently back then, the soundtrack used to be more restless/nervous than bombastic, and the atmosphere could be very imaginatively evoked even just by a "nighttime run" through the backstreets of the Big Apple. I got a bit nostalgic; but now to the substance. Norton is absolutely fantastic, Gere satisfactory, Laura Linney good within reason. The script is mainly designed so that the actors have something to work with, and there's no shortage of twists and turns, which actually feel quite tidy in the end and don't necessarily feel contrived or like a bet on a "shocking denouement". Gregory Hoblit was then able to use his craftsmanship to create an extremely suspenseful courtroom drama that can be considered the pinnacle of its genre. In addition, he de facto discovered and brought to wider awareness Edward Norton, who went on to create some memorable characters in the late 1990s. For me, this is the best Hoblit.

I simply can't fail to mention a fact that has been on my mind for quite a long time (of course, I admit the alternative that it has been thoroughly analyzed before and I am rejoicing quite unnecessarily over my "discovery"), which is that Quentin Tarantino very cleverly chooses a kind of event, period, or well known environment (I deliberately did not say a historical event and did not specify an environment), in order to then demonstrate through the medium of film his own version and his ideas about the specific context and laws of that time or environment (in this case I’m not even mentioning hyperbole, since for the entire work of Q.T. that would simply be beating a dead horse). At the same time, I would be very cautious about suggesting that Quentin is perhaps making a parody of sorts (in theory, these might be parodies in part, but they have been elevated to a separate "Tarantino" genre). He says himself that he's basically making variations on his favorite films – clearly he's still more than good at it. Choosing the topic of World War II and placing a group of Jews in the story to mock and murder Nazis was as ingenious as creating the iconic figure of a black slave who (with a bit of hyperbole) massacres his previous oppressors in the setting of slave-owning America and (with a bit more hyperbole) gradually implements a new system of social order. And of course, you could objectively protest the period inaccuracies, as in the case of Inglourious Basterds, but I feel that the inaccuracies here are entirely on purpose and certainly do not stem from ignorance or a desire to desecrate historical sources. In general, I have long felt that Quentin Tarantino seeks through his films to point out the absurdities that have prevailed in different historical periods or that bind different environments (such as gangster ones), which is also the answer to why his films are usually understood and taken as very absurd, immoral, overflowing with violence, and "a wrong vision of today's world in relation to the moral values so much proclaimed everywhere". Tarantino is an extraordinary and highly intelligent filmmaker who, in his works, mocks the paradigms of different historical epochs or the perverse principles of various separated groups, and who, sometimes by extreme means, very ingeniously points out the nonsense, absurdity, or enormous superficiality of everything he films. He has had my boundless respect for such openness since the days of Reservoir Dogs.

The very obvious inspiration from the master of soulful nastiness, David Cronenberg, is of course easily identifiable here, but I daresay that on a purely intellectual level, the makers of American Mary distanced themselves from Cronenberg (which was probably the intention). If I were to evaluate the content of the film itself, I take a pretty much uniform stance towards all films about revenge of any kind – yes, revenge is morally justifiable, but I no longer completely identify with the idea that the original victim becomes something much worse during a process of retribution that makes the original rapist look like an amateur. And that the filmmakers pretty much pulled it off in this case! --- As the movie trailer would say: and a raging vortex of bloody retribution ensues. ---

A wonderfully tasteful affair, at times almost "P.T. Andersonian" in terms of the power of identifying with the characters emotionally/psychologically. It may seem that the more insane the characters you create in the script, the more intense the final impression will be from a certain point of view, and the overall structure of Silver Linings Playbook encourages this in its own way. However, it struck me more as a kind of sweet, sensitive, and sometimes harsh story (harsh only in terms of the emotions transferred to the viewer) about people who to be sure are "different" in certain ways (we even have tons of charts, names of diseases, and various medications for them), but it is through this "otherness" that a "normal" non-bipolar person can observe that even your average lunatic can be much more perceptive, sensitive, and insightful in many other ways than those who, according to the charts, are not officially crazy. Here I can nicely pick up on what David O. Russell was (in my opinion) really trying to say with this film – namely, that when a normal person has some strong excess in behavior or thinking, it is almost always very difficult to get them to renounce and erase something that was/is important to them, even if it was the source of future psychic disturbance. I really liked how David O. Russell demonstrated through the supporting characters that the more mentally and morally deranged may very well be the officially "normal" people whose completely tactless and boorish behavior bring down and humiliate the officially "abnormal" individuals. Silver Linings Playbook is not a film that glorifies crazy people or a film that presents emotionally vulnerable and unbalanced people as beings who are superior in their humanity to the officially "normal" ones. Silver Linings Playbook is the story of the gradual coming together of two terribly shattered human souls whose loved ones cannot help them (and if they try, they only do so very convulsively and stiffly) and instead try foolishly, but certainly with good intentions, to keep them apart. This is a superbly acted, directed and, above all, sensitively made film that is, in the purest sense of the word, a madcap romance that ultimately warms the heart beautifully in the space of two hours. And Jennifer Lawrence may not be a textbook beauty like Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman, or Megan Fox, but she exudes such an aura that I would quickly fall in love with her (and with me she wouldn't even have to crawl on all fours).

A souped-up soundtrack, the great Colin Farrell, the skinny Keira Knightley, and a well-trodden tale of a gangster trying to live "right" after getting out of prison, whereupon his past catches up with him, of course. Nice locations, direction commensurate to the resulting quality of the film. Doesn't impress, doesn't offend.

A rather unconventional film bordering on art that stuns with its visual creativity and a very evocative musical component. You might want to call it a kind of heavily unconventional fairy tale, but even that description wouldn't quite do it justice. There is no clear-cut way to characterize this film, films like this don’t just get made. On the one hand, it's truly entrancingly beautiful from an audiovisual perspective, but when you realize the pressure that the little girl is put under (would anyone tell a similar story to their five-year-old?), you can't help but wonder if this "alternating of moods" isn't just a matter of expediency and simple manipulation. However... considering that for his first time Tarsem Singh took my breath right away multiple times (the opening black and white scene is a total massacre), I will in good conscience disregard how slightly "unrefined" the story is, because in the final analysis it's still a pretty damn good and, most importantly, original piece of work.