Filmmaniak

An intoxicating masterpiece depicting the world as a cruel and unjust place through the poetically intertwined stories of four characters whose lives are shaken by a series of fateful events. All of the protagonists (a seventeen-year-old girl experiencing bitter moments with her mother, her classmate who accidentally throws another classmate down the stairs, coincidentally the brother of a billiard owner who witnesses the suicide of his best friend, and an old man who is a burden on his family) share the same passive indifference and resignation. They actively express themselves only in critical moments of danger. Even so, their activities usually have (self) destructive consequences. The film, which accompanies the aura of this film, whose debuting director killed himself after it was completed, can also be perceived in this respect as the key to understanding a person who is considering suicide, which does not mean that motifs such as hope or redemption do not have a place in it. In any case, Hu Bo was a great talent, shooting his film in a series of long and incredibly thoughtfully composed shots with complex dialogues and sophisticated continuity. The excellently-cast civilian actors have absolutely precise and perfectly believable performances. The four-hour length is a bit of an obstacle at first glance. Nevertheless, the consistently-flowing and slowly told work attracts interest from the first to the last minute, and over time it becomes more interesting and constantly reveals new information and new twists, gradually escalating to a perfectly constructed finale full of empathy and mutual understanding.

A captivatingly family saga that takes place over two decades about the origin and demise of the first drug clans in Central America and the associated first gang wars. Great actors and their characters with precisely constructed natures are complemented by a number of engaging and special tribal traditions and rituals. A film about that fact that family honor has greater value than all wealth, which in the end only blinds and produces death. Each of the five chapters drag a bit in places, but the overall strong charge present in almost every scene clearly wins the audience over.

It is symptomatic that Švankmajer initially explains that he wrote the screenplay in one sitting. He also denies that it makes any sense and has no idea what it is about. The result is an amazing exercise in narrative subversiveness with actors deliberately acting awkward, lack of time and editing continuity, and frequent insertions in which Švankmajer directs and commands the crew, or in which the actors talk about what dreams they are having. In any case, it really doesn't make sense and does not have a deeper meaning; it's more of an experiment that refutes all of the narrative rules. At times it's extremely fun, but at other times it's numbing and depressing. And in some moments, unfortunately, it is impossible to decipher when the subversiveness and non-continuity is a creative intention and when it is an unwanted mistake.

Panos Cosmatos finally found a suitable topic for his distinctive and visually extravagant LSD experiments - a lumberjack nightmare on bad drugs with brutally bloody orgies, chainsaws and bikers from hell. Only the hallucinogenic passages and the demonically-psychedelic music of Jóhan Jóhannsson save the first half and its extremely relaxed pace, but then such a sectarian trash metal epic starts that it is difficult not to succumb to it, although resistance to extreme violence is a necessary precondition. Nicolas Cage's crazy performance amounts to a guilty pleasure on a trip. Mandy is a cruel and evil film, but it is equally distinctive.

The first thirty-five minutes are a completely stupid and incredibly horrible, cheap and amateur zombie film without any screenplay and craftsmanship (except that it all takes place in a single shot), telling the story of filmmakers shooting a zombie horror who are then surprised by a real zombie infestation. It's hard to get through, and most people will probably give up after the first fifteen minutes. However, the next hour is a bit more interesting. In it we watch the filmmakers and actors prepare for shooting the zombie movie, and then how they actually shoot it, showing why the result was so desperately lousy (for example, when one of the actors playing a zombie suffered a bout of diarrhea and the other actors had to improvise for a few minutes). The film is sometimes funny and imaginative, but still too stupid and not funny enough to be fun the entire time. The theme is remotely reminiscent of Lost in Munich, but it is also filmed by television amateurs, without a deeper message and with zero technical and film quality.

Although the camera essentially stays the main protagonist and never leaves his police telephone exchange, this thriller is extremely gripping and even able to surprise with unexpected twists. Practically, the only thing happening are telephone calls. However, the viewer gradually learns not only about the criminal case of the crisis call of an abducted woman, but also the background and nature of the main protagonist, including his personal problems, as well as the psychologically-demanding routine of emergency line operators in general. Lots of substance with minimal resources, maximum intimacy, but also maximum effect.

A film edited together by excerpts from other films set in San Francisco. In essence, the film is an attempt to tell the story of Hitchcock’s Vertigo through narrative and editorially experimental video montages. However, the film only has a continuous plot within short and very isolated segments a few minutes long, not across the entire film. It only reminds of Vertigo very remotely. These segments usually frame scenes with three men editing the film in the editing room and continuously playing various passages, which is quite a funny meta-solution to give the whole strange shape some cover, although it is somewhat cheap. Otherwise, all dialogues are cut out from most of the other scenes, and in some shots, either green fog, green tint or other green smoke effects are added, but only sporadically, and this has no deeper meaning on the image. A few sequences are very good and edited imaginatively, others are surprisingly inconsistent (the quarrel of a man and a woman edited together from scenes in which the protagonists do not quarrel) and overall, the hour can be survived if taken as something that is visually interesting.

A comedy for women that tells women that they are not beautiful or desirable because they do not look like supermodels on the covers of men's magazines. Instead of fighting the institutionalized ideal of beauty and passing on the message to the audience that superficial appearance doesn't matter as much, the film tells women the exact opposite. The film first gives women the idea that they should feel bad if they look at least a little like the main protagonist (but Amy Schumer is definitely not ugly), and then includes them in situations where it is repeatedly presented that every woman who doesn't look like the model from the advertisement is fat and ugly. The highlight is the conclusion in which the main protagonist has a motivational speech in front of many other women, saying that all women are as beautiful the way they are, but it’s only there to advertise a new series of affordable cosmetics. It's not even very funny for comedy – which makes sense when the entire plot is based on a single joke.

The scene with the human-whining "bear" and a psychopathic recording with the cutting of an abdomen are the best moments in this over-embellished and shapeless sci-fi B movie. The first two thirds still somehow arouse curiosity, but in the end it is drowned in an unsatisfactory mysterious bluff made of strung-together motifs, half of which are completely flat and lead nowhere. The other half are very interesting, but in the end culminates in the meaningless heroine saying, "I don't know".

For a biblical drama, this is a surprisingly intimate and deliberately non-epic film, suited by the modest gray color stylization and the almost meditative storytelling tempo. However, the attempt to capture the well-known story of Jesus Christ from the perspective of Mary Magdalene proves ineffective. The personal storyline dedicated to the protagonist ends after almost half an hour and is brutally overrun by the storyline with Jesus and his apostles, who immediately come to the center of attention. Meanwhile, Mary is relegated to the role of a helping escort and gets attention again at the very end, when she is the only one who understands Jesus's metaphors. The essential parts of the story of Jesus in which Mary was not personally present are then cut out, and the film is thus deprived of context in a number of scenes. The film completely gives up on any sort of drama and effort to influence the viewer emotionally, its scenes are desperately non-intensive and there is no culmination, even if it could be offered in the scenes of Jesus's crucifixion, which happens too quickly and abruptly. The film's focus is not at all based on telling this familiar story from a new perspective, but is rather about revealing the ideology of the individual characters. Unfortunately, its work with the characters is too superficial and its message, which goes hand in hand with Jesus's teaching on having peace in your heart, love and forgiveness, is too trivial. Mary Magdalene is sketched simply and her motivations are plain, whilst Jesus is a character so complex and complicated that the film fails in sufficiently rendering him (this is greatly saved by Phoenix's acting, thanks to which, next to Mary Magdalene, with the somewhat stiff expression of Rooney Mara, Jesus at least feels a bit like a three-dimensional figure). The story of Jesus Christ is timeless and immensely powerful, yet this presentation is dull and lifeless.