Filmmaniak

A visually impressive, but at times somewhat mannerist film about a terrorist abduction viewed from the perspective of a paramilitary unit of teenage fanatical soldiers. The soldiers break free from their chains after the accidental killing of a dairy cow they were supposed to care for and the subsequent suicide of the squadron leader. This raw and physical Colombian film-experience excels in its individual scenes, dealing with the struggle for freedom bordering on the struggle for survival through suggestive acting performances. On the whole, however, the film does not represent anything exceptional or captivating - it lacks greater harshness, more fundamental emphasis on character psychology (the characters are constantly making stupid mistakes that always come back to haunt them) and a tighter story, which in some places the unnecessarily loose narrative doesn't help much.

This is an intimate, independent film that takes place in the non-traditional environment of a dystopian future in which almost all women are extinct. The film only marginally deals with the workings of the fictional society and its rules and overwhelmingly relies on the relationship and conversations between the two main characters (a father and his eleven-year-old daughter disguised as a boy), which include everything from analyzing the difference between morality and ethics to a lecture on menstruation. Yet they do not excel though any significant screenwriting prowess that could hold the film up given its slow pace and minimal plot. The films has minimalist story that benefits only from the camping journey of two characters who talk to each other, only meeting others here and there, and in the end they only need stand in the face of danger in order to continue. The film should be praised for its strong atmosphere, precise acting performances and lightness of Affleck's storytelling style.

The film’s story's is trivial and it deliberately fails to take advantage of the offered love triangle potential. From beginning to end the film remains exclusively in a genre-non-specific form, definable as an essayistic conversational drama about conversations about love, life and relationships. The contemplative discussions of the characters take place mostly in the spirit of friendly chatter over a beer with a touch of light philosophizing. At first glance the film is slightly hampered by its apparent cheapness (minimal budget, absence of lighting, visually unattractive image), which is fortunately compensated by the directing and screenwriting maturity of the film’s promising creator, whose strength is emphasis on naturalness and authenticity of the acting and dialogues based on life observations, thanks to which a sympathetic, small authorial generation film was created.

A formally inventive (great camera and imaginative storytelling through images) film about an escape from the shackles of binding life into a world of magical freedom, whose mystically dreamy atmosphere is enchanting and engaging. However, its deliberately sluggish pace, confusing symbolism and gradually increasing amount of strangeness will probably present an obstacle for many people. In its second half, the film turns into pure bizarreness, but this is somewhat self-serving due to its interpretive ambiguity.

A dense drama about a ten-year-old girl with aggressive outbursts of rage that her mother is afraid of, whilst social facilities pass her back and forth to each other like a hot potato. This is by far this year’s film with the most screaming, which also serves as a feature-length advertisement for contraception. The film boasts great actors and an empathetic insight into the worries of social workers, whose sense of hopelessness, threat and constant terror is successfully transmitted to the audience. The film excels in building fears of another fit by the little girl and offers a number of surprisingly chilling scenes, but in its second half goes in circles for too long and is slightly clueless about how to end the suffering somewhat satisfactorily.

What everyone thought was going to take three hours in Avengers: Endgame is actually over in twenty minutes and shrouded in total depression. The rest is a heist comedy in the style of Ocean's Eleven featuring Back to the Future 2 and featuring The Big Lebowski under the baton of Marvel in its best form and with an epic finale, the last fifteen minutes of which fans will be sure to cry over. The end of an era as it should be, despite some confusing games with time paradoxes. In any case, I have not left the cinema happier this year.

Pet Sematary is stuck in the last century and is a routinely-directed showcase of stale resources, with which the creators try in vain to scare the audience, starting with the sinister-looking cat and ending with a funeral procession of children in carnival masks. In contrast to King's book, the film is a very psychologically flat and sparse horror, suffering from the absence of tension, cursed in recurring nightmares of its protagonists, simple grave motifs and obligatory, the cheapest possible jump scares, and without any sign of ingenuity. The film differs only minimally from the previous, thirty-year-old adaptation, as the sporadic changes in the plot suggest that the creators at least tried not to make copy it in its entirety, but (through quality images and contemporary actors) unfortunately, that is where the modernization ends.

A markedly unbalanced black comedy. The film is directed more in the style of a serious social drama, in which a realistic drama clashes with humor in a disharmonious inconsistency and, instead of collaborating and complementing each other, both suppress each other. Comedic exaggeration is the only thing that saves the film from the accusation that, by celebrating the character of a former teacher (almost styled as a western justice fighter who decides to protect a cottage settlement from an evil mobster with an illegally obtained shotgun in hand), the film basically defends the idea of achieving your goals with firearms. The creators did not, of course, intend to encourage people to use rifles against anyone who stands in their way, but they also present any nonviolent solutions as ineffective, leaving a bitter taste from the absence of a way out for anyone who finds themselves under unfair oppression from callous or corrupt rulers. Even if this film were to present itself as a crazy comedy detached from reality about a vengeful pensioner (which really isn’t the case at all), The Lady Terrorist is weak and lacks intensity. Among other things, the protagonist hasn't even thought out her attempt to commit murder properly. The film is subordinate to the fact that she is a fragile senior who has never held a gun in her life, she never watches her back and her murder plan is amateur and sloppy, making the culmination of the film come off more so as deliberate improvisation. This is also a film in which women are continuously sexually blackmailed, and where a kick in the crotch is supposed to be sufficient punishment for the death of a dog. However, most viewers will probably not spend much time thinking about any of this and will be satisfied with Iva Janžurová’s performance. They will laugh at her aiming the shotgun she carries in her shopping bag on wheels together with a cake pan.

I watched the uncensored version, which was 146 minutes long. An enjoyable and surprisingly quite funny film (for a hardened and very specific audience) with lots of scantily clad girls and demons with tentacles. Overall, the film comes off as an off-the-wall porn version of Akira enriched with romance, set against the backdrop of tidings of the uncompromising end of the world, including an apocalyptic depressive finale. In any case, the film’s basis is a dark urban fantasy with an epic story about the unification of three worlds and the search for the Chosen One, but the bloody battles and explicit erotica are an unprecedented added bonus.

A remarkable and somewhat fascinating mixture of realistic social drama and multilevel parable with elements of magical realism, clearly divided into two parts in the middle. Both parts tell one story and feature the same characters, but otherwise they vary significantly in many aspects. In its first half, the film focuses on the social aspects of the lives of peasants working on tobacco plantations in an isolated feudal community (in sunny and seemingly pleasing shots of the summer harvest), but in the second half it turns into a more naturalistic and dirty social criticism (shot in greyer and more depressing shades of a gloomy winter), which suddenly portrays the same characters in different contexts and under different conditions and encourages reflection on numerous layered messages and a large number of social, religious and environmental interpretations. An intelligible plot, coherent storytelling and consistently mature directing guarantee that this is a film that audiences will like, and one that is emotionally strong, pleasant to watch, unpredictable and entertaining. Also worth appreciating is the film’s courage not to hesitate in the middle and bury all of the previous events and build on their foundations, with a surviving link in the form of an non-traditionally conceived kind-hearted protagonist, whose prematurely terminated mental development the film transforms into visual form and cuts off his development physically as part of an unusual reversal that has a chance to resonate a little longer than an excess of often too literal meanings and messages.