J*A*S*M

A much more unbearable film than I could have ever expected. Technically speaking, it’s good, of course, but the dialogues are a pain to listen to, the main characters are unlikeable (all of them, and the main teenage redneck most of all), the story is driven by either chance or the stupidity of the characters, and the whole lot is so awfully pathetic and kitsch that it made my head spin. I think the world around us is full of better stories and I don’t understand why anyone should care whether one mare will be reunited with an unlikeable young guy or not. And, if the animal in this film intentionally and consciously (!!!) sacrifices itself in order to help its friend, and people actually believe it and are moved by it… something is bloody wrong in this world. It’s been long since something pissed me off so much. Two stars for the technical aspect, but unfortunately, Spielberg is no longer guarantee of quality mainstream entertainment.

If I labelled the blend of horror and comedy as a misdemeanour, then the blend of horror and musical couldn’t be labelled other than a crime against humanity. To make something like that so I would like it, the director would have to be a genius. But, against all my expectations, what I enjoyed the most about Don’t Go in the Woods were actually the songs. The horror part is not worth talking about, the murders don’t begin until twenty minutes before the end. Without the music, it would have been almost unbearable, so two points for that at least.

I felt like a redneck in a posh restaurant who orders some incredibly expensive chef’s special and a thousand Euro bottle of wine and then, when they bring it, I lovingly reminisce of a pork schnitzel with a beer at the local pub. An incredibly well made spy drama whose potential to become an immediate modern genre classic is similar to, for instance, last year’s western True Grit, or Tomas Alfredson’s previous film, Let the Right One in. For me, however, it was too slow, with too much dialogue, too one dimensional and too long, which, together with the fact that spy dramas are not my favourite genre, resulted in my being unable to properly appreciate it. I’m sorry, but that’s the fact.

One star for those couple of moments when it was unintentionally funny and for one of the last scenes, which was nicely awful, and also because I’ve been trying not to give Boo! ratings.

David Fincher is one of the best directors alive and it’s not surprising that he’s made an excellent film. The differences between the American and Swedish adaptations are enough to invalidate the argument of a pointless remake, but I’m still unable to convince myself that I should be satisfied with this new version, I’m not, even though the quality is clear. In short, watching a whodunit when you know who the killer is, is as much fun as going to the sea to watch dolphins, even though you know that dolphins don’t live in that sea. You can enjoy the fresh sea breeze, work on a tan, have a cold alcoholic beverage… but you still know that you won’t see any dolphins.

This is like the Chinese version of Fall of the Innocent, but a lot more expensive and better made. I’m kidding a little, if I started to list the similarities between the two films they would be more random than symptomatic, but the fact is that they both had the same effect on me. A visually nice bait for fake emotions, with an outstanding Bale, that’s it.

SURTHGEN rules again! It has helped the Norwegians, the Irish, the French, the Spaniards, the Italians, the Americans, the Brits, and certainly many others, sometimes more than once. Now it has helped the Swedes and, I have to say, without resulting in any fiasco. This time, the SURvival THriller GENerator has produced a very nice forest chase with a likeable protagonist, a beautiful setting and a decent portion of tension. Unfortunately, the villain brings down the impression a notch, he’s awfully uninteresting and looks a little like from a slow motion film. The villains generated for similar films would have caught the female lead a hundred times, but this one no, he just hangs out while the girl escapes further and further. The overall impression: strong three stars.

In all respects, an average slasher flick from the 80s. It’s okay to watch once, but after a week, I hardly remember anything.

A superb beginning, a fantastic end and an awful (AWFUL!) middle. To give you an idea: A woman is abused by her husband (superb), then a policeman and his girlfriend take care of her (awful), but the husband won’t have any of it and takes revenge (fantastic). The way the oppressive atmosphere dissolves in that middle part is beyond my comprehension. Another country, another culture, I guess. If we ignore that middle part (yeah, it pissed me off so much that I’m saying it again, to be sure), it is a great exploitation film that left me with a far more positive impression than the similar The Untold Story.

According to the predictions of some of my horror colleagues, Living Hell should have made me throw up, crap my pants and maybe even given me a heart attack. Fortunately, none of that happened, but I have to admit that people of a weaker nature will not sleep well after watching it. Shugo Fujii managed to make a horror film that (especially in the climax) feels incredibly evil, nasty and insane, while at the same time generating genuine fear and tension. That was actually a surprise, because in many scenes, it’s clear that his directorial skills have a lot of room for improvement. About the script, I was ready to say that it’s incredibly stupid (even if you put together ten very silly American horror flicks, you won’t see so much lack of logic, weirdness and stupidity as in Living Hell, and though the differences between western and eastern mentalities do play a role, it’s not enough to explain all that stupidity – for instance, the character of the journalist), but that impression is significantly improved by the climax, which (maybe) explains all the previous events and takes the wind out of the sails of potential critics. It’s not very fair on the part of the creators, but well… Overall, I’m very satisfied, it’s a film I can recommend to horror fans. It’s not very well known, which is a shame.