Isherwood

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.

Living in Brno is really not as much of a pose as it may seem to the people who survive there nihilistically. Yeah, it's fun and a little regretful, but it's not a documentary at all, and for a film reconstruction, the documentary elements in it are a bit off-putting. What starts out as a distinctive joke that you can actually live in (in my case, 7 years) ends up being incredibly chosen entertainment of a group of friends who want to have it out with ex-friends and non-friends, masquerading as a strong storyline about a couple in waiting, thus handling themselves first and proving to everyone around that a certain degree of urban-social cretinism can affect anyone. Brno is a city that is not without consequences.

King's seven-part saga is unique in the way it has evolved in genre and literary terms over more than two decades, during which Stephen has managed to write dozens of other books, confess his love of Westerns and pop culture, and come to terms with his own drug past. It's a fascinating dose of the truly epic and bizarre, but the year I spent reading it was nourishing for me, literarily speaking, in the best sense of the word. The series offers about two dozen themes that could be turned into a proper blockbuster. But what they did here is in every way the worst possible option. This The Dark Tower took a few random motifs that seemed apt, but they are put together in a completely nonsensical whole. It lacks any dramatic arc. Jumping between locations, he pounds on the editing room door, desperately searching for the rest of the filmstrip. At best the characters have no chance to stand out, at worst they are annoying. Elba relies on a charisma that will engross even those for whom Roland Deschain is still a blue-eyed blond, but McConaughey played perhaps the most idiotic role in a decade. Taylor's Jake Chambers is a tragedy. This is a creative failure on all fronts that someone tried to salvage at the last minute by selling it as an action B-movie. Even decent special effects can't save the fact that before the first scene, someone should have vigorously yelled stop and turned it over to the cable people, who would have made four rich seasons of ten episodes each out of it.

A hi-tech technological treat in the thrall of routine, passionless melodrama, in which the filmmakers figured that if they couldn't pull off the philosophy or the careful mating call, a bit of spectacular fire at the end would save them. The opening twenty minutes are from another world and the finale from a well-known universe where hysterical laughter can be heard.

Gender hell, interspersed with unsuccessful porn casting, from which half a dozen diploma theses will be born by the end of the semester, none of which will grasp it the same way. This leads to idiotic sociological interpretations.

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).

Maybe it’s a bit more moderate and not as soul-destroying as the fourth film, but it’s still the worst film of the series, and of Bay's entire production line. Everything that ever made his films bad is multiplied here to monstrous proportions. The appearance is as polished as a Mercedes prototype and as voluptuous as the curves of Oxford doctor Laura Haddock. Every (and I mean every, as I realized after an hour) shot is over-stylized kitsch, which is also subordinated to the fact that if the protagonists are supposed to stand in the counter-shot of the falling sun, the sunset will last the whole day (check your watch during the finale). And somewhere beneath the surface of this twisted fetish is a plot that makes not a drop of sense. The series has never been brimming with deep intelligence, but it has always balanced it with a certain amount of craziness and lowbrow fun (Devastator's balls). Here, the plot goes nowhere for the first hour, and with the move to England, it loses the last vestiges of normal creative progression about building, development, continuity, and at least a drop of logic. Everything is absent, and even though Anthony Hopkins feels this is one big creative misstep, he nevertheless enjoys it with sloppy elegance. And that's it. Michael Bay is the last knight of cinematic ridiculousness.

It matured for me a few days later. It is excellent as an adaptation of King's exuberant novel, but a little weaker as a horror film about a clown with a penchant for murdering small children. Muschietti has removed the bushiest branches from the book, but he has captured the most important thing - the children who have stopped being afraid and have gone to face evil, bravely. The superbly led cast clicked and despite many simplifications, it works. The build-up is excellent, and the final confrontation even goes beyond the carefully, but otherwise actually very down-to-earth and respectfully filmed book imagery. Anyway, I fundamentally miss "It" in the film. (spoiler!) What I mean is the hard-to-grasp evil that is embedded in deep-seated fears. However, paradoxically, this is where the second part when the kids become adults may have a major advantage. It is thus possible that a horror combination will be created that will undeniably find its way into genre textbooks. 4 ½.

It's like gutting the core of Red Dwarf, stretching it for two hours, throwing it in a magic box where special effects slaves work, and then having it generate a "movie." The first half is still quite bearable, and, in particular, Rocket manages to do what nobody could do in the first part, which is to plant personal moments and one-liners. However, the moment when the villain is defined, the following came to me: "Fuck it!", because then you're just honestly ticking off all the properties of the standard Marvel menu. No dessert, no surprise.