Isherwood

Surprisingly, the teenagers act quite normal (whether it's the opening antics or the insecurity at night) and are put through their paces in a cinematically polished piece that, while built mainly on Tom Savini's make-up artistry, also deserves recognition for the lean and dark atmosphere of the abandoned camp. The casting is very good, except for the main protagonist, who in the end perfectly seals all the established myths about the shrillness and stupidity of the female cast in the slasher subgenre. Or: It’s true, not everyone can be Laurie Strode! If it weren't for the pointlessly drawn-out finale and the surprising but self-serving inserts, it would have received full marks. 3 ½.

A total trashing of a brilliant novel that mixes all its wonderful attributes (despair, ideas, action) into the form of a standard monster B-movie, of which there were plenty at the time. Nature's tricks are turned into aliens and the intelligent protagonist into a boring macho guy. I don’t like comparing the printed versions to their audiovisual counterparts, given my sympathies usually lie with the typewriters rather than the camera, and here the result is so barbaric and rapey compared to the book that I simply can't help but make the comparison. Also, if it wasn't for the cult-like nature of the book, no one would care about the film today. It’s paradoxical that it was imprinted in the subconscious of the audience...

This film has the most potential of all the Jack Ryan stories. Unfortunately, it is held down by an overly patchy script without a solid skeleton to give it direction. The ultimate twist in the middle is delightful, but the subsequent bargaining with fingers on the trigger of nuclear weapons is surprisingly boring because the director irritatingly hesitates. It lacks the sensitivity and authorial acuity of John McTiernan, or the political commitment of Phillip Noyce. P.H. Robinson is merely a skilled craftsman without a more distinctive authorial imprint. That's unfortunate. It could have been the best installment because Ben Affleck is surprisingly watchable. I’m still giving it four stars, even taking into account the fact that it's not the sort of viewing torture that watching the previous two films with Ford was.

A cynical private eye and a sexy journalist uncover the background to the brutal murders of young strippers, which may be the result of a Catholic feminist conspiracy. It only hints a being a horror film, although the gore is truly impressive, and especially the butt hammering or face ironing is still impactful years later. Yet it's much more of a detective story that desperately doesn't know whether to reference or parody the noir school. The protagonist is brimming with cynicism, but he misses the mark due to the inflexibility of the rest of the characters. The entire film thus has to deal with a terrible inter-genre battle that ends in a tie. However, if you think of it as a B-movie, you'll have a lot of fun with it.

This is a strange film built on the paradox that, although it is a horror film, it formally approaches the genre with more or less only one scene. Anderson's work in stirring the audience’s feelings lies elsewhere. The well-chosen digital cinematography, the cramped setting of a former mental institution, and the interconnectedness of the protagonists serve to create an incredibly evil atmosphere. Although I didn't feel as tense as a string, I felt devastated when the end credits rolled, as if I had just walked out of that place of evil... alive and well, but forever scarred.

Via its distinctive treatment, the unique fairy tale theme is offered to a rather older audience, who will not only enjoy the decadent atmosphere but also the many exquisite details that director Del Toro uses to give his fantasy world a soulfulness and an overall feeling of perfect sophistication. The amazing sets, masks, and the contrast of the civil war with the fantasy world are just a sliding surface. The truth lies beneath the surface, where the viewer's imagination and brain must be engaged. Bravo!

My first, funniest, and dearest Smith film of its time hasn't lost any of its comedic cadence with the passage of time. However, my perspective is a little different given the rest of the director's films. Smith pushed aside his personal views on pop culture and took on church dogmas, whose frequent inflexibility to the current state of society is blatant. It violates them all, makes outrageous fun of them with the help of the most tasteless humor, and yet it is so purely its own, absolutely funny, straightforwardly accurate, never for a moment stooping to awkward variations (hello The Da Vinci Code). This makes Smith’s most mainstream (not counting Jersey Girl) film into a damn polished flick that, while its edge is not as perfectly honed as the rest (neither in terms of humor nor sarcasm), is still supremely entertaining.

The beginning gets going in just the way we expect from the director. Greengrass "only" continues the ride kicked off by the second installment, but more observant viewers will realize this by a third of the way through at the latest. Yet the mix of feelings about a flywheel that perhaps has nothing to offer is swept away by the action in Morocco, which turns it up to 120%, moving furiously across continents to nail the viewer into their seat in breathtaking action and plot twists revealing Jason's past. The whole world was expecting it, but the result pushes all expectations beyond imagination. And while we will all (deservedly) praise Greengrass for the fact that action thrillers will have their most synonymous character in Jason Bourne for a few years to come, let's finally kneel before Matt Damon. After all, it's only during the third time that we can fully realize that he’s the one who actually "made" the role.

The thought-provoking subject matter is held down by an overblown script and Cronenberg's incomprehensible restraint in explicit scenes. The scanning in front of the audience and the grand ending as if from an epic fable are not enough to stop me from dryly stating that the film was just plain boring. It’s a prime example of a film where rumors of exploding heads have created a phenomenon that falls short in reality.

Michael Myers as a contestant on the reality show Big Brother: Slasher upgrade? Did the writers start doing drugs? We get an annoying bunch of teenagers, an annoying emphasis on modern technology, and unimaginative murders. It’s all handled by the director of the amazing second film, who probably also started drinking because such a concentration of filmmaking dementia is pretty rare. The prologue did look promising, but it lasts about 3 minutes... and the rest of the film 90! Let's see what Maestro Rob will do with the series, which actually resembles a rather exhausted zombie!