Marigold

A thread of ghosts transplanted from the fashionable world to the intellectual family of a horror writer and a promiscuous professor. The film is unpleasant, contact-based, and actually too distant for me. However, that doesn't change anything about Moss and Stuhlbarg's masterclass.

I shouldn't rate it, because after an hour and a bit, the film made my horrible hangover so bad that I had to run away. But this simulator of late Stalinism, more of a sociological experiment than a film in the classical sense of the word, goes so deep inside of you that you can’t stop thinking about it. A better argument for proving the monstrosity of totalitarianism than all the moralistic masturbation of the exorcists of neo-Marxism.

Clean marketing and filmmaking work. Klusák and Chalupová have delivered such an unpleasant, funny, understandable, simple and emotionally instructive title to overcome the traditional limitations of documentaries, which demand active cooperation and deeper empathy from the viewer. Like the "opening of a discussion" it's "cool ammo for memes and internet humor". It does not convey anything revolutionary and it does not discover anything stimulating, but it reliably draws you in, and perhaps it will lead to changes beyond the momentary event. The best moment of the documentary is the conclusion, which shows that mere "moral outrage" is not enough to humiliate the predator and drive him into a corner. That's the whole tragedy.

The proclamation of girl power and kicking someone in the balls are not the problems of the film at all. In my opinion, there could be more of them in an ideal world and they could hit elsewhere than the obvious targets, such as ruined demented sidekicks and a generic villain (does Gotham really need another sadistic mobster with daddy complexes?). Harley is a guide. Narratively and self-reflexively, the film copies Deadpool, including unreliable detours and chaotic bloopers. Unfortunately, before the film gets going in any direction, these moments of "let's start again" slow down the pace considerably. The film is accompanied by cheeky and imaginative choreographies by Chad Stahelský, in which there is more sparkle and playfulness than in the entire screenplay by Christina Hodson. He has trouble telling a trivial story with a hint of tension and turning photogenic emancipation figurines into characters. The impression that the DC universe suffers from a brutal fragmentation of personality is not helped by this tolerable and completely useless film. When it comes to Batman ... girls, damn it, I don't even know who this is about. But it doesn't matter. Let’s paint our nails, have margarita and feel satisfied that the straw-men got kicked in the balls.

A personal testimony about the longing to leave, the loss of an unloved home and the sadness for it. It’s too slow and drowned in details that betray the author's lack of distance from his characters. Proximity does not equal empathy in this case, unfortunately. [IFFR 2020]

A contribution to the category of weird Hungarian romance, a gradually-built relationship between a woman allergic to the world and a lethargic psychoanalyst. A metaphor of detachment from the world brought to sterile consistency. Mechanical, clinically filmed and completely indifferent. Kocsis dressed in a chic movie suit that nothing significant from the outside gets into. The camera and some of the compositions are great. Otherwise, a semantic quarantine. [IFFR 2020]

Blade Water Runner Ukraine. A brilliantly shot, slow and unfortunately overstretched dystopia about a cold country, where Vasyanovych has to use a thermal camera to get a warm shot. Suggestive statement. [IFFR 2020]

A masterfully grasped, serious theme of abuse of power and domination, which has a functionally-set directing concept - after a distant introduction, in which the protagonist experiences feelings of dissatisfaction and boredom, the film turns into subjective filming when passion awakens in the protagonist... and inevitably leads to a hypothermic conclusion in which Anna will make several difficult moral choices without any hope of a happy start. Queen of Hearts is urgent in making simple moral judgments impossible. Anna's choices may be reprehensible, but they are also understandable. Trine Dyrholm plays this character perfectly and her acting really dominates the screen. It is a pity that the conclusion crumbles and falters and the final tragedy and closed arc are no longer as impressive as some (not as fatal) of the consequences before them. I very much appreciate the broadening of the perspective of the MeToo debate on the topic of vulnerable and naive masculinity.

A promising introduction. Although rather than a film, it resembles effective cinematics in a survival game that I would like to play, but it does fulfill its purpose. I am quite susceptible to underwater anxiety, so as long as something is going on, I'll enjoy a very flimsy expedition and a high amount of deliberately raw filming. But then… uh-oh. The alternative tagline should read: there is nothing to see under the water, which I would have preferred if it hadn't been accompanied by stupid and terribly confusing editing. It prevents a person from enjoying the underwater terror, because here and there, it is not clear where you are who you are actually watching. In addition, the characters are such dull, forgettable reflections. The perpetrator of terror has about five different forms and it is not entirely clear where the creators are trying to take us - to alternative underwater biology, or full-blown sci-fi horror? The conclusion rushes with the answer in the form of Lovecraft kohlrabi and I have to laugh. Mixing so many good things into such a dull goulash truly requires giant blenders. Unfortunately for Underwater, the film is full of them. It doesn't even work as a fun one-time watch. It’s about as much fun as snorkeling in a pond. Regarding B-movie flooding, I will continue to prescribe the beautiful Verne misstep, which has Balls.

Claes is a great Dracula (except for that first version of the Romanian Borat), but the only time I buy this cardboard B-movie crap is when the Count is pulling off the lines of a villain from the pulp district. Otherwise, it's an ugly-looking, flimsily-mashed-together joke.