Marigold

Borgli has great ideas, but he’s not able to bring them to fruition. Compared to Sick of Myself, which was irritatingly aggressive and stupid, his new film is slightly more refined. In the first half, which concentratedly works with simplicity, awkwardness and an acting masterclass on the part of Cage, it’s even one of the best black comedies that I’ve seen recently. Unfortunately, when Borgli spreads his wings and starts satirising cancel culture and the influencer vacuum through dreams, the film suddenly comes across as completely clueless and toothless. Fortunately, Cage’s professor is such a fascinating and ambiguous character, whose guilt consists primarily in thinly disguised egoism, that the film never completely falls apart. But where it was supposed to punch you in the mouth, it rather just dissipates and leaves behind the odour of the nervous fart in the film’s unquestionably best scene.

Bayona is a master of the disaster effect. Whereas Alive was a matter of leaving certain things somewhat in the abstract, physical details are not absent in Society of the Snow. Does that necessarily lead to a deeper experience? No, but it doesn’t seem out of place and tasteless like some of the emotional-blackmail moments in Stand by Me. I could have done without the conjuring with the (unreliable) narrator, but it’s not worth concealing the fact that, despite the slight distance that this refined filmmaking evokes, this film has an excellent pace and the actual event on which it is based has enough...well, meat on the bone is perhaps not an appropriate analogy. In any case, Society of the Snow manages to reconcile reverence with adrenaline. Nevertheless, I still think Alive is the better film (also because I associate it with the experience of going to the cinema when I was a kid) and the excellent documentary Stranded offered greater emotional and psychological depth.

A typical lazy Netflix documentary in which the story and the respondents do almost all of the work while the filmmakers kick back and rake in the money. It’s a shame that Liza Williams didn’t put at least a little effort into the dramaturgy and rhythm, which are a bit soul-crushing.

Genovese once found the silver wind, and he even managed to handle it. However, his stiff moralistic-existential opuses are unfortunately not nearly as catchy as Perfect Strangers.

Water in the first one, and now fire. Milady on fire, literally. Eva Green breathed even more tragedy into this character and further liberated her from the corset of the “villain” formula that we know from the classic Musketeer movies. Thanks to that, the canonical moments of the story are truly strong in the ending and Milady gives new energy to the seemingly unproblematic character of D'Artagnan (not to mention Athos, of course). Bourboulon utilises the same positive aspects as in the first film, i.e. a strong start, excellent action and dark urgency, which is cleverly disrupted by Portos and Aramis and their front-line wedding special. This time, the better-constructed climax also works. There is a certain amount of embarrassment (again) from some of the rickety donkey bridges and the somewhat enigmatic motivations for the chosen plot twists in the political storyline. Like Milady, Richelieu likably gains new dimensions to his villainy in this version. Incidentally, I am the last person who would criticise characters of a different skin colour in an adaptation of a Creole author’s work, but the “black prince” comes across a bit like the Poochie character in The Simpsons. I’m especially looking forward to the third part of this, the best Dumas adaptation!

Concentrated building of apocalyptic tension that employs clever work with perspective reminiscent of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (including the way Esmail microdoses the disaster). In emotional terms, we find ourselves between the brightest moments of Shyamalan, Peele and the masterful Take Shelter, but transposed from the working class to New York’s upper middle class. In my opinion, Leave the World Behind is a much more accurate depiction of the catastrophic zeitgeist than all of those hyped-up eco-anti-capitalist satires. It works primarily as a film and some of the statements from the mouths of the believable characters directed against the system and society come off better than in the case of pompous puppet shows. Great work with the camera trajectories, precise actors (Mahershala Ali winner by KO), excellent sound design... If not for a few tonal stumbles, this would be without doubt one of the best disaster films of recent years.

A return to the roots of a monster that grew out of traumatic guilt, a feeling of failure and the rise of the atomic age, which Japan felt on its body like no other nation. Yamazaki and co. have filmed an organic blend of post-war family drama and Jaws on steroids, making clever and aesthetically economical use of their limited budget. Even though those limits are perceptible, they are always in service of the whole, which is both intimate and epic at the same time. Godzilla Minus One is the kind of blockbuster that Gareth Edwards tried to make, i.e. unencumbered by compromises and pressure from the studio. It is depressing and uplifting, naïve and touching. Everything that I require from a blockbuster!

A slightly overwrought review of a hotel that I didn’t like.

Talk to the hand, or combine an idiotic viral TikTok challenge, a metaphor for drugs, a drama about mourning and a horror movie about possession and you have the genre flick of year, in which cleverly malicious directing, excellent actors and a heavy atmosphere in which the world of phantoms that may or may not mean well by people increasingly crosses over into reality. A more than respectable successor to films such as Get Out and It Follows. I’m trembling!

Beau Travail, primarily from the trio of Louvart, Vitalic and Rogowski. One can sense that Abbruzzese wants to infuse his film with tension and symbolism, to measure the EKG of the heart of darkness and to create a magical parallel between people of two worlds/faces, who are all fording the river of migration, which unfortunately is rather shallow in this rendering, though that doesn’t matter much. The visual aspect, sound design and, as usual, the superhuman intensity of the pit bull Franz carry it through to the expected climax. Though Disco Boy merely takes notes from Claire Denis, it’s still undeniably a joy to watch.