Othello

The early 1920s. The workers are revolting, Russia has been taken over by the proletarian revolution, and you can only find an honest girl with a compass – in short, times are changing. But what is the centuries-old Count Dracula to make of it, benefiting from the emeritus traditions of noble ethics that have so far allowed him to draw energy from a veritable supply of virgin blood? On the advice of his adjutant, they go to Italy thinking that this God-fearing country logically has an ever-running fountain of virginal whores (LOL), but bad luck, bad luck, everywhere a whore in sheep's clothing. And how else, with a Marxist gardener laying it all out there with a spread collar so wide he can barely move his arms. This mustang, who gives the impression that humiliating the noblewomen is actually as necessary to him as virgin blood is to Dracula then actually acts as their last hope, as he's the only one around with the instant potency to deprive Dracula of his only hope of regaining his desperately lacking energy. His catchphrases like "Where is your sister? I want to rape the hell out of her." referring to a 14-year-old girl, or scenes where he rapes his way from "No, no, no!" to "I love you" in a single take is sure to leave not a single lap dry. Opposite him stands a shriveled and infirm Dracula, who is now almost immobile and must stoop to sucking virgin blood through bread or licking it directly from the ground after involuntary deflowering, depicting the final stages of a panting bourgeoisie in the face of a new world. Blood For Dracula is a dud that's better talked about than watched, but it's certainly a crucial contribution to the whole vampire issue, presenting us with the Count again in a different position. Daylight and crucifixes don't kill him, they just sort of piss him off, and non-virginal blood safely sticks his head in the john. It's strange that the devil's damned Dracula actually belongs so much to the age of innocence and has no chance of surviving outside of it.

The B-movie thriller Fincher originally had planned just didn't work out. He deliberately wanted to take a break from the demanding production of Fight Club with something completely genre-pure that takes place in one location. Instead, it turned out to be a 150-day long shoot and one with mainstream feminist milestones, which happened sort of unexpectedly out of the blue (the originally cast Nicole Kidman was supposed to be a classic Grace Kelly-style damsel in distress, and her teenage daughter actually took on the mothering role during the film; the script had to be rewritten after Jodie Foster was cast, because Foster is typecast as a completely different type of actress). In hindsight, it's the formal purity that is the most enjoyable part. While today's home invasion films try to convey the awkwardness of the protagonists' situation through handheld camerawork and quick editing, Fincher almost never uses handheld shots, doesn't pan and therefore doesn't move his gaze, and instead builds the entire film on the gimmick that the camera can be omnipresent, no one person controls it, and therefore we can expect practically anything from it. It's a bit of a shame that the direction then has to rely on a rather unimaginative script which really pulls the subplot out of its ass at the last minute, violently, and in short when another way for the main characters to save themselves comes after ninety minutes, but somehow goes wrong again, you start to wonder more and more if it even makes sense anymore, and with that parameter you find yourself nowhere you want to be nor where the film wants you to be.

Like its predecessor, Darlin' tries to pretend that it's smarter and more radical than smartness and radicalness, but this time around, the mess cannot be saved either by the directorial concept, nor – God forbid – any filmmaking precision. If women-empowerment films are going to look like this in the future, I think women are pretty much in danger of losing the vote again.

My theory is that the director Vukotić deliberately shot material that left him free to go in any genre direction afterwards with only minimal editing as the situation developed. So in the film we can find the ideal basis for family science fiction, dreamy manchild, absurdist comedy, pure avant-garde, and soft porn. But somehow it didn't work out after that, apparently he lost interest in the film, so he just bolted it all together and dropped the mic. If this work is ever found by a real alien civilization, it will cook their brains.

There is a kind of meta-consciousness between living and not living that it is human nature to resist. The Death King is concerned with this alone, and without any sign of resolution. In six days God created the world. On the seventh day he killed himself.

It's hard to navigate a movie when "What the fuck is going on?!" is constantly going through your head throughout. With the live dubbing on this year's FOD, it was irresistible ("I can lend you a compass." "You're a compass."), but I'm afraid in any other setting it would have been unspeakable purgatory. Particularly with the insane one hundred and eleven minute director's cut, where the story itself is reduced to about 5% of the total running time, nothing can save you.

If you’re not even a little bit blown away by Psycho (what are you looking at?), it's hard to get a kick out of this unceremonious rip-off pieced together from redundant dialogue and transitions between three locations. Fortunately, with the arrival of a young version of Gott, who only turns his heel on set in 90° and 180°, it gets a whole new breath of fresh air, and his mere presence in front of the camera produces a scene that will more than once leave you giggling uncontrollably like a complete retard. Unfortunately, when the big reveal comes, his character even retrospectively transforms from irresistible cringe to creative intent, making it once again a gutted Hitchcock, so not that great.

[FOD] Amélie in which people get beaten up with a television. And with a drill, a mug, a shelf, an elbow, a knee, the barrel of a shotgun, etc. etc. In a full cinema, it's catalogue camp where you enjoy every punchline or bloody veneer. I was missing this.

The script for The Game was originally written back in 1991 with the simple aim of just giving it away to a studio for money, which eventually worked out and made it all the way to Fincher, who with Se7en screenwriter Andrew Walker spent 6 months rewriting so they could sew it together into at least this. It probably couldn't have been done any better without creating something completely different. I can understand the audacious ambition to present the viewer with a lie (which is an inalienable part of film in general) as an actual untruth, and it fits exactly with my idea of a young, brash Fincher wanting to challenge and unnerve the viewer; however he tries relatively successfully to hold it all together, by the end it slips away completely and the whole film implodes into annoying nonsense about a now-wiser curmudgeon who got to the whole finale mainly through an excruciating cavalcade of coincidences that must have made the entire glorious CRS company's forehead drip with sweat. However, the cinematography, lighting, and excellent portrayal of the characters through objects and space still make this a first-rate spectacle, even if the film's punchline, for example, completely degrades any future viewings.

Marco Bellocchio, for your utterly reckless, irresponsible, and god-awful use of a high-frame-rate digital camera in a film about the Cosa Nostra that takes place from the 1960s to the 1990s, I sentence you to nine years of community service, during which I expect you to reshoot the nighttime and interior scenes so that they don't look like they were shot on a phone. I have chosen a reduced sentence not only because of your previous clean record, but also because of my personal admiration for your ability to create a portrait of a strong, distinctive man through your everyday dialogue and lack of pathos without making him into an artificial idol. Your sentence begins today. Thank you.