Othello

As If I Didn't See It. Check out the poster and keep yourself engaged for 40 minutes. Congratulations, you're almost halfway through the movie. The Bosnian-Serbian conflict is sadly starting to become my cinematic nemesis, because after the awful Twice Born, this is yet another whiny tryst of apathetic women in the same setting, where you can still see the unsteady hand of a not-very-talented debutante unable to trouble the cast and crew enough to achieve the rawness and authenticity of the scenes depicted. All of that is simulated here instead by the barn in the field and the main character's expression, which only raises the suspicion that she might be made out of rubber. In the end, though, the worst part of the film is the director's decision not to make any comment on the political background to the conflict, and unless you have some exposure to the period, you won't be able to tell what kind of oppression she is suffering under. Thus, it becomes not an account of the horrors of war perpetrated on women, but a purely ideological war of weak women against uncouth and stupid men.

A quiet, non-interventionist, observational documentary about the diverse inhabitants of the simple Roman suburbs, where the common factor is a large highway loop road, focuses mainly on human, sprawling, and ephemeral nature, aided by the evil palm weevil as a metaphor. Understandably, it's boring as shit.

Go for it. There are some great special effects, quite a bit of action, and you'll laugh a lot (in places where the filmmakers want you to). When you leave the cinema you'll fully feel you've had a good time for ten bucks. And it's got a great raccoon. I'm just kind of tired of Marvel managing to profile the target audience and doing exactly the same thing it always does. Plus, when we can't even rely on the death of important supporting characters anymore, and the obligatory action (which is visibly expensive here, but not particularly good) just serves as a transition between comic scenes, I'm really curious to know what the peak of the Marvel blockbuster will be. Btw, the credits for the movie list over 500 names, about a quarter of whom actually did something other than sit at a computer.

My neighbors just love racing movies. The sound of the engine revving in my bass combo is music to their ears, and perhaps the only one that can complain is their broom, which comes into contact with the ceiling a few times in these cases, but is slowly getting used to it. Need for Speed is of course completely moronic in terms of story, but no wonder with this kind of target audience. Which is not the players of the game in this case, because it can't logically make sense to them why they would go to a movie based on a racing game that spectacularly adopts formal film techniques yet at the same time is graphically comparable to reality (because it contains almost no people, only objects). Moreover, there can be no question of any cinematic expansion of the game universe when the game has none. The Need for Speed movie is primarily aimed at those who have to have and see everything that falls under the franchise – all the games, trailers, t-shirts, and of course their Renault Multipla also has a fresh Need for Speed sticker on it. That said, the film's greatest asset is the fact that Scott Waugh and the writers have understood the brief, and thus the whole plot can be summed up as basically 'the main character goes somewhere to drive, thereby avenging the fact that the last time he drove somewhere his friend didn't finish. Ironically, all the characters are stuffed in the pockets of the utterly likable Imogen Poots, and the rest are so bland the film doesn't even try to make them the bearers of a higher truth (unlike the last F&F), such that the center of it all is really just the driving, which is filmed very skillfully, so I couldn't complain too much that, since I personally am more or less only interested in the racing, there's remarkably little of it here, because it's really more about the driving. Otherwise I don't know, but 178 days in jail for street racing, a few dozen misdemeanors, assault on a public officer, and general endangerment is a pretty good deal. Not to mention, the main character probably wouldn't be sitting behind the wheel again for the rest of his life.

I'm in a meeting and thus had a review ready in my head that will hate the film in spite of lobbing it a four-star rating and a joyous review, as opposed to just giving it three stars. If Candidate appealed to me on principle, I can counter any attack with "yes, I'm fine with the pointless visual opulence, the out-of-focus characters leaving the scene in extreme slow motion, the unnecessary camera tilts, and the infantile refocusing from macro to long without any narrative anchor" (a.k.a. that's what’s getting shot for us now that we've taken the spoils from RED, right). But so what, if no one else can do this in the post-Czechoslovakia (props to the exceptions), what am I supposed to do? Karásek's debut is a commercial drenched not only in story, but above all in stylization, which is revoltingly clean, squelching through simple shapes, designer interiors, perfectly composed shots, and the power of gesture versus the power of words. So it actually sucks that it had to waste its time with such a local, uninventive, and overwrought plot, piled with characters I cared more about even less than any future presidential election. Especially in Slovakia. Not to mention the monstrous (Slovakian) postsynchronization: whenever the form manages to detach you from that malignant provinciality, it always drags you brutally back down to earth. And kicks you in the head.

Gans understands me. That his version of the classic fairy tale would be a ticket to the deepest hell for most lovers of understated minimalism was clear from the first blow of the clapperboard, which itself had to be set so cleverly set that the clapper didn't blow away the hundreds of rose petals on the powdered artificial snow. And truly, it dangerously often leaps several kilometers across the boundaries of ultimate kitsch to somewhere in the vicinity of Thomas Kinkade. But given the fact that we have an alibi from the start that this is going to be a storybook illustration, and we'll learn at the end that it was probably the imagination of a simple country woman who likes her bearded husband and a garden full of roses, I can actually sit back and enjoy every hideously over-stylized shot, looking exactly as I imagined fairy-tale realms as a little tyke. Which perhaps makes me a closeted gay, because that rubber tree for artificial flowers was for this film a bridge too far.

Unfortunately, I've seen too much in my lifetime cinematically to be much taken in by a conciliatory human comedy about the clash of canned ossification and independent vibrancy within the space of a single house and a park. Moreover, in such a conciliatory form, with its timid attempts at humor that give the impression they were written during filming and the actors weren’t too enthralled. The potential for comedy was exhausted for me at "fuck le menuet"; the potential for poignant drama had been exhausted some years prior. But the opening shot is great.

Unlike most of the galaxy, I don't suffer from that syndrome of the accidental death of the aesthetic spirit over Romanian spectacles with 90s icons at the prow, because I still see a little too much of the enthusiasm of hyperactive B-movies with their pants full of cock just from the fact that Van Damme gave them the nod in a moment of weakness, in a year they're gonna make double-digit action movies and there's no dork with a laptop and a cell phone behind their ass telling them this is too much, this is not gonna work, and that's not the way to go. Actually, Assassination Games is just its supposed seriousness trying to mask the fact that along with the signing of the contract, the creators probably got a multi-page description from Jean about how much he won't act. That's still somehow reconcilable, but I don't understand why anyone would invite Adkins and Van Damme into the film if they’re planning to shoot all their contact scenes from the waist up in half-second shots. But a relatively unscrupulous twist in the last third and palpable Klaus Kinski syndrome in the scenes between father and daughter – sorry, I meant to say lonely assassin and sexy Romanian prostitute – bump it up to three stars.

I'm terribly pleased to see this film being compared to Se7en, since despite a few similarities – notably the lighting, the ritualistic appearance of the crime scene, the tired desperation of the characters, and basically even the point of the perpetrator’s acts – it’s a tad more challenging of an experience, which will leave those looking for "a whodunit for the evening" may well find themselves cringing at for a long time to come. The grey heaviness of the suburban setting, the impenetrability of the suspects, the constantly pissed off and therefore often irrational protagonist solving crimes pretty much off the leash, the running time of over two hours... well, it’s nothing you'll be telling your parents about at family dinner. But The Treatment scores the most points for constantly passing the baton of evidence as to who the perpetrator could be and for having a fairly decent pair of balls, among other things. Also, I haven't seen such a detailed observation of a tortured child in a film in quite a while.

Yes, please. While it’s embarrassing for me to give credit to all the hysterical barkers, still the second Raid in the context of the current offering, where you go to the cinema to see genre films because of a few attractions and overlook the obligatory cotton fluff, is actually an attraction all by itself even at a respectable 150 minutes flat. This is helped in no small part by that exoticism, which, in a combo with a taciturn hero whose only memorable means of expression tends to splash copious amounts of hemoglobin around the room, makes any devoted melding with the character impossible. As a Westerner, Evans is mindful of this, which is a huge asset; for any who doubt that, let the end credits be the key, where the battle insignia of their characters appear alongside the actors' names. As a result, The Raid 2 is the first film since the Matrix trilogy where a number of familiar contact scenes are set in a relatively functional context. Otherwise, the film has incredible balls; the kind of stuff that happens here will maximally remind people of the contemporary French cinema of extremes.