Othello

Apparently all the quality of the show was in that podcast that Netflix bought and handed over to a bunch of talentless fachidiots to execute. There are, in fact, a lot of tasty horror ingredients hiding here, which is such a sympathetic chronicle of 20th century American horror themes, and we find influences ranging from Lovecraft to The Twilight Zone to a fascination with the occult in the upper echelons of show business. The first episodes, which work with a lot of hints, still not connecting anything, instead trying to keep as many things under wraps as possible for as long as possible, are excellent and at times almost remind me of Lost Highway. But Archive 81 degenerates from the fourth episode onwards into a weary stodginess that lacks resources, courage, or any creative vision. What the fuck is the point of having a different screenwriter write a script for nearly every episode of a mere eight-part horror series anyway? Did I get caught watching some workshop? Fundamental errors in bullet points: 1) The series could have beautifully hidden its production limitations by working with film material, which the plot literally screams for. After all, we're watching a movie where the protagonist discovers mysterious events through the restoration of damaged camcorder tapes. Why can't it be a mystery horror mixed with found footage and even a silent black and white insert from the 1920s, where Episode 7 takes place? Well, because no one there has the guts to do that and they're afraid that switching between multiple formats and viewing angles would put unnecessary demands on the viewer's viewing experience. 2) I have eight hours to profile the characters, but I can't justify motivations for any of their actions other than family satisfaction. Again, this is probably so it can convene a television target audience who would have trouble relating to characters who embark on dangerous quests perhaps for the purpose of exploration, research, inner tension, or simple curiosity. 3) It would be great if Netflix could for once afford to cast, I don't know, actors in acting roles, because watching Dina Shibabi overact for hours makes me rethink my usual view that acting is an overrated cinematic discipline. Although I admit that anyone would probably struggle with a character this stupidly written. 4) Why do those witches look like they're from... ah, Rebecca Sonnenshine, shutting up now. 5) I'm sympathetic to stupid scripts, but when several stupid scripts by several people come crashing down on me within the same plot, the scenes where the analog film expert starts destroying hundreds of VHS tapes by randomly hitting them with a wrench, I'm like dude hit the brakes already.

TV series visuals, impotent record-scratch humor, and a tortured attempt at instant Japanese weirdness logically results in the most desperate train journey since the legendary Slovak Express. The film Bad Times at the El Royale often popped into my mind – for that too was an attempt at a Tarantino-esque screenplay with distinctive characters that failed on the grounds that, like here, it was written by a man who has spent most of his adult life in the back of an Uber somewhere scrolling through Instagram and doesn't know shit about how people work.

Well, in essence, there was nothing to be done with it since the Notre Dame fire is a completely unrewarding situation cinematically. Everyone was evacuated in time, everyone was more or less unhurt, it was caused by a boring technical error, we all saw it from every angle in a first row seat, and it took place sometime in the early evening, so there was no time to forget that there wasn't actually any real drama. Not to mention, of course, the iconicity of the scene itself. But is that iconicity capable of wrapping an entire movie around itself? Uhhh, It's hard to say, Berg might have given it a go, but dude really, really, not a completely, but completely worn out Annaud. He probably simply realized that there's nothing to take from this, so he overwhelmed the film with absolutely awful mini-anecdotes about a frightened young fireman, a faithful young girl lighting a candle, a dramatic security guard hypnotizing a yellow button, a priest falling to his knees, and a spontaneously singing crowd under the cathedral, convincingly gazed upon with emotion and conviction by a fireman exhausted from the fire in the tower. The degree of cringe here is comparable to that famous subway scene in Wright's Darkest Hour, only stretched out to the length of the entire film. The filmmaker's cluelessness (culminating in a final shot of the firefighter putting out the fire, which is just a dramatic un-zooming and re-zooming of the camera on his face until the music ends) is then cemented by a soundtrack so epic that it feels like it's from a music bank, which is also revealed quite often by the fact that it's mostly pretty poorly used and tries to create epic scenes out of practically nothing. I normally reserve my boo! rating for films that somehow offend me personally, because I didn't think there was anything that was simply so poorly made that it wasn't also entertaining, thus forming an intersection between the poles of quality/non-quality. But Notre-Dame on Fire is truly just the worst kind of schlock movie where even death doesn't take (literally). Annaud's descendants should make sure that no one ever gets to see the films of his late period again.

Taken as an unapologetic indie survivor burner from an aspiring debutante, I'm happy with this. Sunburn, mere non-specific references to the world beyond the desert, sandstorms, and a permanent feeling of being completely drained. Except I kind of think he's pining for Lighthouse. I mean, bleak limbo, hallucinations, animals munching on your liver, misanthropy in full force, and a former teen idol trying to rebrand himself (but on the Pattison scale he's currently at the level of The Rover). And the whole film can safely wreck itself against that comparison.

Satire schmatire, I'd have to be more rigorous if I saw the film as merely an attempt to aptly poke fun at late capitalism, because making fun of influencers, models, trophy wives, old rich people, hypocritical leftists, or the devout precariat strikes me as the biggest and fattest target in this whole earthly disco. But what I appreciate about Östlund's latest here is his brashness. It reminded me of the delightful first decade of the 21st century, when teen comedies invaded cinemas and homes. They were always based on recycled archetypal figures whose characteristics and stereotypes were constantly reflected in rather crude jokes. These films mercilessly attacked the idiocy of adolescence, and yet teenagers projected themselves into them and accepted the set roles depicted in the high school hierarchy. Not to mention the key piece of every teen comedy, its climax with some innovative fecal or otherwise disgusting scene that made everyone give an obligatory cringe and laugh at the same time. And then, after finishing every one of those comedies, my classmates and I would discuss who was the class Stiffler and who was the class Finch, with everyone wanting to be present so they wouldn’t come out the worst from the assignment of roles. Which is sort of the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in Cannes being able to squeal until their yachts are shaking in the harbor after a movie that makes a sort of merciless joke out of them. But this acknowledgment of the top 1% that someone is perceptive and capable of making mischievous fun of them is actually, in the current social climate, something of a declaration of love towards them and, as in The Tourist, the multitude of themes hinted at here will ultimately offer nothing but zen nihilism and a bottle of hard stuff as a solution.

A strangely static Park variation on Basic Instinct, where I found at the end that I was focused on something other than what I should have been the whole time. Then I completely resonated with the last shot. PS: "After Parasite and Squid Game, another Korean phenomenon is taking the world by storm." – Man, it that really the best we can do?

A modern-day version of Milius's Conan the Barbarian. That is, a proud barbarian meatloaf that doesn't elevate itself above its station with any subversion or edification, but instead basks in its mythic naivety and thus creates an inner world that reliably operates within the boundaries it sets. When you immerse yourself in it, it is a first-class experience. It's interesting and gratifying to see, a decade on, the cautious return of ambitious formalist blockbusters that model meta-reading (see Reeves's The Batman or Villeneuve's Dune) back into cinemas after it had been completely eradicated for some time. From that period, it's good to recall Immortals, for example, which has a lot in common with The Northman (it chronicles exactly that in-between stage where events straddle reality and myth and influence each other) and whose misunderstanding and failure de facto ended the career of Tarsem Singh.

Reeves's The Batman is a well-informed original that knows that few are curious about another long introduction of a hero mentioned hundreds of times, and therefore assumes the viewer is already familiar with the general Bat-canon. That's why he only spends the first twenty minutes (which feels like a long montage and is utterly grist for the mill) describing the deviations from previous takes on Batman, so that he can then get straight into developing the character. And he does this through visually lavish episodes that leave you marveling at just how deep into darkness a scene can be plunged for anything to be visible at all. From a technical standpoint, it's a breathtaking spectacle that, in the action scenes for example, creates almost self-defeating obstacles. It either takes place in complete darkness and we navigate through flashes from gunshots or faint reflections on characters' costumes, or it takes place in a completely smoky space. And when the car chase comes, the camera captures almost all of it from fixed positions on the vehicles. I've so far considered Reeves a successful presenter of Weta promo-reels, but there's so much work going on here that I have to apologize to him. It's not likely to be as good anywhere else than in the cinema, since you simply won't see a good half of the film at all.

He handled the transition from animation to live action, he handled the transition from studio films to outdoor, he handled the breakup with his co-creator, he handled the huge budgets, the transition to the American way of production, and the attacks of Harvey Weinstein. In the end, it was Netflix that beat him creatively. Jeunet claimed in 2019 that he had been unable to find an investor for his next project for several years, and that he had Netflix as a last resort. There was a strong sense of reluctance to work under this studio, and I'm quite interested to see what their meetings with each other might have looked like. This also reveals an interesting paradox, where it's common knowledge that Netflix will give money to absolutely anything, while at the same time having a minimum of visually distinctive works in its portfolio. Because what has Jeunet been so far more than a formalist for whom every object in a scene was as important as any character. BigBug, with its setting on the stage of a single-family home, might have raised hopes that it would follow the dystopian Delicatessen, but the very first scene, which feels so fake, awkward, and lazily staged, will at most confuse us by telling us that the film is definitely set in the same late-capitalist universe as Iannucci's Avenue 5. Sadly, without Jeunet's previous magical stylings, suddenly all the nonsense, hysterics, and stupidity of the characters just feels silly, forced, and fake, because this time there's just the characters and nothing around them.

A clever collaboration between the Icelandic Ministry of Culture and the Department of Tourism clearly intended to reduce the effects of overtourism to this Nordic island by portraying the suburbs of Reykjavik as the dismalands of Russian housing projects.