Lima

First of all, I have to mention the unfortunate casting decision to put Burt Young in one of the main roles, a guy who never knew how to act and was barely good enough for small roles, and here he is looking like he has a pain in the ass the whole time. Otherwise it was better than I would have expected thanks largely to Damiano Damiani's directorial skill. It's a film of two halves, and the climax comes about halfway through, where Damiani does a great job of spiking the tension and playing with the camera and the sound. There's also some of that Italian sleaze, so there's a flash of gore here and there, and on top of that unexpected incest between two siblings. But then for the rest of the film it devolves into a rather uninspiring variation on The Exorcist, which is a shame because here Damiani has hit his ceiling and doesn't bring anything more to the film. The ending with the exploding latex is like something out of a Troma movie.

I guess I'm too old for this kind of conceptually and dramaturgically disjointed and incoherent films, where nothing works and the mess on the screen slaps you so hard that you're completely numb and tired at the end. The only thing that works a little bit is the references to old classics, but these days they can emotionally enrich you incomparably more and they only need half the running time. This looks like it wasn't even made by Damien Chazelle, but by some egomaniac who merely needed to propel himself over his supposed genius. The production design and music are top notch, the should by shat on elephant shit and flushed.

The last quarter of an hour is the only passage where some nostalgia works, and if I were the narrator, I would be much more uncompromising in my completion of Dr. Jones's life's journey. I would have found it much more emotional and logical (connoisseurs know). The rest is inconsistent to say the least. The opening with the train when there's palpable CGI rushing at you from all sides, is not enjoyable, it makes you remember with sadness the train opening of The Last Crusade, where Spielberg didn't need computers (understandably) and it worked much better. The tediously long chase in Tangier again, given the long takes, looks as if the local streets are empty of cars and people and as long as airport runways, I didn't believe it for a second. And that's how it is with everything. It's just such a see-and-forget feel-good movie most of the time, about on the level of the overwrought fourth film. Otherwise, the much-criticized Phoebe Waller-Bridge was fine, she has such a mischievous charisma and is a great counterpoint to the curmudgeonly Harrison Ford, and actually entertained me the most out of the whole film.

An atmospheric treat, where the script this time plays second fiddle; just one room, an amazing ambient soundtrack, some magic with camera filters and the impressive directing skills of a hirsute Italian wizard. The work with optics, all the details and the taking of the actors, that's textbook filmmaking. Plain and simple, Panos Cosmatos is a master of his craft (Mandy, oh Mandy!) who has his own signature, his own distinctive creative identity and I'm eagerly awaiting Nekrokosm. Oh, and Peter Weller is utterly brilliant as the extravagant billionaire.

A throwback to a time when the world of cinema was still okay. When films had nice sets and weren't bogged down with CGI junk, when directors weren't afraid to slowly and patiently build atmosphere and tell a story, and when scripts had substance. Kenneth Branagh clearly didn’t take any notes, and neither, apparently, did the actress of only two expressions, Gal Gadot. P.S. I was very pleasantly surprised by Angela Lansbury, I would not have expected her to play a role so expressively and with gusto.

A thoughtful script from a man who can't give the film any kind of fluid dynamic shape, I take it as a kind of failed attempt at early Forman. On the other hand, the film's certain rigidity doesn't actually hurt the story, the message remains the same and often chillingly apt. I’m giving it an extra point for the chemtrails stuff, it reminded me of a colleague from work, a mechanical engineer, who bought an air purifier for his apartment from a famous charlatan and scammer; kind of like the vinegar in the film. Fools exists in all social classes.

Poster tagline: A new kind of killer to stalk the screen! it claws... it drains blood! I'm glad that the Scream Factory publishing company has released these forgotten gems Blu-ray. This one in particular is classified by the foreign literature, for example by the great book “Keep Watching The Skies!”, of which I am a happy owner, among the science fiction films of the Golden Age, probably because medical research and pills made from the blood of vampire bats, which the protagonist accidentally ingests and triggers an unwanted transformation, play a significant role. It’s not really a vampire, though, he doesn't resemble a vampire, more like a strange guy with scabby skin, and he doesn't even mind the light, because the transformation always takes place at 11 o'clock in the evening. Until then, he's a perfectly respectable doctor in a mundane small town. So yes, the inspiration of Universal's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is very evident. But overall, it is a likeable film. Landres occasionally chooses an interesting camera angle, the murder of the grandmother on the street is viewed from the perspective of her dog and his increasingly frightened gaze, which I found interesting. The protagonist gives a good performance, with passion, even for a low-budget affair, with the charismatic Kenneth Tobey (the legendary The Thing) reliably playing his part. It's not the event of the season, but it's a nice film, which unfortunately paid for the fact that it remained in the shadow of the better known Mexican film of the same name released the same year.

A shameless and utterly muddled rip-off of The Omen that adds a sort of nonsensical space sci-fi element to the original concept, so that even fans of Close Encounters of the Third Kind will have a good time. The little girl gives a terrible performance, the classic John Huston, with his impish smile, looks like he's all over it and is mentally counting down the days until the end of the shoot, and Franco Nero, who in the late seventies was grateful for every gig in Hollywood, is fun with his blonde long wig in a short performance as an alien. The worst part about the whole thing is that, in its own perverse way, I enjoyed watching it because it has the inimitable patina of pieces from a decade when anything was possible in film.

One of the few new-wave films that didn’t work with me. Towards the end it looks terribly fateful, the main character seems to be going through a moral crisis and sobering up from the gradual arrival of social changes, but it's all just in such hints that it touched me only in the slightest. The character played by Jan Kačer is very stiff, the only emotion is aroused only by the scene in the pub at the end, and that is not enough. It pisses off Potentate Novotny, which was nice, but otherwise, it's absolutely unlike Three Wishes, a similarly revealing piece, which is six years older. Evald Schorm is simply not my cup of tea, even his most famous The End of a Priest passed me by in a big way.

Some people say that a film is as good as its villain, and, Pearl is a perfect example. Mia Goth is amazing, on a small space she can play a naive girl, a broken woman, a demon-ridden bitch and a total psychopath, she has all of that in her acting register. Her almost ten-minute confession at the end, filmed in one take, blew my mind. Moreover, it's all supported by a script that flows naturally, has a logical development and almost reaches the level of Phoenix's Joker in terms of psychology. And the visual games with the camera, the opening with classical music in the style of good old Hollywood! I'm just shocked that after the botched X, Ti West was able to create something like this. This is a little horror treat, made with love and art, aimed at film connoisseurs.