Marigold

The best Allen in recent years... There is actually only one thing that hurts this film - when one perceives it as another of the director's parodies and caricatures of superficial petty bourgeoisie and snobbery. But this film is much more of a tragedy about lies and endless hypocrisy, a tragedy of a character who cannot be himself, even if he is himself. The functional mirror structure, in which Allen places a (seemingly) comic monologue at the beginning and a clearly tragic monologue at the end, well reflects the path that the viewer must find with the withdrawn, unpleasant and unsympathetic protagonist. Jasmine has a hard time laughing / smiling, and it's hard to take a clear position on her and it's hard to judge what role she should specifically play in the testimony - is it a self-parody, an ironic smile to superficiality, a serious character...? The protagonist is as unclassifiable as the chameleon and in every detail the brilliant performance of Cate Blanchett, who undoubtedly played her life role on the verge of sacrificing her appearance (in some scenes she is not even recognizable). And the bitter old man Allen unfolds a scathing anti-tale about a crumbling life so consistently and ruthlessly that I had to collect myself for a few hours after the film ended. It's good to know that Woody can still do that. And that he is still able to make a risk-evoking film like the Coens’ A Serious Man (and not only because Michael Stuhlbarg is running around in this film again). Dark, sardonic, brilliant, one of the surprises of the year.

No, it hurts, but it doesn't work this way either. Hood made Wolverine into a generic cliché hanger, whereas Mangold tries to turn him into a modern intelligent blockbuster that works with intimacy, emotions, realism and the mythology of the character. The result is terribly unbalanced - a dark and engaging prologue, followed by the middle part of the film, where romance and Logan's inner contemplation dominate. This part is slow, it emphasizes non-existent meanings and thereby only repeats what Singer was able to better develop in an incomparably smaller space. How many words, how many motives, how many enchanted quotes... and what does it all amount to? Hollow bamboo, Logan as a romantic hero for the third time. I would rather keep quiet about the finale. If I was comforting myself until then that Mangold was hiding the trump card for the end, I was wrong. It was as if someone remembered that this was supposed to be a comic blockbuster, after all, and it miserably ground all the illogicality and exaggeration into an apathetic climax that turned the would-be-adult delusion into a dismantled sonata. It is a grind. The action grinds. The humor grinds. The claws grind. Jackman doesn't grind, but he doesn't spice up this diet sushi enough to keep us from forgetting him quickly and without feeling guilty, as if he is useless. Unlike other Marvel films, the concept here is completely lacking, and both spin-offs are tonally shift away from the main series and do not create anything coherent. As a result, you will spend two hours in the movie theatre snorting during the scene after the credits, saying to yourself: "Was this necessary? Give us what we want!"

A solid genre film that uses the B-movie found footage space horror schtick, but in addition to clichés, it also uses more serious themes and a more ambitious narrative structure. The film does it relatively cleverly and skillfully, although it cannot disguise the cheap props and scenery. The sentinel really didn't have to be there. Given that the creators have combined several of my big phobias, I rate this film quite positively. Catchy.

Democrats have also filmed their action blockbuster after Republicans did so. There is less blood, more conscious 12- bloggers, more peace, right-wing radicals, black presidents who are cool and vulgar, more corrupt arms lobbyists, and a less bipolar worldview (but it does not relate to the domestic political situation). Emmerich continues his world-saving mission started by the eco-agitation film The Day After Tomorrow. However, this soft and politically correct derivative of Die Hard shows that Roland's hand is shaking and the film thus reminds us of a joint afternoon of South Bohemian Mothers and Children of the Earth. Everyone here does what they like, and the result is the sunny confusion, to which Tatum and Foxx give some sort of order. If I have to choose between the swollen milksop Butler or the sleek Tatum... I give up my right to vote. PS: Sorry, in the end I vote for Roland the day after.

A good story is a construct, while a really good story is one where you do not realize the construct. The paraphrase of Tobias Lindholm's directorial screening credo is perfectly captured by A Hijacking. It depends on what you perceive as dramatic - if it is the scenes with circling boats, shooting and skirmishes, then this procedurally tuned film will logically disappoint you. If you can appreciate the meticulously constructed (and the naturally-feeling) plot, perfectly observed situations and once again perfectly cast civilian characters (Roland Møller is now amongst my top Nordic beasts), then this film is what you are looking for. It is clear that the film was shot directly in the relevant environment, that the director collaborated with people who were dealing with a similar problem at the time, and above all that Lindholm is an unusually clever filmmaker. He does not infer anything or condemn anyone, or study and pretend to be someone. I can’t remember the last time I was so tense waiting to see what comes out of the fax machine. Probably never. Together with the Borgen series, this is the ultimate demonstration of the Danes' ability to "face" geopolitical reality.

Guillermo del Toro was a bit of a wildcard in the top Hollywood league, because it was automatically assumed that once he made a real feature film (the underfunded Hellboy and demented Blade can't be included here), it would be quite the event. In retrospect, I'm really sorry that the R megalomania in the At the Mountains of Madness exploded and The Hobbit was overripe. Because Pacific Rim is basically everything that connects me to the term generic Bay blockbuster. A few initial great ideas and a really gigantic atmosphere were taken away by the speech of a crazy hipster scientist, in which he sucked all the clichés about the alien invasion into one sentence and things got no better thereafter. The fact that basically a third of the film is devoted only to the relationships between the characters makes Pacific Rim feel empty and undeveloped, even the miniaturist del Toro, who managed to make a sympathetic character from a walking ectoplasm, sinks to awkward creations and casting overacting (the younger and less talented brother of Heath Ledger really doesn't pull it off). Were it not for Ron Perlman, I would dare say that there is not a single really eccentric character in the film, rather only a collection of replaying clichés. I was quite surprised by the clumsy work with the storylines - in order for one to continue, the other stops and after five minutes continues from the same place it ended. Sometimes this leads to obscure awkward transitions, such as SPOILER "characters who learn valuable info have to run to the control room to shout into the microphone and warn the Jägers, who are meanwhile marching for three minutes on the seabed" / SPOILER. At the time of Star Trek's frantic intertwining of events, this is truly dense retro. You will get to know Guillermo mainly from the perfectionist visual, which gives the impression that Gaspar Noé started playing with robots and monsters. There is really very little to catch on to the neon beauty full of reflections, and some scenes are giddily iconic and it is a pleasure to look at them (even in 3D, which is not dark and is not at all bothersome). So what arose from del Toro's long transition to blockbusters? Visually and design-wise retro, which is not much better or wittier than Transformers (although from my point of view, it surpasses Transformers in terms of implementation skills). Hit me in the head with a tanker, but that is not going to be enough.

A family comedy (perhaps even a grotesque), a melodrama, a horror, a monster movie and an anti-imperialist parable that has designs on America and its "mutagenic" Korean heritage. A brilliant alternation of moods, tempo and atmosphere, precise parallel storytelling, deliberate sneering at Hollywood clichés and flying between a literal film about a monster and a monster-symbol / bearer of a mysterious virus that serves to unleash fear and control citizens with marvelous mutants in hazmat suits. The only way not to go crazy from it is to get carried away by it. Bong Joon-ho is strong in this type of freestyle - and the film is not chaotic or unbelievable for even a moment. Mannerist yes, but the question is to what extent one should take the conclusion deadly seriously.

Cultivated and non-pandering, but far from unbiased, hard and free from melodrama (the superfluous motif of snow, lyrical shots from the train, overuse of moving music, inconspicuous adoration of a common community of refugees). It rather resembles a cleverly shot compilation of several similarly tuned images. But it never has the intensity and rawness to bite too deeply a viewer trained in economical Central American films. In any case, Quemada-Diez is a skilled filmmaker, and his debut is sympathetically reminiscent of Fukunaga's Sin Nombre. Compared to Sin Nombre, in this film there is no artificially-built storyline, but The Golden Dream touches on a very similar humanistic ethos.

Refn's Pusher on speed... Noer is not particularly original, but economical work with believable characters, a totally flowing script, meaningful use of colors / space and dynamic cuts / and the sharp jumps between environments are very cool. At this year's Karlovy Vary festival, I didn't see a more entertaining film with bigger drive, and it's also not a banal thriller, but rather a Refn-style empathetic view of the other side of the law. Noer can obviously make do without his colleague Lindholm - it is clear that these two are definitely moving to the forefront of Danish genre films.

The screenplay is far ahead - a complex, delicate, yet with a uniquely-balancing serious theme and humor, overlap and a personal story. A critical and sentimental family story from contemporary Japan, which most evoked Farhadi’s A Separation in Karlovy Vary this year. Beware: the mere "friendliness" is easily confused with the depth and richness of the topics involved. An inconspicuous gem.