Marigold

This is a rather tiresome parade of talking nerd heads and Reddit ducks in various guises. Sewell doesn't come close to his drive from Bad Sport here, thanks in part to some static viral material, and despite the fascinating story, it's a bit of a mess of speculation and a futile search for a dramatic mover.

This is an intimate, depressing, gothic noir emo that at times looks like a nightmare of a light-headed sociopath, on the one hand lonely, on the other thrown into a claustrophobic space where law and crime embrace each other so tightly that it is impossible to distinguish them. A cleverly adapted origin story and a tale of a man consumed by revenge are superimposed on an almost Fincher-esque thriller. It's slow, sometimes driven to maximum effect, backed by the famous Riddler... three hours doesn't seem like a problem to me, because Reeves does it with precision, heavy-handedly, and unlike Snyder, it's not a masquerade at the bottom of dead mannequins, but still a human drama - even if simplified compared to Nolan. Pattinson fits the role perfectly, but the main asset is Paul Dano as the king of the incels. Reeves has delivered his own similarly willful project like Villeneuve recently did. For me, it's a hundred times better than the comically depressing Joker charade and several levels above the DC duds of the last decade. Finally the darkness breathes, the scars don't heal and the rats gnaw at the flesh.

This is an awkward tug-of-war between family sports drama and wacky comedy. In the end, it's neither, more like a sympathetically stupid stew. I have a soft spot for films about submarines and the best sport in the world, though.

This amounts to confusing revisionism that, while based on real events, is helped mightily by the symbolic license of a trio of young protagonists who embody both illusion and common sense. The problem is that the historical context is at the level of war for dummies and the fictional line with the classified document (passed on directly during the conference) is boilerplate and not very well thought out. The result is at times suspenseful, rarely charismatic, yet strangely endeavoring to avoid responsibility in its historical tone, as it simultaneously indicts (false hopes) and excuses (there was no other way to do it at the time). Munich and the bells and whistles of Sudetenland come off as the mechanical backdrop of a sexless spy story. The basic message of "there were good, moral people on both sides" is nice, but it is also completely thin and without any reverberation. While Schwochow tries to kinetically speed things up and get the characters going, that doesn't make this scheme any more human... The Golden Crown.

In terms of price and performance, Roland Emmerich has already destroyed the planet several times in a much better way and with a nicer humanistic furor. This incel-conspiracy vision is fine as long as it plays by the rules of a disaster film, but then my brain was skipping out on this attempt at lobotomized sci-fi. It should have ended up on Netflix, because I haven't seen such ugly green-screens on the big screen in a long time. Being able to put the laundry in the washing machine and look out the window would only have added to the film. I don’t expect much from Emmerich, but certainly something more fun than Moonfall.

Two-thirds of the film is marked by a masterful tension based on cultural and character differences. Similar to A Horrible Woman, Tafdrup excels in well-observed situational sarcasm. Then it's time for the explanation, and I consider this a weakness because it is logically lame, generic, and wrapped in "high concept" horror pathos. It is indeed an absolute shocker, but actually very unsatisfying to me after the methodical nature of the previous acts. However, I haven’t seen something this uncomfortable for a long time.

No one is lying, and yet no one is telling the truth. An incredibly polished script, detailed direction, the phenomenal Amir Jadidi in the lead role of a man who acts all too human and thus becomes an ordinary, smaller-than-life hero. Unfortunately, the fates of such people usually end badly. This is Farhadi's best film in a decade. The emotional punch of A Separation may never again be matched by the Iranian, but he still does great work.

It gets off to a fabulous start, Sandahl's contact and intimate approach worked in the gem Borg vs. McEnroe, and even here he offers a surprisingly personal take on a professional sport. Unfortunately, the final third spins the emotions around a pole rather than a field, and it's repetitive, lacking greater focus and any real impactful scenes.

A desperately overly-elaborate mishmash that more or less promises an absurd denouement from the start, which it then delivers. Unfortunately, it lacks any charisma to play the game with the insane grace of a film such as A Cure for Wellness. The characters are anemic, the atmosphere gets diluted after a few promising episodes and the last two episodes belong in the "yawn with raised eyebrows" category. This was a missed opportunity, and I’d only suggest the second season purely out of boredom.

The best Sorrentino in years, probably since The Consequences of Love. Finally shaking off the chubby Roman pathos of The Great Beauty and the masturbatory excesses of Youth, he serves up his unmistakable Napoleonic diet poetic style. The fewer great words that are spoken, the greater things that God's hand touches. The more modest the images here, the more moving they are. The first half is a crackling family comedy with many memorable moments, whilst the second half is a much heavier drama about the impossibility of accepting the loss of loved ones and film as a refuge where we find shreds of lost happiness. Life is sometimes like a cruise to a party island, but where everyone has already gone to sleep... The Maradona of European cinema scores a good one.