Othello

I have a lot of sympathy for the role of the young, ambitious Czech filmmaker who has to endure the grueling conditions of co-productions in an attempt to break out of the domestic milieu, only to get so carried away that you can catch those European role models right from your seat as they fly out of the screen. But if I only let my sympathies speak, that would be condescending of me, so tough luck – A Certain Kind of Silence undoubtedly has its individual merits, but a completely flawed concept that explains the background to absolutely everything depicted only with closing credits. Until then, it offers not a single clue as to what kind of film it is and dances along with a half-horror plot about a totally dehumanized community of rich people reminiscent of, say, the Dutch Borgman. Moreover, the whole film is heavily stylized in image and sound, so when we learn at the end that it is a variation on real events about a real organization, we realize that we have just been the victims of a really thorough manipulation, no matter what we might otherwise think about that organization. Personally, I have less of a problem with this than most people should, because I'm aware that film in general is manipulation. Still, here an imaginary line has been crossed.

On the one hand, the silent and unhappy battle of a bourgeois intellectual for his position in a changed world is breathtaking in its palpable, subjective documentation of Cuban post-revolutionary everyday life; on the other hand, it's consistently irritating with an unbearably aggrieved protagonist. He gives the impression that his choice to remain alone in communist Cuba is motivated only by taking a vacation from his duties as an intellectual, which he spends bitterly glossing over the surrounding futility. And that’s supposed to be my project.

A decent psychological drama about an incurable reprobate or the excellent comic origin story of an elusive and provocative bad guy. The latter contains everything that is most essential to revitalizing a classic comic book character – revision and updating. Daring to make the Wayne Family the most negative element we can without any major frills may seem to pander to current commercial demands reflecting contemporary class friction, but it's still a terribly radical step, because that’s the position Batman, as a pure symbol of the guardian elites who decide good and evil from a position of inherited position and wealth (thanks largely to Nolan's visions of a chaotic enemy coming from below), has maintained thus far. If, in the end, Joker does indeed launch a new Gotham universe, it'll be fun to watch the Batman get tossed to filmmakers who have more sympathy for radical incels than those who want to make decisions about them and stop their actions.

From the moment you realize Sorrentino is going to bring this whole thing down to parent issues, you're praying he'll wrap it up as quickly as possible and not totally decimate everything that made half of the series so breathtaking. It was a close call this time around, but the question is whether his general tendency to pull all the truths of the world down to one simple point will stimulate or irritate me more in the future. On the other hand, I will not deny that this question is for me more than for him.

About the only interesting thing about this film is how it is unable to conclude and fulfill even a single hint of the plot or subplot it sets in motion. We don't get to learn about the nature of the plot detour with Vincent D'Onofrio (originally and according to the script, he was some sort of rival in love with Geddes, however this line didn't make it past the test audience), the class conflict between the protagonists completely fails because the portrayal of the world that the character of Hilary comes from is completely abbreviated, unspoken, and after a while the film completely stops paying attention to it, the film is not even able to fulfill its commitment as stated in its title (because it also failed to make it through the test audience) and personally I still had a big problem believing that Geddes is straight because with every smile, sideways glance, and lowering of his eyes he completely denies it. Schumacher himself admitted he lost the reins on this one.

When the protagonist paints a self-portrait in front of a mirror placed in her lover's crotch, or when she wipes the tears of the unfortunate girl with a toddler placed next to her during the abortion process, you get the feeling that the filmmakers are literally jumping under the saw. And while I'm on the subject of criticizing, the struggle to have the absolute maximum of diegetic music in the film, but still needing it for the cathartic scenes, is actually easy to attack as well. However, so what if the film so accurately describes the subjective surrealism associated with not recognizing oneself in an irrational emotional storm. Thanks to increasingly advanced emancipation and communication, I'm increasingly convinced that we need the label of queer film less and less, as films like this and Call Me By Your Name prove the universality of both feeling and loss across sexual preferences. In the end, it's all about the codes, the shifts, the insecurities, the hints, and the secrets. All love is forbidden. On the other hand, if Claire Mathon had captured my life the way this film does, I'd feel like it made sense, too.

A horrific fable in the embrace of Schumacherian visual opulence that salvages what it can from a barren script. The imagined world in which "religion has failed and philosophy has failed" and which is pervaded by emptiness, decadence, decay, and resignation can only be saved, according to the film, by overcoming the limits of self and knowledge. The November gloom, with all the daytime shots filmed either in the morning or evening, the interiors resembling empty temples (including the characters' apartments), and the side streets filled with dealers, prostitutes, and illegal abortions contrasting with the depopulated main streets – all reminiscent of the fatigue of the decade of 1980s hedonism from which Schumacher had benefited so much in his previous films. The decade in which Filardi wrote the screenplay for Flatliners, and so in the end the story is about young students challenging death in their own arrogance, which pays off in the end because it gives them therapy that can be solved by saying sorry to the girl you called a cunt twenty years ago. Mm, I don't know.

Excuse me, entrusting the music to one-trick pony Toppinen was whose idea now? Worse, it only appears about three times in the film, so it successfully disrupted my meditation to the roar of water walls, the crack of bushes, and the crashing of waves, which is unforgivable. But the Russian opening, with the cars being pulled from the bottom of Lake Baikal by short-tempered drivers, is again and again Life Imitates Art Scenic Depictions of Slavic Life. You can't make up a frozen wet Mongol with a Titanic T-shirt who just drowned his car in a lake.

Rambo could actually choose between two genres. Either following in the footsteps of the first installment, it could have been a drama about war trauma or the godless action carnage of an unbreakable machine along the lines of all the other installments. Except it doesn't have a second option because of the protagonist's limitations, and it's too stupid for the first one. Because of the protagonist's limitations. Sylvester Stallone is one of Hollywood's most annoying stars. His incessant need for self-presentation, dabbling in scripting and production, grandiose declarations and the gloriola of his own supposed wise old man's modesty twisted the entirety of Rambo: Last Blood into a very agonizingly twisted corpse that is incapable of meeting even the simplest expectations of an action movie. The first twenty minutes are a celebration of honest work, in which we watch a sweaty Stallone exercise a horse, a sweaty Stallone hammer a nail, a sweaty Stallone spin some wheels, or a sweaty Stallone forge an iron bar. There are no action scenes in the film, just a bunch of shots of the protagonist hitting someone with a hammer or a knife. The final confusion, where we watch fifty people casually walking down identical corridors and randomly falling into some traps, is the most disturbing film finale of the year. Most importantly, please make this 'old-school and honest' spectacle all animated next time. Who's supposed to watch those digital flames and funny pools of blood?

"Live. Love. Submit." I called Interstellar a manifesto of humility; Ad Astra is a manifesto of its own insignificance. Those who say the film is about nothing are right.