J*A*S*M

An entertaining and really well made Australian horror comedy about two brothers who produce organic fertilisers and the three young tourists they want to turn into fertiliser. There’s very little horror (though there’s a lot of carnage), and plenty of jokes. But don’t expect to cry in laughter, this is rather a nice and slightly funny flick with likeable characters. The plot is pretty predictable but still fun. Unlike the similar Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, the premise of 100 Bloody Acres is less original, but I liked this Australian comedy a little more. Strong three stars.

“A family dinner or a funeral… better the funeral, there would at least be one idiot less.” A remarkable Icelandic comedy that fascinated me mainly by how often it managed to surprise me, although after a few minutes I thought that it could no longer do it, that I was ready for everything ... A very likeable and incorrect flick.

The name really screwed it. Throughout the film, the experience from an excellent chamber thriller drama is disrupted by the world “Cloverfield”; you know what kind of reveal this will eventually lead to. And when it gets there, what follows is disappointment, because the connection with the original film is really only on paper. If the film was called Independence Day 2, it would’ve been the same, if not better. A weak four.

What?

Yeah, Boyle and Franco probably did the best they could under the circumstances, but the fears I had before the screening turned out to be true: the premise is good for an autobiography, but not for a feature film. To allow the camera to leave that unfortunate wedged guy at least for a while, the script includes flashbacks and hallucinations that are pretty annoying and pathetic, though I understand the dramatic reasons behind them. But, considering the possibilities the creators had, the film is very brisk and energetic and Boyle again shows his strength: the blend of music and images. The ending (when the “action” is behind) managed to arouse some emotions. However, I still have mixed feelings about 127 Hours and I would love it if next time Danny chose more story-rich material. 7/10

Just like Zimmer recycles his music, McQueen here has recycled all of the movies about black slaves that have existed to this day. Honestly, this film has nothing unexpected or otherwise interesting. Ejiofor becomes a slave, is a slave for twelve years and then it’s no longer a slave. The end. I also had some problem with the time frame, it didn’t feel at all like it was twelve years, I actually felt that the story could’ve taken place in four years, or even less. But the execution is very good, without any excessive moralising or pathetic bullshit, so a pretty decent Oscar winner. BTW, the best performance is Fassbender’s, hands down, while Pitt surprisingly manages to annoy even in his short, almost cameo appearance.

This is really alright. Around the middle of the previous decade, the zombie sub-genre enjoyed a small boom, but things have got quieter in the last few years, with the zombies ending up more in the waters of uninteresting DVDs that rarely produce anything good. 13 Eerie comes from those waters, and I’m really happy that this time I can give thumbs up to a low-key new zombie flick – it’s just a nice little horror movie. The script is, of course, utterly generic, it won’t take your breath away; this one will please only fans of the genre, who will love the nicely atmospheric environment, the dirty feel, the blood, the good gore and, especially, the perfect look of the zombies – this time they aren’t just people splashed with fake blood and faces covered in chalk who don’t look different than your average mortal. No, here they look like beautifully awful, withered and wrinkled monsters dripping black goo. From this point of view it’s great. I also liked the relatively short run and the fact that the film doesn’t suffer from an excessively long and boring beginning.

Maybe I will write a longer review, but only after I recover from this crap. :-(

Awfully uninteresting and boring. Where are those days when British horror was a safe bet…

A tough thing to review. It’s a pretty imaginatively told story (though the screenwriting leaves plenty to be desired) that in the 10th and 11th episodes, and especially in the 12th and 13th reaches a strong climax. But why the hell did the real drama have to start so late? Two thirds of the series are about a whining, over-sensitive cow trying to convince the over-sensitive audience that she is really to blame for her problems. Given the climax in the last episodes, I think it’s terrible that the series is built in such way that anyone watching it can get the idea that “it’s her fault”. And it is really like that, because until those last few episodes, they address the type of terrible pettiness that, in one way or another (and much worse), most people had to face in secondary school. As a result, I soon began hating all the characters, and actually poor Hannah most of all. Her teenage wisdom voiceover is annoying, and so is the permanently brooding expression of the only righteous person, Mr. Clay. The last episodes improve the impression, but the fact remains that I got to them only through willpower. The pettiness piles up and piles up, to the point that it is no longer pettiness, and all that remains is antipathy towards the characters. By the way, does anyone really believe that, in 2017, someone feeling so truly downtrodden as to kill themselves would record 13 cassettes before the act, where they would speak about their suffering, almost without emotion and with a “narrative perspective”? And to perform graceful narrative pirouettes like “I’ll leave this part of the story for later”? This series portrays suicide as a romantic gesture, and I believe that’s very dangerous. If this had come up ten years ago, when the Emo style was all the rage, I think we would’ve had a few more dead teenagers.