Lima

Arrow Limited Edition: The last of Sam Katzman's "big four" that I'm reviewing here after many years of delay. Quite an enjoyable zombie flick from the days when George A. Romero was still squeezing his zits. Nobody can take away the status of the first zombie film from the now forgotten White Zombie from 1932, but for a long time after that, with few exceptions, there was silence on the trail, and even in the 1950s you could count the number of films with the writhing dead on one hand. This one is one of them, and it is, how shall I put it, exactly what you'd expect from Katzman. It's far from the unintentional comedy of his The Giant Claw, after all, a giant toothed flying ostrich is a different scale, but there’s a lot of fun here, too. There are only three cheesy interiors, the funniest of which is the so-called "European burial ground in the middle of the African jungle", where zombies lie in clean backdrops, in bakelite coffins, identical and pillaged one after the other. They have the appearance of the beer-guzzling geezers you can see in down-at-heel train station bars. They walk slowly, don't make any sounds, they look like they just swallowed a large amount of endiarone. Occasionally they will threaten you with a fist bump or spread their arms as if to hug you, otherwise they are completely harmless. The underwater scenes are replaced by a greyed-out filter in front of the camera and a bubble blower attached to a diving helmet. That's how it's done, no CGI needed :) Otherwise Octavianus is right, Allison Hayes is great, before the script commands her in the 2nd half to stare dumbly ahead (like a "zombie") she has the animalistic sex appeal of Tura Satana in her prime – and the perfect make-up does help. In summary, it has no craftsmanship qualities, but I'll still slightly overrate it, because I actually enjoyed the – from today's perspective – pleasantly cute naivety. And a big thanks to publishing companies like Arrow for taking such good care of these forgotten B-movies, it looks fabulous on Blu-ray.

Cronenberg, as I like and dislike him. Visually I found it as poor as his minimalist Spider, David doesn't even deliver atmosphere anymore, and the few bizarre sarcophagi are not enough. On the other hand, the microworld presented by the five main characters is so creepy that it's kind of fun to watch if you're in the right mood. You just feel like some creepy voyeur watching a couple of weirdos licking each other's bodily deformities through a keyhole. Here, for "licking" add groping abdomens, pulling out tumors, cutting into the skin and making a zipper on the abdominal incision (anyone heard of Videodrome?). Ultimately, the most entertaining part of the whole film is the pissed-off frustration of uninformed male and female viewers who leave during the screening because they were expecting "something nice" with Mortensen, and instead they see people pulling tattooed entrails out of their stomachs. David, that's why I still like you :o)

Excellent low-cost take on Lawrence of Arabia, if that was Favreau’s intention, hats off. Visually it almost looks like a three-reel movie, the desert scenes caress the eye, the train robbery is a showcase of top-notch editing and very decent special effects for TV. The lizard on the head, the Tusken customs, the making of a mallet and the final battle dance around the fire, excellent. As you can see, Favreau is a man in the right place and one can only regret that he didn't also work on Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Poor Ewan, this is a waste of his immense charisma and this weak tea doesn't deserve it at all. I really wanted to like it, if only because of him, but alas. Only a few nostalgic moments work in the weak script (especially in the first part), the direction is pathetic, sometimes it’s really painful to watch, and there are moments when it seemed like a parody and others that had the atmosphere of the TV fairy tales made by the commies, where the production poured a lot of money into mediocre effects and expensive sets. Deborah Chow may be confident in relationship dramas, but she lacks the chops to build the legacy of a famous franchise. Mickey has messed up everything he has touched in Star Wars, except for the narratively courageous The Last Jedi and Rogue One, which were brilliant craftsmanship and had the balls to take the famous saga in a different direction.

The Beatles' last live performance on the roof of Apple's headquarters in Saville Row, in the heart of bustling London, restored in all its glory. Fantastically smoothly edited, shown from several angles, whether from the point of view of the astonished bystanders being interviewed or the clueless officers who have to respond to about thirty complaints about noise and breaches of public peace, yet thanks to the division of the image into several windows you don’t miss a second of the show. There is a slight aftertaste, though, because during the penultimate song the Lennons turn off the bugged speaker, and apparently the whole performance gets lost a few songs earlier, but even this is actually the spice of a unique ending for the most influential band of all time. By the way, U2 did something similar in Los Angeles 18 years later. Nice try, Irish lads, but you are not The Beatles and you probably wouldn't have had the balls to do it in Conservative England at the time :o)

I’m not fond of carnivals from the first half of the 20th century, with their bizarreness, the way their tormented animals and boasted about the deformity of disabled people, but the setting in the late 1930s and early 1940s suits me. However, I feel that the story and its plot arc is not so substantial to justify the enormous runtime. I would have cut the beginning at the carnival by half, maybe more, and nothing would have happened, leaving Bradley and Rooney Mara's reunion and , for the final (very funny, by the way) twist, the important monologue of the the demonic Willem Dafoe about how they recruit human scum to play the role of renegades who are locked permanently in a cage and eat chickens alive. On the other hand, if I were Del Toro I'd focus more on the intrigue in the big city, its grimness and depravity, because Cate Blanchett is a great femme fatale and the sparks between her and Bradley are electrifying. Overall, I enjoyed it, but a pair of scissors for the editor would have been really nice. But it's hard when you consider how much del Toro loves the bizarreness of the old fairs and carnivals, he must have felt like a kid in a candy store in their backdrop.

Barefoot in the Park slightly dented his stellar start, Sundance Kid catapulted him to the acting Olympus, and in the meantime Redford, my idol, made this unremarkable tale of an arrogant man who comes to happiness. There’s no chance to build a positive relationship with his character, because he starts his story as a pretentious jerk and ends the same way, with no sign of any epiphany. Moreover, it's not even very well directed, not to mention the choppy narrative. The ending offers an unintended parallel to Ledecká's recent unexpected Olympic triumph in the downhill (here as a German downhill racer), but even here the filmmakers didn’t go off the expected track. It was interesting perhaps only for comparison and confirmation of what a huge technological and qualitative leap winter sports, and downhill skiing in particular, have made since then.

Fortunately, the big-studio system hasn't ground Robert Eggers down; despite the higher budget he has remained his own, uninhibited and original, although I think that of his three films so far this one is probably the least interesting. The narrative is not exactly flawless, especially in the middle part the story drags a lot, as if it doesn't know which way to go, but thank Odin it catches its breath again with the bloody climax and the final fight is an atmospheric blast. You will also enjoy the unusual insights into the life of the Old Norse, their customs and shamanic practices. The manly Skarsgård impresses with his animalism and muscularity, so his traditional puppy dog look doesn't matter. Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, is a horrible sight when the camera filter isn't mercifully working on her; facial liposuction is evil. Ageing also demands grace.

Tommy negotiated a 20% cut of every ticket sold, clever boy, and with himself as producer he serves us a fairytale that is beautifully filmed, but with a plot that is cliché as hell. Fighter jets have never been so sexy, in the cockpit shots you can totally see the effects of overload on the actors' faces, every extra mach – nostalgia is fine if you know how to work with it – but it all goes follows classic predictable Hollywood notes, you can guess exactly what will happen in the next scene, there is no moment of surprise, this film can only dream of some surprising twists. I was thoroughly bored for the first half, and in fact for the rest of the film. The only one who gave me the creeps was Val Kilmer, especially if you know about his health. The final praised action set-piece looked like a CGI cut scene from “Call of Duty”, the only thing missing was a gamepad in my hands. I think the current 92% here is nonsense.

Hipster bollocks by the Greek version of Charles Vachek. Had it been half an hour longer, I would’ve jumped out of the window myself.