Lima

It took a long 33 years, but we finally got it. After Episode 6, the best film in the Star Wars universe. It doesn't feel contrived, it doesn't tell the story through bridges for morons, and it treats the main and episodic characters in a brash and bleak way, like in a real war. The beginning is perhaps too slow (my only complaint), but otherwise it's pure fan joy. I'd love to have a beer with Gareth Edwards, not only is he one of the few to understand the poetry of the original Japanese Godzilla films, but his rendition of Star Wars doesn't look like a cheesy coloring book either. Give him Star Trek, too!

Poster tagline: THEY CREATED AN INHUMAN BEING WHO DESTROYED EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHED!! The synopsis is simple: a woman dying of tuberculosis and is saved by two doctors who inject her with a special healing serum that turns her into an evil being able to shapeshift (manifested by changing the colour of her hair and make-up) and kill anyone who stands in her way. The first thing that strikes you is that the film was shot in gorgeous cinemascope format, which was not yet common in cinemas. The second thing, the lead actress can't act, and the only time I believed her is when she goes into a rage and murders someone. The effects are quite good (the aforementioned sudden change of hair colour observed in the mirror, the disappearing scars on the hand after being scratched by a leopard), the men are exclusively in the position of passive drones with whom the dominant woman does whatever she wants, but above all, the story is so stupidly presented that even the audience of that time couldn't take it seriously (and they were faced with hundreds of even more naive films). Some scenes really fall into self-parody, fortunately for me Neumann fully made up for this one year later, with the fantastic The Fly.

It's a love triangle, that's all there is to it and the whole thing kind of fizzles out. Woody only makes films out of inertia these days, but Café Society in particular is so caressing, cute, and in its own way, endearingly old-fashioned, especially since it has the flawless atmosphere of 1930s Hollywood, an era that has always appealed to me, an old-timer. In addition to that, I realised that Stewart can be attractive when the role allows her to. And in fact the ending was exactly as melancholic as it should.

“Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft!", says the film’s theme song. Shaft was the first one, he brought the blaxploitation genre to the world of cinema, he brought a black hero who has women falling into his lap like on a treadmill, who’s not afraid of blacks or whites, who, when needed, is appropriately aggressive yet smart. And it was a hit with black young boys from the suburbs who flocked to the film in droves. Yet the film's reputation is a bit ahead of its quality. I was expecting more wisecracks, more sex (2 girls in the whole film? - Shaft you’re disappointing), more action and more violence (three smaller action sequences don't pull it off). Even so, it's interesting, if only for the great atmosphere of early 1970s New York, the period clothing, the cars and the black junkies dealing. And the white population plays an irrelevant second fiddle, as it should be in a proper blaxploitation flick.

I would never have believed that a sci-fi film could say more about the nature of people in general than the hundreds of other psychological films that have graced cinema screens. This a cinema event with capital E, I've been waiting for sci-fi like this since Zemeckis's excellent Contact in 1997. And at the same time it's a litmus test of our population, whether you're idiots (like the guys two rows behind me, who spent the whole movie making jokes and unknowingly poking fun at their own idiocy) or sensitive people who can appreciate something like this. And Amy Adams is awesome.

It’s hard to say which version is better. Both have their emotional peak, the French one in the form of a crossing over an oil pond and its tragic consequence, while Friedkin's has an unforgettable scene a crossing a rope bridge over a raging river. Otherwise they are both completely different and complement each other beautifully. Perhaps only the French original has an unnecessarily long introductory part, which lasts more than an hour and needs to be cut, but otherwise it is a hearty portion of first-class filmmaking. And young Yves Montand looked like David Gahan from Depeche Mode :o)

What do we have here? Two solid jump-scares, but otherwise it's a compilation of the most overused horror tropes and techniques we've seen in dozens of other genre-related films, and the 1970s horror films Wan refers to did it better. On top of that, there's a script that's just stupid, to the point of slamming the door louder than the ghost could. In the first half, Wan is still coaching with ease, but the second half is just a festival of stupidity and ineptitude. During some scenes, like the interrogation of the ghost ergo the girl with a mouthful of water, I felt ashamed of the filmmakers. But I won’t condemn Wan, he still knows how to polish a turd, like in the excellent prequel, which was simply better in many ways.

A non-mainstream, visually captivating, hypnotically immersive experience for those who can appreciate Nicolas Winding Refn's extraordinary visual sensibilities. But Refn is also explicitly provocative, completely unnecessarily so, and I could really do without a few scenes (sex in the morgue, yuck!). So when I add up the pros and cons, Refn ends up with a draw, but the kid has talent for more, much more. That's probably how Jaromil Jireš would shoot it when he was making Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, he would be a bit of a pervert and permanently on drugs.

It's a bit disjointed, it doesn't hold together, there are funny scenes, then less funny ones and then completely dull ones (the Soviet submarine). But as a whole, it's still a nice excursion to a time I love more than anything, the Golden Hollywood of the 1950s, when cinemas were ruled by naive westerns, even more naive sci-fi B-movie and swords and sandal movies. And I'll say one name: Alden Ehrenreich. I like this kid a lot, he's gonna be a star one day, trust me.

You watch this technological marvel and the thought flies through your mind that "The future is now" and the reassurance of the significance of the giant leap forward filmmakers have made in the development of CGI animation and effects of the last two decades, something that filmmakers in the "pre-Jurassic" period could only dream of. This is undoubtedly the pinnacle of contemporary Hollywood's technical capabilities, and I can smell some technical Oscars. And please, I write this as a viewer who’s not at all fond of the digital coloring books that abound in movies today and prefers practical effects. But here there are no digital orgies that would look out of place, everything looks very believable and alive. When I realize that all the natural surroundings were created in a computer, it just blows my mind. The experience is enhanced by the wonderful book, and if its story teaches at least a few child viewers to love animals, this film is worthwhile.