JFL

The Kingdom is a precisely constructed and directed thriller with a generic plot that very much conforms to the American geopolitical agenda of the time, but also attempts to disguise its propagandistic dimension by building kitsch-laden sympathies for some of the characters of other nationalities. In the end, it even allows itself to poke at the supposed moral superiority and unambiguous firm resolve. But, of course, it remains solely at the level of an easily digestible mainstream flick that resolutely does not go against the grain. However, the effectively built team of main characters, each with their own role in the narrative, and especially the action are definitely worthy of praise. Though viewers will have to wait until the end for that, it is the natural culmination of the preceding events and the depicted characters, and above all it is realised with an outstanding symbiosis of dramatic construction, spatial topography, nervous camerawork and quick editing, as well as astonishing physical dynamics.

- the first generation, or the first two season – Skins was peculiarly nominated for a bunch of awards in drama categories, but not comedy. Despite the misleading or, said more precisely, enticing first episode, this is not a teen comedy built around the usual motifs of losing one’s virginity and out-of-control parties. With each subsequent episode, the drama further crystalises as it focuses on relationships and developing the individual characters. The series has a clever dramaturgical concept by which each episode focuses on a different character. Thanks to that, all of the characters outlined in the first episode (the stoner, the virgin, the sex kitten, the confident show-off, the basket case) get their own personality and ambiguity, as well as their own conflicts, feelings and desires. Both in its characters’ natures and in the chosen style, Skins remains entirely faithful to its target audience. Whereas all of the adult characters, i.e. parents and teachers, are portrayed as caricatures in accordance with the way that teenagers see them, the adolescent protagonists are fully developed without any prejudices or pre-determined patterns. In the case of the first generation of the series, this means that the protagonists do not fit into any outsider or rebel subculture; they are in fact the core members of the class who devote their free time mainly to copulating. Parties, smoking weed and popping pills are only the backdrop for the main thing that makes the world of teenagers go round – intensely dramatic relationships, which are the be-all and end-all of the whole series. In addition to that, particularly the second season of the first generation of Skins brilliantly depicts the end of the last year of high school as a bittersweet time permeated with the feeling that comes with the approaching end and fear of the pain arising from conflicts and the collapse of idealistic plans. Skins is a series about young people and for young people that is in every aspect (including style and great music) uniquely faithful to its target group, but it cannot be said that is naïve.

Whereas Scream enhanced the self-reflection of the victim characters, Behind the Mask, in line with its title, takes a similarly informed look at slasher-flick killers and ponders everything that they must undergo and prepare for in order to get their roles. Furthermore, Scott Glosserman’s debut delivers a fine combination of imaginative meta-horror and the ethos of indie films that pay homage to the films they admire. This second level may evoke even more sympathy for the film. The filmmakers offset the lack of resources with creative inventiveness, where, thanks to the TV reportage format, they can legitimise the fact that we are actually just watching talking heads most of the time. But in the climax, which is characterised by their own love of horror movies, they put the fourth wall back in place so that they can elevate their characters (and figuratively themselves) from the position of knowledgeable fans to the roles of full-fledged horror actors immersed in the genre world.

What is interesting about Déjà Vu is primarily how its screenplay provides the ideal framework for director Tony Scott’s stylistic development. After the extravagant Domino, in which the unreliable narrator gave space to spectacular formal flamboyance, Scott’s upcoming project gives the impression of being a sort of calming. However, by combining various cameras, materials, shooting speeds and post-production processes, the director found an ideal application for playing with the impression of the moment in Déjà Vu’s narrative, which in the essential middle part works with the possibility of looking into time running in the past while changing points of view. In its peak scenes, the film brings a wildly fragmented view of two different time planes running concurrently, but thanks to the visual stylisation, the viewer never gets lost even for a moment. Domino and Déjà Vu together represent the two highlights of Scott’s late-period filmography, where in the respective screenplays he had the ideal framework for his formal experiments – in one case, unbridled wildness in the interest of increasing the expressiveness and delirium of the narrative and, in the other case, the paradoxical use of those elements for maximum clarity and a credible display of the fantastical aspects of intersecting time planes.

Lycan Colony is the ultimate movie miscarriage. Such superlatives, uttered particularly in relation to the broad field of the sewer of world cinema, automatically seem rather dubious. In spite of that, however, I won’t deny myself the right to use them here, especially with the passage of many weeks during which I cleared my head cluttered with the non-stop WTF astonishment from watching this piece of work. The maestro of untrained amateurism Rob Roy mercilessly grinds down viewers with something approaching the absolute bottom of the abyss of incompetence, as well as with the heights of delirious progressivity that proudly treads uncharted territory (where no reasonable person would dare step foot). This leads to the paranoid assumption that Lycan Colony must be a calculated product, because the number of violations of the rules of filmmaking here give the impression that the film is a comprehensive encyclopaedia of how not to make a film. However, every sequence radiates genuine artlessness and sincere naïveté that the calculating mockbusters of The Asylum, for example, can’t even dream of. Of course, what we have here in the masterful auteur who stands before us is not an obstinate Sisyphean genius at the level of Herzog’s Fitzgerald, but merely a fake diamond in the rough in the form of an ordinary small-town fantasist. But what’s even more likable is the deluge of woodenly “acting” neighbours and relatives (and their household pets), crudely framed “compositions”, drastically overexposed shots (many of them shot in broad daylight and subsequently converted into night scenes with a filter, though the shadows remain), idiotically utilised simple CGI effects from the menu of basic editing software, sound effects applied in an endless loop and images clumsily deformed in every possible way. And that’s not to mention the disjointed narrative in which Native American mythology is combined with werewolf lore and where generally functional scenes like those from a family sitcom alternate with crazy twists and fantastical elements. It’s hard to find more convincing proof that in some respects AI will never replace human creativity. At the same time, however, Lycan Colony can also be seen as a portent of a phantasmagorically contorted future of cinema, as Harmony Korine is currently proclaiming in relation to his similarly digitally irrational audio-visual flatulence Aggro Dr1ft. THIS IS CINEMA or Rob Roy is the real killer of the flower moon (that is, if Killers of the Flower Moon had been run through a colour filter in the wrong aspect ratio on a green screen).

This is how comic book adaptations should be done – going your own way to the sound of fanboys gnashing their teeth. With Constantine, the filmmakers understood that comic books – not just the mainstream ones but also the overground alternative ones –  are essentially a load of overwrought clichés, posturing and superficiality with a hint of something deeper. When this idea is appropriately grasped and executed, however, it can be tremendously entertaining, covering the full spectrum from camp cringe to unironic love. The casting of Keanu Reeves is a brilliant move, turning the existentially brooding hero into the greatest sufferer in blockbuster history instead of just another dark and gritty cliché. Whenever he lights a cigarette, utters a line loaded with fatalism or makes himself unavailable, you feel like hugging him. This is greatly supported by Rachel Weisz as a cool chick with a gun in a clearing surrounded by demons. Their chemistry together works magnificently, which delightfully enhances the plot to the point that you wish you could diabolically stop time and push them into a kiss. On top of that, the refined camerawork revels in those magnificent faces in unconventional widescreen compositions and the precise production design is part of fun world-building where something is ridiculously literal and something else is simply just happening. When Reeves first flicks open his Zippo, you get a silly grin on your face, which is surpassed only by the unadulterated pleasure provided by Tilda Swinton as the ethereally haughty archangel Gabriel and Peter Stormare in the role of Satan.

This is just one big WTF, every second of which radiates an entirely distinctive creative and, at the same time and in equal measure, complete inability to competently express it in accordance with the principles and rules of the language of film and narrative. However, it is appropriate to note that all of the creative ambitions are limited to the space of a run-of-the-mill trash framework involving the commonplace motifs of punishment for a crime and the clash between good and evil. Nevertheless, the less you know about Dangerous Men, the more you will be astonished by the unexpected narrative alleys, or rather the gutters of incoherence into which the one-man crew Jahangir Salehi, hiding behind his moronic pseudonym John Rad, will lead you. With this feverish work, which he began shooting sometime in the 1980s but which was released only in 2005, Salehi/Rad secured a place of honour in the pantheon of irrational and clumsy purveyors of trash alongside Scot Shaw, Neil Breen, James Nguyen and Tommy Wiseau. After all, he shares with them not only a very “distinctive” way of handling cinematic means of expression, but also the chaotic mystery in which he shrouds himself with his delirious koans. So, there is nothing left to do but to believe him when he says that he is not only a self-proclaimed director, writer, poet and composer, but also an alleged former multimillionaire and architect from Iran, which he fled during the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and started completely from scratch in the United States.

In his crowning achievement, Tony Scott crafted a crazy story inspired by the wild life of a real-life bounty hunter as an impressive trip that induces in the audience a heightened perception of the over-the-top narrative. With variable shooting speeds, an unusual process of developing material, an epileptically roaming camera and frenetic editing, Scott transforms the movie screen into a kinetic image in which the structure and matter of the film become visible and tangible. Richly coloured shots stacked on top of each other and camera movements become the equivalents of massive coats of paint and brushstrokes, alternately evoking the paintings of the Fauvists, Futurists and German Expressionists.

The script is noticeably shaky, the spy lore is sloppy and the first half of the film is made up of needlessly drawn-out exposition. Fortunately, however, it is saved by its framing through a session with a relationship therapist and a second half that comes to a magnificent culmination, which is memorable not only for its superbly played action/relationship scenes, but ultimately also for the dynamic of the couple dynamics and the chemistry between the protagonists, which is completely absent in the first half. The action sequences come only in the second half and their strength consists in the fact that they combine money shots with the evolving relationship of the titular couple. In spite of that, however, it’s very difficult to dispel the notion that, despite its obvious ambition, Mr. & Mrs. Smith can’t hold a candle to True Lies.

The most expensive camp movie of all time. In contrast to the straightforwardly tasteless Spaceballs, the conclusion of the prequel trilogy offers the properly attuned audience a multi-layered farce with a magnificently overwrought script that abounds with cartoonish characters, absurd sequences and absolutely zero logic. The film’s greatest enigma is Hayden Christensen; even more so than in the second episode, it is impossible to tell if he is a terrible actor or, conversely, very good at playing a horrible asshole (Ian McDiarmid, on the other hand, portrays the nascent emperor with positively swaggering self-indulgence). Episode III similarly also culminates the other drawbacks of the previous instalment. Apart from the ridiculous emo gloominess, the film’s main fault lies in the fact that the narrative doesn’t develop its own story, but serves merely to establish the motifs of the original trilogy. Generally speaking, the audience’s familiarity with the denouement doesn't automatically mean that a film can’t be engaging – one of the best examples of which is Singer’s Valkyrie. This can be achieved by building tension, developing supporting sub-motifs or parallel storylines, or by simply building a fictional world. But Lucas does not do any of these things, relying instead on superficial fanservice and bluntly and literally filling in the gaps in a story that previously at least offered the promise of ambiguity (though the film also introduces a number of gaps in logic into the saga). And what is the moral and denouement of Episode III and with it the completed saga? The Force reaches equilibrium through several decades of the destructive, capricious behaviour of a childishly unhinged egocentric asshole who first subverts the religiously degenerate Jedi and then literally topples the brilliant manipulator and master of chance, the emperor. On the one hand, we can understand this as a stimulating impetus in relation to prophecy, the interpretation of history and the importance of the individual in history, but it’s not exactly exciting for viewers. So, it's actually nice of Lucas to wrap up this denouement in such a wildly bad movie that invites amused commentary at every moment.