Marigold

Less water, man, less water! I’m still a big fan of the first Avatar, which worked like a euphoric trip through another world thanks to its simple narrative structure involving a hero/outsider savior of the noble savages. The second one is essentially a drawn-out and shaky soap opera about a family run by a militant father who moves to a new ’hood and can’t get used to it. Let’s leave aside that Cameron paid significantly less attention to dramatic motivations than he did to the last fish below the surface. The whole film thus seems irrational and the dialogue, which was never Avatar’s strength, is even more ear-scratchingly pedantic. As an epic tech reel, however, the film is breathtaking and I truly, royally enjoyed the underwater National Geographic in HFR. There is something truly intoxicating in the smoothness and fluidity. Unfortunately, the film’s 192 minutes are emotionally stolen by a crippled humpback whale, which has the significant advantage that it doesn’t talk (and even its retrospective is not told smoothly). Yes, Cameron is a great craftsman and illusionist, but as a storyteller, he fails here significantly in my opinion. There is no development of the mythology to speak of, as everything is just a variation, the metaphor of nature as a loving entity is becoming more and more naïve and, honestly, I would like to spend less time waiting for the third one and the fire people after this aquatherapy. During the screening, I found it difficult to push away the thought that I would have preferred to enjoy some top-quality sci-fi, which Avatar decidedly isn’t!

A drawn-out macho mafia saga that gets old as the characters become sparser and the dialogue becomes shallower. There are flashes of Leone's brilliance, of course, but the film is generally similar to Morricone's music. It's quite impressive, but too familiar; the Pan almost kills even the phenomenal Picnic at Hanging Rock. It turns this festival of plaintive glances by human exclamation marks into a nostalgic museum exhibit of a film world that fortunately belongs to yesterday.

An acting masterclass combined with a masterclass in unnecessary directorial manipulation. If Darren had reined in his desire to drag the viewer into a fit of transcendent emotion and had carried the film through to the end as an intimate story about a human mass of guilt and loneliness, it might have had the punch that he last achieved in The Wrestler. Unfortunately, however, this is how the redemption of a self-destructive man becomes more distant the more the director tries to make it poignant. Fraser, on the other hand, deserves maximum respect, as he account for all of the humor and humanism in this dubious dramatic cetacean.

Technically brilliant, self-centered nonsense. Another diligent anamnesis of an artist in late middle age that makes up for its lack of depth with scale, but it misses the mark both as a slightly surreal metaphor for identity crisis and as a reflection on the present. Iñárritu is again confirmed to be a filmmaking bubble. Sorry, not sorry.

The Fabelmans is masterfully shot story of film and family that alternates between moments of extraordinary feeling, in which Spielberg manages to depict big things on an intimate scale, and a slightly banal compilation of familiar motifs and tried-and-true pearls of wisdom. I was moved by the film a few times, particularly the moments involving the magnificent duo of Dano and Williams, and when the boyish enthusiasm of amateur films is presented in such a way that it evokes in viewers the feeling that they are watching something almost miraculous. The Fabelmans portrays the medium of film as a double-edged sword that is capable of both healing and ruthlessly inflicting wounds. The film contains a touch of slight yet aching melancholy that doesn’t come across as mushy; Spielberg is still surehanded in that respect. Despite that, however, there is something banally transitory and too comfortable in all of these nice images, as the anecdotal ending demonstrates. The strongest impression is thus left by the relationship between Sam and his parents, which mirrors the pain and loneliness of Spielberg’s child characters. I feel great respect and mild emotion for this film, but unfortunately also doubt as to whether it will actually leave me with more than a fleeting sense of enchantment.

The repetitive alternation of the heat of battle and the coldness of waiting, the recurring motifs for unimaginative half-wits, the book’s premise stripped of all its compelling scenes, which the film replaces with simple (and sometimes unrealistic) war porn and a completely hollow political storyline. The film fails to approximate Remarque’s insistent humanism except by literally illustrating the conflict of minor and major history, which doesn’t make a lot of sense (the horrors of the First World War didn’t actually consist in the fact that Foch wanted an armistice in six days and the Germans needed to think it over). As an adaptation, this is a disaster, devoid of psychology and with no thoroughly developed characters, and as a film it’s drawn out, transparent and superficial. The versions from 1930 and 1979 had something to them, but this fails even as a stand-alone work. Netflix’s problem isn’t the lack of casting actors of color. Its problem is that its projects lack dramaturgy and thus don’t much sense.

The concise first third of Barbarians with the wonderful Bill is great; the second has an unexpected comedic edge (I roared with laughter at the twist from jump-scare to reality farce), and the third is a mishmash, but... the original mix of inverse home invasion, lactation instruction, collecting of VHS snuff flicks, drama about cruel motherhood and black comedy about the MeToo movement simply kept me watching, even though some of the dramaturgical choices are very dubious and the film barely holds together in places. As another entry in the canon of Detroit high-concept horror movies (the magnificent and in some ways related Don’t Breathe and the more allegorical It Follows are worth mentioning), it is indeed a more than respectable work. A place where society has collapsed invites the rise of barbarism.

Overwrought, overstuffed with false clues, bizarre/horror only marginally and, in the second half, extremely illogical and boring. However, the premise with the haunted house and creepy neighbors is appealing and Watts/Cannavale are a fine pair. Unfortunately, the climax is like Poirot after a massive stroke and the moral about greediness is not very believable.

He's a bad boy, that Ethan, but let's be honest, without his meaty glam rocker, this would hardly be a slightly scarier episode of a cartoon. There are a couple of ideas in there, but they are not the most polished I’ve ever seen. Derrickson surprises us a bit through the fluctuation of tone, and the goofball elements are really out of place. Overall, I wasn’t really blown away by it. Deliver Us From Evil may have been corny as hell, but it had a dense atmosphere. This film oscillates between a cute Stranger Things ballad and a feeble genre hybrid. I am not going to give him any credit next time.

This is sort of like Östlund's Force Majeure from Wish. The partial scenes more or less work, but the more the film gets involved in annoying, quarrelsome and a bit overdone characters and their constant clashes, the less it all makes sense. The last third is very much for effect, and the emancipation of the main female character is dramatically out of place. Stuffing it with classical music doesn't really hide the psychological dislocation. I give it points for the Danish Obi Wan Kenobi, who's in the marina fussing over annoyed Polish ladies.