J*A*S*M

Excellent narrative pirouette and a really intense madhouse! I trusted Laugier, but since the film wasn’t preceded by the hype of a big horror event (like this year’s A Quiet Place or the upcoming Hereditary), I was expecting less. And maybe thanks to that I ended up pleasantly surprised. Ghostland lacks the philosophical layers of Martyrs, which established Laugier, but it certainly delivers more horror satisfaction than The Tall Man. A decade ago we were used to this breed of films, but they stepped into the background in such way that today they can feel like a breath of fresh air again. Finally a horror action film that is unleashed and hurts! The action puts the character through such things that you believe that they are deeply traumatising them, and their hysteria doesn’t surprise you. All this, moreover, wrapped in first-class technical form, taking place in the interiors of a magnificent horror cabin, and made special by a narrative structure that makes sense (though I can imagine that it can be self-evident for some). Applause.

The perfect film to “celebrate” the Victorious February. It’s very funny and dark, but also chilling when you realise that some of the events portrayed are not that far from the realities of a totalitarian regime. So, let’s hope that the gradual stupidisation of this country won’t make us go through something like this again. Otherwise, when compared to this film, the Czech satire President Blanik looks pretty sad. It’s on another level.

I really don’t like it when people give ironic high ratings to bad films. At all. I don’t care about guilty pleasures, I just don’t like bad films by incompetent creators. I think they are offensive to those creators who at least try. But The Room is something else! If it had been made like this deliberately, I would be a brilliant comedy, but the fact that this is the result of a series of accidents and some kind of bizarre aliens can’t erase the positive emotions that I have from this “film”. No bullshit, I haven’t been so fascinated by a film in a long time, even if it is really bad, and how improbably bad it is sometimes, but still.

The best episode of the fourth season (and for me the only one this time that’s getting five stars). A great idea, a great antagonist and perfect lines that blew me away in some cases. In this episode Booker combines a dark statement about the perverted aspects of people with humour and lightness, in such way that it really doesn’t matter that strict logic doesn’t apply to the plot and that the rules of that fictitious world are loose, as if they were put together on the go.

The performances of Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet have received all the honours, but the hero, and the main reason why Call Me by Your Name is one of the best films of the year, is the director, Luca Guadagnino. It’s amazing how he managed to capture the atmosphere of the place and the time where a story like this can happen. Summer in Lombardy, where everything is soaked in rich history, antiquity and the renaissance, the love for knowledge, the fascination for art, philosophy and beauty as such – of body and mind. That’s why the monologue of the father at the end makes sense and why it could be so non-conflicting.

A unique film without compromises which I don’t know what other movie I can compare it with in terms of atmosphere, impression or feeling – something that doesn’t happen very often in modern filmmaking. The main character looks like a “Trumpist redneck”, but the joke here is that if you are expecting him to behave based on the prejudice about his appearance, he will surprise you with how much more there is to him. The second joke is that you will still get some violence delivered by, but to such extent and so weirdly executed that it has an almost transcendental effect. It basically doesn’t look like a film. The whole movie has a fairly ugly cinematography (digital colours, unpleasant and unusual angles), the fighting scenes are almost uncut and frequently shot in unnaturally large set pieces, and the gore also looks differently than in other films. Like, I’ve never seen a tramped skull, but the fact that here it looks different than in a million other films gave me impression that I’m maybe seeing it for the first time ever. Rather than a film, Brawl in Cell Block 99 reminded me of a very realistic dream that gradually turns into a nightmare into which you plunge deeper and deeper. In any case, one of the films of the year.

A film so completely devoid of any logic that it has considerable cult potential. The creators must have been on drugs, and the viewer experience will be better on them, too.

Good, but I think that it’s been way overhyped in America as a result of the racial tone, which resonates more across the pond than in here. What’s interesting, though, is that in the film itself, the racial lines are not that broad and the “raciscm” of the villains is rather superficial. What I find thought-provoking is the controversy about whether the villains make instruments out of the blacks simply because of racism, or because. in many aspects (at least in some cases), they consider them better. But I’m not sure whether that controversy is intentional or whether the script is not entirely clear on what it wants to say. The basic concept is pretty cheesy, certainly more than I had expected. There’s also less horror than I had expected, and more comedy. The comedic moments, in particular, were pretty irritating. I have nothing a priori against comedy elements in horror, but here they clearly disrupted the paranoid atmosphere (laughter doesn’t go very well with it) and, to my taste, the humour was very simple, though effective. Instead of that, I would have welcomed a broader explanation of the mechanism of what is actually happening to those black people, because the film addresses it only very roughly, to the point that it gave me a messy impression. And I was also slightly disappointed that it was missing a surprising moment. Yeah, the premise overall is original, but the plot moves within relatively predictable lines – I figured out the one relatively big twist ten minutes in advance. Things should have got moving after that, but instead, they were over pretty quickly. The comment may sound too critical, but that’s because I was really convinced I was going to see the best horror film in recent years. Not even by chance, but it is certainly a good film. Edit: After the second viewing my quibbles have disappeared. It’s awesome! The explanations of the events turned out to be enough and the second time you can really enjoy those little nuances in the performances that show that the whole thing is excellently thought-out.

I biopic about famous Polish painter Zdzisław Beksińsky (I realised I knew some of his paintings without knowing the author’s name) that doesn’t look at all like a biopic. By that I mean that not even once it looks as if the filmmakers had limited themselves to reality – to what actually happened. It’s a clearly and confidently executed author’s vision that says a lot about a lot, and to do that it only needs to focus on one not entirely happy (yeah, it’s an euphemism) Polish family throughout three decades. The strongest début of the year, and there’s no question about it. Congratulations Poland! Why can’t this happen here?

A painful punch right to the heart. A film whose author must be on the same frequency as I, because I understood every scene. Everything was in its place, everything made sense. It’s been a long time since I felt 137 minutes passing so fast, even though on paper they should have dragged (and judging by the comments, they did drag for many people).