Lima

Soderbergh's redemption from the prison called Hollywood and a clear argument for those who claim that TV production in recent years is more interesting and progressive than film. I am no longer surprised by Soderbergh's words that he has finally found the creative freedom in contemporary television that was so lacking in big-studio film production.

Poster tagline: NATIONS RACING TIME AND EACH OTHER – TO REACH COUNTLESS MILES INTO SPACE... AND SAVE THE WORLD FROM TOTAL DESTRUCTION. THE STORY THAT COULD HAPPEN TOMORROW TO US!!! This thing is something incredible. In the basic outline of the plot, it's as if Robert Zemeckis had gone back 50 years and made a chatty, low-budget version of Contact, without any special effects, and all the surrounding dialogue and intellectual ballast seems to have fallen out of the speeches of zealous preachers of popular religious sects of the late 19th century, brimming with warnings of the flames of hell. And shining into the mix are sentimental shots of the apartments of peaceful, God-fearing families, the true bedrock of American society. Hallelujah! The incipient Cold War, Western society's fear of creeping Communism, and the first signs of an emerging McCarthyism are very much in evidence. Unlike some of the reviewers here, I was not offended by the portrayal of Stalin as a product of the devil and the ex-Nazi as an admirer of Satan, it was rather to be commended (Communists and Nazis should be punched all the time). The tearing down the portrait of Stalin by Russian men who "came to their senses" must have been a satisfaction in its time, but otherwise... otherwise, I'd blast the ardent Catholic fanatic to Pluto and let the ideological foul air out for a long time. The fear of Communism can also be approached in a tasteful and factual way, e.g. Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956, but that is not the case here, on the contrary, after watching it you feel as if you’ve just read a year-worth of “The Watchtower”.

A somewhat unjustly forgotten gem nowadays, though not for connoisseurs. A film that inspired an entire generation of filmmakers and started the Czech (Slovak) New Wave. Visually captivating, the camera works magic even when capturing seemingly ordinary panel impressions with a dense forest of TV antennas, and the solar eclipse scene is hauntingly beautiful. And all this is underscored by a slightly industrial soundtrack with discordant elements that is several decades ahead of its time in terms of boldness and sonic timelessness. Zeljenka was, in short, something like the Slovak Zdeněk Liška, albeit several levels less artistically potent. And the two leads, with their endearing slang and natural acting, give this film a sense of desired authenticity. At the Summer Film School a few years ago, on the big screen, it was a real treat.

Half an hour before the end, I was still convinced of a five-star rating, because such a realistically dirty, unkempt war film had been missing for a long time. Add to that the production values of fantastic sets, Pitt being the walking embodiment of charisma, and the lunch at the German woman and her daughter's house scene, which I consider one of the best movie scenes of last year. But then came a hardly acceptable scene, which even the Soviets at the time of masterpieces like Liberation would not have liked in terms of exaggeration and heroism. Ayer just got carried away and the whole great impression went down the drain, or into the mud of a tank belt trail, of which the film is full.

A digital hell.

Poster tagline: BROOKLYN CHUMPS BECOME ISLAND MONKEYS IN A JUNGLE FULL OF LAFFS! A HORROR FILM THAT WILL STIFFEN YOU WITH LAUGHTER!!! The star of horror icon Bela Lugosi was completely extinguished after the war, and he took every acting opportunity he could to make a living and keep his name from fading into the dust. This was supposed to be a return to the elite, but it ended up being an obscure affair that many critics overseas consider the worst Hollywood comedy of all time. As for the stupid script, it was still bearable, as was the directorial approach of Beaudin, who took things very seriously (he never repeated a scene), but the performance of stand-up comedian Sammy Petrillo almost caused me physical pain (Kevin Hart is a similarly awkward element nowadays), so it was hard to get through the 70 minutes. Otherwise, the rest is in keeping with the period: cute sets, terrible effects and a gorilla costume that must have been hilarious even at the time of its creation. Lugosi keeps throwing those shifty looks, having a go at a young girl like he did when he was younger, but it's obvious that he's probably tired of it. But you have to pay the rent somehow, right? In summary, I've seen a lot of similar crap from that period, but I'll repeat myself – Sammy Petrillo is evil in the making, and like Octavianus, I'd like to see some long martyrdom as satisfaction for the culture shock I'll be recovering from for a long time :o)

Poster tagline: CRAWLING HORROR!!! RISING FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL TO KILL AND CONQUER!!! An utterly unlikeable film. What I love about the sci-fi movies of the Golden Age, even if some of them are silly, is the charming naivety with which they were made, including the cute sets, the costumes, the make-up, etc. But in this case, Corman's calculating approach offers no such thing – "We've got one camera, two cheap costumes and a swamp, let's put something together in a few days!" Cheapness oozes from every frame of the film (as one contemporary review wittily noted - ".... the budget wouldn't cover the catering costs of another normal film..."), the lighting is non-existent, so most of the scenes set at night are drowned in darkness, the exteriors of the Pasadena Arboretum are drab, ugly, repulsive, and visually uninteresting, and the giant leeches are only occasionally and briefly (one might want to say "fortunately") glimpsed. I give one star for the few shots from the cave with the prisoners, which at least remotely resemble a horror atmosphere, otherwise avoid this miserable hour.

Poster tagline: SEE!!! A 6 FT. ASTRONAUT SHRINK TO 6 INCHES BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!!! MOON MAIDENS!!! THE ATTACK OF THE FIRE PEOPLE!!! Surprisingly, the poster doesn't lie (as was customary with the advertising of the sci-fi films of the Golden Age), you will see everything that it promises, but in such a lacklustre way that it hurts. The pace s pretty grim and lazily dragging, thanks to a plethora of banal dialogue that deals with even more banal issues. There is a kind of alien race of people living on an asteroid that they have made into a flying spacecraft that they control by waving their hands on glass pots (I can't think of a better analogy), and with the help of a "gravity curtain" they fight against "solarites", i.e. monsters flying on fiery rocks and whipping plasma rays, and whatever they grow among these rocks for their livelihood, I haven't noticed. For three quarters of the film, the actors run confusedly among the backdrops of rocks, the main character – an Earthling and pilot – has his shirt permanently unbuttoned with his hairy chest sticking out, and he’s constantly deciding which of the alien women he prefers for his amorous escapades. But the film does have its bright moments – the occasional cute visual effect, like the first encounter between the big Earthman in a spacesuit (before he takes in a breath of atmosphere and shrinks) and the alien midgets, the fight with the fire monster (a funny two-metre tall monster in a costume with the body of – believe it or not – Richard Kiel, later the villain Jaws from the Bond films), and that's it. The director, on the other hand, doesn't handle the mashing up of individual scenes, so that the actors – every last one of them – sometimes stare directly into the camera without anything being resolved. But after two hundred or so watched sci-fi pieces of the Golden Age, I'm so jaded that I can’t be offended by this and I won't trash it.

Yes, Jack Arnold running at half throttle, so the uninitiated viewer might get the impression that this is not worthy of his reputation as a sci-fi great. But trashing his farewell to the genre wouldn’t be fair. Even though the production values of are not great by his standards (some exterior shots and a few sandy – albeit pretty – sets, repeated over and over again), the effort to convey something to the audience more than compensates for that. Arnold was a Democrat in body and soul, and this was a sort of a middle finger to the hawks (mainly Republicans) who, full of panic about the upcoming Soviet Sputnik launch, were eager to build something similar to this film’s atomic weapon The Thunderer, which would shoot down similar satellites. And Arnold clearly says, "No-no, boys, it wouldn't work that way." Projecting "the good of humanity" onto the characters of young children was a bit shallow, but on the other hand, the creators of the much-celebrated Village of the Damned two years later could see what it looks like when children play individuals in trance, some kind of mediums controlled by mental energy (or whatever that lump of slime hidden in the cave on the beach was actually transmitting). The pathetic ending with numerous distant viewpoints (as if cut out of a buddy movie) was over the top, but really just corresponded with what Arnold was trying to do.

Why? Because Die Antwoord, that’s why. Throw in a bit of wacky comedy, a bit of fatalistic sci-fi drama, add a dash of Deus Ex Machina and a few ideas from The Matrix on top, season it with a pinch of clichés, stir it up and you have a fun, inconsistent mashup of genres that one moment is laugh-out-loud hilarious and the next is naturalistically ripping your body in half. Blomkamp is a misunderstood filmmaker doing things his own way, the antithesis of the California dream factory of today. And that’s good. And one thing is certain: Die Antwoord are aliens whose cute non-acting is amusing. Although I believe those two didn't have to play much, they're fucked up in real life añready :o)