POMO

Sick is the new film from the horror screenwriter who gained fame with the Scream movies. It’s a formulaic yest satisfyingly sharp, brisk and well-crafted slasher flick with both stolen and surprising moments. The COVID motif is rather laughable, though potentially realistic. People are crazy.

In the context of formulaic and naïve action movies starring Gerard Butler, Plane is pleasantly refreshing thanks to the exotic Asian setting and the bad guys who are reminiscent of the villains in Rambo movies. The captain’s responsibility for his passengers and his experience in the military, which is apparent in his way with a machine gun, are also nice. A buddy motif, long-distance phone calls with his daughter and so on. However, the effects with the plane’s crash landing are mediocre.

A fine subject for a psychological study of a child’s mind going off the rails in relation to his own family. Unfortunately, the filmmaker presents it in the emptiest possible way. The 4:3 format and the minimalist music indicate art-house ambitions (together with the main character, the film is reminiscent of Gus van Sant’s Elephant) and an attempt to raise questions and spark a debate, but in order to do that, the film would have to contain at least some meaningful social concepts, motivations and behavior.

I enjoy the slow telling of human stories in a minimalist form, especially in a village setting with snow-covered hills in the background. But there has to be something to tell about. Certain Women is composed of a few characters’ stories that would have ended up on the floor if the most interesting stories had been selected for filming. What drove the director to film these in particular remains a mystery to me. Jane Campion’s films in a similar vein, for example, are something else entirely both formalistically and in terms of content.

Intimate gangster flicks set in the rundown bars of the New York underworld are attractive to viewers, especially when they have a cast like The Drop has. The film is entertaining, as it arouses curiosity about how the relationships between the characters will develop and what we anticipate the dramatic climax will be. But we don’t get such a surprise or drama in the end. The directing dampens the potential for surprise and there is a lack of the key contours of a dramatic arc that is supposed to make sense in the climax. Do yourself a favor and watch its more polished genre siblings We Own the Night and The Departed instead.

Though I’m not particularly fond of films in which bored characters lament their lives, I am again entertained by Roy Andersson’s visual concept with its playful details and the general balance of all elements in the picture, including the aesthetic framing, the costumes, the characters’ expressions and the color palette, where pale blue is the most vivid, and also cold.

A multicultural collection of goons and a virginal avenger who brings balance into it. There are loads of Refn’s impressive trademarks that do not develop as you would want or expect, but rather as his wandering imagination dictates. The first three episodes try our patience. The moderately entertaining storylines of the Albanian and Chinese mafias are broken up only by absurd interludes with an aristocratic Danish family in a chateau. The butchers Miroslav and Dušan from Pusher kick off the fourth episode with a welcome move to Copenhagen, and back at the chateau we get some chauvinistic bizarreness with some refined black humor and Refn himself makes an appearance. In its meta-symbolism and unsatisfying finish, the series promises a comic-book tomorrow. If someone puts up the money for it. I’d be surprised.

Though I expected a more interesting and more powerful ending, The Banshees of Inisherin is still a great study of unconventional characters with an unconventional conflict in an unconventional, heavily atmospheric setting. The film is playfully tragicomic and unpredictable, as action and reaction are determined by two incompatible villagers from the end of the Earth who are passively squandering their lives. The first half is masterfully written and directed. However, the actual question of how their problem will be resolved in the first half is more entertaining than its resolution in the second half. Colin Farrell is again excellent and Carter Burwell (the Coen brothers’ court composer) is great, as is the setting, which is itself an important character in the film.

We spend the whole film wondering why a child dying of hunger doesn’t want to eat. And there is no aspect of mystery. The subject is unexciting and quite banal, but it makes sense dramaturgically in the end, however slight it may be for the viewer. The Wonder is based on a novel that the filmmakers didn’t want to upgrade in the film adaptation. Florence Pugh is good as usual, but she has better opportunities elsewhere.

Eddie Redmayne would be great as a young Hannibal Lecter. He is able to portray not only teary suffering, but also disturbing derangement. The film itself, however, is only average. The interesting subject is chilling due to the fact that it’s based on a true story, but it’s dramatically underdeveloped for a feature-length film. The dark tone with the sterile hospital setting works atmospherically, but in order for us to be affected by Jessica Chastain’s resolution of the problem, the psychology between her and Redmayne would have to be different and deeper.