Goldbeater

Considering how bold and original Fulci's giallo films of the 70s were for this wild genre, Murder Rock - Dancing Death, as a very late contribution, feels rather tired and unsurprising. Those who have seen at least two similar films in their lives will guess the identity of the killer after the first fifteen minutes. But if you ever want a shot in the vein of something that downright screams "120% 80s" in terms of costumes, music and production design, you've come to the right place.

After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, a platoon of soldiers find themselves on the retreat in the inhospitable jungle of the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian borderlands, while Vietnamese troops getting dangerously hot on their heels. A well-written and very uncomfortable war drama underscoring the French trauma of the Indochina War with a classic battle of ideas between a naive young soldier (Jacques Perrin) and a seasoned cynical veteran played by the always brilliant Bruno Cremer.

A generic January horror flick with zero ideas and even more lacklustre execution. It's like Jason Blum suddenly called out on a whim, "Make me... eh... a haunted pool movie in one week. Go!" It's all bland, cribbed from a blueprint seen a hundred times, devoid of any energy, devoid of anything memorable. No one here has tried to do anything more than make it at least visually look like a movie for the cinema. A puddle at the bottom of a real swimming pool is scarier and, unfortunately, more creative than this entire would-be horror film.

Whereas Spielberg dares to kill a little boy in Jaws, Ovidio Assonitis swears and kills an infant outright in the opening scene. I guess that much tells you how self-aware a film Tentacles is. Ovidio must have had some pretty solid leverage on John Huston and Henry Fonda to get them into this Italian mess. Or was cash and whiskey enough? It's hard to say, but the sight of the papier-mâché monster slowly and impossibly lingering on the surface of the sea (to Stelvio Cipriani's comically repetitive score) will haunt my memory for a long time.

Almost three hours of "misery porn" with a made-for-TV quality that kills with its mood and visual monotony after the first 45 minutes. Ana de Armas gives a committed and engaging performance, but I would have liked to have seen her in a differently conceived film. A couple of scenes (especially the ones with the embryo) explicitly crossed the line into emotionally extortionate kitsch.

After last year's Don’t Look Up!, Netflix serves up another comedic and chilling apocalyptic satire before the end of the year, and if it continues this trend for another year, I'll actually be pretty satisfied, though I have more reservations this time around. The cast is good and the atmosphere is great. It is admirable that Sam Esmail manages to keep the viewer in suspense throughout the entire 140 minutes of running time. The problem, however, arises during the finale, which has to explain all the previous events and the film's message to the viewer in such a horribly literal way that even an illiterate dullard can understand it. This is coupled with characters whose caricature-like behaviour and almost non-communication of fundamental problems, while serving the film's message, comes across as artificial and a bit annoying. Too bad. However, thumbs up for the final scene highlighting the importance of owning physical media despite being shown on Netflix. Heh.

I was nowhere near the experience I think Alex DeLarge had in A Clockwork Orange when they put him in the theater and started cramming all those images into him. Waterboarding through a pastel-colored hood. Considerable suffering.

What can we say, this will be one of the few William Friedkin films (well, probably the only one) that I'd rather pretend I haven't seen... Wow, master, wtf? This is a very jumbled and dubious piece of work even if only as some sort of short Blu-ray bonus to The Exorcist, let alone as a virtually full-length documentary.

Carnival Rock is one of those Roger Corman melodramas designed for teenagers schmoozing in the back seat in a drive-in, and the master made far better stuff than this. It's a little too cheesy, especially when it's trying to be deadly serious. It's good to see the line-up of the director's court actors, but I'll be sure to repeat myself when I add that the only stand-out performance in this is given by Dick Miller - and he's hardly a major supporting player.

If this had been a FILM about a cunt who digs a hole on the property of unsuspecting seniors to fool people with a would-be contest, and if it had come together, it could have been a pretty good comedy with the few flashes of humor. Unfortunately, though, it's just an AD for a cunt who digs holes and fools people with wannabe contests. Nothing good could come of it, simply on principle. The whole fake heist and final message to the ex-girlfriend was the height of awkwardness. The imaginary prize for this year's total Czech film cringefest goes to Kazma, congratulations.