Goldbeater

This is a generally ridiculous horror movie about a poisonous mutant pussycat on a luxury yacht. Watching it at home alone without the collective experience of being in the cinema would have been a miserable experience, however, the live multi-voice-over dubbing at this year's SFF definitely hit the red. [Shockproof Film Festival 2021]

Troma overload. Director Lloyd Kaufman has used the work of the Bard of Avon to comment at length in a roundabout way with a wide-ranging manifesto on all sorts of modern trends, and I imagine that even jaded fans of this peculiar movie-maker will be properly overwhelmed by this Dadaist and quite literal shitstorm. Either way, it is an endearing movie for those who know exactly what to expect from the legendary indie movie studio Troma. [The Shockproof Film Festival 2021]

Phil Tippett has created a movie that shows an impressive odyssey through fantastical war zones, tyrannies, cruel ecosystems, post-apocalyptic worlds, and quite possibly hell itself. Also, if there was one continuous thread running through this whole depressing panopticon in the form of a character and we could accompany them as silent observers throughout the movie (as I had hoped at the beginning), it would be brilliant too. [The Shockproof Film Festival 2021]

This is a triumph of form over content. Hats off to the creativity and all the preparations that had to precede making this movie to make it all come together in one coherent continuous shot. Unfortunately, what makes this movie incredibly underwhelming is the behaviour of characters, who make the most stupid decisions possible just to give some direction to the melodrama. Plus, since the movie makes it so the audience is locked in with these idiots for a full one-hundred and forty minutes, the audience is then fully able to feel the effects of both their incomprehensible actions and the unnecessarily overlong running time more intensely.

The classification of this work as a horror, thriller or even drama is very misleading because it is none of them. Although the heart of the movie is the nightmare called old age, George A. Romero has made a plotless awareness-raising movie, commissioned by the Lutherans. He also made it so depressing and pessimistic that it ended up locked away in an archive for nearly half a century. The biggest standout in this movie is the actor Lincoln Maazel, who, while giving a very committed and believable performance, played an elderly man in the twilight of his life in this movie (1973), and he himself ended up living until 2009 when he passed away at the incredible age of 106.

Compared to the director's debut Raw, which was a slightly dull, bland, coming-of-age horror drama spiced up a bit with some light cannibalism, Titane is definitely a step up from that. It really isn't boring, the extravagant visual aspects work, and the bizarre element is strong. It is spiced up with some light "body horror", and the plot turns at one point by some 270°, as if it turned into a completely different movie. Titane is a movie that is a cocktail of different genres and is definitely not going to be to everyone’s taste.

This movie was created just for the sake of a post-credits scene and making money... In Hollywood, you have competent and talented directors with vision, promising rising stars, ordinary artisans, and then blagging hustlers who are actually not very good at it and are hired just because they are not going to argue with the studio. Now Andy Serkis belongs to the latter group. Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a completely formulaic comic book movie that you cannot enjoy much due to the hackneyed screenplay, lackluster performances and chaotic editing. The whole thing is obviously heavily impacted by the PG-13 rating, and so many times during the movie you are left unsure as to how this or that character actually ended up, because everything is edited so "safely" that you just have no idea. Moreover, the comedy is incredibly childish. I cannot imagine that all the moviemakers involved got into it for any reason other than a paycheck.

Halloween Kills is a problematic movie, which suffers from the second-movie-in-a-trilogy syndrome (it lacks a beginning and an end). It also suffers from the chosen scenario, where the plot is spread too thin because of having a lot of newly introduced supporting characters. It also looks slightly "padded out" with too much filler. Plus, with the enormous fan service and countless (and unnecessary) flashbacks, the movie’s makers overdid it. In other words, it is a bit chaotic. I do not mean to be horrible about it at all, I had a good time watching this movie, however, I have some concerns as to whether the creative team around David Gordon Green actually knows in which direction the whole trilogy is heading (other than simply making more money go to their own wallets).

Let me make a small but important remark before I continue: Dune should be shown on the biggest screen possible; you will never get the full experience in your living room. Denis Villeneuve is an immensely talented world builder and immersing yourself in his cinematic worlds is a great experience every time. As I have read the original source material, however, I went into Dune already knowing that I would be deprived of any plot twists, so instead, I appreciated, in particular, the technical craftsmanship, the creative imagination, and most importantly, the skill in delivering a narrative that was already familiar to me (in which, for example, Lynch's Dune fell short). All of this is definitely delivered at a high standard in this movie. Thus, the biggest frustration with this movie remains only the current question mark over the likelihood of a second installment and the conclusion of the story. This brings me back to my first point: the more people see Dune outside of the cinema, the more the possibility of the emergence of a highly desirable sequel. Now the future of Dune is entirely in the hands of the audience.

This would have been a pretty cool madcap comedy if it had not so openly ripped off Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It is not only the premise and structure of the movie that were ripped-off, however, some of the scenes and the characters' speeches were too - apparently a year after John Hughes' death, the screenwriters took the opportunity to stop being afraid of plagiarising. Also, in the original movie John Candy played a bumbling oaf who deserved the audience’s sympathy in the end, Zach Galifianakis plays a dangerous sociopath endangering people’s lives, with whom perhaps few could sympathise. Were this an out and out remake, one could have probably turned a blind eye, as in principle this is an entertaining road-movie, however, attempting to pass this off as a self-contained new movie is really just a pretentious ruse.