Filmmaniak

Jafar Panahi, the director of Taxi, forced to be under house arrest, once again managed to make a clever and extremely impressive film, gently yet strongly critically reflecting the conditions in contemporary Iran. And he did it from his car with minimal resources. This time around, playing himself and accompanied by popular actress Behnaz Jafari, he sets out to tour villages to find the truth about a young girl who allegedly committed suicide. The film is very well written and acted and very captivating, although its point is easy to predict. More important in this case is the journey to get to the point. I would like to send you my congratulations and I wish you many salty foreskins.

A captivatingly family saga that takes place over two decades about the origin and demise of the first drug clans in Central America and the associated first gang wars. Great actors and their characters with precisely constructed natures are complemented by a number of engaging and special tribal traditions and rituals. A film about that fact that family honor has greater value than all wealth, which in the end only blinds and produces death. Each of the five chapters drag a bit in places, but the overall strong charge present in almost every scene clearly wins the audience over.

Panos Cosmatos finally found a suitable topic for his distinctive and visually extravagant LSD experiments - a lumberjack nightmare on bad drugs with brutally bloody orgies, chainsaws and bikers from hell. Only the hallucinogenic passages and the demonically-psychedelic music of Jóhan Jóhannsson save the first half and its extremely relaxed pace, but then such a sectarian trash metal epic starts that it is difficult not to succumb to it, although resistance to extreme violence is a necessary precondition. Nicolas Cage's crazy performance amounts to a guilty pleasure on a trip. Mandy is a cruel and evil film, but it is equally distinctive.

Although the camera essentially stays the main protagonist and never leaves his police telephone exchange, this thriller is extremely gripping and even able to surprise with unexpected twists. Practically, the only thing happening are telephone calls. However, the viewer gradually learns not only about the criminal case of the crisis call of an abducted woman, but also the background and nature of the main protagonist, including his personal problems, as well as the psychologically-demanding routine of emergency line operators in general. Lots of substance with minimal resources, maximum intimacy, but also maximum effect.

A wonderfully and amusingly strange film that will be appreciated especially by lovers of plenty of black humor and unusual films with crazy plots. For anyone who has already had the honor of watching Lanthimos’s films, this is simply another of his original and imaginative satirical images of human society, governed by absurd rules and funny-freezing cultural habits, and their creator does not need to explain in any way. Bizarre art. The best in Lanthimos's filmography so far (for me).

Baby Driver it is sympathetic and entertaining summer fun, but it is not directed, or (mainly) written, quite perfectly. Compared to Wright's older British work, it is also more trimmed and lacks perspective. However, the entire film is based on the creative intention to edit it all into songs that always play in the protagonist headphones. One can only praise the director for being able to so excellently edit to the rhythm of the music not only the action scenes, shootouts and car chases, but also how a character walks down the street or plans a bank robbery. Content-wise, there is nothing particularly demanding, but as a silly action comedy, it's a fair bit more imaginative and entertaining than the last episodes of The Fast and the Furious.

Double Lover tells the story of the psychological roots of the sexual fantasies of a mentally complicated young woman, and it is also a sophisticated tribute to Brian De Palma's Sisters, Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, and Roman Polansky’s Rosemary's Baby, full of references and double meanings. In connection with the motif of twins, Ozon probably also liked to divide images, axially symmetrical shots and especially mirrors, which he inserts into every third shot, in order to draw sufficient attention to the illusory game with the viewer, which he does from the very beginning. He plays on the edge of reality and fantasy, digs into the inner marches in the mind of the main character and pulls props and hasty plot twists from his sleeve, which in some cases can be easily interpreted. However, many require plenty attention and thinking in order to analyze them, whilst others are probably just confusing. As a result, however, Ozone fails in telling the last third of the story, which seems convoluted and chaotic. There is tension in the relationship between the characters and the final point just complicates the psychological level even more. The director managed to improve the B movie theme of the original book thriller with erotic elements to an artistic European psychological drama that looks like Fifty Shades of Grey in a version for demanding and thinking audiences, but even they will still remember one single shot the most – one that is right at the beginning of the film.

This is a completely precise work in terms of directing and acting, this time condemning racial hatred through the motif of right-wing terrorism. The story is slightly manipulative and in the end a bit hurried and therefore not completely satisfying, but everything until then is thought out and written well. The strong theme is used in a thrilling, emotional and brilliantly escalating storyline, and Diane Kruger really does an amazing job. There are many other films about this topic, but that doesn't matter. Quality is what’s important.

Technically, Jupiter's Moon is an absolute win. It is excellently crafted, with a perfect camera and artistic stylization, combining 70s American crime films and modern science fiction ala Chronicle, Children of Men and Inception, but it is always a film from a Hungarian perspective. However, the great introduction consisting of a raid on illegal immigrants, several excellent action/escape scenes and a remarkable theme, fail to obscure the incompleteness of the story, which goes in circles and has ill-conceived twists, and the initiated social commentary on the refugee crisis mixes with religious analogies somewhat unnecessarily. Even so, this is another example of how much Hungarian cinematography has been on the rise in recent years.

This is not a documentary commenting on the neo-Nazi community in general through the character of Dalibor; Dalibor is far too unique for that, so neither the neo-Nazis nor anyone else is likely to identify with him and his views. It is easy to laugh at Dalibor and his deeds, but there is also a lot of sympathy and perhaps pity in that laughter, and it is not possible to point a finger at him and call him a Nazi xenophobic asshole that deserves to be beat up. In addition to Dalibor's hateful and racist slogans and his off-the-wall video production, the film also reveals a lot of information from his private life, pointing out what this film is largely really about - people with problems and internally-unhappy people who are not satisfied with their lives, with their work and with what they have in their lives. However, they desperately want to belong somewhere, meaning they do not hesitate to join groups with somewhat more extreme views. These are opinions they usually obtained from "alternative" online media and from other, like-minded individuals, existentially dependent on television and social networks as the only available form of entertainment. There are probably a lot of these people in Czech and Slovak societies, it’s just that Dalibor stands out so much among them that thanks to him, watching this film is not only an exceptional insight into a certain area of society, but at the same time it’s sometimes outrageous fun. Every scene is a gem - but they also bring shivers down your spine.