Othello

A monument to humility. It rolls almost everything (including Kubrick) onto the field of exploratory sci-fi. For us cosmophobes, moreover, a unbearably intense experience that can only be finished from the corner of the seat.

And did you know that chimpanzees are the only animal, other than humans, who look into the face of a female during coitus? Not the female their doing it with, but still. The monkeys in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes don't have sex, of course, because they have nothing to have sex with, given that sewing digital dicks onto pissed-off monkeys would probably make the whole revolution too phallic, and that, of course, wouldn't make this movie's horribly adult parable work; and besides, Caesar's old lady is also worryingly flat and there’s generally nothing to grab onto, so we simply have to accept that we're watching yet another Hollywood compromise that tries to look as serious as pneumonia. And as a result, I bit quite a few nails in the first hour and a half. While the first installment grazed on the attraction of a CGI humanized monkey, the second identifies the exact same thing as its main asset, only multiplied by more monkeys. It's still cool, it works (though we still have to be able to tell the monkey protagonists apart with scars or different ape species), but it's not enough. And combined with the human characters, of which there are I think 12 (speaking) in the film and they could all be shrunk down into two, all that's left is to beg for mercy during the final climax. Which fortunately works very well, the tank scene is an absolute gem, as is Jason Clarke running through the human base being looted by apes with the thoroughness of a Liberian liberator. The final fight delights with the length of its shots and its use of long shots, which makes sense as it was all conceived in the comp, and I have to give the formal and directorial qualities a nod with four stars in the end. However, if you go to the movies for the story and you're over fifteen, good luck.

While it stinks of Haneke as its conductor, thanks in particular the isolated family terror using minimalist means (except for a beautiful scene of a flaming piano), the problem with the film is that it maneuvers on its battlefield with a completely uninventive war tactic that only a slightly more progressive general would immediately see through and successfully counter. Unfortunately, the handling of character archetypes here is so transparent as to be comparable, for example, to a viewer with a lack of higher cinematic education comparing every unpleasant isolationist film to an overcooked Haneke.

Damn. I'm so sorry this film doesn't even have a US distributor, because it would have fit nicely into theaters at the same time a comedy of the same title with Jennifer Anniston and Vincent Vaughn was plowing the multiplexes. Honeymoon can ruin your evening quite nicely, in a Cronenbergian kind of way. Again, the B-grade body horror formula frames an ugly breakdown of an individual and a relationship, which works nicely here thanks not only to the skillful dynamic direction, but mainly thanks to the absolutely first-rate Rose Leslie in the lead role.

Technically, this is absolutely divine. Legendary shot composition, transitions in focus, lighting, and masks. Thank you. The rest of the cast, led by the haha hoo hoo owl and the integrated demonic MP3 in the hero's head, does its best to make you spit Bruckheimer-flavored popcorn at the screen and giggle through the next two scenes. Fortunately, we're told that the senselessness of the dark forces' actions is due to the fact that we as humans are unable to grasp it, so that takes care of that. Plus, I'm of the opinion that Scott Derrickson’s ol’ pal Jesus should dock his allowance.

I guess my highest praise for my truly unfavorite "children in wartime" subgenre is that it didn't offend me. Even though here, too, the kid is cute, the times are bad, the Germans are blabla and the bread is hard, still I didn't feel the need to swallow a bullet with this one, as with the contemporaries in striped pyjamas or with stolen books. Compared to them, the fugitive boy has an undeniable dramaturgical advantage in that he's constantly forced to change places, and thus the film is always visibly moving somewhere (though basically, for most of the film, the protagonist is just wandering around). However, the direction here has quite significant limitations, which bubble to the surface especially in the moments when the filmmakers try to imply a longer time gap between scene A and scene B, because the relationships between the central boy and his community are always defined by the opening scene of their encounter and do not develop again for the rest of, say, the six months that the boy spends with the character. Sure, that doesn't make the film last three and a half hours, and thank goodness for that, but even so, this story feels like a stump right up to the end.

The comic theme of trying to popularize the shitty image of the Hong Kong police through the media is riddled with myriads of ammo. Action alternates with more action, things go bang here and there, completely calm criminals dine with their hostages, and I'm left wondering from the opening few minutes why I so rarely see something so directorially assured yet charmingly dynamic and explosive. It's badass.

Horns fails in most respects on issues of story structure, and the film also prompts questions even over such otherwise insignificant details as "What's it about again?" The fault is not with Aja – who does what he can and, above all, what he knows how to do (which is why the highlights of the film are always associated with trashy violence handled in a first-class way). However, in my groping through the screenwriting incoherence and indeed the omnipresent idiocy, I became convinced that the cause of the failure was none other than – colleague Joe Hill forgive me – colleague Joe Hill. He can change his name until he passes out, but even if he were Creole he still couldn't deny his inspiration in Father King. In particular, the setting of the story in a small town with multiple supporting characters, the childhood relationships carried into adulthood, and the satanic rebellion against a commune redolent with the church is straight out of King's opuses Needful Things and It. That being said, Aja, with the consistency of a fifteen-year-old pervert, dutifully waits the entire story for those scenes where you throw your feet back on the table, a mischievous grin appears on your face, your hand dives back into your chips or down the neckline of your companion, and you tell yourself that such a demented perversion hasn't actually come around for quite a while and you're happy.

The only reason The Priest's Children can wrap itself in above-average ratings on FilmBooster is that the Croatian language bears a striking resemblance to the Czech language, and thus only arouses deep frustration over how no one can manage to put together a summer comedy in this country, at least like this one. Otherwise, though, it’s not worth crap. Brešan is not a good director, a fact that is most apparent through the poor editing and the accompanying unsuccessful timing of the jokes. He's unable to highlight the various supporting characters at the right time, so he helps himself by having them all wear the same outfits over and over throughout the film, which is pretty ridiculous given that the film takes place over the course of more than a year. It's that temporal sprawl that also denies the picturesqueness and nostalgia of the intended time period, which is otherwise the biggest domain of summer comedies. The film eventually scores points in the moments when the filmmakers' brakes on taste and correctness go out, and yet in this respect the film exhausts itself almost entirely in its first half.

Ahh, someone figured out that keeping a ten-ton colossus in captivity for the amusement of grubby weekend families probably isn't all that great. Well, congratulations. Otherwise, the most fantastic footage is of course the authentic footage of Tilikum getting pissed, sure, and the style of the documentary is somewhere below the level of news reports on commercial TV station, but that can be excused by its target audience.