POMO

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.

Luca Guadagnino fills a gap in cinema. An intimate analysis of the outsider life of people who are dependent on human flesh and depicting the existence of desperate individuals on the margins of society, like a paraphrase of the fantastical theme of vampires. Bones and All is about the necessity of concealing one's own personality, the search for a family history in order to understand oneself and one’s place in the world. At the same time, however, it is a delicate romance about the importance of finding a soulmate. The film contains more terrifying and gory scenes than you would anticipate from the expected global distribution with artistic exposition and Timothée Chalamet. For mainstream viewers, it will be repulsive to the point of being unwatchable, despite having the plot of a classic road movie with a relationship element and a clichéd climax typical of the genre. I’m giving it a weak fourth star for the courage it took to examine the biggest social taboos in an artistic way and for the brilliant casting of Mark Rylance. In terms of emotion, however, the film left me completely cold, as I was unable to sympathize with the characters in any way.

Inspired by actual events, Holy Spider is an Iranian story as Iranians would never dare to film it. The protagonist is a courageous atheist journalist who is arrogantly disrespected by the police chief when she politely turns him down. The hunt for a serial killer who targets prostitutes is only the first act, followed by a reflection on the Iranian mentality dominated by the power of faith. Indeed, a significant number of Iranians see "cleansing the streets of prostitutes" as a pious activity. The centerpiece of the narrative and the most complexly portrayed character is the murderer, a good family man who acts in good faith. This is a brilliant, layered drama that far exceeds the thematic possibilities of similar Western genre movies and which needs no abstract artsy interludes to enthrall even the most discerning viewer.

The Australian Deliverance, in which the antagonists are not evil villagers, but wild tropical fauna. The two protagonists find themselves in a marital crisis and a situation that doesn’t entirely suit them. The animals help, but their main enemy is themselves and their unstable psychological state. This atmospheric thriller is surprisingly impressive given how little happens in it and the space in which it happens. The screeches of the animals, the discomfort of camping, the oppressive magic of the dark night. Reality turns into delusion as time passes and actions are committed without sound judgment.

Avatar: The Way of Water has the screenwriting of a mediocre television series that’s not in any hurry to get anywhere. Not only can the story again be summed up in a single short sentence, but it’s the same as the last time and it looks like the next one won’t be any different. The unnatural movement of the blue lizards on dry land hasn’t changed since the “pilot”, so the first half of the film comes across like a video-game demo. Transitioning to the world under water is thus a tremendous upgrade. The lizards swim much more elegantly than they walk and jump, and James Cameron breathes extraordinary life into the fictional undersea plants and animals. It is beautiful and enchanting.  Luc Besson will be pleased. The human characters are also given space on the water, thus giving the digital artifice a more physical sense of drive. All of those submarines, mecha crabs and wicked scenes of “whale” hunting are uber cool, reminiscent of the action treats in Waterworld. Overall, however, the Avatar phenomenon becomes rather more of an amusement-park attraction (with the promise of a VR future) than a cinematic work in the true sense of the word. It’s kind of like Cameron’s version of a Marvel flick, but with poor character development, which is a bit of a shame.

There’s nothing much to fault this romantic film for, but there’s not much to praise it for either. A safe relationship plot in which none of the characters can be judged for anything, despite their indulgence in forbidden fruit. The lack of greater dramatization and the 100% fulfilment of the genre template practically make the film a Harlequin romance. However, the helping of sensuality in the erotic scenes is pleasing. It’s interesting to see how, thanks to the open internet age, unglamorized sex is becoming a natural part of mainstream film entertainment.

The viewer is drawn into the roar of demonstrations in a bombastic way; the first long, seemingly one-shot scene is technically beautiful. The film’s anger-fuelled drive never lets up, reminding us multiple times of the filmmakers’ effort to create superbly composed, dramatically intensifying long shots. However, they don’t manage to bring us close enough to the characters that we would experience the hell that they are going through. We don’t even learn anything more personal about the most sensible of them than who her sibling is. With such a simple plot premise, no binding emotions and no higher artistic reach, Athena becomes a bit of a superficial construct.