Filmmaniak

This is a classic horror film with a haunted house, ghosts and a demon, in which the protagonist, a young man who suffers from past trauma and lack of money, is grateful for a one-time deal to be the guardian of a dead member of the Jewish community (which is part of tradition), without knowing what evil will try to get inside him from the dead body. After solid exposition, the film slides quite quickly into a horror routine and a series of standard jump scares, which uses Jewish elements only sporadically and superficially, and instead, it clings to cheap clichés. The tension is built quite densely (although only in individual scenes), many passages are appropriately chilling and the kosher camera works nicely with the darkness, but this is barely enough to create a slightly above average film, and when compared to the promising subject matter, this film has a surprisingly generic and overly hasty ending.

A horror film with comedic elements about a filmmaking team producing a popular exorcism show on the Internet, and the latest live broadcast (with hired actors and pre-arranged tricks, of course) is suddenly disrupted by a real demon that nicely disrupts the viewership. The story, built on an attractive theme, disturbs the horror atmosphere with comic elements, the effectiveness of which, however, is slightly variable, as well as some acting performances, alienating elements and the fluctuating tempo of the narrative. The film, mainly focusing on the perniciousness of lies, the healing power of forgiveness and the fascination with horror and violence, nevertheless still contains a sufficient number of ideas and juicy scenes, is able to consistently entertain from beginning to end and has several surprising points and a purely adorable conclusion that is able to aptly take jabs in all of the right places.

This is an intimate drama/thriller about three men and one woman (all under age thirty) spending a summer day together at a flooded quarry. The woman is the girlfriend of one of the men but is cheating on him with the second man. The third man is there mainly to make sure that the risky encounter doesn’t come off as all that unlikely (which is not entirely successful). The film is based on the distorted nature of the characters, their escalating relationships and conflicts, long dialogues, solid acting performances, limited locations, a few low-cost props, and the slow build-up of nervous tension and an atmosphere full of insecurity, grimaces, suspicion and threats. This amounts to quite an impressive performance with minimal resources, but you still can't hide the fact that most of the film is above all a long wait for something to finally happen, and frankly not that much ends up happening. A few scenes, however, are worth the wait.

The eponymous short story by horror legend HP Lovecraft about a meteorite from space which begins to remake the point of its impact on Earth into its image, has received a fantastic modern film adaptation, in which this purple-glowing meteorite hits a remote farm of a family of five, who are subsequently deprived of rational perception, gradually lose their minds and are exposed to their worst nightmares. The uncompromising, brutal, dreamily intoxicating, neon-psychedelic and distinctive vision includes radioactive monsters, magical rituals, a whistling well, alpaca llamas, Nicolas Cage's wonderfully hysterical acting, and even reflections on contemporary society's anxiety about the environmental crisis. A terrifying and intense film with an impressive camera, fitting music and an original "Lovecraft" atmosphere of deepening despair, helplessness and fear of a successfully rendered unknown evil, which is sufficiently specific and at the same time mysterious.

A stylish noir gangster movie with five chapters, based on a comic book whose author also happens to be the director of the film. In terms of visuals, the director put the effort in (characters in trench coats, the rain-drenched alleys of the time period, spectacular shootouts), but less so in terms of the run-of-the-mill story in which an aging mobster must return from retirement to avenge his son's death. In addition to its visuals, the plot is also aided by solid direction and, as always, the charismatic Toni Servillo, whose character is supposed to be a veteran and at the same time a capable killer-gentleman, not endangered by younger enemies, which doesn't come off as entirely believable. Because of this, the film, combined with tense theatrical dialogues and the absence of any emotions, comes off as artificial as the protagonist's hooked nose.

A horror with an ordinary theme (a man comes to renovate an old house he recently bought without realizing that it is cursed and haunted), but also with a relatively original concept that adds a specific mythology to the house and interprets the haunting as retribution for a moral mistake. The slow start evokes a disturbing procedural drama about the reconstruction of a dwelling, from the bowels of which various fluids mysteriously ejaculate and glasses fall out at the beginning, but over time the film becomes more brutal. The film is a remarkable and intellectually stimulating genre contribution, with the only bad aspect being that the film tries to disgust and make the audience laugh rather than be tense and frightening, and that the film’s point is more interesting than the characters and performances.

A psychological drama about a young pregnant housewife whose daily activities consist of cooking, cleaning, playing mobile games and a persistent effort to make her husband, who hardly notices, happy. The film is a portrait of a woman drowned in a distressing relationship with an oppressive and manipulative partner and his family, moreover in an environment where she feels incompetent, useless and inferior, and where she cannot do anything on her own to experience satisfaction from her own success. She thus begins to swallow various objects, first small ones, but later quite large and dangerous ones. The intimate film, based on consistently elaborated characters and the performance of Haley Bennett, with a perfectly hurt expression on her face, serves as a brilliant study of the origin of mental disorders and also functions as a social critique in this regard. In the last third, however, the film deviates a little from this concept and begins to look for the roots of the main character's problems elsewhere, which is a bit of a shame, as it reduces the intensity of the final catharsis and comes off as a missed opportunity.

The socio-politically engaged drama, which begins as an inconspicuous intimate insight into the life of a closed village community in the Brazilian countryside, gradually transforms into a captivating (almost) thriller, in which this community must come together to defend itself against oppressors. This is carefully constructed film, innovative in a number of creative approaches, follows a consistently slow pace of storytelling that slowly dispenses information, just enough for the viewer to be able to imagine everything necessary. The point is striking and well executed, and the culminating plot is accompanied by clear criticism and a number of metaphors referring to the hidden power of the common people and their history. Perhaps only the introduction of the film is too lengthy. In any case, it is a film with an original story, realized in an unprecedented form.

Film is a means to say things that cannot be communicated through any other medium. The latest proof of which is this animated film, a geyser of creative, screenwriting and directing ideas, formally, content-wise and emotionally captivating, unpredictable, thought out in detail and, in short, beautiful and amazing. The film presents a story about coping with loss on a mental and physical level and takes place on two levels; in the first level, we follow the story of the protagonist, a pizza delivery man in love, and in the other we witness the surreal and suspenseful odyssey of his accidentally severed hand that comes to life and decides to find its owner. This impressive, intense and sharply original film is always one step ahead of the audience, cleverly plays with individual motifs, specific images and narrative structure and precisely, with ease, humour, but also a large portion of sadness, fulfils a unique and distinctive vision that will completely captivate you and, as a bonus, will teach you to really be aware of your hands and appreciate them.

A simple, absurd comedy story based on the amusingly smug performance of the main protagonist and the nonsense logic of a fictional world that gives up on certain actions and reactions, tells you practically nothing about the main character and his past and only directly (but not stupidly) fulfils its weird theme. For Dupieux, it’s basically run-of-the-mill; a plaything. But it does contain a few ideas that are worth laughing at.