Archive for Release Year: 2019

41 posts from 10 August 2024 to 16 February 2019.

  • Capharnaüm

    Really puts a human face into the so called “economic migrants” we hear so much about. If this can’t shift policy, nothing can.

  • Solum

    A low rent Alex Garland film with lower budget and amateurish acting, brought to you by The Hot Jesus.

  • John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

    More Wick, plain and simple. This is the greatest hits of close combat action films, now with added Halle Berry. Eat your heart out, Bond!

  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters

    Rah rah, variably sized monsters run amok. I’m just here for Ziyi Zhang, not just a cameo at least! And she doesn’t die at the end.

  • The Dead Don't Die

    Meh-ish Jarmusch lighthearted romp. Some incredibly funny skits. Like a good version of Zombieland.

  • Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

    A series of vignettes about 60’s Hollywood, very loosely based on what happened, with the reenactments being played by Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. Psycho Tarantino fans get a couple of scenes of blood and gore to put butts in seats.

  • Ad Astra

    Mad Max, Gravity, Space Cowboys (Donald Sutherland even!) and Moon stuffed in a blender.

  • A Herdade

    The fictional biography of Ricardo Salgado, by way of Os Maias. Direct political answer to Raiva. Visually, it’s almost 3 hours of people chain smoking and gobbling litters of whisky.

  • Parasite

    A masterful story, breaking the ice with black comedy, but leading to chilling societal commentary.

  • Adults in the Room

    A seemingly faithful diorama of the 5 months in which Varoufakis lead the Greek finance ministry, until being ostracised by the European institutions that turned Tsipras into his own anathema. ευχαριστώ.

  • A Hidden Life

    The closest Terrence Malick gets to insulting Trump. By making a 3h-long bucolic meandering through rural Austria, right after the Nazi invasion. The unbreakable shield of (Catholic) Christianity meets the unstoppable force of Nazism. Only innocents perish.

  • By the Grace of God

    Simple but powerful treatise into Church sexual abuses in Lyon. Sometimes, just reading the allegations suffices.

  • 1917

    Not the best “fake” single shot film, perhaps the most expensive one. Utøya: July 22 was more intense.

  • Joker

    Joaquin Phoenix does his thing and the mainstream goes wild! Welcome to the fan club.

  • J'Accuse

    Roman Polanski tells the Dreyfus story, making it about himself twice. The second one is to cast Emanuelle Seigner as the hero’s wife. Still worth it, though.

  • Little Women

    Cry me a frozen Massachusetts lake. An upbeat Civil War-era story. Too many flash back and forth. Sadly, the plot clothesline where to hang the contemporary elements turns into a straightjacket.

  • The Lighthouse

    Landlubber Ephraim Winslow and old sea wolf Thomas Wake heave their belongings to the rock, eagerly waitin’ for the two fortnights of their shift. Two man in, how many men out? The sea. Sums. Dichotomy between good and evil.

  • Les Misérables

    Better title: Black Bloc: La prochaine.

  • The Wolf Hour

    Daugther of Sam. Naomi Watts in an apartment being the self-destructive writer. Good prevails, somehow. Not much to do with the similarly named Bergman film.

  • Little Joe

    Another take on The Thing / Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but without communists. A man-made fake happiness creator, must be Instagram.

  • The Personal History Of David Copperfield

    Quadrilaterally fantastic. So close to you, it’s like it lives on your nose and wants to get back home.

  • Bauhaus

    That cold opening! Only slightly hagiographic history of the OG Bauhaus movement, brought to life in Weimar republic.

  • Marighella

    As he listens to the biggest lies used to legally support his actions, the fascist spook nods along everything and signs his name to the farce. He stands up, and “Truth and Justice” is written is big letters just behind him. Powerful images.

  • Color Out of Space

    Lovecraftian The Thing, with added Nic Cage. The black dude doesn’t even die, eat shit Lovecraft!

  • Brightburn

    Let’s go Brandon! Just an Evil Supes.

  • Paradise Hills

    As the name implies, these are the opposite of paradisaical greenery. Nice costumes, with a mere clothesline plot to show them off.

  • Men in Black: International

    That’s no Sonnenfeld Men in Black. Strictly worse than the second one, with added Tencent cash and so much product placement.

  • Hellboy

    The Neil Marshall version, Neil Marshalled up to eleven. Gory as hell, in a fun way.

  • Detective Pikachu

    The nostalgia for kids stuff is a powerful drug. So powerful, it makes oblivious to how stupid this whole thing is. The Emoji Movie-levels of stupidity.

  • Eternal Beauty

    This should include triggers warnings for extremely downer mood inducing, the synopsis calls this a comedy, for crying out loud. And I’m not even talking about the Welsh countryside.

  • Portrait de la jeune fille en feu

    Forbidden love in the 1700’s, remains mostly the same until about the 1960’s. You will be disappointed if you go in expecting Blue Is the Warmest Color.

  • Charlie's Angels

    Hot damn, it’s a twofer: turns Charlie’s Angels into something other than braless woman running around, and proves you can do a modern feminist-ish big blockbuster without condescension nor Clinton-esque girlboss nonsense.

  • Alita: Battle Angel

    Some kind of mesoamerican Blade Runner, bots hunting bots. It’s mostly self-contained, by way of the tried and true method of amnesiac protagonist that keeps discovering things about herself.

  • Anna

    This is yet another female version of John Wick, but much less po-faced. There’s more than just smouldering rage, there are attempts at humour and drama. The lead is not Charlize Theron, though.

  • Knives Out

    Hot damn, that’s a nice modern detective story. Just like most modern plots, it incorporates the detective into the plot itself, even though our Kentucky Fried Poirot bills himself as a dispassionate, cold, calculating observer, seeking only the truth. In the end, all is good, even after all twists, double twists, and even untwists. The butler did not do it, in the attic, with the morphine injection.

  • Bacurau

    This was not what I was expecting for a “political allegory”. Surely not Tarantino-esque shootouts and actual characters saying “Wanna fuck?”. This is not Parasite, not by a long shot.

  • Doctor Sleep

    Yes, I also read The Shining, and saw the film. Doesn’t make you special, director man. And in case the meaning wasn’t obvious, the Overlook Hotel BURNED DOWN, finito, dead.

  • Terminator: Dark Fate

    Come with me if you want less money. I only watched this for Mackenzie Davies, she hit the gym hard, but does nothing but kill people like crazy. It’s a CGI fest in the worst possible way.

  • Gemini Man

    My god, the CGI face is so bad! Smack in the middle of the uncanny valley. Mixing it up with real actors of the calibre of Will Smith and Mary Elizabeth Winstead only makes it more cartoonish, but not in a good way like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

  • Dreamland

    A gender swapped Bonnie and Clyde, with a bizarre framing device as a smartass little girl as narrator, like the Inspector Gadget niece, or the protagonist of The Nice Guys.

  • Us

    Esoteric AF. I didn’t get it, needs a second view.