JFL

Verhoeven devoted his entire oeuvre to bringing back to the sacred (genre) worlds the profane (excessively physical and emotional) aspects that had been pushed out of them by the previous tradition. His (perhaps only for now) last film thus represents a magnificent culmination of this effort, as he turns his attention to the Church itself, following his treatment of Hollywood genres and national historical milestones and local social phenomena. Benedetta thus delivers a caustically funny deconstruction of the Church as a pragmatic apparatus based on the illusion of hope. As in his previous films, this time Verhoeven offers a seemingly one-dimensional spectacle. But lying just below the wholly functional (in terms of genre) and, for many, outrageous, grim and entertaining surface, there is a broad spectrum of thought-provoking layers. For some, Benedetta will remain a cynical or even exploitative and objectifying mess, but for others it will be, among other things, a sophisticated portrait of the wonderfully ambiguous title character. Through her, personal and organised faith is revealed to be an instrument of institutional and personal power and, paradoxically, within a certain historical context, of possible emancipation, though only in the sense of career and existence, but peculiarly not in terms of personal freedom. And, through the protagonist’s development, it also shows that spiritual foolishness and physical orgasm have more in common than many want to admit.

The Green Knight offers a swamp of captivating scenery and the enchanting atmosphere is intoxicatingly absorbing. Though there is no miraculous treasure waiting at the end, the journey is no less splendid. This is a film for the screen and the cinema, where the viewer must submit to Lowery’s vision and the movie’s rhythm. Anyone expecting a spectacular, mainstream Arthurian fantasy will be extremely disappointed. This is rather a creative illustration of the original chivalric ballad set at a pace that is completely opposite to the Hollywood standard. Pompous splendour is combined with down-to-earth, mundane experiences, while intimate fantasy episodes alternate with interludes pointing to epic adventures in a world that people share with ghosts, fantastical creatures and their own demons, and where chivalric virtues blend with base vanity and pettiness. Like every old story, The Green Knight varies according to who is telling it, as the person in question highlights or downplays certain motifs at the expense of others or adds their own ending. What makes it all the more amazing is that for the absurdly ridiculous sum of $15 million, Lowery was able to realise an uncompromising vision that is equal parts shallow and enchanting. In the end, his The Green Knight remains an ode to the boldness of A24, which, together with Annapurna Pictures, represents the last of the more powerful and stout-hearted bastions of the alternative to the dominant and uniform mainstream of American film production.

Die Hard with a Vengeance is the best action movie of all time. It is an absolute masterclass in camerawork, editing and narrative that was made long before everyone was drooling over these things in some Bourne movie. To wonder over the fact that the bad guys’ plans somehow work out too smoothly or that McClane's indestructibility makes him look like a superhero is akin to pondering the calorie count of Erhart cakes. This is pure filmmaking perfection, two hours packed with enough material for at least three movies and the essence of 1990s genre filmmaking turned up way past eleven. That’s not even to mention the fact that a film of such scope, with so many real New York locations imbued with action, could never be made again. Willis may have had a more essential part in The Last Boy Scout and a more nuanced performance in 12 Monkeys, but here he is given the ideal partner in Samuel L. Jackson to help polish his iconic damaged cop to archetypal perfection. And seeing it at the cinema on the big screen was a dream come true.

This feature-length version of the Starro Attacks sketch from Robot Chicken is garnering rave reviews thanks to the fact that a big-budget comic-book movie has finally dispensed with both seriousness and sophistication and instead gone the route of juvenile trash (which was an essential characteristic of comic books for many decades before they were taken over by nerds who had the need to justify their childish obsessions by faking profundity). But on the other hand, compared to the unapologetic futility of the best and funniest comic-book movies like Batman: The Movie (1966), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011), the new Suicide Squad feels too forced and made-to-order – like products from The Asylum that try too hard to be camp, but can never elicit pure enthusiasm like pure trash can.

The most recent instalment of the series is a solid recycling of the original Candyman myth for today, which comes across as appealing and literal, not only in comparison with the phenomenal and, in terms of the genre, very atypical original. The classic slowly gnawed away the foundations of reality and rationality, and worked dramaturgically with a view from outside that, at the same time, problematised and thoughtfully thematised, developed and analysed the phenomenon of urban legends until it became one itself. Conversely, the new Candyman relies on the contemporary formula of combining spectacular brutality and ostentatious cleverness. The screenplay highlights the motif of names and their importance to the narrative, as well as the identity and iconography of the community in a thought-provoking way. The narrative itself is built around the pain and trauma of African-Americans as individuals and as a community, thanks to which it strongly resonates with issues that have been a long-lived experience for them and have been brought to the attention of the rest of the world by the protests and, especially, the discussions following the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The film thus abandons a more general overlap, but it does so at the cost of expressive emancipation. As a character, the Candyman thus becomes an amalgam of names, faces, injustices and pain. The view from the inside may not allow him to take flight like the original did but, on the other hand, it gives him the power of eloquence.

At first glance, A Chiara gives the impression of being literal in its symbolism, overwrought in its emotions and theatrical in its gestures, and the title character himself is intolerably bratty in places. However, all of this fits into the intended mix of mafia dramas and coming-of-age films, where both the settings and the characters of these genres are characterised and self-defined by these very attributes. In fact, A Chiara has something in common with John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles, but instead of the usual high-school outsiders, Jonas Carpignano wants us to sympathise with a model rich bitch who, somewhat surprisingly, looks beyond the carefree façade of her privileged life only at the age of fifteen. Thanks to this, however, the director is able to put into play the motif of adolescence as a transition from self-centredness with a black-and-white view of the world to the perception of ambiguity, uncertainty and the search for one’s own path in relation to or in spite of his/her background. The female protagonist, who is problematic at her core and, for some, even unlikable, enables the film to present a highly topical theme involving the idea that we should not judge people based exclusively on their past transgressions and should give them a second chance. Because, in the best case, we spend our whole lives growing up and looking at our own past in a new way.

This perfectly crafted festival product shields itself with phrases like “a female perspective on a male industry”, “sparks debate”, “provocatively authentic”, “contains disturbing scenes”, etc. At the same time, however, it merely serves up a morality play that says nothing new on the topic of the illusory nature of the career of a porn star. It thus engagingly but predictably maps the career trajectory of the main female protagonist, whose path to shady supposed stardom leads through ever increasing self-degradation and loss of self-worth. Paradoxically, perhaps the most interesting question that the film indirectly raises may be why porn not only uses formulas and stereotypes in its narratives, but also invokes them as an industry and meat-grinder of human bodies and identities. --- It is necessary to praise the experiential benefit of seeing Pleasure at a festival, when stepping out of the Hotel Thermal after the film and finding oneself among stylish girls in stilettos and conceited dandies around the Becherbar added a 4DX dimension to the screening.

Life with film, film about life, life after film and film after life. At first glance, Noé’s departure from conceptual games with genres, form and film as a sensory attack aimed at the realms of Bergman and Haneke is unexpected but, at its core and in accordance with its subject matter, unavoidable. Though the topic changes, the creative signature and motifs remain unmistakable. Noé continues to crush viewers, only this time not so much by playing games with the material and medium of film as by mercilessly bringing the end of life to the audience’s attention. If Noé, being true to his youthful and rebellious nature, had previously shown us life as a fleeting dream and an extreme experience, this time he reveals its end as a spiral between a helpless wakefulness and a kindly nightmare that brings everything that came before to the final fade-out.

What Carax’s Annette is to musicals, Ada is to Icelandic festival films – with everything good, bad, emotional, bizarre, idiosyncratic and conceptual. It thus makes that much more sense to see the film at a festival in a packed screening room and watch the audience’s reaction as they wrestle with the film, ride the wave of tension in the first third, then burst into relieved laughter, through which they paradoxically accede to the rules of this absolutely serious film.

The praiseworthy screenwriter Lau Ho-Leung could have easily made his directorial debut as a sophisticated indie film in the style of Johnnie To’s works aimed at international festivals. Instead, however, he created a hyperactive, overwrought folk tale for the local audience. From the perspective of foreign viewers, the formal style, which picks up the threads of domestic comic books and nonsense comedies, may come across as excessive, thus interfering with their immersion in the narrative. But that’s not Lau’s thing at all. On the contrary, his goal is to hold viewers outside of the film so that they can be that much more entertained by its absurd twists and not have to deal with any spatial and logical inconsistencies that would otherwise be exceedingly obvious. Indeed, Two Thumbs Up doesn't want to deal with plausibility, but instead carries its heart on its sleeve and, in a folksy and enchanting way, pays tribute to typically local heroes who, while not wearing their briefs on the outside of their pants, are actually superheroes.