JFL

The Power Rangers stretched on the rack of contemporary comic-book movies – the pulp of pathos, the inflated mythology, the familiar faces employed to add charisma to the one-dimensional characters, the quote spotting simulating sophistication and the faking of maturity with a dollop of ketchup.  It’s just another a double dutch rider for the fans that replaces the playfulness and naïveté of the source material with mega-seriousness in order to validate the target audience’s obsessive vision of a certain children’s franchise.

If not for its occasional cluelessness and drawn-out introduction, Turbo Kid would have been a flawless bit of retro-trash in the style of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, albeit with the difference that it draws more from genre flicks for children and youths, even if it supplements them with sparingly (and, thanks to that, effectively) used splatstick. The music goes a long way to save the film, as it follows in the footsteps of the Power Glove soundtrack of the aforementioned video game and adds force to the formalistically lame yet imaginative action sequences. For viewers whose hearts beat faster and eyes widen with nostalgia at the sight of a BMX bike or Powerglove, it’s a great ride. For others, however, it’s not so great, simply based on the ability to distinguish the individual stylistic references to the pillars of 1980s pop culture. This is primarily what the filmmakers depend on, so their work is actually only an amazing tribute to a certain era and its products. This is what the creators rely on above all, so their creation is actually just a wonderful tribute to a certain era and its products. Unlike the geniuses from Astron-6, for example, they aren’t able to make anything distinctive out of them. PS: Rather than a variation on Italian and Filipino Mad Max knock-offs, Turbo Kid comes across as a gore paraphrase of the authentic 1980s pastiche Solarbabies. Furthermore, the creators added elements and aesthetics of Pyun’s low/no-budget Cyborg movies, BMX flicks (from E.T. to BMX Bandits) and a heap of inspirations and quotes from the semi-forgotten gem America 3000.

If anyone tried, they wouldn’t be able to  intentionally cram as many genre clichés into a film as Phillip Rhee, the not only superfluous, but also forgotten hero of ’80s and ‘90s flicks, managed in his old age. If you’re in the right mood for it, the camp is like fine wine, but the rest is unbearable bullshit.

This film was made with the ambition consisting in “let’s shoot a bunch of captivating shots of the Arctic and throw them into a children’s movie because those sell well”. The faulty logic and causality trip up every scene. I like children’s movies, but this one doesn’t deserve attention despite its spectacular concept and the money spent on it.

Macho macho man, or impeccable craftsmanship in a formalistically precise genre film in classic garb in which the only utterly surprising element is that the protagonist and the villain look so terribly similar that the viewer constantly gets them mixed up.

Seven Years in Tibet combined with The Bear. Simply Annaud’s “grand cinema” – an ambitious concept, a load of pathos, great craftsmanship, alternately touching and predictable in places. But this time in needless 3D.

The movie of the year, which leaves Blade Runner in the dust...

The Demon’s Rook is seemingly just an episodic presentation of homemade but professional-looking masks and gore effects strung together to come up with a feature-length runtime and interwoven with the standard ills of amateur productions (those nice-looking but self-indulgent camera compositions with spiderwebs). From the very first scenes, however, The Demon’s Rook enthrals viewers with its unhinged atmosphere and deranged narrative. As a result, the film comes across as a completely bizarre and irrational project by the neo-hippie married couple James Sizemore and Ashleigh Jo Sizemore, which is captivating due not only to the backstory of its creation, but also to its deliriously complex and evidently rather seriously intended mythology. 7/10

It’s a terrible pity about the clichéd genre layout and especially the nonsensical, would-be mysterious ending and the hopeless conclusion, because there was potential here for a chilling horror predecessor of Toy Story 3. If we leave aside the hypothetical possibilities, it is all too apparent in Dolls that what was most important to Gordon was always the mechanical effects, while the context in which he presented them was then necessarily secondary. Thanks to Ed Naha’s screenplay, however the film also contains a number of principal motifs about the relationship that children and adults have with toys, as well as about growing up. But instead of elaborating on these motifs, Dolls is based on changing up a classic horror premise (Price’s films with haunted houses and deranged hosts) and building a straightforwardly entertaining genre flick. With its dramaturgical construction and modest runtime, the result comes across more like a mediocre contribution to The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt.

First a lot of blather and then a lot of bullshitting. Let Us Prey has strong potential to be a fine horror flick, but despite its effective form, basic concept and Pollyanna in the lead role, the result is surprisingly mediocre and forgettable. This is partly due to the fact that the passages that are seemingly intended to be mystical and mysterious conflict with the shocking horror and action-packed splatter. Though its likable as a cheesy genre flick, it lacks the spark to take the precision craftsmanship on display here to a higher level.