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I managed to watch The Fabelmans twice over the weekend and the second time in particular I experienced feelings I no longer associate with modern films. This two-and-a-half-hour chronicle of a famous filmmaker's difficult formative childhood in a crumbling family is the most beautiful film I've seen in a long time, and it offers narrative techniques so subtle and yet often utterly unobtrusive that a generation of young directors could learn again in the cinema. The story of an aspiring filmmaker and a bitter divorce is based on the alternation of artistic and rational perspectives. The camera reveals things to the protagonist that the human eye never sees in real life (including his mother's infidelity in the background of the action), and the photographic form of the footage, which can be manipulated in various ways in the editing room, makes the films the most reliable source of existence, something that you can control and can give authorial forms of representation. In the end, Sammy, distressed by his family situation, uses this to glorify the school bully in a school video, thus bringing his rival to his knees – realizing that he will never look as good in real life as he does in the film. Life can be grey and Spielberg knew the bitterness of anti-Semitism, bullying, failure with girls and, most importantly, the divorce of his parents, only one of whom supported his passion for movies. The Fabelmans represent two worldviews that must intertwine, but the more painful one must never suffocate what fulfills us most and what we aspire to. It is an emotional and psychologically detailed family study in which cinema serves not just to escape, but to clarify and filter emotions. Most of Spielberg's films about the complexity of an incomplete family have managed to suck us in, but The Fabelmans is a film through which we can inhale and, despite the sad passages, absorb the joy of the narrative and its impulses. After the second screening, I curled up on the bus for half an hour, put the John Williams soundtrack on my headphones, and let myself be swept away by what Sammy's story revealed. I too can try to be an extrovert and clamor for someone's attention, but I know in my soul that I embrace my introvert bubble and get lost in movies where I don't have to deal with interpersonal relationships, where I don't quite excel at. And what brings me joy is being able to analyse the work with space, the movement of the camera and the positioning of the characters around the set, which in The Fabelmans is again beautiful and original. Steven Spielberg has made an amazing film that spoke to me in every scene and I can say that it opened my eyes again. If you've yet to see a single film this year (so far), make sure it's this one, Avatar is going to have to try hard.

I’ve read the book once in high school and don't remember much of it, I'm not burdened by the demands of faithful adaptation. What I demand of a historical war film, however, is that it somehow expresses its thesis in a meaningful way, which All Quite on the Western Front (and Boredom and Ash) fails to do. There is no character development, no profiling in the opening and no emotion in the scenes where we are supposed to sympathise with the protagonists. The whole thing is mired in the bias of war scenes, of which only the transporter sequence leaves a bigger impression, otherwise every scene from the trenches has the same aesthetic: stick the camera on the protagonist and let it bang around. This is supposed to increase the suggestiveness and perhaps the subjectivity of the experience, but the film soon disproves this by layering melodramatic clichés and haphazardly involving "big stories" from the peace negotiations – by that point, it's already mixing together Come and See (in a weak concoction of the hero's suffering), 1917 (steadicam in the trenches), Paths of Glory (a moral about the futility of human sacrifice and the irrational thinking of generals), and Dunkirk (the role of condensed time during the negotiations, cutting to the impending battle). Together, of course, it's a mess, which mostly looks nice, but the sheer disjointedness of the journey leads to inevitable boredom and tedium. When I checked the progress bar and found that I still had over 40 minutes to go, I almost wanted to turn the film off. Of course, it only takes the basic ideas and motivations from Remarque, I know that, even with the rather clouded memories of the book (and unfortunately that's the least of the problems).

Actually, probably the best #MeToo thing yet. It is not uncompromising, but it’s definitely unpredictable and it uses its genre playfully for strong thematization. A thrilling horror film with heart, surprises and a message... 85 %

Good job. I didn't mind in the least that there was no hurry – quite the opposite. We get under the skin of the characters and this is clearly a long-term commission, so the built-up atmosphere and internal tension that was palpable permanently in the last few episodes will surely pay off handsomely. The only thing that really bothers me is that when the creators did swing for more action, it usually resulted in something unfinished and rushed (Daemon vs Crab Man) or just a silly twist (the dragon in the penultimate episode). There are plenty of bastards, though, and even though I'm not enjoying any of them as much as Littlefinger so far (Game of Thrones was different overall in terms of characters), I'm looking forward to the clash in season two. And all this is crowned by a commendable feminist tone that gives it a previously unexplored scope and even some historical value. 80 %

My God, why? I would never have expected such a stupid and tiresome debasement of Michael Myers and everything he ever stood for in a film signed by John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. But I lived to see it in full glory, incredulously absorbing one screenwriting kick in the crotch after another. Myers becomes a turncoat in a boring and imbecilic tale that humorously attempts to resolve the very nature of evil and in the process doesn't know what to do with the main characters. I've rarely felt so miserable with a mainstream horror film. At least the violence at the end is quite delicious, though the mind-numbingly dull opening and the wannabe surprising, jarring middle don't save it, of course. Especially the ending, the entire new trilogy doesn't seem to understand what it was originally about. 30 %

Bruckner continues to maintain his high standards and does not just rip off the cult classics from the 1980s, but sets them in broader and more ambitious meanings. As a result, the new Hellraiser is not a festival of filth and gore with a trivial slasher plot, but a more complex reflection on what we really want from life and what we are willing to do for it. And while we're at it, I also saw it as an effective warning to addicts whose fate is forever sealed by needles and who are left with nothing but pain and woe. The script could do with some tweaking, and the characters initially move towards revelation in a suspiciously languid manner (and their meeting at the mansion reminded me of the funniest moment from the comedy The 40 Year-Old Virgin in its timing), but the narrative is otherwise beautifully fluid and the horror elements tread well – the passage after the escape from the mansion in particular is downright brilliant in its play with the setting. What bothers me most, as in the original, is how the bad guys are only "half-used". They're creepy in their own right, and their ambivalence works even better here (are they evil devils or harshly righteous angels?), but their power hops from bending reality to being unable to walk through doors. But otherwise I wasn't bored, the more serious and narrative execution suited me, and the transcendent motifs touching the human body and mind are surprisingly impressive for a horror reboot, following the creature-feature original. Far from Martyrs, but good enough for a mainstream streaming product. 75 %

These hellraisers can be really scary and the debuting Clive Barker, especially in the opening, shows first-class direction based on time parallels. Even Stephen King may never have imagined such a disturbing house. Hellraiser may be set in a decade defined genre-wise by slime and mutations (the physical ones as much as the narrative ones), and some of the violence and make-up effects are delightfully naive, but it paces well for 90 minutes and doesn't overwhelm you with cheap attractions. It's a clear cult classic, of course, with everything so very 80s that if something similar had been made a decade later, it would have gone straight to video. I probably would have liked more ingenuity around the torture of the victims, which is admittedly ugly, but at least visually just physical and too straightforward – I was waiting for the title dudes to start making Rick and Morty-esque noises with needles in their faces and snapping teeth coming out of hell, occasionally just waving their arms around. The final tug-of-war with the rock, paper, scissors monster is downright funny, but I still can't give it less than 4* – a bit out of amusement, but still mainly for the lack of horror qualities and enthusiasm in today's work. 75 %

Quite an entertaining romp that didn't surprise me at all with its stylistic homage to the horror films of the 1930s and 40s, with the emphasis on shadow play, but I was quite taken aback by the Wizard of Oz-inspired narrative and at times the really off-kilter layering of ideas. Unfortunately, it's not very narrative, and the promised violence is a weak tea compared to The Wolfman with Del Toro, but there is potential for a fresh and playful franchise – and it could be with Giacchino in the director's chair, there are several sequences with strong backlighting that are undoubtedly impressive and the composer clearly has a soft spot for B-horror films of the past. It's a pity he didn't have a better script at hand with less banal dialogue, which would have thrown the spotlight on a more coherent formal grip and forgiven the campy moments and failed humour. Nice 70 %.

It's the kind of film that, as someone who writes about movies for a living, I should be blown away by. And I really appreciate the formal intentions that twist the story of the shining icon of the silver screen into a non-linear, audiovisually precarious mosaic of the hardscrabble life of a woman exploited by everyone and desperately seeking male support. But Blonde didn't touch me once in its 166 minutes, and, apart from a reminder of the 1950s feel, cut with disorienting halos, its style didn't impress me at all. It's nice that it comes across as the opposite of theatrical, that Armas gives a fantastic performance and Dominik directs his dream defiance of clean and respectful iconography, but what's the point when all I get out of it is a long moment? I was expecting this film to give me a lot of ideas, especially on the formal, stylistic and narrative level, but it just doesn't interest me... 65 %

For a while it looks like a playful found footage with an unorthodox formula, with a dash of John Wick in a brutal satanic framework. Unfortunately, as much as the fictional world itself is bearable, everything else sends it down the drain – from the terrible English dubbing (or whatever it was) to the stupid marathon of beating up enemies to the all-over-the-place violence, of which there may be a lot, but with the exception of two instances it has an extremely ugly video game look and is just terribly artificial. It may be enthusiastic bullshit, but it's really lame. 20 %