Malarkey

A brutal exorcism B movie, which is off to a terrible start, but after the opening drinking scene in the bar the quality thankfully increases. Moreover, I liked that the film didn’t satisfy itself with the exorcism itself, and tried to be more ambitious than that. A nice B movie chill-out with everything it entails.

The specific features of buddy action movies are a charismatic duo of detectives, funny jokes and original action. This movie doesn’t have any of the above. At some moments I felt I was watching a worse version of Alarm for Cobra 11 – The Highway Police. The “action-packed” ending only confirmed my impression.

I took me a long time to convince myself to give Anomalisa a try. It is a work by Charlie Kaufman, and his films are far from normal. To make an animated flick, where the animation is moreover not exactly nice to look at, about a guy suffering from depression, turning this into the gloomiest animated movie I’ve ever seen, soaking every single shot of this movie in the purest gloom, takes some balls. And Charlie Kaufman’s got them. And he showed us that it can work. But only in the case when you’re ready for a unique experience and have seen quite a lot of movies throughout your life. An interestingly portrayed depression of one animated man full of absurdities and intriguing thoughts.

The Hollywood really can make whatever they please. While watching this, I kept asking myself where all the sci-fi and mystery mentioned among the genre categories is. Towards the end, however, everything sped up considerably so I had a hard time to understand what was going on (and eventually failed to do so). On the other hand, I can’t say I wasn’t enjoying the Caribbean locations. I did enjoy them a lot. Matthew McConaughey plays his typical world-weary guy, and steals the show for himself. Anne Hathaway looks like a mannequin while Jason Clarke’s character makes you want to punch him in the face. Fortunately, there’s also the monk portrayed by Djimon Hounsou who somehow balances out Matthew’s character’s moodiness. I have to say that I haven’t seen such a crazy film with Hollywood stars in a while. Sometimes I felt like watching Interstellar from the Caribbean but I had no idea what was going on in the movie until the very end.

A cute family movie from the Netherlands, where the creators won me over with the cats and Carice van Houten, who as an absolute essence of Dutch beauty is very nice to look at. Because I like cats, I gave it four stars. Yes, it was crazy, but some of those wacky moments were so fun that I can’t help myself. If you have cats, you can let them watch this movie as a bedtime story.

Given how disappointed I was with the second instalment of Transformers, the four stars I’m giving to this flick are quite an improvement. The authors went back to basics and delivered an incredibly simple story, whose script however contains everything I need to grow fond of Bee and enjoy some plot twists. While watching this movie, I realized that today’s blockbusters usually lack a certain charm that would make them stand out from the average and arouse some emotions in me. This film succeeded in doing so, even though I didn’t expect it to. Of course the 1980s feel, so popular in these days, played a huge part in that. Plus I must say that John Cena was a great casting choice. I hope to see him in more movies.

An interesting premise won me over during those 81 minutes. I almost felt like I was watching something by Linklater. Everyone’s role is important and even though J. K. Simmons spends all the time just staring at the mirror with a gun pointed at this head, barely saying a word, his performance is very convincing, just like that of Sebastian Stan, who plays the same character as an adult, and does more or less the same, with less gun pointing and more speaking. I enjoyed myself, found this original and the ending was a pleasant surprise.

I admit to expecting something better. I was really looking forward to those Donbass shots. However, those shots are the only thing I got. The story doesn’t matter in the slightest, completely overshadowed by the military conflict. Plus the filmmaking is so terribly impersonal that it looks like a warzone documentary. A totally emotionless film, which is not to say it is not interesting. It is certainly informative enough.

Exactly the type of film that the Hallmark Channel, specializing in family drama, has always broadcast. It’s not great, but it has an interesting premise that was a reason enough for me to watch this till the end.

Gangrene is a bitch. I think I’m not deviant enough to watch an entire hour of an actor playing Louis XIV writhing in pain and performing “art” to people eating tapas.