lamps

More Easter eggs than in Ready Player One. Though I didn't watch Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers when I was younger, this movie still managed to evoke some missing nostalgia, a longing for a time of film and TV series when original playful works were created instead of ripped-off or recycled. The main villain is an obese Peter Pan, who as a burnt-out star made a stupid reboot and used the money to start a factory for deforming animated characters to make cheap copies of old hits. That’s brilliant. On his heels are the heroes/actors from the original Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers, one of whom underwent CGI surgery and is now 3D. The chemistry between Chip and Dale is still refined, but most importantly, they are part of a world so playful, dynamically arranged and filled with references, that even Roger Rabbit gets a run for its money. The pacing limps along around the middle, but the finale is an amazing whirlwind of ideas and references that doesn't stop lamenting contemporary filmmaking, and the characters only move forward by knowing their past stories. Seeing all the different animation styles together in a world that doesn't crumble under the creators' hands and is described in a sort of natural setting was really fulfilling and I would immediately green-lit a sequel with Chip and Dale facing the cast of the Avengers and Nic Cage, with Tom Cruise coming to the rescue. Please, please! 80 %

Wannabe Come and See that gives the audience a thorough lesson in gratuitousness. Whereas the Soviet masterpiece worked brilliantly with subjective perspective and presented the atrocities of war as if naturally – often only through fleeting point-of-view shots or through sound and off-screen action – here every death must be like something out of torture porn. While the main character guides the events, the story crumbles into multiple episodes, each ending with just another brutal killing, and inadvertently creating a chaos that is difficult to navigate. In doing so, the film applies a sub-genre about a community of characters who treat each other differently at different times, but lacks psychological clues for the abrupt transition between stages, relying only on chaos, marked by brutality and the idea that everyone is a bastard. Sure, almost all of them are scum in a corner of their souls, and the moral lines are blurred during the war in ways I don't even want to imagine (and the film certainly doesn't lie about that), but as a history lesson, Volhynia is just terribly self-serving and repetitive. If you haven't seen it and miss the possibility of comparison, you should take a quick look at Come and See.

So I finally saw what it looks like to literally shit in someone's head. I'm neither the wiser nor the worldlier, and in fact I'm not even disgusted by it – this series of bloody and nauseating nightmares might say something about the total cesspool that many individuals get stuck in from head to toe, but leaves you with nothing. This creepy Satanist/Lucifer Valentine is just as amateurish and chaotic as you'd probably expect and holds your attention at times only with an intense soundtrack and a few well-placed cuts. But even such marginal artistic intentions could have been sold much more skillfully and effectively, instead of only being controversial and ugly just for the sake of it. Don't look for a story, just anxiety and disorientation.

It’s not that bad. Cohen could, of course, have made a stifling psychological horror film about the dark side of parenthood with this premise, but instead of Eraserhead he went for an undeniably softer and grittier whodunit. Although the direction is surprisingly focused and quite engaging in the beginning, gradually Cohen gets narratively unhinged – not so much by what happens on a scene-by-scene level, because that's mostly boring, but by how the story unfolds and how darkly it ends. A murderous toddler unsuccessfully chased by the entire police force, a father with a raging parental existential crisis, and a last sentence that hints at the beginning of Armageddon and the endangerment of civilization. Don't have kids, there's enough of us already and they're gonna eat us! 65 %

For me personally, this is one of the most enjoyable films in recent years, one that works equally well as a commentary on the times and as a dreamy coming of age story. The descriptive exposition, stretched over fifty minutes, doesn't lack for great ideas and creative staging, helping to portray the utopia people lived in at the time around the futuristically oriented NASA, when, to the sounds of Zager and Evans and Canned Heat, they looked up to the distant moon, where, along with Armstrong and others, they could see all those teenage boys. Entertaining, smart and informative – this is how I ideally imagine Netflix's offerings. 90 %

It's an amusing pun in which I didn't really buy the truncated psychology, and I chuckled a few times at the rather simplistic cause-and-effect relationships (be it the actual process of putting the antagonist to sleep or the overall inability to make any kind of impact), but as a cynical take on Psycho, it's great. The motives and relationships between the characters are well fleshed out, and the finale is every bit as disturbing and entertaining as it should be, given its course. And when it gets heated and Balagueró tunes the horror note, it works quite naturally and intensely. 75 %

A dull piece of shit without invention and with visuals that would have been better in the 1980s. But it's worth sticking it out to the end – cinema may not have seen such a ridiculous villain vs hero duel. Netflix garbage in all its glory.

Top-notch work with the blending of archival and staged footage, and a fierce montage most of the time, which exhausts you all the more in the right way as it thickens the action and puts new obstacles that take away the most precious thing: time. Annaud more or less ignores poetic insertions and, apart from the necessary emphasis on the immeasurable significance of Notre-Dame (religious through the relics present, national through the president present or architectural, which is explained by the guides in the introduction), he opts for an almost documentary realistic form, without any clichés, last-minute rescues, or heroic self-sacrifice. The firefighters represent a rather anonymous and dedicated workforce facing the biggest challenge of their careers, and Annaud manages to make sure the audience fully understands the importance of their mission. At several moments I was tense as a string, and perhaps it's just a pity about the finale, when the intensity lets up at the expense of a sensitive multiperspective experience. A top-notch catastrophe movie, the likes of which are hardly ever made anymore, with an experienced filmmaker who knows how to observe events objectively, not to force the audience into certain emotions and interpretations. The fifth star is not very far. 85 %

Growing up, hardly a day went by when I didn't see a bald Homer on TV with a remote in one hand and a can of beer in the other, a patient and caring Marge who didn't actually have blue hair, a mischievous Bart making fake phone calls to Moe, an intellectual Lisa refusing meat and any breaking of the rules, or little Maggie who was already so skilled with a gun. And there hasn't been a day that hasn't gone by when this yellow crew hasn't lifted my spirits and provided me with 20 minutes of the best and most effective humour that I would gladly lay down my life for. I love the humor, I love silly Homer, I love greedy Burns, I love Springfield, I love The Simpsons... Yeah, and I almost forgot: D'OH!!

A seminal film, not only in science fiction, but in cinema as a whole. The fastest 150 minutes of my life, the most entertaining and at the same time most stylish action flick in history, better than anything by Spielberg or Ridley Scott. The story is again simple, but memorably upgraded with chilling flashforwards, a dash of perfectly workable value philosophy ("I swear I won't kill anyone") and of course the duel between two fantastic movie characters – the sinister machine, who gives you goosebumps and ranks among the best villains ever, and Arnold, who is more than just cool, and his building human relationship with John Connor is the biggest highlight of the whole film. The inimitable and touching finale only underlines all the genius. I'd probably propose to Cameron if I happened to meet him somewhere .... I just wouldn’t be able control myself. :))