POMO

I enjoy the slow telling of human stories in a minimalist form, especially in a village setting with snow-covered hills in the background. But there has to be something to tell about. Certain Women is composed of a few characters’ stories that would have ended up on the floor if the most interesting stories had been selected for filming. What drove the director to film these in particular remains a mystery to me. Jane Campion’s films in a similar vein, for example, are something else entirely both formalistically and in terms of content.

Intimate gangster flicks set in the rundown bars of the New York underworld are attractive to viewers, especially when they have a cast like The Drop has. The film is entertaining, as it arouses curiosity about how the relationships between the characters will develop and what we anticipate the dramatic climax will be. But we don’t get such a surprise or drama in the end. The directing dampens the potential for surprise and there is a lack of the key contours of a dramatic arc that is supposed to make sense in the climax. Do yourself a favor and watch its more polished genre siblings We Own the Night and The Departed instead.

Though I’m not particularly fond of films in which bored characters lament their lives, I am again entertained by Roy Andersson’s visual concept with its playful details and the general balance of all elements in the picture, including the aesthetic framing, the costumes, the characters’ expressions and the color palette, where pale blue is the most vivid, and also cold.

A multicultural collection of goons and a virginal avenger who brings balance into it. There are loads of Refn’s impressive trademarks that do not develop as you would want or expect, but rather as his wandering imagination dictates. The first three episodes try our patience. The moderately entertaining storylines of the Albanian and Chinese mafias are broken up only by absurd interludes with an aristocratic Danish family in a chateau. The butchers Miroslav and Dušan from Pusher kick off the fourth episode with a welcome move to Copenhagen, and back at the chateau we get some chauvinistic bizarreness with some refined black humor and Refn himself makes an appearance. In its meta-symbolism and unsatisfying finish, the series promises a comic-book tomorrow. If someone puts up the money for it. I’d be surprised.

Though I expected a more interesting and more powerful ending, The Banshees of Inisherin is still a great study of unconventional characters with an unconventional conflict in an unconventional, heavily atmospheric setting. The film is playfully tragicomic and unpredictable, as action and reaction are determined by two incompatible villagers from the end of the Earth who are passively squandering their lives. The first half is masterfully written and directed. However, the actual question of how their problem will be resolved in the first half is more entertaining than its resolution in the second half. Colin Farrell is again excellent and Carter Burwell (the Coen brothers’ court composer) is great, as is the setting, which is itself an important character in the film.

We spend the whole film wondering why a child dying of hunger doesn’t want to eat. And there is no aspect of mystery. The subject is unexciting and quite banal, but it makes sense dramaturgically in the end, however slight it may be for the viewer. The Wonder is based on a novel that the filmmakers didn’t want to upgrade in the film adaptation. Florence Pugh is good as usual, but she has better opportunities elsewhere.

Eddie Redmayne would be great as a young Hannibal Lecter. He is able to portray not only teary suffering, but also disturbing derangement. The film itself, however, is only average. The interesting subject is chilling due to the fact that it’s based on a true story, but it’s dramatically underdeveloped for a feature-length film. The dark tone with the sterile hospital setting works atmospherically, but in order for us to be affected by Jessica Chastain’s resolution of the problem, the psychology between her and Redmayne would have to be different and deeper.

Luca Guadagnino fills a gap in cinema. An intimate analysis of the outsider life of people who are dependent on human flesh and depicting the existence of desperate individuals on the margins of society, like a paraphrase of the fantastical theme of vampires. Bones and All is about the necessity of concealing one's own personality, the search for a family history in order to understand oneself and one’s place in the world. At the same time, however, it is a delicate romance about the importance of finding a soulmate. The film contains more terrifying and gory scenes than you would anticipate from the expected global distribution with artistic exposition and Timothée Chalamet. For mainstream viewers, it will be repulsive to the point of being unwatchable, despite having the plot of a classic road movie with a relationship element and a clichéd climax typical of the genre. I’m giving it a weak fourth star for the courage it took to examine the biggest social taboos in an artistic way and for the brilliant casting of Mark Rylance. In terms of emotion, however, the film left me completely cold, as I was unable to sympathize with the characters in any way.

Inspired by actual events, Holy Spider is an Iranian story as Iranians would never dare to film it. The protagonist is a courageous atheist journalist who is arrogantly disrespected by the police chief when she politely turns him down. The hunt for a serial killer who targets prostitutes is only the first act, followed by a reflection on the Iranian mentality dominated by the power of faith. Indeed, a significant number of Iranians see "cleansing the streets of prostitutes" as a pious activity. The centerpiece of the narrative and the most complexly portrayed character is the murderer, a good family man who acts in good faith. This is a brilliant, layered drama that far exceeds the thematic possibilities of similar Western genre movies and which needs no abstract artsy interludes to enthrall even the most discerning viewer.

The Australian Deliverance, in which the antagonists are not evil villagers, but wild tropical fauna. The two protagonists find themselves in a marital crisis and a situation that doesn’t entirely suit them. The animals help, but their main enemy is themselves and their unstable psychological state. This atmospheric thriller is surprisingly impressive given how little happens in it and the space in which it happens. The screeches of the animals, the discomfort of camping, the oppressive magic of the dark night. Reality turns into delusion as time passes and actions are committed without sound judgment.