Filmmaniak

What everyone thought was going to take three hours in Avengers: Endgame is actually over in twenty minutes and shrouded in total depression. The rest is a heist comedy in the style of Ocean's Eleven featuring Back to the Future 2 and featuring The Big Lebowski under the baton of Marvel in its best form and with an epic finale, the last fifteen minutes of which fans will be sure to cry over. The end of an era as it should be, despite some confusing games with time paradoxes. In any case, I have not left the cinema happier this year.

The socio-politically engaged drama, which begins as an inconspicuous intimate insight into the life of a closed village community in the Brazilian countryside, gradually transforms into a captivating (almost) thriller, in which this community must come together to defend itself against oppressors. This is carefully constructed film, innovative in a number of creative approaches, follows a consistently slow pace of storytelling that slowly dispenses information, just enough for the viewer to be able to imagine everything necessary. The point is striking and well executed, and the culminating plot is accompanied by clear criticism and a number of metaphors referring to the hidden power of the common people and their history. Perhaps only the introduction of the film is too lengthy. In any case, it is a film with an original story, realized in an unprecedented form.

The film contains a lot of hopefully initiated motifs, well-written characters that have a believable interaction characteristic of people who are unable to communicate properly with each other, and several nicely constructed, absurdly comic scenes. However, the story’s ending is cursory, and it fundamentally lacks more consistent escalation, greater tightness and a stronger point.

An anime variation on The Nutcracker and The Chronicles of Narnia about a high school girl, chosen by an ancient prophecy, who has to deal with a crisis plaguing a magical parallel world, in this case a lack of water. The simple story of the heroes' journey from point A to point B is based on visual ideas, contains a strong ecological theme (picturesque villages with sheep in contrast to the smoky city and industrial metallurgy) and culminates in an emotional conclusion shrouded in original mythology. However, the film as a whole lacks drama and tension (the heroes are never really in any danger) and, moreover, it’s quite ordinary, i.e., it amounts to a change of motifs that have been seen many times before. This pleasant fairy tale, also suitable for children, is slightly above average purely thanks to its imagery.

This is the story of the employees of an ultra-modern, large morgue who are facing an armed assault on Christmas Eve. It makes no sense even in the most basic terms and consists of mediocre action sequences consisting of characters running around and wrestling in corridors, offices and freezer halls. It is filmed pleasantly briskly and energetically, but there really is no logic and credibility in the behaviour of the heroes and the implementation of specific situations. The stupid villains and naively positive heroes, who are constantly trying to outwit the armed attackers at all costs, and the overall feeling of the film is reminiscent of many action thrillers from the 90s. If you turn off your brain, you can enjoy the film’s amusing developments if you only watch it once, but you really can't expect more from it.

This film is a Laotian mysterious art ghost story imbued with magical realism and Back to the Future for demanding and thoughtful viewers. On the one hand it’s a drama about death, the inability to leave loved ones and the need to give the dead a dignified burial, on the other a supernatural sci-fi about time travel (very artistic), time loops, paradoxes and influencing the present through past interventions. The two storylines - one dedicated to a little boy who sees the spirit of a deceased girl, and the other dealing with the same character fifty years later - are remarkably interconnected and told in an innovative way that requires some investment on the part of the viewer (the frequent story ellipses are slightly confusing, but even so the story does make sense). Firmly grasped direction, an intelligently processed plot with unpredictable development, ambiguous characters with gradually changing motivations and a film that gives nothing to the audience for free and rewards you slowly but surely.

The film sticks to a relatively well-established storyline about a newcomer in a closed and torn community, who inadvertently brings it together through his actions, but who is still unable escape his past. Even the film’s form is quite common throughout most of its running time. What is not as common is the incredibly expressive and even demonic Bartosz Bielenia, who gives an extraordinary performance in the main role and carries the whole film on his shoulders, as well as the perspective of his character, looking at the world through God and thereby getting to know himself. The film also delivers through its comprehensively processed theme of religious faith and a static camera, which in the end surprises when it suddenly and justifiably starts moving at a key moment. This remarkable drama also excels in its elaborate script and serves as further proof that even an intimate film with a small budget and only a few locations can be shot in such a way as to provide the viewer with a strong and exceptionally impressive experience.

This Victorian drama revolves around a teenage girl living on a family estate according to an established regime and binding rules that make her life a stern and depressing repetitive routine (the same feelings are transmitted to the viewer through similarly tense and tedious storytelling). A little bit of excitement comes with the arrival of an unknown beauty of the same age as the heroine, who had a carriage accident nearby and is suffering from memory loss. However, the intimate period piece, which attracts the audience with a potentially forbidden lesbian romance and devilish elements, only ends up amounting to a promise and cautious hints and offers nothing more; only ambivalent unravelling with motives of prejudice and fear of the unknown which, after an hour and a half of a weak story about the desire to break free from the shackles of the ascetic environment and finally live to the fullest, cannot be considered particularly satisfying.

This is a precisely-aimed documentary hit to the solar-plexus, a hundred times denser and more interesting than the entire methanol affair after the first twenty minutes. What begins as a total mess in a Romanian hospital ends in absolute disillusionment with the local healthcare system in general, which is riddled, through the state apparatus, with corruption, fraud and lies. The film presents an ingenious observation by investigative journalists who, despite anonymous threats, go behind the scenes of the fairy tale about how socialist health care should heal people, but instead kills them. The film’s mood is nowhere near positive, but it is therefore all the more important that it exists.

The eponymous short story by horror legend HP Lovecraft about a meteorite from space which begins to remake the point of its impact on Earth into its image, has received a fantastic modern film adaptation, in which this purple-glowing meteorite hits a remote farm of a family of five, who are subsequently deprived of rational perception, gradually lose their minds and are exposed to their worst nightmares. The uncompromising, brutal, dreamily intoxicating, neon-psychedelic and distinctive vision includes radioactive monsters, magical rituals, a whistling well, alpaca llamas, Nicolas Cage's wonderfully hysterical acting, and even reflections on contemporary society's anxiety about the environmental crisis. A terrifying and intense film with an impressive camera, fitting music and an original "Lovecraft" atmosphere of deepening despair, helplessness and fear of a successfully rendered unknown evil, which is sufficiently specific and at the same time mysterious.