Filmmaniak

The best thing about this film is its bizarre title and Sam Elliott in the lead role of a badass pensioner who shot Hitler in World War II. Now, when reminiscing about his old love, he is hired by the FBI to track down and kill Bigfoot in the Canadian forests. Unfortunately, neither Elliott's acting nor the surprisingly well-filmed and sometimes nicely-directed scenes (on a limited budget) have a chance to succeed in a completely disintegrated and unbalanced story, which constantly avoids any escalation, taking the obviously completely absurd plot unnecessarily too seriously, and clumsily throws away everything that could have been interesting in the story. The film is basically a weakly constructed and retrospectively narrated torso of a minimalist war romance, in which funny and short episodes with Hitler and Bigfoot (plus one isolated nonsensical passage with a Russian and beard shaving that has nothing to do with the rest of the film) are just random and completely unused diversions.

An over-the-top war battle between five American paratroopers and Nazis brewing experimental medicine in France to transform dead bodies into mutated super-soldiers. This is a total victory of polished production values in an otherwise entirely below-average story full of one-dimensional characters and stupid American clichés. The film is a lot like Frankenstein's Army, with an extremely generous budget and ostentatiously exhibition-like action scenes, relying heavily on horror stylized elements and explicit brutality. When you have a leaky and stupid screenplay, first-rate assertiveness and a large budget seldom tend to save it. The visual gloss can work as a band-aid, but in this case it peels off quickly if you don’t buy into the very impressive parachute introduction and realize that the rest the film takes place in two locations, that you can count the zombies on one hand, and that even the best tricks and masks don’t cover up the barren dialogues, lack of exaggeration, lack of imagination, a predictable ordinary plot, and the fact that a six-year-old boy with ball in hand constantly gets in the way of the heroes, probably to make it even more American.

A visually appealing and outrageously sexy thriller with an interesting story about camgirl, who earns money by streaming her erotic online show on the Internet, where she tries to succeed in numerous competitions and gain as many viewers as possible. But then a mysterious duo suddenly steals her profile, and thereby her job. Soon they begin to also rob her of her privacy... This film is a remarkable and sympathetically open insight into the lives of young girls, who do not hesitate to expose themselves and in fact carry out prostitution on the Internet with anonymous users. It is filmed surprisingly dynamically, with a sense of black humor and the bizarreness of certain sexual deviations, by very capable creators who cleverly express themselves with regard to the current state of life on the Internet and streaming services. The wonderfully constructed plot is also impressive, during which the protagonist becomes the victim of a devilish scheme which, unfortunately, remains unexplained. Who concocted the scheme and how he or she succeeded are questions that are a mystery left to free interpretation. Which is quite a shame.

An unwatchable, amateurishly cheap variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which humans are duplicated by a virus spread from a mutated eucalyptus from space. There is not a single action scene in the entire film and 95% of the story is devoted to an idiotic conversational soap opera with primitive dialogues. The unsympathetic protagonist and his even less sympathetic ex-girlfriend have nothing in common whatsoever, have nothing to say to each other and there is no reason for them to be together. The romantic triangle remains unused, as well as two thirds of other opened themes. Acting as if they were on TV, the truly weak actors talk about nothing, the directing and script are beyond embarrassing, there are no tricks or masks, the film is terribly boring from beginning to end, because nothing happens at all for a long time (the uninteresting exposition of characters takes up more than half of the film), and when something does start happening, it's pathetic and laughable. This is subjectively a three-hour film that is almost impossible to survive through.

Don't expect an action thriller. This film is mainly a social satire about privacy on the Internet and the lives of teenage Americans on social networks. The film wants to be perceived as sharp and piercing, but instead it is as shallow as photos of Instagram models posing in front of a mirror. Through a story about five high school girls about the victims of Internet hackers hacking an online repository and leaking private user data to the public, the film holds up a mirror to America and the debauched, cheeky lifestyles of its troubled youth. However, instead of criticizing it, it actually supports and defends it. Although the film culminates in the last fifteen minutes with a modern witch hunt (that is why the story takes place in Salem, hint hint), during which there is finally some action, the audience has to wait a long time to get there. We have to suffer through an hour of dialogue, in which the eighteen-year-old protagonists are repeatedly presented as unsympathetic, conceited trollops with the fashionable taste of luxury prostitutes who are rude to everyone, but when someone dares to be rude to them, they cry and act as if they’ve been hurt. The tragedy lies in the film's futile attempt to persuade the viewer to cheer for the girls. Worth mentioning are the directing and camera, which in some places are quite imaginative, a couple of nicely shot scenes (the robbery of a family house in one shot) and aptly directed criticism of hypocrites who condemn other people without knowledge of context and arguments, and yet themselves have something to hide. The film amounts to postmodern, flat entertainment visually corresponding to the most recent Purge films, which will be appreciated especially by those who can identify with the protagonists.

An old wives-tale inspired by a real event about three lighthouse keepers who mysteriously disappeared from an isolated island. However, the starkly realistic and psychological rather than dramatic film depicts the reasons for the "mysterious" disappearance as purely prosaic and, through the character performances of three men in the lead roles, tells of how hunger for money, fear, conscience and loneliness gradually change and destroy people.

The real-life story of a South Korean secret agent tasked with infiltrating North Korean leaders in the 1990s for political and war espionage and obtaining information confirming the existence of North Korea's nuclear program. He is disguised as a businessman with government secrets and offering marketing promotion for North Korean products to its southern neighbours. The story is eventful and extremely complex and dynamic, and it requires at least a basic orientation in a political and geographical context, because there is no time for much explanation. The creators, led by a more than capable director and screenwriter and the right cast, handle this period spy thriller sovereignly and practically flawlessly. The film has a thrillingly progressive plot, built largely on dramatically tight business and political meetings between the main protagonists and North Korea's government elites. The creators elevate to another level the exceptionally perfect passages from the meetings with absolute ruler Kim Jong-il, and from North Korean cities, where communist misery mixes with distress against the background of imperially magnificent exteriors. This is in all respects a great film about the fundamental changes in the relationship of the two countries on the Korean Peninsula to capitalism and to each other (however, what is happening in the south is not as engaging as what is happening in the north), about political decisions in the highest places and about life in a country where expressing political disagreement means risking your life.

A boringly-filmed and foolishly written horror film, whose original theme is meaningless (nuns supervise pregnant girls and care about them giving birth to healthy children, but do not hesitate to torture and maim them in various ways during pregnancy just because they are on a "strict regime"). The film interrupts and prolongs the events in the nursing home unnecessarily every now and then with scenes from the protagonist's past, without sufficiently justifying their existence. The characters behave illogically according to the script's instructions, so that at one point the nuns hear every rustle, but at other times they seems to be deaf and blind. The end is terribly naive, even ridiculous. Of the performances, only Carolyn Hennesy in the role of the demonically kind Mother Superior is worth mentioning. Unfortunately, due to the flatness of their characters, the others do not have much to work with.

A young and pretty nun has the gift of seeing the auras of people, and after her mother's suicide, she returns to her birthplace with her sister and injured father, where an ancient secret is rotting. But none of this is important (auras, father, mother, sister, or a house with secrets), because the film throws away all these motifs in the middle (nothing much happens until then and all of the horror attributes appear only in the form of dreams and delusions ) and moves the other half to a completely different location, where it plays out an occult hallucinogenic ride with the devil, exorcisms, drugs and ritual sex, all of which sounds good, but it's done confusingly and in a dull way (except for the last twenty minutes or so). The film has a confused concept and story with a lot of ambiguity, and it is in fact supposed to be the first part of a planned trilogy, so it is possible that it will come back and explain things in future films, but unfortunately this does not play much of a role when reviewing Luciferina.

The main protagonist is a paranormal hunter with his own company for this purpose; however, this is not the subject of this documentary and less than ten minutes is devoted to it. The main theme is the search for his father, about whom he does not have many memories. The attempt to find his father's residence eventually takes an unexpected turn, after which the film escalates into a therapeutic essay about the search for one's identity, the traumas of childhood, distorted family relationships and the consequences that such things will leave on a person. A standardly shot and averagely engaging documentary about a man, his family and his turbulent history.