J*A*S*M

I don’t know if I could imagine a more sickening and depraved crime than the one committed by this film’s paedophile psycho – actually, for the sake of my own peace of mind, I’d rather not try. The director never shows it explicitly, we only hear being spoken about or we see unsettling scenes through a crack in the wall, etc., so the imagination can work at full steam… and it’s awful. Pure darkness, and on top of that, the film is PERFECTLY shot and acted. Hands down, the best pure psycho-thriller with the most despicable villain in recent years. It affected me more than last year’s (thematically quite similar) The Prisoners, and even comparisons with cult movies like Seven are not as wide off the mark as some would expect. If you like this genre, don’t hesitate. Belgium has surprised.

The first episode promised a VERY funny, uncompromising and atmospheric series full of black humour. Unfortunately, in the episodes that followed Fargo lost much of that and, in particular, it delivered a lot less humour. The main storyline was a lot of fun (Martin Freeman is excellent as Lester), but some of the subplots, on the other hand, weren’t interesting at all. Things improved a little in the last two episodes, but I think it was at the expense of several weird and unjustified decisions by some of the characters. Good overall (very good, actually), but the pilot episode promised a lot more.

If you’re looking for a technically solid horror movie about pretty people that get naked in nature and get butchered by a monster, devoid of artistic ambitions or surprises, which simply delivers what you expect from it, then Animal is a pretty good choice. Terror it won’t cause, unpleasant tension, rather. The jump-scares are cheap but effective. If we compare it with Creature, Animal is a miracle, basically. So, given the possibilities and the competition, it’s fine. In the immediate uncritical feeling, I’m almost tempted to slap it with an above-average fourth star, I had good fun.

The home invasion sub-genre has seen an unprecedented boom in recent years, with a pretty decent number of quality movies centred around villains breaking into the homes of the heroes. Torment is one such film and certainly doesn’t exceed the bar set by its peers. At times, it has a pretty decent atmosphere and a dirty feel, neither the setting (and old house) nor the villains (shabby hillbillies in dirty clothes, with the heads of plush animals as masks) look squeaky clean, precisely. So far, so good. The problems start with the not very likeable characters, whose family crisis has absolutely no chance to receive even a bit of the viewer’s interest, and who, as it’s typical, don’t hesitate to make bad decisions, which is a little annoying to watch. At a certain point, the film even wants to convince us we are watching some sort of metaphysical revenge of the child against the parents (framed by a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche), which is really too much. As a short, undemanding genre snack, it’s OK, but the expectations set by the effective and depressive trailer were unfortunately not met. The edges aren’t sharp enough for that.

LOL, that was silly! Silly, but fierce, fun and original. Lucky McKee has gone mad, and so will the viewers who get into this relentless game. I resisted at the beginning, I didn’t give a toss about the characters, but the film gradually won me over and I let myself be entertained. Actually, those cheerleaders reminded me of Joseph Kahn’s Detention, which also was a crazy mess of everything under the sun that never had the intention of making any sense, but still managed to constantly surprise the viewer with unexpected twists and ideas, and an ubiquitous awareness of itself and its pop-culture environment. These cheerleaders are not something I would watch again alone, they don’t fit at all into my horror tastes, but I think they are perfect to watch with friends over a few beers. 7/10

A good conversational thriller with an unravelling that you won’t see coming. Though, I think it has too many twists for my taste. And they come so fast one after the other that you don’t have time to figure out which of the many valid interpretations of the events make sense or not, let alone try to come up with your own.

Imagine this: you spot a new film with decent ratings in IMDB, you don’t know, nor you want to find out anything about it; you want a surprise… and what you get is a story about two abducted Mormon missionaries where basically nothing important happens (Chomsky would appreciate the Eastern European dissidents, lol!), plus a plethora of bollocks about Jesus. It’s irritating.

Well, fuck me. Forty minutes of nothing. A minute of a sock on a tree. Then twenty minutes (!) of a static (!!) scene in a tent that only in its last part (!!!) gets interesting a little (!!!!). That’s followed by ten minutes of going around in circles in the woods, something that hasn’t been cool since The Blair Witch Project in the nineties. Then the shrubs shake. Five minutes of the terrified faces of the protagonists hiding in another shrub at night. And all ends with a minute of the camera being dragged on the ground. The critics on Rotten Tomatoes (currently at 96%) had to be paid, otherwise I don’t understand.

Very well executed concept known from Groundhog Day, Source Code and probably every sci-fi series ever made. At the beginning, the hero is introduced without any heroic attributes and the pandemonium of war that follows during the landing in Normandy sets the bar very high. And it holds there damn long. Edge of Tomorrow only stumbles a little by the end, where the thus far relatively reaistic battles (to the extent than a battle between people in exoskeletons and giant tentacled aliens can be described as “realistic”) abandon the realism and now they are falling from huge heights without any injuries and the entire final fight goes too smoothly, especially considering how important it is and how it goes straight down to business. That said, it’s an excellent action sci-fi blockbuster of the kind that has been missing in cinemas for a long time. The action is spectacular, Cruise and Blunt have good chemistry and the script also has a couple of nice moments.

I admit that there are some shortcomings when it comes to the profiling of the characters and their interactions, where the reasons someone is doing what they are doing are not always convincingly explained. However, the film manages to be sufficiently entertaining, tense and riveting that I didn’t start thinking about those issues until I left the theatre. In the cinema it was excellent, uninterrupted fun. In short, a very pleasant time spent with old (and new) friends. I liked Evan Peters as Quicksilver, there could have been more of him, his scenes are interesting and fun. Overall, I had more fun than with the (IMHO) overrated First Class.