J*A*S*M

Fucking farce! The most terrifying villain in the third Batman is not Two-Face or the Riddler, but Joel Schumacher.

I liked Kill List in the details, but the overall impression is mixed… For instance, the initial dinner (fantastically oppressive), the second murder (after Drive, the second film this year where a hammer is really cool), the chase in the tunnels (the only really scary scene) and the music (or rather the various unpleasant noises and sounds), all that is great. The individual bits are really nice, but I couldn’t put anything together with the package as a whole. And the ending was very disappointing, it blends two ways how to ruin a climax: lack of surprise and not answering some questions the answer to which I would like to know. The film made me happy several times with how it’s made and its perfect atmosphere… but in the end it didn’t tell me anything. 3*+

Well, something good in the darker genres after a long time! A Lonely Place to Die has several good things, the most important of which are the likeable characters, and also the creators treat them rather brutally, killing them quite quickly and determinedly. They aren’t simply bland meat for the butcher’s block, they are interesting and relatable characters and I felt sorry for them at times. With this, the film would already check all the boxes, even if it wasn’t special in any other way. But it is. The first hour takes place in a beautiful mountain setting (in Blu-Ray quality it was a feast for the eyes), but in the last half our the story moves to a little mountain village and this turns a perfect survival thriller into a perfect carnage with several groups going against each other’s throats and the characters drop like flies. The switch between the carnival festivities and what happens afterwards in the house is hands down the best part, and I’m glad the creators left the nature setting behind. One of the year’s best genre films.

Aaaahhhhh!!!! This was my favourite TV show as a kid! I’ve just remembered it after a long time and I was overcome by a wave of nostalgia. A fully subjective five-star rating, I loved it :-)

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a very depressive drama. Before the screening I thought it would take me all the way to five stars, in the end, though, it took me only four. Praising Tilda Swinton’s performance is stating the obvious, but I can’t help it, she’s absolutely brilliant. What I didn’t like too much was little Kevin, the film portrays him almost too demonic. Instead of a boy unloved by his mother and pushed towards life-long psychological trauma, he looks like a kid controlled by either Satan or an extraterrestrial intelligence drawing plans to conquer the world. The result is not perfect, but it’s certainly effective. 8/10

* 18/12/2011 :-( Absurdist theatre on the screen and nothing else. Leaving doesn’t have that much charm, it’s not very funny, but that doesn’t matter if you are willing to listen to it. What’s a little amazing, and also a shame, is that after an entire life wishing to make a film, Havel didn’t make his (unfortunately) only film more “film-like”. But I don’t regret the ninety minutes I spent with Leaving. Václav Havel was just too smart a person to make a silly or uninteresting film. And after reading the comments of certain individuals, he’s someone we might have not been worthy of as a nation. Honour your memory.

Well, I don’t know. Has Herzog made a documentary that delves philosophically on human history? Or is he simply taking the piss and, with a basilisk smile, is giving pseudo-intellectuals fodder to get bogged down in unreadable meaningless reflections full of foreign words? Is he making fun of all those scientists who have dedicated their lives to figuring out which bison prehistoric people painted before and which one later – because it doesn’t fucking matter? Albino crocodiles, a man trying to find a cave by smell, the American anthem played on a human bone whistle, a scientist telling in broken English he must "absorb" the experience of visiting a cave… I’m inclined to say that Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a cute and subversive joke by Herzog at the expense of those ethereal beings who ponder over everything that can be pondered over.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool. It’s not bad sometimes to look at how things work in countries with different mentalities. A fantastic family-court drama that, among other things, captivates with how not a single one of the protagonists is morally spotless. I’ve no idea whether the Iranian legal system works exactly like this (in fact, my Central European prejudices led me to believe that it’s much worse), but it doesn’t matter. An entertaining and thrilling film and a great candidate for the Oscar in the foreign language category.

The best and most entertaining baseball film I’ve ever seen. Before watching it, I wasn’t expecting it to deliver a great experience because baseball is all Dutch to me, but the fears were unwarranted. Brad Pitt’s great performance and the equally great script didn’t allow my attention to stray away. Thumbs up and I’m rooting for Brad at the Oscars.

Soderbergh doesn’t give a shit about the audience. Zero emotions, little tension, full of stars but without any of them shining too much on screen. Contagion is simply an unbiased and detached look at a global pandemic, and it’s actually that austerity and inhumanity what brings to the surface the horror and hopelessness of the situation. It probably only needed to dig a bit deeper into the issue, the last half hour felt too short. 7/10