This independently made low budget American film was never widely released but it slowly gained fame over time. To say that it’s odd would be an understatement. It’s in black and white and has almost no dialogue but does have sound. It uses crude costumes and graphics instead of expensive special effects. It’s basically a modern Looney Tunes cartoon except in real life and with gore. As usual, I’m a sucker for anything unique and original and this does have plenty of charm. But it could stand to be edited down for length as it starts to get boring once you understand what it’s going for.
I was pretty much sold on this horror film when it was described as an atheist haranguing in a reversal of the usual dynamic. The titular heretic is as charming and loquacious as you could hope for, played brilliantly by Hugh Grant. The religious arguments are superficial but a lot fun and the whole script is written with plenty of Internet-savvy humor. As with all horror films, the setup is way more interesting than the answers at the end but I’d still rate this as a great effort.
Sometimes a work feels too depressing, the problems it highlights so intractable, that I don’t look forward to watching them. This Polish film about the refugees trapped between Poland and Belarus certainly qualifies and one critic condemned it as being misery porn. While harrowing in parts, this is on the whole a balanced and fair portrayal of the crisis. It doesn’t only emphasize the cruelty of the Polish Border Guards but also shows the kindness of Polish activists and the generosity of Poland as a whole in their separate treatment of Ukrainian refugees. It’s an excellent treatment of a complex, politically charged issue and I applaud Agnieszka Holland’s heroism for making it.
The first season of True Detective was rightly hailed as being groundbreaking but when reviews of the follow up were disappointing, it was easy to just drop the show due to it being an anthology. I heard that the third season is a fantastic return to form and so added it to my watchlist. I’m pleased to report that it is indeed excellent while being sufficiently distinctive from the first season despite sharing some common features. This time around there is really only one lead character with his partner being only a supporting character and the show is as much about the case as how his life has been warped by it across the span of decades.
Kathryn Bigelow keeps doubling down on making these military thrillers which I think is a bit of a shame as I preferred her earlier, weirder work. I already knew going in that this wouldn’t be very good but I had to watch it anyway as it’s being talked about so much. Indeed, it is a very detailed procedural on how the US would respond to an unexpected nuclear missile so a lot of research must have gone into getting all of the agencies involved and the jargon right. Unfortunately the entire premise is unrealistic, it wastes all of its tension by showing the same set of events from three perspectives and in the end ducks out of having to say anything substantial at all.
This very old French film is so influential that it has been remade several times and even inspired a Looney Tunes character. Its setting of the Casbah of Algeria is exotically attractive thought unfortunately it’s mostly shot on sets made up to look like the real thing. It’s a rather simple plot but the setting as well as the sleazy charm of the Pépé character who actually longs after Paris all along, both make it work.
It’s hardly possible not to have heard of this film given how blatantly it sexualizes the bodies of its female stars. But that’s alright, because it was made by a female feminist director Coralie Fargeat and all that titillation soon turns to disgust as this is after all body horror at its goriest. The imagery is striking in a very visceral way and setting in a strange hyperreal world was certainly the right choice. Yet it’s psychologically very simple with the character having no backstory at all and drags on long past the point that we get all that the director has to say.
