J*A*S*M

The most entertaining horror B-movie of the year. Really, this film looks terrible, but if you get over the ugly visuals, you’ll enjoy an uncompromising and brutal carnage, a brisk and violent action ride that spares nobody – old people, women, children. Eighty people find themselves in some sort of futuristic arena and must fight for their lives – only one can survive. It’s a horror take on The Hunger Games or Battle Royale. But what will make The Human Race really memorable is the nasty twist in the last minutes (I appeal to others to refrain from revealing it in their comments), which in a way gives it an almost cult status. I hope that Paul Hough will get at least 10 million USD for a remake with a more decent visual quality and then 50 million to make a sequel. I want to watch that now!

I’ve already praised Bogliano for Penumbra and I could copy part of that comment for Here Comes the Devil. This guy is getting better with each film, always making something more interesting. His latest looks a little artificial at first (the low budget can be seen and the visuals looked like from a South American soap opera), but that problem surprisingly disappears with time. The atmosphere works and, at least in one scene, Bogliano reminds us of his beginnings in gore. Otherwise, the film is creepily unsettling overall.

Very dark and nasty, with an unpleasant atmosphere. Many people will surely say that Keating’s début (he’s only 23) is a weak, not very well thought-out and extremely pretentious attempt at horror. But for me it is actually the combination of “pointlessly” long shots and scenes, unpleasant music (or rather, cacophonous noises) and the almost stubborn efforts to not satisfy the viewers with the typical gimmicks of the genre what makes Ritual such a harrowing horror experience. When the tension is supposed to escalate, Keating prefers to show a relatively long conversation between two people in a car. When most horror fans are expecting a good dose of exploitation violence, Keating “shuts de door” :-D… It’s not a pleasant experience in the true sense of the word and it will be very divisive, but for me it’s been a proper and totally unexpected surprise and I will be impatiently looking forward to other films of this rookie director.

One star, maybe because there’s probably some creative intention that more perceptive cinemagoers might see. For me though, it’s almost unwatchable, almost too “indie”, with too many awful junkies per square metre.

The best coming-of-age movie of the year, and with pretty solid competition. I had to find my way to the protagonists because none of them felt naturally likeable, but they won me over in the end. Their suffering, desires and trauma are very realistic, tangible and familiar (in comparison with the little too hipster The Perks of Being and Wallflower from last year). Otherwise, do not expect many jokes, romance and sunshine, this film follows mainly the dramatic lines. And also, after a long time a film with nice songs to listen during the end credits, while thinking about the meaning of the ending. I’m a pessimist. It’s fine to just live in the now. But the best part of the now is that there‘s another one tomorrow.

This is exactly the kind of film you can successfully recommend to everyone. Rush is, a little paradoxically, a terribly safe movie about a terribly unsafe (at the time) sport. The performances and the direction are great, but unfortunately I can’t share the enthusiasm. It didn’t win my heart.

Paul Greengrass today has no competition in this type of intimate action movies based on real events. This one is incredibly tense and with a frantic pace (thanks to the camera and the editing), even in those scenes where basically nothing is happening and the characters are just talking (which is most of the film, really). And the emotional climax will give you the final KO. No doubt, one of the best films of the year.

Sorry, but this over-digitalised mess doesn't match my aesthetic feelings.

I was almost giving Tornatore a fifth star and opening a bottle of Champagne in celebration of this riveting conversational detective movie with an almost horror atmosphere. The conversation between two men, a writer and a police superintendent, gets weirder by the minute; there’s something unsaid hanging in the air. And then comes the twist (which I really wasn’t expecting). Used by a less competent director in a less competently made film, it would piss off everyone for fucking with the viewer. It’s hard to explain it without spoilers, but it’s kind of self-serving, because it doesn’t matter what happened before in the story. And it’s really true here, because it fails to clearly reveal and explain all those weird things that had been banging around my head for an hour and a half. In short, an excellent movie experience with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

The pleasure is a bit “guilty”, but a pleasure nonetheless. Three trashy stories from the American backwaters that would love to be like Pulp Fiction, but lack Tarantino’s precision. BTW, Elijah Wood is doing his best to change the tag of “cute hobbit” for “perverted psychopath”, and quite successfully.