Othello

It's utterly terrible in that Hallmark kind of way, but I somehow take it as a cheap alternative to those giant Pixar/DreamWorks productions, compared to which it's not as capable of masking what a terrible load of tripe it is. If David Bowie did the voice of Maltazard in the first one and Lou Reed in the second, I expect he could be dubbed in the third one by, say, Lešek Semelka.

It's not a comedy. Just a sensitive defense of the mundane, true to its subject matter in its guerrilla approach, with non-actors or debutantes filmed among real people on vacation who occasionally peer curiously into the camera. The film's strongest asset is definitely its familiar portrayal of the micro-life of family car camping in season, with all its traumatic details, including the ubiquitous Dutch. Every sound of a tent zipper unzipping makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

It would be a pleasantly meditative compilation of heretical settings if the set design didn't look like something out of a puppet show. The sharp multiple shadows on the styrofoam rocks and the corner rooms shot from only one angle unfortunately don't make the long, slow scenes feel increasingly funny. The funny thing is that when Cecilia Pezet takes off the nun's headdress, she looks exactly like the protagonist of the anime Paprika.

Poland's French Connection, which excellently blends period local specificity (the revaluation of communist state security agents in the new state regime seamlessly with the expansion of foreign mafia structures in the weakened new state) with clear genre rules. Pigs was one of a number of films with which Polish cinema tried to counter the onslaught of Western flicks that was attracting the audience of the time more than the post-revolutionary aggrieved works. When we realize that it was made for the same motives as, for example, Nudity for Sale, we have to realize how completely retarded we Czechs are even compared to Poles.

With every installment I think I've sufficiently girded myself, and yet I always stare in disbelief at how someone who can, for example, legally drive a car, could sign their name to something so horribly stupid. I'd like to say that DeMonaco can at least be acknowledged for how he manages to keep his finger on the pulse of the times and adapt that idiotic SAtiRe to current moods (criticism of the rich in post-crisis times, racial friction in the present), but there's no effort on his part to somehow clean up the scripts, make the characters at least something beyond inanimate pawns, or otherwise try to obliterate the pure fact that this is a mere money-grab, parasitizing on current social ills. And here's the problem – I don't actually know whether to be mad at him for this, because I don't think he has the capacity for anything better. Should I be angry at the stupid man in power or at the society that elected him there based on his stupid slogans? Likewise, I wonder, should I hate the stupid DeMonaco or the viewing public that has caused the fourth sequel of the most nonsensical and contrived plot ever to hit theaters? (Not to mention that technically, from the digital flames and blood to the horrible color-grading, it totally looks like Asylum).

I was more interested in this in the context of how much my socks were knocked back then by the live Rammstein: Paris. Lindemann doesn't have as strong an audio-visual concept as Till's alma mater, but it's more of a fun project where you can hear Tägtgren's hand almost exclusively in the composition, especially his band Pain. That's not a bad thing in itself, but this music can’t defend 90 minutes of running time. The show itself is also more of a romp than the sophisticated and over-realized antics of Rammstein. And then I have a moral problem with it, too, where Lindemann is a project that benefits greatly from pushing the edges of certain taboos in the discussion of where art ends and kinky pornography begins, yet chooses a bigoted environment for live viewing where they have to censor the projections until virtually nothing remains or they'll go to jail. What then plays into the live action is my personal affinity for Till Lindemann, with whom I find it incredibly entertaining just to watch how he stands.

A misty forest beyond whose elusive edge the war ends. And with that, a situation arises for the actors where meeting practically anyone is a death sentence. While Coach to Vienna suffers from declamatory, unbelievable finales and its share of unnecessary overacting, the excellent cinematography for its time, the wonderfully depicted environment of the dark forest, and the unique setting from it make for a pretty functional nightmare in the end.

More of a pamphlet than a documentary, but I don't have that much of a problem with it. The one I do have is that women's achievements and struggles for equality are only weighed here purely as part of a system that is inherently based on segregation and oppression (the same problem that current mainstream LGBT+ movements have, i.e. seeking recognition within an unjust system rather than trying to change it). Feminism in this form thus comes to fruition again at the expense of another aspect of society. And then, in time, it is again overtaken by another phase. With this in mind, Woman is then a rather interesting insight into various women's issues across cultures, but as a step in the struggle for equality, it is merely representative of the trend of marketing slogans in a time of late capitalism built on the commodification of ideas.

A compilation of pagan music videos and illustrative animations in strategy video games for which I'm very glad they filmed it and managed to keep the scenic look without helping themselves to the usual downplaying. The collective experience in the cinema was first-rate, as the annoyed snorting of the cellphone-wielding dudes who went to see something like The Witcher took on the intensity of an asthma attack towards the end. It's got its problems – Dev Patel doesn't have the requisite charisma, the digital vixens' speeches shouldn't exceed the length of the phrase "Chaos reigns", and unfortunately for the film, we also have to work with the fact that it was made in the same world as Kurzel's Macbeth. Still, it would be a shame to nitpick and patronize it unnecessarily, if only because this type of experience is truly rare in contemporary cinema. And 15 freaking mega?! Believe me, it looks like it cost five times that.

Hmm, documentary... let's call it a presentation. 90% of the material is period photos, the rest is archive videos and new talking heads of old people. If most of the film hadn't been taken from excerpts of an interview with the protagonist that was only found during the making of the documentary, it would probably be an insufferable adoration of the dead over and over again. Guggenheim's terse, somewhat senile and condescending speech thankfully gives it some soul. Among other things, I actually enjoyed the fact that we're not watching a classic zero-to-hero documentary about "a woman who triumphs against all odds", but instead the story of how a wealthy daughter from a good family hobnobbed with insufferable bohemians in Paris for so long that when her inheritance landed, she simply opened a gallery to be part of them, often letting them discover her outside their previous sphere of influence. And they all kept fucking each other. Naturally.