The Favourite (2018)

Ireland/United Kingdom/USA
directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
written by: Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara
starring: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult
seen on 30th March, 2019

After "Mad Max: Fury Road" I was convinced that Nicholas Hoult should only walk around with his head shaved and obviously I was wrong. I've always hated Emma Stone and here it's put to a wonderful use. Olivia Colman is a goddess. Curiously enough, I have no desire to comment on Rachel this time.

It's nice to see that Lanthimos does not repeat himself when it comes to his filmography, although he may repeat himself a bit when it comes to this film alone.

-"I dreamt I stabbed you in the eye."

Big (1988)

USA
directed by: Penny Marshall
written by: Gary Ross, Anne Spielberg
starring: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Mercedes Ruehl
seen on 25th March, 2019

Of all the possible stories that would offer themselves with this kind of premise they had to go with the one that did not offer itself, a romance with an adult woman. O my god. And I hear the director rejected an idea to make the main protagonist female stating she could not realistically see a relationship between a thirty-five-year-old man and a twelve-year-old girl. Well, kudos for this completely acceptable realistic alternative then. Oh my god.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

USA
directed by: Tobe Hooper
written by: Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel
starring: Gunnar Hansen, Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal
seen on 25th March, 2019

Well, I'm never... something ever again. Most intense existential drama that made me wish I lived somewhere far away from all the people with just a hint of a bitter feeling that it wouldn't help anything.

Raging Bull (1980)

USA
directed by: Martin Scorsese
written by: Paul Schrader, Peter Savage, Martin Mardik + Jake LaMotta (book)
starring: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci
seen on 24th March, 2019

Well, that's two hours of my life I'm never getting back. They can try to beautify it all they want but it still is a garbage film about garbage people. I don't even care about what happens in the foreground, because the background is them treating women like some inferior entity and that, for me, is the real tragedy of this story. And besides not knowing why would anyone think that everybody needs to hear the voice of this "man" I got a migraine from listening to all those never-ending dialogues without absolutely any meaning. Nothing. Nada.

Laura (1944)

USA
directed by: Otto Preminger
written by: Jay Dratler
starring: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson
seen on 15th March, 2019

Damn, I didn't know that Vincent Price used to play tall thick manly yet wimpish Adonises when he was younger. And who would have thought he would be so gosh darn good at it. This was a very pleasant film, it was incredibly easy to listen to charismatic and accurate actors and go with them wherever they went without even realising how much film time has already passed.

The biggest plus for me is how grounded everybody was, nobody was overacting or trying to create "drama". This results in the film feeling really modern and timeless. I mean, look at Clifton Webb for example, the way his performance morphs ever so slightly, almost inconspicuously and internally into a masterpiece gorgeous to behold is simply stunnig, and that could be said about all five of the main actors, more or less. Judith Anderson, for example, appears only for a couple of scenes, but she manages to leave a great impression indeed.

I would have liked it, for me to be perfectly satisfied, for Mark McPherson to return to the apartment one minute too late, but that's almost a spoiled demand. But wouldn't that be something, huh.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

USA
directed by: Lewis Milestone
written by: George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson + Erich Maria Remarque (book)
starring: Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, Ben Alexander
seen on 13th March, 2019

Okay, I'm going to say it: All this film's missing to basically be Full Metal Jacket (my personal war favourite) is Surfin' Bird and Vincent D'Onofrio. (And fifty seven years of film-making advancement, but I consider that a minor detail.)

The trench war portrayed here is so real and palpable it makes my skin crawl. Sometimes I have a problem with the way screenwriters adapt a literary story arc into a film one, but this film is not the case. This uncertain constant move forward with the possibility of it being a circle with a lot of dead ends and the characters being in focus and bearing the message on their shoulders works perfectly and does the silver screen super justice. "The boots" is one great example for all, but I am a hundred percent fan nonetheless.

A Star Is Born (2018)

USA
directed by: Bradley Cooper
written by: Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters +Moss Hart (original screenplay), John Gregory Dunne (original screenplay), Joan Didion (original screenplay), Frank Pierson (original screenplay)
starring: Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliott
seen on 6th March, 2019

People like Bradley Cooper, if I may judge him based on this debut, should be mandated by law to not make films longer than 100 minutes. That would make him to really think about what is important to see and what is just unbearable baggage that drags the story down. Perhaps then some subject matter would make an appearance, because we know there is something deeper in this story, it's just impossible to see it in this iteration.

Secondly, people like Bradley Cooper could, from time to time, admit to themselves that their acting abilities are not up to par to play a character with this kind of complexity. It's nice that he spent a year lerning how to play a guitar in a basement with the son of Willie Nelson, but who cares how he plays the guitar if his acting performance does not show any kind of progress during the frickin 136 minutes and his character stays the same the entire time.

Also, my ears and eyes started bleeding from those music and dance numbers. The reason for this might be that I usually do not come in contact with this kind of music, or perhapse because they really made sure to made Ally's music as shallow and superficial as possible. One of the songs starts with the words "Why do you look so good in those jeans?" Wtf, is that character supposed to be nineteen years old or what? If they even made that the source of friction in between them, that she makes shittier and shittier music to stay famous, but oh no, during the argument he rather barks at her that she's ugly.