Reviews

Netflix afford a unique experience: to see what a graduation project might look like if it was given a feature-length budget. At least I really hope Scott Washa has a rich uncle working working for the network, because this is hands down one of the worst scenarios I've seen in recent years, with literally more holes than cheese. It strings clichés like penne rigate on a necklace, and look at us searchingly hoping for approval.

The fights are also thoroughly substandard, at once unoriginal (w/ extinguisher, w/chains, w/ car door, etc.) and poorly choregraphed. The acting bad (is Beckinsale's perpetually startled face the result of a nonsensical script or of botched lip surgery?) but it is wholly eclipsed by the steady stream of embarrassing edgy one-liners. The sets are just as kitsch, with neon-lit sex scenes and a brutalist villain tower, while the music and the costumes stand out for being merely unremarkable--rather than terrible like everything else.

Probably about a decade ago, I remember watching Adam's Apples while visiting friends in Denmark. My host had somewhat more conventional taste than mine (or at least thought she did), and was evidently delighted to have unearthed something likely to impress me: Anders Thomas Jensen, I was told, was *weird* (I'm still unclear what that means). But today, the only thing I remember about Adam's Apples is that there was nothing memorable in it.

As I keep hearing about ATJ and how fearless and inventive he is, I thought I ought to give it another spin. Hence Riders of Justice. But I am sorry to report that I was right ten years ago.

This is run-of-the-mill action comedy. Not terrible, to be sure: it's competently filmed, the script has its moments, and the characterisation successfully tread a thin line between the burlesque and the treacly. Mikkelsen offers a surprisingly convincing gruffy, PTSD'd action-hero, while the teen daughter is competently acted and even competently written.

However there is nothing remarkable, risky, *weird* or particularly 'European' about this film: it is a tale of nerdy underdogs and damaged dad taking on an evil biker gang. Sprinkled with a bit of pop psych advice on grieving and parenting. That's it. A story we've heard again and again in US films over the past ten years. And aside from a few moments of fantasy (i.e. Lennart's trauma) Jensen plays it all very, very safe.

In short don't go in there expecting the new Aki Kaurismäki. This is Euro-cinema light, sugar and caffeine free. It will keep you entertained for two hours, but it's nothing to write home about. Upon visiting once again the same Danish friend, who ten years ago had introduced me to *weird* Jensen, I had her watch Asteroid City. She had never heard of Wes Anderson. She did not find it *weird*. She did not find it good either. In fact she fell asleep about halfway through. I was disappointed she did not find it *weird*, but perhaps she was getting back at me for being nonplused by Adam's Apple all those years ago.

I am not a big Suicide Squad fan, but this feels like a budget version of Suicide Squad: the same kind of interchangeable plot dressed with a little edgy-teen humour to make it look 'adult'. A very vague 'you-go-girl' varnish has been added, but the toothless result look less like a Bikini Kill music video filmed by Tarantino, than like a Sheryl Sandberg instructional styled by Lady Gaga.

Despite some good ideas (i.e. Roller-skates car chase) the action scenes are not particularly convincing, in part because the choreography is uninventive, but mostly because the acting is subpar. This problem reaches beyond the stunts however: the kid is great, but the rest of the 'Birds of Prey' are too generic for anyone to care. Largely, this is because Robbie/Quinn monopolises so much of the screen time. The villains are forgettable (which is OK for the type of 'street-level' super antics the film goes for) but all in all there are few memorable scenes, characters or dialogue lines in the whole flick.

This is unfortunate because Quinn herself has potential (in fact the animated Harley Quinn series is pretty much what this film tried and failed to be. But this falls short of both being the live action equivalent, and of developing a introducing roster of compelling DC female characters.

Once upon a time, fantasy movies--to say nothing of serials--were all terrible. All of them. Best case scenario you'd get Willow, worst case scenario you'd end up with Dungeons & Dragons (the first one!) But since this epoch of darkness, geek culture has grown from an insignificant market segment to the millennials' lowest common denominator. We have therefore been blessed with some fine fantasy cinema (i.e. LotR) and some excellent fantasy television (GoT, mostly). In this new era, pimpled power-fantasies have receded to make room for intricate and demanding political maneuvers, chainmail bikinis have (mostly) disappeared in favour of careful and thoughtful worldbuilding, while shazam-style wizardry tend to take the back-seat, more of a mood-builder than a plot-device.

Enters The Witcher. I came to this series quite late, because there seemed to be *too much magic* for my taste (unless the magic of your fantasy world is made into a system, I still think magic is 8 out of 10 times a lazy plot-hole filler). What little I'd seen of it, while slick and well produced, did not exactly ooze complexity or originality. I've now seen most of it and I must admit I was wrong: The scenario, as taken from the books, is complex and intricate. The world-building is subtle and the forces at play are both credible and well-defined. There is some great plotting going on (although unfortunately the protagonists tend to be 'pawns' rather than actors of those machinations, which is far easier to pull off). The production is lavish, with fine CGI and great attention given to detailed sets and costumes (although neither of those are particularly original or memorable). The action is well performed and well directed, and Geralt in particular is a convincing swordsman, with a style all his own.

The main problem for me was the writing: while the rhythm is good and sustained, the dialogues are--often--very bad. This would not be so embarrassing if the writers were not convinced they had profound and life-changing revelations wisdom to impart to their audience. Many a semi-philosophical banality declared with great earnestness by Geralt or some other poor soul made me cringe very hard. This problem is compounded by some very uneven acting: none is egregiously bad, but while some secondary characters are well acted (i.e. Calanthe) many of the main characters are simply disappointing: Cavill (Geralt) is very one-dimensional (as, admittedly, the dialogues and perhaps the story demands), while Chalotra (Yennefer) is simply unbearable. Batey (Jaskier) struggles to climb out of the comedic hole he dug himself, and Freya Allan (Ciri) never shows the charisma or power we'd expect from her character. This is not entirely the actors fault: to a large extent it should be blamed on lackluster dialogues. Some puzzling make-up decision do not help (Ciri sometimes looks like a chavette coming out of Sephora).

The poverty of the dialogues and some rather heavy-handed attempts at romance/erotica ultimately leaves me with a 'cheap' feeling: this falls short of the standards of Game of Throne, which is perhaps an unfair, but certainly an inevitable, comparison to make. Had I watched this a decade ago, I would probably have been dazzled. But right now it seems often a bit tacky, falling short of its own pretensions. For all this it is an enjoyable experience and I will gladly watch some more if more is made.

This does not sound very promising on paper: character-driven thriller about a pair of priests investigating alleged miracles in rural Mexico. But those two priests are multidimensional (the more religious one is trained as a medical doctor, the more skeptical one as a canon lawyer) and their interactions are snappy and mostly heartfelt. The rest of the cast is largely unremarkable but this 'dynamic duo' and a fairly tight plot, without frills or holes, manages to keep us interested. Said plot is nothing to write home about, but gives them time to shine and packs a few twists and turns. Unfortunately, once fully revealed it seems a little overstretched and the last two episodes are bogged down with Latino melodrama (lots of tears and handwringing, poorly acted dilemmas, perpetual dramatic music, etc.) On the whole it is a decent piece of television, and a relatively nuanced (if not terribly accurate) depiction of Catholicism.

This is a great setting, unique, reflexive, layered and full of potential. Unfortunately, the scenario which unfolds therein is irremediably generic: your average YA coming of age, dealing with the same ultra-stereotypical insecurities, family issues and non-descript political awakening as hundreds of other movies released this year.

The production is alert and ambitious, probably a little too much (the outtakes would have deserved more grit). The metalepsis at the core of the setting interestingly (and innovatively) includes the sound-design, although the end result is mostly forgettable. The acting is rather uneven, although an indulgent spectator will find this fitting with the story. All in all the only real problem are the scenario and script, which are hopelessly bland and lacking wit.

YA is a German sickness, and no one seems to care. I suspect those days you probably can't get a film funded unless it stars an awkward teen in the main role, and strings some grand but empty gestures at 'empathy' and 'solidarity'. Mind you, I am largely in agreement with those sentiments, but their completely generic treatment in commercial TV (mis)use them rather than serve them. And what we end up with, instead of being Snowpiercer-meet-Charlie Kaufmann, is yet another Harry Potter-meet-1984.

Yet another remarkable Polish, grim-n-gritty cosmicized thriller. What's cosmicized thriller, I hear you ask? Well, it's those conspicuously dark and adult thrillers that used Lovercraft-style ('cosmic horror') tropes to represent the interior life of their protagonists. Think True Detective first season, or the fine Polish series Kruk.

That's more or less what Binded by the Lights sets out to do: a few days in the life of a drug dealer as the.vice tightens. But to a large extent, this is just an excuse for a series of excellent vignettes exploring the different milieu which buy their coke (because it's all coke) from our protagonist Kuba.

You get a dazzling portrait of Polish gangsta rap, half terrifying and half laughable. You get stunning techno nightclub scenes (with not a single shot using bisexual lighting, thank god!) You get dingy Russian restaurants, crime-fueled nouveau riche weddings, singing Vietnamese tailors, and much more. All this is beautifully shot, flawlessly acted by a cast of memorable faces and a remarkable soundtrack, ranging from piano sonatas to dark and hard minimal techno, via mainstream and alternative hiphop and what I imagine to be Polish turbopop. But perhaps the greatest achievement here is the writing, specifically the dialogue, which are always tense and terse, full of flavour and rousing, but remain credible throughout, which is a rare feat in crime films. Special mention to the subtitlers who did a great job btw.

My only complaint is that the second half is not quite as good as the first three our four episodes. Mind you, it's still very good, but as we get more tied up in the plot the directors indulge less of those little vignettes where Kuba really shone. Yet the plot is tight and everything comes together in the last couple of episodes, with long awaited reckonings and moral dilemmas, so I can't complain much!

Don't let the (rather generic) plot description and pink-lit poster dissuade you, this is very much worth your time! You'll thank me late.

Animation can be so wonderful. To make it wonderful is pretty labour-intensive, but even crappy animation takes some pretty hard work. Why is it then that Japan can churn so many crappy, superficial and formulaic anime every year, I do not know. There are a few exceptions, though: one guy who never disappoints is Masaaki Yuasa. I just love his artwork (think Egon Schiele meet Bill Plympton), and his stories often strike the perfect balance between genre-tropes, heartfelt character-studies and sheer madness (Kemonozume will forever remain with me).

My Year of Dicks is not--a priori--something that should appeal to me: I'm usually warry of profanities in titles (not because I'm a prude but because it's so often a cheap marketing gimmick). Like so many people I have grown tired of coming-of-age stories (all too often an excuse for indulging the grown-ups' taste for soapy tropes). I'm also an old-ish dude, and worst of all, I don't remember my teenage years well enough to feel any kind nostalgia about them.

And yet as soon as I saw the art style, which echoes with the aforementioned Masaaki Yuasa, I knew I had to give this a spin! I was not disappointed: understated hand-drawn characters with great body-language, abstract and expressive framing and some expressionistic angles, a variety of colouring techniques, a bit of montage, some bravura bodily distortion, this is one of the best animation work I've seen in a long while! Even the 90s aesthetics, whose ubiquity typically annoys me, felt 'right' (yes, I know, a great many things annoy me. The MYoD team should make a music video for that other 90s-themed project I tolerate, 1000gecs.)

But what's even more incredible, is that all this wonderful animation fits perfectly with a story, that is funny, moving, introspective, honest, and short (without being too short). The voice acting is spot on, the rhythm is good an the writing is mostly unobtrusive but also has its moments ('the talk' with 'the dad'). Perhaps there was a few too many facile subculture references for my taste (did we really need *both* a goth skater *and* a straight-edge?) But perhaps that's what life really was in the nineties? And really this is a tiny speck that I had to rake my brain to come up with. If you have not watched MYoD yet, you should drop everything and go see it now.

This is one of those projects that starts from a bad intention, but is redeemed by a large budget and a competent production team: the world-building and the story are mediocre but both look great, the writing is tepid but is delivered by some competent actors... I salute the efforts of the production team (costumes, SFX and sets or locations are all remarkable) but I feel they would be better employed turning out less generic stories.

Said story is largely an embarrassing pile of reheated clichés: sword-wielding new age nuns, post-apocalyptic cabarets in the Paris catacombs, Peter Pan vs Captain Tarasque, Last-of-Us-style Chosen One, etc. Etc. Most embarrassing perhaps are the geopolitics of Zombie France: Fascist secularists at war with an interfaith resistance organized around the concept of 'hope'. If you know anything about the today much debated concept of world religions (or about Ernst Bloch) this will make you cringe very hard. On the whole, this is the sort of ham-fisted setting you'd expect from teenage-marketed animes or videogames: a kitschy re-hash of French culture as pictured in American films, instantly recognizable to anyone whose never set foot there, but utterly banal and artificial for anyone who has.

The acting is also quite uneven, with some characters (i.e. Laurent) being ill-served by mediocre dialogues, most of it performed in French but evidently not written by a native speaker. Others, like Dixon himself or Isabelle, are both acted and written well enough. Many of the secondary characters are flat and manichean (i.e. Fallou), and many of them seem named by a first year student of French Lit (i.e. Genet... the Sauvignon gang and the Baudelaire Orphans to turn up any time).

With all those caveats it's actually quite watchable: the rhythm is good, the fight scenes are well choregraphed, the costumes and sets are all thoughtful and detailed, and there are even occasional moments of bravery in the filming. It's not very good, in fact keeping in mind the size of its budget it is very far from what it could have been.

Signe Larsen, a young woman from relatively modest stock--working in a flower shop--discovers she was adopted and that her real family is a rich and decadent lot, fighting over the titular legacy of her recently deceased mother.

This sounds like a terribly worn out premise, but the writers actually succeed in transfiguring it by carefully avoiding the vulgar clichés we might expect: this is 'Dallas' alright, but 'Dallas' for the XXist century. The dead mother was not an oil magnate but a conceptual artist, the brothers and sisters are curators, lawyers and beach bums, all rather bohemian in their own privileged way. In place of gold watches and sports cars, we have conspicuous displays of cultural capitals (art books, white cubes and subdued designer dresses.) Behind this urbane and cultured façade, however, J. R. has nothing on any of them: Gro the curator dress her self-interest as selfless dedication to her mother's memory, Emil's devil-may-care altruism is fueled by privilege and self-indulgence, Thomas is perpetually escaping from his responsibility, and Frederik alone wears his stony heart on his sleeve.

The result is a populist Cinderella: Signe stands for honest work and common sense. Her decadent siblings, with their high-falutin modern culture and high-minded hypocrisy, are the fabled 'cosmopolitan elite'. But Avringerne is not *genuinely* populist: it is too well written, too well acted, too tastefully produced to appeal to the little man. Signe, pure as a lamb, perpetually turning the other cheek, is also the least compelling of the characters. This is a populist tale not for the little man but for the self-hating cosmopolitan elite.

The result is compelling: acutely observed, well cast, restrained and mostly credible. It does suffer from the failings of its soap opera model: as the episode count rises, the accumulation of peripeteia inevitably becomes less and less believable, so that by the end of the first season the viewer is already hard-pressed to suspend disbelief. By the end of the second, it has all become quite strained and repetitive. One wishes the writers had spread out their episode in time, avoiding thereby the artificiality of perpetual emergency and giving their characters time to grow.

This is the living proof we can still make good cop shows today: Most episodes are well paced, and few if any scene feel unnecessary. The scenario for each season is complex, built around very different mysteries and a cast of colourful but credible secondary characters. It is neither soapy nor trying to be funny, it keeps the 'spiritual' element in the distant background, it does not reinvent the genre but does a great job of projecting it in its unusual setting: the reservation is a living and concrete community, with its insiders and outsiders, its institutions and traditions. We get a strong sense of couleur locale without ever feeling on a guided tour. Politics and history are broached sensitively without being preachy, and I (a European who, as far as I know, never met a native American) feel after two seasons like I have some minimal sense of Indian daily life in the seventies, and an emotional connection to the dilemmas and ambivalences of Indian identity. Doubtlessly it is primarily because of the fine writing (terse and occasionally punchy) and the excellent cast (Joe, Bernadette and Chee are all remarkably acted).

More and more series from Central and Eastern Europe reach our Western shores: most of the time it's either Cold War spy thrillers or gritty crime tales. Not all of it is very good or very original, but on the whole I've had a few good surprises. Kruk sets out to do the grimdark cop thriller à la True Detective but went far beyond my expectations. It is certainly dark: an exceptionally twisted plot, a brutal realism with loads of death and maiming, all against the background of child abuse in the Polish Wild-East. But it also builds its characters masterfully so that grit never feels gratuitous or out of place (special mention for Kaponow and the Babushka). To depict trauma, which is central to its central protagonist, it employs a very worn out trope (Slawek) but manages to walk the (very thin) line between grotesque and tragic, using this character to bring rhythm rather than explanatory dialogues. This remarkable characterization, subdued and original, poignant without being melodramatic, is achieved thanks to sparse and tight dialogues, but mostly thanks to an outstanding casts (all of them unknown to me) who have the perfect look and deliver memorable performances.

In Germany you pay 18 euros a month in tax--automatically, whether you own a TV or not--to fund public television services. In the UK, I used to pay 150 pounds a year for the same thing: roughly the same amount. Why is it, then, that German TV (or at least, German serials) is so bad? Try googling that question, and you will see we are many pondering this issue.

Among the credible answers I have noted the lack of a foreign market for German shows, comparable to that which French or English-language television can count on. Fair enough: few countries have German as a second language, and those that do--Central and South-Eastern Europe for the most part--generally also speak English quite well.

Another such ground is the demographics: German TV, as will be clear to anyone who ever watched it, is largely geared toward middle-aged and senior spectators. Hence the inane amount of Krimi and police procedurals, which decade after decade continue to pollute the German airwaves. Tatort and its numberless spinoffs are stuck in the late-70s /early-80s, following a model devoid of suspense, of action and most of all, of originality.

Nonetheless, I need to improve my German, so I am constantly scouring the listings to find something I might watch in German. Commissario Laurenti caught my attention because it is set in Trieste, that charming enclave on the Adriatic Sea where German, Italian and Slavic culture overlap. This region and the surrounding Karst have a fascinating and complex history, which could make for a great backdrop for a Krimi. It even seems that the books on which this serial is based, make a fine use of this setting.

Unfortunately the Germans did it again: they made a terrible, truly terrible mess of it all. The plot itself is interesting enough (hence my remark on the original books, which I have not read) but the whole TV-series reduces this plot to a background or an excuse for what is, first and foremost, a soap opera so ridden with 80s clichés, with wooden and monolithic characters, with mediocre camera-work and nausea-inducing dialogues that I had to pause the first episode several times because I cringed too hard.

The palm goes to Ziva Ravno, who, while acted well enough (compared to. Proteo or Bruna Marasi for example), is accompanied each time she shows up on screen by a soft-jazz soundtrack worthy of the Emmanuelle series, meant to clarify that the titular Laurenti has the hots for her. Anywhere else in Europe, such ham-fisted filming would be a parody, but not here: I don't think there is even a trace of irony. This is the sort of things my late grand-parents would have watched and enjoy. My mother, now in her seventies, would already recognise this for the embarassement that it is.

As the mother-daughter psychological horror becomes a genre of its own, the bar for a film to be interesting while surfing that wave is inevitably raised. Run Rabbit Run takes a run-up but hit the bar squarely, and will only appeal to dedicated fans of its formula or to lenient judges. The music and camera work are occasionally interesting, the casting is good and the acting is decent, but unfortunately not good enough to redeem a thoroughly reheated scenario and an indulgent script. What is most interesting is perhaps the vicious satisfaction which the director takes in depicting the collision of 'childcentric' (millennial) educational ideas, with the infuriating resilience of a spoiled and perverted child. But that's hardly enough to keep you entertained for 1h40.

I'm a sucker for the 'reverse conspiracy' narrative: the one where it is not (or not only) the heroes who get caught in a complex and far-reaching plot, but where they themselves manipulate, plan and fake things. I like it because, like a whodunnit, it invites us to measure our wits to those of the characters and the author. This is precisely what Rabbit Hole sets out to provide: but while this 'reverse' aspect is used for a few decent twists, it is mared by the lazy (but today, unfortunately, customary) flash-back based narration, which 'dumbs down' both the writing and the watching. In addition the writing itself is frankly mediocre, full of idiotic decisions, blatant infodumps and melodramatic dialogues.

John Weir is not a memorable character but he is competently acted and written. The real problem is his gallery of insufferable side-kicks: the genial abducted accountant doubling as a scoobydoo-grade comedy routine; The accidentally tangled-in girl-next-door (a girly trope to broaden the target audience of big-bucks action-thriller like The Old Man and The Night Agent); and Ben Wilson, whose inane scheming serves no purpose whatsoever, other than delaying resolution and building cheap tension; The inevitable sympathetic/hostile cop with her inevitable sulky teenage;

It's unfortunate that the script indulge in such basic clichés and lacks the discipline to stick with its plot, because there are some good ideas in there too.

I came to this with pretty low expectations: while I enjoy some 'classic' West-African cinema, Nollywood tend to horrify me, often taking the worse of Western cinema and leaving the out the good bits.

It is far from perfect: a lot of the secondary and some of the primary characters are acted by amateurs. The fight scenes, while sometimes well choregraphed, are evidently mimed (the lack of sync between the moves and sound effects being partly to blame). The camera work is unobtrusive and we are served some inevitable clichés (i.e. Pink-and-blue-lighting in the club scenes), and the soundtrack is a bit homogenous for my taste But the scenario actually holds its own pretty well, offering a gritty and credible slice of Nigerian street-life and a classic 'rise of the foot-soldier' narrative. Most of the characters are morally ambiguous and while it remains fairly predictable, we are far from the simplistic Manicheism of Nollywood. While the dialogues could have been better, all of the main characters are credible, and the writing for the most part successfully walk the fine line between the grotesque and the spectacular, which most crime-stories have to tread.

HBO rarely goes wrong, and even when it does, they do not venture too far down this path. Sharp Object is a bit of a wrong turn: it is acted well enough and well filmed, and as 'Main Road thrillers' go it has an interesting plot. Unfortunately it is weighed down by indulgent choices. For example, the music: Camille's rock n roll taste is foregrounded, but neither the selection nor its presence in the plot really manage to flesh out her character on this basis. Another example: Your usual small-town sets (diner, church, dive bar, etc.) are reworked a little but not enough to free them from their aura of cliché.

The main problem however is the script. Camille is a hard character to like--that's alright, a good film need not put butterfly in our tummies--but she is also a difficult character to believe--which is more of a problem: her alcoholism is displayed on screen at every turn (once or twice would have sufficed to make the point); the theme of self-harm is similarly put on display, but oscillates between a vice, a medical condition or a consequence a trauma (as with other films treating of the subject, I cannot help but find it is here 'glamourised'); Finally Camille is hinted at as a self-made intellectual, but the script has nothing to show to back such claims, except her journo job.

Curry (her fatherly employer) has to remind us a few time that she is very bright and promising, because nothing in her deeds or words indicates that she rose far above the cheerleaders she left behind. Camille appear passive, helplessly shoved to one side and another, without ever showing any initiative. There are certainly people like that in life, but I don't feel this is what the writers had in mind for her. Her relation to her abusive family--obviously a core element of the story--is I think quite poorly handled.

Adora is so horrible even her name is insufferable: vulgar, superficial, aspirational, she feels like a one-dimensional caricature of small-town socialite. Her personality, alternating between theatrical self-pity, manipulative cruelty and provincial self-importance is pretty hard to take seriously. Camille's willingness to put up with her nonsense, for no discernable reason, seems to place her in the same bag as her stepdad: a mixture of money-grabbing opportunists and of forbearing fools.

Amma, Adora's daughter and Camille's half-sister, is similarly unconvincing. No good reason is given in the series for a grown woman like Camille to take any interest in her. Perhaps she is projecting her much-idealised dead sister (Marian) onto her living half-sister, but if this is the case the script fails to show it. Instead Amma's appeal sole appeal is her oversexed teen self-confidence. Nabokov notwithstanding, this is a trap only dense and/or superficial people fall for, which does not help giving Camille any intellectual credibility.

This is a one of a kind movie, and yet I couldn't help myself but be reminded of True Detective: the jumpy editing and the looming sound, the terse but intense dialogues, even the perverse take on bromance or the full-frontal treatment of child abuse. I'm not saying The Stranger is imitating Pizzolatto--or anything else for that matter--just that the same restraint, keen observation and whole-hearted dedication to bring out the terrible yet unspectacular grimness of human cruelty is at work, drawing some of the same conclusions. The Australian setting, something that never captured my imagination before, is powerfully reduced to the monotony of decaying urban sprawls and arid outback, financially and culturally impoverished, dominated everywhere by the automobile. Residential areas seem like bootleg US suburbs and everyone, whether or not lying, seems raw and hopeless. The boringly familiar tropes of procedural are all there: conflicts between jurisdictions, undercover slippage, the gap between ascertained guilt and evidenced conviction, etc. But they are reduced to their bare bones, keeping only the most powerful or profound moments. The outstanding writing is well served by an excellent cast, Sean Harris and Allan Dukes being imo particularly memorable.

Predictable plot-twists, generic telefilm villains, patriotic fuzzy feelings, a cast of helpless and dense female characters, a cast of monolithic and generic male ones. Everything is shiny, everyone is important and the clock is ticking all the time. Some characters are egregiously bad--SyFy kinda bad--and Sarah Desjardin is perhaps the worse of them all. Action scenes, car chases and fist fights are doubtlessly the most successful moments, so this is not the worse series out there, but this is not 'good' by any standard: I watched it to the end, but I usually checked my phone at least twice per episode, which is never a good sign (I only do so when I am bored).

There's something inherently anachronistic, repressed and disturbing to the idea of 'feminity' in our supposedly post-gender cultures. We've seen a number of outstanding 'independent' horror films exploring this theme over the past decade, and I was looking forward to seeing what this might look like away from Anglo-Saxon conventions. Unfortunately it looks like we have reached the point were this new 'genre' is established enough to become formulaic. Huesera is certainly not a bad film: It is well acted (Solián manages to give substance to a thankless character), it is filmed well enough and both costumes and location have character without being distracting. The script is no-nonsense and to the point. In the background there are even some fine pieces of social observation (the couple's very different families, the working class 'witches'). But unfortunately, for the most part, the scenario is a patchwork of worn-out clichés: ye ol' Japanese disarticulated crawling creature, ye ol' helpless middle-class husband, ye ol' serial hallucinations prompting no concrete reaction, and so on. In 'psychological horror' you need either a new idea or a strong and original character to drive your story. Huesera is not original, and Valeria, with her Riot Grrrl mid-life crisis, is neither credible nor likable, with self-pity alone connecting her punk years and her married life. I'll gladly watch another Cervera, because it seems to me she has what it takes to make some great films. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.

I was so excited after watching the pilot: it felt like the freshest thing I'd seen in years. A novel and stimulating subject (the relationship between an upper class gay guy and an asbo single mother). It had enough 'trashiness' to keep things interesting despite the underlying sentimentality. The script was tight and punchy, the acting was mostly good (though I must say Daisy Cooper already lacked range).

Ep. 2 was not as good but I still had hopes. By Ep. 3 it was quite clear the writers first came up with the characters, and that the story was an afterthought. I've just watched Ep. 4 and it's only getting worse: or rather, getting nowhere. Bogged down with unnecessary sidekicks, the main characters fail to acquire complexity and are merely pushed further and further in the direction established in the pilot. Their relation is also rather flat and dialogues lack finesse. It's all around disappointing.

The series was marketed as a 'punk-rock romance' and I think it's quite an apposite description. There are two 'punk rock' areas in London: Camden and Hoxton. The first is full of has been tourists and a few crusties, the second is full of bankers and art school hipsters. Rain Dogs is 'punk rock' the Hoxton way: it's filled with intriguing and colourful character, but ultimately it's all navel-gazing passing itself as rebellion.

The movie take a long time to find its footing: it starts like any other resort film, take a steep turn toward dystopia (I caught myself thinking: 'wouldn't it be nice if Wes Anderson made a Kafka film?'), pulls the handbrake, crosses Cronenberg sr. Territory in reverse, and finishes with 'The Devil's Rejects' but with middle-aged bougees instead of Rob's white trash. That's a great many things, and it could easily have looked disjointed and amateurish, but quality of the acting and the script, as well as the glossy production, manages to make it all hold together (though tbh I am not surprised to see people found it messy: I guess it depend what you focus on).

Skarsgard does well enough, although the character might have called for a wider emotional range. He is credible but does not invite empathy, pushing the movie toward the absurd rather than the psychological. Mia Goth, on the other hand (who seems to be famous, but whom I'd never seen before) pulls off a great performance--brazen, sexy and at times terrifying (i.e. That car hood monologue!) The rest of the cast is on a par with Skarsgard: Coleman seem competent but has no time to shine; Lespert point us to the edge of madness, but never really get close.

There are some bravura shots (that slow looping drone scene at the start!) and the little kaleidoscopic montages interspersed throughout, like the datura-sex scene, are imo unnecessary, but seem those days be required of all movies marketed to teens and tweens. As such, they are actually among the best such abstract exercises I have seen. The soundtrack, understated but highly effective throughout, is doubtlessly to thank.

On the whole, I had no idea what I was watching, and I was very pleasantly surprised--something which lately happens too rarely.

An utterly generic skeleton (Near-Eastern poltergeist, Victorian house, first encounter with spouse's family, etc.) dressed up with a little Jewish folklore. Sets and costumes are decent, and the acting seems OK. But it is ill served by poor writing, resulting in a cast of either clueless (the prego wife, the dad) or detestable (the son and his brother), poor rhythm and a great many visual clichés. To make maximum room for their mediocre creature and its run-of-the-mill jump scares, the few original ideas are left unexploited: the set, a Hasidic funeral parlour, is largely reduced to its mortuary basement, and the rich Jewish folklore only yield here generic pentagrams and shiny crystal necklaces.

Back in the days, when film directors hoped to secure some level of intellectual legitimacy, they had to come up with something new, however absurd or shallow. Because that 'novelty' would suddenly wear out if the film was successful, or die unknown if it was not, every 'edgy' movie had to start anew.

Those were the days before the internet, or at least, before it metastasized. We have since reached the point where self-irony and instant gratification converge, and even 'novelties' no longer need to be new, so long as people pretend to be wooed. Perhaps one day we will find out that history did not end with the fall of the wall, but with John Wick, Neon Demon, or whatever started the present rash of pink-and-blue-neon-lighting.

Does this bisexual lighting has any actual qualities, beyond signifying 'Gen Z' to Gen Zers? Complimentary two-tone lighting has been in use since colour TV was invented (and it was used in painting before that). It's great to suggest off-screen movement or liminal moments. But until 2010s it did not need to call attention to itself as being a film's defining feature. It went unnoticed by most, and was all the more efficient for it. But not bisexual lighting, Oh, no! It does not do 'subtle' or 'understated'. Instead it make grand but non-comital gestures toward futures past, with any political implications safely kept at bay by ironic distance: It looks a bit eighties (offen served with a side of synthwave), a bit futuristic, a bit kitschy, a bit ironic, and a lot of 'I grew up on the internet': a lot of light and fury, signifying nothing.

I would not normally rage against this sort of things: there have probably always been silly fads like those, through with which people can feel special precisely because they do that same thing as everyone else. But is bisexual lighting really still a fad? I mean, in 2018, BBC titled an article 'Is 'bisexual lighting' a new cinematic phenomenon?' Of course, it no longer was (nothing reaches the BBC's culture desk without having been picked up by every single other news source). But man, that was in 2018!! Five years later, we still have a great many TV-series whose main selling point (prominently displayed in trailers and posters) is the presence of pink-and-blue lighting. And there are still people to think that such shows are 'weird', 'original', 'quirky', even 'unique' or 'special'!!! People! Either you've be in a coma for the past ten years, or you are deluding yourself. This is formulaic, lazy and meaningless, the kind of thing we will recall in shame in a couple of decades, the 2010s equivalent of bell-bottoms. I never thought I would say that, but I long for a new fad, any new fad, that could displace bisexual lighting. Because at night, as the wind is howling outside, and I am alone in bed, I am kept awake by the fear that we might be condemned to continue with pink-and-blue-lighting for all eternity.

On a side note: the series itself is passable. There is a nice dose of grit, the lead is affectedly but somewhat endearingly under-acting, and attention was lavished on both sets and cast. The plot is agreeably multicultural, in a Guy Ritchie kinda way. Unfortunately, every shot is three times as long as it should be. That large section of the viewing public who think they enjoy 'contemporary art' because they like Kanye West videos, will also try to claim that Refn is being 'arty' rather than self-indulgent. He is not: he is doing what professionals call 'making the most out of what you've got'. His best ideas are all displayed within the first couple of episodes. After that, the show slowly loses whatever steam it had, and, dragged down by its self-importance, plunges to rock bottom.

For a moment during the credits, I thought 'I wish there were more movies like this': more movies that dare to deal with sentiments away from tried and tested formula, movies that dare to use fantasy to tell genuinely grow up stories, and movies both unapologetically ambitious in their message while remaining modest in their means (in this case: two excellent actors in a room, talking through a fine script). But I think a large part of the pleasure I drew from this, springs precisely from this rarity. So don't make more of those, but do keep on surprising me.

When I say 'modest in its means', I am not completely honest. This is AAA production, and it shows throughout, with start actors, lavish flashbacks and, especially, wonderful special FX (both creatively and technically speaking). But the whole thing is largely a hui clos, and is entirely driven by its charismatic duo. The fairy tale model, in truth, does not leave them all that much room to shine, and both have provided elsewhere more impressive performances, but here they fill the shoes they are given and do it very well.