Filmmaniak

Stir of Echoes very much resembles a Stephen King thriller with horror elements, regardless of its striking similarity to The Shining (and The Sixth Sense from the same year), so in retrospect it makes sense that Koepp got the opportunity to direct an adaptation of King’s Secret Window a few years later. The story is actually trivial, unlike the narrative structure, which intentionally throws viewers into a state of confusion as to how the main protagonist feels as he has newly gained psychic abilities. All the way up to the climax, it is unclear which of his visions are echoes of the past, which are glimpses of the future, why the ghost appears to him and what it wants from him. The film has a solid atmosphere and it is sufficiently effective as a ghost story, and everything in it fits together nicely. The hypnotic scene with an empty cinema is excellent. Nevertheless, everything revolving around the topic of a gradually deepening marital crisis comes across as artificial and contrived. As time passes, the lapses in logic pile up and some promising motifs are only hinted at and remain unused. Like the work with suspense, the actors are not particularly dazzling. Seen 25 years after its release, Stir of Echoes has aged only minimally in the intervening years.

Full of screenwriting/dramaturgical weaknesses, Immaculate is a mostly consumable horror B-movie that, given the number of holes in the rather incoherent plot, apparently suffered major labour pains during its inception, just as its main protagonist did. However, there are two factors that give rise to a certain degree of entertainment value. The first is the narrative twists in the story, which is divided into thirds in line with the number of trimesters in a pregnancy, through which the film gradually transforms from offering hints of ghost horror to sectarian/satanic horror and then to a spectacularly brutal exploitation (or rather nunsploitation) slasher flick in which traditional religious objects are used as lethal weapons. The other factor is the extreme similarity of Immaculate to the better-written and filmed horror movie The First Omen from the same year, which starts with an identical initial situation (a young American novice travels to Italy to serve God and miraculously becomes pregnant). Immaculate shares with that film a lot of other plot and thematic elements, but only until roughly the midpoint, because it then becomes the perfect antithesis to The First Omen in the second half, not only with respect to the work with the Christ and Antichrist characters, but also with respect to the contradictory behaviour of the main characters. Otherwise, it offers what seems to be the established standard in recent horror movies featuring nuns, with expansive cloisters, hospices and orphanages enhanced with adjoining cellars, attics, vaults, catacombs and other forbidden places.

In the Land of Brothers is made up of three loosely connected stories set in different decades and inspired by the lives of actual people, specifically Afghans living in neighbouring Iran, which never accepted them as equal citizens. We see the injustices and tragic events experienced by the migrants and their descendants from the perspective of a student forced into conscripted labour, a maid trying to conceal her husband’s death from her employers, who hired the couple illegally, and parents learning of the death of their son, who had gone behind their backs to enlist in the army. This powerful and sharply directed drama is driven by the realistic acting performances, well-thought-out picture compositions and the forcefulness and gravity of the situations depicted. Conversely, what seems slightly problematic is the interconnecting of the three stories through the characters’ compulsion to hide their problems from others, which is not always sufficiently legitimised through their motivations.

A leaving exam failed because of a minor detail turns into a nationwide issue in which the personal failure of a single student gets blown up into a general debate about national pride in Hungary’s polarised society, in which the two opposing sides are represented by the teacher of the affected student and the student’s father. This slightly satirical drama is told from one day to the next in several storylines that alternate between the perspectives of the characters involved, resulting in the changing content of some scenes depending on the given character’s subjective point of view – ultimately, however, this doesn’t have any effect on the course of the film or its outcome. This realistically conceived and solidly written film lacks greater cohesiveness and focus, the overly divergent plot rubs up against a number of other marginal themes that serve only for developing the characters (the empty high-school romance, problems with a colleague at the father’s workplace, the personal and professional conversations of a young journalist...) and are more or less unrelated to the central leaving-exam affair. Because of that, the exposition alone is stretched out to almost an hour and, given how little actually happens in it, the film ultimately doesn’t justify its long runtime.

A punkishly subversive anti-portrait of oneself. An editing narrative experiment that will probably be enjoyed by the director's fans and those who have some experience with his work, or at least lovers of differentness and distinctive filmmaking forms. It’s unlikely that anyone else will even come across it and, if they do, they will find that it borders on the unwatchable, despite its modest runtime.

A feminist bodybuilding story with dirty 1980s stylisation that deals with faith in one’s own body, the pursuit of the American Dream, toxic family relationships and the destructive power of love. The film connects various situations – a sweaty lesbian romance set in a gym, a redneck family gangster flick and a hallucinogenic steroid delirium bordering on body horror – but it is only half convincing in all of them. The characters and their motivations thus get lost in the accumulating bloody twists and continuously intensifying bizarre scenes.

A superbly filmed, masterfully written and precisely acted requiem for fading family ties in five chapters and an epilogue, in which the complex characters take a non-trivial approach to dealing with their relationships with each other and the complicated problems associated with work, illnesses, childcare and various forms of dying in all of the complexity that life brings. The sophisticatedly constructed narrative changes perspective with each chapter, expanding the content of the overall situation and additionally enriching earlier events with new details and meanings. Dying is a brilliant work about the key influences on the formation of one’s personality and various ways of processing mental anguish, as well as about empathy and mutual understanding. A lot of its scenes, including several musical numbers, are worth remembering. Bravo.

MaXXXine is the weakest part of Ti West’s horror trilogy, but as a tribute to the dirty, bloody slasher B-movies of the 1980s, it is a truly delicious treat in terms of its audio-visual aspect. The film skilfully plays with the period stylisation (VHS rental shop, practical gore effects) and the dream-factory setting (the plot is set in Hollywood and Universal’s film sets), as well as with numerous references to other horror movies and quotes of motifs and clichés corresponding to the genre. However, the script lacks the sophistication of the second part of the trilogy and is qualitatively more like those goofy old horror trash flicks to which it spectacularly pays homage.

This Indian social drama does not conceal its director’s documentarian roots and thus greatly benefits from realism and authenticity, whether that refers to the depiction of the individual settings, the acting or the stories of the three women – nurses – whose friendship and togetherness give them strength in dealing with their personal problems, which they are not able to resolve on their own due to the social norms of their country. One is burdened by loneliness and longing for her husband, who has been working abroad for a long time, the second woman’s life is complicated by the building authority, and the third is faced with the prejudice of the people around her because of her relationship with a young Muslim. However, the narrative has a very slow pace and the situation of the three protagonists does not develop much following the introductory exposition. The sudden change of location two-thirds of the way through the film is certainly refreshing. Conversely, the inclusion of one magical-realistic scene near the end of the film is detrimental. Otherwise, this purely festival-oriented and sensitively made spectacle is rather pleasant and modest.

This very quiet and intimate drama tells the story of a talented sixteen-year-old tennis player with a secret that she suppresses inside herself and struggles with, even though everyone empathetically offers her a helping hand. The film never says anything specific and only sporadically and cautiously offers hints, while it is difficult to get to know the protagonist and the plot is basically ordinary and unexciting. The theme of dealing with trauma is rendered almost too sensitively and subtly. Because of that, the film is rather more appealing due to its realistic depiction of the world of future professional athletes as seen from the perspective of a taciturn teenage girl.