The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos' movies are not everyone's cup of tea. They are bizarre, shocking and more often than not, very unpleasant. While they always provide a great material for actors to deliver astounding performances I was thrilled to find out The Favourite is the most accessible of his movies. And that turned out to be a correct assessment - though also strange, this film is more a dark comedy than a crazy ride like The Lobster or The Killing of the Sacred Deer.

Aquaman

(spoilers!)

When James Wan, acclaimed and successful director mostly known for his horror films, was asked which movie he wanted to make - The Flash or Aquaman - he decided on Aquaman because the character is "an underdog". And Wan was right - the character was ridiculed for a very long time, with jokes at his expense, appearing most notably in South Park and The Big Bang Theory, becoming the most famous thing about the character.

Well....who's laughing now?

Widows

The more Steve McQueen's movies I watch the more I realize the only film of his I truly liked was Shame. McQueen's has this jarring style which was so evident to me in 12 Years a Slave - in spite of having protagonists in his films he focuses on supporting characters too often and in the result his films completely lose focus. In the end we know a little about all of the characters but we lose sight of out protagonists for long periods of time which is detrimental to the film.

Venom

Well, what do you know? The turd in the wind turns out to be the breath of fresh air.

First Reformed

(spoilers!)

Screaming Sunday - Mandy

Movie rating - 84/100
Plot: A psychodelic tale of a quiet logger named Red (Nicolas Cage) who lives a life of serenity with his wife Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), in their dream cabin in the woods. But when the leader of a deranged cult (Linus Roache, who played Batman's dad in Batman Begins and I cannot stop being shocked by it after seeing Mandy) becomes enamored with Red's wife, he and his people terrorize the couple, leaving Red spiraling into madness.The psychodelic goes full grindhouse as Red, armed with a battle axe and any drugs he can find, goes on a violent rampage, enacting his revenge on the cult in the most gruesome ways.
The heroes: Nicolas Cage forging a battle axe as he is wearing sunglasses and a T-shirt.

The Nun

(spoilers!)

The Nun is the fifth entry in The Conjuring universe and unfortunately it's the biggest disappointment in it yet. While not quite awful as the first Annabelle movie, the film is disjointed, boring and makes very little sense. In truth the only people who should pray for forgiveness here are director Corin Hardy and whoever did the rewrites on the promising script.

Avengers: Infinity War

(spoilers!)

A Quiet Place

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It seems like it's a new tradition in movie world to lavish an undeserved praise all over at least one horror movie a year. As great as The VVitch was it's not exactly the scariest movie since The Exorcist which some of the reviewers were claiming. Then we had It Comes the Night, which is usually winning polls for "what is the worst instance of false marketing in the last few years?" these days. And this year it's A Quiet Place.

Annihilation

You dig in places till your fingers bleed 

Spread the infection, where you spill your seed 

I can't remember what she came here for 

I can't remember much of anything anymore 

 She's gone, she's gone, she's gone away 

She's gone, she's gone, she's gone away 

Away...*

(spoilers!)
Alex's Garland's wonderful new science fiction film Annihilation made headlines this year for quite strange reasons. The studio, Paramount - as in the studio that gave Daren Aronofsky 30 million dollars to make a movie based on a script he wrote after he, presumably, dropped acid and his eyes locked on the copy of the Bible on his bookstand - didn't have much faith in the movie. In the result, they sold the distribution rights for most of the markets to Netflix, forcing people like me to watch it at home instead of on the big cinema screen. The move proved to be misguided - the film opened to great reviews and made 3/4 of its budget in US theatrical distribution only.