Goldbeater

The Filipino version of Death Wish introduces Richard Harrison as a self-proclaimed vigilante and avenger, but this time with the added twist that his actions will be used by the mafia for their own purposes. The final five minutes, including the transition into the closing credits, is a sequence of the best and most wtf that C-rated Filipino production has to offer. On top of that, Blood Debts is an absolute masterclass in how to make a film's planked English dubbing incredibly entertaining. Did you think the Italians were masters at that? Wait till you hear the lines the Filipinos throw in!

A carsploitation romp for drive-in cinemas that feels like it was made completely unscripted. Most of the dialogue accompanies random scenes only as voice-over and it kind of goes nowhere. If I was making out in a car in 1968, I guess I wouldn’t care, but watching it with full attention is quite a task.

Okay, we have a nice cave and we have a nice bowling alley. How much of an effective Alien rip-off can we make with that? The answer is, not much. Eurotrash in all its glory, but unlike other Italian parasites, this one is really weak, with a bunch of nonsense and only a few scenes worth seeing. The Blu-ray quality and 2K/4K transfers give these films nowadays a pronounced added value.

The Green Inferno. The movie with the stolen plane on the highway, the resuscitation of the little monkey, the human organ traffickers, the anaconda trapping, the piranha up the ass. What more can I say? Although, thanks mainly to Eli Roth, who borrowed the title for his own horror film, everyone thinks this film is a cannibal horror, it's not at all. It's a pure adventure genre mix of travelogue, action film, comedy and crime. Moreover, the mix is episodic, incoherent, frantically edited and horribly stupid. However, it is also so naive, guileless and pure exploitation (or junglesploitation, if you prefer), which also moves forward so fast and doesn't stop for a second, that I would be downright sorry to give it a below-average rating. For fans of Italian (non-horror) trash, this is a must, for everyone else, enter this jungle movie with a big warning and purely at your own risk.

Oldřich Lipský with his crazy sci-fi comedy The Mystery of the Carpathian Castle should belong not only to the hall of fame of Czech (Czechoslovak) cinema, but rightfully to the world cinema. Excellent period and local stylization, genre spanning and great humour. Michal Dočolomanský, Jan Hartl, Miloš Kopecký and Rudolf Hrušínský have absolutely legendary banter between them. Lipsky's antics never get old.

With films like One Life, it is often difficult to separate the importance of the story from the art of getting it right. Here, however, I don't have much of a problem with that. The film doesn't aim for the easy stuff, it presents things in a complex way, and when it hits the emotional notes with all the force it deserves. Moreover, when Anthony Hopkins' character is confronted with the agonizing truth about the fate of the people he failed to save, he doesn't launch into a heartfelt self-pitying monologue, he doesn't try to cheaply impress the viewer, instead he walks to the window and gazes out at the landscape. Nuance plays a role. Hopkins reaffirms his reputation as one of the finest actors working today, and he's also excellent and captivating, even if he only has half the film at his disposal. And Johnny Flynn ably seconds him. It's just that the Czech actors stick out like a sore thumb at times with their performances. I deliberately put that aside.

Bradley, you're a hell of a talent, but don't push it too hard. It's embarrassing and painful to watch.

The dramatic roles that Adam Sandler has been doing so well so far have brought some rarely successful achievements in his filmography, but Spaceman seems to be the first misstep in this respect. I let it sit in my head for quite a long time, I wanted to go along with it because of the Czech imprint, but unfortunately I can't help it, it just doesn't work. I mean, not at all.

There's not much this film does to show why, at its core, it really should be so important. Instead, it has so much pathos that it borders on the ridiculous.

How much you will like The Iron Claw will probably depend on how far you have set the boundary of when a tragic melodramatic film becomes downright "misery porn". For me, that line was crossed here. In any case, this is otherwise a very well made, acted and (without knowing the actual history) suspenseful film. Holt McCallany should be given more roles.