GÁSPÁR HEGYI

Filmmaker of the avant-garde movement, theorist and critic of bad cinematography.

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LATEST FILM REVIEWS

Everything Everywhere All at Once

★★☆☆☆

I kind of hate it.

The film keeps applying defibrillator paddles to its exhausted narrative when, in reality, it has no heart to begin with. “EEAAO” is that insufferable child whose haughty parents trot her out in her tap shoes, then watch your face to make sure you register adequate amazement at her Buffalo turns and Bombershays. You can't help but appreciate the kid's skill and preparation — but gawd, how you wish it were over.

★★☆☆☆

The whale

The film turns out to be a silly melodrama that views its protagonist with a loathing it tries to present as empathy.

It isn't a bad film, but it's not that good either, and it's worth discerning and separating, to appreciate what's fat and what's bloated.

Avatar: The Way of Water

★★☆☆☆

Pretty to look at but shallow deep.

The Way of Water feels less like a sequel than it does a refamiliarisation of the world and ideas of the 2009 blockbuster. Simply too many ideas with not enough focus to justify the gigantic runtime.

Luckily for Cameron, it's hard to check your watch while wearing 3D glasses.

★★★☆☆

All Quiet on the Western Front

More grisly and sadistic that any other horror movie made nowadays.

The in-the-trenches tracking shots that Stanley Kubrick crafted for “Paths of Glory” (a movie that culminated in a point that actually made sense, unlike this muddle) are now steady hand-held digital panoramas of exposed viscera and agonized writhing. Filmmakers have arguably lost the plot, turning “War is hell” into a “Can you top this?” competition.

Women Talking

★☆☆☆☆

Missed opportunity.

The film is not capable of reaching its ambitious intentions due to its unsubtle and realist execution.

There are many ways to effectively advance a feminist agenda through cinema. Boring the life out of people so intensely their brains begin leaking out their noses is not one of them.

★☆☆☆☆

Top Gun: Maverick

Military fetishism, a**hole energy, and the suspension of belief usually reserved for latter-day Liam Neeson fight.

Don't be fooled.

Elvis

★☆☆☆☆

Creative failure.

“Wise men say only fools rush in,” Elvis Presley sang. Baz Luhrmann should have taken those words to heart, as almost all he does in Elvis, his new whirlwind of a musical bio-pic, is rush.

★☆☆☆☆

Babylon

Babylon is an easy film to hate.

Chazelle appears to have mistaken his own dexterity for directing. It may also be a box office failure.

The messy attempt to out Fellini is real, a spectacle reduced to tics and gimmicks. Waste of acting talent.

Empire of Light

★☆☆☆☆

A dull historical romance. It isn't even amusing enough to be offensive.

Like Spielberg's “The Fabelmans”, it tries to use nostalgia to develop a meaningful plot. But Sam Mendes lags in this aspect. It feels disjointed like a series of events loosely tied together.

It's hard to fathom just what attracted so many top-tier talents to a project of such torpor.

★★★☆☆

Tár

The colorful rare bird in a monochromatic, conformist and uniform zoo.

We don't give a damn about Lydia Tár or what happens to her, yet Cate Blanchett convincingly breathes life into her world. While it attempts to tackle some pretty hefty issues, its story blurs too many details which does more to obscure any truth than actually reckon with it.

The Fabelmans

★★★☆☆

The Fabelmans may be average and not particularly memorable, but it's intriguing — as to how a cinematic genius got his start. It isn't perfect, there is an amount of lows and the incapacity of stealing your heart away, however, with the way Spielberg imagines and idealizes himself into pure pleonasm, it is working.

★★☆☆☆

The Banshees of Inisherin

A film about men, their stupidity, ambitions and inability to communicate. Well, Kerry Condon might be the helpful key. Notable performances, sure, but many times it’s tragicomedy becomes dull and loses the desired dramatic wellness.

Triangle of Sadness

★☆☆☆☆

Exercise of unbridled misanthropy, the cinema fades into the background.

A painfully blunt satire of the super rich and Instagram celebrity that is rarely entertaining and often annoying, sinking into a cocktail of stereotypical and unfunny characters that only work on the surface.

Would've been better if it had ended nearly 60 minutes in.

CONTACT

@Gáspantgarde