Micro-Reviews 2025

JAN 12, 2025, CineStar Theater
Błażej Jankowiak’s 2024 Diabeł

Błażej Jankowiak’s 2024 Diabeł is a thoroughly enjoyable not-fast-paced-in-good-ways suspense action thriller with a decent script that employs tons of tropes from several genres but keeps close to the characters and is always good for some relatable, idiosyncratic, or just plain funny moments. Toward the end, I more or less lost the plot among multilayered reveals, courtesy of the script putting too many of them into dialog instead of into action on the one hand, and my entirely untrained memory for Polish names on the other. Also, the one-on-one finale feels contrived. But then I do like the denouement, and appreciate the closing title cards about the conditions for veterans in the U.S. and Poland. I’ve never engaged in learning Polish, or any Slavic language, but the (English) subtitles seemed solid. Also, not to forget, a co-starring doggie! And she’s definitely a good girl.

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JAN 11, 2025, Metropol Theater
Magnus von Horn’s 2024 Pigen med nålen (The Girl with the Needle)

Full-length review.

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JAN 09, 2025, Bambi Theater
Scott Beck & Bryan Woods’s 2024 Heretic

The less you know about Scott Beck & Bryan Woods 2024 Heretic before you watch it, the better. I wasn’t interested at first and wanted to watch a different movie, but then there was a heavy snowfall in the area that night, and the theater that showed Heretic was easier to get to. From the trailer I’d seen I’d thought it would be less like a genuine horror movie than a psychological thriller in form of a three-hander chamber play, and that is true for a very good while. Until the midpoint. Then, uh boy. The movie slams both feet on the gas and shows its true face, among other things. Yet it never ceases to be a fiendishly plotted mind game around existential questions, which keeps it both interesting and enjoyable the whole way through. Cinematography and set design do a really good job, and shining on top of it are the script, the sound design, and the three lead actors, which are particularly terrific.

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JAN 07, 2025, Metropol Theater
David Fincher’s Se7en

David Fincher’s 1995 Se7en should count among the most stylish serial killer police procedure neo noir thrillers ever made, a masterpiece with tons of innovative stuff from its title cards down to its grizzly ending. Everything from Khondji’s cinematography (shot, besides Panavision cameras, with an Aaton 35-III so no wonder some dialogs had to be overdubbed; lots of clever underexposure trickery; ingenious claustrophobic establishing shots that aren’t), Francis-Bruce’s cut, Shore’s score, the soundtrack, the sound and set designs, to the action choreography showed at the time what was possible, and it had an enormous influence on later movies. But reviews left all that more or less underappreciated at the time of its release, not unlike they did for Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner or Proyas’s 1998 Dark City. Walker’s script is stellar, from its high concept premise up to dialog refinements after casting and touch-ups during filming, with career-defining performances by the principle actors. What’s somewhat disconcerting is that so many improbable things had to happen for this movie to see the light of day, against the odds and the sensibilities of studio executives as a species (who had already fucked up Fincher’s 1992 Alien ³), so that one is left to wonder how many movies that could have been great never happened or were managed into mediocrity.

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JAN 06, 2025, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie, Australia 2019

Suzie Miller’s 2019 one-woman play Prima Facie is terrific, even with some minor script weaknesses and an ending that comes across a bit too didactic, where in-play performance gives way to addressing the audience—instead of transforming its matter too into action—as if the play doesn’t trust its own strength. Which it can and should. It is strong throughout both on the surface and under the hood, which includes touching on the nature of processes and procedures in interesting ways that make me want to read Luhmann again. For a first in decades, as friends had invited me to join, I saw a performance not in its original language; but the German translation seemed solidly plausible and Tessa Ensler’s performance was excellent.

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