Tai Chi Master

Tai gik Cheung Sam Fung; martial arts film / action, Hong Kong, 1993; D: Yuen Woo-ping, S: Jet Li, Chin Siu Ho, Michelle Yeoh, Fennie Yuen, Sun Jian-kui

China, 15th century. The kid Tienbo is sent to a Shaolin temple to study martial arts, but is angry that he is subordinate to Junbao, who is his age. 20 years later, they are both expelled from the temple after defying a teacher who didn't intervene when a fighter threw dust at Tienbo during a fight. In a town, they befriend Miss Li and Siu-lin, but Tienbo joins the military ranks of the powerful province governor Liu Jin. As Junbao joins the rebels who fight against Liu Jin, he inevitably becomes Tienbo's enemy. When Siu-lin captures Liu Jin and threatens to kill him with a sword, she forces the army to stand down and allow Tienbo and Junbao to fight. In the duel, Junbao kills Tienbo. Junbao leaves Siu-lin to establish his own martial arts school.

Despite references to real historical figures (Zhang Junbao and province governor Liu Jin) and some attempts at deeper Taoist parallels, cult film "Tai Chi Master" still stands out most during its creative and energetic martial arts and fight sequences, in which Jet Li simply rises to the occasion. The excellent actress Michelle Yeoh would have been an additional virtue had she not been so underused and neglected in the storyline. Despite a great transition in the opening act—when the kids Tienbo and Junbao are fighting with brooms in the temple, the camera pans to the right, across a pillar, and as it emerges on the other side, Tienbo and Junbao are now grown ups while fighting with brooms, in an inspired time jump—the rest of the film is rather conventionally directed, save for the great martial arts moments. Some of the imaginative battle sequences include Siu-lin walking on table legs to be taller, or Tienbo throwing a spear, but Junbao just jumping on the spear to walk on it and jump even further directly at his opponent. The fight around the wooden tower was also creative. However, the dialogues are underwhelming, the characters routine, whereas the segment of Junbao losing his mind for 20 minutes, and thinking, among others, that he is a duch when he is diving inside the water in a barrel, feels as if it from a lesser movie. There are some contemplations hiden in the story: even though they both started out as students in the temple, Tienbo chose the quest for power, while Junbao chose the quest for enlightenment and honor, signaling their yin and yang relationship. This could have been developed better, with a more emotional and philosophical juncture, yet "Tai Chi Master" is still a well made film that is still fresh today.

Grade:++

Mavka. The Forest Song

Mavka. Lisova pisnia; computer-animated fantasy, Ukraine, 2023; D: Oleh Malamuzh, Oleksandra Ruban, S: Natalka Denisenko, Artem Pyvovarov, Olena Kravets, Serhiy Pritula

A Ukrainian village, 19th century. A long time ago, a villager asked the forest demon for a leaf from the rejuvenation tree to save his daughter, but when the demon obliged, the villager returned with other people to try to steal the whole tree, sparking a war after which the humans were forbidden to cross across the mountain. Mavka is a forest spirit who falls in love with Lukas, a musician from the village who trespassed into the magical forest to find a leaf from the rejuvenation tree because he was paid by Kylina. When Lukas is chased away by other spirits, Mavka visits him in the village. The villagers are incited by Kylina to attack the magical forest. Kylina has a secret agenda, since she uses the drops from the rejuvenation tree to keep herself young. Mavka uses spirit powers to create a tornado and attack the village, but Lukas' music manages to stop her. The spirits and the humans agree to live side by side in peace.

A gentler, more kid-friendly version of "Princess Mononoke", "Mavka: The Forest Song" blends Ukrainian folk mythology into an ecological film that works surprisingly well. Most of the charm stems from the loveable, innocent title heroine and her interaction with a human, Lukas, which even becomes a sweet love story. Simple and accessible, "Mavka" also has some bitter contemplations about the relationship between humans and nature, and even between two different cultures and the problems of co-existence. Once humor is introduced (when Lukas first meets Mavka, he tries to be polite, so he forces himself to smile when looking at her pet, an aggressive forest spirit, saying: "It's so cute how he hates me..."), the story just becomes funnier and funnier later on, with some moments practically becoming a comedy (the hilarious sequence where the evil fashion designer forces himself to go to the village and step foot into the back yard full of mud to secretly spy on Lukas from the window, but is then attacked by an angry rooster). The relationship between Mavka and Lukas is really well done, since their affection grows gradually and naturally, as they are both gentle souls. The animation is at times schematic and "stiff", and the pacing is uneven, yet the storyline does have some sharp observations (the ending with the humans at war with the forest spirits is a parallel of the opening intro; the villain ends in the least expected resolution), whereas the authors show a lot of care for Ukrainian folklore, no matter how untypical it might look for the universal market.

Grade:++

Free Guy

Free Guy; science-fiction action comedy, USA, 2021; D: Shawn Levy, S: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, Lil Rel Howery, Taika Waititi

Guy works in Free City in a bank and is friends with security guard Buddy. Various explosions and bank robberies occur routinely. One day, he meets Molotov Girl and asks her out on a date. He also puts on the sunglasses which show various items around him. She explains him that he is actually living in a mass multiplayer video game, but that he is a non-player character, and that his algorithm for some reason developed a consciousness. Guy starts acting individually, saving other characters from robbers. Molotov Girl is the avatar of Millie, who in the real world developed the game with Keys. But the boss Antwan wants to delete the "Free City" video game because he wants to launch "Free City 2". Millie is able to "evacuate" the characters before the destruction and send them to a new video game. Guy admits he is just a love letter to Millie from the author, Keys. Millie and Keys thus kiss.

"The Truman Show" meets "Ready Player One"—this film about a character in a video game who suddenly develops consciousness doesn't place that much emphasis on philosophical questions or depth, but is instead content with being just a relaxed, light action comedy that entertains, and it does this really well at times. Most of the charm is derived from the excellent Ryan Reynolds in the leading role, and "Free Guy" does indeed work the best when some metafilm jokes remind of "Deadpool", though there is also a fair share of jokes that don't ignite or are just lazy. The villain Antwan (Taika Waititi) reminds of Christof from "The Truman Show", including in his attempt to stop Guy from going to the edge of the video game virtual reality world, whereas the touching "twist ending" reminds of the one in "Sailor Moon" episode 6. The director Shawn Levy doesn't reach some creative heights, yet the movie has its moments, since even its moderate-lukewarm scenes are cute. The best joke is when Guy, trying to escape from a chase, confidently runs across a steel beam on top the building and jumps towards a wrecking ball with Miley Cyrus' song "Wrecking Ball" playing in the background—but then he misses it and just falls down from the top of the building. And one moment is suprisingly emotional: when Guy ponders if anything he does matters if they all live in an artificial, virtual reality world, his friend Buddy tells him: "What does that mean? Look, brother, I'm sitting here with my best friend, trying to help him get through a tough time. And even if I'm not real, *this moment* is."

Grade:++

The One

The One; science-fiction action, USA, 2001; D: James Wong, S: Jet Li, Jason Statham, Delroy Lindo, Carla Gugino, James Morrison, Dean Norris

Gabriel Yulaw uses a device to travel through various alternate universes in order to kill 124 different versions of himself. This causes an effect in which after each murder he "absorbs" more powers from his alternate universe self, hoping to become a God-like being. Gabriel is arrested by Multiverse Authority agents Funsch and Rodecker and sentenced on a trial, but he escapes to the last universe to kill the last version of himself, Gabe Law, a police officer in Los Angeles. When Gabriel kills Gabe's girlfriend T.K., the police hunt down the innocent Gabe, not believing he has an evil double. Rodecker is also killed, but Gabe and Funsch team up to defeat Gabriel and return him to his sentence, namely to be sent off to an alternate universe of Hell. Gabe is sent to an alternate universe where he meets a different version of T.K., who is a veterinary there.

After "Everything Everywhere All at Once", a renewed interest was sparked to retroactively check out James Wong's earlier film "The One", which also combined martial arts, action and the multiverse worlds into a peculiar whole. Take away the humor, emotions, cinematic creativity and philosophy from "Everything Everywhere", and you get "The One", a simple and straight-forward action film, but a one which still has enough merits and virtues to be a good film, among others because Jet Li's martial arts skills are simply indestructible. After a 'committee appointed' schematic intro explaining the concept of several alternate universes, the movie actually starts off pretty well with a subtle scene in which news on TV mention US President Al Gore, implying an alternate world where the politician won the election. The concept of the "evil" antagonist killing his aternate selves to absorb their powers makes sense, while the good version of himself is there to confront him (both are played by Jet Li), which makes for some hints at yin and yang, though the execution is rather routine and standard, settling only for fights and chase sequences. Therea are only two truly standout ideas that exploit this concept at a higher level: in the first, after agent Rodecker is killed, his partner Funsch meets a man at the gas station who is the exact alternate universe version of Rodecker, and so Funsch thanks him for all the things his alternate self did to help him in the alternate timeline. The other is when the evil Gabriel tricks Gabe's girlfriend into thinking he is actually Gabe. The rest is often underwhelming and stale, sometimes even abrupt, without elaborating some plot points, though it did become an unlikely forerunner to the trend of numerous multiverse movies which came after it.

Grade:++

The Florida Project

The Florida Project; drama, USA, 2017; D: Sean Baker, S: Brooklyn Kimberly Prince, Bria Vinaite, Willem Dafoe, Valeria Cotto, Christopher Rivera

Florida. The 6-year old girl Moonee lives with her problematic, marijuana-smoking mother Halley in a budget motel near Walt Disney World. Moonee is friends with other kids: Scooty, Dicky and Jancey. The motel manager Bobby has to take care of the tenants, such as restoring electricity after a power failure. Moonee makes a lot of mischief, and when the kids set an abandoned house on fire, Ashley, the mother of Scooty, forbids him to hang around with Moonee again, fearing bad influence from Halley. When Halley starts to work as a prostitute in the apartment to make ends meet, Bobby orders her that any visitor has to register at the counter. The social services arrive to take away Moonee from Halley. Upon hearing that, Moonee and Jancey run away and flee to Disney World.

"The Florida Project" is a sad independent drama about poverty and problematic single mothers told from the child's perspective, in this case Moonee (played by very good Brooklyn Kimberly Prince). The director and screenwriter Sean Baker sets the movie in a budget motel near Disney World, Florida, to contrast the lives of people suffering from real-life issues, while their idealistic perfection (Disney World) is so close, and yet always out of reach, since they don't have money. The first hour of the movie feels chaotic, disorganised, with just random scenes appearing and disappearing (Bobby chasing away three cranes just standing there on the parking lot), yet a lot of them align into a meaning in the last third, when several seemingly random moments (in her apartment, Halley puts on a bikini on herself and her daughter Moonee, and then tells Moonee to make photos of her "posing") are later revealed to have a point and play a role (it turns out Halley posted the photos of herself in a bikini on a website for prostitution, and even though she blurred her face, Ashley recognizes her due to Halley's tattoos visible on the photo). Willem Dafoe plays the kind and patient motel manager Bobby in a good role, though it lacks some more grand character moments. "The Florida Project" is a small, but honest and quality made 'slice-of-life' film that slowly reveals its theme in the third act, where Halley's negligence towards Moonee starts to cause a consequence, all leading to an unforgettable ending about kids' escape from harsh reality into a dream world.

Grade:++

Tár

Tár; psychological drama, USA, 2022; D: Todd Field, S: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong

Lydia Tar is a conductor for the Berlin Philharmonic. She is cynical, a lesbian, an opportunist and highly career driven. Lydia lives with her wife Sharon and her little daughter, and relies on her assistant Francesca. She replaces Sebastian in the orchestra with Olga, a woman she finds attractive. Lydia rejects e-mails from old acquaintance Krista, who kills herself, so her parents sue Lydia. A video shows up of Lydia mocking a colored student for his views on J. S. Bach, which causes enough negative public uproar that the board decides to replace Lydia as the conductor, fearing for their reputation. An angry Lydia attacks the new conductor, causing even more negative backlash. As Sharon quits all contact, Lydia goes to the Philippines to hide, and starts composing music for video games.

"Tar" is a movie that works more as a great showcase for Cate Blanchett's acting talent than as a really well assembled story. Blanchett is truly outstanding as the title anti-heroine, a cynical, egoistical conductor, yet the sterile story is just one giant list of disparate episodes and isolated events, without a clear goal as to where it's going. The main plot doesn't set in up until a 100 minutes (!) into the film, when Tar's acquaintance Krista kills herself and triggers an angry media backlash against Tar, upon which the movie contemplates about cancel culture and the difficulty of separating the private life from an artist. This theme is already mirrored in the excellent sequence in the class where Lydia has a public argument with a colored student, Max, who despises Bach because said musician was a "misogynist" and "had 20 children". A visibly irritated Lydia gives a sharp reply: "I'm sorry, I'm unclear what his prodigious skills in marital bed have to do with B minor... If Bach's talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality, and so on, then so can *your's*!" It is a sly swipe at too excessive political correctness trying to find flaws in sometimes trivial things, but it also shows how, just like Max was boycotting Bach, this is paralleled with Lydia who will get boycotted by the public as well for the video in which she mocks Max. At a running time of 158 minutes, "Tar" is definitely overlong, and it wastes too much time on irrelevant episodes. Sadly, except for this incident with Max, the viewers don't see why Lydia is ostensibly such a terrible person. Sure, she is career driven and thus egoistical and opportunistic, but it's nothing to deserve the title of a "bitch". The movie's theme would have worked better if the movie was less "Tar" and more "Whiplash", where Simmons played the obnoxious music instructor tormenting his students, and which would have worked better in the final act, a sort of culmination of Tar's personality. There are neat details and dialogues here and there (36 minutes into the film, Lydia edits her own Wikipedia page to insert a New Yorker source saying that "Tar is one of the most important musical figures of our era"; "He said there was room for only one asshole in the house."), but the storyline is so chaotic and disjointed that the ending feels both abrupt and incomplete at the same time. 

Grade:++ 

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The Super Mario Bros. Movie; computer-animated fantasy comedy, USA, 2023; D: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, S: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, Seth Rogen, Keegan-Michael Key

Brooklyn. Mario and Luigi just opened up a plumbing service, but their father disapproves. During a giant flooding on the street, they get sucked into a portal to another dimension, where Luigi is captured by the dictator Bowser Koopa who wants to invade and annex the Mushroom Kingdom, where Mario landed and took refuge under Princess Peach who wants to save her Kingdom. Peach, Mario and Toad are joined by gorilla Donkey Kong and his army to battle Bowser. When Peach interrupts her own forced wedding with Bowser, the battle spills over to Brooklyn, where Mario and Luigi get a Star super-power and defeat Bowser and his army.

30 years after the first rejected movie adaptation of the Super Mario Bros., the directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic easily 'broke the curse' and achieved a huge success at the box office with this animated edition which is more faithful to the video games, at times even too much, to the extent that it becomes a detriment to the narrative. Overall, though, it is a fun and better movie version that has just enough charm and wit to sway the viewers into its favor. The opening act—as Bowser Koopa rhetorically asks: "And now no one can stop me!", we cut to a TV commercial of Mario's and Luigi's plumbing service, in tune to the song from "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!", where a confused actress playing the customer says a wacky line ("Thank you Super Mario Bros.! It seems the only thing you haven't drained is my bank account") and the plumbers speak with exaggerated Italian accents, only to go even a level further as Mario and Luigi watch said commercial, speak in normal English and wonder if the accent was "too much", while a protoversion of Mario, a man in red overalls, blue shirt and a red cap says it's perfect and jumps—is so contagiously fun and sympathetic it makes you giggle like a little kid. 

There are also other neat details in this first third: the grumpy Spike throws a used napkin at Luigi's face, but Mario intercepts it by catching it with his hand and throws it back at Spike; when Mario first encounters Princess Peach in the castle, he is running towards her in slow motion, reaching out his hand towards her, but her first reaction is to grab and throw him behind her back on the floor. Peach is also a well developed character, feisty and funny, already in the scene where she explains Bowser to Mario: "This guy's a lunatic, a psy-cho". Unfortunately, the whole middle part crumbles under the pressure of expected 'fan service', since there is a 30-minute part consisting out of sequences questionable to the usefulness to the narrative, which are only there to serve as a giant 'empty walk' and promotion or references to other Mario video games (the pointless long fight between Mario and Donkey Kong; the prolonged, stale Mario kart race on the rainbow highway; the dead end sequence of Mario and Donkey Kong inside the stomach of a giant fish) which seem to stop the movie and take you out of the experience, disrupting the storyline all until it reconnects again in the finale. Even the jokes stop in this central part. The first and the third act work, but the second, middle part doesn't. It is also a pity that Luigi is absent for the majority of the story, and is thus underused. Moreover, the character of Donkey Kong is superfluous to the plot. The super-powers are finally introduced, but very sparsely, and don't get to a good use all until the finale. Despite omissions and uneven parts, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is an overall good film with some bits of charm that remind of Pixar's better days, yet the "Super Mario Bros. 3" highlight episodes "7 Continents for 7 Koopas", "Reign Storm" and "Super Koopa" are still an unreached ideal for it.

Grade:++

Crumb

Crumb; documentary, USA, 1994; D: Terry Zwigoff, S: Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Charles Crumb, Maxon Crumb, Robert Hughes, Dana Morgan, Dian Hanson

The film follows the daily life routine of underground comic book artist Robert Crumb. The film crew interviews his wife Aline Kominsky, and shows their teenage son and little daughter, who also practice drawing. Robert vists his two brothers, both psychologically unstable: Charles, who is under medication, and Max, who suffers from epilepsy and lives in San Francisco. Robert recalls his displeasure with the movie adaptation of his comic book "Fritz the Cat"; his childhood when he was unpopular with girls; his comments about the society. Ultimately, Robert and his family move to southern France.

One of the few documentaries that Roger Ebert included in his list of Great Movies, "Crumb" is an acquired taste since it plays out something like "Freaks II". "Crumb" shows a glimpse of the underground subculture and the 'cockroach existence' of the very bizarre, almost disturbing and unsettling mentality of comic book artist Robert Crumb—among others, he claims he was sexually attracted to Bugs Bunny; humped his mom's cowboy boots as a kid; rode piggyback on his wife—and yet, by having the director Terry Zwigoff contrast him with his other two brothers, Charles (under sedation due to manic depression) and Max (alienated from society, suffering from seizures), it's clear Robert is the most normal one among them. Upon moving to France, Robert even admits he feels guilty for leaving Max behind: "Not too many other people he'd talk to. I'm probably his closest human relationship in the world". The movie feels as if it is a meditation on how far human behavior can stray away from the limits of normal, which makes for a dubious viewing experience. The best moments are when Zwigoff uses a couple of directorial interventions to align the movie into something more purposeful: at around 78 minutes into the film, the camera zooms in on the photo of a young Charles holding his hand in front of his chin, and then makes a "match cut" to the present Charles talking to the camera, subconsciously still holding his hand in front of his chin; the comical scene where Robert presents a drawing of his delirious self, lying in bed while a giant, black camera is staring at his face, and says this is how he felt the whole time while making this documentary; or Robert's recollections from his childhood, intercut with panels from his comic books which parallel his life (he claims he watched the TV show "Sheena" as a kid, cut to the comic book of a grown up Crumb making out with Sheena). Robert's comic books about incest, racism, sick society and perversions feel indeed as if on an acid trip, and thus some viewers will have trouble stomaching all of what is shown on the screen.

Grade:++

Harakiri

Seppuku; drama, Japan, 1962; D: Masaki Kobayashi, S: Tatsuya Nakadi, Rentaro Mikuni, Akira Ishihama, Tetsuro Tamba, Shima Iwashita

Edo, 1630. Hanshiro, an impoverished unemployed samurai who has last seen combat over a decade ago, arrives at the castle of the Iyi clan and claims he wants to perform harakiri, suicide through cutting his stomach open with a sword, to counselor Saito, even though the latter tries to dissuade him. Out in the courtyard, Hanshiro asks for three samurais to behead him in the ritual, but when the messenger returns, he informs Saito that all three are sick. Hanshiro then tells his tale: his daughter Miho married samurai Motome, but when their child got sick, Motome went to the Iyi clan to request harakiri, hoping he would instea dbe given charity and money instead, yet Saito forced him to perform harakiri with a bamboo sword. Miho and the child died. Hanshiro thus cut the hair of the three samurai of the Iyi clan a week ago, explaining why they feigned they were sick. Saito refuses to feel regret and orders his twenty men to attack and kill Hanshiro, who puts up a good fight, and destroys their samurai armor in the process.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, Masaki Kobayashi's "Harakiri" is a dark and somber analysis and critique of the rigid traditions which often stray away from ethics, in this case the samurai codes which lead to fundamentalism, but also a tragic essay about transience, since these characters slowly started becoming obsolete in a new, modern era, and thus had to die out or adapt to a new society with different skills. The movie is very good, but still not that great: at a running time of 133 minutes, it is definitely overlong and overstretched, whereas its conventional dialogues are way too straightforward, proving somewhat old-fashioned today. Still, the first half flows smoothly and has a tight pace, as it slowly reveals itself to be a revenge story in which the unemplyoed samurai Hanshiro tells the counselor Saito his real reasons for wishing to talk to him, namely to avenge the death of his son-in-law Motome who was forced to perform harakiri even though he pleaded to have two days to prepare himself: his slow suicide is depicted as shockingly painful and stressful, since he had a bamboo sword (he had to sell his real sword for money to take care of his family), causing a bloody disembowelment until his head is cut off by the assistant samurai. Ultimately, Hanshiro comes to a bitter conclusion, scolding Saito: "Your samurai honor is just a facade". The movie needed kind of something more than just that to use as a justification for its conclusion, since this doesn't feel as strong today as it should, and the finale in which Hanshiro is able to fight off twenty rivals for seven minutes is equally of a stretch, but Kobayashi's ambitious tone and operatic dedication to this theme have its moments, especially in a few elegant long camera pans from left, depicting Hanshiro sitting, across the courtyard to the right, where Saito is listening, almost as if showing how Hanshiro's words are slowly getting to him. In the end, "Harakiri" is a two-hour suicide depiction of its hero who is outnumbered and physically weaker, but his 'human honor' is still stronger than the traditional honor.

Grade:+++

Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man; comedy / drama, USA, 2016; D: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan, S: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Hank, stranded on an island, wants to hang himself under a cliff, but is interrupted when a corpse of a man washes ashore. Naming the corpse Manny, Hank uses it as a ship and sails back to mainland using Manny's fart as propulsion. Hank carries Manny through a forest, searching for the nearest city, and imagines that Manny has conversations with him. Hanks tells him how his mother died and how he always met a woman in the bus, Sarah, but was scared to approach her. He even dresses up as Sarah to teach Manny how to talk to women. A bear attacks and injures Hank's leg, but Manny's farting combined with fire causes an explosion that scares the animal away. Manny carries Hank to Sarah's house, finding out she is married and has a daughter. When a TV reporter wants to interview him, Hank carries Manny back to the ocean, where the corpse swims away.

"Weekend at Bernie's" meets "Cast Away"—the plot outline of the feature length debut film by the Daniels sounds like utter nonsense and the dumbest thing ever on paper, but the directors' trademark in which they manage to use the most preposterous allegories and symbols to reach the heights of wisdom, humanity, philosophical contemplations and truths about life is already palpable in this edition, which will get even more refined in their later films. The viewers need to accept the most insane ideas in the first half in order to get to the emotional finale where a lot of things is amended and justified in the second half. This is one of the only movies in existence where you begin with a cringe at a corpse farting and end up almost crying in the touching end. How did the Daniels do it? By presenting a very abstract, but still recognizable story about loneliness. The corpse Manny (the unofficial "third Daniel", Daniel Radcliffe) serves as a psychological crutch to help the hero Hank understand that he derseves to live. Hank starts out trying to commit suicide, a person who feels ugly, insignificant and depressed, but ends up as someone who is healed by finding a new perspective in life. 95% of the film is just the interaction between Hank and Manny, as Hank even imagines that he is talking with Manny, to show what a mental trap loneliness can be. Despite some clumsy solutions, including moments that don't even attempt to be logical (exploding farting catapulting Manny flying), the funny dialogues charm ("I'm scared of whatever took that poop." - "But why?" - "Because only huge, scary things take poops that big." - "So what? Everything poops." - "Yes, but if it finds *us*, it will eat *us* and push us out its butt and turn *us* into poop"), and even reach that impossible dramatic turn which nobody saw coming in the end ("Maybe we're all just ugly, dying sacks of shit, and maybe all it'll take is *one* person to just be okay with that, and then the whole world will be dancing and singing and farting, and everyone will feel a little bit less alone"), all aligning into a movie that is its very own thing, and that's something that was lost in the formulaic-schematic modern cinema.

Grade:++