Wuthering Heights (5 Stars)

This film has been promoted as the perfect film for Valentine's Day. I almost agree. It's a powerful film packed with passion from beginning to end, but as those who've read the novel by Emily Bronte know, it's a tragedy. You won't go home with a contented feeling in your heart. In fact, this post could be reduced to a two-word review:

Love hurts.

My praises go out to German cinema fans. The theatre (373 seats) was almost full, even though the film was shown in its original version with English dialogue. The film was shown simultaneously in another room (404 seats) dubbed into German, and it was also close to being sold out. I'm always happy when the cinemas are full.

The Road Home (5 Stars)

I have a principle. Every time I watch a bad film, like "Spring Breakers" yesterday. I make sure that the next film is something I know and love. Bad films have an effect on my mood. They bring me down. So what better film can I watch than "The Road Home", a beautiful love story directed by Zhang Yimou?

"The Road Home" is one of Zhang Yimou's most deceptively simple films; a rural love story told with the clarity of folklore and the emotional precision of memory.

Set in a small northern Chinese village, the film unfolds through a son's recollection of how his parents met. The present is rendered in austere black and white, while the past blooms into saturated colour; a visual strategy that quietly reverses expectation, suggesting that memory is more vivid than lived reality. At the centre is Zhang Ziyi's luminous performance as a young woman whose love expresses itself through ritual, patience and stubborn devotion. Her repeated walks along the dirt road become acts of faith; love is not declared but enacted.

Zhang strips away political spectacle and urban modernity, focusing instead on landscape, tradition and the dignity of ordinary people. Yet beneath its pastoral calm lies a subtle meditation on change. The arrival of modern education, the Cultural Revolution's aftershocks and the erosion of village customs hover at the edges of the frame. What remains constant is the emotional architecture of remembrance.

Unfashionably earnest and almost defiantly sentimental, "The Road Home" works because it believes in its own sincerity. It's a film about waiting, about honouring the past and about how love survives in gestures repeated over time. In its quiet way, it's one of Zhang's most moving achievements.

Spring Breakers (1½ Stars)

"Spring Breakers" was shown in my local cinema as part of the monthly Cinema Futuro series, which highlights films that the organisers consider to be the future of cinema. When it began three years ago the emphasis was on films directed by women, but this is no longer the case. When the film was announced the posters called it a cult film, which surprised me, because I had bad memories of the film. I wanted to be in the cinema today, but I was unable to go due to family issues, so I watched it at home instead.

Today I made an effort to enjoy the film, I really did, but within the first half hour I felt like turning it off. It's such a superficial film, about four girls who go on spring break – that's an American thing – after robbing a diner to get the money. It's the best time of their lives, they repeatedly claim in voiceover, until they're arrested at a party with excessive drug use. They're bailed out by a local drug dealer who gives them guns and uses them to get revenge on his rival.

Anyone who knows anything about me and my tastes will immediately know why I don't like things like this. In my youth I avoided drug use, with the exception of a few weeks experimenting with LSD when I was 20. The women in the film are objectified as weak eye candy, with the exception of a sudden, unexpected transition in the final scene. There's no character arc, unless you can call the sudden jump from one extreme to the other an arc.

I've read article after article praising the film. I seem to be in the minority. The only reason I have for granting it half a star above my rock bottom rating is the eye candy. I like beautiful girls. The film has nothing else in its favour. It's trash, and I don't say that in a good way. Today's the second time I've watched it, and there will never be a third time.

Success Rate:  + 4.4

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Madame Web (4 Stars)

"Madame Web" (2024) is an origin story set within Sony's Spider-Man Universe. Rather than centring on an established superhero, the film follows Cassandra "Cassie" Webb, a paramedic in New York City who gradually discovers that her life has been shaped by forces connected to clairvoyance, fate and a web of interlocking destinies.

The film opens in the Peruvian Amazon in 1973. A pregnant researcher, Constance Webb, is searching the jungle for a rare spider species rumoured to possess extraordinary properties. She is betrayed by her colleague Ezekiel Sims, who murders members of the expedition and steals the spider. Constance is fatally wounded but is saved temporarily by members of an indigenous tribe who use the spider's abilities to try to preserve her life. She gives birth to Cassie before dying, and the baby is taken back to the United States.

Decades later, Cassie Webb is a hardened, emotionally distant paramedic in Manhattan. She has grown up in foster care and believes her mother died in a plane crash while researching spiders, unaware of the true circumstances. Cassie avoids personal attachments and lives a solitary life. During a rescue operation on a bridge, she nearly drowns while saving a driver from a submerged car. After being resuscitated, she begins experiencing vivid flashes of the future. At first, these episodes are disorienting and brief; she sees moments seconds before they occur and realises she can alter events by acting on her visions.

Cassie's powers intensify when she encounters three teenage girls on a train: Julia Cornwall, Anya Corazon and Mattie Franklin. In a sudden vision, Cassie sees them murdered by a masked, superpowered man wearing a spider-themed suit. The attacker is revealed to be Ezekiel Sims, now a wealthy and influential businessman who gained enhanced strength and agility from the spider in Peru. He has been haunted by recurring dreams in which three spider-powered women kill him. Through his own research and access to advanced surveillance technology, he identifies the girls as the future threat and sets out to eliminate them before they can develop their abilities.

Realising the girls are in imminent danger, Cassie kidnaps them from the train to save their lives, though they initially see her as a threat. As Ezekiel hunts them across New York, Cassie gradually accepts her role as their protector. She uses her precognitive visions to anticipate his moves, repeatedly altering events to keep one step ahead. The group hides in various locations, including a diner and a fireworks warehouse, while Cassie tries to piece together her mother's past and the origin of her own powers.

Through research and conversations with her colleague Ben Parker, Cassie learns more about Ezekiel's background and about her mother's expedition. She comes to understand that her near-death experience activated latent abilities connected to the same spider species. Unlike Ezekiel, whose powers are physical and driven by fear of his prophesied death, Cassie's gift is psychic; she can perceive branching timelines and subtly shift outcomes.

As Ezekiel closes in, Cassie's visions become more expansive, showing possible futures in which the three girls grow into powerful spider-heroes. Julia is shown with psychic spider abilities, Anya with acrobatic combat skills and Mattie with enhanced strength. These glimpses of their future selves reinforce Cassie's determination to ensure their survival.

The climax takes place at an abandoned Pepsi-Cola sign factory during a Fourth of July celebration. Cassie foresees multiple deadly scenarios and repeatedly tests different actions in rapid succession, effectively rehearsing the fight in her mind. When Ezekiel attacks, she coordinates the girls' escape with precision timing based on her visions. In the chaos of collapsing fireworks scaffolding, Ezekiel is crushed and killed, seemingly fulfilling his own prophecy in an ironic reversal; his attempt to prevent the future directly causes it.

Cassie is gravely injured during the confrontation and loses her eyesight, but her psychic abilities expand further, allowing her to perceive the world through visions of the web of life and time. In the aftermath, she adopts a mentorship role toward Julia, Anya and Mattie, hinting at their eventual transformation into spider-powered heroes. The film ends with Cassie in a wheelchair, now fully embracing the mantle of Madame Web, calmly guiding the girls as she looks ahead into the vast network of possible futures, aware that this is only the beginning of a larger destiny.

Success Rate:  - 0.7

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Time Cut (5 Stars)

Netflix Thursday #46

Just when you thought the teen slasher genre has worn itself out, here's a highly original film that breathes new life into the genre. It does this by adding the element of time travel.

The film begins in 2024. Lucy is a teenage girl who lives in the shadow of her older sister Summer, who was murdered by a serial killer before she was born. Her parents make no secret of the fact that they gave birth to Lucy at a late time in their life to get a replacement for the daughter they'd lost.

Lucy finds a time machine in a barn that's been set to travel to 14th April 2003, two days before her sister's death. She sees this as a chance to prevent the killer murdering her sister. The problem is that if she saves Summer's life she'll never be born. But if she's never born, she won't be able to save Summer. The possible time paradoxes are mind-bending. Does time travel really work like that?

Potentially an intellectual film, "Time Cut" remains a thrilling teen slasher story. Wait for the surprises, which I didn't expect. An excellent film.

King of Beggars (3 Stars)

So Chan is the rich, spoilt son of a powerful general in late imperial China; he’s lazy and illiterate, but surprisingly skilled at martial arts. While pursuing a beautiful courtesan named Yu-shang he enters the imperial martial arts contest to win her hand in marriage. With his father’s help he cheats his way through the written part and wins the physical tests, but he’s exposed as illiterate at the last minute and accused of cheating. The emperor punishes him by stripping his family of their wealth and forcing him to live as a beggar.

Thrown into a harsh new life on the streets, So struggles until an old beggar he once helped teaches him humility and a mystical martial art called the Sleeping Arhat Skill. This is a fighting style that can only be used while asleep! When Yu-shang is kidnapped by a corrupt official with sinister plans against the emperor, So rallies the Beggars’ Gang by pretending to channel a legendary leader; he learns their secret techniques from an old manual and leads them on a daring mission. After saving Yu-shang and foiling the plot to assassinate the emperor, So is offered a reward but chooses to remain leader of the beggars; he and Yu-shang wander the land helping the poor.

The film mixes slapstick, action and wuxia elements in a story about growth, honour and unlikely heroism.

Woodwalkers 2 (4 Stars)

This is a sequel to "Woodwalkers" that takes place shortly after the events of the first film. Thankfully the young cast hardly seems to have aged in the last 18 months. Makeup works wonders.

It's a German film with German dialogue, but it's about a school for special children based in Wyoming. The children are all able to change themselves into animals. Or is it the other way round? They're animals who can change themselves into humans. Despite being many different types of animals, some of them natural enemies, they all get on with one another.

The central character is Jay once more, a puma. He manages to make contact with his family. They're all human-puma hybrids, but unlike him they prefer to remain in their animal form. Jay's father, in particular, doesn't trust humans.

Overall, "Woodwalkers 2" is an engaging continuation that respects its fan base while broadening its emotional and visual scope. The cinema was packed today, mostly with younger children. Oliver enjoyed it.