Saccharine (1 Star)

This is the 16th film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

"Saccharine" is a film that has some good ideas, but it's visually so ugly that I have to give it a rock bottom rating.

Hana is a medical student struggling to lose weight. She weighs over 80 Kg, and her dream is to get down to 65 Kg. She visits a fitness studio, but it doesn't help because she still eats too much. Then she discovers that she can lose weight if she eats the ash of a burnt person's body. In her classes she has to dissect a dead person, a fat woman, so she takes some of her bones home and burns them to ashes. It works. However much she eats, she sheds weight, and within a few weeks she's down to 45 Kg. Her personal trainer at the fitness studio tells her that it's unhealthy to lose weight so fast, so she eats as much chocolate and cake as she can, which doesn't stop the weight loss. But there's a bigger problem. Hana is being haunted by the woman that she's eating. If she holds up a spoon, she can see her standing behind her in the reflection.

As I said, the film sounds interesting, but you need to see it yourself to realise how unpleasant it is.

This was the last film that I watched in this year's Nights Festival. Overall, I was disappointed. There were no really outstanding films. Maybe next year.

Imposters (4½ Stars)

This is the 15th film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

Paul was a policeman in New York. After he was shot in the back and barely avoided death, he quit the police force and decided to start a new life. He moved with his wife Marie and baby son Theo to a sleepy little town.

They hold a housewarming party to meet their neighbours. They leave Theo alone for less than two minutes, and he's gone. Despite an extensive police search he can't be found. Two weeks later a simple-minded man called Orson visits them and says that he doesn't know who took Theo, but they can find him in a small cave in the woods. Against Paul's protests, Marie crawls into the cave. An hour later she brings Theo out. Paul wants to know why she was gone for so long. Marie says she's forgotten what happened in the cave, but it's obvious that she's lying. Having Theo back is all that matters, isn't it? But after a few days Paul notices that Theo's birthmark is missing from his foot, and he knows that something is wrong.

This is a supernatural mystery film. I can't say anything else without giving away spoilers. I need to watch it again.

The Vile (2 Stars)

This is the 14th film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

Amina lives with her husband Khaled and teenage daughter Noor in Abu Dhabi. She's happy, even though Khaled works away from home. Her idyll is shattered when Khaled comes home one day with a second wife, Zahra. He's angry that Amina doesn't accept the new wife, because it's allowed by Islam. Allowed, maybe, but he should have told Amina in advance.

Khaled goes away again for a few weeks, leaving Zahra alone with Amina and Noor. Zahra makes an effort to be friendly, but Amina totally rejects her. She does whatever she can to make Zahra feel unwelcome.

Most of the film is a twisted family drama. It only becomes clear in the last ten minutes that there's also a supernatural threat. This isn't what I'd call a twist, it's simply a new thought slapped onto the end of the film. The film is poorly written.

Nightborn (5 Stars)

This is the tenth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

Jon and Saga have just got married. They move into the house in Finland where Saga grew up. There's a lot of work to be done, because the house has been empty for years.

Nine months later Saga has a child. The child isn't normal. He has a hairy back, but the doctors reassure her that it's nothing to worry about. Other things are more unusual. Within a few months the baby, that they call Kuura, is able to stand and walk. Most disturbing is that Kuura doesn't want to drink milk, he only wants blood. By the time he's six months old, Saga is feeding him raw meat. At first Saga rejects the child, but she grows to love him, and as they bond she slowly becomes feral.

"Nightborn" is the best film of the festival so far.

Veins (2 Stars)

This is the ninth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

Isabelle goes to visit her parents, who live in an isolated place in the countryside. If I counted correctly, there are only three houses clustered together, although it's mentioned that they belong to a village that we never see. There's no Internet. Who needs it? Isabelle is shocked to find out that her father died three days previously. She's angry that her mother didn't tell her. Isabelle's mother is acting strangely, and she seems to be under the influence of the retired doctor who lives next door. The mystery slowly unravels.

This isn't an attractive film. There are lots of realistic medical shots, which is something I never like. The pacing is painfully slow. At the end of the film loose ends are left open. Very unsatisfying.

Mag Mag (3 Stars)

This is the eighth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

We all know Japanese ghost stories, don't we? Films like "The Ring", "The Grudge" and "Dark Water". A female ghost is seeking revenge for some sort of wrong in her life. It's all pretty much the same story, but I don't complain if the film is made well. So when I heard that "Mag Mag" is a Japanese ghost story, I expected it to be the best film of the festival.

Mag Mag is a ghost who kills every man – usually high school boys – that she falls in love with. She leaves them dead on the ground with their eyes gouged out. That's the sort of concept that thrills me. Unfortunately, this film is spoilt by the frequent comedic scenes. Comedy doesn't blend well with a Japanese ghost story. And then the film has multiple twists at the end which spoil the story. I was disappointed.

Whistle (4½ Stars)

This is the sixth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

After the previous boring film, the festival ended the day with an exciting horror film. A skull-shaped whistle is found in a high school. When it's blown, everyone who hears it is killed by a monstrous figure, one by one. The inscription on the whistle is "Summon your death", which is exactly what happens. Every person is destined to die in a different way, whether it's a car accident, lung cancer or simply old age. The whistle causes each person to die now, in the same way that he would have have died in the future. Maybe some elements in the film are infeasible, but it's still a very good film.

Silence (2 Stars)

This is the fifth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

Anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis knows that I like films about vampires, especially female vampires. So why have I rated this film so low? It's not just because the vampires are so ugly. The problem is that so little happens in the film in the way of action. There's occasional biting, but most of the film is made up of talking, talking, talking. Maybe the conversations cover some philosophical ground, but I was so bored that I could barely pay attention. The best thing about the film is that it only lasts 56 minutes.

Appofeniacs (2 Stars)

This is the fourth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

"Appofeniacs" is a film with a serious message. It shows the danger of deepfakes created with AI, in particular deepfake videos. Throughout the film people kill one another as a result of seeing deepfakes. The film could have been good if the people shown weren't so stupid. They're either drunk or high or simply lacking in intelligence. Maybe someone can make a better film on the subject.

Feels Like Home (3 Stars)

This is the third film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

A woman is kidnapped while standing in the street. Two men grab her and bundle her into a car. She wakes up tied and gagged in a bare room, with only a chair and a bed. A man tells her she's his sister, and her real name is Szilvi, not Rita. He only allows her to walk around the house when she accepts that she's his sister. She even begins to suspect it might be true, until she's shown photos of Szilvi which obviously aren't her.

It's a fascinating film, maybe too slow in parts, but with a serious message. Despite giving it a low rating, I'd like to see it again.

Obsession (4 Stars)

This is the first film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

This year the Nights Festival is being held once more in the Metropol cinema, which I see as a mixed blessing. On the one hand it has a larger screen than the Innenstadt cinemas. On the other hand it's poorly organised. The season ticket holders have to sit in the sixth and eighth rows; why not the seventh? The snacks in cinemas are always expensive, but Metropol's prices are extortionate for the small selection that they offer. Before the film started there was an announcement in the foyer that food and drink bought elsewhere was not allowed in the cinema, because it would make other cinema patrons jealous if they saw us eating our own food. That doesn't make sense. When festivals were held in the Innenstadt cinemas it was expressly stated that food could be brought in because of the long days. When I went in this evening my bag was checked, and I was sent to put my bag in the cloakroom. The next few days I'll have to put my snacks in my coat pockets, where they won't be found.

"Obsession" is an enjoyable, though not perfect opening film. It's a supernatural horror film. It's about a young man called Bear who's had a crush on a woman called Nikki since high school. Now she works in the same store as him, but he still hasn't found the courage to ask her out. She's planning to move to another town, so he's desperate. He tries another method; he buys an item called a One Wish Willow, which allows him to make a single wish for anything he wants. Only $6.99. That's a bargain! He wishes that Nikki will love him until the day he dies. Yes, that works. The same day after work she invites him home. She can't get enough of him. But as the days go by, we see that her love has become an obsession. She kills any other girl who comes close to him.

The film starts slowly, but after the first half hour I was amazed. The jump scares are used effectively, which is something I can rarely say. I would have given the film five stars, if the final 15 minutes hadn't disappointed me.

It's still a reasonable opening film. Let's hope the next films are better.

The Eight Hundred (3 Stars)

"The Eight Hundred" is a spectacle that's easy to admire and harder to fully love. Directed by Guan Hu, it dramatises the defence of the Sihang Warehouse during the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War; 452 Chinese soldiers hold out against 20,000 Japanese forces for four days while watched by civilians across the river. It’s a premise loaded with tension and moral weight, and at its best, the film delivers both in bursts of striking intensity.

Visually, it’s often astonishing. Shot for IMAX, the scale is overwhelming; explosions tear through the warehouse, bodies pile up in grimly choreographed waves, and the Suzhou Creek becomes a symbolic divide between courage and complacency. There’s a raw physicality to the combat that recalls "Saving Private Ryan", though without quite matching its emotional precision. The sound design, too, is thunderous and immersive; you don’t just watch the battle, you feel battered by it.

Where the film struggles is in its storytelling. For a narrative centred on sacrifice, the characters remain frustratingly indistinct. A handful of soldiers are given backstories or personality traits, but most blur into a collective mass of heroism. Compare that to the careful individualisation in "Dunkirk", where even minimal dialogue is enough to carve out distinct identities; here, the emotional stakes feel diluted because you're rarely anchored to a single perspective for long.

The film's cross-river structure – soldiers fighting on one side, civilians observing on the other – is a compelling idea that never quite coheres. The civilian scenes often drift into melodrama or symbolism that feels heavy-handed, undercutting the immediacy of the battle. A more disciplined intercutting approach, or a tighter focus on one or two civilian characters, might have created a stronger emotional bridge between the two worlds.

There's also a tonal inconsistency that holds it back. At times, "The Eight Hundred" leans into gritty realism; at others, it embraces near-mythic patriotism, complete with slow-motion hero shots and swelling music. Neither approach is inherently flawed, but the film doesn't reconcile them. A clearer commitment to one tone, or a more careful blending of the two, would have made the narrative feel less conflicted.

If it could be improved, the most obvious change would be a sharper focus on character. Following a smaller core group of soldiers, giving them clearer arcs, and allowing quieter moments between the chaos would heighten the impact of their eventual sacrifices. The battle scenes are already powerful; what's missing is the emotional thread that makes those scenes linger.

Even so, it remains an impressive achievement. Few modern war films attempt this scale, and fewer still sustain it for over two hours. It's a film that commands respect, even as it leaves you wishing it had trusted its human story as much as its spectacle.

Success Rate:  + 3.8

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The Life of Chuck (5 Stars)

Every now and then a film is made that's truly original. Not often, but it happens. The best film of 2025 was doubtlessly "The Life of Chuck". Told backwards, the film shows the key incidents in the life of Charles Krantz, nicknamed Chuck. He lived, he danced, he died. That's something that could be written on my gravestone. It wasn't written on Chuck's gravestone, because when he died the world ended.

Other reviewers tackle the question of whether the world really ends in the film. Is the third part of the film just the imagination of a man lying in a hospital bed dying of a brain tumour? Personally, I don't think the question should be asked. Walt Whitman wrote, "I am large. I contain multitudes". He wrote it about himself, but it applies to everyone, and in the context of the film it applies to Chuck. When Chuck dies at the young age of 39, the universe dies with him.

The film wasn't very successful at the box office, which is sad. It should have been seen by more people. I don't think it was a problem that people didn't understand the film, they just didn't go to the cinema to see it. I've spoken to friends who I'm sure would have liked it, but they didn't go. They didn't know what the film was about. One friend thought it was a film about music. Another assumed it was a horror film, because it's based on a Stephen King story. It's not a horror film. It's a science fiction film and a deeply philosophical film.

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Ambulance (4 Stars)

Michael Bay's "Ambulance" is a loud, breathless exercise in controlled chaos that succeeds on its own terms. It takes a simple premise, a desperate bank robbery gone wrong, and stretches it into a near two-hour chase sequence that rarely lets up.

The standout feature is, unsurprisingly, the driving. The film's lengthy car chases are relentless, jittery and often astonishingly staged, with Bay turning Los Angeles highways into a shifting maze of ambulances, police cruisers and military response units. The camera rarely sits still; drones, dash cams and sweeping aerial shots create a constant sense of motion that borders on overwhelming but feels deliberately so.

Plot and character work are minimal, which is fine here. "Ambulance" is less interested in motivation than momentum, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II driving much of the tension through escalating panic and strained brotherhood dynamics. It's scrappy rather than deep, but that suits the film's stripped-back survival structure.

It won’t convert anyone who finds Michael Bay's style exhausting, but for viewers willing to go along with the noise and velocity, it delivers exactly what it promises: an extended, high-octane chase film that barely pauses to breathe.

Success Rate:  - 0.7

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Kill Bill (5 Stars)

Oops I did it again. I went to see "Kill Bill" for a second time in two days. When I bought my tickets it seemed necessary, because it was claimed it would never be released on disc. Quentin Tarantino has  changed his mind, fortunately. But it was still good to see the film again.

One recent change to the complete film that wasn't in the 2011 version shown at the Cannes Film Festival is a 12-minute after-credits scene, called "Kill Bill: The Lost Chapter". It's a fully animated sequence featuring Gogo's sister Yuki. It doesn't really belong to the film, especially not at the end. When I own the film on disc I'll probably watch it separately, not tagged on to the end.

One thing that amused me tonight was the man sitting in the seat next to me. I always respect people who go to the cinema alone, like me, not with their partners or friends. It shows that they take films seriously. This man was different. During the fight scene in the House of Blue Leaves he covered his eyes every time a head or an arm was chopped off. Someone should have warned him that it would be so violent.