Mikolaj Kunicki

This film pretends to be what is not, a horror reminiscent of the 1970s masterpiece "Don't Look Now." But instead of a murdeous midget, we have a resurrected hare. It is absurd, at times grotesque, and unintentionally funny. The hare obviously reminded me of the rabbit monster from Monty Python and the Holly Grail as well as David Lynch's Inland Empire, another grotesque film posing as a great art. So here's how we make a low budget tale, which is ambitiously labeled as an English or Yorkshire folk horror tale. I can't understand how Mark Kermode could praise this nonsense on the BFI streaming platform. This movie will not scare you. It made me laugh my stomach out, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Very uneven, with some really good acting (Nina Hoss and Sebastian Koch) and cartoonish characters played by Kitsch, Middleton, and, yes, M.C. Hall. The pace is good and the plot easy to follow, perhaps too easy. I have enjoyed parts of the series, but still have 2 episodes to watch and my confidence in this enterprise is tittering. I am a historian and never rigorously examine historical facts in Netflix series. But I'd only like to point to several sloppy mistakes and misconceptions: 1. Soviets never ran any POW camps in Bavaria, which was occupied by the US 2. Jewish vigilantes did exist, but their role has been overblown in Western popular culture. These guys never formed armed gangs roaming the streets of occupied Berlin. 3. The core idea of a ragtag group of idealistic beginners trying to create new German police under the supervision of a NYPD guilt consumed cop is laughable. Western allies preferred professionals; the Soviets built the entirely new police force in their zone. Still, I've enjoyed the neo-noir style and CGIs of Berlin, the city of ruins (though it reminded me more of post-1944 Warsaw than the German capital in 1945). But there's no comparison with Babylon Berlin. And why on earth, Koch as the "Angel Maker" Gladow keeps switching between German and English while talking to his German female collaborators?!

Fresh, tragic and comical, with a flavour of cinema verite. A wonderful gem from early Scorsese with Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. For the director and his two leads, this is the premonition of their collective breakthrough, "Taxi Driver," made 3 years later. In fact, I prefer "Mean Streets," because of its wonderful humour and banality. It lacks the latter movie's sense of gloom, though we quickly get sense that De Niro's Johnny Boy is drifting toward abyss. Like Fassbinder's "Katzelmacher" (1969), this is a movie almost about nothing, the day-to-day lives of a few characters in New York's Little Italy. They are low-key hoodlums and fixers in their 20s, always scheming, dreaming about being cool and successful, amassing and collecting debts. Their existence is pointless, irresponsible but also comical. There isn't much they can do on their own, so they go with the flow. I suggest that viewers should quickly give up on following criminal affairs our heroes are part of; instead, it's better to enjoy yet another, absurd story told by Johnny Boy to Charlie (Keitel), laugh at their carefree actions and brawls, and appreciate the para-documentary vignettes of Little Italy, with its sleazy bars, pathetic mafiosos, and religious processions where old amateur musicians play fascist "Faccetta Nera." Keitel is very good, De Niro's acting superb and Scorsese's directing innovative. Warning, many viewers may find it misogynistic, but please remember that we are dealing with the late 1960s/early '70s, conservative and corrupt ethnic district, and narrow minded machos. So please treat it not only as an excellent movie, but also the document of its era.