Seven years after Law of the Night, Ben Affleck returns behind (and in front of) the camera to even meet his “best friend” Matt Damon. The latter plays Sonny Vaccaro, one of the leaders of… a little-known Nike basketball division in the mid-1980s. While the company can’t compete with Converse and Adidas in attracting young NBA talent, Vaccaro will become obsessed with finding a promising newcomer to the league: Michael Jordan. However, for the deal to go through, the company’s boss (Ben Affleck) must make an offer unprecedented in the annals of the sport.

An absolutely delightful true story is also one of the biggest success stories of global marketing, which continues to generate billions of dollars in profits today. However, to get there, we needed … the magic of Sonny Vaccaro, who, as we see in the film, understands relatively early that the road to Michael passes through the Cerberus mother Deloris. The chemistry between Matt Damon and Viola Davis in the scenes they share is also the best part of the Affleck movie and we wish there were more of them. Otherwise, the film is impeccably paced, filled with plenty of humor, while choosing (wisely) to never show Jordan himself face-to-face, thereby adding even more bias to his legend.

One of the most special films of recent years came out with the signature heretic Peter Strickland, who creates a delightful satire inspired by the world of modern art. In the “shelter” of the artist, the culinary team creates a performance based on the sounds made by… food. However, conflicts will soon break out between its participants, as well as with the eccentric project manager. The observer and narrator of the whole story is the character Makis Papadimitriou, who, however, also faces his gastrointestinal problems. Strickland’s layered and anarchic satire begins with what we today call art and the intrigues of an artistic microcosm, moves on to projected conditions for preparing reality, and ends with references to the status of women and contemporary political correctness. His gaze is clearly non-standard and insightful, as are the images, visual and sound, with which he tests the viewer. Highlight the narrative monologues (in Greek) of Makis Papadimitriou, who describes his digestive problems as if he were reading pharmaceutical instructions.

Vatican Exorcist ★★
THRILLER (2023)
Director: Julius Avery
Interpretations: Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovato

Russell Crowe dons the clothes of a real-life Vatican exorcist, Father Gabriel Amort, in a film based (loosely) on the latter’s memoirs. Seeing his reputation tarnished in the modern world, Amort travels to a ruined French abbey where there is a report of the boy’s possession. There he will come face to face with an evil rooted in the sins of the Catholic Church itself.

Reminiscent of Maria Kreutzer’s “Corset” a few months ago, the Russian Kirill Serebrennikov (“Faithful”) focuses on another tragic heroine. We are at the end of the 19th century and the beautiful young aristocrat Antonina Milyukova meets and falls in love with the then rising composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

He, out of necessity rather than desire, agrees to marry her, but they will not be happy. He soon tries to get rid of her, but Antonina becomes more and more convinced that her only purpose in life is to love him and support him in his work, eventually developing an obsession with him.

Serebrennikov uses the story of this idiosyncratic unrequited love to comment on the centuries-old male monopoly in art – and in other areas – that limited creative women to the supporting role of wife.

The film by the Russian director is atmospheric and successfully takes on the features of a thriller, although its duration (more than two hours) could be much less.

The theme of neo-Nazism is quite interestingly staged by the French film. A Jewish family sells the basement of their house to a seemingly quiet middle-aged man. However, they will soon realize that this is the Holocaust denier who will now haunt their daily lives.