Balestra (2024)

Premise: Joanna has one of the coolest possible surnames (Bathory) and is also a sort of disgraced olympic fencer who is trying to go for the gold again. She’s slightly older than basically every other contestant, so she feels a bit at disadvantage - until she’s offered a new fancy high tech gadget that will let her train while lucid dreaming…
Under 90 minutes? No, oh ho ho ho, no. Not at all. It’s two hours and a half long for some reason.
Do they say the title? Yes they do, and THEN they explain what the title means (some fencing thing), so thank you.

One sentence review: Could have been titled “Joanna Bathory’s Blue Balls” because oh boy at some point I was feeling bad for her.
Rating: Okay, it wasn’t amazing, it was way too long but I’m a sucker for stuff where dreams and reality get kinda blurred sometimes. Mind you, sometimes I find them super cheap, but this time it was fun. Speaking of, it was also very fun seeing Manny Jacinto of The Good Place’s fame playing the polar opposite of his loveable, dumb as hell character on that show.
A simple way to improve it: On one hand I would suggest being more blatant about the obvious inspiration (Altered States, part of Impeccable Taste HQ’s favourites) and go for extremely psychedelic things, on the other hand I think fencing as a sport is kind of boring compared to fencing in movies. So let’s Errol Flynn it up, friends! Have Countess Bathory laugh maniacally while hanging from some rope, have her kick her enemies in the face after jumping from a table, have her flirt with everyone around… you know, fun stuff. Not bam bam bam done, what a waste of a sport.

Trivia about the IMDb trivia:

Joanna tells Elliot to “stop showing me your dark side.’ Manny Jacinto (Elliot) played a dark side Jedi in The Acolyte (2024).

My friend, sometimes words are just words. It’s not healthy to think everything’s a reference to your space tv show, your wizard books or whatever.

In other words,