Goldbeater

Well, it was a total madhouse of a movie. Thumbs up for the camera work and the overall visuals, although on the other hand, it is clear that the movie is based on the novel and actors so theatrically recite the script, and so little of what they do and say seems truly believable. In terms of the history of Czech cinema, this movie is more of a curiosity than a functioning work of art.

Licorice Pizza is a pleasant two hours of nostalgia looking back to the crazy seventies. It follows the development of a young couple's love story told through a mosaic of mutliple different events, which I enjoyed.

I enjoyed this movie in the cinema as opposed to the recent Murder on the Orient Express, which left me completely cold because it was simply a pretentious flamboyant parade of stars with no added value. The filmmakers did not shy away from somewhat tweaking the plot of Death on the Nile. So even though I already knew the end of the story quite well, I ended up being slightly surprised by its development, where the tone of the movie became indiscriminate and somewhat pessimistic. Thumbs up for that.

The Last Race is a technically very well-made survival movie and definitely a strong above-average Czech movie, which deserves some appreciation. My only (albeit huge) criticism is directed at the chosen narrative style. Director Tomas Hodan seems to have been more concerned with how to harmoniously combine two timelines than making sure he effectively and comprehensibly narrated the critical moment of the whole drama. Instead, he withholds information from the viewer to seemingly shock them with a bizarre flashback within a flashback. The flashback made me incredibly confused and threw me off in an otherwise comprehensible narrative. Instead of feeling good about understanding the key moment, a series of pertinent questions flooded my mind (Where did Vrabata suddenly come from? Why did he go there in the first place and not tell anyone? Why did he give his coat away when he needed it himself? Where was the time continuity in this case? Why was he absent for most of the movie's running time when he is such a pivotal character? Why does Hodan needlessly sabotage his own movie with such a strange screenwriting ploy?). I think it was simply a completely unnecessary and stupid shortcoming of an otherwise good and very interesting Czech movie, to which I am going to award four stars in the end. It could have been better.

Robert Eggers has made his third movie, which is a bit different. It is not very original in terms of subject matter and plot structure because it is based on a real Scandinavian legend that was the main inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet. So, if someone called it an ambitious Conan the Barbarian on shrooms, I would not argue. Even though the development of the main characters' motivations and emotions in the movie's last third is strangely turbulent, it is still a very interesting movie. It is also visually compelling, and within the context of other cinematic releases globally, it is a refreshing venture that marks a minor step towards the mainstream for Robert Eggers, even if The Northman is certainly still not a mainstream movie. The Lighthouse remains my favorite of the director's movies so far. However, I enjoyed seeing this Nordic romp in the cinema and would have wished it as much commercial success as possible. However, there is as much chance of that as Amleth's life story not being an inevitable fatal tragedy.

I think that you simply could never get tired of watching Paul Newman, especially when he is playing a detective. However, this neo-noir does not come close to his Harper movies. After his previous collaboration with Robert Benton on the excellent Nobody's Fool, my expectations were a little different, and Twilight is, unfortunately, a bit bland throughout.

I admit I enjoyed Moonfall and I had a dumbfounded smile on my face during all the derailed craziness. However, you have to approach it as a total no-brainer (especially when listening to the dialogues). It was a pleasant surprise that John Bradley's character, who I was most worried about after watching the trailers, ended up being the movie's highlight. I enjoyed the plotline with him, Patrick Wilson, and Halle Berry. However, Moonfall also features a forced parallel plotline with family members on earth, which weighs it down, so it drags, and those moments were a stumbling block for me. Scenes with horribly written, uninteresting, unlikable, and even horribly acted characters (I do not want to see Charlie Plummer in anything again, ever) turned a stupid, if entertaining, guilty pleasure into a painful embarrassment.

Poor Bogdanovich, no aspiring filmmaker with big ambitions would or should have been dragged into making this "masterpiece". On the other hand, everybody has to start somewhere, and without Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, we would never have gotten Targets, The Last Picture Show, and Paper Moon. So even the worst repetitive movie like this is vindicated by cinematic history, which is probably the most positive thing I can say about it.

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet is one of two versions adapted from the Soviet science fiction movie Planet of Storms. It was adapted for Western audiences and enhanced by the addition of principal scenes featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue. Unlike the subsequent second Roger Corman-produced Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet at least sticks fairly faithfully to the tone of the original material and is not as regrettable in terms of filmmaking as its successor, which up-and-comer Peter Bogdanovich directed.

Planet of Storms is a fairly ambitious Soviet science fiction movie that contains quite a few iconic scenes, although the whole movie cannot be said to work together as a whole in a very satisfying way. However, if I had seen it as a child would probably have rather fond nostalgic memories of it because of the very good practical effects.