Filmmaniak

Reflections on the social present and the life of the social bottom in a small town, as well as an ingenious satire on Czech behavior, wrapped in a B movie horror comedy about a carnivorous hole in the ground... The Greedy Tiffany is a multi-genre mix, all of the components of which are in perfect proportional interplay - terror, tension, humor and social criticism are all present in the right proportions and work together above all expectations. There are some problems with it, but even so, it is an extremely good film. The film should be appreciated for the fact that someone dared to adapt to the Czech environment truly unconventional film and genre elements. He succeeded, and a film was created that not only entertains, but one that also has something to say. This was truly a big and pleasant surprise.

It's not that the jokes in American Ultra are weak - they're almost non-existent. Although the film is presented as an action comedy, it doesn't seem like a comedy at all, because it lacks insight, funny one-liners and relieving elements, and its protagonists, scared to death and on the verge of tears, and fleeing from killer psychopaths, are far from entertaining. The film is more of an action thriller with several comically-overshot scenes and untapped potential, drowned in failed dialogues, not very well-directed actors and below-average directing.

Kormákur decided to shoot his most ambitious film as realistically as possible, without the traditional Hollywood embellishments and artificially-evoked dramatic situations, making Everest almost a documentary reconstruction of the real events by which it was inspired. However, the film suffers from too many characters - at least two dozen are clawing their way to the top and many more are waiting at the bottom or at home. There are so many that a large number of them appear only marginally in the film and do not get enough space so that you are able to form an emotional bond with them, which is quite a shame given the stellar cast. The film is beautifully shot, but without invention and without ideas. Everest works as a fateful testimony about overcoming oneself, about the power of the human spirit and that nature always has the last word in the end. Otherwise, however, it represents a risk-free film for the audience, in which the sympathetic pursuit of credibility and realism is brought down by a lack of drama and too many characters.

It can be seen that the film was very expensive and narrative-based, the music is dynamically thundering, the actors are trying, the directing is skilled, etc. However, none of this can obscure the fact that from the point of view of the story, there is simply almost nothing interesting going on in the film, whilst what could have been interesting is pointlessly truncated to a minimum. After the previous, worn-out work, I was looking forward to the announced civil war and the grand finale, but I did not get to see anything like that, and instead I was served another load of the same boredom. Most of the film has a rather sluggish pace and suffers from shallow dialogues that more or less repeat the same thing that has been said before. There are only two more decent action scenes in 135 minutes, and we get to see only a short fraction of the most important of them - the attack of the insurgents on the Capitol.

I've seen worse nonsense before, but this film is still pretty miserable. Danny Trejo is in the film for about two minutes, the volcano is spewing zombies and embarrassing digital lava, but mostly nothing happens and it's all terribly boring. It's slightly unintentionally entertaining, but hardly enough. I'm also fascinated by the director's effort to constantly stuff various out-of-focus objects or the actors' shoulders right in front of the camera at all costs.

In the first half hour, Zelenka gets this not-very-successful bitter comedy about a media bubble around a talking parrot going, in order to later have the upper hand against the audience by implying that the films lack quality had been intentional the entire time, and for good reason. Lost in Munich is a perfectly balanced (very funny and at the same time sad and painfully true) parable about backstage of film productions, about the Czech nation, and about the fact that appearances sometimes deceive, of course with a certain amount of exaggeration. The film is directed with a firm hand and is a thoughtful and conscious project with natural actors, the ambitiously and intelligently-grasped theme of the Munich Agreement, and with a functional story full of surprising twists. In terms of Czech films, this story is also told in a rather unusual and attractive way.

It seems to me that Kevin Smith INTENTIONALLY tried to make this film so that it could not be physically tolerated. First, we have a crazy and perverted wtf story reminiscent of The Human Centipede, dominated by a repulsive walrus costume and the disturbing thought of a painful transformation. It’s a story that is completely demented from the very beginning, but at the same time wants to give the audience a sort of deep message (see the last scene). Then there are the excessively long dialogues about nothing, desperately unfunny jokes uttered with the greatest awkwardness, nonlinear storytelling disturbing the viewer’s attention, indecisive genre balancing on the edge between bad horror and lousy comedy, absolutely horrible acting by Johnny Depp... There is so much of it and to such an extreme extent that it simply could not be a coincidence, and given the director's experience, or even non-art, so I suspect that Smith wanted it to be this way intentionally. He apparently succeeded. But that does not mean that I appreciate his intentions.

An aggressively unpleasant film with an unimaginative and sloppy plot, unsuccessful and utterly embarrassing jokes, poorly-directed and miserable acting, and with a lot of self-serving and unnecessarily exaggerated vulgarities and distastefulness. The story is totally nonsensical and incoherent and breaks apart into a tangle of unrelated scenes in which desperately unsympathetic protagonists act like incompetent lunatics so that they can eventually end up in a mess of feces, vomit, or cow guts. The equivalent of comedy hell.

It doesn't matter that the plot is demented; I was expecting that. But what bothers me is the absence of good jokes, more interesting characters and a better screenplay, which would have at least made a bit of sense. The authors of the film created a world that does not follow absolutely any rules, is terribly inconsistent and Dadaistic, feels lazy and slapdash, and doesn’t bother to explain anything.

A comedy with a lack of functional humor, a spectacularly inconsistent atmosphere and a brutally incoherent and random plot. It is sad that Czech filmmakers can make a commercial film at a high technical level (there are even action scenes, car chases and ninjas in this), but they have a terrible problem filling it with meaningful, or at least coherent content. Most of the characters, the situations they experience, and the motifs would better suit a depressing drama, while others are parodies, or even crazy. However, the result is that the film has no genre. It does not entertain, impress, nor does it provide a story that would fit the title of the film, "Life Is Life", because it seems false, unnatural and soulless.