Marigold

The incredibly simple, flat story, is saved from my sheer hatred (which I felt for the idiotic racial jumble The Help) by humor, and by the fact that it’s so stupid and stupider that there is no way it will offend you. The themes of tolerance and self-acceptance do not make much sense. The film, like a forged midcult, avoids everything that is even slightly problematic (or looks at it helplessly as a doctor looking at working nurses), and it always finds a way to get away from it. If I wanted to play at being Žižek, I would see an extraordinary tragedy about how two people help to create a fake version of themselves (supposedly better, yet totally a lie for the person watching). Farrelly's directing is about as progressive as the filter his cameraman uses, but one thing that he has is almost ingenious - the cast. The two idiots are so nice and relaxed that it's hard not to enjoy it for a while. They can convince most people that this film is not as hollow as it seems. Burn after reading.

It took three films for Department Q to find its film identity. After the contradictory and screenplay clumsiness of the previous films, this is finally a decent combination of a whodunnit detective story and a social thriller, which is driven forward by its two central characters. It has a strong, great pace and only a few moments of partial clumsiness. In addition, the involvement of the current social storyline is very, very skillful. It’s a Scandinavian Noir champion.

This excellent archival and investigative work, which is not as genre-creating and revolutionary as the first series of Making a Murderer, is rather based on the research and life work of others. But that doesn't diminish the detail and insight into Bundy's life and the contemporary context of his tenure, trial, and ultimately his stay in the Florida death cell. Ted Bundy is a magnetizing personality, a potentially successful politician who has become the most feared serial killer due to an interplay of psychological factors. For fans of psycho-detective Mindhunter, this is an obligation, also because Bundy was one of the essential factors in the emerging criminal discipline at the time. Cold, uncomfortable and, pardon my words... toxic.

One of the best directorial works by Susanne Bier, who has endured the dangers of a film in which a piece of hypersensitive kitsch is definitely dormant. But, folks, Sandra is great and Trevante Rhodes shows that his special fragility is as astounding as his musculature. Screenwriter Erik Heisserer is an aspirant and intends to specialize in female alien encounters ... which is why the structure of the two alternating levels of storytelling works very well. Bird Box has a nice rhythm and does not drag, and moreover, it avoids the absurd escalation that damaged the similarly tuned A Quiet Place. It's a bit unfortunate that the point itself feels a little lost, and the main character, despite trying to question her relationship to unwanted motherhood, never quite goes deep enough. But chattering aside, this is very solid genre work in all respects, also because the creators eventually gathered enough courage not to show the evil at all. I wish their Hollywood colleagues would take an example from them. One of the best Netflix originals and a dignified reparation for ultimate evil from Shyamalan's The Happening.

I would like to draw your attention to Marigold's submarine dogma in advance: submarine = automatically * plus. Because according to all other criteria, Thomas Vinterberg shot only a slightly above-average genre template. A celebration of boyish friendship spiced with sentiment and two-dimensional characters. He tries to draw something more from the jerky screenplay by Robert Rodat (among others, Saving Private Ryan) through format changes, veristic filming and emphasis on wordless details (a boy as a silent witness and conscience). But there is simply nothing more in this film. The real case is devastating and could do without the extra drama. The film works because some of the sequences are catchy (underwater search for oxygen cartridges in one suffocating shot) and Schoenaerts does a decent job in the lead role, as does Firth in the supporting role. As a Kursk Memorial it is dignified, but above the surface the film does not release the conflict between the Hollywood template and the attempt to conceive it as a civil statement about the tragedy of ordinary people. The performances of broken mothers then inadvertently resemble bad theater. It's a shame, but the years in development hell didn't help.

I have a weakness for this type of film, which balances on the edge of humor and depression. Moreover, after a tough TV start (I don't mean the first "home video" sequence; that is divine), the film finds a fairly moderate creative key, which gives it a satisfactory dose of retro, shabbiness and a certain dreaminess. The story of a useless man who tries to joke carefully in a time that consistently suppresses humor, has its clear highlights (the great scene from Baikonur) and is accompanied by a gently absurd vibration. The Humorist is a metaphor not only of real socialism as a pragmatic time period without illusions, but also of the relationship between power and humor in Russia in general. The Humorist combines a comedy about conformity and a drama about anxiety. Like Dovlatov, this film about internal riots is without fireworks, and like Leto (for which Idov is the screenwriter), it captures a sleepy time without great heroes.

This is like a bad season of Dexter. A parade of self-serving psychopathic figures on a clock driven by illogic. I haven't seen so many script flashes in one series and it doesn't matter that Idris is good in it.

Like all of Lanthimos’s previous films, The Favourite is a description of a bizarre struggle for the favor of authority and a deliberately distorted caricature of human society, defined by a constant struggle for power. As a bonus, however, this new films is also a serious historical drama with an conservative narrative arc (one can feel that fragmentary storytelling lover Efthymis Filippo is not involved in this). The Favourite tries to be a venomous and scathing period piece, where (toxic) relationships between women play a leading role, while men are ephebic fools and horny idiots. The central trio is a joy to watch mainly due to their great acting and the sparkling mischief of mutual interactions. Unfortunately, over time, the film, which is a bit violently cut into chapters, becomes what it is at its core - a sparse, monotonous story with a predictable subtext. While until now Lanthimos has always been able to misalign and surprise viewers, to troll them with something that may contradict the laws of logic, but effectively comments on the arbitrariness of our existence, The Favourite is in some ways conventional. Although it contains typical choreographic excesses, it flows according to genre rules. It is dirtier, more vulgar, more crooked (Robbie Ryan FTW), sometimes effectively elliptical, but sometimes cruelly literal (the rabbits). In part, I support her, but she also did not stimulate me in any way, did not upset me, and she did not make me think. Yeah, humanity is a bunch of degenerates and really destroys character. We know, Jorgos. But I didn't feel it this time. For the first time ever, I left Lanthimos's film slightly apathetic rather than morbidly exacerbated.

It really tries to go back to a series of emotions and at the same time follow the current trend of back to 80s. It really wants to be "cute" and have soul, so much so that it falls into a mindless schematic. All of the things are so ostentatiously assembled according to a manual that they have trouble communicating with each other. Moreover, if someone laughed at Bay that his female heroines seem artificial, this is a different type of art - Charlie is constructed as an essential outsider with emotions so consistently that her alternation of teenage angst and sadness seems purely robotic. As well as the constant incorporation of 80s realities and references into the story. I get that naivety is a trademark of films for teens, but even these can be done so that they do not act like the result of a focus group session. Unfortunately, that's exactly what Bumblebee comes off as. Props for the cameo Optimus and the unintentionally funny John Cena. I hereby disconnect from the series and I will be happy to remember Bay's total sociopathy of the last episodes. In some ways, it was more stimulating than this colorful nostalgic junkyard.

Petr Zahrádka has inserted a penetrating, almost anthropological probe into the life of mentally slow villagers in the romantic environment of the Beskydy Mountains. Dr. Martin's character, who has Asperger’s, is a brave commentary of masculinity which, in contact with the majesty of the mountains, is dealing with a serious identity crisis. The second half of the film exchanges psychological stratification for a symbolic commentary of a broken national identity. He metaphorically demonstrates that it is history that brings Czechs and Slovaks down. We need to uncompromisingly discard it in order to free ourselves from the yoke of our ancestors and finally touch our manly, fertile selves. I am very much looking forward to where the most ambitious Czech multiverse will move this research in the expected spin-off Strážmistr Topinka.