Marigold

The first third is like a flowery hop, boyish-bodied ALE with a delicious taste, whereas the second third begins to smell like an ordinary Eurolager, but it's brisk and drinkable. The final third is like a musty small cellar beer with the dull aftertaste of steamy socks of people who saw too much in their idea. A film whose wheels fall off. Wasting talent and good ingredients for something that again does not lose sight of the genre, but desperately loses sight of itself. History repeats itself, but compared to Hot Fuzz, this is an even thinner attempt at a cheeky meta-party. Most of all, it's quite sad to see how all the overlap literally stamps out the film at the end of the verbatim and still stays with only a few badly grafted references. This is simply not cheeky or clever, just weathered. I pour the end out the window. [65%].

Carrie for viewers who don't like claustrophobia, insinuation and moral relativism. Mechanical relocation of the classic to a time when mere community ridicule is no longer enough, but a video on YouTube is also needed. It is quite symptomatic how much attention the new adaptation pays to school benches and how little it "terrifies" through the situation in the house of Carrie's Mother (one bleeding Christ is simply not enough). Julianne Moore made me feel good (again), Chloë Moretz fights bravely, though she’s not completely victorious, but the second half killed the film for me. I was expecting excitement that would scatter the tendentious high school operetta, but I saw only a tired and ugly B-movie with a demented cliffhanger. One of King's best texts deserves much more than a few great hits (Passion Pit pleased me), excessive shots of evil beautiful people and realization kicks - in addition to disgusting tricks, in some places I was annoyed by the miserable sequence of shots and lousy implementation of brutal scenes. Carrie took the fall in this case. [40%]

A very model, stylish, even pre-stylized detective story, which replaces the view, sarcasm and momentum of the original with a number of formal and motive clichés. Mikkel Nørgaard has his finger on the pulse of the time period, because he participated in the serial political drama Borgen. Compared to the horribly cowardly and impotent film The Hypnotist, The Keeper of Lost Causes is much more photogenic, fiercer, and sharper, though sometimes there are attempts to make the viewer feel out of balance unnecessarily beyond self-purpose. I have a more fundamental problem with the character of Carl, who in the film version is a textbook example of a Nordic loner and a guy with depression... but the book prototype is much more humorous and lively, which distinguishes him from the generic stack of frowning guys on vodka with Xanax. Lie Kaas may be able to play his star power at home, but his Carl is simply not an interesting character, and the protagonist's interaction with his film partner Assad is at about a quarter of the throttle compared to the book. I could easily imagine this detective story being a little longer, bolder and more pampered. If the creators focused as much attention on the characters that they do on tearing out teeth, the film could be more than a solid series pilot with a metrosexual visual. [65%]

Cats do not ferment or the Slovak Inheritance, which very cleverly combines ironized Slovak mystery and Taragel "degenerate" satire. Folk wisdom, a universal plan of "morons on the edge of the new world" and an intelligently chosen stylization that never gets into screaming. One of the best comedies of the 90's and apparently the best post-revolutionary Slovak comedy ever.

"You don't look that smart..." Indeed. It is a pity that the script realizes this only after it realizes that two wooden clubs will not produce an intellectual spark. A few of the situations are amusing, Arnie's religious Germanic frenzy is magical, but otherwise it’s a handful of poorly written and dully filmed situations that try to look smart here, dramatic there, but they rather flow by harmlessly (and arouse legitimate smiles). I have a feeling that a similar happening will work at high speed only on a wave of irony and playfulness. And the creators forgot to lock them up in the same prison. I don't know if I dreamed of meeting Sly and Arnie, but since I'm a fan of both, I would justifiably expect some greater emotion than the embarrassed smile on my face when Sly punched Arnie. It's gone. Oh well. [55%]

Exactly the type of film that pulls out all the trump cards in the first third, only to dilute them in vain and uneasily mix them. I was looking forward to a slow psychological crime thriller, but over time it breaks down into a one-string litany, from which protrudes Deakins’ excellent camera and the character of Jake Gyllenhaal, who, unlike the others, has the advantage that you basically don't learn anything about him (at least in this way, it’s a little mysterious). The film also fails significantly as a detective story when it dispenses information very inefficiently and fails to justify its excessive length (one revelation involves a senseless number of repetitive and intense dialogues without a deeper meaning). However, the music, the camera and some of the directing moments away from the plot make it a solid film. EDIT 2020: I take it back, it all works brilliantly as a story of insurmountable anxiety and destructive rage. And in fact as a detective story about a spasmatic detective who patiently faces a feeling of inadequacy.

Intellectual exploitation. Everything you've ever thought about global capital, predatory capitalism and high banking management all in one film, where the characters are just a function of a legible ideological message (which I agree with, but which I do not enjoy in this pamphlet form). Sometimes it is ridiculous (Pacman with bank logos that is supposed to shed light on the principle of a key transaction, a director who needs a consultant to shed light on the fact that if he swallows a bank with 80% of toxic assets, he'll have a problem, etc.), but mostly it is a desperately sterile and unsatisfying film, because it only shows theses and model situations - golf, luxury whores, redneck American managers (from Goldman Sachs), the distortion of painters' names, an estranged son addicted to computer games, a sexually frustrated protagonist, and old ethical bankers, etc. If I'm wrong and this movie is a really realistic depiction of the lives of elites, then it's great news, because soon everyone will want idiocy, frustration and boredom. The dominant impression for me was that Costa Gavras wanted to make a film that would be like a motionless surface, under which it boils with tension... but in reality, however, there is a sterile, tiled bottom underneath. [40%]

The saying of finding solid ground under your feet will never be the same again. A visually ingenious, revolutionary, liberating experience of overcoming loneliness and finding gravity (hope). With the exception of the deus ex machina and the overly literal emancipation scheme in the last third, this was an absolutely brilliant and captivating experience that moved me to tears in the middle part through the image of endless solitude. Bullock took my breath away. A juicy variation of brave babes in spacesuits. Clooney as a space trucker is economical and charismatic in every line of dialogue. It's not revolutionary in terms of ideas, profound and dizzyingly metaphysical, yet at the right time it got to me like nothing else could this year (and very few in recent years). A pure visual celebration of the fragility of existence. Somewhere out in space. One of the best sci-fi films of all time, which can easily withstand its admitted simplicity (who needs more metaphysical diarrhea from The Tree of Life? I don’t). A Space Odyssey for the new millennium. Goodbye... I'm drifting forever and only answering the phone when Ed Harris calls from Houston. [90%]

Howard is more like Niki Lauda - cool, calculating, like a professor with a flair for fine design. Because of this, Rush accelerates incredibly in the racing sequences and stiffens a bit where the film tries to name the destructiveness of racing passion. James Hunt looks like a poster boy (something like a gasoline-smelling pin-up boy) and the best parts aren't the wooden dialogues, but rather the moment when the heroes make a face or gesture after them. Otherwise, Rush is actually a fresh affair in terms of "sports lemonade". It is customary that in sports dramas, the hero has to sacrifice something and deny a piece of himself. Given that the film Lauda has what the film Hunt does not have, and vice versa, the final victory is in fact absolute. Everyone has their truth and their piece of triumph. The moment when, in the end, one cannot decide to whom to cheer for more is quite rare. I would like to point out that Rush idealizes the whole sport like knights, and according to them, it is not possible to perfectly reconstruct the case of "Lauda vs Hunt". I've been waiting all year for a blockbuster that pushes me into my seat and pumps me up with adrenaline. I had Rush as a black horse (don't hit me, I know it's basically on an indie budget). They did their job perfectly. [80%] P.S. Thumbs up for Brühl... Lauda has never been this cool. Cold and sharp as a razor.

A boring, uninspired and sad boy makes a documentary about banal, boring and doleful people who are interesting only when they get lice; otherwise they spew out vulgarities, of which I was ashamed. Impotence hidden behind the lyricism of the family album, a show of uselessness, whose intimate dimension / informative value escapes me. I'm probably no better or more interesting than the actors, but it never occurred to me to pick up a camera and push it onto others as a testimony without a testimony... probably because I'm not from an arty enough family to be convinced of my own uniqueness. Sorry, this family etude should not succeed even as a year's work.