Necrotongue

Detective Hieronymus Bosch has clearly returned in full force, again completely overwhelmed with work and still unable to control occasional outbursts of his temper. Anyway, I have given the first episode of the third season only four stars, because I consider it just a promising start of the new series.

I can’t say I’m overly enthusiastic by this series. Season 1 was still slightly above average, there were some funny moments, but also a number of disappointing and unconvincing acting performances. However, the quality dropped significantly in Season 2. There was less humor, and it was somewhat cumbersome and unpleasantly predictable. The only constant of both seasons was Hynek Čermák, whose performance was brilliant and entertaining all along.

Season 2 was significantly weaker compared to the first one. There was noticeably less quality humor. Unfortunately, there was still the same amount of forced acting performances. The writing was borderline pathetic in places, and I think it would have been much better to end the series after the first season and bow out gracefully. Season 2 seemed to be only recycling the material from the first one, and not even the attempt to spice things up by adding new characters was successful. Despite not having high expectations, I was disappointed with the result. The only thing I loved was the performance of Hynek Čermák who was excellent.

In the third episode, I had a rather good time, the doctor couldn't really be faulted this time, in this case he handled the collision with the idiots excellently, knowing myself, I wouldn't have been able to keep my nerves in check when meeting an "alternative" family. If I counted correctly, Luisa was insulted no more than three times, so I'm starting to worry if the doctor will somehow lose it.

A weird film, which knocked my cynical self out of the game. The Hungarian filmmakers really pulled it off again. The film was relaxing, romantic and dramatic, yet I wouldn't recommend it to any animal rights activists or the faint of heart. I'm still blown away by Alexandra Borbély, it's been a long time since a film character intrigued me as much as Marika.

I've grown rather fond of films about organized crime although I can’t explain why. I guess Lord Vetinari is to blame. The conflict between the Italian and Irish underworld obviously relied heavily on various explosives, so the pyrotechnicians got their fix. The film had a decent atmosphere and a stellar cast, but Ray Stevenson got on my nerves. Or at least his crazy wig did. Whenever he appeared on screen, he made me think of Terence Hill, which was highly distracting.

The premise is getting old. A good guy ends up in prison where things get even worse because of an evil prison boss, et cetera. S. Craig Zahler took a slightly different approach. I imagine there were quite a few viewers who didn’t manage to keep their dinner down during certain scenes. Those hardened by experience like myself, on the other hand, could savor each and every crack. The biggest surprise for me was Vince Vaughn, who was totally convincing and gave one of his best performances in my opinion.

If I were supposed to take care of that fat bastard (sorry, morbidly obese troubled boy), it would definitely be a short film, as he definitely wouldn't survive his attitude in the beginning. The longer I watched, the more obvious it was that it was a typical family film, whose plot, despite its many unlikely adventures, was inevitably marching towards a happy ending, which isn’t exactly my thing. It’s not that I hate happy endings, but the story just wasn’t any good. I’m not sure why the characters repeatedly said there were a million hectares of the Bush around them, when both runaways kept stumbling across people all the time. Lame.

Once again, I was made to watch a Marvel film almost against my will. I was told that the latest Thor was different and perhaps even funny. And it was true, I did get to laugh a few times. The creators did a great job visually. Plus, Cate Blanchett’s voice is simply soothing. Then again, I do like Norse mythology and its constant desecration was extremely distracting. I won't list all the errors here, I think it's enough to name Heimdall and the last (wtf?) Valkyrie. I just can't stand how black people are constantly cast in roles that don’t belong to them. I would be just as annoyed if a white man was cast as Barack Obama or Martin Luther King.

I’m sure there was a certain message and I even get what the message was, but I think Taika Waititi can do better. I would have given this film more stars if it hadn’t been trying too hard to look artistic and play on the emotions of overly sensitive individuals. The idea of populating the film with "quirky" characters wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t original.