Lima

I didn't appreciate this film until years later, perhaps influenced at the time by whoever was in the director's chair. A hugely enjoyable flick, tasteful, without pandering and with more than one truth of life. Most of all, it's admirable how Kwapis balances the entire film on a fine edge, never slipping into turning his narrative into a shallow cliché. And the character portrayed here by Justin Long is hugely likeable, if I wasn't straight I'd probably fall in love with him :o)

After a forced hiatus of several years, when the consolidating normalisation regime had him in their sight, this is but a mere glimmer of the genius of Vláčil, whose excellent craft and imagery exploded in the 1960s and whose artistic heyday (when he was planning many other ambitious historical projects until the 1970s) was halted by the invasion of Russian troops and the subsequent shameful five-year era of "cinema of oblivion". In other words, the Communists squeezed Vláčil like a lemon, and although his last creative phase is not to be dismissed, the proverbial chains that had bound his hands for the previous ten years are very noticeable. Such a shame.

The "good boy of Hollywood" Henry Fonda is again a respectable good guy in every way, Richard Widmark is again the right stubborn policeman, there's some fine jazz music and the atmosphere of New York at the end of the 1960s is very classy, but the plot in the first two acts is not engaging at all, it doesn't draw you in and there’s too much dialogue dealing with utter banalities. I was expecting something much sharper from Don Siegel, a specialist in the crime genre and macho films, and I didn't get it until the last twenty minutes, which ooze with the charge so typical of his films.

With a bit of exaggeration, it’s sort of thematically related to Will Smith’s hit I, Legend. The post-apocalyptic atmosphere of the first 20 minutes is excellent. There’s no need for stacked clusters of extras and panoramic scenes, just a few deserted streets, garbage on the ground, a few dead bodies by the roadside and the ominous smoke from the pit where the main character cremates the infected corpses. The concept of zombies, or rather infected ones, is somewhat strange: they resemble drunkards on their way back home from a bender, even after three years since the infection they still walk around in fairly clean and undamaged clothes, they hate garlic, mirrors and daylight, they call the main character by his name and they use tools. The flashback, which illustrates and explains the plot, is rather brief, so that the weight of the moment when the pandemic breaks out fails to reach you. The final ten-minute action set-piece is unintentionally funny, unfortunately. Of course, there's the charismatic Vincent Price, who bravely carries everything his shoulders, he could sell the biggest crap.

This film looks different on the outside (synopsis, trailers) than what it is. I wasn’t expecting it to be so mature and self-aware, my appreciation for Gordon-Levitt has risen. Until now I regarded him as an interesting actor, but now I seem him as an interesting filmmaker who knows what he wants to say without pandering.

"A wise man can learn more from his enemies than a fool from his friends." (Niki Lauda).

I liked Justin Timberlake’s natural acting, but Ben Affleck was much more fun, he really enjoys playing the asshole, and his is a case of “the older the better”. I don’t have any fears about Batman, he’s in good hands.

A sensitive take on a literary classic that unfolds slowly and you have to find your way to the characters, but as the narrative draws to a close, it grows in emotional intensity. You won't forget the drowning scene for the rest of your life, and the final fuck off is such a sweet, ironic icing that Paul Newman only confirms his status as someone few could match.

To accuse Peter Jackson – as many here do – of getting too carried away and overwhelming us with attractions is to misunderstand his essence. The truth is that he hasn't changed at all since he was a young boy baking evil alien masks in his mother's oven for his feature debut. He’s a big child who loves movie effects and likes to impress with visual stunts that often go over the edge. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the overstuffed King Kong, and I’ve also enjoyed the overstuffed second Hobbit. It’s so visually sumptuous and rich that no other fantasy or fairytale movie of the last ten years can match it in this respect. It starts to make sense if you take the lukewarm first film as a launching pad of sorts for the massive second part. But at the same time, I warn you, if you are you looking for insightful ideas, eye-popping scenes, in short, that "humanly warm artistic experience", go elsewhere. If, on the contrary, you want Jackson off the chains and as his most exuberant self, you are in the right place.

Cimino spent four years recovering from the commercial disaster and the audience rejection of his ambitious Heaven's Gate, and came back with what I love him for: a piece of proper filmmaking, with "Cimino-esque" precision, where Chinatown, with hundreds of extras, pulses with life as believably as the explicit street gang violence depicted here with bullet-riddled bodies and one severed head. Mickey Rourke as the grizzled, uncompromising Commissioner Stanley White is perfect, and never mind the critics of the time who accused this character of open, unconcealed racism caused by the trauma of his military service in the Vietnam War, and then wrongly accused Cimino of being intolerant of minorities in American society. Maybe that's why the film kind of fizzled out without much audience response in the cinemas, Cimino became bitter and, to our misfortune, Year of the Dragon is his last big film. (watched on Blu-ray).