DaViD´82

Decent and magnificent in terms of craftsmanship, albeit ridiculously naive and dull (the current commentary is late by a few years), an action techno thriller trying to remark The Bourne Ultimatum too faithfully (and above all unsuccessfully) to its own detriment. It's not a bad movie in any way (except for the script, Gilroy is noticeably missing), it's just an unworthy and useless Bourne movie.

Kameňák is one of the most famous, most fundamental and, after all, the best Batman stories. It is the pure essence of what Batman/Jokers is about. Like any good "joke", it's short, striking and damn impressive. And therefore completely unsuitable for full-length footage. Which the creators somewhat clumsily handled so that the introductory half is about something completely different, and no matter how hard the creators try to fit it to Kameňák itself, this effort has zero result. It is decent and not that bad, but completely useless padding which is too lengthy and nothing more. Scenes from the second half, which are taken one to one (including picture framing), work, but paradoxically this is also detrimental, as it is not so much an adaptation as an illustration of the original. But what stands out is the great voicover (Hamill confirms that he is still the best voiceover artist) and worse portrayed. It is therefore something between a cat and a dog, which does not give the original a good name (rather the opposite), but it is only and only thanks to the high quality of the script that it will stand up to the result.

In this terrifying world, all we have are the connections that we make. Despite a rather slow beginning when it's trying to find its place and humor in a too forced way, it gradually turns out to be (from the sixth episode of the first season the quality goes up, but that cult/qualitative status "must see" earned it only from its conclusion onwards), black horse (ha ha ha) among animated series aimed exclusively at adult objective viewer, who does not expect the creators to serve him the same episodes one after another, season after season. Although there is a huge amount of (quite specific, based on one-liners, slightly sidelined and thanks to its absurdity it’s certainly not for everyone) humor, the main role has the dramatic story line that ignores every one, even the characters and certainly the viewer too. It has a continuous plot and it is fully based on the development of all the characters. Satirical social reflection and the whole thing is connected by the daily survival of a burnt-out once-famous narcissistic horse (I’m not always the best at being not terrible.) With ugly middle-aged crisis, who is always ready to say something cynical, who is a nihilist to same extent, and tends to have depression, anxiety and alcoholism, self-destructive nature and unrelenting desperate inner desire for recognition/acceptance. And so well (and much better than, for example, Californication/Koalafirnication or Mad Men, to which the main character is closest), that we can say without exaggerating it is a regular (and above all successful) quality TV rather than comedy satiric monkey business (which I don't mean as an insult but rather as an appraisal) like Rick and Morty. Nothing else in the history of television combines such cleverly absurd (meta) humor with brutal ugly sincerity about the relationships of all of us. In addition, it is (also thanks to congenial voiceover) the most emotional series of today (perhaps only Leftovers can keep up). Yes, these emotions are mainly sad, full of unpleasant truths that no one wants to hear, unfulfilled dreams, unspoken sentences, depressed, intoxicated by alcohol, but always and at every moment truly authentic showing normal people lives. Yes, yours too. And it doesn't matter that these emotions are mediated through animated anthropomorphic animals.| S1: 4/5 | S2: 5/5 | S3: 5/5 | S4: 5/5 | S5: 4/5 | S6: 5/5 |

Nostalgic Things... Authentic 80s King style (children's level) Carpenter style (horror level) Spielberg movie (adult level) par excellence, in other words Super 8 done absolutely right. It can't be more retro. You will recognize (among countless others) for example Stand by Me, E.T., Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Cocoon, Nightmare from Elm Street, Peanuts, The Monster Squad (simply put, the production of Amblin at the time) and... And not surprisingly, even if everything in it (like really everything, a s mall town, an unbelieving self-grown sheriff, a high school, etc.) is purely overseas 80s, so it doesn't seem like a nostalgic copy, a parody of itself or in any way contrived (namely there are two allusions per every minute of the running time), on the contrary, it stand firmly on its feet. In other words, this one doesn’t pretend to be 80s. IT IS 80s in terms of visuals, Carpenter's-tangerinedream musical undertones, mood and generally by atmosphere. And by far the best part is that all of the above is just a foundation for a graduated, mysterious, captivatingly disturbing and deliberately insight into a intentionally second-rate cliché story, which is also enhanced by acting performances, including those of children (after all, you can see on their cast how much it is faithful at the time, none of the children is nice or cute), and everything is dependent on their performance (what such Millie Brown can play only using her eyes, her much experienced, awarded and older colleagues can only envy her, because in spite of everything it is mainly and above all a children's (but not childish) expedition for adventure. If the 80s shaped you, so using the words of Charlie Sheen... What's not to love? | S1: 5/5 | S2: 5/5 | S3: 5/5 |

Top Gear Specials "we go to the countries of mostly the third world" are traditionally the showcase of the show. But with the exception (yes, the exception and not the exceptions) confirming the rule, one episode is better than the other. And the Bolivian "Wages of Fear" is among the three most successful of all, which means a lot.

Do you know the saying that anything that can go wrong will go wrong? So the Graduation is a movie about that everything what can possibly go wrong will. And not only once but multiple times. Mungiu is really good at making movies, that's for sure. The problem is that, as in the case of 4 months, the escalating personal tragedy itself serves as a means of reflecting the society and the conditions. But where in 4 months it went nicely hand in hand together and it was always mainly about those characters, it works here in an exact opposite way. As if the story only served as a justification for more and more overlapping comments and the fate of a doctor whose journey to hell is paved with good intentions, are somehow extra and sidelined here. And it is in the mode of "I go after this and that, bit by bit I retreat from my principles and succumb to the corruption that is on every corner and I'm more and more stuck in a self-destructive spiral" considerably repetitive or in other words kind of annoying *boring*.

Or in other words how the originally unqualified Danish substitute gained great victory during the EURO 1992... I hoped that it would be the Danes who would be brave enough courage to trample on the classic scheme of sports-celebrated films about outsiders who become famous despite the expectations, and take it all at least a little subversively. And at first, surprisingly, these hopes are fulfilled, because it begins in a way of Okresní přebor. However, from the moment Yugoslavia get eliminated due to the conflict, it starts to follow that classic scheme "team made of quarreling individual stars, outsiders who are only makeweights even whose fans don't believe in them, who step by step unite, find their way to themselves and how to play, improve and finally they shock every one with their success so many people will be touched. It couldn't have been more mediocre, even if the creators deliberately had tried to do so. However, it could still work, have emotions (except for moving story of Vilfort's life, they remain sitting on the bench and do not get into the game at all) and the football segments alone could have had the appropriate drive, which they do not have, as they are a disparate mix of archival footage with artificial fiction which is conflicting if together. As a result, it is a mediocre sports standard, which somehow works mainly thanks to Ulrich Thomsen, who handled well the most clichéd possible role of a skilled coach, which goes against the flow.

Ray Donovan or in other words "Mr. Wolf, who solves the problems of the averted face of Hollywood" and his moonlighting jobs among the cream of the LA society, when he tries to balance his personal life with not always strictly legal jobs (read drugs, murders, mistresses) for mobsters, security forces, celebrities, porn magnates and who knows who else in the style of "I help you, you help me" and so as a hen runs (i.e. in his case drives Mercedes) from dusk till dawn in LA and sometimes he blackmails, sometimes bribes, oppresses, catches someone red handed, or he kills someone and buries his corpse. If that's not enough, he still has to solve the problems of his large mischievous family, where every family member is a trickster looking for troubles. And to top it all off, his crazy daddy, a longtime prisoner, and a former gangster bumpkin/hopscotch who doesn't know what to do with the rest of his life performed by charming Jon Voight. As long as/if there is at least one of the Ray/Mickey duo present on the stage, it's flawless. There´s enough tension, twists and turns, ideas, character development or pace. The problem (and fundamental one) is that they space covers about two-thirds of each episode. The rest is occupied by the relationship vicissitudes of Ray's brothers, the daughter's first love or the escapades of a naughty son and similar monkey business, which of course can be portrayed in an interesting and meaningful way, that´s for sure, but imagine family scenes filled with padding the last seasons of Dexter or Homeland (when taking about movies from Showtime station). Does it make you feel uncomfortable? So here it's the same, only a little worse, because the relationship segments are presented in such a way that it would not work even in the later faded Beverly Hills 90210 series. And what's worse, they treading water. Not in several episodes or perhaps one series, but even for several seasons. I would like to see the clever fellow that came up with the concept of "we will have a tough guy who every one respects, who is threatening every one with a baseball at and then cut, and we will focus on the daughter and her texting flirts and fondling and all this not only in one episode but for several seasons. The audience will be shocked and they could not wait until they find out if the rapper succeeds or not". But it's not just about the daughter, her brother, their mother. Even Ray's relatives are like two peas in a pod. In other words, about two thirds of the episodes/seasons/series are in the top of their league but the remaining third is way below the average and unbearably boring. Nevertheless, as a viewer I have been getting on with the multitasking Ray for several years, because no matter how annoying the above mentioned is, the genre (initially very fragmented) story line is inevitably worth watching and over time, even more and more.

Capturing of a wannabe global bureaucratic (and political) process precedes a possible counter-terrorist drone attack on the territory of a friendly state, when it is necessary to make Sofia's choice whether to strike despite the casualties of the civilian death toll. Time is running fast, the tension is growing, politicians are trying to get rid of responsibility, participants are having twinges of conscience, a higher principle is starts to play important role. The start was perfect and the first half is flawless. But there is one weak point. Namely, the more the footage is advancing the less distance Hood keeps and the movie starts being too emotional in a forced, cheap and unnecessary way. Seemingly cold or even depersonalized purely procedural approach would be much more appropriate, because in this way the movie explicitly says to the viewer what he/she should think and feel. And at the end of the day it would be much more impressive and chilling in a way Greengrass or Lindholm does it if done differently. In any case, it's a decent war drama, which, despite the fact that everyone is sitting all the time, has a furious pace, you won't get bored and it has something to say (it just says it too literally). They could have taken more out of the topic than only a "decent war drama", but to achieve that someone else than Hood, who has no style and likes routine, should have been behind the camera.

A war about peace. An industrial gangster movie about Birmingham hooligans with ambitions that is not afraid to take the time to build a story, intentions of the character and the environment in order to settle the accounts in an uncompromising, stylish and often sympathetic way without genre clichés. Although the first thing you will notice is cinematography and postmodern stylization (playing games with English dialects) or the setting, it´s mainly based on living characters their magnificent cast (without exception). There is a lot to be written about Peaky Blinders, we even might go into details, from the aftermaths of the Great War to how they work with contemporary political movements, but despite all possible weak points (slow pace of the opening episodes, overuse of retarding moment by some directors, namely Otto Bathurst was not able to handle it in this respect and it's him who is responsible for the three opening episodes, in other words he does the series rather a disservice) episodes cannot be denied that they are distinctive in its dirty street way, but the dirt is unfortunately washed away in the third series when turned them into "better people". Although you might find it similar with Boardwalk Empire in many ways at first, they have little in common in fact, except for the time and genre. But they definitely do not play in each other's backyard, they follow different paths and have different pace.| S1: 4/5 | S2: 4/5 |