Malarkey

A bunch of girls in an unintersting French town are bored. They have been bored for a long time, so one ‘intelligent’ 16-year-old girl gets the idea that it might be quite fun if she got pregnant. The girls’ lack of zest for living was pretty obvious and I can easily imagine that this very thing is the problem with today’s young people, who do not know how to entertain themselves, so they look for entertainment in nonsense. The film’s premise will attract your attention, but at the same time you cannot expect this to be a five-star gem of a movie. There are too many scenes portraying the endless moments of boredom of the current French generation, who do not know how to value life.

Die Italiener punkteten wieder mit einem tollen Thema. Ich muss sagen, dass sie dafür einen sechsten Sinn haben. Ich schaute Dutzend durchschnittliche Filme an (und bei Italienern oft sehr laute) und dann aus dem nichts beeindrucken sie mit einem Film, den ich mir aus dem Kopf nicht rausschlagen kann, auch nicht dann, wenn ich mich in den Kopf extra fest schlage. Und es ist ganz egal, dass sie sich hier mit einer Zeitreise aushelfen. Der Film verkörpert Familientraditionen, gewisse Geistlichkeit der Familie, und das ist genau das, was mir an diesem Film so gut gefallen hat. Dazu bemerkte ich sofort den Slávia-Schal im Wohnzimmer des Vaters, der eine Buffon-Frisur trug, also die Begeisterung für diesen Film wuchs dadurch sofort. Die Auswahl der Schauspielerinnen ist hier für italienische Verhältnisse überdurchschnittlich gelungen – Vittoria Puccini ist schauspielerisch auf der Spitze und Benedetta Porcaroli spielt – dafür dass sie noch so jung ist – auch gar nicht so schlecht. 18 Geschenke ist ein gefühlvoller Familienfilm, bei dem man zwar nicht heulen muss, aber am Ende fühlt ihr euch so unglaublich seltsam, dass ihr diesen Film nicht vergessen wollt.

Jackie Chan wanted to film it honestly and as convincingly as possible, as it’s about a rather crucial moment in the history of China. But the result is so bland and boring that it won’t convince even the world’s worst dictator of how China should write its history. It looks nice, but the action is slow, and the dialogs won’t mean much to the Czech audience. I wanted a film made in an interesting way that would not be boring and that’s exactly what I didn’t get. Seen based on the Challenge Tour 2015.

I think that Sam Mendes was aiming for the Oscar here, I don’t know why there aren’t more films about the First World War, but it’s probably because most of the time the soldiers were battling boredom in the trenches rather thanfighting for territory on the ground. Sam Mendes, however, went a bit too far here, replacing filmmaking with an attempt at absolute realism. The illusion that everything is a single long shot makes the scenes look remarkably surreal. It all starts with the crash of a German plane into a dilapidated barn, continues with ruins of the town illuminated by flares and ends directly in the trenches, a few seconds before running into the turmoil ofbattle. I was bating my breath, fascinated by the fabricated scenes, and enjoyed one of the best war films made in the last few years. The trio of good old British actors (Firth, Cumberbatch, Strong) is the icing on the cake, which will draw you into the depicted events of the war and remind you that it is “only” a film.

It’s fascinating how well Thomas Jane rehearsed his role of a total American redneck, including the melodious but barely comprehensible dialect. Really fascinating. Unfortunately, even though it’s based on a short story by Stephen King, which guarantees the quality of the topic, its execution was too gloomy and horribly slow. Given that the film lasts 101 minutes, nothing much happens in it, apart from one explicit scene. Everything else rises and falls with the atmosphere of 1922, and I must admit that’s very authentic. Undoubtedly an interesting piece, which has its pros and cons but is definitely worth watching. Moreover, you can’t miss several references to the legendary The Shining. For Stephen King’s fans, this film is definitely a must-see.

A story from the end of the Second World War told with a love of the old, which has a catharsis so strong that when it comes to the Hungarian cinematography, I will remember it for a very long time.

I would say that this movie shows which director is a genius and which is a routiner. While Stanley Kubrick has made a groundbreaking and legendary sci-fi in the late 1960s, almost 20 years later a routiner Peter Hyams made a solid but (compared to Kubrick) a very routine movie. However, although it is routine it is still a sci-fi classic.

Finns and their special way of telling the story of 21 Ways to Ruin a Marriage. The story was nonexistent. I wasn’t having any fun at all and most importantly, I didn’t even get to laugh. The only thing that was salvaging it was the lead actress and the interesting Finnish language. And also, the polar day setting and the final scene that said a lot about the movie as a whole.

Zuerst dachte ich, wieso lässt man diese Geschichte zweimal drehen und dazu noch in einem Jahr… aber dann las ich den Namen des Regisseurs und es wurde mir alles klar – Paul Greengrass. Das Thema haargenau auf ihn geschnitten. Ich würde den Film sogar besser bewerten, wenn ich nicht den ursprünglichen gesehen hätte, der genug schockierend und vor allem, was die künstlerische Seite angeht, total ausgezeichnet war. Aber ich dachte, um die Ehre dem Regisseur zu erweisen, probiere ich es. Und ja, ein paar Kritikpunkte hätte ich. Vor allem der Angriff, der ist sehr einfach und ohne Mühe gemacht. Weil er aber nur ungefähr ein Drittel des Films einnimmt, können die zwei anderen Drittel fesseln. Es ist eine richtige Gefühlsschleuder, weil der Film die Gedankenwelt von Breivik, welche schockiert jedes Mal, wen sie auf der Leinwand erscheint, abbildet. Er zeigt aber auch junge Leute, die seinen Amoklauf überlebt haben, und zwar mit allen Folgen. Zum Nachdenken sicherlich gut, aber am besten ist eigentlich der Schluss, der das Opfer-Kapitel mit einer Gerichtsverhandlung abschließt. Die Laufzeit konnte ruhig um eine halbe Stunde kürzer sein, aber andererseits ist es ein typischer Greengrass, also wird alles so zivil sein, inklusive der Kamera, dass ihr den Eindruck bekommt, das alles betrifft auch euch persönlich.

The first movie was absolutely crazy, so the second one is properly insane. For the first fifteen minutes, I was just staring at the two idiots with my mouth wide open and I wasn’t sure whether I’m supposed to laugh or stare like a stuck pig. It was obvious that it was so overdone on purpose and it all pretended to be awfully stylish, which was also complemented by the dance music itself. The story didn’t surprise me because they didn’t come up with anything new. They just swapped high school for college. But one-liners were plentiful; In fact, there were so many that I think that I must have overlooked a ton of cool and clever references to the 1990s in all that colorful fun. I don’t really like Hill or Tatum, but they were really putting on a show here and so I had good fun, I just had to get used to it.