Malarkey

Finally a series I find enjoyable in all its aspects. Simple, brutal, a bit depressing. Moreover, the main characters are two young people, with the girl being aggressive, wild and interesting and the guy a total wacko, which tells you everything you need to know. The authors take the catastrophic idea to absurd lengths, but save it by short duration of the individual episodes, so that you’re never bored. So my personal rating is four stars. It’s original, if a bit forgettable series where the main characters go through everything you can imagine and more. Fresh filmmaking like this is just what I need from time to time. Straightforward and fun.

Considered how many A movie actors they managed to put into this film, this Christmas dramedy is quite bad. It’s just a story about one dysfunctional family, where several storylines are brought together at the Christmas table. The problem is that all those characters’ problems are just boring. Everything is supposed to be mitigated by the Christmas atmosphere, but in a movie like this it won’t get you over the moon. No matter how many candles do you light in an attempt to bring in some Christmas cheer, the characters won’t become less annoying.

Gloomy, mysterious, brutally dark and finally after a long time also anoriginal film about something mysterious, evil, but also provocative and compelling you to learn more about it. After a long time, Apostle made me experience fear. Revulsion, too, but the fear was stronger. It was caused by a religious sect, from which I didn’t know what to expect, so I was gaping at the screen, bowing down before the director and director of photography at places, because the pictures of terror they came up with sent shivers down my spine. I wondered when was the last time something on TV made me feel like this and I think it was when I watched the first season of True Detective. And that was quite a few years ago.

Netflix tried its hand at Christmas comedies, making a chill-out piece where Santa Claus is portrayed by Kurt Russell. And I don’t know what more should I say, because this means that the quality of such a movie is guaranteed. For an American comedy, it’s quite a Christmas experience I haven’t had in a while, and I was happy to have it this year. The whole time I was wondering whether Kurt’s beard was real or fake… they masked him so well that he was indistinguishable from a real Santa :-).

It’s good that there are still screenwriters in American who are not afraid to write one action buddy comedy after another. Stuber is no wild ride, but it works alright as a comedy. Dave Bautista is a cool actor I wouldn’t mind seeing more often, Kumail Nanijani has stand-up comedy roots, and is able to surprise the audience. Together, they work as a good team, with cool catchphrases. What more would you want? It’s true that the golden days of Top Gun are long past, but it’s totally okay as a chill-out movie.

The Portuguese bit off more than they could chew here. They decided to show us the rise of the Mozambican black pearl – the soccer legend Eusébio. The problem, however, lies in the totally boring screenplay. The Portuguese conceived this film as an intimate drama so don’t expect anything spectacular. They could have saved it with dialogues, but those unfortunately seem like those of two hustlers squabbling in some back alley. A real pity.

Can the Chucky doll be taken seriously? I don’t think so. And even though the film tries to milk the audience’s emotions and convey some sort of moral message, it is still a remake of a horror classics that doesn’t deserve more than three stars. On the contrary, three stars might be more than enough here. Moreover, the movie tries to copy the atmosphere of Stranger Things or It, but doesn’t really succeed in doing so.

After seeing a few of his comedies, Eugenio Derbez is for me a guarantee of unique and quality humor. And I didn’t know that he was behind the idea that the French made into the film Two Is a Family three years later. And even though I found the European version more relatable to, I definitely wasn’t bored while watching this comedy. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised.

The problem with the second part of It lies in the fact that the director wants to make it in the same way as the first part. The adults, however, cannot work as well as kids in the similar world, because that world was created with kids in mind. The mysterious and fantasy atmosphere stems from the fact that we perceived the world exactly the same when we were kids. That’s why the first It and Stranger Things turned out so well and are so popular. In It: Chapter Two, there’s no reason to believe the craziness on the screen; it just seems like the screenwriter got high and wrote down anything that came to his mind.

The first instalment was crazy enough, so there’s no reason to expect the second one to be better. Naturally, it’s a bit worse, but the difference is not so big. The plot is nuts, the effects okay and acting performances mediocre. If there was no Jack Black, who moreover only has a cameo role here, there would be no reason to watch this movie.