Malarkey

If you saw Mr. Oizo’s Wrong Cops, then Wrong is rather similar to this. There are similar actors playing similar roles, and it’s all one big crazy ride. The whole time, however, I was waiting for some brutal scene that would cross the line of reality, like it happened with Wrong Cops, but nothing came. Nevertheless, there were a few original ideas, for example any scene with the cop or with the painter. Until you see this, you’d never be able to imagine something like this – trust me on that.

I decided to watch My Foolish Heart because I was curious about the combination of drama and jazz music. But to my unpleasant surprise I found out that this film is one of those I watch for a quarter of an hour without understanding a word of it. The narration techniques used here are completely incomprehensible to me. The investigator seems to be constantly high, there’s a hypnotic jazz musical background and the whole thing has this kind of delirium tremens vibe that makes film experts talk about such films for hours but they fly over my head.

I actually have no complaints here. Because the Czech distributor changed the title to the same title Deep Blue Sea has, I at first thought this was a remake of a 20-year-old action movie of the same name featuring a huge shark, so I was pleasantly surprised that this is actually a film about a submarine. Too bad that the action movies produced by Hollywood these days lack the soul they used to have in the 1980s and 1990s. There’s a lot of action scenes, the cast is alright, but something is amiss. The best moments were those featuring Michael Nyqvist as the Russian captain Andropov; his charisma added some charm which increased the film’s overall quality a little. Too bad this talented actor passed away.

I’m glad that Terry Gilliam finally got to shoot his opus. And I’m also glad that I’ve watched it. But that’s about it. Unfortunately it’s nothing special. What else should I have expected from Terry but something totally wacky, right? But not to sound all that negative, I must admit that Adam Driver was a good fit for his role. I really liked his character, which has a lot of the director himself in it. The locations were perfect, too. Spain is simply charming, there’s no doubt about that. The filmmaking craft is once again at a high level, but the story contains more fantasy than reality. But when I ponder on this – what is reality, really? Not even Don Quijote himself knew the answer to that.

The wait for this season was the longest so far and so the expectations were logically the biggest. But it was well worth it. The third season is dope. Eight fantastic episodes, which again make use of everything that this series is famous for. In the beginning, the season relies mainly on the 1980s atmosphere, before the story fully unravels in the second half. It was great to see the crowd around El again, even though they’re getting older like the rest of us. In addition, I liked how during this season, I’ve grown fond of certain characters I would’ve never expected to like. I was really sad at the end. And as this season was very heavy on emotions, I must say that the third season is the best and most memorable thing I’ve seen as far as series go this year. I can’t wait for the next season!

The creators of the Marvel Universe finally decided to visit our little country as well, as they discovered that Europe presents an interesting market. I’m glad that they chose Prague and Liberec as some of the filming locations. My relationship to Spiderman is such that I grew up with the first movie trilogy, mostly ignored the movies with Andrew Garfield, and he regained my attention with Tom Holland. As I enjoyed the previous instalment, I had one more reason to look forward to this one. And I wasn’t disappointed. There was a lot of fun, a sufficient number of nostalgic moments, and I greatly enjoyed the shots of the ravaged Old Time Square (or Liberec Square). It all has pleasant young adult vibes that are a good fit for the new Spiderman, filling a certain gap in the Marvel Universe these days.

I wonder what went wrong here – the premise is decent, as is the cast, and you’re the director of one of the Harry Potter films, so you know how to give a movie some adventure/fantasy feel. But despite all of this, nothing in this film worked. When I first discovered this film, I was really looking forward to it and I wondered why I’d never heard of it before, but everything became clear after the first half an hour. The boy makes you want to punch him, Helena Bonham Carter is the same as always, and everything is weirdly gloomy, as though the film didn’t wish for the audience to like it. You must either possess the patience of a saint or you’ll just give up on it.

A solid wacky ride from the 1980s made by a madman, which plays homage to the VHS. That’s how I’d describe Videodrome in a nutshell. James Woods played his weirdo with so much passion that every time he goggled his eyes on the screen made me fear for my life, and every time some guts were spilled I felt incredible disgust. A solid horror movie in the vein of Carpenter’s The Thing, in comparable quality.

I cannot believe that it has been so many years since Hollywood was experiencing a financial crisis and so after a few episodes, they had to cut The Big Bang Theory, which already had a huge potential, only for it to be renewed and now they finished with 12 seasons, which had, obviously, some good but also some worse episodes. Nevertheless, the twelfth season had more than decent quality. There was always something happening, the characters were still crazy and even the new ones were very nice. The creators were particularly successful with the ending. Hats off. So once again, after Friends, I have something to remember with sad nostalgia.

The Hungarians filmed a nice and distinctive memento of a time when their country wasn’t ruled by them but by the Soviet Union. They shot it fairly well, but somehow, I couldn’t shake off the impression that despite this comedy being so crazy, I actually wasn’t laughing for longer periods at a time, even though the Soviet space program got a brutal beating and Brezhnev bought it as well. Serves them right.