Lima

In 2021, these alien derivatives may only entertain bacteria and other single-celled organisms. If it wasn’t for the bombastic CGI here and there, it would have nothing. And Chris Pratt's dumb attempts at expressing deeper emotions are quite comical. As Star-Lord he's fine, his awkwardness doesn't matter there, but otherwise he’s very far from a character actor.

Get a second-rate actor or amateur extras, shoot it as a sequence of more or less unrelated scenes, add to that clouds and clouds of filmmaking errors that will make you have fits of laughter, and which are a joy to analyse in rewind, spice it up with a lot of clumsily staged love scenes like a bad Kama Sutra, and throw in some unexpected dialogue that makes your monitor crack, and you've got Samurai Cop. Yeah, this is The Room of the action buddy-cup movies. And all the absurdity is enhanced by the fact that, like Wiseau, Amir Shervan made it with a love of film and a conviction that he was making something world-class. I don’t know if it’s been featured in the Shockproof Film Festival, if not, it is a clear candidate.

The attempt at some kind of insight, expressed by the documentary footage at the beginning (the worst atrocities of the 20th century, including Auschwitz and genocides all over the world), is rather futile, and actually quite unnecessary, because it doesn’t enhance the overall impact of the film. Plus, the cutters of the editor should have worked harder, halfway through I felt like I'd swallowed a whole pot of lemon balm. But I can't deny the interesting atmosphere, the killer children with their innocent faces are really disturbing, sometimes even scary, and the fatal scene with the pregnant woman is physically unpleasant. Besides, I can't imagine something like that in today's politically correct times, when at the end a machine gun unexpectedly comes into play and the little bastards are cutting each other down on the head with boards, knives in thighs and carotid arteries. Simply, as was the custom in the 70s – the Spaniards did not mess around.

Pat and Mat in an unintentional parody of something that should have been dramatic at least on a basic level, but is just pitifully ridiculous. Taylor Sheridan is going downhill. I guess he likes fruit, so he wants a Golden Raspberry, otherwise, it’s a mystery. He was writing and filming Yellowstone at the same time, which is completely, completely different with its nourishing emotions and perfectly logically constructed story. In this film I recognized the sensitive Sheridan only in a small subtle scene stroking a horse, otherwise I spent the whole second half banging my head against the wall out of boredom, brushing crumbs out of my beard, counting fingers on my hand and looking at my watch to see how much more of this emotional torture I would have to endure.

I don't understand what happened to Zack Snyder, a guy who has the brilliant Watchmen and the very good Man of Steel in his filmography and never really burned out creatively until now, to make shit like this. Pathetic, fucking boring and visually repulsive (no, the juicy opening credits and those few Las Vegas green screens don't cut it). It has only one decent action scene – the casino shootout – which doesn't come until half an hour before the end, and one single noteworthy idea, which is the zombie tiger. And leading the uninteresting ensemble of actors is Dave Bautista, whose acting limits end somewhere near Hamáček's abilities when he talks about his disguise maneuver.

The unbearable lightness of acting. I remember well Hopkins's exclusive interview with Reflex, where he said that "...acting is the easiest profession in the world...". So Sir Anthony cut yet another theatrical role, the likes of which he has portrayed hundreds of in his lifetime on stages, and he still won an Oscar for it, by the way. Yeah, acting is a beautiful profession, if you know how to do it.

The grey hair and wrinkles are increasing, but they look good on Liam and he certainly knows how to age gracefully. It's not the classic Neeson action vehicle that people were probably expecting, more like a human, sober story of an aging marine, spiced up with a bit of shooting in two scenes, and with some of the clichés I don't like so much (talking to the bad guy) coming in towards the end. A pretty pleasant two hours, but I’ll probably forget about it in a month.

Let's face it, Godzilla films across more than half a century have never been the pinnacle of intellectualism, but whether they were the work of Ishiro Honda, Jun Fukuda, or Takao Okawara, they were entertaining fairy tales, just overwrought and teetering on the edge of an awkwardness below which they never fell. But here the stupidity of the mythology is literally bursting through the door, everything revolving around those teenagers and that black guy who played it absolutely horrible (oops, didn't I just write something politically unacceptable?) was a torture to watch, so all that's left are the fights, which are surprisingly scarce, and all the highlights are revealed in the trailers. But to be fair, the fights between the ape, the lizard and the Mechagodzilla are excellent, lush, clearly delivered and hats off to Wingard for the way he directed them. Just a shame about the script, which was probably written by fanboys with wet teenage dreams.

Except for the fabulously overstuffed chapter where Steppenwolf's headquarters is attacked, this is the first Snyder film where I'm sort of willing to accept digital mess. It is tempting to make a screenshot of each frame and add text bubbles to the characters, this is a living comic book, like from Crew or BB Art. Thanks for that feeling at least, but I can't say I'm jumping in joy. What works on paper doesn't work in the film, the 4 hours of perceptual inferno and the fuckton of slow motion make you tired, so you are grateful for every subtle scene where two characters just talk, which are few and far between. I could have easily done without the pathetic epilogue and Leto's awkward Joker.

Unexpectedly, Vienna is a cool place for a Giallo murder mystery and it was nice to see that the area around Schönbrunn, its park and dark corners, still looks just as sexy after 50 years; too bad the ending wasn't just as sexy. Yeah, it's got suspense, it's got style, it's got atmosphere and the beautiful Edwige Fenech, but the final weak twist sent the whole experience down the drain. Such a muddled script is unworthy of Sergio Martino's skill.