Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

David Hasselhoff and his talking car meant a lot to me too… volume 2 of Guardians of the Galaxy plays on a family note (did Vin Diesel drag this in from Fast and Furious?) and an emotional cartwheel. An evil bastard can have a heart of gold and, vice-versa, a golden bastard can have a heart of evil. The continuing storyline revealing Quill’s origins is convincingly perverse and the idea with the living planet is sufficiently unusual. A welcome return of Tango and Cash, parody of the USA’s drone policy, Drax’s humorous interjections and Groot’s cute smile. Nothing changes in terms of acting, everybody is having a great time, Gunn’s childhood dream with rainbow bubbles comes true and nostalgic music creates gallons of good feelings with an emotionally draining ending even more intense than volume 1. Absolutely happy with this. (09/05/2017)

It really needs something more than the solid chemistry of the main gang, Zoe Saldana, Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone’s cameo. After half an hour of camera flourishes and digital effects I already had a headache. (12/08/2017)

I now have a peephole wheel of blockbuster backlogs, and after a series of infinitely boring, footage-bloated and emotionally collapsed balloons, this colorful overkill is like a dose of a euphoric drugs. Gunn doesn’t have try so hard with the jokes. Sometimes they miss, but to be honest, this surprisingly sensitive story about the imperfections of fatherhood and friendship gripped me from the first second. Marvel manages to humanize most the figures who are furthest from humanity. I clung to the Guardians of Galaxy to the point that I won’t bother making silly remarks this time. It gave me what I missed on the screen this year – fun, and the feeling that I care about the digital turmoil. It's just that a magnetic tape of something real goes after terabytes of calculations. Father issues for two hundred million have not been this cute for a long time. (30/09/2017)

Blockbuster equivalent of the 90th TV Nova Saturday variety show, too colorful, trying to be funny at all costs, but it´s simply not funny. It´s excessively long, dull and relies only on famous people making faces. Perhaps only Petr Novotný was a better villain than these ones. The characters themselves are not that bad, but the way they are (not) uses in a confusing coloring book digital is hopeless. The first hour can keep up with the first movie in terms of quality, put the second one destroys the whole "feel good" concept. (06/05/2017)

The sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy is more or less in the same vein as the first one, but it doesn't bring much new. It's decent fun no doubt. Drax and the raccoon are the funniest again, Starlord is a bit bland and didn't seem to have enough space, I didn't like Kurt Russell much and Stallone is only here for maybe two minutes, so there's not much to look forward to. The film is a bit too colourful and quite infantile in places for my taste, and the big finale is actually the weakest part, as it is nothing but a massive digital mess that you can't really absorb and you don’t really care how it ends. The highlight for me was the scene in the forest where the raccoon disarms his opponents with ingenious traps. I probably won't watch it again and would classify it as one of the more mediocre Marvel films. I suspect DC will kick Marvel's ass this year with Wonder Woman. 75% (04/05/2017)