Hromino

Eh... have we not had enough of these movies about animals taking over, and their plans for world domination?! There are unlikable actors, lame humor, hyperactive tomcats, plague rats – and this is supposed to be a family comedy?! Dreadful! Comparable in quality to Home Alone 3. However, I am still going to award it one star for the somewhat unconventional idea and for the fact that I quite liked it as a kid.

This is a lovely, funny, and imaginative movie that I really enjoyed, and although I am not familiar with the book, I think it sticks to the book quite well and where it did deviate, it did so in a witty, original, and playful way. The actors are excellent – both the adults (Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, in particular, gives a terrific performance) and the child actors. The child actors portray the little bastards superbly, but best of all are AnnaSophia Robb and Jordan Fry; of the "good" ones there is only one – Charlie – played, of course, by Freddie Highmore. The soundtrack (as with most of Tim's movies) is, as always, excellent, the sets are a little garish and over the top, however, that is just something that simply belongs to Tim’s world, and only adds to the movie’s uniqueness. This is therefore a great movie that has left me impressed for a long time after seeing it.

Before watching this movie, I was in doubt if Gil Kenan was capable of making a good adventure movie, however, this movie convinced me that he really can. Saoirse Ronan surprised me a lot with her talented acting ability, and pleasant demeanor, while Harry Treadaway acted like he was unimpressed, and overly mature. The soundtrack was also a very good feast for the ears, giving the movie a real edge. I must also commend the screenplay, which (unlike Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D) is quite unpredictable (even though the happy ending was pretty predictable), and left a good impression. I also liked the set design (the underground city looks really cool), the special effects and some illogicalities in the plot (the final voyage to the surface) were the only things to bring the rating down to three stars.

This was quite an enjoyable documentary from Animal Planet, where you could pick up a lot of useful information regarding animals. Jeff is sometimes entertaining with his gentle humor, and you discover that all animals "have something going for them” after all, from a rat to a huge and intelligent elephant.

"Proletarians of all countries, fuck you!" ––  I think this is undoubtedly the best movie in the history of Czech cinema ever. Just the fact that its perfect portrayal of the then atmosphere managed to pull at my heartstrings so much with its perfect charm that I even wanted to be able to travel back to the past, if only for a short while, speaks volumes. However, if we add to that the performance of a lifetime of Jiri Kodet (may he rest in peace), and the great acting performances in general, the brilliant screenplay full of memorable lines dropping out one after another, and Hrebejk's excellent direction, for me, Cosy Dens is a movie I can watch over and over again and still have an admiration for it. In addition to all that, the scene where Kodet plays the Czech national anthem gives me goosebumps every time.

I have a great love for jazz, film noir is my cup of tea, and I can’t get enough of science fiction. So you might be wondering why I only gave Cowboy Bebop a three-star rating. It's a cult show that I recently rewatched, ten years after I first saw it, and it still didn't quite hit the right spot for me. I understand why it's a cult classic, especially in America, and how it became a gateway to anime for many viewers. I also see why Netflix didn't hesitate to produce a live-action remake after more than twenty years. However, in my opinion, Cowboy Bebop is a creative combination of good but not great ingredients. The episodic narratives are enjoyable, but they didn’t leave a deeper impression on me and quickly became forgettable. The show has a cool vibe, and the characters are interesting, but their character design can become overly generic at times. Additionally, the concept of a "modernized" Western had already been explored in Trigun at that time. While the show's accessibility to Western audiences is understandable, it comes at the cost of its Japanese identity, which is primarily manifested through the eclecticism of genres and themes. For me, the lack of a strong Japanese identity was somewhat detrimental. If you're looking for a show with a unique and bold Japanese identity, I highly recommend Samurai Champloo. It has even more advanced concepts, ideas, a fantastic soundtrack, and cleverly mixes Japanese identity with Western ideas compared to Cowboy Bebop. “Better” 3 stars.

Yes, we could have made a normal seinen anime for you, and it would have been beautiful. It could have had characters who were psychologically sophisticated, plus, an interestingly crafted vision of the moral decay in Japan, and then some ballsy action scenes. Only we said no. Deadman Wonderland is a prime example of an anime whose subject matter itself had potential, but then the creators completely squandered it and went down the wrong road, getting everything terribly wrong. I think that the main problem with it is that despite the mature subject matter, this anime is aimed at a teenage audience, but raises a range of issues that make my blood boil when watching such anime. First and foremost is the creators' resignation to attempting anything to elaborate on their vision of the future world. Nothing makes sense, including the behavior of the characters and their development. The heroes and villains are clearly black and white here, and you know that just by looking at them, because psychopathic outbursts, and pulling faces as sternly as possible is what all the real bad guys do, right? Once a character's tragic backstory is introduced, it is quickly dispensed with in the space of two minutes, and the characters' features are basically limited to the following four manifestations: cuteness, innocence, cruelness, and devotedness. The ratio in which you mix them together is completely irrelevant, because in the end all the characters are one-dimensional and completely idiotic. No one cares how prisoners could grow flowers in a high-security underground prison, how they could basically move around wherever they wanted to, openly rebel, even have their own bar (??!!). Also, how they could get strawberries and other food, and how they could obviously live a life very similar to the one they could live on the outside, where they lack nothing. The plot pacing is atrociously fast, with characters randomly disappearing and reappearing again throughout the story, but everyone and everything centers around the main hero. Is he in danger of death? Relax, just hang on a minute and someone will obviously come to save him. Prison officials having fun depriving prisoners of organs and limbs for losing a fight? Well, obviously just before the main hero approaches, they are still intact. Are we going to stage a revolt against the prison authorities? Then it is best to wait for the moment when the main hero arrives, that is for sure. Coincidences alternate with other coincidences and my head is filled with despair and boredom. I am giving one star more or less only for the reason that I reserve a BOO! for anime that is impossible to finish watching, and also for the excellent ending.

Death Parade is a beautiful example of how trying to develop a short piece of work into a fully-fledged television show does not always complement the original work. While Death Billiards was not exactly a top-class piece of work that made my suspenders burst with suspense and excitement, it was thanks to its excellently built suspense and mysterious atmosphere, short running time, and open ending that left the audience’s mind full of questions and was therefore quite cathartic. So, in that regard, Death Billiards stood out as a stand-alone work, and after watching it, I did not expect any sort of follow-up in the form of a fully-fledged season. Therefore, rather, unfortunately, Death Parade did not boost the value of the original work in any way. To my disappointment, the season follows a silly and, for me personally, a severely unpleasant pattern almost the entire time: throw in an as-yet-unseen game, and always choose two participants so that their interactions will cause the greatest possible amount of emotional outpouring on-screen, and to move the audience as much as possible. This of course entails showing over-the-top emotional outbursts as much as possible, shouting lines full of pathos, and would-be philosophical horseshit, which again is just a means to manipulate the audience’s feelings. I refuse to engage in such games with the production company. I am not sure if the original Death Billiards suffered a bit from being embarrassingly calculated, but if it did, it certainly did not suffer to this extent. Thus, only the soundtrack, along with the opening theme song, and the outstanding visuals are worthy of praise, which of course is not enough to make a season successful. Maybe it would perhaps demand more elaborate characters, psychology, a deeper story and for the repetitiveness to be kept to an absolute minimum? But alas, this is just a first-rate attempt to emotionally manipulate the audience by any means necessary. For the soundtrack, the artwork, and the good things left from the original Death Billiards, I give it a very weak 2 stars.

The title is a perfect fit. This is the kind of Death Race that none of us would want to enter, and we can count ourselves lucky to be at home enjoying some peace and quiet with a nice cup of tea and some buttery biscuits (which I'm currently devouring), while our boss isn't forcing us to take part in such a race.

I would like to award this more stars, I would really love to, but alas. The fights are a joy to watch, the character designs and artwork are engaging, Kajiura's soundtrack finally sounds fresh after all these years (bringing in another composer to the party was obviously a great move), and if we were to rate just the audiovisual aspect, it would have a clear seven out of ten. The screenplay is not such a looker anymore, the storyline is simple, not very original, and although the main hero is a shonen-like hard-ass, he surprisingly knows how to use his brain and win the audience’s sympathy, just like his sister. The pace of the narrative is set reasonably, there is no flip-flopping, and the season is clearly on its way - at least for the first half of the season. Until the second half, it is a hilarious, self-conscious shonen that on the one hand adheres to the unwritten rules of the genre, but is not afraid to push the envelope in places, and be much darker and more expressive than usual - in this respect, I was reminded more than once of the similarly imaginative Hunter × Hunter. Unfortunately, from the middle of the season onwards, the pace of the narrative slows down considerably, with new characters with exaggerated personalities, puerile humor, silly tropes, and screenwriting quirks. It also becomes clear that even though it initially looked like the whole story could be told in 26 episodes, whereas in reality, only the tip of the iceberg was revealed during that time, and we might not be able to watch the ending until after a hundred episodes or so. It is disconcerting that, in the case of the original manga, taking into account the rising reader interest, the publisher clearly pressured the author to stretch out the story, which had been reasonably measured up until then, and to make it more accessible to a younger audience – it is hard to explain the sudden change otherwise. The slow pace, new stereotypical characters, weird grimaces, exaggerations and stupid jokes filling almost half of each episode, a rather uncharismatic main villain and an anticlimactic conclusion unfortunately ruin an otherwise good impression. Where, for the first half I give a very strong 4 stars, but for the second half I give only a disappointed 2 stars, so in the end it is 3 stars. I will watch the upcoming sequel, but I do not have high expectations for it. Also, just for the record – given that the season is supposed to be set in the Taishō period (1912-1926), I would have expected a lot more references to the life of the period there to appear in the series than just one locomotive and a Tokyo alleyway for a few minutes.