Isherwood

Don't blame me for the three stars. I guess I really wanted more from the film because even though the director and choreographer understand what can be squeezed out of the actors (and that it definitely exceeds every conceivable limit of what we've seen so far), the plot, on the mental level of an arcade, just slips into a painful stereotype in the second half and just repeats what we've seen before. In addition, the final fight also loses a lot of its attractiveness, so if I want to contemplate this in the pub I'll take a big sip at the memory of the trick with the fridge, but the rest will be like that cheap catchphrase "...you know how that guy is going to beat up the other guy, right?" This likely says a lot about the fact that I'd regularly suffer through it a second time; in fact, I kind of envy those who are giving it perfect reviews. :)

I liked it, but I'm still going to complain. First and foremost about NBC for refusing to produce a second season due to low ratings, thus leaving the series with a premature ending - the re-filmed ending and a bunch of unresolved themes are just not going to satisfy me and it’s going to sting for a long time. Secondly, the creators themselves also deserve some criticism. So what if people like David Slade and Miguel Sapochnik were on set? The first three episodes are identical copies of the same concept, with the "realities" changing to the exact second, whether it's sitting in a psychiatrist's office or solving the cases themselves, but they don't offer anything new. It finally starts to get interesting when Michael Britten - the best part of the series, the excellent Jason Issacs, who finally has a positive role and plays it perfectly - starts digging into a possible conspiracy. The bad thing is that the second half of the series is already airing. I can imagine an alternate reality where this well-crafted series was based on solving a single case, or perhaps two, one in each reality, and if the grand conspiracy is brought to a clever conclusion. This is why I give it 3 ½ stars, which I round down with my bleeding heart.

I could lament the fact that the "buddy chemistry" would have worked better under a different director. However, then I remembered R's load of dirty jokes and realized that although it had its dead spots (five minutes less runtime wouldn't have been a bad thing), I roared with laughter too often to just consign it to mediocrity. The moment when he shoots off the dude's penis and then picks it up off the ground with his teeth is something you simply don't normally see.

Whatever you expect from this, it will still get to you because this quirky genre film perfectly suits Balagueró. Whether it's due to the main character, who is actually likable, or the light-hearted narrative, which has some gentle black humor, through the excellent cast of tenants (the little girl rules, and especially the porn scene!), to the uncompromising finale, where the director doesn't deny what once "made" him. After all this, I'll mostly console myself with the fact that I'm too ugly a guy to be singled out for strange courtesy visits. :) 4 ½.

In the weight class of superheroes who, instead of psychotherapy sessions where they spend two hours figuring out their superhero identity, manage everything by letting their powers speak, preferably in a pretty fierce, loud, and explosive way, the Avengers actually have no competition far and wide. For the first hour, they tease each other with humor, and they use it together against the alien invasion. Kudos to Whedon for dividing up the roles precisely and giving everyone exactly the space they need. Most importantly, it's all done inventively (camera tricks) and it’s imaginatively (funny inserts even into the serious scenes) shot. [My only criticism goes to Loki. Hiddleston isn't so bland anymore because now he’s a charismatic bastard whose character portrayal by the writers falls a little short. Edit: After the second screening, this criticism no longer applies either.]

Seeing Breaking Bad makes me want to extract the ricin from the beans, but that's essentially my only complaint. This is the first series since The Wire that honestly fascinates me with its attention to plot sophistication, fictional characters, and, most importantly, absolute unpredictability. I gave up guessing the storyline halfway through the second season because there's no point. The way in which Walter White, who learns the value and brevity of human life from one day to the next, functions on both sides of the law while (un)consciously pulling in people around him is perhaps even better than in Dexter. This is mainly because the moments when we realize that he is really becoming evil are conveyed by the filmmakers through complete banality. Like ordinary marital conversations: "I'm not in danger." I am the danger!"

The first film worked with something like a moment of surprise, with the famous detective navigating Guy Ritchie's exquisite visual world. The second time around, the moment of surprise is gone, and suddenly you start digging into what you didn't mind in the first film. For two hours of runtime, the plot is too diluted, the female protagonists are neglected, the villain is bland, and except for two or three funny dialogue exchanges, there’s a lot of filler. But most importantly, a detective storyline is one you don't care about whatsoever. The action escapades are trite and not saved even by the run through the woods, yet that scene was also genius. During the first half, I was hoping it would pick up in the second half, as some commentators sometimes promised, but for the last half hour, I was praying for it to end. You don't just see blockbuster fails like this.

By the time the van was hijacked, I was just checking off boxes in which I’d written the characters and situations I'd seen elsewhere. Not that it's any different from that point on, but then the protagonists are in real trouble and it starts to take on the kind of gradation you expect from a genre film like this. It gets bonus points for the well-used handheld camera, but I take some away for the characters, which, except for Wahlberg's, lack a better profile. 3 ½. [I won't remember the film in a week.]

I have no problem with the gibberish script on the level of a B-grade thriller from an overseas production, even if the characters amount to one template next to another, not to mention the ear-splitting dialogue. Paradoxically, what bothers me is that Zdeněk Kubík "sold" the film as a sovereign indictment of the political situation in the Czech Republic, where everything is run by mafia gangs connected to the political top and the hand not only washes the hand but also dries it. Maybe it's true, but for an hour and a half, it drove me crazy that I was watching a thriller that wasn't suspenseful, there was no one to root for, and the cuts to Mr. Bishop or the FSB just weren't cool. It’s too bad about the sight of his grey eminence and the artificially-induced hype. Several times while watching it, I wondered what it would have been like if Petr Jákl had filmed it.

The hasty and often logic-defying first half is quite solidly balanced by the second, mainly because Gens is clearly not very good at building functional interpersonal relationships. Yet when it comes to "evil is in all of us," he lures the viewer in quite bluntly, culminating in a great ending; the fallout epilogue is a bonus.