DaViD´82

In terms of film-craft this is the most precise work that can be achieved under current conditions, but above-average film-craft defining new standards alone doesn’t necessarily make a good movie. Luckily, Avatar is good, but unfortunately no more than just good. It’s like despite all the attention that Cameron devotes to polishing everything down to the last, tiny detail, he forgot about the movie as a whole. Who cares that it suffers from all imaginable maladies of “blockbusters", if only Cameron had managed to enthrall us, draw us in, simply forget that this is still just a movie (it only happened to me in one scene). And the saddest thing about this is that, despite the message, in the end it will be Cameron who causes mass deforestation on out planet due to the mountains of wood needed to produce the paper on which the millions of movie theater tickets sold around the whole world will be printed, and this thought chills me more than any of the best scenes in Avatar. And all of the above applies to the extended version which didn’t concentrate primarily on emotions and characters, but again on technical brilliance. P.S.: This review was written after seeing the regular version; my subsequent visit to see the IMAX version neither improved or impaired my impression of the movie (and why should it, it’s the same movie, isn’t it?), but it did enhance the brilliant effects. ♫ OST score: 3/5

Palin’s travelogues were always mainly about the book form, where the forced (and understandable) conciseness goes unnoticed because Palin has an incredible nose for situations, people and moments... Simply for details that attract his attention and he subsequently presents the atmosphere of the place in question using “dry humor rife blog style". The TV version then serves as an accessory which offers the beauties of the world visually and where everything is focused on Palin’s personality and his situation humor. This unusual mutual combination worked almost twenty years. Until New Europe. Not that it has nothing to offer, but the briefness often remains uncompensated by anything extra, plus Palin is scared of getting into conflict and diving under the surface of sweet nothings and so it gradually changes into an exhibition of his comedy antics which reliably entertain, but don’t enrich. And, in terms of Palin’s regular standard, this is too little.

Brüno, just face it: Derek Zoolander is simply a prettier, but really a prettier class of guy. Your bad luck lies in the fact that you have always been so obviously the “third wheel" even in the days when Sacha Baron Cohen was still really funny and original (i.e. in the days of short sketches with Borat and Ali G). But what now, when he’s just regurgitating himself and has trouble coming to terms with feature length productions. As a result he spends more time puckering his butt to the camera than criticizing public attitudes. In other words, I think that Cohen no longer has anything to say through the mouth of Ali/Borat/Brüno and should begin to consider a different alter ego.

A Western version of “The Hobbit”. It's also kind of a journey there and back again, and as with “The Hobbit”, the journey there is much more fun.

“War with Newts" by Robert Merle, raped by the Hollywood money machine. However, time proved that, unlike the book, Nichols’ child mere quality craftsmanship. While for a good hour it looks like it had better in store. That applies until the moment when Day of the Dolphin significantly (or even completely) diverges from the book. Although an imagination is a good thing to have, when you get rid of the fundamental idea of the whole work and replace it with a dime-a-dozen American thriller with cute Cetaceans, well... you have a dime-a-dozen American thriller with cute Cetaceans and nothing else.

For everything that happened after the train robbery, I would be delighted to give Peckinpah’s most famous picture full marks and I would also gladly place the Wild Bunch on the pedestal of best westerns right behind Leone’s masterpieces. But I can’t, I just can’t. What prevents me doing so it the hour it takes to get going. It’s not bad, but it is so desperately ordinary and confusable with any other western (with the exception of the opening sequence, of course) that it’s hard to watch.

(Don't Fear) The Reaper, baby. Unfortunately I was right when I said to myself after seeing the opening credits that nothing better could possibly follow. Zombieland is a movie where its greatest blessing is also its greatest affliction. Woody Harrelson is unarguably outstanding and pulls the whole movie along, but even so the role should have been given to somebody with cult status gained by hard work in countless B-movies. Yes, somebody like Bruce Campbell would be more suitable. And everything in Zombielandis like. What you find here is good and entertaining, but you can also see clearly how much better and more rounded it could of been... P.S.: It was really nice to see the nod to Deliverance.

How the poet enjoyed life and how the poet lost his illusions. Simply a poet that Dušan Klein wouldn’t have liked much. The poser Bondy might have liked the result (but he still would have expressed his liking in the way that Tetsuo suggests), but nobody will ever find out. But to hell with it, because what is most important is that I like it in the end. I really like it. However, it is held back from getting the full five stars by the middle passage where it is unnecessarily slow-moving and nothing much happens and Hádek, whose acting is fantastic, just isn’t convincing as a seventeen year old.

This is almost better than Gran Torino. The opening scene on the motorbike is the best filmed scene this year, Caine is more uncompromising than anybody I have seen recently and for seventy minutes this really is a five-star movie. But then it starts to go wrong and the finale in the pub totally wrecks it. If it had remained on the “modest level" of pensioner versus local youth in front of a tenement block, I would have been much more content in the end. P.S.: Comparison with Gran Torino is essential, like it or not. Although in the end they are completely different genres, Eastwood worked and relied on the premise that everybody expected precisely what they get here from Harry Brown.

If Mulder and Sculley had appeared in this, it would have been one of the best X-File conspiracy episode ever. But as it is, in all ways it is “at least" a fascinating documentary through and through, where the absolutely obvious bias doesn’t matter one bit. P.S.: f this had been about similarly intelligent, but less cute rats, nobody would have given this a look, but anything in the name of dolphins, isn’t that right? I am intrigued to find out just how many of the really incensed and agitated viewers will make the effort to visit the website and make a donation.