DaViD´82

Terrence Malick's style farewell to his daughter. The concept is quite nice, but the way it is eventually put into practice is rather a letdown. The melancholic atmosphere works quite well, but in terms of acting it is not typical. What is telling is that pensive Arnie whose acting seems to be desperate and inappropriate is the better part of the central duo.

Simply said, when the actor and director are on completely different level in terms of quality. While Gyllenhaal’s performance is brilliant and he is even "aiming for Oscar", Fuqua only makes just another everyday consumer version of the thousand-times-seen boxing B-movie melodrama, in which perhaps all genre clichés are present; just often in a non-functional style. It also strangely tends to fade away, because it starts with by far the best scene and then it only gets worse especially after falling to the bottom, when the true values are revealed and the after getting at its height again. It's kind of sad when the opening match has a driving force, energy and charge and the final one has nothing. It holds together only thanks to Gyllenhaal’s performance, but as I mentioned, his excellent performance seems almost inappropriate in this movie.

This is surprisingly the better, more beneficial and timeless part of the community-funded project, which in many ways revolutionized gaming history. In the spring of 2012, Tim Schafer (author of most classic adventure games of LucasArt) launched the community funding on Kickstarter promising “I'll make an old-fashioned adventure game, I just do not know what". He collected a lot of money, showed the way to others, and thus started the subsequent nostalgic tsunami of the return of experienced creators and the good old gaming school along with them, which no longer were wanted by big studios. And he changed the whole industry to some extent. And this twenty-episode documentary series, depicts the entire long-term production journey, even before the funding was launched. It is an interesting show, as it shows in depth the complete creative process in all areas, including all compromises and sofia's business choices. The best thing about it, however, is that Schafer's entire project was built on shaky ground from the beginning, and the higher it got the bigger was the fall, no specific plan, financial resources were terribly overestimated, all the finances were spent long before completion, controversial communication about many unpopular decisions, unfulfilled promises, disproportionately long development and questionable quality of the final product. This show captures all this and much more in an objective way, uncompromisingly and in the raw, so it is a unique insight that is very interesting (especially if you are starting a project), regardless of whether you are into playing video games or not (especially old school point and click adventure games).

The fight between the men is somewhat spoiled by two snags. The first "heist-like" half got significantly older than the second "inherit the wind". And then, to a large extent, it is a movie about those two famous silent scenes (robbery and the final ride through Paris), which unintentionally stand out and unfortunately steal the show.

Reed inherited gold from Wright and McKay and transformed it into copper. However, high quality copper in all respects. Even in this traditionally Marvel-like sterilized form, Ant-man will keep you entertained (yes, especially thanks to Peño and Tomáš). And what will disappoint you even more is how he wasted so many possibilities to take full advantage of abilities of the main characters. Because his small adventures, ideas and playfulness are outshone by the six-decade-old The Incredible Shrinking Man or the Hamster in a Nightshirt of Czech TV and what is far the best in this regard is the poster promo campaign "with Avengers"(whether official or fan). And that's not enough.

These a few dozens of seconds were completely unnecessary, without them it could have been the best horror of recent years. But we cannot do anything about it and their presence is even a bigger letdown because the problem is not what they show but how. Anyway, otherwise it is pretty good. You can find here everything what a real old school horror movie should contain; disturbing atmosphere, graduating psycho tension within a closed community (in this case a family in the middle of the woods), exposing carefully written characters, fears, evil and prejudices hidden in us, disturbing scenes... I am completely happy about that; especially when you add the impressive camera à la Dutch masters and acting performances of the whole family, which are worth highlighting, including the children. I can't remember when four children played such a complicated characters so well. Perhaps Eggers will make more horror movies, because a similar approach to this genre has been missing in recent years.

A barely believable tragicomic series of events that lead to the destruction of a military unit by several forgotten Soviet mines on a few square meters in a valley in the middle of nowhere. You hardly come up with something so absurd. After all, it is said to stick to the facts faithfully. On top of that, they managed to perfectly capture the psycho-tense atmosphere of a ridiculous, but hopeless situation; in the best moments, when the true personality (in fact even the entrails) of the individual characters is fully revealed, the Sorcerer (1977) will come to your mind. The whole movie then progresses after the first helicopter attempts to land around two thirds of the footage. After this climax that comes too early, the movie only gets worse and becomes dull and the increasingly naturalistic anti-war movie begins to turn into to a movie celebrating all this.

John Oliver from the UK and his team mirror (not only) America. Sunday after Sunday, in its 30 mins (one big topic for about 15-20 minutes, on top of that an overview of events from around the world and some smaller topic) it does what it takes to address the topics that others (not only overseas but mainly overseas) do their best to avoid or if they inform about them eventually, it is from a somewhat different point of view. And not even remotely in such an apt, substantiated and fun way. Yes, without being backed by HBO (or at that time perhaps Comedy Central), such investigative (let us put it this way) journalism (yes, a clown becomes journalist his work makes journalists look stupid) would not be possible. The creators of this show can explain controversial topics in a keep it simple and stupid way (but neither make viewers look stupid nor underestimating them) that plays educational and informative role but does not look like a school lesson. And as if this alone was not enough, they dare to do everything, so they cannot do without some smart satire, black incorrect humor and the constant "playing down" of delicate topics (without losing informational value, however). Simply put, a perfect example of infotainment. Of course, the whole thing is entirely dependent on Oliver. And we may have the impression that if Oliver had been only a little less nice or funny, the whole show might have collapsed like a house of cards. But Oliver is a VERY funny nice guy (except for his spider's fingers) and the result is the top journalistic opinion show ever (everything solely relies on opinions of Oliver's team, which without exception are worth listening to, whether you agree with them or not), nothing more and nothing less.

It describes in an excellent way, using behind the scenes plotting, how not to intervene and more importantly how not to lose face officially so the whole world would not know. It captures series of events preceding the fall of Khartoum and one of the most interesting figures in British colonial history. These aspects are fine, on the contrary, they are along with the camera the strongest point. The problem, however, is that it largely relies on the relationship between the two sides of the same coin; two extraordinary men who determine the future of (not only) Sudan, whose attitudes and actions are strictly based on their firmly entrenched different faith, which defines them significantly. And this interesting conflict between Christian and Muslim even today (or especially today) is completely ruined by the unfortunate portrayal of the self-proclaimed Mahdi. Due to Olivier's busy schedule, he appears only in a few scenes that were shot in the studios in England afterwards and not in locations in Egypt like the rest of the movie, which is both obvious and disturbing. The second thing is that the respected leader of the people is represented by an African, lisping, dirty typical white man. The third issue is that they either forgot or were too afraid to say to Olivier that this is not a theater performance, so he theatrically recites while others "normally" play and last but not least is that there are only a few scenes with him, so it does not match the space prescribed by the screenplay. So, in fact, he is mentioned in almost every dialog but rarely appears on the screen. At times, it seems really ridiculous and almost like Cimrman's Hamlet "if Mahdi was here now, he would tell you…" It's a pity, because with more dignified Mahdi, Khartoum could have been an even better movie. Even so, it is an impressive and interesting historical film, that is for sure.

We can clearly see in every other scene, how much the movie was edited and it is more that obvious that Ridley has a much longer version of it in his drawer. Without this, it would have been even better. But even in its current not polished form, it is exactly what one would expect from it. In other words, it is a truly magnificent and handcrafted adaptation of one of the most impressive stories ever. The snag is mainly in the form of the already mentioned cinema editing, which should have either been shorter and free of all those ambitious subversive motives and themes (Moses' blinded madness, his unbelief, vengeful (not)God of preschool age, emphasis on the non-mythological line, doubting Joshua, Macbeth-like Sigourney, much more sympathetic Egyptians led by the pharaoh, etc.) and simply being an "precise" adaptation of the well-known or should have been even longer and should have been more focused on the above-mentioned and purely sympathetic ambitious subversions. In its current form, however, it is unfinished and halfway, because the epicness of Egypt, individual wounds and the exodus itself were prioritized in terms of footage. Which is a letdown on one hand, but on the other hand it is very enjoyable to watch. That is for sure.