Marigold

More shaky filming and strange angles, less tidy beauty... you can feel that the creators want to bring Poirot closer to the current audience, for whom the fragrant Biedermeier of the older series is already a bit de mode. The plot is quite predictable by Christie's standards and is not overflowing with emotions. I would rather call it a standard collection item. [75%]

No, Hercule should not run away from and escape explosions, because it always seems so ridiculously unbelievable. The effort to bring more rawness into the pedantic world is not particularly refreshing in this form. As convoluted as a Nordic detective story, darker thematicization of the Nazi threat, squinting at current trends in "socio-political manipulators"... but in the end, the best part is when old friends meet years later. In the 13th series, it embodies the "search", but what is eventually found is not dazzling enough to deprive one of a penchant for proven Poirot nostalgia. [70%]

The 2010 Orient Express was unique mainly because it presented Hercule from a new angle and was totally consistent in therein - it subjected everything to the dark psychological picture of searching for a broken man. This episode attempts to do something similar (the return of the Hercule-lover torn by guilt), but is desperately inconsistent as it stumbles between the backdrop of Swiss operetta and the sentiment of a nickel-and-dime novel. This time, Hercule's femme fatale looks like a cheap and vulgar Russian prostitute, the unraveling is explicitly demented and the alpine hotel looks like a poorly lit stage for a dubious piece. Only Suchet sails through it with enormous grace. Otherwise, it’s a weak link in the 13th series. [55%]

Is Captain Phillips a glorification of the status quo and a civilian hero? I don’t think so. A comparison with Lindholm's A Hijacking is entirely relevant, but we should not automatically claim that the Danish "harder, colder, and non-hero" interpretation of reality is "better". A material comparison of starting points is interesting: The Danes choose a typical situation, whilst the Americans a dramatic and spiraling situation. The protagonist of A Hijacking is an ordinary sailor who is a passive "commodity" in negotiations, the hero of Greengrass's film is already picked up and belongs to the active movers (he is a captain and actively fights for his life almost to the last moment). The American version is actually two-thirds characterized by shifts, actions and reversals, while the Danish version completely avoids them and captures the routine of negotiations that drag on callously. The Danes film in the affected area and let the whole crew live in uncertainty (because they also want to transfer the rawness to the film), whereas the Americans use the calm waters around Malta. These are two approaches to the same topic, I see no reason to hierarchize them - both are completely legitimate. In addition, they both create a very similar picture: a broken individual and a system that continues to function as if nothing had happened. We can certainly perceive Captain Phillips as a celebration of the Navy Seals and the US Army, but Greengrass gives enough clues to the counter-interpretation - the whole situation is absurd, disproportionate and unsolvable (a small orange boat vs. three warships), and both sides happen to have legitimacy. The fact that he is monitoring Phillips and his future captor in parallel should alert us that Greengrass wants to do more than just paint a thrilling case. Similarly to Zero Dark Thirty, here, it is as if more clues seem to tempt to the conventional satisfaction that the disgusting skinny people will get their assess kicked, yet the action only provides spectator satisfaction to a limited extent. There is a disturbing array of free motifs that Greengrass surrounds with his millimeter-accurate direction. My view is more in line with Lindholm's, but that doesn't mean Captain Phillips didn't get to me in the end. It only happened during the penultimate scene, but it was worth the wait. [80%]

Amazing. The greatest fluctuations of sweaters, the scheme of the first series stretched to a larger domestic political scale and made in half the area with a much greater escalation (with the exception the 6th and 7th part, it keeps moving forward). With a bit of exaggeration, the creators managed to combine the civilian political thriller Borgen and a visually beefy dark detective story a la The Bridge. The ending is explicitly brilliant, overwhelming, perhaps borderline, but all of its elements are perfectly in line with the logic of the characters and the established motifs. Nikolaj Lie Kaas was a great choice as a partner, kind of like Lund with a lot of testosterone. So far, the best I've seen in the Nordic series, all taken together.

He came, he saw, he was not surprised. Purely as an old acquaintance, I forgive the emotionally collapsed (rather inflated in terms of tone) first half, the Marvel exposition according to the "nothing from something" template is, of course, expected. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the scheme "from the dark depths of the universe will emerge another horse face that has another mega-weapon to destroy the cosmos" is starting to get quite worn out and hackneyed. The best thing about Thor: The Dark World is not the main storyline, but rather the completion of relational peripeteia from past films (Thor x Frigga, Thor x Loki, a comedy storyline with a disturbed Erik). It is shot skillfully, it tries to dilute the theatricality with dark fantasy and a greater richness of relationships between the gods. The result is not dazzling, but at least it works (and where it doesn’t, it ironically thematizes the discrepancy - jumps between dimensions). I was expecting some more surprises and a slightly fresh approach. But the series team hit the Marvel tracks and isn't tearing out the sleepers. In the end, it escalates nicely, Natalie is (more and more the same) fragile, Chris waves the hammer around decently... basically, things are essentially the same as always. Nothing amazing, nothing beneficial, no new interesting characters... a pleasant stop on the way to something bigger. Which I'm actually not really looking forward to. Thor: The Dark World confirmed to me that the only real life line in the Marvel world is Iron Man. If, instead of saving the world, he's worrying about what is going on inside his head. Otherwise, it's a wooden costumed opera that is nice to look at, but it doesn't really move anything forward. I liked the first film more, because everything was new and detailed. The second film just successfully draws from it. Edit: No, I cannot give it 4 stars compared to Iron Man 3... [65%]

It may seem bold and raw the way in which Chapaev is portrayed as a hero of the Civil War in the film, but the fact remains that this film is entirely in line with the ideological universe of early Stalinism. It reflects a dying positive type of "spontaneous hero", a savage hero, with a penchant for anarchy. Chapaev was one of the models on which socialist realism was built; however, in the mid-1930s, a conscious hero who was not prone to individualism and natural whims was preferred. This is one of the reasons why the "real author" Furmanov replaces book commissioner Klychkov, completely free of the doubt, mistakes and weaknesses of the book prototype. From the very beginning, the film leads the comedically stormy Chapaev in the very mercury-like performance by Boris Babochkin as a naughty child, but he is drafted too soon, so the motive of rebirth thereby somewhat disappears (even in the book, Chapaev remains rather "unenlightened" until his death). The film version of Chapaev is a wild addle-brain. Instead of fighting there is mostly singing in the film, and for a long time there is only one revolting soldier on the side of the victims, whom Chapaev personally kills for mutiny. In a way, the film feels de-mythologized, although we are talking more about the extent of the myth than about its complete absence. There is a clear picture in it of a folk hero, a rebel who may be confused in the number of internationals, but he does sing beautifully. At the same time, he acknowledges his limited role by predicting a beautiful new world for young lovers, to which he will no longer have access as a "man of war". It is quite an eloquent memento of a historical turning point, in which the infallible Stalinist titans began to take the place of the spontaneous heroes.

A small big man smokes a hallucinogenic peace pipe with Pirates of the Caribbean and a mute grotesque. A movie that looks like it's being told by a senile crazy Indian... because it's being told by a senile crazy Indian who also likes to listen to himself talk. The middle passage is a little weak, but otherwise I had a great time. Verbinski sometimes drowns in beloved references, but his "meta-westerns" are smarter than most genre competitors. That guy is not Tonto.

I wanted it, but I didn't believe. I was waiting for the soft version of Carda for teenagers, but Hood pleasantly surprised me. He preserved all the main thematic elements of the original, just compressed it, trimmed it and significantly simplified it (most of the earth storyline is missing and a number of episodes from the cadet storyline are missing). For me, the film was lacking a bit of the more precise rebirth of the main character, but Butterfield was able to capture Ender's inner dilemma well, even in a small area. The cool, mechanical direction sometimes perfectly preserves the atmosphere of the original, and despite the other half losing a bit of tempo (also due to the fact that Ender's relationship with his sister / brother is more of a purposeful explanatory tool than a functional part of the narrative), the conclusion is just as uncomfortable and hard as it should be. The only unfortunate adaptation decision can be considered the compression of the time frame. After all, the point stands out better when it is spread out over a horizon of years, not days (the film, of course, chooses a more dramatic and tight framework, which does not necessarily help the urgency of the message). The twisted visual aspect is more so a bonus, thanks to which the film could not start working. The interplay between the characters (Ford's great return!) and the disturbing emotional withdrawal are essential. There is no need to fall in love with Ender and his world - one should either respect him or hate him, in full accordance with the strictly rational original. Thanks to this, Ender's Game is more of a film endemic. I have no idea where the film will actually be spread outside the territory of lovers of old school sci-fi (it has more ideas than fun and gloss). This is a full-blooded, dark and unusually ambitious sci-fi, which fails to penetrate the minds of the genius warlord / assassin as deeply as in the book, but at least it stands as an attractive addition to it. This is also because it is easy to write into it the missing and indicated context. Hood simply remained exceptionally reverent... and uniqueness is rewarded by loneliness, even Ender knows this well... [75%]

The best social dramas take place in landfills this year. Uncompromising verism, in which at first I was a little bothered by the thematic presence of the camera (in contrast to passages that adversely work with purely cinematic procedures), but in the end it captivated me with a combination of urgency and lethargy. This is another one of those films that opens up the possibility of several attitudes, does not introduce any of them and offers the most important thing - a raw section of reality, which the viewer must "experience" and process himself. Tanović is certainly not as skilled a mediator of "social distress" as, for example, Fliegauf, but here he managed to exactly hit the mark. [80%]