D.Moore

No short story stands out in terms of processing or plot, and all four are pleasantly balanced in this respect. However, the third story has a great cast (as soon as Jaroslav Marvan and Zdeňka Baldová play the couple, it's a safe bet, and add to them the irresistible tragicomic figure of Ladislav Peška), and the excellent performance of the amazing Eman Fiala stands out from the fourth story. Hašek would be happy.

I turn a blind eye to how polite and smiling all the Red Army men are here, because The Marathon is not about them. The couple Jaromír Hanzlík and Jana Brejchová are amazing - two young people who sweep through Prague streets full of revolutionaries, pulling a heavy suitcase, and the revolution is perceived by everyone in their own way. They are very nice to look at, they're determined, funny and scared. I trusted everything I saw. I also liked the second part of the film, the war with the tank columns, explosions, demolitions and firefights - the design is generous, the battles are decently shot and have the necessary atmosphere and familiar actors appear in them here and there, who sometimes get only a sentence (Svatopluk Beneš), other times two sentences (Bohuš Záhorský) and at other times a full role with everything (the fantastic Karel Höger and of course Vladimír Menšík). I certainly wouldn't think badly of The Marathon.

Unfortunately, it’s rather boring. It’s interesting at first thanks to the opening atmospheric Arctic minutes, and then only thanks to Ray Harryhausen's fantastic special effects. The lizard attack on the city obviously inspired Emmerich's Godzilla and is the best scene from the whole film. By comparison, the ending in the theme park is meant so seriously and is so unimaginatively shot that it is ridiculous. I was amused by Lee Van Cleef's role, who hit the giant film monster with a radioactive grenade two years earlier than his future spaghetti western colleague Clint Eastwood sent a giant tarantula to hell in a jet.

An irresistibly dry bureaucratic absurdity with the magical poetics of Ypsilonka, which strongly reminded me of Gilliam's Brazil. Seriously, if the plot of Brazil played out in Austria-Hungary, it would certainly look something like this. The great pair of Jiří Císler and Bronislav Poloczek play an official power play against the helpless Ladislav Freja, murderers Jiří Wimmer and Petr Popelka are constantly getting involved, as well as Jana Synková, whose husband left to get the paper and never returned.

I liked perhaps everything - from superbly cast and acting child actors to the utterly mad Pennywise, from whom untold horror was truly felt (Tim Curry was ok, but his variations on Freddy Krueger just don’t have what it takes), to the script that, although it changed things from the book, it did so cunningly and is still faithful to it. So far, only Stanley Kubrick has done Stephen King this well. This is much more than a band aid for The Dark Tower - It is just a great old-fashioned horror film and I can't wait for the second chapter.

A new (or relatively new) film, and when watching it, it occurred to me from start to finish how unreservedly great an actor Al Pacino is, and what a joy it is to watch him, and we haven’t seen this for a long time. The last time perhaps was in 2010, when You Don't Know Jack came into being. Maybe it's a coincidence that both films were made by HBO, maybe not. Anyway, Pacino also found himself in Phil Spector, showing off something unreal and once again having perfect teammates with Helen Mirren in the lead. The script, using ingeniously written monologues and dialogues, leaves the viewer balancing in doubt the same time as Spector's defense lawyer, only to not explain anything in the ending and letting us decide on our own whether he has reasonable suspicion or not, and what he actually believes (or wants to believe).

It's usually not the mess you'd expect, especially the scenes with well-cast children, but the more the film deals with the adults and the closer to the hasty conclusion, the cheaper and more boring it is. I don't get the right horror feeling from Pennywise, who always just scares the kids and then lets them be, and unlike the book, Derry itself doesn't play a big role either, which is a similarly big minus. In terms of what was possible and, for example, compared to the tragic TV version of The Shining, it is a very faithful adaptation of King's epic.

A dark sci-fi story with revolutionary effects that, like the virtually ubiquitous suspense, are still impressive. I remember how long and how much the very last shot of the film used to haunt me, and I'm actually not surprised.

A very likeable film from start to finish. You can cheer for the main hero, although he's not fully a good guy, it's thrilling and funny and it has a pleasant retro look and sound. I often thought of Gold with Mathew McConaughey, which, of course, had something extra and I liked even more, but I rarely thought of the much worse The Wolf of Wall Street. Tom Cruise shows us why he still belongs amongst the most sympathetic and best actors.

Not great, not terrible, rather an average film that only very theoretically could have been better. I didn't expect that The Dark Tower could be filmed better than in an average way. For those unfamiliar with the book (or in this case rather “drafts") will probably be more conciliatory. Connoisseurs may like the introduction with Jake, and then various allusions to Mid-World (talking raccoons in a commercial, Walter's Glass Balls, 19-19...) and to King's other works (The Shining, It, Christine, The Shawshank Redemption, 1408, Salem's Lot...); however, the film won't offer them much more than that. Perhaps just the surprise that, God knows why, the screenwriters changed the function of the Tower or the Rays. Idris Elba is almost uninteresting as Roland and has almost no motivation, the actor playing Jake is also bland, and Matthew McConaughey plays Walter like Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, but the directing or the script do not help him too much, the spark of atmosphere only shines every now and then, and there no fear emanating from it. The final battle wants to be flashy, but is instead rather awkward. I'm not offended, but if the film hadn't been made, it would not have mattered.