Malarkey

The Hollywood really can make whatever they please. While watching this, I kept asking myself where all the sci-fi and mystery mentioned among the genre categories is. Towards the end, however, everything sped up considerably so I had a hard time to understand what was going on (and eventually failed to do so). On the other hand, I can’t say I wasn’t enjoying the Caribbean locations. I did enjoy them a lot. Matthew McConaughey plays his typical world-weary guy, and steals the show for himself. Anne Hathaway looks like a mannequin while Jason Clarke’s character makes you want to punch him in the face. Fortunately, there’s also the monk portrayed by Djimon Hounsou who somehow balances out Matthew’s character’s moodiness. I have to say that I haven’t seen such a crazy film with Hollywood stars in a while. Sometimes I felt like watching Interstellar from the Caribbean but I had no idea what was going on in the movie until the very end.

A cute family movie from the Netherlands, where the creators won me over with the cats and Carice van Houten, who as an absolute essence of Dutch beauty is very nice to look at. Because I like cats, I gave it four stars. Yes, it was crazy, but some of those wacky moments were so fun that I can’t help myself. If you have cats, you can let them watch this movie as a bedtime story.

Given how disappointed I was with the second instalment of Transformers, the four stars I’m giving to this flick are quite an improvement. The authors went back to basics and delivered an incredibly simple story, whose script however contains everything I need to grow fond of Bee and enjoy some plot twists. While watching this movie, I realized that today’s blockbusters usually lack a certain charm that would make them stand out from the average and arouse some emotions in me. This film succeeded in doing so, even though I didn’t expect it to. Of course the 1980s feel, so popular in these days, played a huge part in that. Plus I must say that John Cena was a great casting choice. I hope to see him in more movies.

An interesting premise won me over during those 81 minutes. I almost felt like I was watching something by Linklater. Everyone’s role is important and even though J. K. Simmons spends all the time just staring at the mirror with a gun pointed at this head, barely saying a word, his performance is very convincing, just like that of Sebastian Stan, who plays the same character as an adult, and does more or less the same, with less gun pointing and more speaking. I enjoyed myself, found this original and the ending was a pleasant surprise.

I admit to expecting something better. I was really looking forward to those Donbass shots. However, those shots are the only thing I got. The story doesn’t matter in the slightest, completely overshadowed by the military conflict. Plus the filmmaking is so terribly impersonal that it looks like a warzone documentary. A totally emotionless film, which is not to say it is not interesting. It is certainly informative enough.

Exactly the type of film that the Hallmark Channel, specializing in family drama, has always broadcast. It’s not great, but it has an interesting premise that was a reason enough for me to watch this till the end.

Gangrene is a bitch. I think I’m not deviant enough to watch an entire hour of an actor playing Louis XIV writhing in pain and performing “art” to people eating tapas.

Biopics about famous people I haven’t heard about before always have a hard job to win me over. I quite liked Nicholas Hoult’s Salinger, however, as well as Kevin Spacey in a typical mentor role. All in all, the film met my requirements, to the extent that now I really want to read Catcher in the Rye and think about how such a story was written by a person whom everybody predicted to never amount to anything…

I have stumbled upon this film by accident, thanks to the book it’s based on. The book is, given it was written by a Soviet author, very pro-Western and undoubtedly high quality. And the film is the same. Of course it’s a bit dated, as it was made in 1984, but it was able to capture the essence of the book, especially its ending. So I wasn’t paying as much attention to the filmmaking qualities and rather focused on the idea behind the story. And that idea is excellent as far as the sci-fi genre is concerned. Such a deep sci-fi story written by a Soviet author? We can see that quality can be born everywhere and that a Soviet movie doesn’t necessarily mean communist propaganda.

Given that Ethan Hawke is one of my favorite Hollywood’s alternative artists, this movie about a country musician is not much. The music is average, the story boring… maybe a fan of Blaze Foley would appreciate this, but my country is not exactly overflowing with those.