Lima

Andrej, forget MAFRA, the intellectual hinterland of your voters comes from the readers of Blesk, Aha and similar shit. You didn't buy that, mate. But don’t worry, it’ll be better, a donut can fix everything...

The reviews here criticizing Emily Blunt's character are stupid and stem from a misunderstanding of the film's concept. By choosing a fragile woman as the centre of the narrative, as a kind of wide-eyed and out of place Alice in Wonderland, Villeneuve makes the viewers themselves grope and question. Emily is a beautiful contrast to the rough world of tough men who shoot from the hip, and the final denouement is an emotional blast, giving the preceding events meaning and significance. In real life, you’ll probably end up like my friend who commented at the beginning "It's a bit confusing", and then at the end apologetically said "Okay, Villeneuve, you played me like a cat with a mouse." The kind of authenticity and rawness that Sicario presents is something that 99% of film production can only dream of. And one thing is certain, charisma has an identical twin, and his name is Benicio del Toro.

My rock heart has always been with Pink Floyd, but I have to admit that the band that most significantly influenced 20th century rock music, its direction, sound and development for many decades to come was The Beatles. Their first albums, the ones that were so awfully happy with multiple vocals ("...yeeee, yeeee, yeeee..."), never really appealed to me. But from “Revolver” onwards, their work became the most important thing rock music has ever produced. The Beatles suddenly stopped relying on simple rock 'n' roll basics and brought a lot of inventiveness, influenced by eastern (e.g. Indian) elements, they were not afraid to experiment with other genres, even psychedelic rock, which was just beginning, and they incorporated orchestral elements into their music, which was unprecedented and unheard of in rock 'n' roll until then. And all this with great musical inventiveness. Moreover, “The White Album” from 1968 is in my eyes the best rock album of all time, together with Pink Floyd's “Dark Side of the Moon”.

After his debut in Piranha 2, where he was more of a puppet in the hands of an Italian producer, John Cameron found himself in Terminator and despite the low budget delivered a technically proficient action flick that is a perfect image of 1980s tastes, with the hard-bodies cult of the period, typical synthesizer sound and violence that is you no longer see in today's impotent times.

Poster tagline: HOW DEEP WITHIN EACH OF US IS HIDDEN OUR FORBIDDEN DESIRES? OUR UNBEARABLE FEARS? WHAT IS THE TERRIBLE MYSTERY OF THIS WORLD BEYOND OUR WORLD? Sidney Pink and Ib Melchior (the latter in particular) were experts in producing extremely cheap sci-fi B-movies, which they could shoot in 5 days and with a budget of a few tens of thousands of dollars. Here they shared the work of writer, editor and director, and to save even more money, they put everything together in Denmark, Melchior's native country. Thus, the complete film crew, including the actors (with the honourable exception of Agar) were Danes and later dubbed. It’s amusing from the very beginning, when the narrator tells everyone that in 2001 man has learned to live with himself, without wars, only with the desire to conquer the universe. For the first half hour, the film makes do with one room as the interior of a spaceship and a few artificial trees in a studio, representing a wooded landscape with a mill and a stream on Uranus (hence "the seventh planet"), which is actually a holographic projection of an evil monster with the appearance of a big brain with one eye. The second half is already more visually arresting, all prickly frozen trees with "ammonia snow" (exact quote), a giant rat with a cyclops head, and a giant tarantula whose attack is so poorly composed and edited that would make even Bert I. Gordon blush. There was no money for special effects, so the laser beams from the guns look like haphazardly sketched brushstrokes, the force field is simply a blacked-out half of the picture that the actors climb into, and there is the necessary female element – three Danish photo-models – as an illusory projection to fool our lovely heroes. But what made me honestly happy was to see B-movie legend John Agar again after a long time. He had turned a little grey and saggy, but it was still him, the guy with the mischievous smile.

Poster tagline: EVIL! BEAUTIFUL! DEADLY! EYES DESIRE IN THEIR VEINS THE BLOOD OF MONSTERS!!! This is what happens when screenwriting amateurs, really journeymen actors from Corman's stable, write a role tailor-made for themselves and think they have a sense of humor. I like B-movie science fiction movies of the Golden Age, because they are mostly funny thanks to their naivety, and the way they take themselves seriously makes them even more funny. But the boys here went at it from the opposite side. They don’t take themselves seriously at all and they make attempts at pretty cheap humour. The first 20 minutes are almost unbearable – unfunny situational comedy, when all that's missing are farts and burps. When the plot shifts to aliens, or rather to two dominant alien women and their slaves – vegetable-men, whose appearance is described by one of the heroes with the words "Wow! That's the first time a salad's ever tossed me!", the actors occasionally let out a witty line that aptly throws off the usual genre clichés. But these are just exceptions, the feeling of awkwardness lasts until the end of the film. There are also such treats as a secretary with a gas mask on her face, and on the way to the space ship towards the end of the film the heroes meet a Comanche, Sitting Bull, with whom they try a peace pipe and drink firewater. Hahaha. Another oddity of the era I can cross from my list.

Clear evidence that electronics labeled smart are a potential threat. That’s why I decided to disconnect my smart washing machine. I'll miss the quiet rustling of my dirty laundry, but what wouldn't a man do for safety. I also unplugged my computer because it was suspiciously overheating while playing this movie, and my monitor because it was flickering suspiciously. I'm glad I caught it so early, no one will make a fool of me!

The Rock is cool, no doubt about it. Otherwise, this is just a bunch of terrible, boring clichés, dull dialogue, amateurish acting and overwrought CGI; just everything I hate so heartily about the current mass production of the dream factory. And three people wrote the script for this? This shows that some professions in Hollywood are even easier than receiving welfare. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss Emmerich!

These teen novels from the pen of female authors, wrapped in pseudo sci-fi/fantasy crap are an unfortunate phenomenon of today's pop culture. Paraphrasing Simona Stašová in Cozy Dens: it cost so much money, and it's so stupid. I felt genuinely sorry for the respected character actresses Jodie Foster and Naomi Watts. I know how expensive mortgages in Florida can be, but still, do these two ladies need to do this?

The script must have been written by Jára Cimrman, based on one of his plays. So it's clear, you are my son, but you could actually be my father, or brother, and if the time paradox allows, father and son at the same time, along with my mother, who’s actually my daughter. Whatever. Time paradoxes have always been there, they are part of the sci-fi genre. What I just realized is that the Terminator has no place in today's cinemas. What seemed revolutionary and innovative at the time of the release of Cameron's first two Terminators, which enchanted awestruck audiences with the metamorphoses of the T-1000 model thanks to digital effects that were at the dawn of their age, now, in an age overcrowded and overstuffed with CGI atrocities, no longer impresses anyone and has nothing to offer beyond that. And when you present the core of the story, those time paradoxes I mentioned earlier, as clumsily as Alan Taylor does, then there's a problem. Especially since the film doesn't have a single (!) memorable action scene that you'll remember years from now. Unlike, for instance, Terminator 2, which is a textbook of the action genre. And Arnold? Due to the plot, his presence here is rather symbolic, all he has to do is show up and throw in a few one-liners and fans will be satisfied. But he's fine, and it has to be said, the only (surprising) bright spot of the whole film. If the Terminator has to age, it should certainly be in the way Arnold has demonstrated here.