Lima

The plot twists and the chattiness of the trio of “Pirates” remind me a lot of our glorious parliament. Endless quarrels and fights, here played for the eye of the spectator, here meant seriously; on the outside they appear as irreconcilable rivals, but behind the scenes, out of the public eye, they even toast each other with "pirate rum", at one moment they are falling each other's arms, and the next they could stab each other in the back and nobody would be any wiser. The admirable precision of the production design and visual effects deserves praise, the final battle raises the overall impression a lot, but it's more than two hours long! With all that politics the creators deserve to be flogged. Or better still, they should be condemned to smell Jack Sparrow’s socks for two weeks in a row.

Fully appreciated after a second screening. This film is not what it appears to be at first sight. A witty mockery of petty bourgeoisie, the fanatical religiosity of the American Midwest and the stupid anti-Semitism of a significant part of the population, all with a broader scope (it doesn't matter if it's the USA or a small country in the middle of Europe, people are basically the same everywhere, except for small nuances). My colleague Cooper and I laughed like madmen, a cleansing laugh, knowing that what we see on the screen is inherently ridiculous, but beneath its veneer is a deliberately targeted satire. "Disgusting, filthy and perverse" can only seem to people unable to read between the lines.

Unconventional and distinctive filmmaker Werner Herzog and Christian Bale in the grip of the Vietcong? I couldn't have imagined a stranger combination, but it worked out just fine. Probably the most "normal" Herzog film, but that's not to say it's the least interesting. With a few exceptions (a somewhat mishandled airplane crash), it's a brilliantly told drama, whether it's the hardships in a Vietcong prison camp (yet not cheaply "colourised") or the escape through the jungle, where scenes like leeches being ripped off just don't get out of your head. In terms of the degree of realism and "jungle sweat" there is a comparison with Aguirre, Wrath of God, but Rescue Dawn is told in a much more understandable language, so much so that you can feel the inclination towards the mainstream (of course, in terms of Herzog's work). Well, if others here are singing praises to Christian Bale, I have to single out the entire central trio. Late in the film, the splendidly skinny Bale looks as if he has just stepped off the set of The Machinist, and in places he gives a performance on the verge of being physically unbearable. The hirsute Steve Zahn finally got rid of his usual acting position of a total looser and is absolutely magnificent. And last but not least, the bone-skinny Jeremy Davies, with his Jesus-like visage (where is that studiously polite guy from Saving Private Ryan?), who looks as if he’s permanently rehearsing and, as in Soderbergh's Solaris, performs completely mimetic acting (nonsensical hand gesticulations, etc.). But in this case he’s playing a man mentally scarred by the hardships of imprisonment, it has its place and it looks great!! I was really looking forward to see the 'new Herzog' after years of his filmmaking fast and I am very pleasantly surprised, despite the weak start and the honey-sweetened finale.

The unschooled Rob Zombie is certainly a talented horror filmmaker, as evidenced here by the skillfully orchestrated Myers attacks, which have incredible pacing and occasionally he comes up with an interesting idea during them, but otherwise everything else is weak. It’s a step backwards for him, in his previous film,The Devil’s Rejects, Zombie managed to surprise and pleasantly shock, but Halloween is boringly predictable in its accumulation of horror clichés (especially in the second half), without a hint of surprise and with zero suspense. I don't think the inclusion of Myers' fate in some kind of weird psychological plane would have done the film any good, and most importantly, Carpenter's classic had a big trump card in the form of the likeable Jamie Lee Curtis, while here all the characters were annoying or had minimal space, so when Myers unleashes his "one kitchen knife concert" in the second half, I didn't care who was disemboweled in the following moments and how brutally. Zombie not only failed to surpass the creative bar set by his previous hit The Devil's Rejects, but literally crawled under it like Myers's wounded sister.

A low-budget sci-fi flick, at first glance heavily inspired by (and in many ways blatantly copying) Scott's Alien, and produced by B-movie guru Roger Corman, which is interesting today for perhaps only three reasons: first, it was ranked among the 50 worst films of all time in a poll of film critics three years ago; second, the then-unknown up-and-comer James Cameron was responsible for its production design and set design; and I'll save the third remarkable thing for last. It has to be said that those sets, which oddly enough also look expensive in a few shots, are the only well-crafted things in the entire film. The other ingredients belong somewhere in the galaxy alongside Ed Wood, Bert I. Gordon and other non-artistic legends. But taken through the eye of a B-movie enthusiast, it's also quite unintentionally funny at times, especially some of the inventive killings. Chief among them is the death of one of the crew – a black astronaut armed with ninja stars (while his colleagues wield laser guns) – he’s killed by his own severed hand, which crawls across the ground, picks up one of the stars, and knocks the poor black man down with a deadly throw. Had it been over-the-top like Raimi's Evil Dead II (which this scene reminded me of), it wouldn't be paradoxically as ridiculous as with Galaxy of Terror, which is deadly serious. However, Corman’s production does have one virtue: it is undoubtedly the alien-clone only film where the alien kills one of the crew members, or rather a female crew member, by rape in a rather explicit manner. Watching an alien monster from a galaxy far, far away hornily rip the spacesuit off a poor female astronaut is a truly unusual sight for the genre.

Originally, I was going to remark, at the expense of some of the responses here, that to complain for the lack of humour in a classically cut western, is like mocking Schwarzenegger for never playing Hamlet. But I really didn't expect that, because the last 10 minutes almost gave me a pain in my cervical spine from shaking my head in disbelief. There was a lot of potential, though, with the fantastically believable realities of the Wild West, the impressive casting with all those unwashed, hirsute faces and two actors (Crowe and Bale) who have the personality and charisma to pull the film to its very… stupid conclusion. What takes place in the last quarter of an hour (the moral awakening of a hardened bastard, the joint escape on the train, etc.) shamefully dwarfs the previous 100 minutes of carefully constructed suspenseful narrative. Stupidity of the coarsest grain, when during the closing credits I was looking to see if the Monty Python gentlemen had contributed their scriptwriting bit to the mill, because in the genre classification here I am missing the word 'parody' next to the word 'Western'. Strong 3* for the first 100 minutes and let's leave it at that, I'm going to pretend I went to the toilet for a very long 15 minutes before the end...

My God, that was quite a parade! An illustrative example of the fact that "blue ideology" and "red ideology" are closer to each other than they appear at first glance, despite their differences. The infatuated "Red Army guys" gave me the creeps and the technocratic Klaus-boys gave me the shivers. If these individuals decide the fate of this country in the future, I'm emigrating to Greenland.

I pray that this is not a new filmmaking trend and a question comes to mind: Is everyone really going to unsuccessfully play second-rate Paul Greengrass from now on? The words of an overseas film critic who wrote that Berg invited a "permanently dancing monkey" to operate the camera sound true. Even in static shots, the chaotic shuffling of the camera from side to side, up and down, which, sitting about 10 m in front of the big screen, led to sore eyes and, after half an hour, I had the feeling I had overdosed on Kinedryl. Greengrass owns this filmmaking style, he's mastered it perfectly and gave Bourne an interesting flair. But in your case, Peter Berg, was it really necessary? Because otherwise the actors, led by the charismatic Foxx, were superb, the Saudi realism fantastic and the final action breathtaking in places. If Berg became convinced that his pseudo-documentary approach with a camera unleashed could draw the viewer more into the plot, in my case it completely missed the mark. The last two sentences of the film are great, a simple and yet so apt description of the never ending struggle between the Western world and the Islamic one! By the way, for the first time in my life I had the experience of being in the cinema completely alone!

Turkish Star Wars, watch it and die! A clear tip for those who think that the film world can't surprise anymore. First of all, I would like to point out that the Turks have probably never heard of the concept of copyright. In their obscure mix of Star Wars and Superman, they inserted (stole) whole passages from Lucas's saga, but they shrunk the image, like when you make a rectangular widescreen format into a square, without side cropping, and converted it into garish colours, so the space ships sometimes look like they were vomited on by a whole air force at once. The music was also stolen, the entire film is accompanied by musical themes from Indiana Jones, Star Wars and other classics. The best part is of course the Turkish contribution: two heroes (supermen) walking among rocks (alien planet) and fighting against a galactic emperor (whose troops can't be compared to anything) and red bears (extras dressed in red fur coats). Throw in "superman training" with polystyrene boulders tied to his feet, karate punches landing 10 cm from a rock and lots of ridiculous fancy poses. The highlight is the superman martial art, I call it "baby-karate", because it looks exactly the same as the martial "presentations" of five-year-old kids playing with their friends. It’s hard to describe, you must see it. But make no mistake, this was not an obscure B-movie of its time, but by Turkish standards a high-budget film with the country’s biggest action star Cuneyit Arkin! Summary: a total cinematic low point, a total downer for days to come and after this experience, I have a question: Turkey in the EU? What would they do?

I will never forget the roughly 300 m long queue (no exaggeration) for tickets in České Budějovice that stretched from the cinema along the main avenue. Nor will I forget the pictures of dinosaurs from the bulletin specially printed for the viewers of Spielberg's juggernaut, which further piqued curiosity and increased the desire to see this "technical marvel". In a way, it was a social event and everyone wanted to be there. There’s certainly one thing that cannot be denied about Jurassic Park, about which the legendary puppet animatronics director Stan Winston affectionately said that it "put him out of a job", and an unmissable entry into the history of cinema. It wasn’t the first film to feature a CGI character (the primacy is held by the animated window mosaic of the knight from Levinson's Young Sherlock Holmes), but it was the first to dare to depict the movements of a living being in a completely realistic way, and it succeeded beyond measure. But when you scrape away the skin of groundbreaking visual effects and the initial amazement, what remains in my eyes is a completely mediocre adventure story that, unlike other Spielberg cachet like E.T. or Indiana Jones, which never get old, doesn't entertain with such ease. I felt disappointment even at the time of the premiere, compounded by high expectations and a terribly muddled dubbing. Unfortunately, Jurassic Park didn't become my favourite and that hasn't changed even with repeated viewings after many years.