Lima

An echo of the 80s? Yeah, right. This movie will be completely forgotten in less than six months. Take, for example, Commando, which makes for a good comparison. In a way, it has aged like wine and with the passing years since its release it has acquired a kind of cult status, thanks especially to Arnold, who had undeniable charisma (whether anyone likes it or not), spouted one good one-liner after another and his (non)acting was endearing in its own way. John Cena has none of that. He's just a dull mountain of meat and his character lacks any kind of insight. And if the only thing a film can offer other than an unlikeable leading man is over-the-top action like Transporter 2, then you have quite a problem. The only positive, Robert Patrick, who was very clear about the situation he was in and really enjoyed his villainous role.

Although the plot of Angelica's stories can be safely described as shallow, and her love for de Peyrac as a mere cover and a flimsy thread that neatly ties the whole series together, since Angelica is in fact an insatiable nymphomaniac (all the more reason to root for her), I'll be very charitable. Despite the fact that it is very hard to empathise with the protagonist's fate because, let's face it, Angelica is a selfish bitch who walks over dead bodies, craves power, according to her own words, and would rather trade the righteous revenge of a young boy's death for a confession over a chocolate cake. But what the hell. The films are nice to watch, these old-fashioned costume narratives are a big weakness of mine, Michele Mercier is gorgeous, the music is downright divine in some passages, and my favorite Jean Rochefort is "Mr. Charisma", an acting devil who steals every scene with his mere presence, and his ambiguous character as the head of the secret service is a very refreshing touch. In short: a very subjective 4* and I won't go lower even for a night with the Marquise de Peyrac :)

Once every few years it happens that an inconspicuous film unexpectedly hits a golden vein in the form of great audience interest and favourable critical response, but at the same time the buzz and the aura of "wonderful comedy" created around it far outweighs its real value. Recent examples include My Big Fat Greek Wedding and now Little Miss Sunshine, the most overrated comedy of recent years. A pleasantly tedious 97 minutes, with completely banal humour, a few blatant constructs (the somewhat belated discovery of colour blindness) and one of the most incomprehensible Oscar nominations for Alan Arkin as a cackling grandfather. An over-hyped affair that will certainly not become a classic in the future. The dance of the cute Abigail Breslin won’t save it.

Now that's what they call "a role written right on the body"! Hugh Laurie aka Gregory House has such overwhelming charisma that even Dr. Strossmeyer would turn pale with envy next to him :)

There’s one single moment that makes me remember this otherwise pretty average low-budget monster horror film, one that's unusually brutal for its time (of course, it wouldn't shock anyone today) and completely unprecedented among 1950s monster movies. I'm talking about the scene in the last act or so when the monster comes out of a room holding a close-up of a severed bloody head – a pleasant little shock. Until then, it's a very restrained and chatty film about a prehistoric bipedal monster that terrorises a small town by the sea, with lots of boring dialogue; the tension is created, like in Spielberg's Jaws, through the unseen, merely suspected, or presented only through the monster's shadows. But there is no suspense to speak of (Berwick is no horror genius), except perhaps in the last ten minutes, when the monster is shown in all its glory. The one thing that helps is the proficient design of the monster, similar to the more famous one from Creature from the Black Lagoon. Otherwise, however, the comparison fails, because Jack Arnold, unlike Irwin Berwick, is in the premier league.

4 1/2 *. A return to subtle storytelling and definitely Nolan's best film since Memento. The only thing that bothered me was the literal conclusion. If Nolan had used a more elegant solution, perhaps in the form of hints, instead of a half-hearted explanation, it would have been a perfect experience. Nevertheless, with each new film of the N+N duo, it is true that "to have the ideas of the Nolan brothers is to be filmmaking legends in the future". Anyway, the trump card is the cast, with a very good Michael Caine, the almost inhumanly charismatic David "Tesla" Bowie and above all Christian Bale – an actor of many faces and you believe all of them. When he flashes his typical foxy smile, you'd go for a beer with him right away, but in front of his sinister expression you'd rather crawl under the table :). The atmosphere is scrumptious, and the sets are a separate chapter, they deserve some special film awards.

Iñarritu abandons the time fragmentation of 21 Grams and, as in his first film, tells several intertwining stories. The Mexican episode is probably the weakest, with relatively little emotional impact, while the Japanese one seems to have fallen out of another film, but thanks to the likeable lead actress it’s one of the most enjoyable. Great emotions take place in Morocco, with the story of a shepherd and his sons that escalates with great urgency at the end, while the fate of the injured American woman is gripping in places thanks to the great performances of the central duo Pitt – Blanchett, whose circumstantially forced intimate moments are among the film's strongest. The Moroccan episodes are clearly worth 5*, the other two 3*, but if I had to compare, Iñárritu's previous 21 Grams had much more emotional charge overall, at least for me.

A distinctive work by a distinctive artist. What I like about Mel Gibson is that despite the journalistic statements about "sadist Gibson", he still goes about his business, ignores all critics and keeps his creative freedom. He doesn’t spare violence here either, but unlike The Passion of the Christ, it is kept within tolerable limits (like the battle scenes in Braveheart). For example, the scene of the double sacrificial heart-cutting is quite subtly depicted, and its media criticism is completely out of place. If I am telling a story from the time of the late Mayan empire, it would be strange to omit this quite common practice. Aside from Gibson's light allusions to the manipulation of crowds and the depiction of the decadence of society, a concomitant phenomenon of the decline of great empires, looking for some kind of insight here is completely pointless. The whole film is constructed as a kind of ancient narrative of hunters somewhere by the fire, who, with typical male vanity, show off where they killed who, who they escaped from or who they saved. In this respect, the film is absolutely great and I don't really care about the lack of an idea. Moreover, Gibson's direction is imaginative, the make-up and adornments of the protagonists and the visuals of the Mayan metropolis scene are a triumph of cinematic art design. Mel did not disappoint again and continues to be for me a breath of fresh air in the stale Hollywood production :o)

I'd like to write that Lost is a drug with opposite effects: the more you take, the less you like it. The cleverness of Season 1 and its perfectly paced conclusion (the cliffhanger in the last episode) is replaced by the muddled mush of the first half of Season 2, which you can only enjoy if you have a certain level of tolerance for the acting of the guy in the Michelle Rodriguez skirt and are able to accept that the centre of all the action is pushing a button. Certainly the quality of the individual episodes is also directly proportional to the appeal of the flashbacks, with Sawyer clearly having the best, together with John Locke’s his much-maligned "kidney problem", with Boone and Shannon and Charlie and his desperate DriveShaft at the opposite pole. In the current 3rd season, the so-called "bubblegum effect" (i.e. what could be told in half an hour is stretched to 6 episodes, the 3rd episode "Further Instructions" is an example of a complete screenwriting collapse) comes into play, with very effective, but somewhat stupid crutches to dramatize the plot (Sawyer's "implant"). Plus, the way the showrunners have branched out the plot to an unsuspected breadth and brought in a bunch of other big questions (and haven't answered any of them yet), I kind of feel like they have put themselves into a corner. I'm genuinely curious to see how the whole mystery will be solved; either we're looking at one of the biggest duds in the history of television in a few years, or, on the contrary, we’ll see that the Abrams team has created one of the most interesting series of the last decade. The frantic tweaking of the script over the last winter does not inspire much confidence so far. The reasons why I give it a cautious and very weak 4* are as follows: firstly, despite all my qualms, Lost still retains a kind of compelling mystery and manages to surprise. The second reason is the interesting characters free from the black and white concept – especially the extremely charismatic John Locke, the ambiguous rogue Sawyer, or the mysterious Henry. For now we can only say "we'll see, we'll see", there is still plenty of time for a conclusive assessment.

BIKINI KOMBAT!!! Baywatch meets The Shaw Brothers and the result is a 100% brainless affair that redefines the term "shit" and becomes a hot candidate for inclusion in www.badmovies.org. Unfortunately, the overly dense frequency of brawls makes DOA a rather monotonous affair as time goes on. I enjoyed it's stepsibling, Paul W.S. Anderson's visually much more sophisticated Mortal Kombat (Anderson co-produced DOA), infinitely more, even though it was really about the same thing.