Marigold

In the midst of the repulsive detective wildness spewing out of television screens with incredible cadence, Detective Barnaby and his old-school conversations in a typically English style caress the soul. Finally, a detective story with very intricate and honestly-knotted stories with the overtones of the mystery of Albion's detective classics, with a charismatic hero whose humor and charm serve better than fists and nine-millimeter arguments. Very decently cast, well written, very sensitively directed and, moreover, the ubiquitous subtle irony delights the sore souls of fans of good detective stories.

If it weren't so excessively cool, it would be the biggest sci-fi event since the launch of Spielberg's Minority Report. Directed by Alex Proyas, the film has a suggestive atmosphere and, surprisingly, a decent (albeit reduced) idea. Will Smith was cast to ensure commercial security, so his Del Spooner makes the film a bit of a macho zodiac. I don't mind the character as a whole, but some of the one-liners seem as natural in the context of the story as Zarathustra in public toilets. Nevertheless, I pay tribute to Proyas for the ease with which he was able to balance the compromise between the action show and the impressive sci-fi spectacle with a warning undertone... How easily he was able to incorporate impressive emotions and sequences worth remembering into the veins of the film. In the end, one tends to forgive even the several exaggerated fancy "matrix-like" scenes, and if you are not one of the uncompromising fans of Isaac Asimov, then with a bit of good will, you won’t be able to help but enjoy this perfectly filmed ride. Definitely a hot candidate for sci-fi of the year.

A folk-proletarian fairy tale with a beautifully cheesy artistic stylization, a remarkably morbid story, a macabre sense of humor (when Death says things like: Cold water? Are you crazy? She could have died from it!), a tolerably engaged subtext and, of course, wonderful acting performances by Jiří Sovák, Rudolf Hrušínský and especially Standa Neumann. Martin Frič made a film that is relatively rough and realistic for a fairy tale, but in turn he also made a real story into a cute fairy tale. Anyway, it's great and pleasant fun.

Like a spa, this film also helped me a lot with regular evening spiritual hygiene. It is not exotic in form; on the contrary, it clearly refers to the traditions of European narrative film. Zhang depicts the picturesque environment of a Chinese spas with all the remarkable characters and their stories and small (but actually big) dramas. The central motif is the clash of two worlds – the new world and the world of old traditions, which is embodied by the spa and its owner, Master Liu. Da Ming's "lost" son returns from the new world and slowly but surely succumbs to the spell of the slow but wise space of the traditions of purification and human closeness. He also finds his way to mentally handicapped brother Er Ming, and despite the fact that the end of the old world is inevitable, catharsis will persevere the end of the spas (and the breakup of their staff). Zhang chooses a rather slow, yet charming and gracefully comic narrative approach, which lightens the tragic and melancholic undertone of the Chinese spa and adds a wisely humorous touch to everything. It's too bad that the film has a few dead spots, which are caused by the somewhat sharp cut to another space-time...

A remarkable vampire epic, which certainly does not rank amongst vampire horror movies, but rather, with surprising elegance, balances on the edge of drama and a relatively controversial love story. The quintessence of this spectacle is the convincing performances of Cruise and Pitt, whose homosexual relationship is hinted at throughout the film. In the end, in Interview with the Vampire, the relationships between the characters and the kind of "realistic" view of the vampire underworld play a much bigger role than any vampire props. Definitely an interesting film, which is not quite perfect perhaps only due to a lack of significant gradation and a slightly better built story. But these deficiencies are replaced by the atmosphere and some really great and powerful scenes that will stay with you.

Basically a perfect example of the current development of Kundera's myth. From a complex and dense text to a sparse and twisted story that is styled to be "user friendly" for Western audiences. The absolute artificiality of the environment wouldn’t be as important if the atmosphere just before / after August didn’t play such an important role in the original. Kaufman evokes the atmosphere like someone who is uninitiated in the classics – he inserts the emblems of Czechness everywhere – the flag, the anthem, Prague Castle, but a simple a glance reveals that in reality everything is artificial, misunderstood, twisted. The highlight is the end of the film, when the Czech countryside is depicted with unwanted irony in the same way as in Sorel paintings from the 1950s. Another problem (at least for me) is the acting, especially the lousy performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, whose character Tomáš completely lacks any of the internal tension from the literary texts and suffices with one seductive look, whilst fatigue, skepticism and internal exile disappear somewhere. Thirdly, the screenplay, unlike the balanced and masterfully styled original masterpiece, gets stuck on considerable inconsistencies in everyday speech and deeper thoughts. As a result, it comes off as extraordinarily pathetic and inorganic. Several well-filmed moments deserve praise (I would especially highlight the photography of Sabina's nudes and then the impressively edited conclusion with its great sound), which, however, did not convince me that Kaufman made a cohesive film worthy of Kundera's novel. If it weren't for the original novel, I would probably be more lenient, but this film simply wasn’t very good.

Whether I want to or not, I need to nag and criticize. The aspects of the film overshadow a certain banality and imperfection of the content... Beneath the shell of perfect visuals (the edit and camera are excellent!) and narrative magic, there is love story that is only briefly sketched psychologically and is not exceptional in any way, and it lacks depth and the hard-to-name magic that "made" Coppola's gem Lost in Translation. Carrey excels and with absolute sovereignty connects the civilian inner and exhibitionist mannerisms of his acting, and Winslet is also deeply immersed in the eccentric Clementine, but they are unable to hide the flatness of the characters and their considerable proclamation and two-dimensionality. The exclusivity of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is aided by the superficial memory-erasing plot that allowed Gondry to play out the audio-visual drama of an escape from the inevitable oblivion that takes place almost entirely in the main character's head. The drama of the end of a relationship between two people, painful disillusionment and an irreversible return to the beginning, which overshadows all the evil that happened after it. It's not boring at all and it warms my soul, but after the film ended I had nothing left but a handful of positive impressions and a very overdone, mundane love story in an exclusive package. Nevertheless, I can only praise the ease with which Gondry et al. work with emotional shades... But I was still expecting more.

I completely agree, Caligarim... the book is schematic and predictable, and the only thing that pushes it above average is King's decent style and work with atmosphere. From this perspective, Mary Lambert's work belongs to the better film adaptations of King's work – it sticks to the point and the original, it preserves a rather impressive paranoid atmosphere and it doesn't particularly stir up the viewer – in short, it’s a pleasant watch. I certainly don't think that Stephen King is the author of literary breakthrough books, and Pet Sematary perfectly captures both the master's literary standard and the standard of the film remakes of his work.

A very old-fashioned and gradual conversational detective story, in which Sequens managed to create an exceptional panopticon of characters from the luxury hotel Excelsior. The brilliant acting and a light perspective of Vacátek's advice make the peaceful investigation of the murder a fun, albeit slow spectacle. It’s too bad about the annoying title song, which almost made me faint by the end. But if you want to have fun with an intelligent detective story without unnecessary brutality and action, enjoy well-written characters and an enticing story, then visit the Excelsior Hotel, an island of peace and quiet...

Lynch's Mulholland Drive is a great lesson in perception. As well as a great lesson from the power of the narrator - power over the fictional world, its inhabitants, but also over those who try to decode it. In the first part of the film, the director entices us into the trap of traditional narrative perception, into the straitjacket of the unity of time, action and characters. He unfolds before the viewer a seemingly unambiguous thriller plot about a woman who lost her memory during a car accident and, with the help of the beginning Hollywood actress Betty, tries to look for clues about what happened to her. She finds three material constants that will soon remain the only constants in the chaotic vortex of dream and reality – house number 17, the blue key and $ 25,000. The ensuing earthquake, which destroys the plot that has been carefully constructed and reconstructed by the viewer, is typical Lynch. The characters change names, and the plot and time become relative... And the key remains, which does not unlock anything for the viewer, house number 17, whose inhabitant is known and yet unknown to us, and $ 25,000, the determination of which we suspect, but we do not receive anything to support this theory of ours. What is real and what is a feverish dream? How do the strange and disturbing episodes that Lynch seems to associatively insert into the flow of narration fit into the plot of the film? What, in fact, is Mulholland Drive? I do not know the answer. It's a classic mental time bomb that confuses and annoys you, but you don't really think about anything else. Lynch created a disturbing labyrinth in which he shatters the mirrors of the classical narrative structure, in which the hypocritical and empty world of Hollywood (a masterful scene with the revival of meaningless and empty text on casting) is reflected, in which the viewer is necessarily lost if he or she perceives in a learned manner - materially, causally. A labyrinth with a brilliant and almost schizophrenic performance by Naomi Watts... Lynch is a great magician of dreams, hints and riddles. A bandleader who creates the illusion of instruments to then reveal that everything is played only from the tape - it’s fake, artificial... confusing. I am not going to give it any stars until I see the film a second time, maybe a third time... I confess without torture that I don't really know if I've actually watched a film. Formally, undoubtedly masterful (sound, editing, camera, music and the overall atmosphere resulting therefrom is freezing, dark, enchanting...), but in terms of its interior, I am still too far from its core to make any judgments.