D.Moore

An achingly quiet drama with the exquisite and beautiful Lída Baarová and, as always, more than skillful direction by Otakar Vávra, who was one of the few directors of his time who could shoot in a truly worldly style. I especially liked his thoughtful long shots - the opening one and the one from the roof. And even Hitchcock wouldn't be ashamed of the fish scene.

It ignores anything remotely resembling meaningful story that would hinder the continuous grotesque escapades of varying levels. For some it's enough to relax, for some it's enough to be completely enthusiastic, for some it's enough to keep them awake.

The Man with a Movie Camera appealed to me more. It is even more imaginative and does not need so many obviously faked and even acting interludes, but Berlin: Symphony of a Great City is still such an amazing spectacle. In a very dynamic way, it captures a living city on the threshold of an economic crisis and before the terrible horrors that came next. One has to ask oneself if this beautiful building was hit by a bomb, if the shop windows were smashed and burned, if these children survived... Oh dear.

An extremely tired film, made without a single decent directorial idea that would have interested me. While the cast is appealingly likable, and so is Genghis Khan's story, the result is, for all intents and purposes, presumptuous misery that probably wanted to play at being Lawrence of Arabia (three years its senior), and it deserves its failure.

The first episode is unnecessarily drawn out and I could probably do without the film inserts, but the subject is very interesting and the rugged mystery story is one of the most fascinating I have encountered in recent times.

Studio Hammer used the horror potential of Doyle's novel to perhaps one hundred and ten percent, but fortunately they have not forgotten the detective story either and have mixed both in the right proportion so that the viewer does not get bored for even a second. Moreover, Peter Cushing is a great Holmes and André Morell a great Watson - not possible to write something similar about Christopher Lee.

The plot and in fact the rest of the story, including the (rather sympathetic) ending, feels like something out of a better (i.e. not completely stupid) episode of Believe it or Not. But I liked the fact that the film, thanks to the sober runtime, quickly got to the point, did not delay and tried only to worry and frighten from beginning to end. Unfortunately, it didn't always work out.

The film is edited according to a tired biopic template, so the plot won't surprise even those who knew nothing about Florence Foster Jenkins, but at least it's a pleasantly lightweight spectacle with excellent performances by Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant, with whom a grinning Simon Helberg tries (and mostly succeeds) to keep up. Fortunately, it's neither a rip-roaring mock comedy nor a deeply serious drama with a tragic heroine to pity; it's something in between. And that is good.

I've seen some really hilarious mystifying documentaries and feature films, but none of them looked as believable as Searching for Sugar Man. So imagine my surprise when the film ended and I learned that there was no hoax on the viewer, that it's all true! I had been wishing that it were true, that such a beautiful life story could indeed happen. And so I give a fifth star for the fact that it took place, which I probably would not give if it were a hoax.

I love it when, years later, I look at a movie that I once liked and find that I like it even more. Young Frankenstein is just like that. Behind all the jokes that make it a really excellent comedy, there is a great love for parodied material, which makes the fun even funnier. The most devastating bursts of laughter hit me during the reveal of the secret passageway, the Puttin' on the Ritz performance, the scene with the blind man (an unrecognizably bearded Gene Hackman), and the sight of Marty Feldman's Igor as he operates Frankenstein's lab at the end, hopping from switch to switch.