Lima

The sentimentality at the end is too much, but I still give it four stars, especially for the brilliant scene with the flock of dodos and the squirrel sketch. If you want to enjoy the squirrel more, check out the Gone Nutty DVD bonus with it, it's better than the whole movie put together.

It’s bollocks as The Blue Lagoon, but not as sleazy, and it’s a better watch. Also, Mila Jovovich has a lot more sex appeal than Brooke Shields, even though both are terrible actresses.

A film set in the early days of aviation. A film about top aviators who entertained many spectators with their stunts in biplanes, only to see many of their peers fall in aerial combat during the war. It is almost a must see for fans of the early days of aviation and everyone else will enjoy it too.

Verhoeven doesn’t mess around much. Starship Troopers was a commercial flop in the US, the Americans found no sympathy for the satirical undertones of the fascistic depiction of the human society of the future and the naturalistic gore scenes. When I went to see it, there was a little girl and her mom sitting next to me. The little girl loved it at first, the story unfolded like a sort of Beverly Hills 90210 from the future. Gradually, however, Verhoven's creepiness began to be revealed and the little girl and her mother couldn't stand it and ran away from the cinema. I, on the other hand, was in my element. State-controlled news and army recruitment, as if cut from the documentaries of the Communist era. Kindergarten children trampling little bugs to the enthusiastic applause of the teacher, it was like seeing our peasants exterminating the American potato beetle in the 1950s. The cerebral elite in long black coats, looking like Gestapo, a female lead dying in pain and with blood in her teeth – tell me, how many times have you seen a female lead die like that in a mainstream film? No, I'm not a pervert who revels in that, I just love Verhoeven's lack of inhibition, which he has demonstrated so many times before and which, in the case of this film, makes for a hard-to-digest affair that can't possibly have a chance at wider commercial appeal. And I get the feeling that Verhoeven doesn't give a toss, and that's what I like about him. Arms, legs and heads fly through the air with such frequency that it must have given the censors a hard time. And on top of that, those amazing visual effects. No, this is not mass entertainment, this is a cult-classic for weirdos.

After the revolution, there were several obscure distribution companies that flooded our small video market with even more obscure, cheap crap. One of them was a company whose name I can no longer remember and its flagship was Hell Comes to Frogtown. The cover had a muscular guy with a submachine gun and a voluptuous lady at his feet, and around him stood resolute-looking frogs with firearms of various kinds. Now tell me, who can resist that? So, my mate Cooper and I rented it, looking forward to some cheesy B-movie. It was worse than we expected. Awfully lame and amateurish, though the actors with the bad make-up had something going for them. Basically, nothing, but that's just my moral justification for paying 20 crowns for this crap and sacrificing an hour and a half of my time.

A superb thriller in the Coens’ unmistakable style. Everything played into their hands: 1) the magnificently bleak mood of winter Minnesota, 2) the simple yet impressive soundtrack, 3) Macey and his characterful portrayal of mean-spirited jerk and underdog, as only he can play it, 4) the pair of goons, irresistibly played by Buscemi and Stormare. Add to this the Coens' absurdist humour (e.g. the scene where Buscemi buries the money in the snow), and the final rating is easy. Only the Oscar to McDormand is a bit of a mystery to me.

Probably the best film showing the communist 1950s not as an exhilarated working class era, but as a time full of fear and widespread snitching. Brzobohatý as a high-ranking communist official and Bohadalová as his wife give the performances of a lifetime. After the Russian occupation this film went into the vaults, of course. Kachyňa made a humiliating apology and survived, but Jan Procházka, with his script, set up his professional suicide.

A beautifully shot safe bet. The contrast of a cute little boy vs. a grumpy bachelor can't fail.

My favourite Jan Svěrák film. An original premise, a smart script by Svěrák Sr. and pretty good visual effects for the time. And for me, the twist remains current, sometimes, after sitting at the computer and watching the monitor all day, I feel I could use a healer like Fišárek :)

Clichés, clichés and then some more clichés. Add to that a hearty dose of patriotism and boredom, and the result is Armageddon. I don't want to be biased and so: the introduction with meteorites is decent, the training on the NASA base has flair and wit. The rest, on the other hand, is what I say above.