DaViD´82

The first part of John Woo's Pearl Harbor about the fates of three couples on the verge of the Chinese Civil War. You certainly won't miss nor overlook that Woo has gotten a huge budget at his disposal. There is no problem with that. The problem is how he used it. The scenes of everyday life of the central trio are naive and so sweet that they would easily fit into romance movie, but despite all of this, you will get over it. Surprisingly the problem is, (don't forget it is John Woo!) over-the-top epic war scenes (they look like those from the Navajo Code; just bigger, bigger and even bigger), when Woo doesn't know what to do and so he shows one explosion after another, the all this slows the pace significantly. And yes, on both of these levels, it's simply 100% Pearl Harbor. It's just not that fun (or ridiculous) and it's just boring. And also thanks to the fact that it is a prologue, which could have easily been captured during the first fifteen minutes of the second part. However, it will not make you want to watch the second part, not even remotely, because the fates and the characters are not interesting and, to their own detriment and the over-the-top style of action will soon annoy you even in this movie.

(over) An over-the-top stylized, undemanding spy retro one-time movie, which is not purely comedic, but it make you smile throughout the footage. Unsurprisingly, it is entirely dependent (even thanks to the unnecessary bad guys) on the squabble of the central trio, which usually works. Most of the time. And if not, "sixties" Ritchie, "Morricone-like" Pemberton or Uncle Rudi with his fairy tale carry it.

I cannot deny that I really enjoyed Rebecca Ferguson and all that neatly shot, imaginative and various actions scenes without overt-the-top CGI (especially the motorcycle scene is simply perfect), but what is the best thing about it (apart from Rebecca Ferguson, of course) is the final minimalist personal London third, when it definitely turns into a classic British-style spy film, where the well-written characters (not only in terms of action blockbuster) mess with each other using dialogs "I know that you know and you know that I know" at the airport, in the room or on the restaurant terrace, and it completely does without any action. And it works, because it's not silly at all, while respecting the principles of the genre, and McQuarrie makes you forget that twenty years ago, in terms of script, he was able to do with one room and unfortunate narrator. As you can clearly see from this, he was mainly concerned about the characters and the plot and the action and tinsel were sidelined; which is an unprecedented thing for a summer popcorn movie, which in fact it is not.

Terrence Malick's style farewell to his daughter. The concept is quite nice, but the way it is eventually put into practice is rather a letdown. The melancholic atmosphere works quite well, but in terms of acting it is not typical. What is telling is that pensive Arnie whose acting seems to be desperate and inappropriate is the better part of the central duo.

Simply said, when the actor and director are on completely different level in terms of quality. While Gyllenhaal’s performance is brilliant and he is even "aiming for Oscar", Fuqua only makes just another everyday consumer version of the thousand-times-seen boxing B-movie melodrama, in which perhaps all genre clichés are present; just often in a non-functional style. It also strangely tends to fade away, because it starts with by far the best scene and then it only gets worse especially after falling to the bottom, when the true values are revealed and the after getting at its height again. It's kind of sad when the opening match has a driving force, energy and charge and the final one has nothing. It holds together only thanks to Gyllenhaal’s performance, but as I mentioned, his excellent performance seems almost inappropriate in this movie.

This is surprisingly the better, more beneficial and timeless part of the community-funded project, which in many ways revolutionized gaming history. In the spring of 2012, Tim Schafer (author of most classic adventure games of LucasArt) launched the community funding on Kickstarter promising “I'll make an old-fashioned adventure game, I just do not know what". He collected a lot of money, showed the way to others, and thus started the subsequent nostalgic tsunami of the return of experienced creators and the good old gaming school along with them, which no longer were wanted by big studios. And he changed the whole industry to some extent. And this twenty-episode documentary series, depicts the entire long-term production journey, even before the funding was launched. It is an interesting show, as it shows in depth the complete creative process in all areas, including all compromises and sofia's business choices. The best thing about it, however, is that Schafer's entire project was built on shaky ground from the beginning, and the higher it got the bigger was the fall, no specific plan, financial resources were terribly overestimated, all the finances were spent long before completion, controversial communication about many unpopular decisions, unfulfilled promises, disproportionately long development and questionable quality of the final product. This show captures all this and much more in an objective way, uncompromisingly and in the raw, so it is a unique insight that is very interesting (especially if you are starting a project), regardless of whether you are into playing video games or not (especially old school point and click adventure games).

The fight between the men is somewhat spoiled by two snags. The first "heist-like" half got significantly older than the second "inherit the wind". And then, to a large extent, it is a movie about those two famous silent scenes (robbery and the final ride through Paris), which unintentionally stand out and unfortunately steal the show.

Reed inherited gold from Wright and McKay and transformed it into copper. However, high quality copper in all respects. Even in this traditionally Marvel-like sterilized form, Ant-man will keep you entertained (yes, especially thanks to Peño and Tomáš). And what will disappoint you even more is how he wasted so many possibilities to take full advantage of abilities of the main characters. Because his small adventures, ideas and playfulness are outshone by the six-decade-old The Incredible Shrinking Man or the Hamster in a Nightshirt of Czech TV and what is far the best in this regard is the poster promo campaign "with Avengers"(whether official or fan). And that's not enough.

These a few dozens of seconds were completely unnecessary, without them it could have been the best horror of recent years. But we cannot do anything about it and their presence is even a bigger letdown because the problem is not what they show but how. Anyway, otherwise it is pretty good. You can find here everything what a real old school horror movie should contain; disturbing atmosphere, graduating psycho tension within a closed community (in this case a family in the middle of the woods), exposing carefully written characters, fears, evil and prejudices hidden in us, disturbing scenes... I am completely happy about that; especially when you add the impressive camera à la Dutch masters and acting performances of the whole family, which are worth highlighting, including the children. I can't remember when four children played such a complicated characters so well. Perhaps Eggers will make more horror movies, because a similar approach to this genre has been missing in recent years.

A barely believable tragicomic series of events that lead to the destruction of a military unit by several forgotten Soviet mines on a few square meters in a valley in the middle of nowhere. You hardly come up with something so absurd. After all, it is said to stick to the facts faithfully. On top of that, they managed to perfectly capture the psycho-tense atmosphere of a ridiculous, but hopeless situation; in the best moments, when the true personality (in fact even the entrails) of the individual characters is fully revealed, the Sorcerer (1977) will come to your mind. The whole movie then progresses after the first helicopter attempts to land around two thirds of the footage. After this climax that comes too early, the movie only gets worse and becomes dull and the increasingly naturalistic anti-war movie begins to turn into to a movie celebrating all this.