Othello

As I'm slowly getting older, I'm finding that more than the sensitive humanistic story about a human creature I'm interested in all the stuff around it. All those chimneys, gas lamps, banging workers, chimney sweeps....

For me, an utter superhero fantasy (the superhero subgenre doesn't say much to me on its own) that shows how these double-identity movies stand on character. And just compared to the constantly troubled Peter Parker, who manages to find a bunch of faults even in the fact that he flies between skyscrapers and throws cars at people, Tony Stark is a very pleasant refresher. He also moralizes once or twice, and he doesn't relieve us of some of the pathos at the end either, but he does the rest with a grace that only the constantly high Robert Downey Jr. can give him. I liked the final destructive scene as well, and actually overall I was pleased except for a few crap things, like the virtual translator -)

I don't like Czech director Filip Renč, or any director without a manuscript. With this film you can understand his youth and post-revolutionary derangement, but it was very hard to get past certain stages of the film. Renč's eternal desire to make something that avoids Czech standards is so evident here, more than in any of his other films, that it reaches a severe spasm at certain stages comparable to the post-revolutionary wave of Vit Olmer (did you get goosebumps just now, too?). To top it all off, he put himself in the male lead role and it really hurts. His total lack of acting talent would be obvious even on a fourteenth videotape copy of a dumbshow grotesque. His playing at being an appealing action hero with his heart in the right place comes across as a preschooler playing detective, and his performance in the final scene oscillates with awkwardness in the fatal consequence of that expression. Slow-motion shots, strange resurrections and, by the finale, the cast of the 1st floor (who on earth was that dude with the horribly whitewashed face in the straitjacket and dice?) make the film a truly contradictory show that gets stuck realizing what the film's possible ambitions were. Because from the very first scene, when a public safety car drives in the gloom along a deserted county road somewhere on the edge of the world, it has the makings of a hellishly depressing atmospheric ride. And the film manages to maintain that bleakness most of the time, before briefly killing it again with some stupidity. Add to that a certain cold rawness to the film, some great production design, and a 14-year-old (perfectly naked in places) Anna Geislerová, and it doesn't come out all that terrible, but it had the makings of 4 stars. Imagining what Michálek or Zelenka would have done with it... ah well.

Two stars the first time, but the second time real fun, which I guess I'll really only allow Tarantino. The fact remains that Planet Terror is the better of the pair anyway, as it manages to entertain perfectly throughout.

Day Watch is a mess, but in the nicest sense of the word. The vampire universe here has no rules, no set abilities or limits, so the viewer is not at all prepared for what might happen the next minute. Here the hero teleports through posters, there he flies through a closed subway door. For example, one of the characters is told by another character that she's not invited to the party, but she'll definitely send her some pictures of it. Then, at the party scene, we see that uninvited character there as a photographer. She subsequently stops the exposure time of the camera. The whole of Moscow is here destroyed by a rubber ball (not seriously). Logically, the script runs on half-gas, but its functionality surprises with about seven times catharsis at the end. On the other hand, for the music, as in the first episode, they should crack someone around. Day Watch makes as much of an argument for Timur being a brilliant director as it does for him being a total dud. Yet his follow-up, Wanted, proved the former.

Monstrously chauvinistic miamisploitation suffused with amoral nihilism in the best action scenes the world has ever seen. The creative freedom of non-judgmental vocabulary drips so beautifully. What's not to love?

I'm hoping, hard, that I'll also see a multi-part series of Mayhem in Miami, which will, incidentally, feature five Pure Fucking Armageddons in swimsuits.

Aronofsky pissed everyone off when he got 35 million for this metaphysical and overly personal project and had it hyped as a blockbuster. It's not a film I would normally rate with full marks. I'd forgotten what else to go to the cinema for. The English-speaking Spaniards and the occasionally slightly careless artistic patents in the narrative need a tune-up. Of course, the film's finale is visually and sonically (Clint Mansell rolls like a pig) so... final. That after finishing it, you're left with exactly the feeling that should follow the film. PS: I don't know of a film that uses publicity so effectively for reconstruction.

Spectacular direction and brilliant animation, with its feet kicked out from under by an incredibly stupid and cliched script. However, the film is definitely worth seeing for the two facts mentioned above.

A spectacle free of caffeine, nicotine, and with the absence of sperm, excrement, and other interesting things, where next to the brilliant technical side (special effects, set design, costumes, etc.) the direction, the script, and the performances of the little actors gradually weep.