Lima

An excellent series that unfortunately hasn’t reached a wider audience in our country. It's exactly as one foreign review says: "easy to admire, but hard to love." To admire because of the flawless craftsmanship, the detailed period setting (the 1980s) and the precise actors, from the smallest supporting roles to the leading ones. And it's hard to love because the leading duo are like fellow TV serial killer Dexter, who, as with the two protagonists playing Soviet KGB spies, we know that what they are doing is not exactly kosher (and sometimes beyond what we would expect from our favourite lead characters), but we still root for them in a way. We form an ambivalent relationship with them – on the one hand, as dedicated KGB spies, they irritate us because they undermine the foundations of a society that has opened its arms to them; on the other hand, we like them because they are not brainwashed, they have a point of view and they are likeable (Kerri Russell and Matthew Rhys are my new acting revelations). The casting overall is the trump card of the series. I especially enjoy the well-known secondary role actor Noah Emmerich as a CIA agent who exudes respect, some of his monologues give me chills, and the unknown Alison Wright as the manipulative, naive Martha is also excellent. The script is entirely unpredictable, winding its way forward in unexpected paths, so nothing for lobotomized viewers who are addicted to the standard mindless TV entertainment that you can watch while doing the ironing. Perhaps I would have liked a sharper climax in the last part of the 1st season, given what it had promised all along, and also the pilot doesn't lure enough and someone might be forced into the second episode. But give it a chance, really. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the second season, which is supposed to be even better.

Poster tagline: NATURE GONE MAD!!! THE MOST EXPLOSIVE SCI-FI FILM EVER PRODUCED!!! Well, Stephen Hawking was wrong :o) The thing that can destroy planet Earth is not the Higgs boson, but according to the creators, it’s "particle E-112" (something like a "liquid rock" that increases its volume and explodes when exposed to air), now I'm a bit smarter. Well, if I were a professional geologist, I'd bang my head against the wall in despair. It's not badly filmed, the exteriors and interiors are believable, there are no blatant rear projections and the stalactite cave set really does look like a stalactite cave. But this film simply lacks any element of believability, from the pseudo-scientific theories to the contrived plot elements (to better explore the effect of the Earth's core, you just need to climb a few dozen meters down into a cave on a rope ladder). And the scene when the sheriff explains to the protagonist over the phone that an earthquake has caused a volcano to grow outside his window (which, when seen from the window, looms in all its cone-shaped majesty behind his silhouette) is sure to cause fits of laughter. What surprises me, though, is that the man behind this is Sam Katzman, the famous B-movie assembly-line producer who regaled our hearts with gems like The Giant Claw. This one isn't that amusingly stupid, more just kind of goofy.

Poster tagline: TERROR IN THE SKY!! WHAT MYSTERIOUS FORCE HAS TAKEN CONTROL OF THE FLIGHT?? Nowadays a completely forgotten sci-fi piece that looks like an episode of the mystery TV series The Twilight Zone, popular in the 1960s, which was parodied by The Simpsons. This isn't a cheap, low-budget film to mock, or at least it successfully pretends to be so for most of its runtime. I would have cut the first half hour, all those conversations over coffee that don't move the plot anywhere, but again, thanks to the short runtime, they are bearable. Then, when the "hijacking of the plane" happens, the film starts to find itself in B-movie waters for a while. In this "mysterious world", where there is no time, no past, no present and no future, we creatures walking around in black trousers and white shirts and there’s no shortage of Dada moments. I would have liked a sharper twist, but the anti-war message is actually quite good. In the end, it fizzles out, but I can’t say a bad word about it.

Poster tagline: LAND ON THE MOON WITH THE INTREPID FIRST ASTRONAUTS!!! I didn't let myself be swayed by the terrible overseas reviews, but it’s still bad, man. I'm sort of used to the technical silliness (which zelvopyr mentions at length) in Golden Age sci-fi, so I condescendingly overlooked that the overload at launch only affects humans and not animals, that meteorites (i.e. polystyrene boulders) bounce like tennis balls when they hit the lunar surface, that there is a breathable atmosphere on the moon so you don't even need a glass on your helmet, etc. etc. (it would be a long story). What’s striking is that the 8 years younger Kubrick Odyssey is light years more technically sophisticated and without any nonsense. What I do appreciate, however, is that they made a certain effort to portray the psychological development of the characters. So we have 12 astronauts – each from a different country – and at least the friction between the representatives of Israel and Germany can shake us out of our lethargy (though the numbers are awfully wrong, the Israeli rebukes the German saying that that his country had killed one hundred thousand of his people). What I found stupid, on the other hand, is that the American gets the longest introduction, he’s the captain of course, with the look of a typical alpha male with sharply cut features and half a head taller than everyone else. I’m not surprised at all coming from a country where they can’t even distinguish between Russia, Croatia and the Czech Republic (see, for example, my recent experience listening to the commentary of Russia's Makarova's tennis match at the US Open). But that’s something you can overlook, but the film is so tedious, without pace or creative zest. The actors are all terrible, the discordant score used many times almost burned a hole in my head, and by about the 30th minute I was just praying for it to end, which doesn't happen often. Why 1*? For the fairly nice visuals of the moonscape, perhaps the wide-angle restored image played its part.

Poster tagline: EARTH GIVEN 24 HOURS TO SURRENDER!! AN UNEARTHLY ENEMY DEFYING SCIENCE!!! IN A WAR TO-THE-DEATH OF ALL CIVILIZATION!!!!!! The world of cinema is unfair. Films like Robot Monster or the works of Ed Wood are notoriously known by all fans, but this gem that is equal to them in terms unintended comedy has been forgotten. If I were in the management of the Shockproof Film Festival, I’d go for it immediately. It’s impossible not to love. A film where piles of raked dirt attack (i.e., traces of invisible enemies, recycled many times from the same shot but from a different angle), zombies are destroyed by high-frequency sound, invisible alien ghosts get caught in a layer of acrylic paint on the body of their victims (so they can't escape through sweat pores), a bunch of edited disasters, demolitions, and footage from WW2 documentaries and other sources, etc. etc. Add to that the amateur actors (the only one who meets the criteria for normal acting is the great John Agar) and the pathetic voice of the narrator, all that wrapped in cheap visuals and the setting of the famous Bronson Canyon, in California, where the aforementioned, legendary Robot Monster was shot. And I wouldn't be surprised if the film's central situation - a group of people locked in a bunker surrounded by a horde of zombies - wasn't the inspiration for Romero and his Night of the Living Dead. I had a great time with the ubiquitous nonsense, which definitely wasn’t the intention of the creators, and I have no problem over-rating this time :o)

Poster tagline: MIGHTIEST SHOCKER THE SCREEN EVER HAD THE GUTS TO MAKE!!! 27 THRILLS A MINUTE!!! Nobody could resist this in the American science fiction of the time, but the posters, as usual, exaggerate. This is not about shock and unbearable tension. In fact, it doesn't even play on special effects (unless you count the two second shots of the flying saucer), just a fairly smartly constructed story with a less smart climax. This film is almost forgotten among sci-fi fans today, but a bit unfairly so. Like the much better known The Day the Earth Stood Still, it reflects the Cold War era, when a classic political chess game was being played between the "good" Americans, who only care about peace, and the Russian commie bastards, who only cared about wiping out the entire United States. Cinematically, it’s no cheap B-movie, the settings change frequently, and the visuals are rich in locations. The film as a whole relies only on dialogue, so it would work well as a stage play (it's a adaptation of a novel by its author, who also wrote the screenplay), and only one small gunfight brings a little bit of excitement. I found the concept of putting the fate of humanity in the hands of five earthlings interesting, especially in terms of how they deal with this reality, each in their own way. In the second half, there’s the classic game of "bad" and "good" (read USA and USSR), which may bore a seasoned viewer. Anyway, it's nice to see how relatively big a role Jiří Voskovec got, including the final speech, a sort of warning appeal to humanity that closes the film.

Poster tagline: RACING OUT OF SPACE... A FACE TO HAUNT THE EARTH FOREVER!!! In Czechia we have an old saying that fits this piece perfectly: “It was need that taught Dalibor to play the violin”, similarly, the low budget ($50,000) actually benefited this film – perhaps unintentionally. Ulmer couldn't rely on shooting on location, numerous extras or attractive props to enliven the narrative, so he devoted a large part of the first half of the film to frequent shots of a small spaceship, the alien itself, and supported it all with a seductively gloomy atmosphere, where, as in 1930s horror films, fog rolls lazily over moors and the lighting and camera work are sensitively handled. It's good that the script takes an ambivalent attitude towards the alien, we never really get to know whether it arrived with good or hostile intentions, and the final dialogue doesn't resolve it (“You know, I think that creature was friendly. I wonder what would have happened if... if Dr. Mears hadn't frightened him.” - “Who knows? Perhaps the greatest curse ever to befall the world, or perhaps the greatest blessing.”), which is refreshing in the sci-fi genre with evil aliens. Since there was no money for special effects, the alien ice planet, which, like the one in Trier's Melancholia, crosses the solar system, is only talked about, just as its bad deeds – in the words of the main character, the alien turns people into obedient zombies (but we don't see any of it). At the end, some excitement is provided by lame pyrotechnic effects and a B-movie duel between the protagonist and the alien. If I had to sum it up, I saw a decently atmospheric sci-fi flick with mostly seven actors, nice cinematography, a weaker second half, a nicely paced ending, and one thing you can't deny: it was the first low-budget sci-fi of the Golden Age about an alien invasion; it would be followed by dozens of similar ones.

Poster tagline: EVERY SECOND YOUR PULSE POUNDS THEY GROW FOOT BY INCREDIBLE FOOT!!! SHOCK BY INCREDIBLE SHOCK!!! THIS RAVAGING DEATH OVERRUNS THE EARTH, MENACING MANKIND WITH OVERWHELMING CHAOS!!! Just as they had successfully exploited the popularity of “The Quatermass Experiment” by adapting it to film, the English hoped to do something similar with a film adaptation of the 1956 seven-part series “The Strange World Of Planet X”. But the film was a flop in the United States and its later cult status is not really warranted. For 50 minutes, things run at half throttle, recycling three rooms where the actors deliver their dialogue without much passion. There's talk of freak storms and tidal waves, but we don’t see any of that, just bold headlines. Something more interesting starts to happen 20 minutes before the end, with mutant insects running around the forest (i.e. macro shots of grasshoppers, beetles and centipedes in front of static shots of a forest), soldiers shooting at them and one of the beetles nibbling on the face of one of the soldiers in a close-up. The main character, a young female scientist (whose arrival is commented by one of the actors in a strongly politically incorrect expression) gets caught in a spider's web and watches from the edge of the picture as a spider feasts on a fly on the rear projection behind her. The effects look like something out of Bert I. Gordon's stable in their quality, including a rushed ending with a painted landscape behind the actors. But at least you'll take away one important lesson: if you want to fit in secretly with humans as an alien, you have to shave!

Sly's scripted assurance that old geezers are still better than young inexperienced kids is actually enough to make me happy. I could have done without the gender emancipation element in the form of an invincible warrior in a skirt (the director should have explained to her that a perpetually scowling face would not make her a tough brawler), but on the other hand, Banderas was pleasantly delightful in his self-deprecating role delivered like a ferret on speed. The fact that the young ones lack any charisma at all is actually good, it makes the personality of the old action stars stand out all the more. And the final action-packed 20-minute set-piece finally brought it up to a very close 4*. I have to laugh at some of the criticisms here (as well as like-minded reviews on news sites) to the effect that the Expendables 3 "is all about shooting". What else did you expect from a pure action franchise scripted by a man named Sylvester Stallone? A Kantian reflection on the meaning of existence and the universe?

The plot rides on the wave of traditional comic book clichés, there’s the die-hard bad guy who wants to wipe out the galaxy and a bunch of oddballs trying to stop him. But the ubiquitous self-deprecating humour takes this tale up a level of fun, as do a bunch of likeable characters who have each picked up an extra bucket of charisma and whose fates keep you interested. James Gunn has capitalized well on his Troma beginnings, and he handles the wisecracking bizarre characters with aplomb and with humor that doesn't feel awkward or hammy. And tell me, is it possible not to love a film in which the protagonist is willing to put his life on the line to save his beloved prehistoric Walkman? I myself once, many years ago, as a poor student, bought my first Walkman with the last money I had saved and was happy as a pig in shit, so I understand Chris Pratt's feelings :o) And it wasn't even  a gift from my mother.