Stanislaus

I've always had a soft spot for the English countryside, historical costume dramas and stories that could only be written by life itself, so this film with its long and bizarre title was perfect for me. While it's true that the plot is at times borderline romance novel, it's nevertheless told and acted in such an honest and straightforward way that you simply let yourself ride the waves of a story about love, the horrors of war, and the power of friendship wrapped in potato pie skins for a full two hours. In addition to the amazing performances by the cast, the film offers beautiful locations and a very strong story that made the onion concentration rise uncomfortably a few times while watching it. The trip to Guernsey was without doubt my cup of tea and it tasted absolutely delicious. P.S. The Downton Abbey ensemble rules!

At first (and very possibly at second) glance, this is an understated film, which, thanks to its criminal plot, makes the viewer follow it to the end. Eva Green takes on the role of an unhappy and disappointed woman in a convincing way, wonderfully seconded by Shailene Woodley as her daughter. It was interesting to watch their unorthodox and complicated relationship, which defied conventional standards. Thanks to the clues in the form of dream sequences, I was able to form a picture of what had partially happened quite early on, and while the final denouement was somewhat surprising, I also found it very far-fetched. On the one hand, I felt the film had visible ambitions to go beyond the grey average, but on the other I found it somewhat underdeveloped.

In a way, Passengers could be conceived as a futuristic version of the Titanic, with an Overlook bartender on board, plus the modern equivalent of Sleeping Beauty starring a technician from below deck, a first-class intellectual and a giant ship with 5,000 passengers in fatal peril. The film impresses above all with its appealing visuals and the grounded performances of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. In addition to the visionary notion of planetary habitation, the film invites us to reflect on the question of human behaviour (a drowning man grasping at straws) and the helplessness of omnipotent technology in a state of emergency (where machines fail, good old human hands come to the rescue). I believe that even more could have been extracted from the subject matter, but I was still satisfied with the final product.

A more minimalist version of Emmerich's disaster movies produced in Norway, which, except for the relatively unadorned fjord setting, offers nothing particularly new within the genre and mostly depicts what has already been seen. Personally, at times I had quite a problem with some of the characters, whom I found exceedingly unlikeable, making it hard to root for them in this fierce battle with nature. On the other hand, I have to mention and praise some solidly suspenseful scenes, especially the ones with the evacuation and the arrival of the destructive wave.

Baby Driver is a milder version of the phenomenal Drive with Ryan Gosling, but it still manages to engage the viewer and make the second half of the film tense thanks to a good dose of action. Baby is a really bizarrely written character and you can see that Ansel Elgort enjoyed it very much. Overall, as far as the cast is concerned, I was extremely happy with the ambiguous Kevin Spacey, the deranged Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx, and the endearing Lily James. The first half was weaker, but then it all picked up and didn’t stop until the end credits. A weak four stars!

Departure deals with both troubled adolescence and troubled marriage and family relationships, and I think it would have been more effective if it had focused properly on just one of them. While the issues in question are well acted, I felt like they skimmed the surface rather than fully sinking beneath them. At times, the film even tried to be poetic – the underwater scene with Rusalka speaks for itself – but I still felt that much more could have been made of it. I felt the emotion, especially in Juliet Stevenson's acting, but there are other, similarly-themed films that simply got me more.

A prehistoric version of The Hunger Games based on shallow dialogue and incredibly unlikeable characters that, with a few exceptions, are impossible to root for. Most of them are sociopathic psychopaths, both those in the arena and those in the command center. Fortunately this is not a product of Asylum, so technically the film is on a noticeably better level – the pterodactyls were awful, but the raptors and T-Rexes were pretty good. As a result, it could be considered an upgraded and perverted version of public executions of criminals sentenced to death. The original premise was certainly not bad, but the execution was very weak, especially from a screenwriting standpoint.

Chuecatown captivate you mainly thanks to its black-humoured theme and witty characters, dominated by a vigorously straight-talking mother and a commissioner with phobias from A to Z. Don’t expect a deeper story in this case, this film was made purely for entertainment, which it quite succeeds in doing thanks to this cast of bizarre characters. Unpretentious nonsense with all the trimmings!

The French know how to make dramas and comedies, and they are also good at mixing genres. Two Is a Family is more on a serious note, but it also features many humorous moments, especially provided by Antoine Bertrand as Bernie. During the first two acts I thought I would give the film a solid three stars, but in the last act it all went up a notch and in the end the film played a lot on my emotions, and I ate it up hook, line and sinker. Two Is a Family isn't a comedy of the kind that will have you rolling with laughter, it's more of a humorously paced story of a father and daughter trying to live their life together to the fullest despite more than one obstacle.

"Do you know what marriage is? - Marriage is when the woman tells the man to take off his pajamas... and it's because, she wants to send them to the laundry." Marriage Story but more than fifty years earlier. Two for the Road is the bittersweet story of two people who couldn't stop loving each other despite everything life threw at them. What makes the film particularly compelling is its indirect narrative techniques, which allow us to follow Joanna and Mark's life journey on several time levels, which intertwine in a purposeful way to create a map of their complicated relationship. The two leading actors play their roles in a convincing manner and give us a realistic view of the snares of marriage. Even though this is primarily a relationship drama, there was still room for a few humorous moments that balanced the serious line of the film. P.S. Little Ruthie and her parents made my blood boil beyond belief!