Marigold

Nice choreography, especially in the first half of the series, sympathetically sketched characters and the world - but that's the problem. It's an "approximate spectacle". Incomplete, but it's no problem to enjoy it as a solid B-movie glued together from a number of more famous and better elements.

Agatha Christie meets full frontal feminism. I don't know if I should take a look first at how well it's written, how exactly it's acted, or how exclusively it's filmed. There are a lot of series that work hard on feminism. This is feminist, without pirouettes and big words. A maze that on the one hand looks like a brilliantly built small-town tragicomedy, on the other like a purebred whodunnit detective story. God, do not punish me for guessing the solution in the third part. But the sound of Elvis still vibrated me. Love them all, those wicked moms.

Shell without the ghost. The scenography, design and audiovisual performance are excellent, the cast sympathetic, but from the complex spirit of the original, only a predictable and stenciled shell about naive souls abused by the corporation remains. It doesn't matter that the screenplay literally quotes certain ideas when there is essentially nothing left of the original meditation on "being a machine" except for a dozen revenge stories. But I could let that go. No one expects that the 180 million dollar blockbuster will suffice with wordless shots of sad facades and people's faces. But what I won’t let go is the second half and the fact that Sanders is a director with a sense of effect and smooth texture, but his style lacks the essence that would bring this nice cyberpunk wallpaper to life. It could have been worse, I agree. But it could have been better, one always realizes whenever a ghost really flashes in the movie - whether in the wobbly gait of Takeshi Kitano or the sad eyes of Pilou Asbæk. If this is what the Deus Ex adaptation would look like, I would actually be quite satisfied. But Ghost in the Shell is more than just a facade.

Artistically remarkable, skilled directing, emotionally flat... I was more struck by metaphorical animated insertions than by the slightly insensitive verbal chemotherapy of real life. The topic is truly serious, but the film helps it alibistically to its own seriousness rather than being able to truly contain it. Unfortunately, the heated scenes evoke in some way the cumbersomeness of Fesser's "oncological" drama Camino, albeit in a much more bearable package. As another sprout of the "realistic children's movies" branch (let’s say together with Pete's Dragon), it is definitely an interesting mainstream alternative.

Life is missing... life. Although it has a very nice liquid first scene and a very ambitious artistic aspect, even the olm that mutates into an octopus from the second floor is said to correspond to scientific knowledge. However, the rhythm of the film, which has the pace of a beginner driving at a driving school, certainly does not correspond to scientific knowledge. I really don't consider the alternation of tiring and awkward dialogues and action scenes to be the rhythm I want to indulge in in a similar thriller, especially when the motivation for the action is getting more ridiculous every minute. The fact that it’s a B-movie wouldn’t matter - if it hadn't been covered in the needless coat of attempts to create a contemplative A-movie, and if Espinosa hadn't directed with a ruler in his ass, it could have been at least as funny as in the first scenes.

A nice surprise. Despite the initial impression that it will be a B-movie amalgam of Blade Runner, Total Recall, Alien, Mass Effect and other legends, The Expanse quickly begins to show its own style, which mainly depicts the dirty and mundane futuristic Society of the Rings and the ruthless climate of impending war. Sympathetic and ambiguous characters greatly help to overcome the loss of tempo and content in the middle (one simply keeps watching, because one is interested in Miller, Holden, Nagata and co.). The biggest snag is the screenplay, which tries to include as much detail as possible, and a person unfamiliar with the books a) has no idea what is going on, and b) sees that the logic is sometimes sloppy. The genocidal finale and biomechanical cancer are great, but for me the sweeping of the asteroid in the eighth episode remains the highlight. Anyway, its meaty, hard sci-fi, that has been missing from the screen for years. I will saddle up my Rocinante and set out for the second series. P. S. Formally more than above standard, I haven’t even mentioned the solid tricks and nice scenography and shots that someone obviously took the time to think about.

Terribly awkward dialogues, dull in terms of directing and acting (anyone who grumbles at the pace of Cage, avoid this nonsense), the most amusing are the biggest clichés, so a mistake apparently occurred somewhere. Does the world really need another billionaire-orphan with paranoia, who is treating it this time with a New Age cocktail from the Himalayas? I guess so, but I don’t want to see it. In terms of series competition, this is really only for undemanding fans.

The only thing that bothered me here - the material and the number of destinies would suffice for ten episodes, and the pace is sometimes very "choppy". But the decision to make it a miniseries is understandable. What appears to be a comprehensive probe into the social policy of the city of Yonkers is in fact an analysis of one man's psychology. And thanks to the fantastic performance of Oscar Isaac, one only realizes this when the first scene gets quite a depressing and overwhelming feel at the end.

It still struggles with a certain degree of panopticality, a certain strangeness, a certain condescension that is made possible by the characters, who are very much caricatures, and from the period sloganeering. Undeniably, though, it has its sharper PARTS at times.

Everything has a price - Singer knew it at first. And Mangold is now paying her interest on all the excesses, cardboard, digital cotton wool and unfinished work. Brutal, explicit, socially dystopian, yet very nostalgic and sensitive to the characters that the film undresses from leotards and impales them with deadly diseases, coughs and doubts. No, Mangold is not an elite director. Sometimes the dark tone is on the brink of exaggeration, sometimes you can really see inside of it, but in the last shot it hit me as deeply as any other X-Men movie. It is in a way an e-Revolution. Logan uses it not only for vulgarisms and unusual anatomical clarity, but also for opening up a very unhappy vision of the future, in which heroism is just a dull memory from scuffed comic books. America in 2029 built from hints, but very current hints. Children of Men in a superhero version. Logan hurts. And that is good. A film for pessimists who can't stop believing.