Lima

The first half is a series of more or less awkward and even more awkward jokes, where my rating oscillated around one star. Fortunately, the second half picked it up, the awkward humour disappeared and it became a quite pleasant, albeit a bit simple-minded moral on the theme "Family above all!" With the passage of time, the initially unlikeable Sandler has become a person who can believably play some deeper emotions. In the end, I would give it 3 stars, but I can't because of the first half. And in conclusion, I can only say with pleasure: "Hola hey, the cult lifeguard and general of shallow commerce, the reborn David Hasselhoff is here again!!!" :o) He clearly enjoyed his role as the boss after his film fast.

JESUS CHRIST!! Cameron what have you done! This film can be described with two words: unnatural and kitsch. Unnatural character behaviour, unnatural dialogues, unnatural situations. At times it was really unbearable and towards the end I was praying that this plastic kitsch would finish already. Orlando Bloom showed once again what a faceless actor he is, the whole time he looked like he wandered into the film purely by accident and if he doesn't enrich his acting register in the future with more than just the look of a shy guy, I'm afraid his acting career will soon go down the drain. On the other hand, there’s the charming Kirsten Dunst, whenever she appeared, she lit up the whole scene like the sun with her immediacy and charisma. It is only thanks to her and the fact that Crowe still has a great way with music (again, very pleasant, as is usual in his films) that Elizabethtown can be survived in one viewing, albeit in my case with a lot of persuasion. And I didn't expect it, but unfortunately I have to conclude: Elizabethtown is the first bad film from the creator of the wonderful Singles. We all stumble sometimes.

Every movie fan since Kill Bill knows that revenge tastes best served cold. Unfortunately, I got my mouth properly scalded by McGuigan. Initially, the story is promisingly paced, narratively enjoyable and witty, with no fucking around with machine guns, and with likeable characters. But about half an hour before the end it changes its face completely, the narrative lightness is gone and the overwrought resolution with tiresome explanatory flashbacks and a numerous body count comes into play, lacking insight and thus putting McGuigan's film among this year's unoriginal, long-worn by me uselessness of the type of Running Scared. I'm just bored of all these ultra-hyper-cool Tarantino clones! Ben Kingsley can only remember his Gandhi and Itzhak Stern with a tear in his eye, his acting is awful (especially noticeable in the dialogue scene between him and Freeman), some of the holes in logic of the plot are truly remarkable, and Josh Hartnett proves that he is just a mediocre actor and simply not up to serious roles.

Very funny and imaginatively directed in places, especially in the opening, when we are introduced to lobbyist Nick Naylor (the utterly brilliant Aaron Eckhart) as the "embodiment of cigarettes" in an irresistibly black and humourless sequence that approximates the number of victims of tobacco addiction. Guaranteed to amuse, too, are the apt observations about the now-fashionable curses on smoking in contemporary Hollywood ("These days, when someone smokes in the movies, they're either a psychopath... or a European."). Even at the very end, Reitman elegantly gets away with moralising that smoking may be "bad", but it is up to each of us to choose. But still, in the end, only 3 stars, albeit very strong. Despite a promising start in the opening 20 minutes, the film has too many deaf spots and unfinished scenes, which is a shame, because such a hot topic is ripe for a complete explosion of politically incorrect, sarcastic humour, of which there is woefully little. Still, the "Ghostbuster" can be proud of his son, I think there is a great talent growing here.

Hess, Himmler, Goebbels, Göring, Speer, Dönitz, Mengele, Eichmann, Schirach, Ribbentrop, Freisler, Bormann. A 12-episode documentary series about the worst bunch of the 20th century.

HITLER-BASHING. This six-part documentary series is undoubtedly the most comprehensive portrait of one infamous "disgraced painter". Watched several years ago on ČT2.

Accounts from the diary of the greatest quack in German history, accompanied by film footage from the time. Of particular interest are his emotional state in relation to women, his undisguised hatred of Himmler and his comments on German and Hollywood cinema. It's just a shame that there's virtually nothing of the mental motivations of the last weeks of his life (his decision to commit mass family suicide); that could have been the highlight of the entire 2-part documentary.

It's got some good ideas (the smart balls reacting to whistles amused me), visually it's not completely futile either (very nice sets at times), and Charlize, who could probably do with rainbow-coloured jeans, is a pretty sight to behold. But that's about all that's worth mentioning. The story is terribly stupid, the action is uninteresting and there is not a single moment in the whole film that you would be willing to watch again. The seemingly charismatic Marton Csokas clearly has a limited acting range, he's good at villains, but I don't trust him as a "good guy" at all, and why an actor like Frances McDormand wandered in for those few shots is really a mystery to me. So the truth is that so far all the movies with comic book action heroines are getting their asses kicked cinematically, artistically and commercially, Catwoman and Elektra can tell you about that.

King Kong Escapes. Do you know how to calm a horny King Kong? You just ask him nicely. In other words, Kong is on the rampage again, and again under the baton of Ishiro Honda!! No, it's nowhere near as good as its predecessor King Kong vs Godzilla, it has a lot of deaf spots, but there are still some nice cinematic nuggets to be found. The story begins at the North Pole, where the evil Professor Who constructs Mecha-Kong, a steel robot the size and shape of King Kong, to mine precious gems. But Mecha Kong, girded by the bombs he throws into the ice crust to get to the coveted minerals, can do nothing. Meanwhile, a military submarine anchors off an island somewhere in the Pacific, out of which flies a hovercraft (all cute little models) that goes into the island jungle manned by two commanders and one lieutenant named Susan. While the gentlemen go to explore the terrain, the lady stays with the hovercraft. Out of nowhere a prehistoric lizard (an actor in a costume) appears, Susan starts screaming and wakes up Kong in a nearby cave. He steps on the lizard and the fight begins. If you're wondering how such a lizard fights, well: it jumps up and with both feet in the air kicks Kong in the stomach, who does a backwards roll. This is repeated about three times until Kong gets pissed off, chokes the lizard and puts it out of commission with precisely aimed fists to the stomach. Meanwhile our heroes flee the island, on their way back to the submarine they are attacked by a sea serpent, Kong again comes to the rescue, kills the serpent and then comes to the submarine in which Susan, with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love, is hiding. The horny Kong shakes the submarine, pounding it with his fists and making it impossible for it to leave. Susan comes out and says: "Kong, please dontt shake the ship. I sleep and I eat on this ship." And Kong stops. The submarine sets sail, Susan and her colleagues announce to the world that they have discovered Kong, and Professor Who decides to kidnap the ape to help him mine the gems. With adorable helicopters he puts Kong to sleep with ether bombs, loads him on a ship and takes him to the North Pole. He also takes Susan, who had happened to return to Kong’s island. Kong, controlled by some kind of antennae stuck on his skull, digs through the ice like a madman, looking for gems, but after he sees the kidnapped Susan, he rebels, breaks through and runs away through the polar landscape, towards Tokyo (why Tokyo, I have no idea), where the army attacks him with tank models. Who brings Mecha Kong in to see him off, and the final battle can begin. Then Susan, who has escaped from the mad professor's clutches with her kidnapped colleagues, runs up to Kong and says: "Calm down, Kong. We’re your friends!" voluntarily allows herself to be drawn into his paw, all to the amazement of the onlooking soldiers. The ape, with Susan in his paw, climbs the local TV tower together with Mecha, where a fierce fight ensues, in which a nice blow on the head with a ripped out railing is the least of it. Who do you think wins?

Such a shame. In the first two acts, this drama had the makings of a nice 4*, but from the bus scene onwards, the story is one logical gaffe after another, with the most profane screenwriting cliché (I was 100% sure the screenwriter was going to unload on me) at the very end. Even so, Bruce Willis repaired his reputation after the bad Hostage. The role of an aging, limping cop suited him like a glove. The sword-wielding Mos Def took time to get used to (and played it well), and Richard Donner is still not an old hand. Summary: easily digestible three-star entertainment.