Lima

An overwrought digital coloring book, and I almost want to write "literally" coloring book – looking at the CGI smoothed out faces almost made me throw up. This just shows the hypocrisy of some film critics who accused The Hobbit of CGI overkill (and ignored the fact that in many cases it was also handmade sets), and with Aquaman, which in terms of digital mess is two or three levels above, they are quiet in this respect. I didn’t feel it was alive, not even once. Not even a comic book feel, because even the worst DC comics have more life and multi-dimensional characters than Wan's boring one-dimensional archetypes. Boring, sterile like Znojmo’s pickles.

My two-year-old great-niece loves it, and it’s actually funny sometimes. For example, the episode with the tennis match, where the creators make fun of the screams of players like Sharapova or Azarenka. Of course the kids won't get it, but it's a nice bonus for us adults.

That “nothing happens” here? We must have watched a different film. A very good indie affair for most of its runtime, which surprisingly brings some untested ideas to the post-apocalyptic genre, with a nice chemistry between Dinklage and Fanning, but unfortunately in the last 10 minutes it completely falls apart dramaturgically and loses its sense and logic. Still, I'll stick with the final four star rating that the whole film was going for. It was overall a lot more interesting than I originally expected and I have a soft spot for personal ventures (good advice at the end: never put a rating on FilmBooster :o))

If there was an award for the most forgotten film of a popular genre, I'd have a candidate. An early poliziotteschi piece that badly wanted to be a spy flick, but never went further than an attempt. The story of the double agent is not as convoluted as my colleagues writes here, Miraglia manages to give the dialogue scenes a proper charge. The problem is that the real spice of wannabe Bond films, the action sequences, are three in total, very short and you won't remember any of them as they are bland. The genius loci of 1960s New York works quite well, but the film loses its visual charm when it moves to Hamburg and Berlin. Only the beautiful music with melancholic saxophone and the charismatic Henry Silva, whom I personally love in any movie, keep it above the average.

Do you know the name of Jaromír Soukup's dog? Jaromír Soukup's Dog.

The first 20 minutes, with the errant behaviour of one of the protagonists and the confused editing, were almost unbearable. Then, thankfully, it turned into a nicely atmospheric, cinematically imaginative spectacle, but again with confusing editing. You sit with it out of curiosity, trying to understand what Refn and Tarantino see in it and why Criterion took it under their wing, but it just didn't draw me into the plot, I just don't give a damn about these rambling Godard-esque films. Tokyo Drifter, which I liked a bit more, has the same visual charm, similarly inventive use of music, but the plot is just as rudimentary and the continuity of the scenes completely disjointed. Probably Suzuki is not my cup of tea.

A beautiful, unintentional slap in the face of our current filmmakers, who whine all the time that they don't have the money to make films and when they do get it and make something, it's mostly crap. Here's proof that it's not about money – all you need is an idea, a vision and a skilled craftsman. The almost 90 minutes feel like 10, it has tension, it has an unexpected twist in the second act or so; simply, as I've been convinced lately, the Danes are on fire!

The first half is better than the second. Boris Karloff's entrance is exquisite. He was an extremely charismatic guy, and the filmmakers knew that, that's why the close-up of his face – the same one – is repeated several times, even with those glittering sinister eyes; it’s beautiful to watch (I had to save that evil look as a wallpaper on my PC :o) The second half is terribly rushed, as if the filmmakers were trying to cram it into the shortest possible runtime. One of the main characters dies, but nothing comes of it, no one seems to care much. Things happen too fast and Edward Van Sloan plays Dr. Muller awfully. I love old movies a lot and that's the only reason I don’t give them a hard time. The whole thing is pretty naive, next to the likes of Frankenstein it doesn't really hold up in comparison. On the other hand, the long silent flashback is impressive, and there's Karloff, he keeps it afloat, a stud, a true icon.

I've written this before with another of their films, but I'll say it again: cursed be the day Lou Costello believed he was a good comedian, or that he had any acting talent. Here again, he's awkwardly goofing around, constantly throwing direct glances at the camera as if to highlight the "joke" he just made. He's a real pain to watch. His partner is much better, his speech is rather subdued and as if it was beyond the business of which of the duo is the smarter one. Otherwise this wannabe slapstick Laurel and Hardy type, like Costello, isn't very funny, though there are two or three good ideas. But I can't completely condemn it, it has beautiful, classic, old-fashioned Egyptian sets (the whole thing was filmed in a studio), and my eye was captivated by them. But until next time, I'll think twice about wasting my time with the Abbott-Costello duo. Perhaps just to understand why they were such a big phenomenon at the turn of the 1940s and 50s.

Throughout all six episodes, there are four amazingly composed action scenes, twists and turns like on a treadmill from the third episode onwards, and the main villain was for me only on the last line in the list of suspects, I really didn't guess him (but maybe I'm just dumb). The long scene with the explosive vest in the last episode is something, something so bizarrely suspenseful that you almost can't believe your eyes. But in a good way, it had drive, I had a great time. Richard Madden was incredibly good at it, a pro in every way, the minister's lapdog and a bundle of nerves all rolled into one. He was fantastic! I’m not giving it five stars only because at the very end I didn't believe at all the sudden transformation of one of the characters into absolute evil, given the previous course, the way she presented herself, what I felt from her (those who have seen it, will probably guess). The filmmakers simply overdid it with trying to surprise.