Isherwood

At first, I appreciated how even a Czech filmmaker can get behind the camera so that he doesn't shoot the same characters at a static angle at face level. These are the people that keep on worrying about small Czech problems over and over again, but once your eyes have seen enough - especially when Ševčík alternates "cool" shots with the cheapest ones - you start to think he is, in fact, showing us nothing. If Milan Kňažko is not in the frame, the monster is only talked about, and that is simply not enough. An unhappy childhood is just words in a void and a legal dilemma is just a sweaty forehead and a shirt without a tie. Not to mention love and other deeper things. When Ševčík finds a screenwriter who can thicken the plot, his solid images will get a solid idea and an original Czech filmmaker. This film left my mind on the way home. 2 ½.

This is the essence of screenwriting idiocy that refuses to make the characters anything more than pieces on a chessboard of slaughter. These are one of the best things I love about the current French exploitation wave, but when you spend the first half desperately looking at what jerks the main characters are and the second half looking at what jerks those around them are, you kind of start looking forward to the end. But then comes the final point, and I just helplessly wonder how much Western critics must have seen that made them yelp so much. It left me completely cold, desperately bored, and kind of... pissed off. Laugier is a very decent craftsman, no question about it, but as a screenwriter he sucks!

Untouched by the comics, but with thoughts of both Gilliam and Greengrass, I end up being thankful for Zack Snyder, who has grown as a filmmaker in his third film. While he was enabled by an obviously strong premise or rather its script treatment, the way Snyder presents the vast world of rejected superheroes is breathtaking. It’s a powerful reflection on America with an almost meditative thought about humans in general. It is based on excellent dialogue by a group of fresh-faced actors who are occasionally sent into excellent action sequences by the director. Rorschach's rendezvous with the cops took me far beyond mere viewer ecstasy. I left the movie theater very pensive, but a day later I was cheering and I know I have to see it at least one more time. Edit I: It was worth it. It's been a long time since I've experienced a second screening of a film that I've enjoyed so intensely. Edit II The D.C. version is "only" a gourmet cherry on top.

An inoffensive adaptation of Wyndham's classic that suffers from a slightly softened Carpenter who seems to have run out of bizarre ideas for disposing of people, which is quite unfortunate because the material was perfect for it. It’s not boring, but I did forget it after a few days.

It’s one big guilty pleasure that can only be criticized for making RoboCop into a sentimental tragedian with a tendency to protect small children and the virginity of unknown girls, for stealing from Terminator 2, and finally, the reprehensible failure to use an evil Japanese man. Otherwise, this film is unceasing fun at the expense of perhaps the majority of the crew, who I pat on the back for the fact that it's much better than the second film. 2 ½.

Day One: I turned it off after forty minutes because I just didn't understand what was going on, let alone who was with who. Day two: I didn't give up and devoted the rest of my time to it. I guess now I do have an idea about who's with who and what, but the mound of useless characters simply defeated even Kelly’s genius, about which I now have strong doubts. Appreciating porn and making a satire of your country’s foreign policy can be done in a better way, I think. The Rock's charisma, Sarah Michelle Gellar's girlishness (someone get her into real porn! :)) and Moby’s fantastic music keep me somewhere around neutral. The feeling that I should devote two and a half hours to Kelly again is strong, but I am somehow afraid that he will reward me in the same way as the first time. At least no one’s going to take away its title of the "weirdest" and "WTF?" film of the last few years.

I appreciate how Clint's slow but focused direction manages to fully serve the story, telling it from the position of an unbiased observer while letting the viewer deal with the emotional whirlwind on their own. What I appreciate less is the fact that the last quarter is a bit of an appendix - a place that just is, but somehow the viewer can do without it, perhaps because the cards have been dealt long ago and nothing can surprise him anymore. Then there is Angelina, and although she’s great, she’s still and always just "Angelina™," which can't be hidden even by the elegant hat and the period hair and make-up. However, I do admit that the first two-thirds or so of the film hit me hard.

James Cameron is a very wise and clever man. The way he was able to gracefully bridge Scott's horror film (the 57-year time gap, the nightmares, the colonization of the planet) to his own vision of an alien encounter is admirable. It’s an impressive action ride that is unrivaled across all weight categories. It’s built on ingenious editing, (now legendary) sound, and of course, a bunch of marines who, apart from an amazing arsenal, also spew a bunch of catchphrases that should be carved into the most expensive marble. This simply fascinates me even after more than twenty years. To this day I still wonder how something like this film could have ever been made... for me, this is James Cameron's best film and think what you will about it, but that's about all you can do.

HBO gets bonus points! This predatory re-creation of America's most controversial election, which is well cast, cleverly written, and relatively impartial, stumbles only at points when there are so many characters involved and so many names being spoken that the uninitiated viewer simply can't keep up. Still, audiences will take away the feeling that the United States electoral system is upside down, and at the turn of the millennium its sacred constitution got its ass kicked. 4 ½.

Even after watching this film twenty times, it's still an inventive, clever, and suspenseful thriller where Joel Schumacher, constrained by budget and shooting days, lets the entire weight of the plot be carried by the polished dialogue of the Farrell-Sutherland pair. For this, the biggest thanks go to Larry Cohen, who did have some mistakes and logical question marks in the script, but the witty social criticism together with the escalation of the plot reliably carries the film for the entire 70-minute runtime.